A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [192]
“Oh, please.” He had his hand at his throat. “You sound like you’re reciting a Scout’s oath.”
“There is still hope,” I said.
He sighed. “What I find hard to believe is that she actually dated a man who makes hot dogs. Someone called ‘Grinder.’ Did Rafferty assume she’d fall for someone who made hot dogs and brats? Did he go to the Oscar Mayer plant and ask all the workers if they’d gone out with her? Why does it have to be hot dogs? Why couldn’t she go out with someone who works for the Sierra Club?”
“Howard, I don’t know,” I said. “He works in an office, anyway. Rafferty said he wasn’t the first choice, that there was some other boyfriend, a real piece of work, who the neighbor lady saw. At least Grinder’s not down on the line, pulling the wieners out of a machine. He’s not some big, beefy Neanderthal guy who can’t speak in complete sentences and wears a loincloth. I was surprised that he’s a white-collar worker, not some awful redneck—” I heard Dyshett again, talking to me this time. “You always sayin’ things like you think you God, lookin’ down at the half-ass work you made, like you don’t like nothin’ you spent all that tahm makin’. You always sizin’ people up and you don’t know shit about them, girl. You don’t know shit!”
“Who knows,” I said. “Who knows about any of them.”
When Rafferty and Dirks and Judge Peterson reappeared, the trial resumed.
Jim Perkins wasn’t harsh or vulgar in appearance. He was a quiet, well-mannered, well-dressed citizen. It would have been easier for the jury to understand him if he’d seemed stupid or coarse. Later Rafferty articulated so well what came across about Perkins, what the jury, with a bit of luck, may have perceived and found distasteful beyond the prurient details of his sex life. “Did you notice,” Rafferty asked me, “how earnest Perkins was about his pleasures? He takes himself very seriously. He didn’t have any qualms about getting up in front of us to tell us about his mastery. And he made it clear that his recreation was his constitutional right, and that he was proud of his potency. Perkins wasn’t my first choice but he did all right. He was better for us than I’d hoped.”
“Did you usually stay the night at Carol Mackessy’s?” Rafferty asked him during the questioning.
“Maybe once or twice. Not usually.”
“Where was Robbie when you had your trysts at her house?”
“He wasn’t around.”
“Do you know where he’d been sent?”
“We didn’t talk about him.”
“He wasn’t a concern?”
“He was hers.”
“I see. So you were not involved in her personal life.”
“That’s right.”
“And if Robbie had been around you might not have known it?”
“I never thought about it. I didn’t know she had a kid until pretty near the end.”
“Did you meet him?”
“I saw him a couple of times.”
“Did you see him at the house?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ever at the house for a social visit?”
“Ah, we always met for a purpose.”
“For what purpose?”
“What I’d advertised for.”
“So you came to the house for sex?”
“Correct.”
“And you saw Robbie, a couple of times, you said.”
“We had a meal afterward a few times and he showed up.”
“Where had he been?” “A friend’s.”
“Who told you he’d been at a friend’s house?”
“Ah, I assumed it, I guess. She didn’t say.”
“Robbie showed up, you said? He was suddenly just there in the kitchen to eat the meal?”
“As I said, I didn’t think about him.”
Howard was silent on the way home that night. It is one thing to be in a car with someone who is quiet, and another to be with someone who is silent. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him look anything but grim. I made a few observations along the way. I wondered what it meant that Dirks hadn’t chosen to cross-examine “Grinder.” I thought Howard might answer, but he got out of the car when we pulled into the driveway and walked into the house, shutting the door before I got there.
Mrs. Nancy Sheridan, Rafferty’s dream come true, appeared before us on Tuesday morning. She sat down, wiping her runny eye with