Coming for You

by Deborah Rogers

  “Objection!” I repeat. “The defense has failed to disclose this information. The prosecution has not had adequate time to consider it.”

  Mercer looks at me. “Oh, you really want to go down that road?”

  Judge Brown bangs her gavel. “Overruled, Ms. Kellaway.”

  “But Your Honor!”

  “I said overruled, Counselor. Take your seat.”

  I remain standing, my trembling hand perched on the edge of my desk.

  “Now, Counselor, sit,” says Judge Brown.

  I concede and lower myself into my chair and watch helplessly as Mercer turns back to Susie and proceeds to tear her to shreds. “I put it to you, Susie, that Mr. Kennedy was only ever kind to you and that none of the events you outlined in your testimony ever took place.”

  Susie, sobbing loudly, swings her head back and forth. “No.”

  Mercer continues her attack. “I put it to you that you are a very confused little girl who has not told the truth here today, most likely cajoled and coached by your mother into making these outrageous claims against my client in pursuit of some material gain.”

  “No…please…I can’t,” chokes Susie.

  I stand. “Objection, Your Honor! She’s hounding the witness!”

  “Momma!” wails Susie. “Momma!”

  “Nothing further,” says Mercer, resuming her seat.

  11

  I’m facing John Liber, my boss, the New York County District Attorney. Every time I see John, I think of Tony Soprano, dark-haired, larger-than-life, a diamond in the rough. He recently lost a ton of weight after a heart scare and his once plump jowls now hang deflated and fleshy around his neck, much like his shirts, which he has yet to update to a smaller size. John sits back in his chair and laces his hands over his belly. A mannerism that doesn’t seem to carry quite the same consequence now that he’s reduced so much of his girth.

  “What the hell happened in there yesterday?” he says.

  I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say.

  He softens his voice. “You struggling, Am, is that it?”

  He picks up the NutriBullet blender cup at his elbow and takes a chug of his thrice-daily Spirulina smoothie. I think back to the time, just over three years ago, when I approached John for this job. He knew my background, how damaged I was, and still took me on.

  “You look like shit, kid,” he says, draining the cup. “When was the last time you had a decent night’s sleep?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I look away. His office is a mess. Morning light seeps through the blinds, lowered for as long as I have known him, and stacks of files teeter preciously on top of his desk and litter the floor around it. John’s a very busy man, with an entirely unmanageable workload, but he tries to keep across all the cases, which he does with varying degrees of success. He was the one who decided to go ahead with the Kennedy prosecution even though all the other witnesses pulled out.

  “Who in the hell do you think you’re kidding? Anyone can see you’re not coping.”

  I feel tears burn. I don’t want to cry in front of him.

  “It’s not that bad,” I say.

  “Not that bad? Geeze, Am. You just caused a fucking mistrial.”

  The dreadful scene flashes into my mind. A distraught Claire Watson shouting profanities from the public gallery after Judge Brown granted Eileen Mercer’s motion for a mistrial. A sobbing, almost hysterical, Susie wailing for her mother. A shell-shocked Detective North looking on as Claire struggled with two bailiffs as they escorted her from the courtroom. A clearly elated Alistair Kennedy pumping Eileen Mercer’s hand and then pivoting to hug his wife and sons. Images, I knew, that would stay with me forever. His teaching license wouldn’t even be revoked. The worst that would happen was in a few months the school board would quietly encourage him to move on and he’d continue his predatory ways in another school.

  “It was an impossible choice,” I say.

  John stares at me in disbelief. “Choice? You didn’t fucking have a choice. They’re called rules. We’re lawyers. We follow them. That simple.”

  “Not everything is so black and white.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You really want to argue about this?”

  I look at my hands. “I know I screwed up, John. Maybe we can relay charges. He wasn’t acquitted.”

  I’m reaching and we both know it.

  “That ain’t gonna happen. I’ve already heard from the Bar Association. Mercer put in a complaint against you right away. I got no choice but to suspend you, kiddo, pending the outcome.”

  I’m shocked. “What? You can’t do that.”

  “Just be grateful I’m not firing your ass. If it was anyone else…”

  I bristle, “I don’t need your pity, John.”

  “Am, come on. You’re a great lawyer. I don’t want to lose you. But you fucked up so you’re out of here until the matter is resolved. With your impeccable record, hopefully you’ll just get a censure, maybe a fine.” His jaw clenches. “But with Mercer on your ass…we both know what a tough cookie she is. We need to play this by the book. A suspension shows the Bar we are taking the matter seriously, and Amelia, this is serious. The DA’s office needs to be squeaky clean. I can’t have a staff member playing by her own rules. What you did, well, it brings all of us into disrepute.”

  I lower my head and study my hands. “I said I was sorry, John. What about my other cases? Susie’s was only one in a stack of a hundred, and there’s an arraignment tomorrow for the liquor store holdup case.”

  “Already reassigned.”

  I feel like throwing up. Everything I care about is being taken away.

  “Kiddo, I’ve been telling you to go on a vacation for months. Do it. Sort yourself out.”

  “I don’t want to go on vacation.”

  John Liber pauses. “Lorna Stewart called.”

