A Good Mother

by Lara Bazelon

  Outside the weather is as insipid as always: bright yellow sun, not a cloud in the blue sky. They walk, Abby and Luz in the middle, Antoine and Will on the outside. Luz’s head is down, her shoulders slumped, fingers twisting the gold chain where the cross hangs on her neck.

  “What happened to your lip?” Antoine asks Abby.

  Abby fishes in her purse, presses a crumpled tissue to her mouth. Her lip has started bleeding again. “Nothing happened. Everything is fine.”

  Will turns to look, then quickly looks away.

  At the courthouse, it is far worse than he expected. News trucks double-parked, Court TV, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, all the local affiliates. “What about the Spring Street entrance?” Will asks Antoine.

  “It’s the same. But I called Jared and he’s meeting us at the corner.”

  And sure enough, Jared is standing at the corner of First and Main with six other marshals. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  Abby takes Luz’s hand, nods at Will to do the same. Antoine falls back as the marshals press in on all sides, taking hold of Will’s and Abby’s upper arms. As they approach the steps, Jared raises his voice. “Step back, let them through. Step back.”

  The gaggle moves, but just barely. Then come the questions, like shots fired from a semiautomatic weapon.

  “What does it mean that the jury came back so fast?”

  “Did you kill your husband?”

  “Who will take care of Cristina if you go to prison?”

  “Are you afraid of going to prison?”

  “Step back,” Jared bellows. He and the other marshals aren’t escorting Abby, Will, and Luz so much as propelling them up the stairs. There are flashbulbs going off, explosions of light and sound. Will watches as Abby shakes her head slightly so that her hair falls over her face and hunches her shoulders, concealing as much as she can. But they aren’t looking at her. Everyone is craning to see Luz, saying her name over and over. “Look down,” Will says to Luz, shouting over the noise, “keep your head down.”

  But Luz stares straight ahead, looking neither right nor left as the questions fly. “Was it for the money? Did you do it for the money?”

  “Luz, look over here.”

  “Luz, can you answer the question?”

  “Luz, are you a killer?”

  Friday, March 23, 2007

  3:51 p.m.

  United States District Court

  for the Central District of California

  In the crush and heat of bodies, the din of voices, and the frog-march up the courthouse steps, Will focuses on holding tight to Luz’s hand, limp in his own. It is the first physical contact they’ve had since his awful mistake that morning, which incredibly, had been only hours ago. This is the longest day of his life.

  Inside, security officers wave Abby and Will through the attorney line, but Luz has to be stopped, her shoes removed, the contents of her purse examined. The marshals encircle her to create a pocket of space but the crowd pushes back, swollen in the lobby’s contained entryway, voices echoing off the marble walls and eighteen-foot ceiling.

  As they wait on the other side of the metal detector, Will looks at Abby again. He notices for the first time that she is wearing a different blouse than she had been that morning and she’s taken off her stockings. Showing up in federal court with bare legs is almost as bad as showing up drunk, and he briefly wonders whether she’s gone back to her old habits. Abby looks like she’s been in a fight. There is congealed blood on her lower lip and an angry red mark on her cheek. Will swallows, instinctively touches his own face, but it has been long enough that there is nothing there anymore.

  “Are you okay?” he says in a low voice.

  She turns to look him full in the face. “What do you think?”

  Dars’s courtroom is on the second floor but the escalator is mobbed. Jared hustles them into the judges’ elevator, the three of them squeezed together inside a circle of marshals. No one speaks. Luz’s hand is hot inside his own, her eyes trained on the ground.

  The doors open and they step out. More madness. Will tries not to look but he can’t help himself. Thank God there are no cameras or microphones allowed in federal court. But the crowd is so dense and loud it is like being surrounded by locusts, an insistent incessant buzzing coupled with a physical pressure of bodies, smells of perfume, cologne, cigarette smoke, and body odor. Jared and his cohorts storm through, forging a knife’s edge path. Will, Abby, and Luz clasp hands, following behind in single file.

