Lucky

  My father acted interested, but I think he was scared. He found talk like this distasteful. He liked to be in control of a discussion and if he wasn't, he usually opted out. This meant his paying attention itself was something out of the ordinary.

  "You know, my girlfriend's name is Alice," Murphy said.

  "Really?" my father said, taking interest.

  "Yep. We've been together for some time now. When I heard your daughter's name was Alice, I had a good feeling about this case."

  "We're quite fond of the name ourselves," my father said.

  I told Detective Murphy about how my father had wanted to name me Hepzibah. That it was only because of my mother's vehement objection that the idea died.

  He liked this. It made him laugh and I repeated the name until he got it right.

  "That's a doozy," he said. "You lucked out."

  We turned onto the main street of Syracuse's downtown. In May, it was still light at 7:30 P.M., but the stores were closed. We passed by Foley's department store. The cursive script and old brass security gates comforted me.

  Up on our left I could see the marquee for the Hotel Syracuse. It too belonged to a more prosperous past. The old lobby was bustling. John Murphy checked us in at the reservation desk and showed us where the restaurant was. He told us he would return for us at nine the following morning.

  "Have dinner. Gail said she'd be by sometime around eight o'clock tonight." He handed me a blue folder. "This is material she thought it might be useful for you to go over."

  My father thanked him earnestly for his escort.

  "No problem, Mr. Sebold," Murphy said. "I'm off to see my own Alice now."

  We parked our bags in the room upstairs and returned to the lobby. I didn't want to eat but I did want a drink. In the bar area of the restaurant, my father and I sat at a small round table. We ordered gin and tonics. "Your mother doesn't have to know," he said. Gin and tonics were my father's drink. When I was eleven, I had watched him drink an entire pitcher on the day President Nixon resigned. My father went off to call my mother. She and her own mother and my sister would be sitting tight, she said, waiting for any news.

  While he was gone I opened the blue folder. On top was a copy of my testimony from the preliminary hearing. I hadn't seen it before. I read over it, covering the page as I went with the folder itself. I didn't want anyone there--the young businessmen, the older salesmen, and the sole professional woman--to see what I held in my hands.

  My father returned, trying not to disturb me while I was going over my words. He pulled out a small book in Latin that he'd brought from home.

  "That doesn't look like good dinner material!"

  I looked up. It was Gail. She was pointing to the blue folder. At three weeks before her projected delivery date, she wore a blue maternity T-shirt, tan corduroy pants, and running shoes. She had her glasses on, which I hadn't seen before, and she carried a briefcase with her.

  "You must be Dr. Sebold," she said.

  Score one for Gail, I thought. I had told her once that my father was a Ph.D. and hated being called Mister.

  My father stood up to shake her hand. "Call me Bud," he said.

  He offered to get her a drink. She said water would be fine, and as he went to the bar, she sat down beside me, bracing her arm on the back of the chair as she lowered herself down.

  "Boy, you're really pregnant!" I said.

  "You can say that again. I'm ready for the arrival. Billy Mastine," she said, referring to the district attorney, "gets the case because the sight of a pregnant woman makes the judge nervous." She was laughing but I didn't like it. I never considered anyone else my attorney. She, not the district attorney, had driven over on her offhours to review the case. She was my lifeline, and the idea that she was being punished for being pregnant seemed another antiwoman maneuver to me.

  "You know, Husa, your GYN, she's pregnant too. Eight months. Paquette is going to bust. All us pregnant ladies surrounding him. Cross-examining us makes them look bad."

  My father returned and we got down to business. She excused herself to my father, saying that she didn't mean to be rude.

  "Billy and I think that his attorney might go with an impotency defense."

  My father listened hard. He played with the two onions at the bottom of his second drink, a Gibson.

  "How can they prove that?" I asked, and Gail and I laughed. We imagined them bringing a doctor in to testify to the fact.

  Gail broke down the three kinds of rapists.

