A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [179]
Nearly a month later we solved the dilemma of what to do for Thanksgiving by all of us, one by one, coming down with the stomach flu. Nellie had invited us to Minnesota for the long weekend. I don’t think she really understood that I was going to be standing trial days later for something that could put me away for years. I don’t know that Howard had ever fully explained the fact that I wasn’t allowed to leave the state.
“Could you tell her we need family time right now?” I asked him. “Could you say it’s been a confusing season and we need to have a day alone?”
“Would it be possible for you to come to us?” I heard Howard say to her on the next call. “We’ve got the sofa bed in the living room.” That alternative was not what I had had in mind. They phoned back and forth and she finally settled on driving to Spring Grove early Thursday morning, bringing her homemade cranberry sauce, and making stuffing when she arrived. Emma got sick on Monday, Claire went down on Tuesday night. It was only a matter of time before Howard and I capitulated. He was stricken on Wednesday and I held out all the way to Thanksgiving morning. “It’s your fault,” Emma said to me as I squatted by the toilet. “It’s your fault that Grammie can’t come for dinner.”
When I came downstairs midafternoon the girls were on the floor putting together a puzzle that Theresa had sent them, and Howard was sitting on the sofa staring out the window. There were a few saltines in a package on the kitchen counter, a six-pack of Seven-Up, and in the refrigerator the thawing turkey and the makings for coleslaw. I shut the door quickly, plunging the big, dimpled bird back into darkness.
As the trial got closer, Rafferty predicted that it wouldn’t last more than a week, two at the outside. When I sat through the jury selection and then the trial itself, I tried to hear a melody, to find a sense of music in that mournful room. The story was so old I was quite sure there had to be music running along somewhere, through the benches, up through the heating ducts, out of the worn woodwork. I once tried to explain my feeling to Rafferty; I tried to say that despite all of his careful tactical maneuvering, in spite of his knowledge of the rules, the new rules, the newest rules, there had to be something lyrical in the game, had to be something on the order of music.
“I don’t quite follow,” he said, looking mystified. “Music?”
My head was hurting quite a bit back then and I could only put my hands to my crown and wonder if something had in fact come loose.
“No, I like that,” he said after a minute. “I’ll have to listen. I like that. Music.”
The day of the trial I closed my eyes at the sight of the jurors filing in. There was already a feeling of weariness in the courtroom, and if, as I had hoped, there was music to be heard, it was the slow occasional twang of a music box winding down. Rafferty had said that there were conflicting strategies for choosing jurors for child-abuse cases. Some lawyers believed that women were more sympathetic to children; some believed, as he did, that senior citizens didn’t generally believe that adults were capable of abusing children, that a child’s testimony often seemed preposterous to them. Rafferty also thought that men were more tolerant of abusers. Although I had sat in a pretty dress watching the interminable selection process the day before, it was quite different to have to watch them move in together. They seemed connected, something on the order of a centipede in the school play, minus the blanket thrown over them. At first glance, they all seemed to be aged, overweight, stone-faced. They wanted to be in their beds, in front of their televisions, crocheting, fishing, anything but this at the end of their lives. They slumped down miserably in their chairs as if they thought they were going to have to do something unpleasant in a few moments, something that required exertion. When the testimony began I was able to observe them, sneaking looks periodically, and they soon came to be individuals,