  Inside the courtroom, Dars is on the bench, the clerk below him, Shauna at her place at the counsel table. Waiting on them. The noise level is lower and subsides altogether as the spectators turn to look at them. Side by side, still holding hands, they walk down the aisle through the short swinging doors that cordon off the gallery, Will and Abby like grim parents about to give away their child.

  At the defense table, they let each other go. Will pulls back Luz’s chair and gently pushes it forward once she is seated. He and Abby take their places on either side of her.

  The clerk calls the case and Shauna, Abby, and Will make their appearances. Will is surprised to hear how normal he sounds, but then again, all he has to say is his name.

  Dars says, “We are here for the reading of the verdict.”

  Hearing the words, Will feels a kind of shock, and he realizes he has been engaged in magical thinking, believing somehow that this wasn’t actually happening. Dars leans forward, his eyes on the crowd. “Now,” he says, “this case has generated a lot of emotions, a lot of interest. But let me make myself clear—I will not tolerate any outbursts. Not from the victim’s family—” he looks meaningfully at Travis’s mother and sisters, who are holding tightly to each other’s hands, then brings his eyes to Jackie, who is seated next to them, her baby in her lap “—not from counsel, and not from the defendant.” His eyes shift to Luz, then back to the gallery. “Not from anyone. If you cause a disruption in my courtroom, you will be forcibly removed.” He nods once. “Alright. Madame Clerk will bring in the jury.”

  The clerk rises from her seat and disappears through the side door. Everyone waits, the silence thickening. Will and Abby retake Luz’s hands; Luz’s feels boneless. Will wishes she would look at him, but she doesn’t. He wishes there were something he could say to comfort her, but there isn’t. He looks over at Abby, who also refuses to return his gaze. She is staring down at the table, pulling her locket back and forth across the chain of her necklace.

  The side door opens again and the jurors file out stone-faced. Not a single one of them looks at Luz. Will watches Abby watching them, hears her sharp, quiet intake of breath. Luz’s head is bent down, her eyes trained on the table.

  Luz will not survive prison. Will knows this with a sudden terrifying clarity. She will take a metal slat from her cot and file it down to a fine point, embed a razor blade in a toothbrush, sharpen a pair of scissors on a stone in the rec yard. She will make a weapon and she will use it on herself.

  Will looks at the jurors, now seated, willing them to look back at him. None do. They are about to kill her and they don’t even realize it. He wishes there was a way to make them understand, to send them back to deliberate with the weight of this knowledge.

  “The foreman will rise,” Dars says, “and remain standing.”

  The stay-at-home dad gets to his feet. He is wearing khakis and a light blue button-down, hands behind his back. He looks ludicrously normal.

  “Has the jury has reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor.”

  Dars nods. “Alright. Please provide the verdict form to the clerk.”

  The foreman brings his right hand forward, holding out a piece of white paper folded like a letter. The clerk takes it, walks back to her seat, then turns, standing on tiptoes, to pass the paper to Dars. Everyone waits while he unfolds it and scans the contents.
Time slows down, stops.

  Dars refolds the paper and hands it back to the clerk, who returns it to the foreman. Dars looks at Luz, his face expressionless. “The defendant will rise.”

  Luz’s lips are moving. Abby whispers something to her and she stops. They stand, Will and Abby still gripping Luz’s hands as they pull her gently from her seat. Her body sways slightly, then stills.

  Dars swivels in his chair to face the foreman. “What is your verdict?”

  The foreman clears his throat, looks down at the piece of paper as if to double-check, and looks up again. “On the sole count of the indictment, murder in the first degree, we find the defendant, Luz Rivera Hollis, not guilty.”

  There is a collective gasp from the spectators and Will raises his fist in triumph, realizes too late that he has yelled, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” like a rabid fan who has just seen his favorite player leap sky-high to pull a spiraling ball out of the thinnest of air. But his hoarse cries have been absorbed in the general uproar and no one has heard him. He puts his hand over his mouth to stifle a sob. Tears are running down his face.

