The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (25 page)

“In that slim little folder?”

He cocked his head.

“Don’t be coy,” he said.

His voice was dry and to the point, almost as if he were a Marlene clone. It was Ling’s Nails all over again. I folded my arms while he sat forward in his chair and patted the new bags under his eyes. (He probably named them after me.) Only twenty-five, and already he was schlepping sacks around under his eyes like a vagabond.

Within moments of arrival, he began sifting through the file, displaying piles of papers from my trial, medical records, statements given from friends and family members, teachers and doctors on the table we shared between the Plexiglas visiting booth. Then he added stack upon stack of stapled medical documents, as if it was supposed to explain his absence for nearly a month.

“I found someone who I believe can help our case. A pathologist—he’s young—but very bright.”

I waited before responding.

“And?”

“And he’s taken a preliminary look at the autopsy report and photos and testimony from the cardiologist and seems to have done a lot of work with obstetrics.”

My palms were beginning to drip.

“He believes that Sarah was
not
pregnant when she was killed. This would mean that it would not have been a capital offense. That it would just be murder. Not capital murder. No death penalty.”

A single finger scratched his forehead. Ollie looked back to his legal pad, picked up his pencil and cut a blunted line through about five paragraphs of writing.

“Are you following me?” he said, looking up. His eyes stood still before me.

I stalled.

“Ollie, she was pregnant.”

“But what if she wasn’t?” he asked. “What if she had just miscarried prior to your visit, prior to your defending yourself, and she was so upset that she lost it. What if this new evidence is the key? This isn’t something you’d find in the transcript, because it’s not there.”

“Then why did you leave me with more copies of it?” I asked, rather abruptly.

“I wanted you to familiarize yourself with it before we continue down this line into the next step. You have to know what’s in that record.”

“If there’s anything in my life I know well, it’s my trial,” I said.

“I think you know what I’m saying, Noa.”

I couldn’t control the sequence that followed. A hearty laugh first, followed by little trickles of whitewash—the kind that washes up on shore long after a wave.

“Look, Ollie,” I said, cooling my laughter. “These fantasies are wonderful, but like we both know, it’s not good enough.”

“I’m just waiting on the report from this new expert and then I’ll file the writ. The courts have to listen. They have to allow your case to be reopened with this new information. The deadline is soon, but it’s all that’s left to be done. It’s newly discovered evidence. That’s one of the reasons they will actually let us hear the case again. You could potentially get a new trial.”

He was as energized as he was four months earlier, looking around from here to there as if he knew something nobody else did.

“How is it working with Marlene, Ollie?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Focus, Noa.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. But it’s a little difficult, given my blocked view,” I said, pointing to the Tower of Babel between us.

He put down his pen and sat back. I’m sure he must have crossed his feet near the floor, too. The entirety of the thin writing space that seesawed out from the glass divider was full of my quasi-documented life. It was piled so high, I could hardly see Oliver past the stacks. Then, like Moses parting the Dead Sea, he put his hands between the papers and slid them apart so we could see each other.

“Better?” he asked.

I smiled. And so did he.

“There you are.”

“Why are you always so eager to talk about Marlene?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“What is it about her?” he asked.

“I suppose I could ask you the same question?”

I could tell he wanted to interrupt but was beholden to manners. I think his hairstyle might have changed a bit since I last saw him. A haircut maybe? A new razor that shaved closer to the skin? Contact lenses?

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you even working for her?”

“Because I believe in MAD,” he replied. “Because I want to do something meaningful with my career. Because I don’t believe in the death penalty.”

“Is that it?” I laughed, leaning back in my chair. “I was hoping for something more original.”

“Noa …”

“Did you ever think about what MAD is really doing? I mean, how are your other cases?”

He sat up straight.

“They’re okay.”

“Really?”

He cleared his throat.

“What about the garden variety drug charge? When do you think you’ll get into a courtroom on your own instead of all the behind-the-scenes stuff?”

“These things take time. I’m not experienced enough to try a case. Besides, I can’t talk to you about this,” he said. “You know that.”

