The Burden of Proof (34 page)

"Ah, yes," said Stern. "I See Claudia waving. It must be most urgent.

Many thanks," he told Margy, ."many thanks," and put down the phone, feeling queasy and grateful and free.

TWICE in the last week, Stern had gone home in the morning to change for work and to look over the mail from the day before, having spent the night at Helen's. They had been out three times since their evening at the symphony-dinner, the theater--and she demonstrated on each occasion her ability to make him sweep aside the vexing detritus of his wrecked life. With Helen, he tended to hear only her beguiling musical laughter, her clear firm voice, and to feel, of course, the urgent throb of his reinvigorated romantic life. Dear, sweet Helen--she remained intent on improving him.

In yesterday's mail, Stern this morning found another copy of Westlab's bill, a pink form this time, bearing a red block-letter stamp which said OVerDUE. Yes, indeed, he thought at once. His most recent speculation was that, given the nature of the problem, Clara had consulted a female physician; he had gone paging through her phone book once again, looking for a name, even while he felt it would be fruitless. What could this doctor tell him? What could she change? But his curiosity was not all a matter of reason.

He took this overdue notice as a direction from fate, and with Westlab's bill and his checkbook in hand he set out, as soon as he was dressed, to find the place where, in the middle days of February, a specimen from Clara Stern was cultured, examined, and, with clinical exactness, named.

What if it was a mistake? he thought suddenly as he was driving, and then realized, as he had a hundred times before, that diagnosis was not the final issue. Clara had had a reason to suspect a problem. Only in the Bible and the tales of King Arthur did the virtuous have relations in their sleep.

Stern had never recognized the lab's address, but his street guide placed it on a small court tucked between two prominent commercial avenues, no more than five or six blocks from the Sterns' home in the Riverside neighborhood.

And there it was, a low, flat-roofed brick building with casement windows, a construction style of the 1950s. He had been driving by Westlab for twenty years and never noticed.

Within the building's glass doors there was little public space, a small waiting area with four plastic bucket seats bolted to a bar of steel, and a glass partition. At this window, ' he asked for Liz. She was beckoned and came forth, just as Radczyk had described her, dark and small, with short black hair cut into a fringe around her face.

She wore gray slacks and heavy makeup; liner was glopped below her bottom lashes as well. She smiled attractively, accustomed, you could tell, to dealing with the public.

"I am Mr. Stern," he said. "This bill was sent to my wife before she passed away in late March. In the confusion of events, I am afraid I neglected it."

"Oh, that's all right," said Liz emphatically. A hand proffefing absolution, casual but complete, passed vaguely by her nose.

He waited just an instant.

"There was probably a doctor's bill as well. Either we never received it or it was misplaced. I would like to contact the doctor to be sure the bill has not been overlooked, but I am not certain who that was.

Could you give me the name of the physician who ordered the test? I am the executor of my wife's estate, if there is any concern."

"Oh, no." Liz waved a hand the same way and, with Stern's copy of Westlab's statement was gone at once, receding into the visible office space, illuminated as in most buildings of that era by too much glaring fluorescence. From somewhere farther back came a vague antiseptic smell. Banging through the file drawers, Liz called out to another woman about something else, then returned, paging through a folder.

She had not quite arrived at the window when she spoke.

'Calling,' he thought she had said. "Pardon?"

"Do you know hun? Dr. Nathaniel Cawicy?His office is over on Grove.

About three blocks. Here's the address." By now she had laid the folder down before Stern and showed him the test requisition, a long form of small type and boxes which had been filled out in the usual indecipherable doctorly hand. Nate's name and office address were stamped at the top of the form, but there was no question he had been the one to give the orders: he had signed, in a scribble, and had written "Viral culture for HSV-2" in a block for comments at the bottom of the page.

Weak and suddenly chill, Stern glanced up to find Liz looking at him oddly. Perhaps she was reacting to his dumb response or had recollected Radczyk, or had finally noticed what the test was for. His first impulse, however, was that he must continue to pretend, and he removed the gold pen from his inside suit pocket to write down Nate's address.

There was no paper around, however, and instead, without' speaking, he turned away.

"Did you want to pay this?" Liz was holding the bill.

He wrote out the check falteringly. He could not get the numbers right and had to tear up his first effort.

Nate! Outside, Stern fell heavily onto the cherry-colored leather of the front seat of the Cadillac. There was undoubtedly a way to explain.

Drinking too' much, or overcome by the involvements of his personal life, Nate had allowed this to skip his mind. Nonetheless, Stern was badly shaken.

Nate was fuddled at times but steady. It alarmed him for incomprehensible reasons to think of a doctor as unreliable or inexact.

He reached for the car phone; this model had come equipped with one.

Stern had no use for it--his daily drive to the office was no more than ten minutes, and he could walk to both courthouses--but out of his love for gizmos and toys, he had let Claudia get him a number and he used the phone on any occasion. Now he flipped on the ignition, dialed information and then Nate's office.

"He's not in. Can I help you, Mr. Stern?"

"I must speak with him." He had shown Nate courtesy enough; he felt entitled to an immediate response. "It's something of an emergency."

The nurse paused. You could tell what she was thinking:

Patients---everything was a eftsis.

"He's at the hospital." She repeatet the number. "Try to page him. He's in the middle of rounds, though. I'm not sure you'll get him."

He left his numbers--office, car, homemthen dialed University Hospital.

When he reached the page operator, he described the call as urgent.

Behind him, near the doors of Westlab, a mother was dragging a screaming child up the walk toward the building. Stern turned about fully to watch this scene. The little boy apparently knew what was coming, for he was carrying on fiercely, almost lying on the ground. The mother herself was overcome; eventually Stern noticed that she was crying, too. "This is Dr. CawIcy."

"Nate, Sandy Stern."

