The Hearing (6 page)

“Yes.”

Dutweiler said, “Do you have anything you want to tell us?”

“I have to talk to my wife.”

“You mean you didn’t say yes? The President asked you to be on the Supreme Court and you told them you’d
think
about it? Is that what you said? You really
said
that?”

“Not exactly, Michelle. I wanted to discuss it with you. Some wives, they’d be happy about that.”

“I
am
happy. I just can’t imagine it. ‘Supreme Court? Well, I don’t know. Let me run it by the wife.’”

They were spending the night at her parents’ place, sitting on the porch in the twilight. Her mother and father were at a
movie.

Gus said, “I’m only thirty-eight, Michelle. This is for life. We’d have to move to Washington. You want to live in Washington?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

“It’s like Jupiter, only less hospitable.”

“You like being a judge. You can’t be any more of a judge than on the Supreme Court.”

“That’s me, Michelle. That’s not you. You’d miss this
ranch.
I’d
miss this ranch. Not to sound corny, but this is where I first found out I’m alive. I’m not sure what would happen if we
went to Washington.”

They were side by side, bodies touching, on a wooden swing suspended by chains from the ceiling. He gave the floor a light
kick with his foot, and the swing rocked gently in the breeze from the ceiling fan. A porch swing. A ceiling fan. This was
the nineties in the United States of America? They were going to leave this, go to Washington? People
killed
themselves in Washington. White House people.

He had dreamed about the Supreme Court. But it’d been
his
dream, it wasn’t
her
dream, it wasn’t
their
dream.

“Look at it this way, Gus. If we don’t go, will you ever have peace? Will we ever have peace? Will we ever stop wondering?”

Finally, it was the peace thing that made up his mind. Michelle was right. He had to know. They had to know. If they hated
it, he could always resign.

G
us and Michelle rented a small two-story brick bungalow in Vienna, Virginia, a forty-minute drive from Washington. An accountant
lived across the lawn on one side, a young attorney on the other, and an engineer with the Department of the Interior across
the street. At night it was so quiet you could hear neighbors cough and tree leaves rustling in the breeze. Michelle liked
that. It made her feel secure.

And then, two weeks after the nomination, had come the video.

John Harrington, the attorney who had been in Montgomery for the Vicaro case, had invited Gus to his Washington
office and, with more curiosity than caution, Gus had gone. He’d watched the video, taken it home, showed it to Michelle.
Lying on the bed, recovering from the shock of seeing her daughter for the first time, she’d said, “Where did he get it?”

“Harrington said the girl’s father, the adoptive father, sent the video to the adoptive mother two years ago. They’re separated
and he took the girl. He wanted to prove to his wife that the girl was safe and happy, so he sent the video.”

“Where did he take her? Where is she now?”

“Harrington said he didn’t know. He didn’t want to tell me anything. He just wanted to show me what he had so I’d withdraw
from the nomination.”

“Who are they?”

She sat up, and Gus moved next to her on the edge of the bed. He said, “The parents? I don’t know.”

“Is she all right?”

“She looks all right on the video. That’s all I know. I think it’s all anyone knows.”

“What are we going to do?”

His desire, his principles, his heart, everything most important to him said,
Fight.
But prudence, reality, responsibility, his obligation to Michelle and their daughter, his love for Michelle and their daughter,
said something else, and that was what he told Michelle.

“I’ll have to withdraw. We’ll go back to Montgomery.”

“And just drop it? Just like that? You can’t do that, Gus, not after seeing that video. We have to know how she is, where
she is, is she all right, is she safe.”

“We don’t even know if the man’s looking after her. Where is he living, what’s he doing?”

“Michelle—”

“If you withdraw and we go back and pretend nothing happened, we’ll never know, we’ll spend the rest of our lives just—we
couldn’t do that, Gus, we …”

“What do you want to do?”

“Why do you have to withdraw? Can’t the White House find her? Can’t they make Harrington say where he got the video? Why do
you have to withdraw just because they’ve got a video of our daughter? That’s not a crime, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t have to be a crime. They’ve got more than the video.”

