The Sabbathday River (28 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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Somebody in Her Corner
FOR THE FIRST WEEK, THEY WOULDN'T LET HER visit Heather. She was “under evaluation,” they said, in some kind of medical wing adjacent to the jail outside Peytonville, and Naomi couldn't seem to find a single person who had authority to explain the situation. The jail itself, when she called, referred her to the press office, where she was told that the accused murderess could not be permitted to speak with non-family members without the permission of Heather's lawyer. Heather's lawyer was, officially, the Public Defender's Office in Peytonville. So Naomi called Judith.
“I just started,” Judith said, laughing. “I'm barely up on the coffeemaker instructions. I don't know anything about what's going on with this!”
“I want to see her,” Naomi said. “I feel awful that I haven't been to see her. You know I'm going to take care of her little girl.”
“I didn't know,” Judith said, and Naomi explained that Polly was still with a foster family in Peytonville, until the paperwork got sorted through. “Are you really up to this?” she asked.
Naomi couldn't say that she was. At night, when she was alone and looked around her little house, trying to imagine having Polly with her, she didn't know how she might be able to do this, how she could possibly meet the unimaginable needs of a fourteen-month-old child. It would be like bringing an exotic animal under her aegis, she thought. What would it eat? And how would she keep it alive? She only had to believe that she would learn. She remembered something her mother had told her when Naomi, native New Yorker that she was, had finally, in her early twenties, taken on the task of learning to drive. She'd been terrified of the power of driving, the responsibility of guiding a lethal weapon through crowds of other people in other cars, and sure she wouldn't be able to understand road signs or respond to the mutable and constant requirements of the highway. “Listen,” her mother had said, the night before Naomi's first lesson at Ithaca Triple A, “people much stupider than you can do this. You can do it, too.”
Now she was a good driver. And like most other late converts, she liked to drive.
“I'll be okay,” she told Judith. “Polly's sweet, and it's what Heather wants. So how could I say no?”
“All right,” Judith said. “Look, I'm a little harassed right now. Can I look into this for you? I'll find out who's got the case and see if I can't get you on an approved list. Is that okay?”
“Okay,” Naomi said. She hung up the phone and called Erroll.
“I'm glad you called,” he said. “I was going to call you.”
“You always say that,” she observed. “But you never do.”
He paused. She could imagine him frowning into the phone, completely incapable of response.
“Nelson, I'm going to have to get out to Heather's house. I need to pick up things for Polly. Like a crib, you know?”
“I see,” he said. “Well, I don't know if that's possible.”
“Work on it, will you?” she said, a little irritated. “I mean, this poor kid doesn't know what's hit her. And we're going to move her again. The least we can do is get some of her own things, you know? Like her toys, Nelson.” She waited, listening to the silence. “I'm not going to go around collecting
evidence
, okay?”
“You'd need an escort.” He sounded wary but relenting.
“Fine.”
“You couldn't go out on your own. It's a crime scene, Naomi.”
“
Fine
. Whatever. Will you please work it out?”
He said he'd try, and Naomi, aware that she wouldn't get any more out of him, let it go at that.
Judith called her at home that evening.
“You're on,” she said. “You can visit any weekday afternoon, from two to four-thirty. Just call in the morning and say you're coming.” She gave Naomi the number. “No tape recorders, no cameras. Any gifts have to be checked by the guards. She's on a suicide watch.”
“How surprising,” Naomi said dryly. “What she's been through, I can't imagine why.”
“Yeah,” Judith said vaguely.
“So … who's in charge, then?”
“What?” said Judith.
“You know, who's going to defend her?”
“Well, nobody yet. No one in particular.” Naomi heard her sigh. “I don't think anyone wants it, to tell you the truth. Most people in the office are just generally freaked out by the whole thing. There are only two other women, and as far as I can tell, they can't handle the material at all. They both have kids,” she said in explanation.
“And the men?” Naomi asked, her heart sinking.
“Well, one or two seem pretty excited about getting a high-profile case like this one's bound to be. I mean, already the calls from reporters—they've never had anything like it. They'll probably give Heather to one of those guys.”
It sounded primitive. Naomi winced.
“Hey, Judith?”
