The Price of Silence (25 page)

Guilt is a weight that should grow lighter with the years.

I expected it to become a memory, its edges softening with time, the middle blurring until it thinned to a slim disk, conveniently movable out of sight. I never imagined it would finally tear through me.

“Hey, wait up you two.”

NINETEEN

THE DEFENDANT, EMMA Perotti, is on the stand. She is a tall, soft-bodied fifty-two-year-old, with short graying hair, an oval unmade-up face and wide heavy-lidded brown eyes. A writer for an upscale women’s magazine has described her as having the flat look of an Alex Katz portrait. The sketch artists in the courtroom find her likeness hard to capture.

Emma

My lawyer walks to the podium, gives me a small nod of encouragement.“Good morning, Ms. Perotti.” He has convinced me to tell the truth, not to be afraid to bare my soul to these strangers. They sit in judgment of every breath I take. How can they possibly understand?

I will keep my eyes on Fishkin’s face, a kind one. I take a deep breath.“Good morning,” I say.

“Please tell the court in your own words what happened on April nineteenth of last year, the day the woman you knew as An-ling Huang died.”

“She called me at school in the afternoon. Inez, Ms.

Serrano, called me away from the class. I hadn’t talked to An-ling since I’d left the loft. Almost three weeks, I think it was. She said, ‘I need to see you.’ ”

Her voice was high-pitched, splintered by sobs.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“Yes, I’m happy, awesomely happy, totally happy. Your check’s in my pocket,my bags are packed and I’m going so far from you; you’ll never catch my spirit. But first I want to say goodbye, leave you the key, show you that I haven’t painted FUCK OFF all over the walls. I’ve even vacuumed.I want you to be proud of me. I’m leaving you all my paintings, the screen too.Maybe you can get some money for them for the rent.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“That was our deal, remember?”

“I would have preferred loyalty,” I told her.

I tell the jury,“She asked me to come over. She said she was going away and wanted to say goodbye in person.”

“Did she sound upset?”

“Yes. She was crying.”

“Why didn’t you go right away?” Fishkin asks.

“I had classes to teach.And then I was still angry with her because of my son. I didn’t realize how desperate she was.”

“You have to come over.” Her tone was that of the child who wants, who can only envision the now.

I wasn’t going to let her maneuver me like that. “Leave the keys on the table then and thank you for cleaning up.

That was sweet and I appreciate it. I do. Please send me a note when you get to China and let me know you’re well.”

If I could sell her paintings I’d send her the money.“Be well, An-ling, and be safe.”

“Please come,” she repeated.

“What did you tell her?” Fishkin asks.

“I told her I’d be there after my classes, around five o’clock, but then I got worried. She had sounded so unhappy. I asked Ms. Serrano to take over and went to the loft.

When I got there, I rang the doorbell for the longest time.”

“Didn’t you still have keys to the loft?”

“Yes, that’s how I let myself in downstairs, after ringing the bell to let her know I was on the way up. I didn’t want to barge into the loft. I no longer lived there. After ringing the doorbell for maybe three to five minutes, I assumed she’d left and I used my key.”

“What did you find when you walked in?”

“She was dead.”Her body twisted on the floor, her mouth wide with hardened foam. I lifted her up against my chest.

From the floor underneath her, Josh’s medal and broken chain glimmered at me. I snatched them up, stuffed them in my pocket, and then I rocked her, sang to her, recited poems we had read together. In the hospital they had taken Amy away from me.

“I held her for a long time.” It was dark when I heard a burst of trumpets. Tod Curtis, the upstairs tenant, blasting his classical music for the entire neighborhood to hear. I became aware of the outside world again. After him, maybe others would come. I removed the robe An-ling was wearing and eased her back on the floor. I got up and went to strip the sheet from her futon.The sheet and the cover, the towels in the bathroom, the sponge in the sink, anything that my son could have touched, I threw in the washing machine.Then I kneeled down next to An-ling and washed her face with soap to remove her makeup, to make her look like the young sweet girl she really was. I dragged the futon next to her, put a clean sheet on it and, lifting up first her torso, then her legs, slipped her onto the futon.