  I’m pissed. Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?

  “She had no right to do that.”

  “We had a deal, Am. Every month. You promised you would go.”

  “I got busy, John.”

  “Three years, working night and day, you got burnt out. Your judgment was affected.”

  I sit there, unmoving. “I’m sorry, John.”

  He nods and lets out a sigh. “I know, kiddo. I know.”

  12

  I’m on the train, homebound. My satchel empty of files. My heart heavy with failure. John Liber’s disappointment stings. Part of me, that fragile little girl part of me, needs his approval and not having it hurts. Terrific, I tell myself, add being pathetic to the growing list of things wrong with me.

  It’s barely midmorning and the train car is almost empty. Just me and a teen with hot pink Dr. Dre headphones. Probably skipping school. I like the space. I feel safe here. I can breathe. I can almost convince myself I’m normal.

  I consider staying on, zoning in and zoning out, and just riding. But I can’t risk another blackout. And I’m bone-tired. I need sleep. If I don’t get sleep, I won’t be able to remain alert. If I don’t remain alert, I’ll make mistakes. If I make mistakes, I’ll put my life at risk.

  I elect to get off two stops early and take the long way home despite the fatigue. This is both a test of will and stamina, but there’s also a practical reason. I need to compensate for my low bandwidth today. Being extra cautious will go some way to tipping the balance back in my favor.

  Given the time of day, there are more people about on the streets than I would usually encounter during my weekday getting-home-after-work ritual. Shoppers. Pensioners. Facilities workers. When I arrive at the playground across from my apartment, it’s busy with chatting mothers in puffer jackets and kids playing on swings. My pulse quickens. I can’t do my usual checking because they’ll be suspicious about what I’m up to. This change in sequence makes me nervous and I begin to sweat beneath my woolen coat.

  Swallowing down anxiety, I pass through the playground, avoiding running children in case
they trip over my cane. I stop when I reach the other side of the street. The only thing I can think of is to pull out my phone and make it look like I’m checking Google Maps for directions. No one pays me any attention so I hold the phone higher, until my apartment block is in my eyeline. I commence the checking process, sweeping left to right, studying each balcony and, finally, my own. Everything looks okay. The blinds look the same. But I make myself check again because I know I’m tired and I don’t want to risk missing anything.

  When I’m done, I tell myself to move on or the mothers will start to worry. I clap up the pavement toward my building and go inside, closing and locking the shared front door, taking the archaic elevator up to my floor, wrangling with the dead bolts and retreating inside. Once there, I pause to lay down my satchel and turn on the heat. Then I begin checking.

  The apartment seems strange in daylight. Noises are different. Objects too. There seems to be more of them. The furniture looks like it belongs to someone else.

  It throws me off balance. I tell myself it’s okay, just trust the process because I know the process works well. It is painstaking in its thoroughness and will catch anything amiss. So that’s what I do, checking the living room, the windows, the kitchen, the bathroom, the spare room door, my bedroom, the closet, and so on.

  I’m so sore. Everything hurts. My eyeballs, hair, skin. My bladder is screaming for relief. But I need to finish checking first.

  I’m in my bedroom when my phone rings in my pocket. I nearly jump out of my skin. I check it and see my mother’s number. I wonder if she’s had a call from John Liber. Would he go that far? Would he really call my mother?

  I let it pass to voicemail and try not to get angry with John or my mom, which will only cloud the quality of my checking, and return to the process. I pause and look at my bedroom window. Did I check that already? I think I did but now I can’t remember. The phone call has interrupted my flow and now I have lost my place and I’m out of sequence. I will have to start again. Tears spill over. God. Damn. It.

  I tell myself to stop being such a crybaby, stop being so goddamn weak. I brush the tears away and start again, trudging through the apartment, my foot throbbing, head aching.

  When I’m finally done, I return to the bathroom and put the plug in the tub and turn on the faucet. I sit on the edge of the bath, waiting for it to fill, staring into the middle-distance fog.

  A hazy memory of the last time I took a bath in the daytime comes to me. I was ten and had tonsillitis and my mother made me an egg sandwich on soft white bread laden with butter. Life was so simple back then. When the bath is drawn, I slip into the warm bubbleless water, too aware of my own nakedness in the daylight. There’s also the ugly half foot bobbing at the end of the tub, demanding I pay attention, whether I want to or not. I wash myself quickly, get out, dry off, and climb into bed.

  I lie there. Count the squares on the wallpaper. Trying to ignore the light leaching through the shades. I lie there for hours. Until there are after-five noises of people arriving home from work, climbing the stairs, turning on their heat, feeding their cats and themselves. Even though it’s not exactly sleeping, I’m not moving and that’s something. I tell myself to drift, let go, that eventually slumber will come.

  There’s a knock on the front door. My heart flips. I hold my breath, straining to hear. Another knock. Who could it be? What do they want? This has never happened before and I don’t know what to do. I lie as still as I can. Hoping that whoever it is will not hear the drumbeat of my heart. Another knock. Louder this time. Go away, just please go away. I wait, but there’s nothing more. Maybe they’re gone.