“Like I’m going to tell anyone.”

He didn’t reply.

“Is Marlene working on them, too?”

“What? The other cases?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No,” he said.

“Right,” I said, folding my hands together. “All we’ve talked about is this writ you’re working on. Does that mean we’re done with clemency, then? I thought that was the point of this whole last-chance, last-change plea here. That’s what Marlene wanted, right? She was feeling guilty about putting me in here.”

“I’m not sure I’d say that.”

“What would you say, then?”

He didn’t reply.

“Come on, Ollie.”

“I don’t think Marlene feels guilty about putting you in here.”

“Really?” I laughed. “Did she tell you that when you were chatting over dinner? At the Adams, Steinberg, and Coleson Partners and Associates retreat?”

He didn’t humor me.

“She’s an overprotective mother. Ever heard of the stereotype? She practically raised her daughter on guilt.” I swallowed. “You think that Sarah Dixon wasn’t cloistered in a little stupid Rapunzel castle? Of
course she was. She was miserable. Why else would she have found my father of all people to screw?”

He picked the pen up again and started clicking on its head. Incessantly, as if it would drown me out in its hollow beat. But I continued.

“Marlene’s practically perfected the art of the guilt trip. Why do you think she’s so lonely? It’s isolating, like a termite scuffling up your innards.”

“Lovely, Noa,” he said, spitting a bit of scoff my way. “Taking a poetry class via the post?”

“I try, Ollie. I try.”

He stopped clicking and put the pen back down.

“Are you done?”

“I suppose.”

A shaky hand touched his neck, and he spread his fingers across it, clearing his throat. Only this time, he didn’t look down to the papers in his hands. Instead, he smiled at me, unwieldy, as if he hadn’t been teased in years, as if he hadn’t ever been close enough to anyone to have been teased in his life, as if this were some unwritten form of linguistic foreplay that all those men on death row talk about to reel in the lonely Bratislavan women and such. Part of me was ready to play, and part of me wasn’t quite sure what he was getting to.

“So what do you feel guilty about?” I asked him. “Everyone’s got something. You cheated on your math test. You slept with your best friend’s girlfriend. You lied to your parents about where you were that one night when you totaled the car.”

“Let’s get back to the case.”

But he was still grinning.

“Ollie,” I said. “It’s been nearly five months.”

“Marlene didn’t put you in here,” he insisted.

“Deflection,” I said. “I can work with that.”

“Both Marlene and I are working on this case together.” He over-enunciated the word
together
so that I heard practically every syllable, every letter.

“Then how come I haven’t seen her in months?” I asked. “And
when I do, she only talks about the clemency petition—never the writ that you’re working on. Never this other newly discovered evidence you keep talking about. Are you sure this isn’t Marlene’s way of intentionally throwing the whole case? Clemency’s not going to get me a new trial, Ollie. She knows that. Is that your pet project? Because if it is, you’re delusional. She’s working against you in that. Trust me.”

“This is not a baseball game, Noa. Lawyers don’t just ‘throw’ cases. Particularly on appeal.”

“You clearly don’t know Marlene very well then.”

He didn’t respond.

“Hear me out, Ollie. Nobody reverses her opinion on the death penalty when her child is concerned,” I said. “Did you ever think about that? Nobody pulls such a huge reversal without having something to prove. Don’t you think maybe she feels just a little bit guilty?”

He laughed again. It was clumsy. And exaggerated. And I think a bit of spittle might have even popped out of the corner of his mouth before he covered it up by trying to speak again.

“You know why she’s helping you, Noa. She no longer believes in—”

“—oh shit, Ollie,” I said, “you don’t listen.”

He wiped the corner of his mouth.

“Marlene no longer believes that even the worst of the worst deserves to die. If there is any guilt that she feels, it is for cementing your punishment with her testimony. With her words that you’ve read over and over again in the—”

“—don’t go down that soliloquy of self-righteousness with me again,” I said. “Especially with Marlene. Good lord, why on earth did you even go to law school? And don’t say it’s because you believe in justice and fairness.”

