A Good Mother

by Lara Bazelon

  “I need Will. He has to do the direct examination of Luz. He has to be the one to protect her on cross. It won’t work if we switch up, not now.” She doesn’t add that she’s never actually seen Will do either of these things because he has prevented her. For all she knows, Will has made as much of a hash of that job as he clearly had with Aronson. But her instincts tell her the opposite. She believes what she said to him that day in the car on the way back from Dr. Cartwright’s office. She believes what he told her that night in her kitchen. Will can embody Travis. She can’t. And that is a powerful visual. The extreme physical mismatch will drive home the mortal stakes in a way that words alone could never express.

  Jonathan says, “That’s quite a gamble, isn’t it?”

  “Everything’s a gamble in trial, you know that.”

  “What about Estrada? What if he breaks?”

  “He won’t.” This Abby has real reason to believe, and for a moment, she is sorely tempted to confide everything. To say that, in fact, she has just come from seeing Estrada in the jail. But it’s too risky, even with Jonathan. Instead, she tells the part of the story she can give up easily. By tomorrow, everyone will know anyway.

  “Maria Elena had a stroke late this afternoon,” she says. “She’s in the ICU at King.”

  Now it is Jonathan’s turn to stare. “A stroke?” he repeats. “And she’s at MLK? They’ll kill her if she wasn’t going to die already anyway.”

  That had been Abby’s first thought, too. Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, built in the ’60s to treat the city’s poorest residents, was under federal investigation for a myriad of problems, including abnormally high mortality rates from routine procedures and sanitation that regularly flunked city standards. It was widely rumored to be headed for closure.

  “It happened while Father Abelard was helping her into the car after court,” she says. “I guess the EMTs thought it was closest.”

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is Dars going to give you the day off tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How is Luz?”

  Not knowing how to answer that question, Abby gives logistical information instead. “She’s at the hospital with Father Abelard and other members of her church. Cristina is with her, of course.” And Will, she adds silently. On the phone two hours ago, Will had told her little except that the prognosis was poor and that yes, he would make sure he and Luz were in court in the morning if Dars demanded it. It was while Will was talking that Abby had made the decision to go see Estrada at the jail, a decision she had not shared with him. Not sharing, as a general principle, seemed best right now. With all the men in her life. She thinks briefly of Nic, then firmly shuts him out of her mind before the guilt can smother her.

  Jonathan watches her for a moment, his head inclined slightly. “How are things with Nic?”

  His mind reading scares her. Jonathan is the reason why she doesn’t have many close friends. “Fine. Everything is fine.”

  “That’s another lie.”

  She doesn’t bother denying it. On her phone are six texts from Nic.

  When are you coming home?

  You need to come home now.

  Right now.

  Cal needs you.

  You can’t pretend he doesn’t exist.

  And then, WHERE ARE YOU???

  All unanswered. There are probably more now. She hasn’t turned her phone back on since leaving the jail. Dars had kept them late and the last text had arrived as she was headed out to see Estrada. Abby had planned to go home immediately, was in fact on her way to the car when the call had come in from Will and with it a decision that could not be delayed. She had come back to her office just now only to drop off the files and then—Jonathan. With any luck, and God knows she is due for some, both Nic and Cal will be asleep when she gets back to the house.

  “You act like nothing’s different.” Jonathan’s voice is cold. “Cal isn’t some kind of appendage you can remove and reattach when it’s convenient for you.”

  Abby stands up, putting her purse back over her shoulder, trying to keep her voice level. “You have no right to lecture me about my parenting skills.”

  Jonathan stands, too. “Why? Because I’m gay and childless?”

  “Don’t throw that in my face. If you and your rich screenwriter boyfriend want a baby, you can go out and buy one.”

  “Right, because that’s so easy. People are just dying to give their kids away to two gay men. We can’t even get legally married.”

  “You don’t want to, is my point.”

