Age of Consent (24 page)

“Relax, don't move,” he whispered to her one night. He hovered over her, running his fingers slowly over her cheeks, then her forehead, then across her brow. He had large, dark green eyes, a brow of curls.

“You can't say ‘relax' and expect me to actually relax,” she said, pretending to be exasperated.

He carried on silently, touching her lips, tracing her jawline. One minute, then another, for as long as she would allow him to look at her with all the longing that she returned. “Are you still with me?” he asked finally, and she nodded, because she was.

“Mmm, progress.” He smiled.

AND WHAT DID
he say on the stand in court all those years later? As much as Bobbie wished to know, she did not stay for the session. While Dan was sworn in, while he fielded questions and answered yes or no at cross-examination, she waited at a coffeehouse, remembering how Dan had been like a tonic to her all those years ago. She remembered how they had kissed so often amid the slow, roaring movement of buses that the smell of fumes became part of it, part of the union. And that they laughed while they kissed, as though there was something terribly funny, and sometimes grew quiet and fell into lengthy, intense silences that made them both uncertain. They would lie side by side—even on wet grass, even on cold earth—and listen to the sounds around them, listen to their heartbeats.

“This is how it should be. How it should have been,” she had told him. Autumn 1978, while Craig was in the hospital.

“How what should have been?” he said.

“You know.”

He'd pretended he had no idea. He played dumb because in his love for her everything that had happened before was not worth recalling. This is what she understood.

Sometimes she would mimic Dan's mother, whom she had never met and refused to meet, imagining her as a perfect and beautiful lady.

“Is she like this?” she'd ask, taking a pose. “Or is she more like this?” He told her to stop, please, because he did not want to think of his mother and Bobbie at the same time.

“But tell me!” she'd insisted. She was teasing, of course. He shook his head, drew her close. In all the years since no man had held her as completely as this skinny kid.

“You will meet her one day and then you'll know,” he'd said.

She did not mention his doctor father, whose specialty, internal medicine, sounded vast and mysterious. It wasn't that she had taken a dislike to his father, who she also had refused to meet, but almost as though she could not fathom him.

“My father used to fix things and he used to chop logs,” she said.

“Hmm, wow,” Dan said. “Do you miss him?”

Bobbie thought about this. “I miss remembering him,” she said. “My mother misses him. Or used to.”

They had been walking together, navigating a stony path into a darkening woods, the temperature dropping noticeably with the coming of a rainstorm. The sun had long since faded; the wind was picking up. She walked in front, holding a bike light that later, when the woods were completely dark, would blaze a yellow trail they could follow. He had on his down jacket and work boots and heavy jeans. She wore a stocking cap and duffel coat and sneakers.

“My dad's nice,” Dan said. He stopped and she turned to look at him. Behind his shoulder, a canopy of bare branches broke up the deep blue of evening. She could not read his face in the half-light but she could hear the urgency in his voice, the bewilderment, too. “He would like you,” he pleaded. “They both would.”

“No, no,” she said, answering the question that he no longer asked outright about whether she would come over for dinner, meet his parents, be with him openly in the house instead of all this sneaking around. He was proud of her—couldn't she see that?

“Why not? There's no reason not to,” he said.

“I can't be like other people,” was her reply. Really she did not know why this was the case, only that she was certain that her judgment was correct and that she needed to stay away from his parents, or from anyone who might look too closely at her.

“Meaning what?” he said. “You can't meet strangers like other people? You can't eat dinner like other people? They are my parents, not strangers. And they have this thing we will soon really need.”

“What thing?”

“Electricity. Central heating, shelter from rain…the collective term is a house.” When she said nothing, he asked, “Why does it all have to be so hard? What are you worried about?”

What was she worried about? Sometimes it was so great, the constant anxiety, that it was impossible to tease out a single worry and name it. But she tried—she did. Because Dan had asked her.

“It's like I've got an enormous secret,” she said, turning toward him. “And every new person I trick into thinking I don't makes the secret bigger.”

He thought about this. “But it's not a secret,” he said. “Not really. A secret is something that you ought to tell, that you owe it to someone to tell. And you don't owe anyone.”

