The jurors that were called got worse and worse, as if the lottery itself had been fixed. After a quick recess in the late morning, everyone seemed to be over the age of sixty; everyone was Catholic; everyone had done some time in the service. Graham began to ignore Fyvel's tugs at his trouser leg and violent scribbling on his legal pad. He whispered instead with Allie: I like the way she blinks too much. Her mouth looks kind. A Mickey Mouse tie is a sure sign of nonconformity.
Audra challenged a young woman with a shaved head, as well as a Japanese computer technician. Graham objected to a lady who ran the local organization of right-to-lifers.
When there were fourteen potential jurors, Graham turned around to the jury box and took a deep breath. Of the fourteen, Fyvel had accepted only two: a self-professed starving artist and a nursery school teacher's aide. Allie felt strongly about the man with the Mickey Mouse tie and the fat lady with the dyed hair. Jamie said the woman with the kind mouth had smiled at him.
Most of the jurors could go either way, but even Graham had to admit it did not look good. The average age of the jurors assembled thus far was fifty-two. The majoriry were Catholic, Republican, fairly uneducated. Fyvel threw his pencil down; it rolled off and under the defense table.
Graham looked at the veniremen who had yet to be called for questioning. A sea of blank, old faces; no one who overtly possessed any of the characteristics that would have guaranteed a 20 on Fyvel's scale. Not, of course, that you could pick a Democrat or a Jew by just looking--but Graham had no reason to believe that the remaining prospective jurors would suddenly take a turn for the liberal.
He had five peremptory challenges left. If he used one of them, he gave Audra the chance to get rid of one of the jurors they really liked, such as the artist or the aide. With the way his luck had been running, the replacement would be a White House Chief of Staff from the Reagan era.
He glanced at Audra Campbell before turning to Judge Roarke to tell him that the defense accepted the jury.
Hoecht Lake sat like a cherrystone in the middle of Braebury, ensconced in a valley that rose on all sides to become the town. It was enchanting. Cam laced Mia's skates for her and tugged her around the oval once until she felt steady enough to keep her own balance. The people that circled around laughed and bobbed in her field of vision like a sea of balloons. A little girl offered to take their picture with a Polaroid Mia had bought. Instantly the picture developed: Cam with the sun shining to rival his hair, his arms around Mia, a wide smile splitting her face.
But when you don't know how to skate, you quickly get tired of falling down. "There's something genetically wrong with my ankles," Mia said, grabbing Cam's hand for support as she stumbled over a piece of straw stuck into the ice. "They turn in."
"There's nothing wrong with your ankles. They're just not used to this."
Cam gently detached Mia's fingers and skated ahead of her, turning in a sharp curve on his hockey skates to send a spray of snow into her face.
"Show-off," Mia said.
"Now that is genetic." Cam did a little loop around her and locked his hands on her hips. "Just glide."
Mia felt her feet coming out from under her. "Let go," she said, pushing at Cam's palms. "I don't like going fast."
"Mia, the trees are moving faster than you."
He moved away, and Mia stumbled over another piece of straw sticking out of the ice. Cam straddled her and pulled her up from her armpits. "I knew that going away with you would be dangerous," she muttered. "I just didn't figure it would be quite like this."
Cam hauled her to her feet. "If you're very nice to me, I'll let you sit the next round out."
Mia clutched his elbow and smiled gratefully. He propelled her to one of the Adirondack benches. "I'll be back," he said, and he took off toward the separate hockey oval at a breakneck pace.
She watched Cam dart and weave between the three hockey games in progress, leaving a thin white line on the ice where each skate had been. Suddenly, this grace of movement was not beautiful but upsetting. Mia would never skate like that. She'd never fit seamlessly into the harsh New England winters like everyone else up here; like Cam. It was just one more difference to add to the mountain between them.
By the time Cam skated back to her, bright-eyed and panting, Mia was curled into a ball on the Adirondack bench, her toe picks digging into the scarred wood and her arms hugging her knees. She lifted her face at his approach, knowing her nose was running and her eyes were red and her skin was mottled with the cold.