“What do they have?”

He went to his briefcase and took out the manila envelope Harrington had given him.

“They have copies of our interviews with Dr. Novatna, and your conversation with a woman at the adoption agency.”

She put out a hand. “Let me see.”

When she had agreed to end the pregnancy, they’d gone to see a counselor, a Dr. Novatna. Gus had told him that he wanted Michelle
to have the pregnancy terminated. Michelle had agreed, but her reluctance was clear. Novatna had taken notes. The notes were
full of Gus’s insistence and Michelle’s reluctance. Finally, Novatna had said he would schedule an appointment for the termination,
but he asked Michelle, point blank, “Are you sure you want to end this pregnancy?” Michelle had hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Finally, she said, “Yes. I’m sure.” Novatna had said that before he proceeded he wanted to have another meeting. “Give you
time to think about it a little more.”

They had never gone back to Novatna. Instead, Michelle had told Gus she would have the termination in
Montgomery. That was the last he had seen of her before her return to Cambridge twelve months later.

The counselor at the adoption agency in Milwaukee had also taken notes. Michelle had confided in her. She had said it was
Gus who had wanted the pregnancy ended, that he had insisted. She said she had left him and decided to “save my child.”

Michelle finished reading the reports and handed them back to Gus.

Gus said, “They make me look like I forced you. I look like a monster. I
was
a monster. I’m sorry, Michelle. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “It didn’t happen anyway.”

Michelle reached for his hand.

After a minute she said, “She’s very pretty.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“We’re going to find her, Gus.”

“The nomination is off.” Everything in his brain said that was true. But his heart was screaming.

“Why?”

“Michelle, they’ll give all this to the media. How could I be nominated now? The pro-life people won’t support someone who
pressured his own wife to end a pregnancy. And the pro-choice people will say that whatever I did I was uncaring and heartless.
And think what it will do to the girl, and her adoptive parents. Everything will come out. The father taking her away. The
girl’s life—how will she react to this? It’d be all over the TV and newspapers. Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s adopted.
What have her parents told her? Nothing good could come from this, Michelle.”

“Maybe you’re wrong, Gus.”

Oh, if only he were wrong.

“Tell Dave Chapman. Tell Dutweiler. Ask what he can do. The White House has power, Gus. We might not be able to find her,
but the White House can. If Harrington could get that tape, the White House can find out where he got it. They can find her.
At least then someone can talk to her, see how she is. Then we can decide what to do. But we have to find her, Gus. We have
to know.”

“Michelle …”

She blew her nose but didn’t speak. He had never felt such sorrow for anyone. She couldn’t share his joy that their daughter
was alive because she had never thought she was dead. All she had now that she didn’t have before was the pain of thirteen
years lost with the stranger on the video.

She lowered her head and began again to cry. How could Harrington do this to them? The joy of seeing their daughter, his distress
at what it had done to Michelle, the impossible position they were in—everything turned to anger. “Cheap, malicious little
bastards.”

“So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘So what?’”

“Gus, when some cheap, malicious little bastards left those bullets and photograph in the luggage locker at the airport, you
knew
what to do.”

He had known what to do because that had been a threat he could overcome. This was not even a threat. This was a certain consequence.
Fail to withdraw as the nominee and that video would be on TV, along with the notes of their interviews. The girl in the video
would be hounded and destroyed. Michelle would be crushed.

“Michelle, I—”

“Didn’t you?”

“Please don’t shout. Of course I did.”

“Well?”

“Michelle, this is different.”

“This is
not
different. This is
exactly
the same. You are someone those bastards don’t want. You are going to do things they don’t want you to do. You believe things
they don’t want anyone believing. What’s the difference? That time the threat was against you and your family. It’s
still
against you and your family, only this time it’s your
whole
family, daughter included. Gus, you can’t just roll over and play dead. You will
hate
yourself if you do that. For the rest of your life you will hate yourself.”

“Michelle, there isn’t—”

“At least talk to Dutweiler. See what he says. Maybe he can do something.”