“I held An-ling until my arms hurt.When she started to stiffen I lay her back on a clean sheet on her futon. I crossed her arms over her chest and kissed the top of her head, covered her with another sheet.” The same ritual I had performed after discovering Nonna dead on her bed.“I pulled the screen in front of the bed and opened it fully. It was my burial ceremony.”

“When you found your son’s medal and chain under An-ling’s body, did you think he had killed her?”

“I panicked and forgot he was safe in Albany. Forgot his gentleness, his goodness. He would never have killed herNever. I just lost my mind.”Tears come unexpectedly, pour down my face, drip from my chin. I shake my head to gain control. Fishkin hands me a handkerchief. “What did you do after your burial ceremony?”

“I tried to remove all traces of my son’s relationship with An-ling.” I looked for the portrait of Josh’s naked body. I didn’t find it. Either Josh had it or she had done me a favor, destroyed it. Then I did what even a bad mother would do.

“I cleaned the can of his possible fingerprints. I was too focused on Josh to realize what a wiped-clean death weapon would mean to the police.”When I left I walked to the East River and dropped Josh’s medal, chain and An-ling’s laptop in the water. From a nearby phone booth I made an anonymous call to the police.

“Emma, you are under oath.” Fishkin says. “You have sworn to tell the truth.”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill the woman you knew as An-ling Huang?”

It is time to face them. I turn and look at the twelve men and women who will decide if I am innocent.Their faces are impassive except for one droopy-eyed black woman. She leans forward on her seat and studies me with a look full of concern. “No, I did not kill An-ling,”

I tell her.

I form a picture in my mind of Amy and An-ling together, two sisters perched on the sun, gleefully throwing needles down to earth.The image eases my guard, allows me to speak from the heart.

“I am guilty only of letting my own feelings, my self-absorption, make me forget how unhappy,how fragile An-ling was.An-ling killed herself—I have no doubt about that—and I take some of the blame. For being too harsh with her, for giving her the illusion that I would always be there for her, no matter what she did. I abandoned her.

“I will always carry the thought that if I had gone to the studio earlier, she would be alive today. Every day I picture myself consoling her, making peace with her, reassuring her that she isn’t a throwaway girl. I hear myself tell her that I will always help, always be her friend.

“Never, not even when I was very angry with her, did I want anything bad to happen to An-ling. Please believe me, I did not push the nozzle of that can.”

Josh

Dad said Fishkin nixed my idea about him confessing to killing An-ling as being too obvious.The judge wasn’t going to buy it and it would destroy Fishkin’s defense: that An-ling killed herself. Four days ago, Guzman spent the whole day cross-examining Mom. He was mean, but she didn’t crack. No tears this time.When he asked her,“Why did you leave your family to live with An-ling Huang?” she answered, “My family is privileged.An-ling was not. I thought I could help her. I never meant to stay as long as I did.” She didn’t bring up Dad, their fights.

“You didn’t think your son needed your help?”

She looked at me, her face getting real soft, blurry. I knew she was trying to tell me how sorry she was. I knew then she really loved me. All I could think of was giving her a thumbs-up sign.

“I’d seen the scars on An-ling’s wrists,” Mom said.“An-ling, from what I knew at the time, had no one.”

The next day we got the lawyers’ closing statements. Fishkin went first and said the evidence showed that Mom was a generous and kind person who tried to help a desperately unhappy artist.The evidence showed she loved me very much because she destroyed any evidence that might connect me with An-ling’s death.

Then Guzman got up and said the evidence showed without a reasonable doubt that Mom cared only about An-ling and when she found out about me making love to her, she got so jealous and angry she killed her.

Which evidence was the jury going to believe? And what was I going to do with the evidence playing in my head?

It’s been two and a half days. Fishkin says the longer it takes, the better it is for Mom.Worms are eating up my stomach; that’s what it feels like.

The judge walks in and we all stand up.The court officer hands him a note. That could mean the jury has reached a verdict. Mom turns to look at me and Dad and smiles, like she knows it’s going to be okay.