Cam's chest constricted when he saw her. All he could think was that she had hurt something when she fell and he had been stupid enough to leave her alone. "Mia?" He gathered her close. "What's the matter?"
Her voice, hitched, was little more than a whisper. "I don't want to go skiing."
Cam blinked. "You what?"
She pulled back. "I don't want to go skiing. Tomorrow." Sniffling, she wiped her sleeve across her nose. "I don't want you to see something else I do terribly."
Cam kissed her ear. His lips were at least ten degrees warmer. "We don't have to go skiing," he said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love with someone, but that you "had love toward" her, as if it were a physical thing you could present and hold--a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness. "I'd love you if you just sat in a chair all day."
They sat in companionable silence, staring at an ice sculpture some burgeoning local artist had created at the juncture of the two skating ponds. It was a bird--a phoenix, Cam supposed--rising out of the pond with its wings spread.
Something at the back of his mind burned a little, and he recalled Jamie MacDonalds voluntary confession, which he'd read again on behalf of the ADA for trial preparation. He remembered Jamie talking about an ice sculpture he'd seen somewhere on vacation with his wife, how it had been nothing but a shell with the life gone out of its eyes, how it had been like Maggie.
Mia laced her gloved fingers through his bare ones. "You're not thinking about skiing anymore," she said.
Cam shook his head. "Jamie," he stated, as if this would explain it all. He turned to Mia and stared into her eyes. "Do you think he was wrong to kill his wife, if he knew she was dying anyway?"
Mia glanced away. "The papers say she asked him." Cam nodded. "Well, in my book that makes a difference."
"I know," Cam agreed. "I'm not talking about placing the blame. I'm asking what you would have done if you were Jamie."
Mia looked at Cam, his cheeks rough with beard stubble and his breath quick with health. She squeezed his fingers just to feel him squeeze back. She of all people knew that what you thought you would do in a given situation didn't mean a thing until you found yourself actually facing it.
Would she kill Cam if he asked her to, for a good reason? Probably not. She was too selfish for that. She always had been. Her parents would have done what Jamie had done, in a heartbeat. Of course, they wouldn't have stopped there.
Which brought her to the question she really thought everyone should be asking Jamie MacDonald. How could he not have killed himself, too?
"Do you think he was right?" Cam repeated.
Mia bit her lip. "I think love makes you lose yourself," she said carefully. "My mother used to start kitchen fires all the time because she'd get to teasing or kissing my father and forget anything was on the stove." She paused. "And I don't think my parents would have left me alone nearly as much as they did, but they were so wrapped up in being husband and wife they forgot about being a father and mother."
She leaned close enough for her words to fall directly on Cam's lips. "I don't know about Jamie, but I understand doing something you know you shouldn't be doing, and knowing at the same time it's not wrong."
Turning her head, she nestled closer to Cam. A single drip ran down the side of the ice sculpture, boring a hole in the snow at the side of the pond. Cam buried his face in Mia's curls, and he wondered how muc
h time was left.
I'm not making any promises," Graham said, picking at his BLT. "I'm just telling you what's at stake." Jamie stared dejectedly at a turkey sandwich. The mayonnaise was seeping through the white bread, which hadn't been cut thick enough to begin with. He pushed the center with his finger and watched the dressing ooze up. "Never thought I'd hear you say that." He glanced up. "What's it been? Three, four months? 'You're gonna walk, Jamie,' " he mimicked in falsetto.
Graham shook his head. "Who knows?" he said. "You may walk."
"And I may get twenty to life."
Graham went to protest, but shut his mouth and took a bite of sandwich. Jamie wasn't a fool, and he'd seen the jury selection process that day. He had watched Graham bow his head when it was all over, as if the weight on his shoulders had suddenly become too much to bear. He had noticed the way Judge Roarke's eyes trapped him, like a scientist inspecting a rare insect, when he thought that Jamie wasn't looking.
Jamie pushed his sandwich away and took a drink of water. He thought about the snow, which lay knee-deep over Maggie's raw grave. He would miss the outdoors, he thought. He would miss seeing the sky.
Other than that, he didn't much see how the punishment would differ: a life sentence that made the limits of your world a prison, or the prison your world became when your sentence was simply to live.
On Saturday, Allie drove Jamie all the way to Pittsfield to buy a suit for the trial. He had several at home, but he refused to wear them. "She picked them out," he told Allie, who understood exactly what he was saying.
The men's shop was called Lou's, and Lou himself came forward to offer his assistance. "You're a big one," he said, glancing up at Jamie. "What, forty-four, forty-six long?"
Allie stepped up to the man. "We're looking for something sedate. Something tasteful but not flashy."
"Tasteful," Lou said, trying the word on his lips as if he had never quite heard it put that way before. "Tasteful."
Allie pushed past the proprietor to a rack marked 44 Long. "You like blue, Jamie, or gray?"
Jamie followed her. "I don't know. Blue, I guess." He ran a hand down the rack of jackets, making the hangers clack and sing. "Does Cam buy his suits here?"
Allie laughed. "Cam buys his suits through a public safety catalog. He owns one sports jacket. His mother bought it for him when he was twenty-two."
She deftly pulled a couple of suits from the rack. "You've got the height to carry double-breasted," she mused, "but I don't want the jury to think you're slick."
"I'm going to wear the same suit through the whole trial?" He stuck his finger through a buttonhole.
"Graham says that you don't have to wear a suit every day. Just during the opening and closing arguments, when you're making the biggest impression on the jurors. He suggests V-necked sweaters and ties with Wall Street dots." "Wall Street dots?"
Allie nodded. "You know, yellow or red with those little divots in neat little rows. Like you have no imagination at all." She glanced up. "Come over here."
She held a suit up to Jamie's chest, as high as she could reach. "I think I like this one best. Go try on the pants." When Jamie stood there, just staring, she laughed at him. "Go on," she said, pushing him off. "I'm not going with you."
Jamie looked around for the fitting rooms and finally realized they were hidden away behind the row of mirrors to the left. He stepped inside one and hung the three suits Allie had chosen on the tiny hook in the wall. Then he stripped out of his clothes and pulled on the first pair of trousers.
Allie had forgotten to give him a shirt. He stood there for a moment, staring at his bare chest. The hair ran down in an arrow to disappear beneath the baggy waist of the pleated trousers. He looked like a kid dressing up in his father's clothes.
He remembered once when Maggie had dragged him bathing suit shopping. She said it was the worst thing a woman could possibly do to herself, and she'd really appreciate having someone there who loved her no matter how flawed her shape was. The dressing room had been big, so he came inside while his wife tried on one maillot after another. He thought they all looked good and he told her so, but she wasn't considering the bathing suits at all. She'd poke at her stomach and suck in her breath and slap at her thighs with each suit she tried on, until Jamie realized that in spite of each shiny scrap of red and aqua and purple, she was only seeing herself.
Maggie had not much liked mirrors after the mastectomy. She'd shower in the morning and wrap a towel around herself in the steamy stall so that she wouldn't have to see. As far as he could remember, after the operation she had always gotten dressed in her walk-in closet.
Suddenly, Jamie was sweating. He stripped out of the trousers and hurriedly got dressed. When he opened the dressing room door, Allie was waiting for him. She held up two shirts.
He thrust the suits into her hands, a smooth spill of herringbone and subtle checks and dark wool. "Any one," he said, pushing past her toward the clear, cold outside. "I don't care."
It wasn't nearly enough time. They would be driving the following afternoon to Shelburne Falls, picking up Mia's car, and Cam would go home to Allie while Mia would return to the Wheelock Inn. A day of skating, a morning when he could wake up with Mia beside him, and then Cam would have to go back to the way it always was, as if this weekend had not occurred at all.
While the water was running in the bathroom, Cam laid a fire in the bedroom grate. He turned off the lights so that the four-poster bed was bathed in a red, smoky glow, and pulled the towel away from his waist.
Mia came out of the bathroom with a towel turbaned over her head, her skin still dripping. "Feel better?" he asked.