  “Actually, we do—on both counts. We put in an adoption application about six months ago. Average waiting time for gay couples is three years to infinity.”

  She opens her mouth, then closes it. Jonathan had been over the moon about her pregnancy, had been the first person to visit at the hospital. She thinks of the look on his face every time she puts Cal in his arms, like it’s some kind of holy privilege. This is a sucker punch, but she should have seen it coming.

  “Don’t make this about you, Jonathan. And don’t you dare pull this bad mother bullshit on me. I am so sick of you, of all of you, and your 1950s misogyny. I am doing my job. My very fucking important job.”

  “You have an infant. And you act like you can put him—and his father—on a shelf until your almighty case is over and that they’ll still be sitting there in the same place like two stuffed animals when you decide to come back and start playing with them again. They won’t be, Abby.”

  It occurs to her with a chill that Jonathan might actually be talking about her to Nic. Jonathan hadn’t hesitated to interfere in similar ways in the past when he was worried about her. But Nic’s not a talker. And anyway, she would never give Jonathan the satisfaction of asking. She heads for the door. “I have to go.”

  Jonathan crosses his arms over his chest. “Why did you have him?”

  She stops, her hand closing over the doorknob. “What?”

  “Why didn’t you terminate the pregnancy?”

  Unplanned, but not unwanted. That is what her mother had said about Abby and her brother, no matter that they had turned her life upside down. It had been doable, or, at least, manageable, until her husband’s untimely death—at which point Roz was broke and alone with three-year-old twins. She left her PhD program at UCLA, never to return.

  Roz had made the best of it, was now a well-respected high school principal for an underserved public high school. Abby knew her mother derived great satisfaction from her work. But Roz had never become an art history professor in an ivory tower, spellbinding eager grad students with pixelated slides of Renaissance paintings and enjoying sabbaticals in Italy. In high school, Abby found a draft of her mother’s dissertation on Caravaggio in a cardboard box on a high shelf in the closet. It had been written on a typewriter, faded red-inked notes in the margins in Roz’s careful script. Flipping through the yellowed pages, Abby had felt a stab of pity followed by revulsion. She had shoved the box back into its dusty place, wanting immediately to rid herself of the knowledge of her mother’s beloved dead thing.

  She turns around slowly to face him. “When I found out, I was in denial. I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t do anything except pretend it wasn’t happening. And then Rayshon was murdered and I—It did something to me.” She had made the mistake of looking at the crime scene photos, one in particular now embedded in her brain. A close-up of Rayshon lying in a McDonald’s parking lot, brain matter oozing like the insides of a rotten pumpkin after taking three shots to the head. The grief had been like drowning; every time she opened her mouth for air she breathed water instead. In the end, it had all been for nothing.

  Without Cal, Abby would have kept drinking until she was dead or in the hospital. Forget feeling a sense of responsibility: the tiny see
d in her body made her so sick she couldn’t. Cal’s existence forced her to feel something other than an ever-rising despair. She began to look forward to the doctor visits, where she got to listen to the rapid-fire whisper of his heartbeat, had even recorded it on her phone to play back at night.

  “Cal gave me a reason.”

  “A reason not to drink.”

  “A reason not to give up.” She pauses. “It is impossible to describe to you, the way I feel about Cal. I know what you think of me. I know what Nic thinks of me—what everyone thinks of me. That I don’t love Cal or that I don’t love him enough. But you have no idea. After everything that happened—and, Jonathan, you will never know—my little son saved me. The way I feel about him—” She breaks off. “Cal is the driving force behind my doing this case. I know you don’t understand that, but I think—I hope—he will.”

  She looks away from him, to the framed sketch of Rayshon on the wall, his head touching hers as they bumped fists that miraculous day in court. For the first time in a long time, she lets herself look—really look—at his face, the wide-set eyes, the perfectly shaped head, the hollows beneath his cheekbones that are plainly visible as he smiles at her. Only at her. Pain floods her and she forces herself to stay in the moment, feeling it deep inside of her before looking back at Jonathan. “The situation with Rayshon—it’s not like that with Luz.”

