The Perfect Mother (9 page)

“The Spanish media is surrounding this jail, and if it hasn’t happened yet, soon the international press will join them,” she continued in a tight, tense voice. “We have had to prepare Pops and Granny and Lily and Eric.”

“There is something else,” Roberto added. “Once the media is involved they start digging up information that might put you in a negative light. Up until now, the press view of you has been positive—a pretty, naive American caught in a web of drugs and murder. They might have been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about your lie concerning seeing your boyfriend. But now that they have been doing some research, all that has changed.”

“Changed? Why? What negative things could they have dug up?” She looked again at Jennifer, her voice rising in agitation. “Mom?”

Jennifer rummaged in her bag and pulled out the newspaper. She was overwrought and her hand was shaking as she tossed it onto the table. “That, Emma. What is that? What in God’s name were you doing dressed like that?” She fought back tears. “Oh, my God, what has this Paco done to you?”

Emma picked up the newspaper, seemingly bewildered. She looked at it for a long time, during which everyone seemed frozen. Then she laughed—a hard, bitter laugh that Jennifer barely recognized as belonging to her daughter.

“That was Halloween, Mom. That was a costume for Halloween. What did you think? That I was a hooker? God, Mom, don’t you know me at all?”

J
ennifer felt she had made a serious mistake. She should have known that there would be a good explanation for that photograph. Her trust in Emma had wavered, and of course Emma had felt betrayed. She was determined never to let that happen again. She told Roberto to be sure he explained Halloween to the Spanish media in order to defang them, and she called Suzie and told her to make much of it with the public relations people, telling them it was a perfect example of a typical innocent American custom being turned into ugly innuendo and used against Emma.

Mark was scheduled to arrive in three days. But before he did, yet another blow struck. José called to say that the police had decided to charge Emma as an accomplice to murder. She had already been moved from the cell in the police station to a prison out of town. Jennifer called Mark to alert him and beg him to come sooner, but she didn’t reach him and his secretary said he was in court. She fired off an e-mail giving him the news and telling him to call right away, but she didn’t hear anything until she received a voice mail the next day saying he got her message and wished he was with her. “Only two more days,” he said.

He arrived, as scheduled, greeted by the crowd of journalists that now gathered around the hotel and hounded Jennifer every time she appeared. A big man and an angry one, he barreled through the crowd with large strides and pointy elbows and flicked away their badgering questions with contemptuous looks and curt replies.

Jennifer was waiting for him inside where the doormen were able to keep the journalists away. They walked together to the elevator, riding up and then entering their room without a word.

Jennifer was so angry she could hardly look at him. He knew her well and saw at once, by her refusal to make eye contact, how upset she was.

“I couldn’t come sooner,” he said. “I couldn’t even reach you to talk. I was in court all day yesterday.”

She shot him a long-suffering look. This was an explanation she’d heard before; she couldn’t even count how many times. It was word-for-word the excuse for everything he had missed that mattered to her or the kids throughout the years. He understood her meaning without a word passing between them.

“I’m sorry, honey. I know how important this is. But I have an obligation to my client too.”

This was the wrong thing to say. She exploded.

“An obligation to your client? You put that on the same level as your obligation to your daughter, to your wife? Do you have any idea what’s been going on here? Emma is now viewed as some kind of promiscuous, entitled American whose lies are damaging the name and honor of a murdered Spanish boy. Some journalists have speculated that she killed him herself, ridiculous though that is.” Jennifer was just warming up, and now she talked more rapidly as she listed the recent terrible developments in their case.

“Last night the boy’s mother was interviewed on television. She talked about the kindness, intelligence, and promise of her son. She wept and said this ‘
bruja americana
’ had killed him twice—first his body, then his name. She denied there ever was a rape attempt or an Algerian savior. She publically accused Emma and her boyfriend of killing him while robbing him of the thousand euros he had just withdrawn from the bank.” She stopped the onslaught and continued in a tired, heartbroken murmur. “And that seems to be what the police believe too. I left you a message that Emma has been charged as an accomplice and they’ve moved her from the jail to a prison out of town. Did you get it?”

He nodded grimly. “How is she doing?”

“I haven’t been allowed to see her yet. They’ve charged her boyfriend with the actual stabbing, but they say she helped him. It’s terrifying. You see why I’m so upset, don’t you, Mark? I know the practical reasons you had to stay. I am trying to be understanding. But all this was happening while you were defending your client against insider trading that you know he did. How can it be possible that you can’t get someone else in the office to handle that, Mark?”

