VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the moonlight.

  Potted plants and dainty tables and chairs came into focus. She caught the trail of perfume again, and it drew her across the terrace to the low wall.

  She stood there, looking out. She saw things with eerie, drugged precision. The town-house facades across the garden all glowed with the dead light of the moon.

  A breeze ruffled the little boxwood bushes that the gardener had spaced along the low section of the wall. She saw that several of the branches had been freshly snapped off.

  She moved a toppled chair aside. She stood a long moment staring over the waist-high wall. She slowly swung her gaze down to the garden five stories below. It was like staring down into a pool from a high diving board. The trees and the parallel dark rows of green hedge all seemed to be rippling on dark water.

  A body lay directly below, splayed out across the flagstone path. White dress. White arms. White legs.

  Leigh doubled forward. Disbelief physically took her. A sickening whoosh of bile and booze and half-digested diet Pepsi flooded her mouth. She could feel vomit rushing up and out of her.

  Some instinctive residual sense of decorum told her to get to the john. She turned and shoved a garden chair out of the way and ran stumbling and puking back toward the living room.

  A young man stood half crouched against the wall. She collided with him and stared with a hand over her mouth.

  He sprang up to his full height, well over six feet, and there was something about his panicky eyes that made her think she might have to fight him.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he whimpered.

  “No, I know you didn’t.” Leigh kept her voice soft, nonconfrontational. She edged past him toward the open French window.

  He made no move to stop her.

  She darted into the living room and in the same movement swung the French window shut behind her. Her heart was banging in her chest. She fumbled her hand around the key and twisted it, and then she ran to the phone and snatched up the receiver and punched 911.

  SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL the woman who was prosecuting the case phoned Leigh and said the defense had unearthed new evidence. “Could you be in my office tomorrow morning at ten?”

  Leigh wore her black-on-black Chanel. In the limo, riding to the meeting, she took twenty milligrams of prescribed Valium and twenty of unprescribed Dexedrine that her husband had left on his side of the bathroom cabinet.

  At ten after ten, on the fourth floor of the State Supreme Court Building, the prosecutor introduced her to a small, stocky gray-haired woman wearing a plain black cotton dress. “Miss Baker, I’d like you to meet Xenia Delancey—the mother of the accused.”

  Leigh did not take the hand that Xenia Delancey offered.

  “Miss Baker,” Xenia Delancey said, “I’m a mother too.”

  “We have nothing to say to each other,” Leigh said.

  “On the contrary.” The defense attorney placed a small leather-bound book on the conference table. He invited Leigh to read it.

  The book, Leigh discovered, was a diary. She opened it. Most of the pages were blank. Where there was writing she recognized it as Nita’s. The forty or so hand-written pages covered the last forty days of her daughter’s life. Days of drugs and sex and recklessness.

  “This is a forgery,” Leigh said. “Nita never did these things.”

  “Miss Baker, I understand that you loved your daughter.” The prosecutor spoke with an unashamed Queens Irish accent. Words sounded tough in her mouth. “I understand that the diary comes as a shock to you. But I’ve prosecuted six date-kill cases, and I can tell you from trial experience, young girls are sexual beings and they often do confide their sexual activities to a secret diary.”

  “Maybe, but this diary is a fake.”

  “The jury will have to decide that,” the defense lawyer said.

  “They’re putting this forgery into evidence?” Leigh said. “They’re allowed to do that?”

  “Yes, they’re allowed to do that.” The prosecutor drew in a long breath and let it out in a deeply troubled sigh. “But Mrs. Delancey has an offer to make.”

  “You tell the state to accept a lesser plea,” Xenia Delancey said. “I’ll tell my boy’s lawyer not to use this diary.”

  “What kind of lesser plea?” Leigh said.

  “Negligent manslaughter,” the defense attorney said.

  “At best,” the prosecutor said, “the state can make a case for involuntary manslaughter.”

  “It was murder.” Leigh heard herself speak before she’d even realized what she was going to say. It was a flat statement of fact, with no emotion in it whatsoever. “I saw him push her.”

