A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [178]
He told me that often in cases like mine his hardest decision was whether or not to have the accused testify. “There’s no doubt here,” he said. “We’ll put you on last. We’ll leave the jury with your honest, forthright, and indignant denial.”
I had several sessions with Rafferty in which we rehearsed his direct examination, and then a friend of his, a lawyer named Ross Gryle, cross-examined me, firing dirty, abusive questions, one after the next. Rafferty had filed a motion asking the judge to prohibit any cross-examination on the subject of Lizzy’s death, because it was not relevant to the case. The accident would serve, he said, only to inflame the passions of the jurors. Judge Peterson had written a stern letter to both Rafferty and Susan Dirks, granting the motion, and instructing both of them to keep their witnesses from including Elizabeth Collins in the testimony.
When I answered Ross Gryle’s questions, Rafferty would say things like “Yes, Yes! Beautiful!” and “Deliver it with more punch, Alice,” or “You have talent, my dear!” Once he said, “You look like Audrey Hepburn in that movie where she plays the blind girl. You know the one I mean? Wait Until Dark. Helpless, so pure and unsuspecting. The audience knows the killer is in the room and she is saying so sweetly, ‘Is anyone there?’ ”
When I thought I might lash out at him, or cry; when I protested that I did in fact feel that I was on location, Rafferty said, grand in his humility, “I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. I’m getting carried away because I know you, because you’re my friend, because we share certain sympathies. I’m very sorry. You have to understand that this is where it comes together. We’re getting down to the last few pieces of the puzzle. It’s intense, I know. You’ll do fine. You’re doing just great. You’re wonderful. Say, Ross, do you remember the time you tried that guy for rape, and the girlfriend had the monkey, no, it was a parrot, wasn’t it?”
I’d leave them to remember their early glory days. Sometimes I’d walk over near the jail and I’d look up to the fourth floor, wondering if they were all still there. I’d go so far as to slip inside the courthouse and study the trial lineups, the arraignments, the motions, the hearings, to see if any of them were on the schedules. Afterward I always made myself go outside and sit on the steps. I had a ritual: I had to stay put for so many minutes and think of them, think of what TV shows were on, how many card games they’d been through. I had to put my time in, sitting, as if it was church. It was silly, I knew, to think I was doing them good by having a moment of silence in their honor. When I’d done my small penance I turned around and drove away from the city. I picked up Claire, and if there was time we went in the Motor Vehicle Registration Office, to watch Howard guide illiterate customers and old ladies through the paperwork of title transfers.
For the first time in their lives the girls had an old-fashioned Halloween. They got to walk through the town streets in their disguises, trick or treating. They opened their bags and strangers dumped candy in, telling them they looked precious in their St. Vincent de Paul kitty costumes. No one ever used to come to the farm for either pranks or sweets, and we had managed to keep Emma and Claire in the dark about the treat aspect of the holiday. In Spring Grove you could take the candy to the hospital to have it X rayed, but we chose instead to rely on blind faith. When we got home the girls poured their stash onto the floor, drew a circle on the carpet beyond which no others could come, and began to eat and trade and eat. Howard and I did not have the heart to stop them, and they neither turned green nor got sick. They seemed