But she did. That was the thing. She just didn't know who.

“And it's over,” Dan insisted. “What more can he do to you now?”

“I don't know. But it's like he's getting closer,” she said.

“Closer to who? Not to you.”

“To my life.”

“Everything with that guy is over,” Dan said.

But it wasn't, and she knew it.

2008

T
he defense rests and the following morning, June is called to the stand.

She has worn her best dress, warm colors, a soft neckline, an abstract design. She had thought the dress flattered her but here in court, surrounded by the somber attorneys in navy and charcoal, she feels silly. She is reminded—this is awful—of TV cop shows in which a plainclothesman arrests a hooker, and the girl arrives at the station wearing an outfit that announces to any passerby exactly what she is. What does June's dress announce? That she is uneducated and small-town. That she is not sophisticated. It's a terrible failure, the dress, and now she hates it. Hates the dress and how hard she has tried: semipermanent eye makeup, glue-on nails, a two-hour hair appointment the day before. Why did she go to the trouble when all that is happening is that she is sitting before an audience that thinks she is a bad mother?

Bobbie is in the courtroom, but far back in a recess where June can barely see her. It seems to June that her daughter has spent a lifetime hiding from her and she has no idea why. The courtroom is packed. The bench seats are already gone and they are setting up folding chairs in the spaces between rows. The air-conditioning is inadequate and people are fanning themselves with their notepads and handbags. She is mildly alarmed by the armed bailiffs, whose guns look bigger than strictly required to control a courtroom and who scurry about, rearranging people and issuing loud warnings about fire regulations. Even more disturbing is the imposing woman judge in her endless dark robes, presiding in thick tortoiseshell eyeglasses and with an air of constant disapproval. She looks, in turns, bored, angry, bemused. She scolds the attorneys as though they are reckless schoolchildren. Even Craig's glamorous defense attorney bows in deference to this judge, who sometimes appears as though she'd like to put them all away, everyone involved with the case, lock them all up.

The witness stand is a terrible place to be, like a set of colonial stocks in which the whole community sees you. The only person for whom the humiliation is worse is Craig, who sits glumly at the defense table in front of her, and before everyone assembled, absorbing all of their disapproval. She wants Craig to be proud of how she handles being a witness; she wants him to see her as his powerful ally.

She does well with Elstree, because she knows what to expect. Elstree takes her through how she'd met Craig, how their friendship had developed, the accident, the courtship. But here is Dreyer and he worries her. His questions are much more difficult than the ones that Elstree had asked, which were designed to put her in the best light. Dreyer leans over her, studying her as she speaks. She thinks about asking the judge to tell him to step back, but of course that would mean talking to the person of whom she is most afraid.

“Before Mr. Kirtz moved into your house, were you aware of your daughter ever being in his presence without you being there?” he asks her.

“No,” June says. “Bobbie was a little girl and she was always with me.”

Dreyer frowns, as though her answer is disappointing. He says, “Did you know your daughter was with Mr. Kirtz at the radio station where he worked just weeks after having Thanksgiving at your house in 1976?”

“Oh, yes, but that was different. There were lots of other people at the station.”

“Were
you
at the station with her that night?”

June tries not to appear annoyed at the manner of this question. He already knows she was not there. And now he wants her to inform everyone in the court that she left her little girl alone with a strange man. She wishes she didn't have to answer the question, but the judge sits above her like an evil gargoyle and so she has to admit that she was not there.

“How many other people were in the studio with Mr. Kirtz and your daughter, who I'd like to remind the court was thirteen years old at the time?”

“How many?”

“Yes. How many people?”

“I don't know.” This is true, but how could she have known if she wasn't there? “How could I know if I wasn't there?” June says, annoyed.

“Thank you,” Dreyer says, in a manner that means
be quiet, please
. He turns from her now, his hands in his pocket, and continues. “In 1977 and 1978, did anyone supervise your daughter as she went to and from school?”

“Supervise? No. She just went to school like all the other children.”

“Was there any way you could know whether your daughter was on the bus every afternoon after school?”

