Thorns of Truth (21 page)

From her seat at the table she watched the opposing counsel, Mark Cannizzaro, pace the scuffed strip of floor separating them from the first row of prospective jurors, and thought.
Yeah, it fits.

Esposito
v.
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
as the Gospel According to St. Mark.

The way he was carrying on, like Clarence Darrow making his closing statement in the Scopes trial, except Mark reminded her more of Lieutenant Columbo—short and dark, with lousy posture. Everything about him rumpled, from his coarse black hair to the tan socks he wore with his navy Capezios.

Lord, she thought. If he got this worked up over voir dire, imagine what he’d be like once the actual trial was under way. Rose imagined herself smacking the back of his hand with a ruler, like the nuns used to do.

The very hand that right now was gesturing theatrically in accompaniment to questions any child would have known to ask, while Mark zeroed in like a hawk on the would-be juror seated before him—a retired schoolteacher from Central Casting, complete with regulation gray bun and half-moon glasses clipped to a chain around her wattled neck.

“Mrs. Merriman, this next question is
very
important, so, please, take your time, and give it some thought.” Mark’s voice husky with false portent, his heavy eyebrows raised so high they were nearly touching his dense hairline. “Honestly, now, would you have a difficult time finding
against
a seventy-six-year-old woman left partially paralyzed after routine surgery—even if the evidence and testimony should
fail
to prove my client’s stroke was a result of the hospital’s negligence?”

Translation:
We all know the doctors screwed up, and I’m going to prove it, but in the meantime, are you willing to play along?

Rose squirmed in her seat. Really, this was too much. He’d been like this all morning; even the prospective jurors, judging from their expressions—which ranged from bored to outright disgusted—were fed up with Mark’s crude attempt to twist things around, and make it look as if being favorably disposed toward St. Bartholomew’s would somehow imply that they felt no sympathy for poor old Mrs. Esposito.

Except Mrs. Merriman, it seemed. To Rose’s dismay, it appeared that Mark’s cleverness in mentioning the age of his client was having an effect on her. The schoolteacher’s face grew even more pinched, and her eyes narrowed. Rose guessed she was in her mid-seventies—a member in good standing of the AARP, no doubt. The type who’d spit on anyone low enough to bamboozle, much less cripple, a fellow Gray Panther.

Rose felt a worm of uneasiness burrow into her belly. True, Mark Cannizzaro was nine-tenths hot air and macho bluster. Based on what he’d presented in discovery, he had no solid evidence against her client. But with medical-malpractice cases, she knew, you couldn’t discount the sympathy quotient. What juror
wouldn’t
feel sorry for an elderly Hispanic woman scraping by on Social Security, who spoke only broken English—and now was confined to a wheelchair?

Never mind that Carmen Esposito was about as helpless as a fox in a henhouse, and that both her English and her stroke-induced aphasia faded in and out depending on who she was talking to. And in anticipation of the fat judgment she was confident she’d be awarded, the sly old lady had already charged up a storm on her daughter’s credit card—new TV, new sofa, new everything.

What Rose also knew was that any attempt to paint Mrs. Esposito as a greedy opportunist would have to be handled very, very carefully. Too heavy-handed an approach could backfire; she’d seen it happen, time and again. And that would be a mistake she couldn’t afford.

She
needed
to win this case; the stakes were too high. In a low-income neighborhood stalked by ambulance-chasers like Mark, forever on the prowl for telltale signs of blood, a sizable “sympathy” judgment would leave St. Bart’s wide open to a slew of other, similar suits.

No, she couldn’t afford a juror like Mrs. Merriman.…

She took several deep breaths, steeling herself. When Mark was finally finished with his grandstanding. Rose stood up. She strolled slowly, purposefully around the table, hoping her confident expression would fool at least some of the people looking blankly back at her. Underneath her perfectly-ironed expression, though, she felt as jittery as six cups of coffee on an empty stomach.

She perched on a corner of the counsel table, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and smiling at the retired schoolteacher as if she were an old student paying homage. In a low, conversational voice, she asked, “Mrs. Merriman, do you smoke?”