“Hmm?” She sounded distracted. “Sorry, I'm rinsing. They're not hooking up the dishwasher till next week.”
“Well, I was just wondering. What about you?”
“What about me what?” She sounded wary. “Oh no, you mean Heather? Oh, Naomi, no. There's no way.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because I'm the new kid,” Judith said, amiably enough. “I can't just waltz in and ask for the biggest case in years!”
“You can if nobody else wants it,” suggested Naomi. “Or if you're better qualified to handle it. I mean, maybe you had something like this before. In the city. You said—”
“I said it was happening,” she spoke tautly. “I never said I'd had a case like that myself.”
“But you could say you were aware of cases like that, in your office. Maybe you assisted on them or something, even if they weren't yours specifically. Couldn't you?”
“May I ask why you're saying all this?” Judith said. Naomi heard the water shut off in the background. “Why are you asking me to do this? And are you in a position to ask me to do this?”
“No,” Naomi said. “Of course, officially, I'm not in a position to ask anybody to do anything. I just want to see somebody in her corner, you know? Not somebody who has to defend her but somebody who really wants to see her get what she deserves, and not somebody who doesn't care about her but just wants their own picture in the paper. She needs a friend.”
“A lawyer isn't a friend,” Judith said carefully. “A lawyer shouldn't be a friend. Sometimes a friend is the
worst
kind of advocate.”
“Even so,” said Naomi, who couldn't quite parry that, “she needs help.”
“She'll get it. In the hospital.”
“Oh, right!”
The silence built between them.
“Listen,” Judith said finally, “I hear what you're saying. And I promise to think about it. That's not the same as saying I'm going to ask for the case. But I'll think about it.
Basta?”
“Basta. And thanks.”
“Don't thank me. It's unlikely they'd even consider giving it to somebody so new, no matter how many big-city murderesses I've defended in the past. And also, I've got family stuff I've told them about. They know I'm going to be running up and down to Providence a lot over the next couple of months.”
Naomi considered. “Providence?”
“My sister. She lives there. Her son is ill.”
In the way she spoke it, there was finality. A door shut between them.
“I'm sorry,” Naomi said.
“So it's unlikely. That's all I'm saying,” Judith said. Naomi heard Joel around her, faintly. They were speaking.
“I understand,” Naomi said. “But thanks.” She said goodbye.
The Language of Mothers
THE NEXT DAY, SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF HEATHER Pratt's confession were published in
The Manchester Union Leader
. Naomi read this sidebar, and the large article it accompanied, while she sat in a restaurant near the jail and waited for visiting hours to start. There was a photograph of the baby, draped in sheeting like a football under a shroud, in the arms of the medical examiner, and a close-up of the knitting needle with its metal sheen. Naomi's tuna melt, untouched since she had turned to this particular page of the paper, sat congealing in grease on her plate, the twisted wedge of sliced orange going dry. Naomi felt sick. She rubbed her forehead as pain erupted behind her sinuses. Now, even after she had maneuvered so doggedly for permission to visit Heather, it seemed to her that there was no question of going through with it. How she would face the person who had inflicted such an injury on such a victim, then sent its body downriver into her own hands, was unfathomable. And what she might possibly say …
The waitress came to pour more coffee. It tasted foul, but Naomi drank it.
“Something wrong with your sandwich?”
She seemed affronted. Naomi apologized for her own lack of appetite.
She had been to see Mrs. Horgan, the foster mother in Wentworth, just north of Peytonville, and spent the morning making tentative overtures to Polly. The little girl seemed dull but not unhappy. She watched the two older boys, Mrs. Horgan's grandsons, while they watched television, far more consumed by their faces than by the bright colors on the screen, and ate pieces of cheese and carrot sticks cut thin for a morning snack. Naomi tried to appear competent, but she took notes frantically, asking for recipes and advice and instructions for every medical scenario she could think of. Polly did seem to recognize her, Naomi thought, though the girl didn't exactly seek her out. Naomi would come back to pick her up the following afternoon, she told Polly, hearing herself speak, for the first time, in the language of mothers—the high pitch of maternal concern. She was thrilled by the sound of her own voice, and thrilled when Polly did not automatically turn away. I can do this, Naomi thought. Delivery first, then content. Imitation, then authority. I can do this, too.
