The End of Always: A Novel (26 page)

I
t rained all night the night before the trial. Carl came at six and we sat at the table and ate. He told me that he had been back in Waukesha on an errand for his employer. He had seen Edwin in the woods walking quickly away from the streets. He had called to him but Edwin had not turned and had not looked back. He had moved on and disappeared into the trees. I nodded and said nothing. Carl set out an apple pie that he bought at the bakery because this was a special occasion. He smiled when he cut into the pie and said that some parts of this country were very sweet. He slid a plate across the table to me. “If not for you, then for the baby,” he said, and nodded at my round lap. I had not said anything to him but it was easy to see. When he left, I lay down and watched the light of the fire fade behind the door of the stove and the rain spill down the sides of the building across the street.

In the morning I saw yellow leaves flat like hands against the windowpanes. Downstairs, the street was cold and gray. I rode the interurban back to Waukesha across gloomy fields, the trees in the distance a dark blur, the river when we came upon it a dark slash, the bluffs dark shapes against the dark gray sky.
So this is what comes of love
, I thought, and felt that everything I had known could be held in a cup marked with that word and the cup itself was something horrible to behold. I saw August as soon as I started up the stairs to the courthouse. I wanted to be strong but my breath caught and my heart leapt. He was still August, after all, hatless, with the wind blowing his hair into his eyes. When he saw me, he stepped toward me. Our eyes met. I started to raise my hand. I do not know what I thought. That we would touch? My arm seemed to have a life of its own and it seemed something outside of me was driving me toward him.

But before he could speak, a man took August by the elbow and headed him toward the door. August pulled away and turned back toward me. He took a match from the box and struck it and then tossed the match in my direction, the flame a brief blue butterfly that vanished in the morning air. I stepped back. He laughed.

We all stood when the judge entered the courtroom. Once I saw August say something to the man next to him. Once I saw him turn and look at me. Jared touched my arm and leaned close to me. He told me to look away. He told me that August would try any number of tricks to unnerve me. I turned damp-eyed to the backs of the heads of the men seated with their hats on their knees in the row in front of us.

I was the only woman in the courtroom. Carl and Bertha had wanted to come, and Bertha had sent word that Hattie had wanted to come, but I said that a courtroom was no place for a child. I told Carl and Bertha that I had to do this by myself. But when I looked at the back of August’s head, or thought of the match he sent sailing at me through the air, I wished I could take it back.

We heard cases of disorderly conduct and cases of petty theft and a case involving a land dispute. This last took a great deal of time because men will fight hard over the ground they think they own. When they finally said it was our turn, I stood and followed Jared Thompson to the table behind a wooden balustrade that stood between the courtroom and the judge’s bench. He pulled a chair out and held it for me. He faced the judge and explained why we were there. Then the attorney for August stood up and explained why they were there. Each story entirely different and August’s story only a set of pieces strung together and in none of those pieces did I find anything true.

When I took the stand the men who had been coughing and clearing their throats and shifting in their seats and whispering among themselves went still. I stood up and came across the room in front of the judge and felt the quiet of the courtroom rise behind me, as if I had slid underwater. Then the rosy-cheeked bailiff brought the Bible to me and I hesitated and my cheeks went hot. But I remembered what Jared Thompson had instructed me to do and put my palm flat on the book and swore whatever it was the bailiff wanted me to swear. I took a step up and sat in the wooden chair and forced myself to ignore the men gathered on the benches like vultures. I looked for Jared, who walked up to me and asked me to tell him my name and where I lived and how long I had lived there and then as best as I could recollect, and no more than that, what had happened on the night August tried to kill me.

It took me about twenty minutes to explain everything. I did not look at August. Jared asked me questions about the day August and I got married and what the marriage had been like and had there been any reason before I married to suspect that August Bethke would attack me? Had he struck me during courtship? Had he spoken to me indecently? Had he been known to brawl? He read Bertha’s affidavit aloud and asked if the description she provided regarding the severity of my injuries was true. He asked the judge if he could enter that document into evidence. The judge said, “Duly noted.”

I had a hard time speaking. The questions were familiar but my answers felt confused. I thought I could not form any words at all, and then it seemed that my own language had run away from me. And when that happened, I felt that I had forgotten the things that were true about my life or else could not lay claim to them. But I had a job to do and I meant to do it. And Jared helped. He nodded after each of my answers. I started to look for that nod. If it did not come, I tried to say more. If it came sooner than I expected, I stopped.

Before I left the stand, Jared Thompson asked me about the other times that August Bethke had struck me. I recounted them slowly. He asked me to describe the demeaning way that August Bethke had spoken to me. Tears came to my eyes. Jared repeated the question. In the long silence that followed I could hear the mixed sounds of the street outside, where men went about their days unfettered. Jared walked up to the witness chair.

“Mrs. Bethke,” he said.

How could I say these things out loud in a place where I was not wanted? In a world where no one believed me? It seemed the only way that August could defend himself was to attack me, to say things that were not true, to disregard the facts until all that was left was a tale he thought worth telling. In his story, I was the guilty one.

The courtroom was still. I took a deep breath. And then I said that August had called me a bitch. And then I said that he had called me a whore. And then Jared said, “Is that all?” And I looked up at him and my face burned but I found a way to say out loud that August had called me a cunt. The word rolled out over the stillness of the courtroom and Jared did not ask anything else. He waited and I waited and the word hung in the air and even the men in the seats before me kept quiet. And then I realized that underneath everything else he said,
cunt
was August’s word for me.

After that Jared asked me about the money I had been given by August Bethke to cover my keep and provide for my creature comforts. He asked me to describe the exact amount of food that I’d had available to eat. When I said that I did not have any food at all, he asked me how I had managed not to starve. And so I explained that I had been forced to go home to my sister and beg her for whatever money she could spare.

