Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “Jer-ry.”

  Confusion in every blink of his eyes, in every movement of Jerry’s head as he turns right and left, guided by both bailiffs to the side exit. She remembers holding him when that look came during the nights, his sloppy sobbing and sniffling, the way his long arms wrapped around her and hugged her so tight, so tight. God come tonight, Kay-tee? He come and get me tonight? She knows all about the concentrated pain that settles inside Jerry’s head sometimes, the chaos and panic that comes back to him in the darkness. She knows exactly how small and afraid this enormous man feels when his eyes look just like that.

  She pulls her eyes from his, turns away.

  Later, in the courthouse bathroom, Katie is patting her face with a brown paper towel in front of the mirror when Donna Treadmont walks in.

  “Mrs. Burrelli?”

  Katie watches Donna’s approach in the mirror. She knows that the director of the Warwick Center has handpicked Donna from the Protection and Advocacy office because Donna looks like someone’s mother, like she’d look more comfortable with an apron around her thick middle and holding a pan of warm cookies. Donna’s purse is probably full of Band-Aids and safety pins and hard, stale peppermints, Katie thinks, and then she sees the yellow piece of paper in Donna’s hand.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Donna says. Her lipstick is pale pink, the color of cotton candy.

  “I don’t want him talking to me,” Katie says.

  “Of course—”

  “I mean it. He shouldn’t talk to me. Ever.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re his lawyer, and it’s up to you to make him understand that.”

  “Yes.”

  They watch each other in the mirror for a moment. Donna looks away first, pats the back of her graying permed hair, and presses her pink lips together.

  “Anyway, he made this for you,” Donna finally says, trying to smile. Her eyes skip to the door and back.

  Katie turns from the mirror to face her, automatically takes the extended piece of paper.

  “I know this is unusual,” Donna says, but Katie’s eyes are already scanning the picture in her hand.

  She follows the lines of Jerry’s boxy, crooked house—the loopy smoke curling out of the chimney, the rectangle door with a big circle in the middle for a doorknob, the two squares for windows above the door. The house lists to one side like it’s about to topple over, and there, in the front yard, is a snowman with a long triangle nose, button eyes, a top hat. Standing beside it are three stick figures holding stick hands: a medium-size one on the left, a small one on the right, a big, towering one in the middle. They all have U-shaped smiles that extend out of the circle of their faces.

  Katie and Nick used to have dozens of these pictures taped all over their house, pictures of boats and seagulls, and snowmen, and big turkeys made out of the tracings of a big hand—all different except for the stick figures in each, the three people who are always holding hands, always smiling so widely it reaches past their faces. She stares at the picture, blinks hard a few times.

  Donna places her hand on Katie’s arm. “He’s so confused,” she says, and Katie nods quickly, keeps her eyes on the picture. “I try to comfort him, but . . . but he keeps asking me if God is going to come and get him.”

  Katie’s left shoulder jerks forward involuntarily—even now it’s organic, this sudden, corporeal impulse to race to Jerry’s side. But then Katie focuses on the medium stick figure, on the stick fingers that reach out—on the wide, curving smile.

  Nick.

  And then she feels him again, the weight of his arm slung casually across her stomach in the night, the heat of his thigh as it brushes against hers.

  It’s like getting punched in the stomach, every time. Every time she thinks about Nick, and hears his name inside her head, and pictures his dark eyes looking into hers. It happens a dozen times a day, a hundred, and every single time it’s the same—it’s just like getting punched.

  She looks Donna in the eye. “Why?” she says, just above a whisper.

  “You know his history, his fears at night—”

  “No,” Katie says, shaking the paper at her. “Why?”

  It’s a relief to say it out loud, this one word that runs in a constant loop inside her head—especially to this woman, who might actually know the real reason Jerry did it. But the relief drains quickly, because Donna is stepping back, shaking her head.

  “You know I can’t discuss the particulars of Jerry’s case with you.”