  I get out of bed, pull on my robe, and go check. In the living room the blinds are open even though it’s dark out by now. Then I see him, walking away, up the street, Detective Ethan North. I hang back and watch him. His weary gait, hands in his pockets, collar up around his neck.

  I have the awful, fleeting thought that something bad has happened to Susie. I should call him. I reach for my satchel, find his card, pick up my cell. I hesitate. If I call, he will know I was here all the time. I color at the thought. My craziness on display for him to see. No, I don’t want that. I want to salvage what little dignity I have left. Besides, there’s nothing I can do for Susie in the state I’m in right now. I can barely take care of myself.

  I look out the window again. He rounds the corner and disappears from view and I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. I close the blinds completely and shut off the lights, then return to my bed. Sleep is never going to come now so I might as well do something useful. I take the key from the trinket box next to my bed and return to the hallway. Facing the spare room door, I unlock it and go inside.

  13

  I wake up on my bedroom floor. This hasn’t happened to me for over a year. This strange form of sleeping walking, when I somehow go from being in the spare room to the middle of my bedroom floor. It’s like my mind has some perverse need to recreate the trauma of being lost in the woods, to reinvent that hard, unforgiving forest ground. As if my body is addicted to the pain and can’t let go.

  I stretch for the trinket box and look inside. The spare room key is in there. I must have returned the key in the night, although I don’t remember doing so. My chest tightens. I don’t like this, this awful sense of confusion and gaps in time.

  I sit up and a groan escapes my lips. My left hip aches and so does my back. But at least I slept. That’s something.

  I check my phone for the time. 9:07 a.m. Another missed call and a text from Lorna. I’m free at ten. Come see me. I get up and make coffee.

  *

  Lorna doesn’t know what I’m thinking. I tell myself this as she nods and listens to my lies.

  “The band is working.” I raise my wrist and ping the stupid rubber band.

  “Oh good.”

  “I snap right out of the spiral.”

  I’ve come to know Lorna well. The little tug at the corner of her mouth like she’s tasted something bad. She gets it whenever I talk about him, like she’s personally offended he ever walked the face of the earth. I know every inch of her office, too. The bookcase. The oriental doorknocker behind the glass frame. The Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir scent diffuser on top of the little table to the left.

  Lorna thinks that because there are no photos on display the office is impersonal, but it’s not. There are telling details everywhere. For instance, her favorite color is teal. It’s in the carpet, the curtains, even the flowers on her coffee cup are teal. She drinks loose-leaf Japanese Lime tea, not coffee, so I’m guessing she takes care of her health. She’s orderly, almost compulsively so. The titles of her books are organized alphabetically, spine out, not a speck of dust in sight. And she has been a traveler in the past. I know this because she once told me that the gray-blue Persian rug in the center of the room came from a trip to Istanbul when she was in her twenties.

  But there are things I don’t know, like whether she has kids or not. She holds herself like a single woman but my intuition is a little off these days, so I could be wrong. There’s a sadness about her, too. She’s seen pain. I recognize it. I once saw her in the street. She never saw me. She never looked up. She was frowning at her phone with a disappointed look on her face. I felt the urge to follow her. I wanted to see where she went, who she met. But I stopped myself and just let her walk by.

  “And the work situation?” she says.

  Ah, so John Liber told her.

  “I’m over it.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  I look at my hands, twirl the band around my wrist. I should tell her. All of it. My feelings. How everything is getting worse. How I’m losing control. That I need help.

  I look up. “The son of a bitch, Kennedy, is going to get away with it now.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Of course.”

  “At who, Amelia? Yourself?”

  I shrug. “Yes.”

&nb
sp; She reaches for the mug with the teal flowers and takes a sip. “You’re holding back.”

  “My life’s in limbo. I could get disbarred.”

  “You don’t like the feeling of loss of control.”

  “Would you?”

  She winces.

  “God, I’m sorry, Lorna,” I say. “I don’t mean to snap.”

  She holds up a hand. “It’s fine.”

  I hesitate. “I thought I saw him.”

  “Rex Hawkins?”

  I nod.

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. In the street. It wasn’t him though.”

  She presses me. “You panicked.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Anything else?”

  I remain silent.

  “The checking? How’s that been?”

  I shrug. “The usual.”

  “Amelia.”

  I feel tears but manage to hold them back.

  Lorna changes tack. “Tell me about when you thought you saw him.”

  “I was leaving the gym. It felt like someone was following me. He was the same build.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “He had a cap on. It was the way he walked. It was the same way as he did. That’s what I thought anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  “I ran.” I look at my foot. “Well, whatever it is I do now since becoming a cripple. I made it to the train and when I turned around, he was gone.”

  “So no one was following you after all? Let alone Rex Hawkins.”

  I pause.

  “Amelia?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “I see.”

  “Okay, no. It was my overactive imagination. Again.”

  “Do you still look at his photo on the internet?”

  Suddenly I feel ashamed. “I don’t know why I do that. I want nothing more than to forget him.”

  “It’s the payoff. By doing it you’re keeping him real, keeping the trauma alive. It helps you recall the color of his eyes, the texture of his skin, the way he smelled.”