“Oh, my God, no. Oh no.” It was all I could say. I sank into a chair and put my face in my hands.
Suzanne broke into my misery. “They’re running excerpts from his declaration on all of the channels.”
“What is he saying?” I asked weakly.
She beckoned me to her office. There, all nine of her television screens were on. The talking heads on every single one were all covering the same thing: Gordon’s request for custody.
“How does this happen?” I asked Suzanne, incredulous. “How does the media get hold of a motion before I know it even exists?”
I had been a street fighter all my life, but this kind of warfare was all new to me. My divorce from Gaby had been uncontested. I hadn’t asked for anything except my freedom. And back then there was nothing to get from me. Now I was faced with the loss of my children. And because I was locked into this trial, I didn’t even have the freedom to devote the 110 percent I needed so badly to put into the fight.
I needed time to think what to do. I needed time to talk to a lawyer, I needed time to absorb the shock, but the demands of this case afforded me none. Clearly, especially after Johnnie’s attack, no one would understand if I asked Ito for a few days off to handle this personal crisis. Instead I’d probably be crucified both in court and in the press, and the stories would all have the same punch line: “See what happens when you let a girl do a man’s job?”
Would a judge really take my children away? Here I was with my life in overdrive. Never enough sleep. Constantly under the gun to do in one week what a prosecutor normally required six months to do. I’d been proud of the fact that I’d been able to meet all my commitments. That had meant putting in a full workday, rushing home, then, at the end of the evening, putting in another five hours of work before collapsing in an exhausted heap among my pillows.
I’d promised myself almost daily that once I got through with this damned trial, I’d never think about touching a high-profile case again. To paraphrase Jim Morrison, my ballroom days were over, baby. I wanted to try nothing but nice anonymous little cases where no camera would care to go. A year ago, when I’d come back to Special Trials, I’d planned to try one or two more big cases. Of course, when I thought “big,” I hadn’t foreseen the Simpson case. Nothing in my experience, or anyone else’s, could have prepared me for that.
Two months into the Simpson case, these ambitions had already lost their appeal. The total immersion I’d not only enjoyed but needed in years past was no longer attractive to me. When I’d been doing run-of-the-mill cases, work and home were not in constant conflict. But Simpson had rewritten the rulebook.
I couldn’t stop staring at the TV screens. My divorce was being treated like the news of a military coup or the latest election results. I felt that weird, disembodied sensation I’d suffered so many times throughout this case when I’d seen myself on television or in newspapers and magazines. Who was that woman? She looked like me, all right, but I had no sense of connection to her.
Suzanne’s phones were ringing off their hooks. The media wanted my response to the allegations. “We want to give you a chance to tell your side,” they said.
“No,” I told Suzanne. “Ms. Clark does not care to make a response.”
I didn’t need anyone to advise me on this one. You don’t wash your laundry, dirty or otherwise, in public.
That night, after everyone was asleep, I went into my own bedroom. From the top shelf of the closet I pulled out a photo album and I opened the embossed maroon cover. The very first photo was of Matt the day he was born. Why do all newborns look like Yoda? I was in my hospital gown, preparing to nurse him for the first time. I looked exhausted but happy. Very happy.
I’d always wanted to have children. But I didn’t want to do it until I’d set my life up well enough to give them a good home and a sense of permanence. That meant waiting until I was a Grade 4. During the seventies and eighties, it was an unspoken fact at the D.A.‘s office that if a woman took maternity leave, it could derail her efforts to advance. People just took you a lot less seriously when they saw you going off to make babies. The office is much better about that now, but back when I was a young deputy, it was a reality.
When I made Grade 4, I was thirty-five and pushing the edge of the maternity envelope. Hanging over me was my childhood premonition that I would die young. I really never expected to live beyond the age of forty-five. I suppose that some subrational part of my brain believed that if I had children I might get an extension on the deadline. A continuance, so to speak. It made sense to me that nature has an interest in keeping a mother alive, at least until her children are grown. And if I had children, I would want to live. I would fight to live. You don’t think about having kids unless you’re hungry for life.
I remember thinking that getting pregnant would be as easy as quitting birth control. But it wasn’t. After a year of no birth control and no baby, I’d consulted my gynecologist. He gave me a few shots, then a few pills. Then a more powerful fertility pill. Two months later, I was expecting. I was thrilled beyond words. But I was afraid to tell anyone at work. I wasn’t a teenager. Miscarriages at my age were not uncommon. And what if the amniocentesis showed my baby wasn’t okay? I couldn’t even bear to think about that. I decided to keep the news to myself.
I bought a few drop-waisted jumpers to camouflage my growing belly and silently endured the ribbing I took about my change in style from tailored suits to Laura Ashley. For court appearances I found I could get away with leaving my skirt unbuttoned and keeping my jacket closed-at least for the first five months or so.
Secretly, I was elated. Every day I’d look in the mirror and lightly move my hand over my belly. Had it grown? Unlikely, since I’d checked it just hours ago. It was a thrill unlike any other I’d known to see the baby in the sonogram. My little boy was real! I could see his heartbeat. After amnio showed the baby was healthy, I was so happy I felt drunk.
During that time, I caught the Bardo case. I was still hiding my pregnancy, and I knew there was a very good chance I’d be in trial by the time I went into labor. (As it turned out, that case took so long to get to court that I’d long since given birth to Matthew.) But I still kept mum about the pregnancy well into my sixth month. I didn’t want to be treated as an invalid. (In hindsight I suppose my camouflage efforts fooled no one. But they let me act out the charade.) I felt great, at least most of the time. I’d ridden out the morning-sickness phase by sneaking animal crackers in court. They were the only thing that seemed to settle my queasy stomach. But morning sickness passed, and things were good for me.
Come month six, however, I had to tell my supervisor, an impersonal, imperious man, about my condition.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m pregnant.” It came tumbling out. “I’m not going to take any time off before the birth. And I won’t take a lot of maternity leave after I have the baby.” I braced myself for his reaction.
“No problem,” he said, barely looking up. “Ride that horse till it drops.”
During the preliminary hearings for Bardo, I was almost nine months pregnant. The press had been allowed to park a camera in the jury box, which meant they got a side view that made me look like Shamu. I joked with the cameraman that if he ever aired that shot, I’d move to have the press excluded. But the fact of the matter is, I loved it. I was really a mommy. My swollen silhouette proved it. What my friends couldn’t believe was how I always talked about this baby. And what I’d do for the next one.
“How can you even think about another baby?” they’d ask. “You haven’t even had this one yet.”