The Burden of Proof (39 page)

With their order placed at the counter beneath the stands, they stood in silence. His son-in-law, laconic as ever, put on his glasses to watch the televised version of the game on the screen above the old fry grill.

, "How is the matter proceeding?" asked Stern eventually, desperate for some topic of conversation. He thought, perhaps, to ask if Kate was bearing up; it had occurred to him that the stress of John's problems might have contributed to her worn look and high-strung mood.

"The matter?" John looked at him.

"The grand jury business." Stern had lowered his voice slightly.

"Oh." John poked his glasses back up on his nose and reverted to the TV.

"Okay."

"Klonsky, the Assistant United States Attorney, tells me you have found a lawyer."

"I guess." John hitched a shoulder. It was time for sports; the rest of this was bad news, workaday stuff.

"You are in excellent hands. Raymond is very experienced."

John removed his glasses.

"Oh, I didn't end up with him. I've got a guy named Mel."

"MelT' asked Stern. "Mel Tooley?" It was an article of professional decorum never to speak ill of another lawyer to his client, but Stern could not restrain the note of contempt. Mel TooIcy had not been on the list Stern had given John. The only list of Stern's where TooIcy might appear would be one naming the despised of the earth.

TooIcy, who had been the chief of the Special Investigations Division in the United States Attorney's Office unfl he entered private prac-ftce approximately a year ago, was one of those lawyers who seemed to be attracted to the profession because it legitimized certain forms of deceit. Stern's disagreements with TooIcy over the years were celebrated; legendary. No wonder Klon-sky had said she was surprised by the referral. How had John wandered into the clutches of a creature like that?

His son-in-law had already gathered up the box containing the tissued dogs and the beers and was mounting the concrete steps back to the boxes. Fraught with paternal anxieties and lawyerly rules, Stern followed, lecturing himself. It was, in a word, none of his business how John had chosen his counsel--even Mel TooIcy.

Halfway up the stairs he ran into Kate, literally, jostled against her as she was on her way down. They both exclaimed. Stern laughed, but she seemed startled to see him and jumped back. Here in the stairwell, better lit than the stands, he again noticed her appearance. She was nicely turned out in a sort of maternity sailor suit with a large red bow, but she looked drawn and, most shockingly, seemed to lack her childish blush. It was more than pregnancy, Stern suspected. John's situation was taking its toll. He instantly had the thought that this was the face of Kate's true adulthood. Whatever he had long expected was now in its onset. He touched her hand.

"Katy, are you all right?"

Fine, she answered, just on her way to the ladies' room.

She touched her stomach and added that it was for the third time.

"But is everything else--?"

"You mean John?" When he nodded, she seemed to wince fieetingly and touched her stomach again. She began to speak, then stopped herself. "I shouldn't say anything."

Kate had been briefed, he saw, fully informed. She had the facts, the procedures. In all likelihood, she knew a good deal more than he did.

"I quite agree. I merely wanted to reassure you."

"Daddy--"

"I have seen these situations often, Kate. Trust me. It will turn out all right."

"I only Wish, Daddy."

"You must be patient. It will all probably go on longer than any of Us like. But you should not worry."

"Daddy, please.. You're starting to sound like Mommy. She never wanted me to worry. 'Don't worry, Katy, don't worry."

"She had lifted her hands in imitation, quick, bird-Ye shapes.

"Sometimes I wonder: Did she think if I worried I was going to break or something?"

He considered this lament, so unlike her, not sure how to respond.

"Daddy, it's not that easy. Believe me." With that, she sighed, a despairing sound, and took another step down. "I have to go to the bathroom," she announced, and moved off in that direction. Stern watched her depart. What was that last bit about? But he thought he could read the portents in her mood clearly. She was worried not merely for her husband--but by him. Kate, not unlike her father, had learned more from John, and about him, than she had cared to know. John lumbered on, he slept nights, but his wife now had her eyes open. To himself, Stern briefly groaned and muttered one of his mother's Yiddish phrases. As he emerged into the open night air, the crowd was roaring over a fabulous catch by the right fielder Tenack. Ascending, Stern had seen the ball go by Yike a shooting star.

By prior arrangement, Rob and Maxine went off to spend the night at Kate and John's--a chance for a more intimate visit. Helen begged Stern to stay with her. "Just to sleep," said Helen, who had barely been able to rouse herself in the car. The large, somewhat secluded house which Miles and she had built only a year or two before the end of their marriage seemed to haunt her at times, especially after one Of the children visited.

In her room, Helen without ceremony shed her clothes, leaving them on the floor in a single heaP, and threw herself down naked on the bed. The intimacy pleased her, he knew: to 'be able to bare herself without reflection or fear of his scrutiny under the strong overhead light. See what you like.

Helen had clearly done her best, but in truth she still looked somewhat pounded-on by experience--blotched and slackened here and there, her legs varicose-etched right up to her seat. Not that any of these observations were critical. He was hardly a physical example himself, and he had not withstood two pregnancies. He had been oddly troubled of late to find white hairs growing in his pubic region. But he and Helen were approaching the same point-not quite on last legs, but battered, wobbling, losing the battle to the major forces of physics, gravity, and time.

This was one set of facts beyond the power of even Helen's will.