  "In all the studies they've done it seems like Gregory fits into the most common one. He's a power rapist. The others are anger rapists and the worst, sadistic."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "Power rapists are often unable to sustain an erection and are only able to do so once they feel they've completely physically and mentally dominated their victim. He might have a bit of the sadistic thrown in. We found it interesting that he was able to finally have an erection once he'd made you kneel in front of him and give him a blow job."

  If I noticed my father at all, it was only to will myself not to worry about him.

  "I told him a lot of lies," I said, "about how strong he was, and when he lost his erection, I told him it wasn't his fault, that I wasn't good at it."

  "That's right," Gail said. "That would make him think he had dominated you."

  With Gail, I could be completely myself--say anything. My father sat beside us as we talked. Occasionally, if Gail sensed his interest or his confusion, she made a gesture of inclusion. I asked her how much time Madison would get if convicted.

  "You know we offered him a plea."

  "No," I said.

  "Two to six, but he didn't take it. If you ask me his attorney is too cocky. It goes tougher on them if they refuse a plea and are then found guilty at trial."

  "What's the maximum he can get?"

  "On the rape charge, eight and a third to twenty-five."

  "Twenty-five years?"

  "Right, but he's eligible for parole at eight and a third."

  "In Arab countries they cut off people's hands and feet," my father said.

  Gail, who was of Lebanese descent, smiled. "An eye for an eye, huh, Bud?" she said.

  "Exactly," said my father.

  "Sometimes it seems fairer, but we have the law here."

  "Alice told me about the lineup, how he could have his friend stand next to him. That doesn't seem right."

  "Oh," Gail said, smiling, "don't worry about Gregory. Whatever he was given he might manage to screw up."

  "Will he testify?" I asked.

  "That depends on you. If you're as strong as you were at the prelim and grand jury, Paquette will have to have him take the stand."

  "What can he say?"

  "He'll deny it, say he wasn't there on May eighth, doesn't remember where he was. They'll create a story for October. Clapper saw him and Paquette's not stupid enough to have his client deny speaking to a cop."

  "So I say it happened and he says it didn't."

  "Yes. It's your word against his, and this is a nonjury trial."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means Judge Gorman serves as both judge and jury. It was Gregory's choice. They worried about the superficial swaying citizens on a jury."

  By this time I knew what the superficial were and knew they stood in my favor. I was a virgin. He was a stranger. It had happened outside. It was night. I wore loose clothes and could not be proven to have behaved provocatively. There were no drugs or alcohol in my system. I had no former involvement with the police of any kind, not even a traffic ticket. He was black and I was white. There was an obvious physical struggle. I had been injured internally--stitches had to be taken. I was young and a student at a private university that brought revenue to the city. He had a record and had done time.

  She checked her watch and then, suddenly, reached out and grabbed my hand.

  "Feel that?" she said, putting my hand up against her belly. I felt
her baby kick. "A soccer player," she said, smiling.

  She told me that mine was not the only charge Gregory faced. He had an outstanding charge for an aggravated assault against a police officer. While out on bail since Christmas, she said, he had also been arrested for a burglary.

  We went over the preliminary and some affidavits dating back to the night of the rape. She told me that the police had already testified.

  "Clapper got up there and talked about knowing Gregory from around the neighborhood, indicating he had former knowledge of him. If Madison takes the stand, Billy will try to go after that."

  Here my father was paying close attention.

  "So his record could be used?" he asked.

  "Nothing juvenile," she said. "That's not admissible. But we'll make an attempt to establish that Greg is no stranger to the police. If he trips up and mentions it himself, then we can ask."

  I described the outfit my mother and I had bought. Gail approved. "A skirt is important," she said."I don't go anywhere near a courtroom in slacks. Gorman is particular on this point. Billy once got thrown out of his courtroom for wearing madras plaid!" Gail stood up. "I have to get this one home," she said, indicating her stomach. "Be direct," she said to me. "Be clear, and if you're confused, look over at that prosecution table. I'll be sitting right there."