“Well, she must have been because she got home okay.”

“Let me rephrase the question. Were you there when Bobbie arrived on the bus? Please answer yes or no.”

She does not like to be taken to task like this. “No,” she says, a little miffed. “I was at work. I was a widow, you'll recall.” She crosses her legs, looking away. She wishes her silly dress had pockets so she would have somewhere to put her hands.

“Was there a tracking system or any true way of knowing?”

“Of course not,” she says. “And you already know that.”

“Did Bobbie telephone you when she arrived home?”

“No, there was no need. I didn't have to
spy
on her.”

“Mrs. Kirtz, did you always know where your daughter was when she was not in school?”

Did she always know where she was? “At home,” she says. “Or babysitting.”

“Did you
know
where she was on September 7, 1978, the night of Mr. Kirtz's accident?”

“She was at home.”

“And where were you?”

“I was working.”

“Where were you exactly?”

“Orange, New Jersey. There was an event I had to attend.”

“If you were in Orange, how do you know that your daughter was at home?”

“She didn't tell me she was going anywhere. And she always told me.”

“Did you telephone her at home?”

He knows she did not but she wonders whether he can prove it. She is tempted to tell him that yes, she'd telephoned Bobbie, and that Bobbie had been brushing her teeth, preparing for bed, and that the child had given her all the details of her school day: how she had eaten the lasagna that June had left for her, how she'd been to the library and borrowed a new book, how she'd sat next to a friend on the bus. But she worries her lies will be unveiled. She doesn't know how this would happen, but the worry is like a weight she cannot lift and so she says that no, she had not phoned Bobbie that night. Though she'd thought of doing so. Several times, she'd nearly called her. “No,” she admits sullenly. “I did not call.”

“Did you have any contact with her whatsoever that night?”

“I was driving,” she states flatly. But then she sees the look on Dreyer's face, warning her to please answer as simply as possible, and says, “No.”

“Did you check to see if your daughter was in her bed at home when you arrived?”

She hadn't. She'd come back from the hospital so tired that she'd dropped onto the sofa, removed her shoes, and fallen asleep right there. She looks now at the faces of the jury; their expressions tell her that they already know the answer. She did not check on her daughter when she came in. She did not even look in the bedroom.

“Into the microphone, please. The court needs to hear your answer aloud.”

She wishes so much she had looked into Bobbie's room that night. If she had, she'd have seen Bobbie asleep beneath the sheets, the veiled moonlight through the bedroom curtains glowing on her pale hair. She'd be able to testify that this was what she had seen: a naked foot that had escaped the bedclothes, the wing of a shoulder above the loose neck of Bobbie's nightgown, her daughter asleep in bed, safe, as she'd always been safe. She'd glanced into that same room countless late nights and seen Bobbie asleep just so. Undoubtedly the same had been true that night in 1978. If only she could say yes, that she had looked into the room, the case would be over. Their lives would not be disrupted and damaged and slandered. If they put Craig away, everything she has worked for and put up with will have been a waste. And why would they put Craig away, when he'd done nothing?

There is the other unfairness, too, not spoken of in the ordered courtroom: that she is on trial as well. For being a bad mother, for failing to protect her daughter. But hadn't she protected Bobbie? Had she not allowed her to dream in bed as she, herself, had stayed up late, dusting shelves, making packed lunches, bleaching mold from grouting, hauling laundry in the old brown basket with the rupturing weave? That young woman who had all those years ago taken Bobbie to have her feet measured, her teeth checked, buying pink tops and beach balls and tickets for the merry-go-round, who was always by herself, scrubbing the kitchen table, washing out dresses in the sink, had she not been good enough?

She tells herself it does not matter. She has already been tried and found guilty years ago when Bobbie left wordlessly into the night, leaving no trace. What can they do to her here on this witness stand that is worse than what she has already endured? For months, the police believed Bobbie was dead. And then arrived the first of Bobbie's infrequent letters, telling June that she was fine and alive but did not wish to have any contact—yet. Those letters, posted every few months from different states across the country, kept June sane until, at last, the force of her love was drowned through misery, her heart a landmark and no longer a living place. Now they want her to testify, defend herself, aid the process of justice. And why should she?

