By the time we were called back Rafferty had collected himself. He
cleared his throat, smoothed his plaid suit coat, put his head down, so humble, so manly, and walked into the courtroom.
I have often thought about both Carol Mackessy and Mrs. Sheridan, together, as if they belonged in the same photograph. I persuaded myself that in a sense they needed one another. Carol had brought a suit against me without thinking about her past. Had she believed that modesty or politeness would keep her unconventional behavior out of the evidence? Did she believe in Dirks the way I believed in Rafferty? Our lawyers, we thought, would present us as our best selves. Or did Carol feel secure in her right to entertain her own friends in her own home? Theresa maintained that Carol’s maternal instincts had finally kicked in, that those strong feelings overpowered her, and made her take action. Theresa said that she probably had deep-seated guilt about Robbie, and in pursuing the case she was overcompensating.
Carol hadn’t imagined there could be anyone quite like Mrs. Sheridan. Was the lady too good to be true, I often wondered, or was it rather that in all of our lives there is a Mrs. Sheridan, seeing something in the dark, and translating it into something fully formed? Mrs. Sheridan was perhaps Mrs. M. L. Glevitch’s beautiful and good sister. Mrs. Glevitch stood in funeral lines, grocery-store lines, listening, spying, talking, talking, the words running out of her mouth like ink, leaving an indelible trail behind her. Mrs. Sheridan stayed at home, shut her curtains, and still truth came to her. She kept quiet until she was called upon by the mighty forces of civilization, the court of law, where she believed justice was carried out.
On Tuesday afternoon Rafferty called Theresa to the stand. I had asked him several times if it wouldn’t be better to hire someone else, someone who hadn’t known me, who didn’t have the complication of our particular relationship. Each time he insisted that she was perfect for us, not in spite of our friendship, but because of our association. “She’s a great expert too—she’s always lucid, human, commonsensical. The jury deep down doesn’t care how many degrees a person has if he’s compelling and speaks their language.”
I had talked to Theresa on the phone since our meeting at the A&W,
but I hadn’t seen her. I had always envied her fair skin, her long eyelashes, her curly hair, as well as her sunny nature. In court she was virtually unrecognizable. She’d lost some weight so that her round face had become angular; she had planes and cheekbones, what she had always wished for. She’d taken her glasses off, or gotten contacts. She had previously had a schoolgirl sort of charm, an adorableness, but in the witness box she looked as if she’d grown up, come into her prime. She was dressed simply in a blue sweater and a dark blue and crimson skirt.
Rafferty asked her to explain the guidelines she followed for sexual-abuse cases. She moistened her lips and smoothed her skirt down her lap. I found it painful to watch her in the beginning, in the same way it will be difficult to watch Emma or Claire play an instrument at a recital. I’m sure I was more nervous for Theresa than she was for herself.
“First of all,” she said in a loud, clear, unfaltering voice, “I always err in favor of the child. What do I mean by that? I don’t think that children are capable of lying about their feelings. In other words, I always believe a child’s feelings. It is essential to listen very carefully to a child, but it is just as important to be sensitive to details, to be aware that children often mix fantasy with fact. I have myself seen children, in my own practice, elaborate and get carried away with details, especially as they get further from the incident. I have seen child protection workers get into trouble because of various approaches that are still advocated and widely used, and which often mislead a victim.”
“Could you describe those approaches, Mrs. Collins, which you believe mislead children.”
“The dictum ‘Children never lie’ is often taken to extremes. I have found, in my practice, that children are often fanciful, that they sometimes say outrageous things that I’m certain have no basis in fact. In courts of law we often establish that the child can distinguish between the truth and a lie. But that is a very different issue from whether or not the child will actually lie or embellish.”
I had never seen Theresa before in her professional capacity. She was capable, articulate, and impassioned without appearing rabid. “One of them mind doctors,” I heard Dyshett say. “Tell me your dreams and all that cockshit.”