Her husband sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that it doesn’t work that way, Jennifer. My cases are the ones I get paid for, and we need the money. What do you want me to do? We have two other children, school fees, college ahead of us, a mortgage, and then this case—the lawyer and case manager here, the public-relations firm in New York, the hotels, the airfare—do you think we have enough money to take it all from savings? Because we don’t. Do you think I wouldn’t rather be here? I am working with only half my mind; the rest is always worrying about what is happening here.”

Jennifer didn’t answer. She saw that he was right and she felt ashamed. The tension, she realized, was getting to both of them.

Mark sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I need to see Emma as soon as possible,” he said.

“They don’t allow free access to her anymore. The rules state we can visit for forty-five minutes twice a week, but it seems they can cut off access to her whenever they feel like it. I haven’t been let in yet. Maybe we can go tomorrow.”

She tried to fill him in on the case, reviewing with him that the police claimed the wounds Rodrigo sustained were made by a taller and heavier man than Emma had described.

“What does this Paco look like?” Mark asked.

“I’ve never seen him.”

“You know what I’m asking, Jennifer. What have you heard?”

“The police say that the wounds would have been made by a man about Paco’s size.” Jennifer said this without looking at him and without any expression in her voice, as coolly and objectively as possible. She went on to report that Emma had practically admitted to her that she had been with Paco earlier on the night of the murder, but she continued to deny he ever came back to the apartment and was sticking to her story that she had been saved from an attempted rape. Jennifer sat down next to him and put her hand on his knee. “The police have suggested their own scenario—something so cliché, and so unlikely for Emma to be involved in that I can hardly bear to repeat it.”

Mark stood up, crossed the room, and sat in a chair near the desk. He took a piece of paper from the desk drawer and removed his pen from his inside jacket pocket, ready to take notes.

“Repeat it, Jennifer. I will hear it soon enough anyway. I need to be prepared.”

She paced nervously around the room as she spoke.

“According to José and Roberto, the police think this is a typical story of a jealous lover. They think Emma somehow met Rodrigo that night, liked him, and invited him back to her apartment. In their version, Paco walked in, found them in bed together, and killed Rodrigo in a jealous rage. They claim Paco went through the dead boy’s pockets, took the thousand euros he was carrying, and fled. They say Emma and Paco cooked up this story about the Algerian together to throw the police off track, and they are charging her as an accomplice.” She waited for an outraged reaction from Mark, but it didn’t come. “It’s absolutely ridiculous,” she added. “They can’t prove any of it, and they just invented it because they are too incompetent to find the Algerian who helped her. And of course they don’t want to admit that a rich local Spanish boy could be capable of rape. It’s easier to imagine a spoiled American and her drug-dealer boyfriend, who also just happens to be half-Moroccan, by the way.” She paused again. Mark still said nothing. “It’s absurd,” she added.

Mark finally broke his silence. “Is it?” he asked softly. Jennifer stared at him.

“I mean, Emma’s story doesn’t make sense, Jennifer. We have to face the possibility that there is a lot she isn’t telling us.”

Jennifer had stopped pacing. Now she sat down on the bed, incredulous. “What are you saying, Mark? She’s your daughter. You love her. Don’t you trust her?”

He walked over to her, sat down next to her on the bed, and put his arm around her. He spoke gently. “Of course I love her, Jennifer. But I’m not blind and deaf. Loving her and believing her aren’t the same thing. I’ve tried to explain this to you before. I’m a lawyer and I have to look at this as objectively as possible. That’s my best chance of helping her. I need to know what evidence they’ve found. I’ve spoken daily to José but I haven’t heard of any unusual DNA turning up—nothing; no fingerprints of anyone but Rodrigo, Emma, and Paco. If the Algerian was there, where are his traces?”

Jennifer pulled away sharply. Her voice was angry and accusing. “I don’t know. I suppose he cleaned them up. You aren’t prosecuting her, Mark. It’s your job to defend her. I can’t listen to this.”

“No. It’s my job to find out the truth and to figure out how to save her, whatever that truth is,” he shot back. He collected himself but didn’t relent.

“You pretend, Jennifer. You cover over and ignore or deny anything you don’t like. You never confront what is real and in front of you, only what you think ought to be there. You do that with the kids and you have done it forever with me too.”

He stopped himself, but his words hung in the air. They both realized they were on the brink of a dangerous conversation that neither was ready for.

Jennifer turned away, squelching her reply. It was hot in the room and she realized she was perspiring. She wiped the beads of moisture off her upper lip and walked over to the air conditioner, turning down the temperature to let in more cold air. It wasn’t enough. The room felt too small and cramped. She needed to get out.

