The Burden of Proof (57 page)

Stern's most telling recollection of the two would remain seeing Marta at ages four and five, dark-eyed, standing beside her mother at the sink and questioning each habit: Why do you peel the carrots? Why do you wash your hands before you touch the food? What if we just went outside and ate vegetables off the ground? How can germs hurt you if you can't even see them? On and on. Clara, a woman of some patience, was inevitably exhausted. 'Marta, please!" This became the signal, as it were, for more intense inquiry.

There were occasions when Marta actually drove Clara from the room.

Having become acquainted early with her mother's vulnerabilities, Marta was less' inclined to worship Clara than her brother and sister were; she saw her mother more as others very likely did. These were not, in all measures, pleasant observations; overtime, Stern had acquired a strong flavor of Marta's opinions. Her view of her mother probably came down to a single word: weak. Marta had little use for Clara's homebound realm, her music and her garden, and the occasional synagogue functions and teas. She regarded her mother as inert, with her dignified manner and cultivated habits sheltering her from turmoil, inner and outer, that she lacked the spirit to address. Marta saw the world by her father's measure: action, achievement. Her mother was not a doer, and was accordingly diminished in her daughter's eyes. Over time, they had come to have a relationship that could be described as proper. Clara was wounded by Marta's reproaches. Still, she remained available to her. In the universe of relational disasters-Peter and his father, for examplemMarta and Clara had managed to make do. They recognized and reverenced, in spite of misgivings, their world of attachments.

"Was this her broken heart?" Marta asked, touching the' ring her father held.

"Perhaps. Is that .how you saw her, Marta--a person with a broken heart?"

"I don't know. Sometimes." The judgment, like most of Marta's observations, cut him deeply. She went on with no recognition of that.

"It's hard for me to think of you guys floundering. Having sad romances. When I was achild, I thought what every kid thinks: that yoU two were perfectly matched, that you'd just been out there waiting for each other. Silly, huh?" Marta looked up shyly, her small eyes flickering her father's way. No doubt, over time, Marta had also developed an unforgiving view of her parents' marriage. Stern long assumed it had contributed to her ambivalence about men, her shifting attachments. But now, suddenly, her line of sight rose far past Stern, carried off by recollections. "God," she said, "I can remember one night--I must have been eleven or twelve, and I found myself sitting up in bed, in the dark. Kate was sleeping, it was warm and the wind was slapping the blinds, and I thought, Oh, he is out there! This one man, this perfect man. It was so exciting, that thought." She closed her eyes, shook her head, suffering. "Did you ever think like that?"

Stern wondered. His adolescence, as he recalled' it, seemed full of other passions: the stalled complex of feelings that arose around the memory of Jacobo; his fiery determination to be American. At night, in bed, he planned: he thought about the clothes he sawwhe could remember being preoccupied with a pair of red suspenders for weeks--the way the young men dug their hands into their pockets; he mumbled phrases in English, the same words again and again, with the same sublime frustration, feeling each time that he could not quite hear himself for the sound of his accented voice. There was not much romance in him then, yet he knew what Marta meant: that romance of perfect union: heart on heart; each word, each gesture immediately ..known; the soul's image reflected, a fit l'dce puzzle pieces. He was still now, his blood suddenly racing as his mind lit once more on the image of Sonny.

Already, the picture was fading somewhat, was a fraction more remote S

,principle' of reality had begun tr, ;,, [, om.e. bracing neart with much ao, -; v.."y,, :.*n=, oumsling his ,,o,,,,tc loam ano a teeling of injustice.

He smiled weakly at his daughter and said, "I understand."

"Now, of course, it's not one man I think about, it's any man. There's something about the whole thi , Men and women0" aL 'rig I can t get.

- , au snool her head, the thick, un governed hairdo went in all directions. "Lately, I've been tormenting myself trying to figure out if men and women can be hue friends without sex. Do you kan remember one night--I must have been eleven or twelve, and I found myself sitting up in bed, in the dark. Kate was sleeping, it was warm and the wind was slapping the blinds, and I thought, Oh, he is out there! This one man, this perfect man. It was so exciting, that thought." She closed her eyes, shook her head, suffering. "Did you ever think like that?"

Stern wondered. His adolescence, as he recalled' it, seemed full of other passions: the stalled complex of feelings that arose around the memory of Jacobo; his fiery determination to be American. At night, in bed, he planned: he thought about the clothes he sawwhe could remember being preoccupied with a pair of red suspenders for weeks--the way the young men dug their hands into their pockets; he mumbled phrases in English, the same words again and again, with the same sublime frustration, feeling each time that he could not quite hear himself for the sound of his accented voice. There was not much romance in him then, yet he knew what Marta meant: that romance of perfect union: heart on heart; each word, each gesture immediately ..known; the soul's image reflected, a fit l'dce puzzle pieces. He was still now, his blood suddenly racing as his mind lit once more on the image of Sonny.

Already, the picture was fading somewhat, was a fraction more remote S

,principle' of reality had begun tr, ;,, [, om.e. bracing neart with much ao, -; v.."y,, :.*n=, oumsling his ,,o,,,,tc loam ano a teeling of injustice.

He smiled weakly at his daughter and said, "I understand."

"Now, of course, it's not one man I think about, it's any man. There's something about the whole thi , Men and women0" aL 'rig I can t get.

- , au snool her head, the thick, un governed hairdo went in all directions. "Lately, I've been tormenting myself trying to figure out if men and women can be hue friends without sex. Do you know the answer to that one*" she asked her fatln' in her natural, direct way.

"I fear I am of the wrong generation. I lack experience.

The two women I counted as hue friends were your mother and your aunt. No doubt, that is not a valuable perspective."

"But it's .always there, isn't it?" asked Marta.