“Second,” she went on, “anatomically detailed dolls sometimes startle
a child because of their unusual genital features. They invite a finger into their gaping holes. Give a child a wooden donut and he will invariably place his fingers in the holes. I have seen professionals jump to conclusions based on a child’s natural curiosity. The child often senses the importance the examiner places on the doll. He or she wants to please or possibly get a reaction from the examiner.
“Third, there is a real problem, in spite of the fact that we know we should not, of the examiner asking leading questions. I myself have been guilty of asking specific questions, such as, ‘Does your daddy put his fingers in you just like that?’ ”
“What she talkin’ about?” It was Dyshett again, zinging through my mind. “What this motherfuck lecture?” I had tried to tell Theresa, that day at the A&W, that the girls in my pod had gotten inside of me, that they were real now, more real to me than they had ever been in jail, in person. And there wasn’t much good in feeling that I was one of them, from a distance, from the safety of the outside world.
“Fourth, there is a danger that the examiners selectively ignore the impossible. Let me give you an example. If the child says, ‘My uncle abused me,’ we say, ‘Oh my!’, and we probe and set the wheels in motion to charge the uncle. If the child then says, ‘My uncle abused me during a family outing on the picnic table where everyone was eating,’ we, as examiners, tend to say, ‘Oh, Sally’s tired out. We’ll let her rest.’ ”
“So in your opinion examiners hear only what they want to hear,” Rafferty said.
“I’m saying that’s a danger, yes. Another typical problem in the field is the failure of the child protection worker to interview the accused or the adult accuser. We tend to take at face value the accusations, and we do not consider that there may have been fabrication. We think we do not need to hear another point of view because the child has told us everything. That is not always the case.”
“Mrs. Collins, there is, in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
, a list of telling characteristics of what is known as the unattached child, or the character-disturbed child. Another name for the disorder is the antisocial-personality disorder. Could you give us a profile of the character-disturbed child?”
“A young child with APD will not look you in the eye. The only time
such a child has normal eye contact is when he is trying to manipulate and when he is angry. Character-disturbed children are quick to tell outrageous lies. The child may have a preoccupation with fire, blood, or gore. Many of these children have not bonded with their parents, as infants. They will exhibit aggression and have marked control problems. In fact, the parents are often also angry and hostile people.”
“Dr. Eugene Bailey told us that when a child is afflicted with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, often that child’s basic assumptions about his surroundings and himself have been upset. The child’s belief in his personal invulnerability is shaken, he no longer has the perception of the world as meaningful, and he can also no longer see himself as positive,” Rafferty said.
“I agree with that assessment,” Theresa said.
“Mrs. Collins, I realize that you are not a psychologist, but I respect your twelve-year career as a family therapist. According to the state’s expert, Robbie was suffering from PTSS. Having read the case records, and in your experience, knowing Robbie and his family as you do, would you agree with Dr. Bailey’s diagnosis?”
“Yes.”
“Based on your training and experience and your reading of the court record, would you also say to within a reasonable degree of therapeutic certainty, that Robbie Mackessy exhibits some of the symptoms of a character-disturbed child?”
“Yes, I do, Mr. Rafferty.”
“Unattached children lie even when caught red-handed, do they not?”
“Quite often, yes. It is as if the child confuses the way he wishes life were with the way it actually is.”
“In your experience, Mrs. Collins, do you think it likely that a six-year-old boy who’d seen his mother engaged in sex would experience trauma?”
Mrs. Dirks objected, and for the first time Rafferty raised his voice. “Your honor,” he shouted, “I am asking a hypothetical question!”
“Yes. Quite definitely,” Theresa was able to answer.
“Is it your opinion that the child might experience terror not only for himself, but also for his mother. Might he be afraid for her life?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is it possible that a young boy might imagine himself in the same danger as his mother? That a young boy might have the fear of that danger?”
“I think it’s possible, Mr. Rafferty.”
“If that boy, in his worst fantasy, imagines himself in his mother’s helpless position, might he invent a situation in which he triumphs over the danger, the evil?”
“Children often fantasize about conquering robbers, bullies—the bad guys.”