“Mrs. Kirtz, would you like me to repeat the question?” Dreyer says. “Please tell the court if you checked to see if your daughter was in bed when you came home the night of September seventh.” Dreyer glares down at her with his angular face and small, piercing eyes. He is like a bird standing above her, taking what is left of her dying body. He is a vulture eating her before she is even properly dead.

She decides she will lie. She will tell them she came home that night and saw Bobbie in bed. Why should she be honest when they want so much to disgrace her? It would be easy to lie and she knows, too, how much Craig wants her to do exactly this. He has instructed her to say yes, she had seen Bobbie in bed. She looks at him now. She wants so much to please him. Never in all the years they've been together has he blamed her for Bobbie running away. He has always said that she did the best she could but that some kids are headstrong. Some kids just go their own way. She longs to reward him for his allegiance by saying that yes, she saw Bobbie in bed when she came home. She begins to open her mouth, but eyes the judge above her, and the line of jurors, and suddenly she is afraid. She mouths the word “no,” and immediately she feels a great wave of regret. Whether the regret is about not looking into the bedroom for Bobbie that night in 1978, or about what would come to pass because of her answer today in the courtroom, she isn't sure. She is angry at herself for saying no, for missing an opportunity. When Dreyer asks her the next question she is determined to answer in a way that helps put an end to the preposterous notion that Craig had been sexually involved with her daughter.

But Dreyer doesn't ask another question. He asks the same question, as though she'd said nothing. Apparently, her answer had not been heard.

“Mrs. Kirtz, we need to hear your answer. For the jury, please,” Dreyer says. He clears his throat. She thinks he looks so smug in his fancy suit, his thick silk tie, all that blond hair he's swept back. Very slowly, he says, “Is it correct that on the night of the crash, the night that your daughter has stated she was in the car with Mr. Kirtz, and you were
not
with your daughter,
not
in the same state even, that you did
not
check on your daughter to see if she was in her bedroom?”

She can't let him debase her like this, or allow him to judge her. All her life, she has been cooperative, been nice, made peace, given of herself even when so tired she was on her knees. But not today. She opens her mouth and what comes out has little to do with the night of Craig's crash, nor with Bobbie. It's about what is taking place right now between this young man and herself. He wants her to tell the world she was a bad mother and she will not allow it.

“I checked,” she says, her voice changing with the lie. Everything has become different with this simple declaration; she feels the lie breaking into her mind, eclipsing her thoughts so that she cannot imagine what she will say next. Yes, she was there that night. Yes, she saw her daughter. She looks at the judge, believing that she will find the woman scowling down at her with the full knowledge that she has lied under oath. She looks at Dreyer, thinking that he will laugh at her for believing she can fool him. But both the judge and Dreyer appear unable to detect what is happening. The judge gives a little cough, then reaches for a box of tissues on her table. Dreyer takes a step back, as though needing to rebalance himself after this unexpected news.

Dreyer is genuinely surprised. June can see this. And she realizes that for the first time in a long while, she's done something of significance. She's done something that matters. He says, “Are you stating, Mrs. Kirtz, that on the night of September seventh you checked on your daughter, Bobbie, and that she was at home?” He looks confused, and it gives June some pleasure to see him so.

This is the new truth. She saw Bobbie in bed. She was home that night. There is no turning back. She knows she must maintain these new facts all the way to the end no matter what is asked of her next, or how much pressure they exert upon her. She dares not look at Elstree; she is not sure whether she will be cross at her for altering her testimony or pleased that she is being so helpful for Craig's defense. The problem—if there is one—is that before this moment June has never claimed to have actually
seen
Bobbie at home in bed. She has only ever stated that she believed her daughter to be at home. This new information will come as a surprise to everyone, not least Elstree, who has warned June that she does not like surprises. But she cannot worry about that now. Dreyer is glaring at her, waiting for her answer. June opens her mouth to speak and now the words glide effortlessly, lie after lie, slithering into the air. “I saw that she was in bed. I didn't wake her,” she tells the court.