  The prosecutor whirled. Her glasses flew off her nose, and her blond hair spun out like a tossed skirt. After a moment she picked her glasses up from the floor and put them back on.

  The muscles in the defense attorney’s jaw worked slowly. “Miss Baker didn’t depose that she saw her daughter killed.”

  “I’m deposing it now,” Leigh said.

  “In other words,” the defense attorney said, “you’ve been suppressing evidence for the better part of a year?”

  “I was willing to forgive the man my daughter loved—because I believed he hadn’t intended to kill her.” Leigh could feel the defense attorney’s gaze on her, dubious, puzzled, probing for truth and for falsity. “But that diary, that forgery, is an act of pure malicious calculation. I have no intention of forgiving now.”

  “She’s lying,” Xenia Delancey said.

  “Mr. Lawrence,” the prosecutor said, “would you and Mrs. Delancey be good enough to wait in the hallway for a moment?”

  The defense attorney grumbled and stood and motioned Xenia Delancey to come with him.

  Leigh and the prosecutor sat alone at the cigarette-scarred conference table. The prosecutor’s glance nailed Leigh through half-tinted lenses. “What did you see exactly?”

  I wish I’d had time to prepare this, Leigh thought. And then she remembered what Stella Adler used to say in acting class: Who has time for sense memory? Improvise!

  For the next two minutes Leigh improvised.

  “You realize,” the prosecutor said, “if you change your testimony, the defense will accuse you of lying. They’ll attack you, not just on the stand but in the media.”

  “I realize that.”

  “The attacks will be personal, they’ll be savage, they’ll reflect on your character, your habits, your morals, your marriages, your movies, your lovers, and, above all, on your use of medications, mood changers, and liquor.”

  Leigh understood that the prosecutor had sized her up and was strongly advising her to reconsider. But she had no intention of reconsidering. She had given her daughter very little in life, and she was determined that Nita would at least receive justice in death. “I realize all of that.”

  The prosecutor held up the leather-bound book. “Whether this diary is a forgery or not, the defense will use it to attack and destroy your daughter. They’ll use it to create sympathy for Jim Delancey. He stands a good chance of going free. Are you willing to take that chance?”

  Leigh nodded. “I’m willing. Absolutely.”

  The prosecutor stood motionless, staring at her. “Miss Baker, I hope you’ll excuse my frankness, but in all honesty I have to tell you something.”

  Christ, Leigh wondered, have I gone too far?

  “Thanks to your courage I believe we have a chance of nailing Delancey.” The prosecutor shook Leigh’s hand. Then she crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open and leaned triumphantly into the corridor. “Mr. Lawrence, Mrs. Delancey, would you come back, please? We’re not taking the plea.”

  Xenia Delancey looked at Leigh with her mouth closed so tightly that her lips made a line like a fresh scar. “You’re making a stupid mistake,” she said. “The world is going to know what your daughter was.”

  “And maybe,” Leigh said, “they’ll learn what your son is.”


  SIX WEEKS LATER Leigh Baker entered a packed, hushed courtroom and crossed in front of the jury to take the stand.

  She had fortified herself today with thirty milligrams of Valium and thirty of Dexedrine, fifty percent more than her usual morning dose. She had washed the medicine down with a two-ounce shot glass of vodka.

  She had never, despite fourteen years as a performing actress, felt less sure of the effect she was about to make. She was wearing a navy Galanos with Barbara Bush pearls. Her mouth was dry, her skin on fire, her heart thumping so hard she couldn’t hear anything else, and the light in the courtroom seemed to dip in rhythm to each heartbeat that rocked her.

  Dear God, she prayed soundlessly, just get me through this and I swear I’ll never break another contract, I’ll never sleep with another man I’m not married to, I’ll never take another drink or drug.

  “How many abortions did you procure for your daughter?” the defense attorney asked.

  Leigh jumped to her feet. “That’s a lie.”

  The judge directed her to answer the question.