She was meeting Erroll at five, at Heather's house. She would collect, under his watch, whatever Polly needed.
At two o'clock Naomi went to the main entrance of the Peytonville jail and was directed through a confusion of identical white corridors to the medical wing. There seemed little overtly medical about this place, no nurses in uniform or guards who looked any different from the guards she had seen in the main part of the jail. Behind the desk, a man with a holstered gun sat before a bank of closed-circuit television screens, some blank, a few with blurry, motionless figures. She squinted to see if one was Heather, but by then the guard was staring at her distrustfully.
“You from the press?” he said, when she told him whom she was there to see.
“Just a friend. I called before. It's okay for me to come.”
He didn't believe her, though her name was indeed on a note attached to Heather's file. He called his superior, and then the Public Defender's Office, and then his superior again. Then he asked if she had brought anything with her.
Naomi put her bag on the desk and watched as he went through her keys and bunches of used Kleenex and date book, jammed with stray and unsecured pages. He took it behind the desk and said he'd hold it
till afterward. Then he went through the things she'd brought for Heather: a sweet-smelling fancy soap and a Whitman's Sampler. Both things were choices of desperation, and she felt a little embarrassed watching the guard pick over them. Both were unallowed, he told her. Naomi shrugged, too preemptively exhausted to even be angry.
He took her to a small room sliced in two by steel mesh. There were tables on either side of the mesh, and hard plastic chairs behind them, and doors with small windows in the upper half. She waited there about ten minutes, needing to go to the bathroom but irrationally afraid that, if she went, she might miss her chance to see Heather. She crossed her legs and idly fingered the knee of her jeans, which was buttery soft, about to break through to the skin. She didn't want to be looking up when they brought her in. She wanted that extra instant, to be ready, but not before it was necessary.
When the door squealed open, she closed her eyes.
Heather took the seat opposite, shapeless under a blue hospital gown with loose pants. She put her hands on the table and looked calmly at Naomi. Naomi could not look calmly back.
“Oh, Heather. Did they make you do that?”
Heather's hand went to the back of her head. “No. I asked them to. They said I didn't have to.”
“But your hair.” She knew she shouldn't say this. It was cruel to say this, Naomi thought.
“It's all right. It's less worry like this. And it will grow back. My head feels light.”
“That's good,” Naomi said. “Well, you look very well.”
“I do?” Her voice had always been thin like this, Naomi thought. She was Heather still—a pale and formless person, a blank where a person was supposed to be.
“I brought you things,” said Naomi. “I brought you some soap and some chocolates. They said I couldn't bring them in. I'm so sorry.”
“It's all right, Naomi. I'm fine. I don't need anything.”
You need a shake, Naomi thought, before she could censor herself. She stared at Heather. Only a few weeks had passed, it came to her, since she had last seen her, out at her house with the kitchen smelling of applesauce. She had gone to bring another sampler kit, she recalled now with a stab of resentment: that first sampler sacrificed to be a shroud for a dead baby.
“You've seen Polly?” Heather asked, and Naomi nodded.
“Just this morning. She's fine, you know. Eating, playing.” She paused. What else was there to report? What else did children do? “I'll pick her up tomorrow and bring her to my house.” She paused. “That is, if you still want me to look after her.”
“I do,” said Heather, showing some animation for the first time. “Oh, I really do. If you will.”
“Of course I will. For as long as it's necessary.”
They looked at each other, exchanging the same grim thought.
“I'm going out to your place later on today, to get stuff for Polly. Can you think of what I need?”
She hadn't been allowed paper and pen, of course, so Naomi closed her eyes and tried to memorize: the crib, the special blue elephant, the plastic mat that attached to the bathtub with suckers, the plate with Snow White and the cup with Dumbo, the striped red blanket, the zip-up pajamas with little Christmas trees, even though it was big for her, the No More Tears shampoo. There was so much. There was too much to carry.
“Naomi,” Heather said, “I can't thank you.”
“It's all
right.”
