Traps (24 page)

Lynn lays the paper on the table, curved and ribbed from years of folding and unfolding, and does the same.

They set their cups down but hold on to them.

The static on the baby monitor hisses.

Jessica says, “I’m sorry I left.”

“You needed to.”

“I’m sorry I went to him.”

“Are you, though?”

“Of course.” Jessica blinks. “I could have skipped it. All the grief he’s caused me and my family.”

Lynn shrugs. “Apparently not.”

“What?”

“Apparently you couldn’t just skip him. Me neither, by the way.”

She stands and opens a drawer with a clatter. She takes out two teaspoons, and from the cupboard she gets a little saucer. She sets a spoon in front of Jessica and uses the other to pull the tea bag from her water and wrap the string around and around, squeezing it against the bowl of the spoon. Then she sets it on the little plate between them.

Jessica lets her tea keep steeping. She says, “But just think how much better life would be for both of us if we had.”

Lynn shakes her head. “I don’t know about that. If I’d skipped him, you wouldn’t even be here.”

She takes a sip, and Jessica watches her.

Lynn says, “Life is full of things that feel like traps. Our own weaknesses and mistakes. Unlucky accidents. The violence done to us by others. But they’re not always what they seem. Sometimes later we see that they led us where we needed to go.”

Jessica straightens. She shakes her head bitterly. “No—”

“I’m not saying they’re not awful—”

“No way—”

“I’m saying they can be both. I’m saying it gets used.”

Jessica gives her head another fierce little shake and then looks up at the ceiling and bites her lip to keep the tears from spilling over.

Lynn waits a second, watching her.

On the ceiling where she is looking there is nothing at all to see. Just plain white plaster and a bowl of frosted glass diffusing the light from a single bulb.

Lynn says, “That farm accident I lost this hand in? It was an accident he rigged for money, and I can’t even say for sure that wasn’t some kind of gift to me.”

Jessica lowers her chin. An incredulous puff of air escapes her. “How do you figure that?”

“It made it just a hair too hard to drive a car when I was drunk. It’s what forced me to ask those girls to board with me and help me out. Who knows? I might be dead if I had two hands.”

Lynn looks at her over the top of her cup, elbows on the table, her good fingers and her bad holding her cup suspended. She shrugs. “Would anything be different for you if you’d skipped him? The kind of job you picked? The kind of husband you picked? The kind of mother you’re turning out to be?”

She watches her daughter’s face change, thinking about that.

Jessica presses a finger to the bowl of the spoon her mother gave her, tipping it up, and then lets it settle.

Lynn says, “Maybe you’ve got the whole mess with him to thank for some of what you love.”

Jessica shakes her head again, looking down, crying finally.

Lynn says, “Maybe he’s not our devil, but our angel instead. Or mirror. Maybe it’s only ever ourselves we have to fight or forgive.”

V
ivian sits on a wooden bench in the hallway outside the courtroom. She leans forward a bit to open the purse she borrowed from Lynn, and we see that underneath her white cardigan sweater, the waist of her long dark blue skirt is pinned to cinch it small. She takes a tissue from a little packet and slips off a black vinyl pump to stuff it in the toe, where there is already a crumpled ball of white. Then she puts her shoe back on and sits up to snap the bag shut again.

She can hear footsteps on the stairs before she can see anyone—clicking steps she can tell are a woman’s. She sees her face first coming up, soft brown hair cut short around a soft round face. The woman is wearing a white blouse and a tan skirt and black shoes, and the black briefcase she carries looks like a man’s. She sees Vivian right away and starts smiling like she would meeting her at a bus stop—like she knows her and has been waiting a long time to meet her. She walks over and sits down beside her and puts her hand out over Vivian’s lap to shake. She doesn’t even check that she’s right and ask Vivian’s name. She just knows.

“Thank you for coming,” she says.

Vivian shakes her hand, but she can’t talk yet.

The woman says, “I know you didn’t want to do this.”

Vivian swallows hard.

The woman says, “That’s common, you know. It makes a world of sense that you wouldn’t want to be here. But I think you’ll be surprised at how good you feel afterward. That’s what most women report.”

Vivian wraps the strap of her purse around her finger.

The woman looks at her watch, a white face rimmed in gold, with a black leather strap. She says, “The courtroom isn’t going to be used for anything for another twenty minutes, but after that it will be busy all day. I think we should go in and check it out now while it’s free, before you tell me your story.”

Vivian gets the strap very tight, like a little spring coil, and then unwinds it.

Carla says, “I just think it’s a good idea for it to be familiar to you during the trial. You don’t want to be wondering and worrying. You don’t want to feel surprised.”

Vivian says, “Who told you about me? How did you know to come looking for me?”

“Your old neighbor, Mrs. Ainsley. And a few coworkers of your dad’s, too, from the school.”

She winds the strap again. “I didn’t know so many people knew.”

“They didn’t know for sure. They might have helped you if they did. They just suspected. Then after you ran away—you were only fourteen, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“After that they felt more certain.”

Vivian swallows.

The woman leans toward her a little, resting her elbows on the knees of her smooth suit, like a mother. “So what I’d like to do first is show you the courtroom. So you can see where everyone is going to sit.”

Vivian nods. “Okay.”

She stands and collects her purse. She pulls down the back of her sweater over the bunched top of Lynn’s skirt. Then she follows the woman through the double doors.

