A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [186]
I waited for him to develop the thought and when, after a few minutes, I could no longer hold out, I said, “What? What do you wish?”
“Why couldn’t he have been the one to drown? He might as well have. He might be better off if he’d died.”
“Robbie, you mean.”
“Why have we let this go on? The questioning was the devil’s version of Simon Says. Rafferty baited Robbie and then trapped him. There must have been something we could have done to keep that poor kid from getting slaughtered.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve felt that all along, that he is the one who will suffer more than anyone, more in a way, than we have. I still have music and words, our children—”
“Rafferty is—I’ve never met someone before who made me sick, who made me think I was going to vomit.”
“I have to get Claire,” I said, “or they’ll charge us for the next hour.”
“You never listen to me,” he muttered. “Did you know that?”
“Howard,” I said, “I am listening. I just don’t know what else to say. Robbie didn’t drown, Lizzy did. If not Rafferty, who? Maybe I should have copped a plea and served a sentence, and then we wouldn’t have had a trial. But that didn’t seem the right thing to do, not for me, and not for us, in the long run. I could say I’m sorry for the rest of my life, every day, every minute for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t exhaust all the sorriness I have inside me. I’m sorry for Lizzy most of all. I’m sorry for Robbie, I’m sorry for Theresa, I’m especially sorry on your account, and for Emma, and Claire. I’m sorry specifically, and I’m just plain sorry. I’m sorry Rafferty makes you sick. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll get me off, and then we can somehow try to begin all over, or back in the middle, or go forward from this ending place.”
He stayed in the car, clicking his key chain against the steering wheel while I went for Claire. We drove back to Spring Grove, picked up Emma at the school after-care program, went to the A&W, had the salad bar and bacon burgers, which even Emma had grown tired of, and finally made our way home. Many of the Pheasant Glade units had not been sold and the few that had been set aside for rentals had not been snatched up either. The two blocks of apartments had the feel of a ghost town, particularly at night. By the time we left it, it had begun to fill up, but we often felt, coming home, that we were driving into a place where nobody else wanted to be. All those nights during the trial we’d eat out or scratch up a supper, put the girls in the whirlpool tub, tuck them into bed, and then, because there didn’t seem to be anything we could talk about, nothing to say until we knew one way or the other, I’d rearrange the cupboards or play solitaire until I figured Howard was upstairs fast asleep.
On the third day of testimony for the prosecution, David Henskin, the principal at Blackwell Elementary, and Robbie’s teacher, Mrs. Ritter, both took the stand. It seemed a ridiculous exercise, both of them saying that I was sullen, that I was somehow sinister, Rafferty protesting at every turn, valiantly trying to keep character assassination out of the evidence. I was wearing an old quilt jacket I’d made years ago and a green corduroy skirt, which Rafferty had the nerve to pronounce bookish and eccentric. “Don’t wear it again, all right?” he ordered. Mrs. Ritter said that she realized now, with hindsight, that Robbie was always disturbed after he’d been to see me, that his artwork was violent, that his behavior was problematic only in relation to his visits to me. As an aside she mentioned that she frequently saw me out in the hall doing some kind of strange dance. She had always had such faith in the staff at Blackwell Elementary, she said, and she had never thought to suspect any of the employees.
Rafferty did