The old woman flashed Rose a startled look that immediately escalated to indignation. Drawing herself up even straighter, she replied crisply, “I should say not!”

“You mean, if you’d caught one of your students smoking, you wouldn’t have approved?”

“It happened … on more than one occasion,” Mrs. Merriman recalled tartly. “I never punished them, but I always gave them the facts—that cigarettes were habit-forming, and caused cancer … among other things.” Now she was peering suspiciously up at Rose. “Why? Does it have something to do with this case?”

Mark, too, was glowering at Rose, his naturally ruddy complexion deepening alarmingly. She was straddling the line, she knew. One step in the wrong direction, and he’d insist—rightfully—that the whole bunch be dismissed on grounds that their impartiality had been tampered with.

Ignoring him, Rose plowed on. “Let me put it this way: if you were to learn that Mr. Cannizzaro’s client, prior to her surgery, had been a longtime smoker, would it prejudice you against her?”

For the first time, the old biddy appeared flustered. Fiddling with her eyeglass chain, she stammered, “Why, I suppose … I can’t imagine … Well, goodness, I don’t know.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Merriman. That’ll be all.” Rose excused her with all the somber regret she could muster—as if her working in that Mrs. Esposito had been a smoker were an innocent slip, nothing more. As if she hadn’t purposely set out to eliminate this particular juror.

Rose ignored Mark, now madly scribbling on his legal pad. She wanted to savor her small triumph, but it was too soon. She hadn’t won the war; she’d only succeeded in blocking a single juror. Without using up one of her precious preemptory challenges—this one, surely, Mark would pass on first. Max, she thought wistfully, would have been proud.

But all
she
felt was empty.

Suddenly it seemed as if the lifeline Rose had been clinging to—the long hours and endless round of court dates that kept her from dwelling on her loneliness—was slipping from her grasp. The water she’d been treading surged up in a wave that threatened to drown her. She’d been like this since the night before last, when she’d had her talk with Brian. But it wasn’t Brian making her gasp for air, she knew. It was …

Eric.

She’d imagined that keeping Eric at arm’s length would make her stronger, more able to resist him, but in the end, it had only left her more vulnerable. God, she’d wanted him. So badly that, after his brief visit, she’d lain awake in bed for hours, aching and hot as if with a fever. If he’d kissed her, as Brian had—and as she’d known Eric wanted to—there would have been no stopping. And where would that have led?

One glorious night in bed, she reminded herself, even one that blossomed into a glorious affair, was too high a price to pay for the upheaval it would cause, now and later on. She was half in love with Eric already. Dear God, if she were to
sleep
with him …

She’d be lost altogether.

Rose gave herself a little mental shake, and sat down to await the next prospective juror. She thought:
This is what I’m good at. What I have some control over.
Yes, that was it. Control. She needed to stay focused. Not just on her work—this case—but on her children. Drew and Jay, and, yes, Mandy, too.

Max? He was part of the picture as well. She had so little left of him, just memories … and the time she spent alone, reliving them. Allowing Eric inside would cause those memories to fade.

She’d loved only two men in her life. And twice she’d had to pick up the pieces of a shattered heart.

Rose wasn’t stupid enough to believe she could spend the rest of her life playing the Italian widow. She missed hearing a man’s voice calling to her from the shower, and the sound of newspaper rustling across die breakfast table. Sex, too—God, yes— she missed the sex. But was that enough to justify disrupting the whole, carefully balanced egg crate of her life?

No, she thought.

It all boiled down to one thing: you had to hold something of yourself back. Isn’t that what she needed to somehow get across to Drew? But before she could teach her sons, she’d have to learn that lesson for herself.…

“Mom? I’m going over to Drew’s—okay?”

Rose looked up from the pot she was stirring on the stove. Jason hovered in the kitchen doorway, a teenaged scarecrow in baggy shorts and a T-shirt that was miles too big. His eyes were downcast; his thick brown hair, with its paler highlights, fell over his forehead.

