A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [196]
“Would you please stop,” I said, laughing uneasily at his bulging eyes and the spit that was foaming around his mouth.
“As—as part of the deal you have to insist that Mrs. Sheridan play her own part. Not even what’s-her-name, Streep, could get that accent down, you know how flat Mrs. Sheridan’s Wisconsin, Catholic vowels are, and with just that touch of whining in her voice. It’s so fabulous. And no amount of onion balled up in a hanky could make just one eye run so righteously.”
“Please,” I said again.
“I know, I know. But she is such a work of art, like the Virgin she was, appearing at Lourdes.”
“Be quiet,” I said.
“All right, okay. I hope Howard gets something sinful, something chocolate and very sticky, made with cream and butter and several eggs.”
By the time we were called back Rafferty had collected himself. He cleared his throat, smoothed his plaid suit coat, put his head down, so humble, so manly, and walked into the courtroom.
I have often thought about both Carol Mackessy and Mrs. Sheridan, together, as if they belonged in the same photograph. I persuaded myself that in a sense they needed one another. Carol had brought a suit against me without thinking about her past. Had she believed that modesty or politeness would keep her unconventional behavior out of the evidence? Did she believe in Dirks the way I believed in Rafferty? Our lawyers, we thought, would present us as our best selves. Or did Carol feel secure in her right to entertain her own friends in her own home? Theresa maintained that Carol’s maternal instincts had finally kicked in, that those strong feelings overpowered her, and made her take action. Theresa said that she probably had deep-seated guilt about Robbie, and in pursuing the case she was overcompensating.
Carol hadn’t imagined there could be anyone quite like Mrs. Sheridan. Was the lady too good to be true, I often wondered, or was it rather that in all of our lives there is a Mrs. Sheridan, seeing something in the dark, and translating it into something fully formed? Mrs. Sheridan was perhaps Mrs. M. L. Glevitch’s beautiful and good sister. Mrs. Glevitch stood in funeral lines, grocery-store lines, listening, spying, talking, talking, the words running out of her mouth like ink, leaving an indelible trail behind her. Mrs. Sheridan stayed at home, shut her curtains, and still truth came to her. She kept quiet until she was called upon by the mighty forces of civilization, the court of law, where she believed justice was carried out.
On Tuesday afternoon Rafferty called Theresa to the stand. I had asked him several times if it wouldn’t be better to hire someone else, someone who hadn’t known me, who didn’t have the complication of our particular relationship. Each time he insisted that she was perfect for us, not in spite of our friendship, but because of our association. “She’s a great expert too—she’s always lucid, human, commonsensical. The jury deep down doesn’t care how many degrees a person has if he’s compelling and speaks their language.”
I had talked to Theresa on the phone since our meeting at the A&W, but I hadn’t seen her. I had always envied her fair skin, her long eyelashes, her curly hair, as well as her sunny nature. In court she was virtually unrecognizable. She’d lost some weight so that her round face had become angular; she had planes and cheekbones, what she had always wished for. She’d taken her glasses off, or gotten contacts. She had previously had a schoolgirl sort of charm, an adorableness, but in the witness box she looked as if she’d grown up, come into her prime. She was dressed simply in a blue sweater and a dark blue and crimson skirt.
Rafferty asked her to explain the guidelines she followed for sexual-abuse cases. She moistened her lips and smoothed her skirt down her lap. I found it painful to watch her in the beginning, in the same way it will be difficult to watch Emma or Claire play an instrument