  “Then what do you want?” Katie almost spits at her.

  Donna takes another step back. “He just—Jerry just wanted you to have the picture. I promised him.”

  Katie’s eyes move back to the paper.

  Nick. Still inside the frame, still smiling, even after Jerry has taken him away.

  “Could you tell him something for me?” Katie says quietly.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Please tell him that I did this,” she says. Katie raises the paper to eye level, rips it in half.

  Even after Donna has walked out, Katie is still ripping the pieces in half, and in half again, until they are too thick to tear.

  They’re in conference room number six at Katie’s request, away from the cameras and microphones and hungry men and women who push from all sides.

  “It’s a technique, Katie, that’s all,” Richard tells her, leaning on the table with steepled fingers.

  “But you didn’t even know my husband.”

  “Look, it’s my job to make the jurors—”

  “But why would you call him Nicky if you never even met him?”

  She’s latched onto this name, because it’s all she has—she can’t point fingers and accuse, because she understands, if nothing else, that Nick belongs to Richard now, he belongs to the state. It doesn’t matter how disconcerting it feels to have a virtual stranger in charge of Nick’s life now, or that Nick has become a job, a case. Her feelings aren’t pertinent to the trial, she has no say about posturing and posing, but she can at least remind him of this: Nick was hers first, and he was real.

  Richard walks over to his open briefcase, starts to straighten the already straightened papers inside. “Sometimes we use names to make the jurors sympathize with the victim,” he says. “That’s why I referred to Jerry as Mr. LaPlante today. So that they see him as a man.”

  “Jerry is a man.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “My husband didn’t like to be called Nicky.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He let his mother call him that, but only her.”

  “Okay,” Richard says, nodding, “Good enough.” He keeps his eyes on his briefcase as he snaps it shut.

  “Nicholas or just plain Nick,” Katie says. “That’s who he was.”

  “Right.”

  She turns on her heel, reaches for the door.

  “We’re going to get him,” Richard says. And when she keeps her back to him, “Look, I know what you’re thinking.”

  Katie turns her body halfway, keeps a vise grip on the doorknob. Do you?

  “But you have to stop worrying. Remember, this isn’t the first murder case with a mentally retarded defendant,” he says. “There’ve been countless cases like this one tried in court. Countless convictions, too. The only concession, really, is that as of 2002 we can’t pursue the death penalty.”

  He gives an artificial, rueful shake of the head, like they’re still in the courtroom, like the jurors are still tracking his every move.

  “I can’t imagine—” Katie begins quickly, then stops herself when she hears the next words inside her head: that you have any idea what I’m thinking right now.

  “I know, but you can’t second-guess this, Katie. We’ve gone over it already—Jerry’s low IQ isn’t the only determining factor here. There are crucial issues involved in cases like this. Intellectual development regardless of IQ, a defendant’s adaptive life skills, the capacity to make choices and
operate successfully in his environment. The fact that the defendant clearly knows right from wrong. We have to prove Jerry’s culpability, and we can. We will. It’s been done dozens of times in courts all over this country—in Texas, North Carolina, Virginia. Jerry’s case is no different.”

  A sudden smile spreads over his face as he regards Katie with an expression of gratitude.

  “Well,” Richard says, tilting his head at her, “with one difference. It’ll probably be easier to prove with this one, thanks to all the great information you’ve provided.”

  She softens just a little under this look.

  Richard flicks his eyes to the clock above the door—the charming expression slips off his face, then returns automatically. “We have motive—”

  “We don’t know anything for sure.”

  “But we have enough, Katie, and we have premeditation, a deliberate act. It’s going to happen,” he says. “Life in prison.”

  “It’s all I want,” Katie says with sudden conviction.

  “I know.”

  “He has to go—you have to make sure.”

  “I will,” Richard says.

  Katie nods, takes a deep breath, turns back to the door.