She sighed, shutting off the burner under the marinara sauce—enough for an army. After getting through this morning’s ordeal down at the courthouse, then spending most of the afternoon in a chilly conference room uptown taking depositions for a case involving sex discrimination, she’d been looking forward to a companionable evening at home with her sons. She’d even left the office early so that she would have enough time to fix a nice supper from scratch.

“What about dinner? I thought Drew was coming
here.
” Rose felt something sting her calf below the hem of her skirt and looked down; a drop of sauce had dribbled off the spoon she held frozen in midair.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. He said to tell you he can’t make it.” Jay glanced up, then down again—so quickly only a mother would have caught the furtive gleam in his eyes.

“You’re telling me
now
? What does it look like I’m doing here—getting ready to open a soup kitchen? The least your brother could have done was let me know ahead of time.” Her voice rose, and she winced at the Brooklynese inflections that had crept in—something that only happened when she was angry or overtired, or, as in this case, both.

Jay was chewing on his lower lip, a bad sign. Addressing the toes of his grubby sneakers, he muttered, “Something must’ve come up. He said he’d call later on and explain.”

Rose fixed him with a steady gaze, willing him to look at her. Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Jay, what’s
really
going on here? Why do I have the feeling you guys are keeping something from me?”

“Mom, it’s no big deal. Would you just chill?” When Jay finally did look up at her, she flinched from the hot anger in his eyes. “If I had anything to hide, believe me, you wouldn’t have a
clue
.”

Rose swallowed hard, and turned her gaze to the table around which they all used to gather at mealtime—the boys reaching over each other’s plates, knobby elbows forever on the verge of knocking something over, while she and Max rolled their eyes and exchanged looks of fond exasperation. Oh God, she would give anything to have it all back.…

Now, whenever the three of them got together, they were like loose pieces from an old board game—bright-colored plastic markers with nowhere to go.

Looking back at her son. Rose saw that the jeans she’d bought him only a few months ago were already too short. He needed new sneakers, too. And a haircut. Why hadn’t she noticed before? When had she last looked at his homework, or paid attention to what he was eating?

Poor Jay.

“Dinner can keep, I guess,” she told him, her heart aching with all she wanted to say, but couldn’t.

She watched Jay retrieve his backpack from the spindle-backed deacon’s bench that stood against one wall like a ladder resting on its side. The bag’s canvas pockets bulged suspiciously.

Jay saw her looking at it, and said defensively, “I was going to ask you. Drew said I could spend the night if I wanted.”

Rose stepped away from the stove and walked over to him. Her legs, she realized with dismay, were trembling. She leaned close, close enough so that he’d have to look at her, and said, “Listen, buster, this isn’t a hotel where you can just come and go as you please. You
live
here. We’re a family, remember?”

He glared at her. She could feel her son’s pain and anger radiating off him. Jay was nothing like his older brother, who wasn’t ashamed to cry. Even as a very little boy, Jay would hold himself clenched like a fist, his face screwed up tight to keep from bawling. The way he was doing now, elbows tucked in against his rib cage, the muscles in his jaw working furiously. If Drew was like his father—for whom the proverbial glass hadn’t been just half full but brimming over—Jay was like her: quick to imagine the worst, and slow to reveal his hurt.

Rose longed to go to him, take him in her arms. The last time she’d hugged her younger son had been at Max’s funeral. Since then, he hadn’t let her within summons-serving distance.

“Drew
is
my family,” he replied coldly.

Rose ducked her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose, where pressure was building. “The big Tupperware container on top of the fridge, would you get it for me?” she asked, careful to maintain an even tone. “There’s enough sauce here for a basketball team. I want you to take some to Drew.”

“It’s okay. We’ll go out for pizza or something.”

“Jay. I’m not asking. I’m
telling
you.” She saw him take a step back, and realized she was practically shouting. This had nothing to do with making sure the boys ate a decent meal, she realized. It was to remind them that, whether they liked it or not, they still had a mother.

A mother who cared.

But Jay wasn’t interested. In his hot, furious face, she read the whole story: he’d lost his father … and, in a way, his mother, too. Only Rose hadn’t died—she’d abandoned him. Just when he’d needed her the most.