“I—I think it’s an emergency,” I said.
“Well, let’s just transfer you to Mr. Finn for the moment. He’ll be out of his meeting within the hour. Where are you calling from, may I ask?” She had the saccharine voice and labored patience of a preschool teacher. “Let me see if I have it right,” she said, repeating our number.
“This will be her car!” Emma shouted, as I hung up. I half-believed her and I went to the window to look. My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way. When Ayatollah Khomeni died I watched the hundreds of thousands of identical black-scarfed women grieving on television. I had never seen anything like it. It was their belief that was shocking. They carried it without thinking, like ants hauling bread. I didn’t know what else to do on that Tuesday morning except walk out and check the irrigation rig. The girls ate as they ran. As I lifted Claire into the spray and while she squealed I was pretty sure that what had happened only moments before was some kind of prank. There was no reason to worry. I had the idea that we would check the rig and then we would go and get Alice. I had wanted to topdress the west hayfield but I’d have to put it off until tomorrow. There had been a mistake, which she would explain at first with restraint. Over the summer, with subsequent tellings, the story would become more amusing. I guessed her tendency to exaggerate would be her right in a case like this one. The rig was so old and rusted it was practically useless. We weren’t to the barn when Alan, our driver who picks up the milk, hobbled down from his truck. He came forward grinning as usual. He thought I was going to listen to his jokes and schemes. That Tuesday morning I waved once and then walked as fast as I could with the girls back to the house.
We were slapping some more Marshmallow Fluff on the heels of the stale white loaf, to take with us in the car, when the phone rang. “This is my one call,” she said.
“What?” I went around the corner into the bathroom, as far as the cord would allow.
“This should teach me, Howard. Did you read the warrant? Robbie Mackessy says that I did unspeakable things to him. I said to the deputies
in the car, I said, ‘Aren’t you sick of this kind of thing? Doesn’t it bore you to tears? Is it that we’re saturated with the notion of abuse, we can’t see anything else anymore? We are all nothing to each other but potential abusers—Is that it?’ They looked straight ahead and didn’t say a word. Remember that cable channel we got at your mother’s, that dial-a-fetish program? Maybe that’s what everybody else in the whole world is watching and thinking is normal. Remember there was that guy with the shoe, and the woman who—”
“Alice—” I broke in.
“I’m trying to keep my mouth shut, I am Howard, really. But in a way it’s so—typical. I have the urge to shake these people, to tell them to come off it. Last year a third-grader in Walworth was charged with fourth-degree abuse for pulling another boy’s pants down on the playground. He had to go to court, swear to ten years of therapy. I think about the time John Croger cornered me in the alley and felt my breasts—well, I was in sixth grade, that was the dark ages, nothing to be done about it. As horrible as it was I knew that it was just dumb boy stuff.”
“Alice!” I had to shout to make her stop. “Will you tell me what—”
“The town of Prairie Center is set against me, that’s what I know.” She lowered her voice. “Do you remember in the winter when I invited Sally Hunter over? Don’t you remember that she and Emma went upstairs and took off their clothes and played operating room, and then they went screaming down the hall and jumped on the old mattress stark naked? I didn’t really think anything of it. I thought, How nice, they’re getting along so well. Sally went home and told her mother she had her butt sewed up by Doctor Emma and that when she’s at our place she is not required to wear clothes. Darla Hunter called in a fury: ‘What is it about your sexed house?’ That was a good one, our
sexed house
. I tried to keep a straight face, tried to tell Darla that we belong to the missionary-position club and have a once-a-month average and that furthermore I thought it was normal for children to play—Oh Christ, Howard, I don’t have all day here. God knows I didn’t have a very ordinary childhood, but at least I got to play dirty doctor under the Meyers’s porch.”
“Alice—”
“They booked me, Howard. I was in the bullpen.”
“What?”
“Only for a few minutes, and alone. It smelled. I had to stand handcuffed to the counter, while they got my name and address. They took my fingerprints and a mug shot that goes right into the computer. In a minute they’ll give me my Day-Glo orange jail suit that says
RACINE COUNTY JAIL
in black-stenciled letters on the back. I’m not kidding, it’s the whole works. When I’m arraigned I’ll have to shuffle into court with my feet in shackles.”
I said her name again. I thought to say, “Why? Why you?”
“Did you get Rafferty?” she asked instead.