  Driving home, she thinks about Richard in the weeks following the shooting, when her head was so cloudy with grief, so full of questions and unknowns—how the people and days and formal procedures all ran together: the arraignment, the indictment, endless preliminary hearings, the competency hearing, all the meetings and consultations in between with him and his staff, and even a psychologist at one point. A million times during those first blurry weeks, she would crawl into bed at night, exhausted and ready for sleep, only to close her eyes and see the scene inside the gym once more. And always, after she saw Nick lying on the floor, the same question: why?

  But she doesn’t remember anything specific about Richard’s behavior back then, only the tense certainty on his face a few days after the shooting when he told Katie and her family that he believed in this case, he would fight every step of the way to make sure Jerry was convicted. And then every day, every night, and every second in between, Katie imagined what could have happened in the month leading up to the shooting, when she barely saw Jerry. Wondering, with a sick, churning feeling in her stomach, if she was somehow responsible—if she could have played a part, however small, in Nick’s death.

  —You couldn’t know what Jerry was planning, Richard said.

  —You weren’t there when Jerry was incited, and you couldn’t have stopped it, Richard’s staff told her.

  And Katie would nod, but it didn’t make the fear or the nebulous, guilty feelings disappear, because the truth was, no one knew these two men better than she did, and no one knew exactly why Jerry did it—and Jerry wasn’t supplying any answers. Or if he was, his defense lawyers weren’t sharing—not back then, not now. There were theories, there were decided moments leading up to the shooting, but that’s all they were, and if Katie thought she would learn something in all these meetings, she was mistaken, because so many times the questions were baffling, seemingly unrelated to Jerry’s walking into the gym that day, leveling the gun at Nick’s face.

  —Did Jerry have a big appetite? Richard’s staff asked Katie. (Yes, and he loved her mother’s cooking most of all.)

  —What were Jerry’s favorite shows on TV? (Cartoons, especially Bugs Bunny.)

  —Was Jerry kind to animals? (Yes, as far as she could remember, but they didn’t have any pets because Nick was allergic.)

  There were other questions, too, but they didn’t have anything to do with Jerry, or why he would kill a man he loved so much.

  —On a scale of one to ten, ten being completely open and one being distant, how would you rate your interactions with your family? (Ten, Katie supplied automatically.)

  —On a scale of one to ten, ten being supportive and nurturing and one being completely unhelpful in times of stress, how would you rate your family? (Ten, she said again, thinking of her sister, Dana.)

  Later she understood—they wanted to make sure she wouldn’t fall apart during the trial, during her testimony. Or, if she did, that someone would be there to pick up the pieces.

  They told her that they wanted to interview her parents and her sister, too, because they also had a relationship with Jerry. That these questions would focus exclusively on Jerry’s behavior.

  —But I knew Jerry the best, Katie protested.

  —Yes, but when you’re close to someone, the staff psychologist explained, It’s difficult to recall specific moments that could be telling.

  During those first weeks, when Katie walked around her house like a stranger, her family tried to lighten the mood at dinner. Her sister Dana, raising her forkful of pasta:

  —On a scale of one to ten, ten being delicious and perfectly seasoned and one being oversalted and/or bland, how would you rate Mom’s carbonara tonight?

  Her father laughing, checking on Katie’s reaction, as their mother shook her head at all of them.

  Back then Katie tried to imagine other questions they might ask her family without her knowledge, how her parents and sister would respond.

  —What was Katie like as a child?

  —Difficult to know, she imagined her mother saying immediately, that disapproving look on her face.—Katie was the opposite of her sister.

  —A quiet kid, just independent, Katie imagined her father saying, still trying to gloss over her mother’s criticisms.

  —Did she have many friends as a child?

  —Some, her mother would say, but not like Dana, who always made friends easily.

  —Can Katie rely on your family during the stress of the trial?

  —Yes, Dana might say.—But sometimes it’s hard for Katie to express herself, to really open up to people.

  —Even with you?

