‘‘Means zip. And anyway, it’ll all be over soon.’’ Dennis Haggarty flipped back the pages of his yellow lined notepad, dropped it in his briefcase and pushed himself up from the defense table. ‘‘Elizabeth-’’
‘‘Carla! Call me by my real name. Carla,’’ she snapped, then relented. ‘‘Despite everything, it’s just good to be called who I really am.’’ She looked over her too-thin, too-unkempt lawyer and wondered yet again if she had made a mistake hiring a man who couldn’t even remember her true name. When the media latched on to the breaking story it was FEDS CAPTURE FUGITIVE IN HIDING FOR 24 YEARS, and she was Elizabeth Amanda Creiss, her fugitive name. Carla Dreseldorf meant nothing to them or their readers. It was Elizabeth Amanda Creiss and her two decades on the run that made the front page. For the eight months run-up to this trial every shabby room Elizabeth Amanda Creiss had hidden in, every menial job, every guy she had spent a night with was a day’s hot story. It was impossible to turn on the radio or television without hearing ‘‘Elizabeth Amanda Creiss.’’ Even her high school graduation pictures had run over the caption ELIZABETH AMANDA CREISS 25 YEARS AGO. Carla Dreseldorf was merely a footnote. Before Carla went underground, no one bothered with her name. And when the other conspirators were caught and created their own rounds of publicity, the news stories often didn’t mention her. As Dennis repeated every time she worried aloud, she had been the most peripheral conspirator, present at only one meeting of the much-more-radical-than-she-realized group before they attacked the power plant. She hadn’t even known what kind of explosive they were using. They were making a statement with their smoke bombs, they had told her; never had they said they were trying to blow up the plant. ‘‘Everybody has endgames,’’ her mother would have told her. ‘‘You don’t pay enough attention to see them.’’ True. And way too late now to think about that. Better to remember what Dennis said, that to the conspirators, she was akin to the political campaign worker who dropped off the doughnuts and trotted on home. Besides, Dennis concluded every single time, no one had been killed, and all the evidence against her was circumstantial.
Still, when they filed out the jurors hadn’t looked at her.
Dennis turned to her. ‘‘Look, juries are ecstatic that testimony has finally ended and they will never have to sit in those chairs again. They’re like kids heading for the playground. They don’t waste time looking at you. They’ve had weeks of you. They’re sick of the sight of you, and me, and Jefferson K. Markoff over there, not to mention the judge. Trust me, I have never seen a jury pause for a last look.’’ He stood, yanked ineffectually at his ill-fitting tweed jacket and turned toward the door. ‘‘Come on, let’s get some coffee.’’
The speed with which the courtroom gallery emptied had increased with each week. Already, reporters would be outside calling in their updates. Lawyers who turned up for the summations and the judge’s final instructions fled as soon as the last word was out. The groupies knew the routine after these three weeks. Even the sensation junkies raced out. Carla was shocked at how much the trial, her every action, affected people. She would never have guessed.
She walked through the double door that Dennis always held open for her-‘‘to remind viewers that you are a person worthy of caring about’’-and to the kiosk. ‘‘Just juice, Dennis, I don’t think my stomach can handle coffee anymore.’’
‘‘Hang in there, Elizabeth, we’re coasting now.’’
She didn’t bother to correct him. Instead, she took the plastic bottle of orange juice and stood against the wall. Orange juice-that was an unfortunate color. How many years would she be wearing orange? Or do prisoners only wear those ugly-on-everyone jump-suits in court? Conspiracy for malicious explosion: fifteen to twenty years. She shivered so violently the orange juice shot over the side of the bottle and she just caught the flow with her napkin. In prison, would they call her Carla? Or Elizabeth? Or just seven nine nine oh four eight?
All the regulars had their spots in the gray marble hallway. This corner for defense. In the far corner Jeff Markoff angled his bald head to say something to his assistant, a newbie in the DA’s office who must have been a basketball star in college. From the near corner a blond woman in her early forties offered a timid smile. Carla sucked it in as if its hope could fill her. The blonde had been at trial almost every day. Carla felt a bond and wondered if the woman felt it, too. Sometimes out here when the wait went on and on, she made her eyes go blank like she had learned to do in the subway in New York, and fantasized about the woman’s life, a life that could have been hers if only she had said no to the seduction of saving the world. The woman’s blond hair fell just at her shoulders with the ease of alignment only a stylist could achieve. She wore a wedding ring, probably had children in college now, maybe one still in the last year of high school. She took notes every day on an unruled pad. Maybe she’d gone back to college herself now that her kids were older. Taking notes for a law class, or a journalism seminar? After court let out each day she could call her friends-she would have friends, old friends, friends she could speak to without monitoring every sentence lest something give her away. Or she could fly to Paris, London, Saigon, using her utterly legitimate passport in her real name. If Carla had ever imagined the last twenty-four years, she would never have guessed how important a name was, how much she would miss her own, how she would loathe hearing ‘‘Elizabeth Amanda Creiss.’’ She swallowed, and tried to smile back at the blond woman.
The defendant was looking at her! Laura Powley felt a tingle right down her spine. But she wouldn’t write that, not ‘‘tingle,’’ too trite. She was trying to be a writer; she needed to be able to come up with a more original word to describe emotion. Rush? Shiver? Quiver, maybe? No. Still trite. Besides, her reaction didn’t matter. What was important-key?- was to ‘‘get’’ Elizabeth Amanda Creiss now, because everything would be over so soon. She was a mere observer, not one who had joined the club of the brave, not like Elizabeth Creiss who had risked all because she believed in something so much. Her essay assignment merely allowed her to peek in the door.
Look at Elizabeth Creiss leaning against the dark wood panel, shoulders so straight she could be holding up the wall rather than vice versa-nice. Keep that. She wasn’t afraid to let gray muddy her brown hair, didn’t waste time on expensive cuts. Laura knew that her dark blue sweater, plaid wool skirt, and flesh-color stockings must have been chosen to give the appearance of wholesomeness. Bet she’d tear them off the minute she could. She was so strong on the stand, never made excuses for herself, but never let that slime of a DA twist her words either. It was her testimony that set the groundwork for her pound dog of a lawyer insisting that to even be called ‘‘circumstantial’’ the DA’s accusations had to have some relation to evidence. Look at her! Never once did she have family or friends to support her here; she stood tall on her own. Laura Powley tried to sip her orange juice, but she was too anxious, too excited. She just wished she could tell her how impressed she was.
The jury could be walking back to the court right now. It could end any minute. But Elizabeth Creiss wasn’t nervous; she was so cool. Look at her!
In the far corner Carla noted the older couple. They made no eye contact, not with her or anyone else. Some days they didn’t even speak to each other. There was a bench in the middle of the lobby, but they never used it, as if that would be an admission that they were part of the whole soap opera. Once, a week or so ago, Carla had caught the woman’s eye; the woman had jerked her head away before there was time for reaction. But there had been plenty of time after for Carla to wonder about them, if they were like her mother. How would it have been to telephone them whenever she wanted, to tell them what she was doing, where she was? Tell them she missed them so much she ached from the hollowness of it? They had winced with her when Dennis failed to remember her name, or maybe she just wanted to believe that.