“He’s on vacation. He won’t be in until Thursday. Finn is supposed to call back any minute. Alice, why—”
“I want Rafferty. Theresa says Finn is lecherous and drinks too much and tells off-color jokes. I couldn’t have someone defending me who is a judge for the Miss Dairyland contest. I don’t want anyone but Rafferty. They’ve got me on probable cause, some kind of lawyer deal where they’re pretty sure you did it, sure enough to put you in the slammer. Listen to me! I’ll come out of here speaking a new language and all with the timbre of a truck driver. Robbie was checked out by a child protection worker and they’ve had a couple of investigating officers on this case for weeks. For all I know they talked to Darla Hunter and she told them about our
sexed house
. While I’ve been lying in bed crying my eyes out over Lizzy, they’ve learned that I’m an unbalanced, vicious woman who runs from funerals and tortures young children with rectal thermometers and tongue depressors. They drag you off in a squad car you almost start thinking you’re crazy or guilty.”
Alice was born exaggerating. She probably sputtered and howled much longer than the trauma of birth requires. I was used to taking a lot of what she said with a grain of salt. I didn’t know her well, when we were married. I knew her enough to think there wasn’t much point in having the years pass if she wasn’t along for the ride. She is an intemperate person, one minute shut up in herself and the next dancing a jig, telling an implausible story about a mouse running up her leg at the doctor’s office.
“I’m coming right away,” I said. “We’ll get Finn for today. I’ll be there in thirty min—”
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do. Just call the office and
have them tell Rafferty it’s critical, to call you the instant he’s back. I’ll talk to one of the public defenders here in the meantime. Can you imagine what Rafferty does on vacation? Something eccentric, stamp collector’s camp in Reno, or—or Morris dancing with the bells and handkerchiefs. I trust him even though he’s peculiar, don’t you?”
“I need to come,” I said.
“No! Listen. You couldn’t even see me now. They’re taking me up in two minutes.” When I realized she was indisposed, I began talking at her as forcefully as I could in low tones. The justice system was corrupt, I knew, but they couldn’t slap her in jail without adequate proof. Finn would get her out within the hour, when his meeting was over.
“Howard,” she said, her voice wavering. “You don’t realize about this. I’m in here now and it’s going to take more than the truth to get me out.” Before I could answer she said, “There’s one thing. One thing.” She had regained her composure and sounded again as if being at the jail was part of some plan that only I hadn’t known about. “You have to promise that under no circumstances will you bring Emma and Claire here to visit me. Don’t come if you can’t find a sitter. The visiting time for my group is two-fifteen on Sunday.”
“Sunday?”
“You’re supposed to get here beforehand to register. I couldn’t stand for Emma and Claire to see this place. I couldn’t stand to have them go away again after fifteen minutes. You have to say you’ll promise.”
I was not planning on her stay lasting for more than another few hours.
“Howard,” she said, “are you listening? You have to promise.”
“Yes, I’m listening—”
“All right then. Call Rafferty.”
“Alice—”
“My time is up. Call Rafferty. Please.”
“What was that about?” Emma asked, from around the corner.
I was raised, along with millions of other boys, to strive, to compete, to work hard to get to a crucial destination. It was unspecified but all important. The cost of the trip was the accumulated sum of our school, church, and scout labors. We went to Sunday school and were told about God, but we also knew that His power was not much compared to Hard
Work and the salvation of Free Enterprise. We were told that we could do anything if we put our minds to it, and wanted it badly enough. Mental strength then, and desire, were for us what constituted bravery. I thought, in my younger years, that there was some sort of design that I would unerringly become a part of in adulthood. I thought there was one singular pattern that was for me, and was mine alone. I would work and work and then I would be rewarded by receiving a plot of land and a dairy barn, a sign at the end of the driveway that said, The Howard Goodwin Family Farm. Registered Guernseys. Milk Producer of America.
I hung up the phone knowing that there had been a mistake, that I would get a hold of someone in Rafferty’s office, and with persistence—that’s what it would take—persistence, the whole thing would be cleared up in an hour or so.
“Mom had to go to Racine for a while, but she’ll be back,” I said to Emma.
“She didn’t really say good-bye to us,” she choked, looking out the window.
I sat down at the kitchen table and with one hand drew Emma to me and held her. With the other I stroked along the grain of the wood. We would drive in and demand to have her back. When Finn called he would understand the vagaries of the law and see where we could inch in and get our way.
“When will she be home?” Emma asked.