He dried the moist rings of his eyes with his fingers and forced a smile.

“Because I wanted to help people.”

I laughed.

“It’s really quite simple,” he said.

“Stop, Ollie. Just say you wanted to make money. Go corporate. Or do ‘civil rights’ because of the injustice you saw to your beloved aunt who was a single mother or something, but don’t get all generic on me. I was actually starting to like you.”

“And I was actually starting to believe you for a moment,” he said, almost as if he were flirting with me. “I was actually starting to believe you care about what we’re doing here.”

“We?” I laughed.

“Mothers Against Death. Me. Marlene,” he insisted.

The moment he spoke, he turned away from me and fiddled with the empty space around his ring finger, like there should have been a band there. I didn’t push. I just let him twist the invisible ring clockwise, counterclockwise, and clockwise again until he was ready to speak.

“Fair enough,” he said. “I do have something for you.”

“I knew it. I knew it!”

His lips curled in half like he was half-smiling, half-frowning.

“It’s not so big a deal. It’s just that when I was doing my travels here almost a decade ago—”

“—right, your Greyhound bus tour of America—”

“—right,” he said, catching his breath before moving on. “On the Greyhound America tour, I had a stop in Philadelphia. I should probably preface this by saying that when I left London, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to work with people, I knew that, but specifically how, I was not yet sure.”

“Ollie …”

“Just listen,” he said, struggling. “When I was here, I thought about going to law school momentarily. It was July of 2004. I was traveling with some school friends who were thinking of going to law school in America, so someone suggested we go down to the courthouse and watch a few trials, see what it was like. And, well, I sort of wandered into a courtroom and saw part of your trial.”

I wanted to tear off my shirt. I wanted a drink of water. I wanted to sprint around a track.

“That was nearly ten years ago,” I finally said.

Oliver waited to respond until I spoke first. Patient, resigned, his voice didn’t shake. It was almost as if the instant he confessed, he was a stronger version of himself, like a painted-in stencil.

“And after all this time, you’re still interested in my case?”

“I was only there for one day,” he replied, “but something struck me as odd, and I’ve thought about it for years. First, I didn’t understand why you didn’t take the stand, since most of the evidence against you was weak. I mean, all you had to do was go up there and clear your name and explain your side of the story. People don’t just give up so easily unless they’re lying or covering up for something or someone. It didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t make sense to me now. Second, I was surprised to learn later that your father didn’t testify on your behalf at the penalty hearing.”

I nodded, closing my eyes to picture the accountant and his glassy eyewear, only this time, he was sans mustache. I barely recognized him, living life among the free as just another one of my mother’s ex-boyfriends. Perhaps he cared about her more than he let on. Or perhaps it was me he cared about all along. Beside him, I can now visualize a skinny aging flight attendant with makeup from the sixties over her eyes. And to his other side was a young boy who barely knew how to shave. Oliver, flourishing in his delayed adolescence.

A new treble clef of lines traced his forehead.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

A rush of blood fled to my arms and to my chest.

“It’s okay.” I shrugged reluctantly. “I, uh, didn’t realize I was so captivating.”

He smiled. The lines were still there, but fading.

“You are.”

He patted his lips together as if he had just reapplied ChapStick and needed to even out the smear. Though, upon closer glance, I could tell that nothing had touched them in days, weeks even. A pale rough armor covered his mouth like scales from a striated fish. He forced another smile, and his bottom lip split slightly at the center.
A thin red line divided it, like a velvet bookmark fastened within a Bible. In that brief moment, I wanted to touch them, put my own lips on them to heal the gap, smooth the scales.

“So,” I said, breaking the silence, “you’re waiting on this new young expert to file his new report, and then what?”

“And then I file. We file,” he said. “And we wait.”

My teeth couldn’t stand to be buried anymore, and so out they came. Straight, white (although slowly yellowing from the lack of dental hygiene) and exposed. It’s funny how undressed a smile can make you feel.