  Jonathan turns to go. “Not for you anyway.”

  Wednesday, March 21, 2007

  2:03 a.m.

  1710 Vestal Street

  Los Angeles

  “Wake up, wake up.”

  Abby opens her eyes to see Nic’s face inches from her, bleached white with anger and fear. Her head snaps back and hits the tile, her hands reach reflexively for Cal’s body but he’s not there, only her naked lap, the skin on her thighs starting to shrivel in the bathwater. “Cal,” she says frantically. “Where’s Cal?”

  Nic grips her by the upper arms, shaking her. “You almost fucking killed him. Goddammit, how many times have I told you not to nurse him in the bathtub. When I came in here—” he stops and squeezes his eyes shut “—you were passed out cold and he had slipped. His chin was in the water.” When Nic opens his eyes, they are wet and she turns away, unable to look at him.

  “Where is he?” Abby is whimpering now, trying to lift herself up and look over Nic’s shoulder, but he tightens his grip so she can’t move.

  “You didn’t even wake up when I took him away from you.” Nic shakes his head in disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Abby?”

  She keeps her head turned away, is sobbing now, can taste the snot on her lips. “It was an accident. I want Cal. I need to see Cal.” When Nic says nothing, she screams, “Give him back!”

  Nic removes one hand from her arm, pinching her jaw between his thumb and index finger hard enough that she knows there will be marks tomorrow she’ll have to cover with makeup. “Look at me.”

  Abby forces herself to meet his eyes, telling herself that Cal is fine. If he wasn’t, Nic wouldn’t be in here. He would have left her to drown. She has to calm down and get through this, she has to answer Nic’s questions so she can get her baby back. So she can see for herself that she has not hurt him.

  “Were you drinking? Have you been drinking, Abby, all this time?”

  She shakes her head violently from side to side. “I would never. I was just—I was just—” She has to stop to catch her breath, a sob strangling in her throat. “I was just tired, Nicky. I swear to you. But I haven’t had anything, not one thing to drink since I found out I was pregnant. I swear to you.” She forces herself to stop babbling, knowing that the desperation in her voice makes it sound like she’s lying even though she isn’t. “You have to believe me,” she whispers. “I would never.”

  “Here is what you are going to do.” Nic is speaking very slowly, careful to enunciate each word. “You are going to court tomorrow and you are going to get off this case.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. It’s over, Abby. This grand little experiment of yours is over.”

  She stares at him wide-eyed, so surprised she’s stopped crying. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Paul did, in the middle of Rayshon’s trial.”

  “Paul was the second chair. He was just—sitting there. And with Paul, it was an emergency. His twins were in the NICU.”

  “Your son is going to end up in the NICU. Or worse.”

  “No,” she says suddenly and fiercely angry. “I am not going to walk out on my client. I would never do that. Especially to her.” You came back for me, right? How could Abby make Luz believe that and then abandon her? And then there’s Will. But Nic is looking at her with such furious contempt she feels something approaching terror. “Listen to me,” she says, “you don’t understand. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I can’t leave Luz alone with Will.”

  “Why not?” Nic’s eyes are boring into hers. Abby tries to twist her head away, but his grip is too strong. Her anger flares again and she tries to get ahold of it, knowing it will only make things worse.

  “I can’t talk to you about it,” she says. The water in the bath has cooled and she is starting to shiver. She is suddenly aware of her appearance, how ridiculous and vulnerable she is: naked, wet hair plastered to her scalp, goose pimples on her arms, a droplet of milk on her left breast. “Please, just let me up. I want to see Cal.” The thought of him makes her start to cry again. “I just need to see him, okay? Let me up, Nicky. Please, please.”

  Nic acts like he hasn’t heard her. “He’s fucking her, isn’t he?”