I kept smoothing my hand over the table. The farmer we bought the place from told us that the table was the one on which his great-grandmother served corn bread to the Indians up in Winston, a half hour or so from Prairie Center. I bet I’ve told that story to the girls twenty times. I make the table come alive and I tell the whole thing from its point of view. The year is 1836. It watches the Indians barge in with their scalp belts slung around their waists. They want to see the coffee grinder and the white baby. Our girls have gotten in the habit of begging me to tell them what’s happening today in the life of Emma and Claire Goodwin, from the view of the table. It has an uncommonly deep voice and it usually gives them good advice or a moral. I can’t put my elbows on the slab of oak without thinking of it taking us in, its clear eye watching me.
“It’s awful when you make supper,” Emma said. “You always mix everything together and I can’t undo it into piles.”
I had not given Emma any real answer or put her fears to rest about my cooking when Finn called. I uncoiled the long phone cord as I walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I didn’t have much information. I had difficulty describing the problem. “My wife has been arrested, I think for s-s-sexual abuse.” I hadn’t stuttered in years, not since I was a kid. For a second I was as surprised by the sound of my own voice as I was by the strange story I was trying to tell. “They handcuffed her,” I said.
“Yes, well, they always do when the charge is a felony.”
“A felony,” I repeated. “She hasn’t done anything.”
“If the police acted lawfully,” he said, “then the arrest is valid. That’s the question to grapple with right now.” I remembered then, that night years before when Alice and I went to the county fair. Everything on the grounds was caked with grit. There was no escape from the intoxicating smell of corn dogs and horse manure and axle grease. We had laughed at the sight of Mr. Finn, “Judge Finn,” Alice had called him. We laughed watching him hand up the envelope at the end of the Miss Dairyland Contest.
“Was there a warrant?” he asked.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “I saw it for just a second.”
“I suspect what happened here is the police felt they had reasonably trustworthy information, sufficient, as the law reads, to make ‘a reasonable man’ think it more likely than not that the proposed arrest is justified. We call that ‘probable cause.’ In arrests with a warrant, the determination of probable cause is made by a judge up at the courthouse.”
“Alice knows Rafferty personally. She would really like him on this.”
“I’m sure you know, Mr. Goodwin, that it is essential she have counsel immediately. They’ll set bail sometime today. Mr. Rafferty isn’t in until Thursday—”
“I understand,” I said.
“There are two things you can do right now. You can retain a lawyer, which I strongly advise you to do without delay, and you can pay the bond when it’s posted.”
Although he had clearly given me specific instructions, I was still waiting for him to tell me simply how we could get her out. I understood the workings of the court system well enough, but it is fair to say that I was stupefied at the beginning. I guess the process seemed obscure because we were in the middle of it. A person doesn’t ever think much about being in that kind of trouble, or plan for it. I thought that Alice would be exempt from the rules because her arrest was a blatant mistake.
“If you’d like me to represent her until Thursday—”
“Thank you, thanks for the information. I appreciate—”
“Look,” he said, “Mr. Rafferty isn’t in until Thursday. She should have someone, a public defender, anyone until then. Does she understand that she should remain silent until—”
“Thank you,” I blared. “We’ll do that. Thank you very much. I’ll be in t-touch.”
Alice has sometimes told people, I guess in a way I find objectionable, as if I’m a show animal, that one of my strong points is my ability to stay calm. She had been excessively calm on the telephone, all things considered. I already felt the need to make up somehow for what she had lacked. I careened from the paper-towel dispenser to the refrigerator to the cupboard. I went around the room a couple of times trying to make something other than Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches for my daughters. All the drawers were wide open and I kept bumping them. I called the jail and was told that they did not give out information about inmates over the telephone. I got through to the public defender’s office only to learn that the person handling Alice’s case was in court. When the secretary put me on hold it occurred to me for the first time that I might be powerless to get Alice out before morning. I needed to tell her not to breathe a word, not to open her mouth. I gripped the sink, queasy for a minute, afraid that she was going to blurt to anyone who’d listen, that business about the “sexed house.” I pulled out the clutter of pans and appliances and pots that we always threw down below in the cupboards. We hadn’t had time or energy or the talent for organization. The cupboards were proof of our deficiencies. The slippery bread pans had been stacked and stored without being washed. The ice-cube trays were filled with spider webs and insect skeletons. There were three large plastic bags stuffed with lids and no jars anywhere in sight. Ordinarily such a mess
wouldn’t have mattered to me. Emma and Claire examined the things with enthusiasm until they realized that the black specks on the contact paper were mouse droppings.