The jury box and witness stand and tables—everything inside is a honey-colored wood, and the floor is white linoleum. Their heels click as they walk down the aisle between the rows of benches, like church pews, that people can sit on to watch things be decided.

Carla says, “Do you see the witness stand there? I think you should try sitting in it if you would. To get used to it. I’ll tell you everything while you sit there. So you can picture it.”

Vivian walks toward it—a plain desk with a vinyl swivel chair behind, and another wood wall behind that. She has to take two steps up to sit. She looks down at the woman and all the empty seats and desks spread out below her.

The woman says, “I’ll be standing here to ask you questions, and then behind that table there when your dad’s attorney is asking you his own questions. This table is the defense table.” She lays a hand on it. “So that’s where the defense attorney will sit. And your dad will be next to him. When was the last time you saw him? Your dad?”

Vivian is rubbing a thumbnail along the edge of the desk. With her other hand she is holding the big purse in her lap. “Back when I left. When I was fourteen.”

“You’ll have to pass by him here when you come in. He’ll be dressed in plain clothes. And he’ll be sitting in that chair.”

Vivian nods, looking not at the woman, but at the empty chair, picturing it. “Will he be able to talk? Will I hear him talk at all?”

“If he tries, he’ll be stopped. You won’t be in here when he sits in this witness box, and he’s not supposed to speak from that chair. And the jury will be watching him—he knows that—so he’s most likely to try to look unthreatening.”

“But he’ll be looking at me talking.”

“Yes.”

Vivian stops rubbing the table edge and holds Lynn’s big purse again with both hands.

Carla says, “I want to tell you—you need to know his lawyer will try to seem nice, but the aim of his questions won’t be nice. He’ll be standing
where I am, as close as I am to you, trying to make you seem like your memories aren’t clear, but even if some are foggy you can just keep coming back to the ones that aren’t. We can talk about that, and I can help you learn how to show the jury that no matter what he says about what you don’t remember, there’s plenty that you do. What you remember is enough.”

Vivian’s eyes are still on the chair.

The woman says, “He’ll probably also try to make it seem like you might have a reason to make things up. He’ll ask you about your life now, so next you and I should sit down in a room with some tea or hot chocolate for a few minutes and you can tell me as much as you can about what has happened to you since you left your dad’s house. I can give you advice about how to describe it. But let me make this easy for you. No matter what you tell me, no matter what you’ve done since you left home, none of it can be the reason he did what he did to you, can it? You didn’t cause it after you left, right? So we can just tell the truth, and I can tell you how to do that so the jury will not forget which thing happened first. That your dad chose to hurt you when you were just a little girl.”

Vivian looks at her, finally, her big purse weighting her down in the chair. “You know what he used to say every time when he finished?”

“I surely don’t.”

Vivian’s face screws up, staring at the empty chair. Her eyes fill. Then she says, “ ‘I know you’ll never tell.’ ”

“Oh, honey.”

She wipes her nose with her hand, her eyes still fixed on the chair where she knows now her father will sit and see her.

Later Vivian sits in a small room with a small conference table. A big plate glass window behind her shows the city laid out flat and glinting under the lowering sun—the normal parts and then the strip with the black pyramid, a castle with a roller coaster, and the big flat building of
shiny gold that says
MANDALAY BAY
across the top. She has her back to all this. She is making small tears like battlements in the rim of a Styrofoam cup.

When Carla comes in, she looks up.

She has papers in her hand. “You’re a very patient girl to wait for this. I wish I could have gotten them to you sooner, but I had a trial. I typed up all my notes. You can call and tell me if you think I got anything wrong.”

The little white bits lay strewn around her elbows. “That’s not why I wanted them.”

“I didn’t think so, but you still can if you notice things. I want you to.”

Vivian puts the papers in Lynn’s big purse. “Okay.” She tidies the Styrofoam into a little pile and scoops it into her hand.

The woman reaches out a cupped palm, and Vivian looks at it a second and then dumps the bits into it carefully. The woman empties her hand into a waste can behind her, her blouse rippling in an invisible shaft of air from the vent above.

Vivian slings the bag strap over her shoulder. “Well …” She blinks and stands up. “I think I should get going now. If that’s okay.”

“Of course, Vivian. You were always free to go.”

“I wanted these papers, though.”

“I would too, if I were you. You’ve been brave. You’ve done something important already, and in a few weeks you’re going to do more. You should be very proud of yourself.”

“Can you tell me?—Where is he now?”

“He still lives in the same place. He’s free until he comes here to court.”

“Does he know he’s going to see me?”

“Not yet. But he will. I’ll have to tell his lawyer I spoke to you.”

“Okay.”

“I could imagine you might worry about that. I could imagine you might worry he’ll try to contact you.”

Vivian shrugs.

“Do you feel safe where you are?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Because you’re right that he could. It wouldn’t be wise of him, but we can’t keep him from trying.”

“It’s all right,” Vivian says. “I’m ready, I mean.”

In her little brown car, in the parking lot outside the big courthouse, Vivian locks the doors. The sun is sinking low in the sky, making something creamy orange of the clouds behind the palm trees along the center median. She slips the papers out of Lynn’s big purse and holds them on the steering wheel:

PRE-TRIAL INTERVIEW WITH VIVIAN LOUISE ABLE

She scans through the Q and A lines until she reaches one on the second page: