What I Saw and How I Lied

  We turned into the courtroom.

  It was so humid inside that the windows had steamed over. People stood in back and down the side aisles. They all craned their necks as we walked toward our seats. We sat in the first row, right in back of the counsel table. Mr. Markel left us there and nodded at the other attorney. He opened his briefcase.

  I had called him from the phone in the lobby that morning. He’d met me at his office. Early, before Miss Geiger came to work. I’d told him what I was going to say and he didn’t interrupt, just took notes on a yellow pad. When I’d finished, he’d closed it and looked up.

  “Are you sure?”

  I’d nodded.

  “Do you have a handkerchief with you?” he’d asked. “Use it.”

  I felt their eyes on my back as the judge came in. Their curiosity was like a wild, living thing in the room. I had to keep wiping my hands on my skirt because I wanted to be Evelyn with cool hands, not Evie with her stomach in knots and sweat snaking from her armpits. I was concentrating so hard on being cool that I missed them calling my name. Joe had to nudge me.

  I stood up so quickly that my purse fell on the floor and I tripped on it. Bad start.

  I walked my new walk, the one I had because of the tight high heels, my hips swaying. Chin up! I heard Mrs. Grayson say in my head.

  I looked up at the judge, then back down in my lap. I needed that judge on my side. I needed to keep my hands and my stomach calm. I needed not to be sick. I needed not to faint. I had to do this today, because if I had to come back tomorrow, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be Evelyn for one more day.

  I put my hand on the Bible.

  I swear it on a stack of Bibles. We said it back home when we told the truth, no fudging. Because if you swore on a Bible and you lie, you’d go to straight to hell on the downtown express.

  Mr. Markel rose. He told me in a warm tone I’d never heard from him before not to be nervous. I nodded nervously.

  “Just tell the truth,” he said. “Let’s start the night of September fifth. What happened that evening?”

  “We were all having dinner in the restaurant at the hotel.”

  “You’re sure it was that evening?”

  “Yes, it was a Friday night. We’d been to the movies that day.”

  “Who was there that evening, Miss Spooner?”

  “My father and mother, and the Graysons, and Peter—Mr. Coleridge. After dinner was over, the ladies decided they’d go upstairs to their rooms, and the gentlemen would go to the lobby for coffee. Peter leaned over and asked me if I’d go for a walk, and I said yes.” I hesitated. “But I didn’t tell my parents.”

  “Why is that, Miss Spooner?”

  It was hard for me to avoid looking at Joe and Mom at that moment. But I remembered Mr. Markel’s instructions. I wasn’t going to slip.

  “Because I knew they’d say no. They thought Peter was too old for me.”

  “Was it the first time you’d met Mr. Coleridge without your parents’ consent?”

  “No.” I whispered the word, and the judge made me say it again.

  “You were, in fact, carrying on a secret romance with the deceased?”

  “Yes, sir. It started when Peter drove me and my mother places. If we were alone for a minute or two, he would ask me to meet him later. If I was able to, I did.”

  The crowd was completely silent now. They hung on every word.

  “Did your mother have any knowledge of this?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever go to the house he had used?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know he’d broken in.”

  “What did you do on the night in question?”

  “First I went upstairs. I could hear my mother getting ready for bed. While she was in the bathroom, I went to her closet and took out one of her dresses. The blue one, because that was the prettiest.”

  A flashbulb popped, and the judge ordered the photographer out of the courtroom.

  “I wanted to look older. So I met him in my mother’s dress, and we walked for a bit, and then we stopped under this tree, and we kissed. He thought he heard someone coming, and he pressed my head against his shirt. A minute later he saw someone go by. He didn’t know it was Wally, but he promised me that whoever it was hadn’t seen my face.”

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “Oh, yes. Because I heard the footsteps, too. And we were hidden by the tree, so the person couldn’t have seen us until he was pretty close.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We waited just a little bit, and then he walked me back to the road. I sneaked back into the hotel. My mother was sleeping by then, so I put the dress back in her closet.”

  “Did the dress fit you?”

  “Yes, perfectly. My mother and I are the same size.”

  “Were you in love with Mr. Coleridge, Miss Spooner?”

  I ducked my head. “Yes, sir, I was.”

  At least I got to tell one solid truth today.

  “Did you have any knowledge at any time that Mr. Coleridge might have a romance with your mother?”

  “Oh, no. I knew he didn’t. She spent time with both of us. It was a good…cover, Peter said. No one would suspect the two of us if my mother was along.”

  “Was Peter Coleridge in love with you, Miss Spooner?”

  “Yes. He was. He told me so.”

  Mom slowly slid off her chair.

  The photographers who were hiding their cameras rushed forward. The judge banged his gavel, but no one listened. I stood up.

  “Give her some air!” I heard Joe shout.

  People rushed forward, but Joe waved them back. The judge banged his gavel again. Someone called for water. It had turned into a circus in a tent, all color and heat and movement. And smell. I felt like I could smell everyone in the room, the ladies with the half-moons of perspiration under the arms of their rayon dresses, the men with their handkerchiefs already wet from mopping their foreheads, their hats tilted back.