When I was done, I glanced at August. He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands as if he were reading a newspaper spread out on the table before him. His attorney tapped him on the elbow, and August dropped his hands into his lap and sat up. He crossed one leg over the other and then crossed his leg back.

When August’s attorney rose and came to me, he smiled. He was shaped like a violin, with a pinched waist and pants that sagged at the crotch and a high voice that would have been silly had he not been so serious. He said his name was Walter Meyer and he was sorry for the court proceedings we were all forced to undergo that day. No one wanted to cause me further harm. That in point of fact he more than anyone in that room wanted to protect me from further harm. He thought that I had probably been injured enough.

He spoke like a schoolmarm reading the rules to a test, but he was lying. Of course he wanted to cause me harm. August wanted to cause me harm so his attorney would naturally want the same thing.

He told me that his sole purpose in this was to get to the truth of things and he felt certain that he would. But he wanted to be sure that I understood the depth of the compassion he felt for me. He had seen me himself, walking to and from the woods. He personally knew men who had come to me in the forest. He knew what a fine business I had kept out there, out under the trees, out where I thought no one would ever find out.

Jared Thompson stood up and objected and the judge said, “Sustained.” Walter Meyer just smiled again. He said that he intended no disrespect, of course, and he was happy to meet me at last, since I was so notorious and he was well acquainted with my exploits, since others had told him all about me. And Jared Thompson stood up again and Walter Meyer just waved at him as if he were waving at a float in a parade or a friend or a swarm of gnats. “All right,” he said. “Withdrawn.”

He asked me where I had been employed and I told him. He asked me if I had been a regular worker. I said yes. He looked at me. “Always at work?”

“Yes.”

“Always? Never missed a day?”

“I missed one day,” I said. The sound of the wind in the trees rushed through my head.

“Just one day?”

“Yes.”

“And you were always on time to work?”

I studied the railing that ran in front of the witness stand. “No,” I said.

“No? But you were a regular worker?”

“Sometimes I was late.” A flush rose to my hairline. I remembered the heat of the laundry and my wet skirt dragging across the floor. August on the river at night.

“Sometimes you were late. How many times?”

“I do not know.” I shifted in my seat. I tried to count. I tried to remember. But somehow my mind had become like a land stripped of signposts and roads.

“You don’t know or you won’t say?”

“I do not know.” So hard to answer when one is terrified. A simple statement that only begins to tell the tale: not even that will come.

“Was it five times?”

“I do not know.”

“Ten times?”

Jared Thompson stood up. “Your Honor,” he said. “This has been asked and answered.”

The judge waved him off. “One or two more questions in this vein will be fine,” he said. He glanced down at me and then gazed off above the crowd of men before him.

“Was it more than ten times?” said Walter Meyer.

“No,” I said.

“So you do know.”

I looked at him. Behind him the men in the courtroom like a tableau. Unmoving faces as if they even failed to breathe. August at his table with his gaze on me like a man with an intention known only to him. He leaned forward.

“You didn’t worry about your employer on such occasions?” said Walter Meyer. He widened his eyes as if I had just said something very shocking.

“I did what I was supposed to do,” I said. I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice and I told myself not to cry.

“So you did worry about your employer. But still you came late.” He looked around the courtroom with an aggrieved expression on his face. “That doesn’t seem right to me. Just not right at all.” He walked up to me. “Who was your employer?”

“William Oliver,” I said.

“And would Mr. William Oliver agree with your assessment of the way things stood between you?”

“I do not know,” I said softly. I thought of all the ways that William Oliver and I had not agreed, and of the one thing on which we had not agreed most of all. I tried to picture him standing before us, admitting the thing he had asked of me, the thing I would not do, the thing he had done. I could not see how this would ever happen.

“What was that?” Walter Meyer had been walking up and down in front of the men in the benches with his hands crossed behind his back, playing to them as if they were the jury. Now he cupped his palm around his ear and leaned toward me.

“I do not know,” I repeated.

Jared Thompson stood up. “Your Honor,” he said. “Relevance.”

Walter Meyer turned to the judge. “I’m merely trying to establish whether or not we have before us a credible witness. Whether or not her word can be trusted. She comes to this court and asks for relief and claims her husband, whom I know to be a kind and loving man, tried to kill her. That’s a big statement. A very big statement. This is not a common occurrence, as you well understand. Men don’t kill women. The very idea is preposterous. And it’s even more preposterous to imagine that this man, who has a gentle spirit, would kill this woman, who does not. So we need to find out how she ticks.” He looked earnest and sincere. “Right now, it’s her word against his. We don’t really know what went on behind closed doors. So I need to come at this thing any way I can. I need to do this part of my job.”

“Your Honor,” said Jared, but the judge held up his hand. “Go on,” he said to August’s lawyer.

“Mr. William Oliver,” said Walter Meyer. “You worked for him for how long?”

“Five months.”

“Five months.”

“Yes.”

“And what was the nature of your relationship with Mr. William Oliver?”

I thought of his hands in my hair as he bucked against me in the alley, the smell of his breath. The bulk of his body crushed on mine. “I worked for him,” I said quietly.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.” My very breathing nearly ceased with the thought of him.

“Nothing else you want to say about that?”

“No.” I looked at my hands. The anger I felt at just that moment was provoked even more by impotence than by Walter Meyer. I could not bear the things he said about me. I could not bear that he said them in this courtroom. But there was nothing I could do about it. When we were preparing, Jared Thompson had told me the other side would get mean. But he had not told me how they would get mean or what they would say or how they would come after me. Perhaps he knew all of these things and therefore assumed that I knew them, too. But I did not and now I had to learn in front of a room full of men.