  That night was one of the worst in my memory for physical pain. I had begun, during the year, to have migraine headaches, although I didn't know they were migraines at the time. I had hid the fact I'd had them from my parents. I remember standing in the hotel bathroom and realizing I was going to have one that night. I could feel the drum beating in the back of my head as I brushed my teeth and dressed for bed. Over the rush of the water I heard my father calling my mother to report on Gail. Having met her, he was flooded with relief.

  But that night, as my headache grew worse, my father became frantic. I felt the pain most acutely in my eyes. I couldn't open or close them. I was sweating intensely and alternated between sitting bent over on the edge of one of the beds, rocking my head in my hands, and pacing back and forth between the balcony window and the bed.

  My father hovered. He fired questions at me. "What is it? Where is the pain? Should I get a doctor? Maybe we should call your mother."

  I didn't want to talk, because it hurt. "My eyes, my eyes," I moaned. "I can't see, they hurt so much, Dad."

  My father decided that I needed to cry.

  "Cry," he said. "Cry."

  I begged him to leave me alone. But he was convinced he'd found the key.

  "Cry," he said. "You need to cry. Cry."

  "That's not it, Dad."

  "Yes, it is," he said. "You are refusing to cry and you need to. Now cry!"

  "You just can't will me to cry," I said to him. "Crying doesn't win a trial!"

  I went to the bathroom to throw up, and closed the door against him.

  Eventually, out in the other room, he fell asleep. I stayed in the bathroom with the lights on and then off, trying to soothe or shock my eyes back to their normal state. In the early-morning hours I sat on the edge of the bed as the headache began to lift. I read the Bible from the drawer beside my bed as a way to test that I hadn't begun to go blind.

  The nausea hung on. Gail met us in the hotel cafe at eight. John Murphy arrived and sat with my father. Gail and Murphy tag-teamed me. I drank coffee and picked at the scales of a croissant.

  "Whatever you do," Murphy said, "don't look him in the eyes. Am I right, Gail?"

  I sensed she didn't want to get this aggressive this fast.

  "He'll look at you real mean, try and throw you off," Murphy said. "When they ask you to point him out, stare in the direction of the table."

  "Agreed," Gail said.

  "Will you be there?" I asked Murphy.

  "Your father and I will be sitting in the gallery," he said. "Right, Bud?"

  It was time to drive to the Onondaga courthouse. Gail went in her own car. We would see her there. Murphy, my father, and I went in the official county car.

  Inside the building, Murphy led us toward the courtroom, but stopped us midway down.

  "We'll wait here until we're called," he said. "You okay, Bud?"

  "Fine, thank you," my father said.

  "Alice?"

  "As good as I can be," I said, but I was thinking of only one thing. "Where is he?"

  "That's why I stopped you here," Murphy confided. "To avoid any run-ins."

  Gail came out of the courtroom and advanced toward us.

  "Here's Gail," Murphy said.

  "We've got a closed courtroom."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "It means Paquette is trying to do what he did in the lineup. He's closing the courtroom so you can't have family sit in."

  "I don't understand," my father said.

  "He wouldn't let Tricia stay in the lineup," I said to my dad. "I hate him," I said. "He's a slimy asshole."

  Murphy smiled.

  "How can he do that?" my father asked.

  "The defendant has the right to request a courtroom be closed if he thinks it will rob the witness of support," Gail said. "Look on the bright side, Gregory's father is here too. By closing the court, he won't have his father there either."

  "How could he support a rapist anyway?"

  "It's his son," Murphy said quietly.

  Gail walked back to the courtroom.

  "It might be easier for you without your father there," Murphy offered. "Some of what you'll have to say is harder in front of family."

  I wanted to ask why, but I knew what he was saying. No father wanted to hear the story of how a stranger shoved his whole hand up his daughter's vagina.

  Detective Murphy and my father stood facing me. Murphy offered words of condolence to my father. He pointed to a bench nearby, saying they could wait right there the whole time. My father had brought a small, leather-bound book along.

  In the distance I saw Gregory Madison walking toward the courtroom. He had come from the hallway perpendicular to the one where I stood. I looked at him for a second. He did not see me. He was moving slowly. He wore a light gray suit. Paquette and another white man were with him.