"Sandy?" In his voice, there was a catch of something, frustration or disbelief.

"I shall be only a moment. It was important that I speak to youabout Clara."

"Clara? Jesus, Sandy, I'm in the middle of grand rounds."

Nate took a second to contain himself. "Sandy, can I talk to you about this later?"

"Look, Sandy, is it on this Westlab thing? Is that why you're calling?

I've gotten your messages."

Nate, as he'd anticipated, was going to explain. In a prescient moment, Stern Saw how compulsive and foolish he would look.

"I know it is a silly obsession, Nate, but--"

In a rush, Nate interrupted again.

"No, no, Sandy, it's my fault. I'm sorry I've made you chase me around, but I did look into. it. Okay? I checked my files, I called Westlab, nobody knows what it's about.

They have no records of any kind over there, and I don't either, so I don't know what to tell you. It's just a mistake; I'm sure. Okay?

We've all checked thoroughly. Just let it go. All right?"

Stern found himself looking down at one palm, pink and completely empty.

What is it? he thought. What now? But there was already something moving through him in a subdued rumble, so that it was only another instant before he finally made the connection: Nate was lying. He had been lying all along. For just the faintest second, Stern needed to remind himself to breathe as he listened to Nate's words go stumbling on. What more was he missing? he wondered. And then, as 'so often of late, he decided that he had no wish to know.

Afterwards, he was unsure how the conversation had ended.

The receiver, with the lighted touch pad on its back, was rectadied and he was looking at his hand on it before he had recovered. He started to redial, but a sage voice urged him to gather himself first. He had learned something in the courtroom. A Yar, called out, lied about that.

Nate would deny misleading him. If confronted, he would tell Stern that, no matter what the form said, it was wrong. He needed to be composed--far more than he was now--to deal with this.

He slowly placed the car in gear and pulled out of the lot.

When he had driven a block or two, under the large stout trees that rose up along the parkways in this part of town, the thought drove through him, sharp and sudden, as if he had been impaled: She had hated him.

Despised him. That, somehow, was what animated all this deceit. He could understand what motivated Nate; that had taken only a few minutes' reflection. He was lying out of cowardice--because he did not want to face Stern with the facts. Not merely Clara's unfaithfulness. That was the symptom, not the cause. But the disease, a kind of brutal and unremitting spousal discontent, was too painful to disclose. And yet it was obvious in every act, in the reeking mess she had left behind for her husband to discover. Never able to speak her mind, she had settled for a graphic demonstration, a life, a home, bespattered and fouled.

And was he to pretend-now that he never knew this? Along River Drive, he was approaching one of many vista points, a space of concrete, with an old Greystone wall bordering the river, and a line of park benches looking out toward the green hills of Moreland and the fashionable suburbs on the western bank.

Abruptly he parked and crossed the street. He leaned over the thick wall, watching the swift waters sluicing by with their hidden, welling currents, twinkling, lambent--La Chandelle--then fell back onto one of the benches.

Only in the years when the children had gone off one by one to college was anything apparent. By the time Kate departed, a brooding desperate quality had come over Clara, a suffering lightlessness that would not yield.

Unfalteringly polite, she was regularly out of sorts, and he was unable to soothe her. In the most indirect of approaches, lie had suggested counSeling, which she instantly rebuffed. Always mute about her discontent, Clara complained now periodically about his unavailability.

The office. His trials. His cigars--it was during this time that he was forbidden to smoke at home. The message in retrospect was clear: He still had his life, in which she had never been included. She had little left. Shocked to be rebuked so directly, Stern had avoided her.

He accepted a series of engagements out of town--a lengthy trial in Kansas City, Seminars and demonstrations of courtroom techniques. He had gone flying across America for months, until he had shrewdly suggested the irresistible, a trip together to the Far East. In Japan, with its monstrous cities and mysterious gardens, they came together again.

But before that, during the Kansas City trial, on one of his rare days at home, he had had what he saw now was the opportunity to look into her heart. The trial, concerning a nasty conspiracy of politicians and union officials, had gone on for fourteen weeks. Stern would fly home on Friday nights, leave again midday Sunday. He was present in body only; he spoke on the phone most of the Weekend or worked at the office downtown preparing for the upcoming government witnesses. On one of those Sundays, Clara had asked him to come with her to a showing of Japanese pots, raiku--ceramics fired directly in the blaze, then rolled in straw for markings. Clara was a passionate admirer of all the Japanese arts. Stern did not have time for this outing, but he agreed, hoping to appease her, knowing she would feel free to buy a substantial piece only if he was along.

She pointed at one pot after another. Did he like it? Once or twice, he made the mistake of allowing his impatience to show. When he saw the effect of this, he began to gesture toward the shelves himself. This one? That? She found his sudden eagerness patronizing and abruptly suggested they leave. 'Certainly there must be one,' he said. She yearned for few physical possessions.

Tersely, Clara shook her head and went ahead of him out the door. A moment, like so many of late, of wholly different aspirations. At the head of the staircase in the dark gallery building, he stumbled and reached back for her hand. The iron newel saved him. When he looked up, Clara had her brow drawn down wearily in irritation, and a rare edge was in her eye. She might as well have proceeded with the pronouncement: He did not please her, in a deep abiding way. The hand he had reached back for, he remembered, had remained at her side.

He had believed that was past. Instead, it seemed now that this was to be Clara's parting look. Guilt had overcome her in the end and she had left behind a message begging forgiveness. But she apologized only for her conduct. The rest could not be changed. Clara's heart, too, had been set to the fire and inkcribed with this hideous grudge. Better she should have torn apart the house, broken all the china, slashed the pictures on the Walls. Instead, full of rage and despair, she had smashed and destroyed herself, and left him to wound himself whenever he stooped for any of the pieces.