The morning after she saw the video, Michelle woke up, and the sense of amputation that had haunted her since the birth was
gone. She watched the video again and again and again. There her daughter was, before her eyes, alive and strong. Thirteen
years ago the loss had filled her with sorrow, and now the rediscovery filled her with joy—and apprehension. One had been
a newborn, this was a child of thirteen. Where was she, how was she, who was she? Was she happy? Who were her parents? What
did her bedroom look like? Did she have brothers or sisters? Michelle felt herself becoming once again the person she had
not been for the past thirteen years. Her daughter was alive,
she
was alive. She wanted desperately to see her daughter, talk to her, hold her, ask her forgiveness. She wanted to know her.

Y
ou said you had a video?”

Saturday evening, and Lyle Dutweiler was in a tuxedo. When Gus and Michelle had arrived at his house they’d seen a limousine
waiting at the curb.

Gus handed over the video, and Dutweiler walked across the book-lined study and slipped it into the VCR. Phil Rothman was
there too, bald, chubby, amicably sinister, sitting on a sofa.

Gus said, I’m sorry to disturb your weekend.”

“Don’t worry about it. You said it’s important, so it’s important. You want to tell me what it’s about?”

Michelle said, “I think it’d be better to watch the video first.”

Dutweiler nodded, smiled, and returned to his seat on the brown leather sofa next to Rothman. “Anyone want a drink? Michelle?
Gus?”

“No, thanks.”

Dutweiler crossed his legs, picked up his gin and tonic, and pressed the play button on the remote control.

The eleven-year-old girl came out of a house, walked toward them, smiling, in a hurry. A few yards from the camera, the picture
went blank and the video ended. The whole thing didn’t last more than ninety seconds.

Dutweiler said, “Beautiful girl, but I don’t understand. You’ll have to explain. Who is she? What’s it all about? I’m in a
fog.”

So they told him, about Michelle’s pregnancy, the proposed termination, the adoption.

Dutweiler interrupted. “Excuse me just a second, Gus.”

He took three steps to his desk, pressed a button, and said, “Michael, could you come in a moment, please?”

A tuxedoed young man appeared in the doorway.

“Yes, sir?”

“Please tell Mrs. Dutweiler we won’t be going this evening. And ask her if she could telephone our regrets?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Michael. That okay with you, Phil?”

Rothman nodded.

On the way back to the sofa Dutweiler withdrew the videocassette and handed it to Gus. Then he undid his black bow tie and
loosened the collar. “Sorry, Gus. Please go ahead.”

They showed him the documents. Dutweiler read them in silence, handed them to Rothman, waited for Rothman to
read them. It was impossible to know their reaction. They were attorneys, conditioned to give nothing away.

Dutweiler said, “Where’d you get the video?”

Gus told him.

“They got lucky. They found the mother—sorry, adoptive mother—and she gave it to them, sold it, whatever. So …”

He smiled and shook his head. He put his elbows on the arms of the leather chair and rested his chin on his clasped hands,
thinking. Then he sat up and said, “Well, the first question, Gus, is what does this do to you? And you, Michelle? Where does
this leave us?”

Gus said, “If I haven’t withdrawn by close of business on Monday they introduce their so-called alternatives.”

“What do you think those are?”

“You could answer that better than I can.”

“What’s your answer?”

“Publicity. Give it all to the media.”

Rothman said, “They wouldn’t be that stupid.”

Dutweiler said, “Phil means they might not want to look like people who would use a child to destroy a nomination. This sword
has two edges. They’ll just show it to opposition senators and staffers on the Judiciary Committee and hope quiet conversations
with the White House will do the trick. Publicity would be a last resort. They wouldn’t shrink from destroying that kid and
the parents and you and Michelle if they had to, but they won’t want the return fire that would bring. We could do a little
destroying ourselves. My guess is if you don’t withdraw I’ll get a call from Harrington myself and he’ll be chummy and reasonable
and talk about how reluctant everyone is to drag the girl and her parents into this.”