She’s crying again, but not too much. Donna Middleton is tough. Tougher than Mike Simpson, that’s for sure.
Inside, Donna urges me to go ahead and make lunch, which I do. Today is a spaghetti day.
As I’m stirring the meat sauce and waiting for the noodles to soften, Donna leaves the couch and comes into the kitchen.
“What did you mean when you said if Mike’s case goes to trial?”
In my time in the clerk of court’s office, I saw it again and again. Even in criminal cases like the one Mike is involved in, prosecutors and defense attorneys will meet and come up with a plea agreement. Sometimes, it’s because the prosecutors have a sure case and can get what they want without going to trial. Sometimes, it’s the opposite way, and the defense uses its leverage to force a deal out of the prosecutor.
“The goal, for prosecutors and defense attorneys, is often to not have a trial.”
“Why?”
“A jury trial is not a sure thing, for either side. Lawyers like sure things. I would not be surprised, given the facts in this case, if the prosecutors press for a plea agreement that ensures that Mike is punished without having to go to the time and expense of a jury trial. They have a real good case against him, especially after what happened today. They might not need a trial.”
“But what if I want a jury trial?”
“You can tell the prosecutor that. They do listen and take those things into account.”
“I want a jury to make him suffer.”
“But what if a jury doesn’t make him suffer? What if it lets him go free? The prosecutor will probably ask you to consider that.”
Donna is silent. I go back to stirring the meat sauce.
“Are you wondering why I would have been with a guy like that?”
“No.”
“You’re not?”
“I figured you would tell me if you wanted.” I have learned this from Dr. Buckley, who never pushes me to talk about something before I am ready.
“I’d like to. Do you have the time?”
“Yes.”
Donna says she met Mike Simpson a little more than a year ago. He had been in the emergency room with a friend of his. They had been out riding motorcycles, and the friend crashed. It was pretty bad, from what Donna said—broken ribs and pelvis, bad scars from where his skin scraped along the road. Donna had attended to him, and Mike came around a few days later with some roses as a thank-you, and from there, it went.
“He was a really great guy, in the beginning,” Donna says. “And he was good to Kyle. I waited a long time to let them meet. I’d made that mistake with other guys, and I wasn’t going to this time.”
“What changed?”
“Little things, at first. He would call me, a lot. At first, I thought he was being attentive. Later, I wondered if he was keeping tabs on me.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah. He’d make little snide remarks about things, like he knew where I had been. He’d get insane if he saw me talking to another guy. Hello? I work in a hospital. There are a lot of guys there.”
“Do you think that’s why he got so angry with me?”
“Probably. He’s very jealous.”
“Are you scared?”
“I am, yes. Are you?”
“I would be if Judge Robeson hadn’t revoked his bail.”
“That’s right,” Donna says, her eyes suddenly brightening at the memory. “He isn’t going anywhere.”
I hold my right hand up, as I did several days ago for Kyle. Donna slaps it in high-five style.
Later, we’re in the living room, she on the love seat and I on the couch, and Donna is telling me about her final days with Mike.
“I knew at the end of August I was going to leave. We’d had another fight, and they were growing more frequent now. As we were talking in the kitchen, Mike pulled out a pocketknife and started flicking it to the linoleum near my feet, making it stand up on the blade. He kept reaching down and grabbing it, then flicking it back.”
I feel a tingle in my spine as I imagine that.
“Yeah,” she says, apparently seeing my reaction. “It was spooky. He never made what I would call an overt threat. But he was definitely threatening.
“Anyway, after that, I started to lay the groundwork for my exit. I rented the house we’re in now. I moved some money into my parents’ bank account. I had a bag packed and hidden deep in my closet, ready to go in a moment when I was ready.”
“I know he hit you.”
She looks surprised. “You do?”
“Yes. Kyle told me.”
“Oh.”
She’s silent again. “That was the worst,” she says, finally, “that he punched me right there, right in front of Kyle. I think it shocked even Mike. I didn’t say anything. I just walked into the bedroom, got the bag out of the closet, took Kyle by the hand and left. Mike didn’t even chase after us.”
“You did the right thing.”
“I know.”
At 2:18 p.m., for the first time since we left the Yellowstone County Courthouse, the steely resolve has returned to Donna Middleton’s eyes.
At 2:51 p.m., Donna is looking expectantly out my front window for Kyle’s arrival from school.
“So,” I say, “I went on an online date last week.”
Donna wheels around. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“Terrible.”
“Why terrible?”
I tell her why. I even tell her about the Gewurztraminer burp and the preoccupation with the notion of first-date sex. I tell her about the bizarre series of e-mails from Joy-Annette and the return series of letters of complaint that are now in my files. She laughs at that. I’m not sure why it’s funny, but I don’t mind.
“Well, Edward, I’m sorry you had a bad online date. Women can be weird—weirder than men sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take this Joy-Annette person. She pretty clearly enjoys creating drama.”
Donna Middleton is a very logical woman.
“I think you’re right,” I say.
“I don’t understand women like that,” Donna says.
“Neither do I.”
“Dating is hard, Edward. It’s hard with the so-called traditional ways of meeting people, and it’s hard on the Internet. Can you imagine being on a rocky seashore and looking at thousands of rocks in the hopes of finding one pearl?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what dating is.”
“I don’t think I want to do it anymore.”
Donna laughs again. “You’re not the first person to say that, and you won’t be the last.”
At 3:03 p.m., Donna spots Kyle trudging up the sidewalk toward their house.
“Edward, again, thanks so much,” she says as she heads to the door.
“OK.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“OK.”
And she’s out the door, splashing across the rain-soaked street to see her son.
I don’t keep data on such things, but it seems to me that every day Donna Middleton has been at this house, something extraordinary has happened.
Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, the seventh of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Hammer,” and it is one of my favorites.
In this one, which originally aired on March 2, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called to an apartment house where a man has been murdered, bludgeoned with a hammer. By piecing together details and talking with the apartment house’s residents, the cops zero in on two suspects—a teenage boy and his girlfriend—who are detained in Arizona on a warrant.
The suspects are mouthy. The boy answers all of Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon’s questions by reciting state capitals. He even says that the capital of Nevada is Reno. Officer Bill Gannon, who can track down criminals and win geography bees, corrects him and points out that the capital of Nevada is Carson City.