  She shakes her head as much as she is able, too afraid to lie out loud.

  “There’s a rumor going around the courthouse,” Nic says, his voice calm and reasonable, like they are discussing a grocery list. “Do you want to know what it is?”

  No, a thousand times no. But she says nothing, knowing that it won’t matter.

  “The rumor,” Nic continues, “is that you went to see Dars in his chambers. That you took off all of your clothes. That you tried to blackmail him so he would get off the case.”

  For a moment, Abby wonders if her heart has stopped beating. Her mind races backward. The two marshals standing outside the door when she had entered and exited. Jonathan telling her word is going to get out. “Who told you that?”

  “Is it true?”

  She tries to shake her head again but he tightens his grip on her jaw so she can’t move.

  “Is it true?”

  Abby sucks in her breath, forces herself to look Nic directly in the face. “No.”

  Nic looks at her for what seems like forever. “You’re a liar.” He shakes his head, then releases her jaw, and slowly gets to his feet. Abby falls back against the tub, shaking uncontrollably.

  When Nic gets to the door he turns to look at her. “Cal is asleep in his crib. Don’t go near him.”

  Wednesday, March 21, 2007

  9:00 a.m.

  United States District Court

  for the Central District of California

  Shauna hits a key on her computer and up comes a picture of Travis Hollis’s torso, sliced open and pulled apart, a deep tranche that shows skin, blue beneath the dark hairs, then muscle, bone, organs.

  “Zoom in.”

  Up close and in sharp focus, Travis Hollis’s torn heart is suddenly everywhere: on the TV monitors set up on either side of the jury box, on both counsel tables, on Dars’s bench.

  Will looks at the jurors. Several blanch, all are staring fixedly. He cuts his gaze to the witness, Dr. William Forrester Bridges. A diminutive man with a short, pointed gray beard and rimless glasses, he answers Shauna’s preliminary questions with a precise, clipped diction punctuated by short, sharp breaths through his nose.

  Luz looks nearly catatonic, her only visible reaction to list slightly
. In the end, she had spent the night in the hospital with Maria Elena, which is where Will had picked her up at 6:30 that morning, curled in a green plastic chair next to the bed. She had not said a word on the forty-five-minute, traffic-choked drive to court, or a word since.

  Like an obedient child, Luz had allowed Abby to hustle her off to the ladies’ room. She emerged ten minutes later, hair brushed, the worst wrinkles smoothed from her dress, looking just barely presentable but remaining unresponsive to their questions. Abby looks only marginally better. Even Will can tell that she has used too much foundation—it looks caked on—but has nevertheless failed to conceal the shadows under her eyes or what is obviously a bruise on her jawline, a bizarre injury if ever there was one. I tripped and fell, she told Will when he asked her. And landed on your jaw? he had wanted to ask, but hadn’t. People in glass houses.

  Dars, who had taken the bench promptly at 8:15, was unmoved by Luz’s circumstances. “The jurors are here and I will not have their time wasted,” he said. When Abby, who had begun by asking for several days off, pleaded for just one, his voice had risen dangerously. “This medical situation with the grandmother—” he had waved a dismissive hand “—could go on for weeks.”

  At those words, Will felt Luz sag slightly in the chair next to him, her eyes opening and closing with the slow deliberation of a mechanical doll. She had remained that way, and was, to Will’s relief, now somehow managing not to look at the autopsy photo.

  Shauna, clear-eyed and smart-looking in her houndstooth suit, is going to make sure the jurors swim in every awful detail, visual and verbal. “Dr. Bridges, are you employed as a regional medical examiner with the armed forces?”

  “I am.”

  “In that role, did you perform the autopsy of Sergeant Travis Hollis?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you rely upon in performing that autopsy?”

  “I reviewed the medical records of the deceased, the notes of the emergency room physician, with whom I also consulted, and, of course, my own findings.”