  Through all the commotion, I noticed a man sitting on the aisle near the back. I noticed him by his stillness. He was the only one not whispering or craning his neck to see Mom. A man dressed in a plain dark suit, a white shirt buttoned tightly at his neck, and no tie. He would have been handsome if it weren’t for the deep lines in his face, his thinning iron-gray hair. I thought I was used to people staring at me, but this gaze felt deeper than the others.

  “I call for a recess, your honor,” Mr. Markel said.

  The judge sighed. He leaned over and said to me, “Would you like a recess, miss?”

  “No, I’d like to go on,” I said.

  “Then please sit down, Miss Spooner.”

  I turned again to Mr. Markel, in a hurry to get this over with. I could still feel the gray-haired man’s gaze.

  Mom pushed away the glass of water one of the court officers kept trying to get her to drink. She pressed her handkerchief against her forehead. She looked so pale, so small.

  I broke Mr. Markel’s rule and looked straight into her eyes. She shook her head, just a little bit, tears pooling in her eyes. I didn’t know what the head shake meant. You don’t have to lie, Evie?

  But I did, and she knew it, so maybe she was shaking her head at the whole awful stink of it.

  Not too much longer, Mom.

  “Did your parents ever find out about your romance with Peter Coleridge?” Mr. Markel asked.

  “I told them this morning,” I said.

  “They were surprised?”

  “They were shocked. I wish I’d told them before.”

  “Now we come to the second part of your testimony,” Mr. Markel said. “I know you come forward reluctantly on this issue, Miss Spooner, and I know this might be hard for you. Can you tell us about the events of September seventeenth?”

  “Well, my parents and Peter had planned to hire a boat that day. Then we found out that a storm was coming, and they talked about whether to go.”

  “There w
ere small craft warnings.”

  “Peter said he could handle the boat, if they still wanted to go.”

  The man with the thin gray hair and the thick hands was still staring at me.

  Stop looking at me like that, stop it.

  “So they went out on Mr. Forrest’s boat, and I was waiting for them at the hotel. Wally—Walter—was getting off his shift.”

  “That’s Walter Forrest, the former bellhop at the Le Mirage Hotel?”

  “Yes. I was nervous and upset—the weather was getting worse, and I was worried about my parents and Peter. I knew Wally from the hotel, and he seemed like a swell boy. He reassured me, saying the weather wasn’t too bad yet. Then he said maybe we should walk to the beach and look at the waves. We walked along the beach for a while, and then…he suggested that we sit up near the dunes.”

  “Was anyone else on the beach at that time?”

  “No, it was beginning to get quite windy.”

  “What happened then?”

  I hesitated.

  “Miss Spooner,” Mr. Markel said in a gentle voice, “please go on.”

  “Well, Wally kissed me. And I guess he lost his head. He pushed me down on the sand. He…pulled up my skirt. I tried to get him off me—”

  Just the fans whirring now. That was the only noise. It was like a roar in my ears. I had to speak through the noise. I saw a woman in the third row, her round blue eyes trained on my face. I saw sympathy there, and surprise, and…greed.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to frighten me—”

  Suddenly Mr. Forrest rose from a middle row. I hadn’t seen him. His big sunburned face was red. “Liar! You led him on! You’re a whore like your mother!”

  The word whore was like a bomb thrown into the courtroom. A couple of women shrieked, and Joe halfrose, as if he’d deck Captain Sandy, and the judge called, “Get that man out of my courtroom!”

  Whore. How strange it felt, to have that word thrown at my head.

  I had to concentrate on the roar of the train in my head, of the shadow that noise could cast.

  The silent man on the aisle, watching me. Never taking his eyes off me.

  I leaned over and buried my face in my handkerchief. I wasn’t crying. Tears were so far away from me now, it was like they were in another country. I just kept my head there, until the gavel stopped banging and the room went quiet, and I knew that Mr. Forrest had been escorted from the courtroom.

  “Miss Spooner?” The judge spoke in a nicer voice than I’d heard before. “Can you continue?”

  Slowly, I raised my head. The women had stopped fanning themselves. The reporters were furiously scribbling in their notebooks and looking at me at the same time.

  Everything happens underneath the same moon. Things you never thought you’d see. Or do.

  I was sorry about Wally. But I had to do it. I had to tell them what happened so that they wouldn’t believe him over me. But I couldn’t let it stay like that.

  “I’m responsible for what happened,” I said. “I went with Wally to the beach alone. And when he suggested we find a place in the dunes, I went with him. And when he kissed me, at first I was so surprised that I didn’t say no. I guess he thought…well, I guess he thought I was fast. I don’t blame him for that.”

  “What happened after the…incident?” Mr. Markel asked.

  “He walked me back to the hotel. My skirt was torn. I was upset. And the hotel manager, Mr. Forney, he saw us. He was outside. He called to Wally, and later on Mr. Forney told me that he fired Wally because of what happened. It’s not like I think Wally would hold a grudge against my family or anything…” I looked down at my twisted handkerchief. “I mean, I hope he doesn’t blame me for his getting fired. He saw someone with Peter that night, and I guess he thought it was my mother. It’s not like he was making anything up. He just got confused because of the blue dress, maybe.”

  It was almost over. I looked out at the woman in the third row. She was nodding just a little bit as she listened.

  The state’s attorney was looking down at his notes. His bald spot was shiny with sweat. It was his turn now.

  I answered every question, and he couldn’t rattle me. He tried to do his job, but I knew by his eyes that he believed me, too. After ten minutes he gave up, and I was dismissed.

  When I walked down the aisle to leave, I had to pass the man. I looked right into his face. His eyes were light green. I could see how handsome he’d been once. He had the hands of a fisherman, thick and useful-looking.

  He had a way of looking at you, like he could get the full measure of you in one long glance. Peter must have inherited that. Now I faltered as his father took me in, and I felt afraid. I wanted to say something, but what?

  I’m sorry.

  I loved your son.

  I wanted justice for him, too.

  I’d answered every question, I’d thrown mud at a good boy’s reputation, I’d lied, I’d been called a whore. But it was that one man’s wave of contempt that finally made the tears come.

  Chapter 34

  VERDICT IN COLERIDGE CASE IS

  ACCIDENTAL DEATH BY DROWNING

  Joseph and Beverly Spooner Exonerated

  __________

  Lack of Evidence for Trial, Rules Judge Friend

  We were packed and on the road by noon.

  It was a long way home, and a long way to go without talking. Grandma Glad and I shared the backseat, keeping a careful distance, even when we slept. She sat with her feet planted on either side of her brown valise, and she never moved or complained, even when the sweat dripped off her nose onto her bust. She wouldn’t talk to Mom, and Mom wouldn’t talk to her, and I didn’t know if Joe and Mom were talking to each other.

  The miles ticked off under the car wheels. The weather got cooler, and we had to dig for sweaters. We never looked at each other. We looked at Georgia and South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Maryland. Delaware. New Jersey.

  When nobody looked at you, it made it so easy to feel like you’d disappeared.

  All the way on the drive, I just wanted to get home, but when we got there on Saturday morning, there was something that made me and Mom both stop in the driveway and look up at the house, hesitate about going in. I’d been thinking of my room, and my bed, and the white bedspread, and my own pillow. I hadn’t been thinking that I was going back to Grandma Glad’s house, a place that had never really been mine.

  Mom and I looked at each other, really looked at each other, for the first time since Florida. Then she gave a little tilt to her head and shrugged. She picked up her suitcase and walked up the path. I remembered the night in the car when she’d tilted the rearview mirror and put her lipstick on. How she made herself do it.

  Being an adult—was this it? Doing the thing you most in your life didn’t want to do, and doing it with a shrug?

  I picked up my suitcase and followed her. Grandma Glad was already on the porch, her hand tightly gripping her valise. Joe slipped the key into the lock. We stepped into the dark hall. Every house has a smell, but you can’t smell it if it’s your own home. I could smell Grandma Glad’s house.

  Grandma Glad went up the stairs and I followed her. She turned into her room and I stopped, waiting. I peeked through the door. She stood, looking around for a minute, then opened the closet door and put the valise on the top shelf, grunting while she did it. As she closed the closet I scooted down to my room next door.

  I hadn’t even finished unpacking when Margie arrived. Thanks, no doubt, to Mrs. Clancy’s gossip know-how. I knew as soon as she saw our car that she’d pick up the phone.

  I could see in a moment what Margie wanted, how greedily she greeted me, how her eyes swept over my hair and my figure.

  “Tell me everything,” she said dramatically. “It was in the paper here, you know. My mother said it was an ordeal for your stepfather. An ordeal, she said. But then you said it was you all along who loved him. An older man!”

  I felt my lips close. There we
ren’t any words I wanted to use to talk to Margie.

  She had been my best friend for six years. There were all of the secrets we’d whispered, sweaters we’d borrowed, homework we’d done together at her kitchen table. I’d been practically adopted by her mother, brought into family dinners and stickball games, hoeing their Victory Garden, washing their big old ’39 Ford with Margie on sunny Saturday afternoons.

  I didn’t want to be her friend anymore.

  She settled herself on my bed and smoothed out her skirt. “You can tell me,” she said. She lifted her face to me, all expectation. She would have the gossip before anyone.

  It would certainly increase my standing in the cafeteria. I would no longer hover there with my tray, looking for an empty seat. Girls would slide over to make room for me. For us. Margie would be by my side, the interpreter of what had happened to me. I could see her mouth moving, I could see it all, my story served up on a tray with the grilled cheese.

  Now I have a story, Peter.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  “But—”

  “I have to unpack.” I said the words so curtly that she reared back, her cheeks red.

  “Well, honestly! You don’t have to be so rude!”

  I reached over and took a blue skirt out of the suitcase. I smoothed it and put it on the hanger carefully. By the time I hung it up, Margie had gone.

  Chapter 35

  On Sunday morning, I saw Ruthie Kalman come out of the drugstore as I was heading to the subway. She speeded up when she saw me. I almost had to run to catch up.

  “Ruthie!” My breath came out in a cloud of steam. It was cooler today, a fall day as crisp as an apple.

  She turned slightly and said hello while she kept walking.