  —No, not really. (And then Dana’s thoughtful expression, her sigh, not meant to be unkind.)—But—well, yes, sometimes even with me Katie holds back.

  And they would be right, Katie thinks now, admonishing herself quietly as she makes her way home through the darkened streets.

  There are rooms she can’t go into yet. There are spaces she won’t let her eyes linger on too long, walls she still won’t lean against. Like in the kitchen, between the counter and the sliding glass door that leads out onto the deck, because that’s where Nick used to stand and chew on the inside of his cheek when he talked to his mother on the phone. She won’t use the half bathroom on the first floor either, because every time she does, she hears his voice—It’s convenient because sometimes we only HALF to pee—so she always bounds up to the second floor, where there are no images of Nick slapping the wall and laughing at his own stupid jokes. There are lights that must stay off at certain hours in the night because of the spaces they illuminate, spaces that are no longer filled with anything but air, lamps that must be turned on at dusk so that they swallow the shadows where he used to lie on the soft gray rug to watch the sun dip behind the oak trees in the backyard.

  The only safe place, really, is in the basement, where she keeps her equipment—her cameras, projector, reels of film, editing table and board—but tonight she doesn’t want the walls pressing into her, so she grabs the tripod and projector and hauls them upstairs, then returns to lug up the small, heavy sound box.

  Before she steps outside, Katie turns off the phone; she’s already called her friend Jill, and her parents and sister have checked in, so she doesn’t have to worry about any of them rushing over, their faces pinched with worry. Since the end of the competency hearing and the announcement of the quick trial date, the calls have become a constant again, an endless ringing inside her house, her head, and she is weary of the automatic answers she must supply to everyone: Yes, she’s eating, sleeping. No, she doesn’t want any company. No, she doesn’t need anything. Yes, she’s keeping herself busy and she’s fine, she’s really just fine. She gathers her equipment, shoulders the sliding glass door open, steps outside
.

  Katie sets up the projector on the deck and aims it toward the side of the white shed in the backyard. She pushes a few buttons, adjusts the size of the block of light that takes up most of the wall of the shed, and waits for the hum of film moving inside so she can cue up the sound. There’s a brisk autumn wind blowing, so she pulls the blue plaid blanket off the chaise lounge and wraps it around her shoulders as she settles into the chair.

  An image finally appears on the side of the shed, but it’s too big, too fuzzy. She hops up to adjust the image size, tweak the focus.

  And then there they are, Arthur and Sarah Cohen in her backyard, on the wall of her shed: small, brittle bodies almost swallowed by the brown couch they sit on, their faces deeply lined and spotted, but what a sight—beautiful. Sometimes Katie forgets they’re really gone, that she can’t just run into the house to call them and say for the tenth time that she’s making progress, that their documentary is finally beginning to take shape in her mind. She sits back down, adjusts the volume.

  “I ask you, a little pastry should cost that much?” Arthur asks, shaking his head, his voice blaring out from the sound box by Katie’s side. It’s eerily disconnected from the image of Arthur on the shed, yet the sound is a comfort just the same: a proud, rumbly voice, with hints of laughter grazing the edges of every word. Arthur’s big, black-rimmed glasses make his eyes enormous, owl-like, but they are opened even wider in disbelief. His wife, Sarah, tccchhhes with a smile, slaps playfully at his hands; she pushes a strand of her long gray hair behind her ear, rolls her eyes at the camera.

  A breeze blows Katie’s hair into her eyes as the dry leaves move and shake into one another in the tall oak trees that line the backyard. She knows that New England weather can turn in an instant—from spring into blazing-hot summer, autumn into deep winter overnight—and she wonders how much longer the winter will hold back, how much longer she’ll be able to see Arthur and Sarah like this: bigger than life, alive. She reaches out from underneath the blanket, tucks her hair behind her ear, and watches a leaf dance across the lawn. Inhales the brown, loamy smells of fall and snuggles deeper into the chair.