Naomi shook her head. “Please, let's not—”
“But what you must think.” Heather's voice cracked open. Naomi saw, to her great dismay, that she was beginning to weep, and freely.
“Heather, don't.” It was all she could think of.
“But it's so terrible, it's all so terrible. What I did!”
“Don't
tell
me,” Naomi said sharply. “Heather, I can't.”
“You thought I was such a good mother. You told me.”
“You
are,”
Naomi heard herself say. “Polly has a wonderful mother.”
“But the other one. You see, it was Ashley's, too. I should have loved it, too.”
Naomi felt herself lean back, away from the table. Heather was crying still, her nose running. Naomi looked down.
“You'll be able to forgive yourself.” She was choosing her words as carefully as she could. “One day you will. I know it. And things will get better.”
“No, you don't see!” Heather said sharply. “I didn't do anything to the baby. I just didn't love it. That's what's so bad, you see?”
Naomi didn't see. She wanted to go. She glanced behind her shoulder at the window.
“That stuff they made me say, about the needle and putting it in the river … none of that happened!”
Naomi almost missed it. Then, slowly, she looked back at Heather. The girl's chopped hair was ragged around her ears, but her ears, Naomi noticed, still stuck out a bit. She had no idea how to respond.
“I never hurt my baby!” Heather said. “I didn't!”
“Well,” Naomi spoke, “I can't—”
“They made me say it. They wouldn't give Polly back if I didn't. And now …”
She trailed off, bereft.
Naomi shook her head. “But, Heather, it was your baby. It
was
.” She frowned. “Wasn't it?”
“I had my baby in the field behind my house. I
told
them it was dead. It was dead when I had it. It just lay there on the ground. It didn't
breathe
!” She looked to Naomi as if for confirmation. None was forthcoming. “So I put it in the pond there. It's a muddy little pond at the bottom of the field. I put it there. I never moved it again, and I never … with a
needle
!” She glared at Naomi. “Never!”
Naomi was feeling sick again. Her sinuses beat some deep, resonant rhythm. She thought she might go mad if she didn't get out of the room soon, but she had unfortunately lost the strength to get up and move away. From Heather, who was truly divorced from rational thought, Naomi thought—from the realm of the rational in which she, herself, was trying only to navigate. She couldn't listen anymore. She had to leave.
“I'd better go,” she said, concentrating on the words, making them come out right.
“Naomi, listen.” Heather poked her fingers through the grate and grabbed at the mesh: the nails were short but with rims of dirt, anyway. Naomi flinched. “Listen to me, Naomi, please. At the house. The pond at the bottom of the field. Remember! It's there. I know it is.
I
didn't move it
.” She stared out from behind the wire. “I checked, Naomi, it's there!”
Naomi was overcome with pity. How terrible it must be, she thought, to do what Heather had done and find your life was not even over, that you could not even escape your own sadness and guilt by being dead yourself, but had to stay alive to face the blame of others. She would have to not blame Heather, she suddenly understood. Heather deserved that at least: one person, her whole life, who would not blame her.
“It's all right,” she said. She was amazed by the softness of her voice. She said the same words again, and again they were soothing, sweet, infused by a caring she didn't at all feel. “Heather, try to rest. And let the doctors help you. They want to help. I'll get Polly settled and come back soon to see you. I'll bring her, too, if they'll let me.”
“Yes, please,” said Heather. She seemed depleted. “I want to see her.”
“And try not to think about any of this. None of it can be helped now. There's nothing we can do to change what happened.” She got to her feet. “Take care.”
“Naomi.”
She was leaning forward, to the mesh. So close it cut into her forehead, making a lattice of indentation.
She whispered: “Please.”
Naomi, who wished fervently not to do this, leaned forward. Their heads were close, touching not each other but metal. “What?” she said.
“Remember. The bottom of the field. It's small. Don't miss it.
Please.”
Naomi took a step back, repelled. Heather smiled, her face weirdly strained. The two women stood in this way for a moment, suspended in tandem but separated by space and metal, and circumstance. Were it left to Heather, Naomi thought suddenly, she would not be allowed to leave at all. Anxiety surged inside her. She found her own legs and jerked them to life. Then she turned to the door behind her, banged on the square of glass, and made good her escape.

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