An-ling’s last e-mail, the one Mom never saw, the one I burned—she wrote it her last day, at 2:37 p.m, after she called Mom, before she tried to get me:

Tom’s coming over. I didn’t tell you on the phone because you wouldn’t believe me. It’s true. I’m going to tell him I know he’s kept Amy’s photos hidden from you. I’m going to tell him he’s the one who killed Amy.

You, Lady Teacher, are only guilty of thinking a dog’s life is important.

Maybe Tom will want to hit me and maybe he’ll want to do other things too. Like Bill used to.

I left the door open downstairs. I know you’re already on your way.

Hurry. I’ll hide you behind a screen. With you here, Tom won’t scare me. You’ll stop him from hurting me.

A-l

Why do I believe her? She lied so much.And even if—Shit, the jury’s coming through the door.

An-ling, please help Mom.Amy. God. Please!

Tom

What I could have told my son:

Tuesday, April 19, the temperature in the mid-forties— still coat and glove weather.Thankfully no rain. I had initiated the call to An-ling after another letter of hers had arrived at my office. She had expected a visit, she said. I rose to her bait willingly. I even looked forward to our meeting. There is nothing that gives more satisfaction than the conviction that you have found the solution to a stomach-churning problem.

She had left the door of the building open. I walked up, saw no one. She was waiting for me at the door of the apartment.“ You want to get rid of that?” she asked, pointing to my Burberry. I shook my head. I didn’t want anything of mine to touch anything of hers. I was wearing gloves for that purpose.

“I’m happy you came.” She closed the door behind me and with her free hand tried to lead me inside. I lifted my arm out of her reach. I had no intention of going any further than just inside that closed door. Against one wall was a large canvas, blank except for a long bloated squiggle of what I now understand was insulation foam.The can stood on the floor, straw attached.

“Do you want tea? That’s all I’ve got.”

I shook my head again. She didn’t deserve the civility of words.The studio was overheated, the air stale with smoke.

She was wearing thick make-up: red lipstick, a line of deep green on each eyelid.Two slashes of pink on her cheeks. She looked ludicrous. I was sure that underneath her short silky bathrobe she was naked. She had seduced my wife, then my son and now I was to be her third conquest.

“Nothing I can get you?”As she spoke, she let herself fall against my chest. I watched, as you might watch an exotic creature behind a cage, as her face slowly tilted up toward mine. Her tongue reached my chin, licked it. Her body was light, soft; she smelled of candy. In the heat of that room I turned hard and lost myself. I grasped her buttocks, lifted her up to my waist. She pressed against me, her thigh heavy on my hips and moaned,“Tom.”A wet animal sound. Barely recognizable. And yet, my name.Tom.

She dropped down, pushed me away. Her eyes gleamed and I got the feeling that what was occurring between us was all according to her plan.

“What the fuck do you want?” I said.

She thrust her shoulders back, exposing the white of her chest. I thought it was part of her pitiful seduction routine, but what she was showing me was the medal hanging from her neck.

She turned the medal and held it up with one hand. I leaned closer and pretended to read the name I already knew was there:
Celestina Fenoli
, Emma’s grandmother. I snapped the chain from her neck.

“You’re the one who killed Amy,” she said. “You were supposed to watch her,Tom. It wasn’t Emma’s fault.” I struck her.As I raised my arm again, she jumped back, tripped on the can and fell to the floor, hitting the back of her head with a sharp smack. She lay there, eyes closed, the can rolling to my feet.

I left her on the floor.

My gloves ended up in a trash can in Brooklyn, my Burberry in a construction dumpster on my way to Hunter.

I thought that Josh’s medal and chain were in one of the pockets. I was ridding myself and my family of her. She was a cheap little whore who was trying to destroy my family.

Now, after what I’ve learned at the trial, I realize she was a sick girl like so many who are free to walk the streets.Their twisted minds aren’t recognizable until it’s too late and they crash a brick on some innocent bystander’s head or shove someone into an oncoming subway train.

The jury is filing back into the courtroom. I have never doubted what the verdict would be, which is why I have kept silent about my visit to An-ling. No jury would believe I left the girl alive. I had to stay out of it for Josh’s sake. He still needs me.They both need me.

The jury files into the room.After the seven women and five men take their places, Judge Sanders says,“You have sent me a note saying you have reached a verdict. Is that correct?”