She walked closer to the fire and huddled in front of it. "Warmer," she said. Cam put his hands behind her thighs and drew her near. He unwound her towel and rubbed his palms from her bottom to her calves. "Much warmer," she said, smiling.
He knelt on the hearth, ignoring the cut of the stones into his knees as he kissed his way down the front of Mia's body, following a shifting line that the fire made as it crackled. He felt the heat against his back, and the heat that was gathering between his legs as he closed his mouth over her breast. Mia's breath came out in a rush, and it seemed to him a symphony.
When she finally straddled him on the thick braided rug in front of the hearth, he stared at her. Her hair was outlined crimson. Her head was tossed back, so that he could not see her features, only shadows.
Cam forced himself to close his eyes. Mia had taught him how to listen. So over the pulse of the winter, he heard the cry of a saxophone making love to a flute in the musician's colony a mile away. He heard the soft snore of Mia's sleeping cat. He heard the sound of snow striking snow as it fell outside the window. And afterward, when he fell asleep in Mia's arms, he dreamed this was the last night of the world.
Mia did not wake until nearly noon, letting reality slowly wrap itself around her. She started considering an idea she wanted to bring up to Allie. A personalized Flower-of-the-Month club, much like the Fruit-of-the-Month organizations that ran out of Florida, except instead of oranges and persimmons you'd receive calyx and corolla . . .
"I've been thinking," Cam said, a disembodied voice from the warmer side of the bed. "Maybe we don't have to go back."
Mia rolled toward him and smiled. "It's Sunday," she said. "This afternoon the coach becomes a pumpkin again."
He reached out for her. Cam felt full of Mia, ripe to bursting with her, and he did not know how he could ever go back to living halfway. "I'm serious. You'd come away with me, wouldn't you?"
Mia felt her breath return to her. This was familiar, this was their game. "To Turkey. To Greenland. You name it," she said.
Cam shook his head. "I mean I'm going to leave--" Mia reached out to cover his mouth, but he said the word anyway, and it tangled obscenely in her fingers. "Allie."
Mia sat up, pulling the sheet with her so it left Cam bare and flaccid, exposed. "Don't say that," she murmured.
He rolled toward
her, placing a hand on her leg. "What else could you possibly want?"
You, she thought, the way you are. The life you have. She thought of Cam traveling with her in her rental car, Kafka sleeping in his lap during the long stretches of driving. She tried to picture him working as a hired hand on big farms in the South, or dispatching delivery trucks in the cities, just to make ends meet. She tried to picture him without a name, without a position, without a family. She tried to picture him and she saw herself.
If Cam packed up his duffel bag and went home to Wheelock and filed for divorce, he would not be the man she had fallen in love with. If people passed him in the street without calling a greeting; if he slept beneath the stars with her and ate Chef Boy-ardee for three weeks because it was all he could afford, he would not be the man she'd fallen in love with. And how long would it take before he turned against her for taking away the criteria by which he'd always defined himself?
What she had always wished, she realized, was simply to turn back the clock. To meet Cam before Allie had come into his life and to take the place she occupied so smoothly beside him. And in one of those blind, white moments of insight, Mia realized that what she had wanted all along was not necessarily what Cam could offer, but what Allie MacDonald had.
Cam turned Mia toward him and wiped a tear from her cheek with his finger. "You don't want to leave either."
Mia smiled halfheartedly. "That must be it."
But she knew it was more. If she really loved Cam, and she did, she would spare him the pain of feeling like there was no place you could call home.
She stared out the window at the spotless run of snow. Cam was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boxers. She watched his triceps flex and relax. She thought of how, in a moment or two, he'd ask her what she wanted to do today instead of skiing, and how she would want to say, Stay here. Make love. Remember you.
He came to her side of the bed and pulled her into his arms, mistaking her silence. Mia allowed herself the luxury of leaning against someone she would have trusted with her life. She kissed the base of his throat, letting her tongue dart out and make a small, wet mark that was already vanishing when she left it. Then she straightened imperceptibly, just enough for the muscles and the marrow in her bones to realize she had taken the first step toward separation.