  Dars brings down his gavel. His face has gone red and he is yelling, but Will is no longer listening. Luz has let go of his hand, her face buried in Abby’s neck. Abby has one arm wrapped around Luz’s body, the other cradling her head, five fingers pressed like a white starfish over Luz’s dark hair. He will never forget how he feels, the wave after wave of shuddering elation and relief. His wild bet—his and Luz’s—has paid off.

  Will wants to wrap his arms around both of them. But as he reaches out, Abby lifts her battered face, rests her chin on the top of Luz’s head, and gives him a look that cuts him dead.

  Friday, March 23, 2007

  4:30 p.m.

  United States District Court

  for the Central District of California

  The euphoria of the verdict quickly gives way to logistical problems. Abby, Will, and Luz cannot leave the courthouse without getting mobbed, so Abby quickly confers with Jared, who hustles them out of a side entrance and back into the judge’s elevator. This time, they go all the way to the thirteenth floor to wait it out in an actual judge’s chambers. The judge and his law clerks are away hearing a case in San Francisco, and his judicial assistant kindly offers to take them in.

  There they sit, waiting. Luz falls asleep almost immediately, curled in the fetal position, her hands clasped together under her chin. Abby, determined not to let Luz out of her sight, sits beside her, fielding congratulatory calls on her cell phone and trying to tamp down her impatience at the fact that they are temporarily trapped in the building. The media, as it turns out, has tremendous staying power, doing man-on-the-street interviews and buttonholing anyone who looks like they might at some point have had something to do with the case while they wait for the stars to arrive.

  There is a television in one of the law clerk’s offices, and Jared keeps it on low. It’s a slow day for national news and Luz’s case leads every broadcast. The same pictures are shown again and again: of the three of them harried, heads down, walking to court before the verdict, professional photographs of Abby and Will taken before they started at the federal public defender’s office—Abby regretting that she’d forgotten to smile in hers while Will, of course, looks as movie-star perfect as ever—snaps of Luz pulled from her Facebook page, including some that had been shown at trial. Mainly it was those pictures that dominated: Luz on Travis’s lap with her protruding belly, Luz and Travis on their wedding day, a beaming Luz holding Cristina in the hospital.

  “You’re famous,” Jared says to Abby. His voice is flat, almost accusatory. “They’re calling you and him—” he jerks his head toward the office next door, where Abby has exiled Will “—the best lawyers money can’t buy.”

  Abby looks up warily. “I can’t get Nic to text me back,” she says. “Have you talked to him?”

  Jared looks away. “No.”

  Abby tries calling. “We won!” she says into his voice mail. “I’m so excited to come home.” She pauses, lowering her voice. “I know it’s been hard and—and—I’m sorry for everything. I love you, Nicky. Give Cal a kiss for me.”

  But there is still no word from Nic an hour later when they are finally allowed to leave, taking the judges’ elevator to the basement. From there, Jared drives the four blocks back to the federal public defender’s office in a van marked POLICE US MARSHAL, Will seated up front, Luz and Abby in the back. Abby has had to wake Luz up and she is groggy, her head lolling against the seat, eyes half-open. No one speaks.

  At the deserted elevator bank, Abby says quietly to Will, “Walk away.” He starts, a shocked, pained expression on his face. She says it again, her voice low and warning, and he turns away, heading back to the lobby.

  Father Abelard is waiting in Abby’s office with Cristina, still in her car seat and sucking peacefully on a pacifier. Jorge Estrada is there, too, sitting in one of the client chairs opposite Abby’s desk in a gray suit and silver tie with blue stripes—the same suit he was wearing the day Dars sent him to jail. Luz goes immediately to Cristina, picking her up and speaking to her softly as she undoes the buttons on her blouse, then settles in the corner while Cristina nurses.

  Father Abelard looks at Luz and Cristina, then at Abby. His eyes are wet. “A miracle,” he says.

  Estrada shakes Abby’s hand. “Congratulations, counselor.”