She grabbed her key from the tray on top of the dresser. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said.

“No, Jennifer. Not yet. I have something else to say.”

She reluctantly turned around to hear him out.

“Remember when Emma was in eighth grade and her teacher called to report her copying during a test?”

Emma interrupted him. “I remember it all,” she snapped. “I remember that, as usual, you were on a business trip and I had to handle it alone. And I did and it turned out okay, and what possible relevance does that have now? Are you going to bring in everything she ever did, every normal teenage misstep, and use it as evidence against her? Maybe you should stop thinking like a lawyer and start thinking like a father.”

She left the room, letting the door slam behind her. She slowed down in the hallway on the way to the elevator, expecting him to follow, but he didn’t come after her.

It was hotter outside than it had been in the room, so she didn’t walk for long. She ended up going to the coffee shop in the hotel and ordering a cup of hot chocolate and some churros. She always craved sweets when she was upset. In the past, she’d joked with friends about this, bemoaning aloud her observation that some women lost their appetite when under duress but trouble always made her gain weight. She hoped Mark would worry about her, so she stayed away for about an hour before returning.

Of course she remembered that call from Emma’s eighth-grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Resnikoff and she had claimed that Emma had copied during a history test. Emma had denied it, but the teacher had claimed she had seen it herself, and besides, the friend she had copied from had gotten the answer wrong and Emma had the exact same mistake on her paper. Emma had gotten a zero averaged into her grade and was forced to apologize. Mark had wanted to punish Emma when he came home, not only for copying but also for lying about it, but Jennifer had convinced him that one punishment was enough. This was an important learning experience, she had said, and she was sure Emma would never do anything like it again. Emma was proud and stubborn, Jennifer had argued, making those characteristics sound like virtues instead of faults, and she was also probably so very ashamed, Jennifer had continued, she simply couldn’t admit it. Jennifer had even wondered if the teacher had made a mistake. In the end, Mark had gone along with her, as he usually did.

She always thought there was a sense in which she was lucky that Mark wasn’t more involved in household matters. It gave her pretty complete control—when she objected to an idea of his, he quickly retreated back to his work and let her handle it. In that way, she’d managed to determine the style of their furnishings, the paintings on the wall, their social calendar, and every major decision about the children. She sometimes complained about it to friends—saying that she wished he took more of an interest and contributed more—but she knew she wouldn’t really have wanted it any other way.

Mark was on the phone when she returned to the room. He quickly signed off and turned to her. “Feeling better?”

“Not particularly. Who were you talking to?”

“I called José to see when I could see Emma.”

“When
we
could see her, you mean,” she said coldly. “What did he say?”

“He hopes he can arrange it for tomorrow morning around ten o’clock. He’ll pick us up and take us there. Of course you’ll see her too, but I’ll need to spend some time talking to her alone.”

Jennifer nodded and started to turn away. Mark reached for her hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I didn’t sleep at all on the plane. I’m exhausted.”

She looked down to avoid eye contact. He hugged her and she kissed him primly on the cheek before wriggling away. She didn’t want to argue, but she didn’t really feel better either.

Since they couldn’t see Emma until the next day, they had some free time, and Mark wanted to see the site of the murder. He wanted José or Roberto or both to accompany him and go over all the details known so far, both those revealed by Emma and those sometimes contradictory clues uncovered by forensic evidence and police work. José was unavailable, but Roberto said he could meet them at the apartment in two hours. Mark told Jennifer she didn’t have to come, that she might find it too difficult, but although she sensed he actually would prefer to go without her, she wanted to be there.

Jennifer had shared with Mark her distress at the conditions their daughter had been living in, but he still seemed surprised when he saw it for himself. Aside from the shabbiness of the neighborhood and the grimy walls, peeling paint, and chipped plaster inside, the apartment still looked like a crime scene, because no one had removed the yellow tape that sealed off the door or the outline of the body taped onto the bedroom floor. It was clear that nobody had been inside since Jennifer’s visit when she had first arrived—or at least nothing had been touched—and no one had cleared out the garbage, so the acrid smell of decay hit their nostrils as soon as they entered. They had to cover their noses with their hands. Mark handed his handkerchief to Jennifer, who placed it over her nose and mouth and gagged anyway. He threw open all the windows and held his breath as he grabbed the garbage bag under the bathroom sink, threw the few bits of rotten food in the fridge into it, and took it outside. Jennifer left the door open to air out the apartment and joined Mark outside, where they waited for Roberto.