Stern, who had developed his own routine here, covered Helen in bed, shooed out the cat, and locked the doors. Yet for reasons he could not fathom he was not at ease. He was disturbed at moments by the thought of what it might spell for Dixon to have John in the hands of unfriendly counsel; but these were the kinds of worries that for decades he had been able to quell at night. Dozing off, he thought for an instant about Kate, looking transformed by the world of adult woe, then Nate Cawley, still to be cornered. Tomorrow he would catch him. Soon. And yet each time Stern felt himself gentling down to sleep, he rose like some float in the water. Eventually, it became a night of restless dreams. In ,the one that he remembered, Stern, from ground level, had seen a bird, lifeless in the snow, beneath the needled boughs of an evergreen. This bird, an old ragged thing with plumage of black and white, was gently lifted by. a female hand. She stroked the old bird's chest, stated that his wing, which was held erect from his body, was broken but would mend. Her voice struck a note of joy and congratulation. Waking in Helen's room, with the strong morning light haloing the edges of the heavy drapes, Stern recalled nothing of this woman but that encouraging prediction. Helen continued in the shallow breath of sleep.

He reached over to touch her shoulder. But he was certain that the voice he had heard when he was dreaming had not been hers.

Kate had bought Stern an answering machine. For all his love of gadgets, he'd sworn that this was he'd never own. He was a slave to the telephone as it was. More to the point, it always Pained him to listen to his voice on tape; his accent sounded So much more distinct than he imagined. But he could not ' i Kate most spurn his daughter s generos ty. On the machine, days left a bright message or two (lately, as John's problems had deepened, Stern thought he could occasionally detect a lieaden undertone in Kate's greeting); Helen also often re-coried a pleasant word, so that Stern, despite himself, lOOked forward to coming home and fiddling with the buttons. Tonight, however, the first voice he heard was Peter's.

"It's time to schedule your blood test." Typically blunt--and indiscreet. Stern, in the empty house, actually reached to the side of the machine to lower the volume.

But the message was a familiar reminder. He lurked by the window, awaiting Nate Cawley. He had spent a number Of evenings working at the dining-room table in the hopes .of spying Nate as he drove up; Stern had given up on reaching him by phone. While he waited, he opened his mail.

There was a brief note from Marta reminding him that she would be home in a couple of weeks, over the Fourth of July, to continue sifting through Clara's things.

On paper, Marta was terse, but she had taken to calling late at night, on the verge of sleep, sometimes even waking Stern for long, meditative conversations. Marta had continued to dwell on Clara's death--she recognized it as an enormous passage. And in her casting about, which she willingly shared, Stern, as usual, found much common ground with his older daughter. Sitting up in bed, he listened to her talk, mumbling responses, half-drowsed but intent.

Marta had always been a person of somber character; Stern could not remember her as frolicsome. Even at seven or eight, she seemed perplexed by the fundamental nature of things. Why does a woman marry only one man? Why do we eat animals if it is wrong to treat them cruelly? Can God see inside things or merely their surfaces? Stern, much more than Clara, valued Marta's dark, contemplative side and was, inevitably, moved by her internal struggles. She was the child with whom he felt most in touch. Second in his own family, he understood her occasional mighty battles with Peter, her unrestrained--if momentary--resentment of him.

He had been so pleased when she went to law school, not merely because he was flattered to be imitated, but more because the law, with its substance, its venerated traditions, and its relentless contemplation of social relations, seemed capable of providing one set of proposed answers to the questions with which Marta had been so long preoccupied.

But neither law school nor practice seemed to have lessened her brooding or uncertainty. She took the bar exam in four states before deciding to remain in New York; she'd found three different jobs before accepting the present one, the lowest paying, most tenuous, least promising. She was a single professional in New York, caught up in the usual New York swirl of consumption--the latest restaurants, stores, and events--but late at night there was an unguarded tone of deprivation. She was unsuccessful in her relations ;with men, stalled in her career, baffled by life, and more or less alone. Stern looked down to her note, with strong ensations of her.

Marta's quest--soulful, troubled, Yearning--was nowhere near its end.

Out the window in the lengthenillingly shared, Stern, as usual, found much common ground with his older daughter. Sitting up in bed, he listened to her talk, mumbling responses, half-drowsed but intent.

Marta had always been a person of somber character; Stern could not remember her as frolicsome. Even at seven or eight, she seemed perplexed by the fundamental nature of things. Why does a woman marry only one man? Why do we eat animals if it is wrong to treat them cruelly? Can God see inside things or merely their surfaces? Stern, much more than Clara, valued Marta's dark, contemplative side and was, inevitably, moved by her internal struggles. She was the child with whom he felt most in touch. Second in his own family, he understood her occasional mighty battles with Peter, her unrestrained--if momentary--resentment of him.

He had been so pleased when she went to law school, not merely because he was flattered to be imitated, but more because the law, with its substance, its venerated traditions, and its relentless contemplation of social relations, seemed capable of providing one set of proposed answers to the questions with which Marta had been so long preoccupied.

But neither law school nor practice seemed to have lessened her brooding or uncertainty. She took the bar exam in four states before deciding to remain in New York; she'd found three different jobs before accepting the present one, the lowest paying, most tenuous, least promising. She was a single professional in New York, caught up in the usual New York swirl of consumption--the latest restaurants, stores, and events--but late at night there was an unguarded tone of deprivation. She was unsuccessful in her relations ;with men, stalled in her career, baffled by life, and more or less alone. Stern looked down to her note, with strong ensations of her.

Marta's quest--soulful, troubled, Yearning--was nowhere near its end.

Out the window in the lengthening evening, against a magnificent streaked sky, the BMW at last circled around the Cawleys' drive. Stern was out the door and halfway to the auto before he saw that Fiona was driving. He stopped in his tracks.

"Sandy." She smiled and stepped from the car, carrying a small bright sack from some shop.

Stern stood in the grass. He wore his suit pants and a handmade shirt, monogrammed over the pocket; he had removed his tie. Glancing down, 'he noticed he was still Carrying Marta's note. Stern explained to Fiona that he had mistaken her for Nate.

' :"t took his car today. Mine's conking out whenever I use the air."

"Ah," said Stern, and rocked on his toes. With Fiona :and him, it was always awkward.