  Abby looks him in the eye. “To you, too. We are grateful.”

  Estrada releases her hand and steps back, looking her over. “Everything okay?”

  The cut on Abby’s lip is already starting to scab. Almost guiltily, she puts her hand to her mouth to touch the crusted edge.

  “Everything’s fine,” she says. “And you?”

  “Never better.” Estrada smiles, a broad genuine grin. “I’ll get everything filed on Monday.” He nods at Luz. “We’ll go to court together.”

  Luz stiffens visibly. “No. I don’t want to go back there.”

  “Luz, honey, it’s county courthouse in Riverside, no big thing. When Ms. Rosenberg visited me in the jail, she and I worked out the details, and she tells me you already signed the papers. The judge needs to see us, but it’s just a formality.”

  Abby says quietly, “Court on Monday is about you and Cristina. Keeping everyone safe. The criminal case against you is over. No one can bring it back.” Luz nods, turning her attention back to Cristina as Abby exchanges a few more pleasantries with Estrada and Father Abelard. When Luz has finished feeding Cristina and has changed her diaper in the ladies’ room, they depart, Father Abelard with his hand on Luz’s elbow, Estrada following behind carrying the baby in the car seat.

  At the door, Luz turns back to look at Abby, her black eyes enormous. She has scrubbed off the smudged makeup and brushed the tangles from her hair. Her face is naked, impossibly young. “Thank you,” she says.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Luz looks at Estrada. “You were right about her,” she says to him.

  “You were right,” Abby says to Luz. “And you—” she pauses “—you made me understand what this case was about.”

  Luz looks at Cristina for a long moment, then lifts her gaze again. “She’s my everything, you know?”

  Abby nods. “I know.”

  Friday, March 23, 2007

  6:30 p.m.

  Weilands Bar & Grill

  First Street, Los Angeles

  When Paul, Antoine, and some of Abby’s other coworkers—a few of whom had driven back to the office after hearing the news on the radio—appear in the doorway minutes later cheering loudly and demanding to take her out to Weilands for drinks, she hesitates. She should go home now. But Nic was being such a jerk. Yes, she’d messed up, but she had apologized and given the circumstances—that, against all odds, she had gotten an acquittal and given her client her life back—Nic should find it in his heart to
be magnanimous. At the very least, he should call her back.

  “Come on, Abby, I’m buying,” Paul says.

  “Well, maybe just one,” she says. “But then I really have to go home.”

  She texts Nic again, the fourth time since the verdict. Be home by 7/7:30. Like the others, it goes unanswered.

  “You should go home,” Jonathan says on the short walk to the bar when Abby tells him.

  “Fuck Nic,” she says angrily. “Father Abelard said it was a miracle. And you know what, Jonathan, it was. Luz has her life back. A chance to start over with Cristina.” She looks at Will, walking several paces behind them, hands in his pockets as he talks with one of the other newer hires in their office, then says in a low voice, “In spite of him.”

  “I’m not sure that’s fair,” Jonathan says mildly. “He was the one with the winning strategy in the end.”

  “And I was the one who executed it. What he did to her—” She shakes her head in disgust.

  “What he did to her.” Jonathan repeats the words slowly. “Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

  “I would think,” Abby says, staring straight ahead, “given the last few days, that I am entitled to celebrate a little with people who are actually happy for me.” When Jonathan doesn’t answer, she gives him a sidelong glance. “Wipe that Mother Superior look off your face. It’s one drink.”

  “It’s never one drink with you.” Jonathan sighs. He’s wearing the glasses she likes, the ones with the tortoiseshell frames, and his best suit, the Calvin Klein charcoal she loves. He had told her that he’d dressed up for her; remembering that, she feels less annoyed. Their friendship has been strained and severely tested, but now that the trial is over she is confident things between them will go back to normal. “I know I’ve been really difficult,” she says. “And I know how much you’ve done for me. And Nic and Cal. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “You can start,” he says, “by ordering a club soda.”