I wondered if the jurors were thinking about what it must have been like for Robbie to come up the basement stairs, when his mother called him, coming up the stairs and sitting down at his place. Maybe they were imagining prim Grinder in the den, trying to figure out how to rewind the VCR. Mrs. Mackessy might have had her robe on while she fried up hamburgers on the range. The fan wasn’t on, and the doors were closed, and the room smelled of grease and cigarettes. Were they going to force him down on his knees? the boy might have wondered. “Where’ve you been?” she might have barked at him. “I thought you were over by the Sheridans.” She didn’t look as if she’d been hurt. He couldn’t tell, exactly, if she was angrier than usual. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” He wanted to tell her that, if it would make her feel better, he’d kill Grinder for her, that that’s why he showed Mrs. Sheridan, so that Mrs. Sheridan could call the police and take the stranger away. He thought they’d be arriving any minute, with sirens and flashing lights. But when Grinder came into the kitchen, she started slamming down plates in front of the man, as if she wanted to feed him up. He couldn’t tell if she liked him or not, the way she was slamming the plates down. He didn’t understand it, any of it, and he wondered if someone did those terrible things to him, if she’d feel worried about him, and afterward slam plates down in front of him and feed him full of good things. He remembered the time he got his hand stuck in the car door. She’d been mad that he’d been clumsy but she’d also sat with him at the doctor’s office tickling his ear. It was confusing, the way she was being so nice and noisy, and smiling at Grinder, and he wondered if that’s what grown-ups did, hurt each other.
I looked out the window while Rafferty went on with the questions,
trying to think about Mrs. Mackessy, trying for the millionth time to imagine her side of the story. She had grown up with deaf parents, and might have run wild with bad girls, coming home late and signing lies, squandering her promise on men who ill-treated her. She would probably always think of me as someone who was without question thoroughly evil. She wouldn’t care that we’d lost a way of life; I had deserved my misfortunes and so did my family. I wondered if she could ever begin to bring any of Robbie’s tragedy back to herself.
Before Rafferty finished with Theresa he asked her, as I knew he would, about our friendship. I remember how she looked out at us, first at me, sitting at the table alone, and then at Howard, who was behind me. She studied us, as if she was evaluating our bonds. I thought she was going to get choked up. “Yes,” she responded, “we were neighbors and friends.”
“Did your children play together?”
“Very often. Several times a week.”
“Did you ever suspect my client of neglect or foul play?”
“No,” Theresa said.
“You never saw anything, any signs, any flares to alert you?”
“Never.”
“Your daughter was always happy to go to the Goodwins?”
“Yes. Thrilled.”
“Would you allow your daughter to stay unchaperoned with the Goodwin family at this time?”
She was crying now, in her good old way, her professional mantle at her knees, revealing the woman, the mother. She was weeping so affectingly some of the juror’s were dabbing their eyes. “I can’t impress upon you enough,” she said through her sniffles, “that Alice never would inflict—that she never did any of those things.”
I’d like to say that I was not afraid when I took the stand. I wished for the convictions and confidence of Mrs. Sheridan, and the dignity of Theresa. I could not remember anything about our rehearsals except Paul’s flatulent praise. I took a moment to pray while he gathered his papers. I prayed that I could stand up to the assistant D.A. as well as Theresa had, even
though Dirks trashed her credentials. I sat with my shaking hands in my lap, feeling as if my mouth had been stuffed with sawdust. I looked at Paul, who had job happiness, who would go on to save someone else after he was through with me. We had gone through the questions several times. We had agreed on certain wording. It would all flow he said, like a piece of cake.
He began by asking me what I had been charged with that had been the occasion for my spending nearly three months in the county jail.
I remembered my line. “Sexual abuse, reckless endangerment, child abuse,” I said.
“And how did you plead?”
“Not guilty.”
“And how did you find the jail?”
Dirks objected.
“Your honor,” Rafferty said, “I think my client deserves to say a few sentences about her time in jail as a result of this charge. She was beaten and had a serious injury, so serious she was hospitalized.”