"SexY"

"That seems to be the ca," answe again--fleetingly--of Sonny. rea tern, and thought His daughter ate her large salad, ruminating.

"Do you still count Mommy as a friendg" Marta asked.

"Even now?"

Well, here certainly was a question for a child to put to a parent. How much hope could he hold out?

"Am I allowed to answer only yes or no?"

For the lirst time she displayed a look of impatience, displeased by his forensic gambit.

"Marta, we seem to have done a great deal to disappoint you2 ' '

"I'm not asking you guys to apologize for your lives.. I'm really not.

I just wonder. It seems so depressing. You know, you spend thirty years and that's what it comes to with. somebody rotting away in a garage. I think about it.

What was she to you at the end? In the beginning? Was she the One?

Probably not, huh?"

His first impulse,' of course, was not to answer, but Marta in these moments had a sincerity that was unbearable---for all her worldliness, the prickly hUmor, the boldness, she searched with the same innocent urgency that Sam had mandence Day eve celebration was going on down by the river. After ten, the racket of the fireworks began, a few miles away; from the window in the gable he could see the shuddering glow reflected at instants against the thin clouds. He was one of those imraigrants who still became weak with sentiment--and gratitude--on the Fourth of July.

What an idea this country was! The flourishing of the liberal democracies, with their ideal of equality, remained in his eyes, along with advances in medical care and the invenfon of movable type, humankind's grandest achievement of the millennium. His life in the law--at the criminal bar, in particular--was somehow bound up with those beliefs.

He lay on the bed hoping to slip off. He tried to read, but the turbulence of the day rode with him: his confrontation with Nate; Sonny steaming like some departing ship toward the horizon; the vexing legal complications he was headed for; and the spirits wakened by his conversation with Marta. His daughter asked--demanded--her entire life that her parents speak to her from the soul. It was in some ways the most disturbing event of the day.

At one point he quietly moved downstairs to reexamine the pillbox, but Marta apparently had it with her. Instead, he parted the curtains and stared at the Cawleys'. It was all beyond him now. He would have to speak to Nate once more, but where in God's name did such a conversation even begin?

'Now, Nate, as long as we were on the subject, I had just another question or two about your affair with my wife." Stern shook his head in the dark.

Then he returned to the bedroom. Even after months, Clara's scent remained here; as much as the unspeaking furnishings, she Was present.

Lying in the bed, he expected. Clara to emerge from the bathroom at any instant, a comely middleaged person, flattered by the full lines of her nightgown, hair shining, face creamed, distracted as she often was, humming faintly some musical theme.

Ah! he thought without an instant's preparation, ah, how he loved her!

His recollecfon of her was suddenly overpowering, the most particular details returning to him with painful exactness: the soft wave in which she wore her hair for years; the harmless sweet smell of her French bathwater; her pink gardening hat;. the tiny peculiar ridge, flange-like, on each side of her nose. He remembered her slow way of lifting her hands, her slender fingers and the slim wedding band--gestures somehow articulate with intelligence and grace. These memories stormed over him so powerfully that he felt he could embrace her, as if in this urgent heartsore fondness he could clutch her from the air.

The freshness of his love stunned him; it wrung his heart and left him weak. He had no idea what dark crabbed corner of madness she had wandered off to. He could deal solely with the woman he had lived with, the person he knew. That woman, that person, he missed terribly.

There in that moment, c16se and potent, he waited until at last the ghost was somewhat faded. Here was what he had attempted to communicate to his daughter, this eternal ocean of feeling. Then he lay under the intense beam of his reading light, wrapped in his Paisley robe, unstirring, holding for this particle of time to what little more he could of the presence--mysterious, defined, animate, deep-of Clara Stern.

On Wednesday morning, Marta came down to work with Stern. Claudia and Luke, one of the office men, who had both been with Stern more than a decade, marveled at her-how pretty she was., how mature and poised. Then she and Stern occupied themselves drafting a motion to Chief Judge Winchell, asking that the date of Stern's grand jury appearance be continued. Although it ended up less than three pages long, the motion took hours to compose, because the problems presented, as Marta recognized first, were complex. Ordinarily, communications between a lawyer and his client for the purpose of securing legal advice were privileged--the government could not compel either the attorney or the client to disclose them. But was the privilege properly invoked here?

"That's it?" asked Marta. The safe, a cubic foot of gunmetal, still stood behind Stern's desk. "And you've never opened it?"

"I have no combination, and no permission from your uncle."

Marta set a toe against it; she wore pink socks under her huaraches. Her legmas much as showed when her billowy skirt fell away--was, Stern noted, dense with hair.

"Jesus, what is this made of?. Lead? This thing would survive nuclear war."

"Dixon values his privacy," said Stern simply.

"Well, that's a problem, don't you think? How do we say that you received the contents for the purpose of providing legal advice when you've never seen them?"

Stern, who had not focused previously on this dilemma, reached for his unlit cigar.

"But, on the other hand," aid Marta, "doesn't it tend to disclose confidential communications if you admit you've never opened the safe?

Doesn't that reveal the client's instructions and show that the client has, in essence, told the lawyer that the contents ar6o sensitive he will not or cannot share them? And what about the Fifth Amendment in Dixon's behalf?"

Marta went on a bit about that. She had a large, subtle mind. Stern, well aware of his daughter's brilliance, was nonetheless impressed by her facility with matters to which she'previously had had little exposure. She had gone to Stern's library and digested the leading Supreme Court case as soon as they arrived, absorbing its difficult distinctions without lengthy study. Marta was wholly at ease in one of those complex areas where the law's abstractions occasionally became as unavailable as higher mathematics .to Stern himself.

Eventually, as they sat together drafting, they determined that their legal position foi now was simple: given the potential applicability of attorney-client privilege, Stern could not properly proceed without instructions from Dixon.