A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [93]
The judge in his black robes stood before the rabble, his arms up. From behind he was a dark mass filling the entry. Each person out in the hall was found wanting and could not come farther. He told them they’d need an injunction if they wanted to be present. He shut the double doors and locked them. Inside there were the usual trappings: the blond veneer panels, the half-moon lamps along the wall, the green leather-bound volumes in shelves built into the judge’s bench. I guess the furnishings were to make us feel that we are in the hands of men who have had the time and silence to become wise. I moved along the back, toward the windows. “You’ll want to sit closer,” Rafferty called from his table. “You won’t be able to hear.”
“Being in court feels like going to church to me,” Theresa murmured that night on the porch. “Everyone’s getting ready—lighting candles, pouring coffee—what’s the difference? There’s that same quiet, an almost fearful silence. I’m still sometimes afraid in church, and I’m always afraid in court. As a kid I thought if I didn’t genuflect the right way I’d go straight to hell. There’s all that drama and ritual in both, and the mystique of the priest or the judge. I think court has become like church for a lot of people, don’t you think so? Of course there’s all that infernal waiting. In church at least the priests are on time for mass.”
I don’t know how long I waited. Rafferty had gone out one of the side doors. Judge Peterson went behind his screen, holding his insulated coffeepot. The court reporter and the bailiff were whispering, trying to laugh without making noise. I sat, thinking about Goethe. I hoped that Horace Peterson, over the course of his career, had become an expert judge of character. A connoisseur. I hoped that he had gone beyond Goethe and was so knowledgeable about persons that therein lay the clear discernment. He looked like a tired fifty-five. I held out the hope that he would not need to see Alice more than once to understand the error. She was a beautiful woman with a braid down her back. She carried herself well. She was educated. Yes, she was temperamental; she herself said so. But she was definitely upstanding, of course she was, and principled. At the same time, for good measure, I also held out the hope that he had gone soft over the years, that a beautiful woman could sway him. It didn’t matter to me how she got away.
There must have been a cue because all at once Judge Peterson came back to his bench, coffeepot in hand. The bailiff opened the door to the holding room and Alice shuffled in, just as she said she would, the manacles around her feet clattering as she moved. She didn’t search me out. She looked straight to the windows, to the white sky. Her orange clothes hung on her. The pants puddled down around her ankles. The crotch came to her knees. Rafferty was holding a file and talking to her. It was midsummer and he was wearing a heavy suit coat. Susan Dirks, the prosecutor, and Mrs. Mackessy and Robbie, appeared from behind the screen and came to their table.
“How did Alice seem in court?” Theresa asked. “How was she?”
I heard myself say, “They made her look like a mental patient.”
“How could they do that, Howard?” she asked softly. “What do you mean?”
“Like someone who shouldn’t be allowed to dress herself. Because she’ll put on something too big.”
Theresa crossed the room and came to my side. She put her arm around my shoulders and turned her head to look up at me.
“She says she’s fine,” I muttered, trying to move out from under her little hand.
“Rafferty once told me something funny,” Theresa said, without moving. “When he can’t stand the prosecution he says he imagines the attorneys and the witnesses floating