  Leigh sat. “Nita never had an abortion.”

  “Did you always give your daughter cocaine for Christmas?”

  Leigh looked out at the courtroom. From the front row of the spectators’ section, Xenia Delancey watched her with slit-eyed hatred.

  “You’re lying again,” Leigh said.

  The judge directed her to answer the question.

  “Nita didn’t take drugs.”

  “How many lovers did you share with your daughter?”

  “You’re lying and you’ve lied from the start of this trial.”

  “Objection.”

  “Every word you’ve said, every question you’ve asked, every glance and shrug you’ve directed at the jury has been an attempt to defame my daughter.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Witness will limit her response to the question.”

  Leigh had a panicky sense that the walls of the courtroom were slanting in on her.

  “How many lovers,” the court stenographer read from the trial record, “did you share with your daughter?”

  There’s got to be a way to answer this, she thought.

  “My daughter and I loved many people in common. We never shared a lover. The only lover Nita ever had is the man who took her virginity, and he’s on trial here today.”

  “Objection.”

  “Jury will disregard the witness’s response.”

  But they didn’t disregard it. Thirty-two days after the trial began, following seven hours’ deliberation, the jury of seven men and five women found James Delancey guilty as charged.

  “We did it, toots!” Leigh’s husband sang out. They celebrated the verdict by sending the chauffeur to score eight grams of coke and four boxes of David’s macadamia chocolate chip cookies.

  Four days after the verdict, at three-thirty in the afternoon, California time, two bodyguards didn’t exactly walk her and didn’t exactly carry her but somehow managed to stand her up in front of the crisp, sober, smiling redheaded nurse at the admissions desk. Fortified with what she swore to God would be her last eight vodkas ever, Leigh Baker picked up a squirming pen and signed herself into the Betty Ford Clinic.

  TWO

  Tuesday, May 7

  “THE KING WENT INTO the garden the next morning, and he saw …” Leigh lowered the picture book.

  On the floor four feet from her the child was playing with his battery-operated toy xylophone. Each time a key lit up he pressed it, and a note sounded. The result after he had pressed enough lit-up keys was a tune. Until six months ago the xylophone had known a variety of tunes, but something had happened to the wiring and the only tune it seemed to know nowadays was “The Happy Farmer.”

  For the last half hour the child had shown no awareness at all of Leigh or the fairy tale, but he seemed to realize she’d stopped reading. He turned his head and at last she had his attention.

  “Can you guess what the king saw?” Leigh said.

  The child gazed up at her, his hair spilling out around his head like a frazzled black helmet.

  “Do you think the king saw the blackbird?”

  The child screwed up his face.

  “Do you think the king saw the gazelle?”

  The child was thoughtful.

  “Then what did the king see? I bet you already know.”

  The child shook his head.

  “Yes, you do know,” Leigh said. “That’s why you’re smiling.”

  “I’m not smiling,” the child said.

  Leigh’s heart gave a jump inside her chest. He’d said an entire sentence. He hadn’t said an entire sentence for how long now—almost two weeks. “Oh, yes, you are smiling. I can see the smile right there.” She reached out and touched the corner of his mouth.

  He burst into giggles.

  She opened the picture book again. “The king went into the garden the next morning, and he saw that the snow had vanished and all the queen’s—” She peeked around the edge of the book. “And all the queen’s what?”

  “Roses!” the child shouted.

  Leigh stretched the moment. She peered into the book with a baffled look, then back at the child with a disappointed look, then back at the book. “You’re right!”

  Something skimmed across the child’s face, and he opened his mouth and let out a high, wild, rippling laugh.

  “All the queen’s roses were in bloom,” Leigh read. “And the kingdom rejoiced, for the spell of the evil wizard had at last been broken.”

  Now the child was watching her closely. He had the look of a solemn deer.

  He was six years old. Nothing but life had been given to him: he had had to struggle for every ounce he possessed of humanness. His name was Happy, and Leigh was as proud of her association with this child as she had been of any friendship in her life.

