“I really thought you’d be more supportive of him than you were.” I stare back into her troubled eyes.
Obviously unaccustomed to apologizing, she shifts uncomfortably and fixes her gaze on a spot on my wall directly above my head.
“I felt I had betrayed him after you finished asking me questions,” she says, her voice rising.
“It was only when the prosecutor started in on me that I wanted to defend him. But even right at this moment, I think he probably should have told me to forget the idea of shock treatments Her voice is anguished. This is a battleground she must revisit often.
Jump on ‘em while they’re down, I think, and hit her with my gossip.
“While we’re clearing the air,” I say, watching her carefully, “I think you better be aware there’s some evidence you’ve had an affair with Andy.” Evidence is too strong a word, but I don’t have to prove it. Unexpectedly, her face turns a bright red and her eyes begin to fill with tears. Score one for Yettie Lindsey’s female intuition.
“You didn’t expect to hide it, did you?” I ask, needing a confirmation. I don’t always know why women cry. I hand her the box of tissues from my desk. My office may not be pretty, but now at least it has the necessities.
She nods, a look of genuine misery on her face, and wipes her eyes with fingers as white as chalk. It seems as if all the blood in her body has rushed to her neck and head. “I didn’t think anyone knew.”
As if in celebration of getting the truth, I tap another chunk of ice from the cup into my mouth. My lips are already so numb I doubt if I sound normal. I must be taking some perverse pleasure from this exercise in ruining the few decent teeth I have left in my head. Embarrassed to spit the ice back into the cup, I swallow it whole and begin to cough.
“It’s hard to do things in secret,” I sympathize between wheezes, almost in tears myself from having forced the ice down my throat. My concern for her, however, is genuine. My own life is Exhibit A. I can go to the seediest bar in town in the dead of night, and the next day I might as well have taken an ad out in the paper, so many people will have seen me.
“How do you think Andy will handle the news becoming public?” I ask, leaning in against my desk. I am overselling the danger of exposure (as far as I know, no one has so much as seen them holding hands), but I need to get her perspective on what it means.
Olivia brings her hands up to her mouth and begins to nibble on what was, until now, a perfect nail.
“He’ll worry about what it will do to me.”
Nervously, I begin to tap the cup against the edge of the desk. Saint Andy the Unselfish. This won’t do.
“You realize this is all the more reason he shouldn’t have been working with Pam.”
A sad smile comes to Olivia’s face as she forces her hands to her knees.
“What you mean is that the typical juror, whether it’s conscious racism or not, will punish Andy for having an affair with a white woman.”
That, too, I realize, but she is one step ahead of me. I take the cup, which still has ice in it, and drop it into the plastic wastepaper basket beside my desk, realizing that though this woman may be upset, she can still think. My lawyer’s mind was worrying about the hammer this information, if disclosed, would give to Jill Marymount. In her place, I would argue that Andy’s professional judgment as a psychologist was hopelessly compromised by his relationship with the child’s mother. Yet, as Olivia has suggested, perhaps infinitely more powerful will be the unvoiced argument that society must punish Andy for the transgression of one of the few remaining American sexual taboos. Whatever the cost, a hint of this must not get to the jury, or the real trial might not ever begin. I resist the urge to lecture her. It is my client whom I need to take to the woodshed. I tell her, “If we can prevent this from even being hinted at in court, Andy has a chance. If not, as you surmised, he’s beaten before we get started. I would guess that even blacks on the jury, and there will be a couple for sure, would resent it.”
Her head cocked at a slight angle to the right, Olivia shifts slightly in her seat.
“Are you asking me to lie to the jury?”
“No,” I say automatically, noting her tone didn’t convey much surprise, “but I don’t want you to lie to me either.”
At this stage I have to assume she is what she seems a distraught but honest woman caught in a mess. Do I want her to lie? Yes, but I am forbidden to permit her to do so. It isn’t fair that racial bigotry could decide this case regardless of the lip service that race has nothing to do with it. Black defendants have been subject to prejudice for years because of their color, but not until I entered private practice have I gotten this bent out of shape over their treatment. Since the outcome of this case will have an effect on my practice, I can feel my indignation rising at the injustice of racial discrimination.
At the Public Defender’s Office, we used to play Ain’t It Awful? with this issue, but the paychecks kept coming whether we lost or not. I doubt if paying clients will be that tolerant.
“When did this start?” I ask, wondering how many other people suspect what Yettie Lindsey intuitively knew. I fold my hands across my chest to keep them still.
Olivia studies the ceiling for an answer, further exposing her long, graceful neck.
“Since about two months before Pam died,” she says, again composed.
I study this woman, whose normally cool demeanor has returned. Women, like men, are not averse to using sex to get what they want. Unlike men, they can, if the occasion demands, be subtle about it. I ask, hoping my sudden skepticism isn’t apparent, “Whose idea was it?”
As if she knows what I’m thinking, she gives me a wan smile, barely exposing straight, milk-white teeth.
“Mine. I felt enormously grateful to him. How could I not fall in love with the one man who was trying to help my child? Andy doesn’t think or act like other men. He doesn’t stop and figure out the cost. By the way, he didn’t try to seduce me; I seduced him.” She gives me a fierce look, as if she expects me to react, and continues, “But now that Pam is dead I’m really confused about how I feel about Andy. Maybe he did use my child to get to me. I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”
Andy using her? A nice twist, putting the idea in my male mind. I lean back in my chair, trying to decide if she was simply ready for me or whether she has been extremely candid.
Yet my own reading of Andy doesn’t change. As idealistic as he is, he could have been thinking he was embarking on the great love affair of the century. Maybe they’re both for real. Who knows? My chair begins to squeak, and I stop the rocking I have unconsciously begun. As Olivia herself has pointed out, few people serving on an Arkansas jury will sympathize with either of them.
“I don’t know about his personal motivation,” I admit, “but as a professional psychologist he’s going to be held to certain standards.”
She nods soberly, and I am forced to conclude that she is telling me the truth. So what if she came on to this guy to get him to try to help her child? People have gone to bed for a lot less noble motives. What we call “love” always has a price. I feel my own blood begin to quicken. What is it that this lanky, angular woman has to offer Andy that couldn’t be better satisfied by a younger, more voluptuous female of his own race? Is it the forbidden fruit that tempts us all? I have wondered more than once if that wasn’t the initial reason I was attracted to Sarah’s mother. Southern boys at one time had a long history of crossing to the other side of town. I ask, “Who have you told about this relationship?”
Now seemingly more relaxed, she slumps back against her chair.
“No one, of course. Who has seen us?”
Now that some of the tension in the room seems to have dissipated, I notice my stomach growling. It is almost time for lunch.
“Yettie Lindsey has seen all the signs, but I doubt if she can implicate you directly.”