  I waited a second and then interrupted my father and Detective Murphy.

  "Do you want to see him?" I asked my dad. I grabbed his arm to make him turn. "There he is, Dad."

  But it was just Madison's back now, entering the courtroom, a flash of gray polyester suit.

  "He's smaller than I thought," my father said.

  There was a beat. A silence. Murphy rushed in.

  "But wide. Believe me, he's all muscle."

  "Did you see his shoulders?" I asked my dad. I'm sure my father had imagined Madison as towering.

  Then I saw another man. He had a softer version of his son's build, white hair around the temples. He hesitated, for a moment, near the courtroom door, then spotted our little group down the hall. I didn't point him out to my father. Murphy's earlier comment had made me see him differently. After a second, and a look at me, he disappeared back down the other hall. He must have realized who I was. I didn't see him again, but I remembered him. Gregory Madison had a father. It was a simple fact but it stayed with me. Two fathers, both of them helpless to control their children's lives, would sit out the trial in their separate hallways.

  The courtroom door opened. A bailiff stood in the open doorway and made eye contact with Murphy.

  "You're up, Alice," Murphy said. "Remember, don't look at him. He'll be sitting at the defense table. When you turn around, look for Bill Mastine."

  The bailiff came to get me. He looked like a cross between a theater usher and someone in the military. Detective Murphy and he nodded to each other. The pass-off I reached for my father's hand.

  "Good luck," he said.

  I turned. I was glad for Murphy. I thought suddenly that if my father were to go to the men's room, he might bump into Mr. Madison. Murphy would keep this from happening. I let it come now, the thing that ha
d been burning at the corners of my temples the night before and boiled beneath the surface all that year: rage.

  I was frightened and shaking when I crossed the courtroom, passed the defense table, the judge at the podium, the prosecution table, and came to take the stand. I liked to think I was Madison's worst nightmare, although he didn't know it yet. I represented an eighteen-year-old virgin coed. I was dressed in red, white, and blue.

  A female bailiff, middle-aged and wearing wire-framed glasses, assisted me up onto the stand. I turned around. Gail was seated at the prosecution table. Mastine was standing. I was aware of other people, but I didn't look at them.

  The bailiff held a Bible in front of me.

  "Place your hand on the Bible," she said. And I repeated what I had seen on TV a hundred times.

  "I swear to tell the truth ... so help me, God."

  "Be seated," the judge said.

  My mother had always taught us to be scrupulous when wearing a skirt by smoothing it out before sitting down. I did this and as I did, I thought of what lay beneath the skirt and slip, still visible, if I lifted up the hem, through the flesh-tone stockings. That morning, while I dressed, I had written a note to myself on my skin. "You will die" was inked into my legs in dark blue ballpoint. And I didn't mean me.

  Mastine began. He asked me my name and address. Where I was from. I barely remember answering him. I was getting the lay of the land. I knew exactly where Madison sat, but I didn't look at him. Paquette cleared his throat, rustled papers. Mastine asked me where I went to school. What year I had just finished there. He took a moment to close the window, first asking permission of Judge Gorman. Then he led me back in time. Where was I living in May of 1981? He directed my attention to the events of May 7, 1981, and the early hours of May 8, 1981.

  I went into minute detail and, this time, did as Gail had told me to; I took each question slowly.

  "Did he say anything to you by way of a threatening nature while you were screaming, and while the struggle was taking place?"

  "He said he would kill me if I didn't do what he said."

  Paquette stood. "I am sorry. I can't hear."

  I repeated myself: "He said that he would kill me if I did not do what he said."

  A few minutes later, I began to stumble. Mastine had led me up and now into the amphitheater tunnel.

  "What happened there?"

  "He told me to--that he was--well, I figured out by that time that he was--didn't want my money."

  It was a shaky start to the most important story I would ever tell. I began a sentence only to trail off and begin again. And this wasn't because I was unaware of exactly what had happened in the tunnel. It was saying the words out loud, knowing it was how I said them that could win or lose the case.