  “The king said to the prince, ‘You have vanquished the wizard, and you shall have your reward. Whatever you wish I shall grant you.’ The prince said, ‘I wish the hand of your daughter the princess in marriage.’”

  Leigh felt morally inferior to Happy. He existed like a tree or a rock or a flower, without troubling the universe. She felt he had a great deal to teach her.

  “The king blessed the royal pair, and decreed seven days of celebration. At the end of seven days the prince married the princess. And …” Leigh closed the picture book. “And can you guess what happened after that?”

  Happy shook his head.

  “Oh, yes, you can. The prince and the princess lived …”

  “Happily ever after!”

  “You’re right!”

  Happy giggled and began slapping his fists on the xylophone.

  The front door slammed. A moment later Happy’s father strode into the living room.

  “Happy and I just finished a story,” Leigh said.

  “Good.” Ruddy-faced and military with his bristling crew cut, Luddie bent down and hugged the boy.

  Happy stopped moving. Stopped laughing. Completely stopped.

  Why is he always so quiet around his father? Leigh wondered. Why does he just click off when Luddie comes into the room?

  “Coffee?” Luddie offered.

  She looked at her watch. “Sure. I have a little time.”

  She went into the kitchen and helped Luddie load up the coffee maker.

  “How’s Waldo?” Luddie said.

  Leigh shrugged. Waldo Carnegie was the man she’d been living with since her detox, and Luddie had an annoying habit of saying she’d exchanged one dependency for another. “Waldo’s okay.”

  “You should leave him,” Luddie said. “Really. What do you get from him?”

  Leigh sighed. Every now and then Luddie got on this refrain, and she hated it.

  “Money?” he said. “You’re working again. You don’t need money. Companionship? The only time you two even have dinner together is when he’s giving himself a birthday party and inviting half the planetary me
dia. Do you two even sleep together?”

  “Come on, Waldo is a hardworking, decent human being.”

  “Okay, in minuscule ways, he’s a mensch.”

  She followed Luddie back into the living room. They dropped onto the canvas-covered sofa.

  “Why don’t you just admit you don’t like my friends?” Leigh said finally.

  Luddie shrugged. “It’s not that I dislike them. I’m only asking why you have to have these particular friends? For instance, why these two gals you’re having lunch with tomorrow? Why if you can’t stand them do you agree to meet them?”

  “Because I grew up with them. They’re part of me.”

  Happy tapped out three notes on his xylophone. The sounds hovered in the air like dust motes.

  “They aren’t necessary to you,” Luddie said. “You’ve always got the option of detaching. If they live in burning houses, it doesn’t mean you have to go up in flames with them.”

  “Why are you always tearing my world down, Luddie?”

  “What do you want me to do—ask for your autograph? Get it through your head that no one’s going to love you till you learn to give yourself a little unconditional love.”

  “What the hell is unconditional love?” she said.

  “What do you think I give you?”

  “Luddie, I’m not you. I haven’t got it to give.”

  “Bullshit. What did you just give my son? What do you give him two times a week?”

  “I play with him.”

  Luddie fixed her with the manic, electrifying blue of his eyes, “That is as hands-on and unconditional as love can get. You’re here for him when he needs you.”

  “So are a lot of other people. I’m just a couple of hours a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.”

  Luddie shook his head and sat there for a long, silent moment appraising her. “Not only would I not lift a finger to help you when you sell yourself short like that but I wouldn’t lift a leg to piss on you.”

  “You put it so agreeably, Luddie.”

  “You make choices in life every goddamned minute you breathe. Not making a choice is still choosing. It’s a loser’s choice, but it’s a choice. Recognize it. You chose to be a drunk, and you chose to stop being a drunk. You chose to enter AA, and the latest I heard, you choose to stay in AA. You chose me to be your AA sponsor, and you can tell me to go to hell anytime you want. You chose to live with a self-important billionaire eunuch, and God knows why, you choose to keep doing it. You chose to have lunch tomorrow with a political fanatic and a drunk, and you can still pick up the phone and cancel.”