Absolute Brightness

by James Lecesne

  But then suddenly, on the third day, something happened. Ms. Fassett-Holt asked if she could approach the bench. Mr. G joined her, and together they stood before Judge Gamble with their backs to the courtroom. We waited. Shortly after that there was a recess. I knew something was up because when Mr. G sidled up to us, he didn’t look good—his face had gone ashen and his eyes seemed sunk into his head. Then, after a lot of hemming and hawing, some discussion about the introduction of new evidence, and a fair amount of complaining about the inadvisability of calling a witness to the stand without first doing an interview, he explained to us that Ms. Fassett-Holt was simply making a very desperate, last-ditch attempt to save her client’s life by calling me to the stand.

  Just then a weaselly looking guy in a gray suit elbowed his way through the crowd, came up to me and asked if I was Phoebe Hertle. I was still reeling from Mr. G’s announcement, so I barely nodded, but it was enough to make the guy hand me an official-looking piece of paper, which Mom swiped out of my hand before I could get a good look at it. It was a document that said I was to appear as a witness.

  The next hour or so was pretty much a blur for me. I do remember that Deirdre tried to improve my overall presentation by restyling my hair and makeup.

  “Basically, you want your eyes to pop, up there on the stand,” she told me. This was one of the handy catchphrases that Deirdre had picked up since enrolling in Roberson’s Beauty Academy in Asbury Park. I just sat there thinking about Leonard and wishing that he’d lived long enough to witness Deirdre’s change of attitude and her dexterity with a mascara wand.

  “Don’t make her look too much like a tramp,” Mom said, which I believe was her way of getting Deirdre to tone down the eye shadow and make me look more like a model citizen.

  I said nothing. I was still getting used to the fact that I was about to become a player in an actual court trial.

  Of course, if I had known that I was going to be called to take the stand, I would have worn an entirely different outfit and I certainly would have fixed my hair in a style more fitting for a witness. The worst part, however, was how they used me, or how Travis let them use me, in order to make it seem like maybe the case was not as airtight as it was. Ms. Fassett-Holt did just what she had to do in order to cast a reasonable doubt over the proceedings. That was her job, but clearly Travis had had a hand in it. Was it his idea, I wondered, or did Ms. Fassett-Holt just happen to have a sudden brainstorm at the eleventh hour, a brainstorm that involved me?

  Travis didn’t look up from the table when I took the stand and put my hand on the Bible. And he never looked over at me while Ms. Fassett-Holt was grilling me about my whereabouts on the evening in question. Nor did he look up when I explained that, yes, I knew the defendant. But, no, it would not be accurate to categorize our relationship as romantic. Definitely not.

  Did Travis see his lawyer smirk at that? I wouldn’t know. I was too busy sweating under my oversize cable-knit and side glancing at the jury box. Did he notice how Ms. Fassett-Holt turned toward the jury and shared her bemused expression with them, like they were her private little army of confidants? She had their attention. Finally. How happy she must have been. And who told her, I wonder, that Travis and I had kissed? Who besides Travis and I knew that he had once discovered me standing in his backyard trying to get his attention after midnight by throwing stones at his bedroom window?

  “I didn’t mean to break the window. That was an accident.”

  Travis had definitely told her about that.

  But still he didn’t look up to see my expression when Ms. Fassett-Holt asked me point-blank if I had ever been inside the shed, which was situated in the Lembeck backyard.

  “No,” I told her. “I didn’t even know there was a shed.”

  I saw where she was going with this. She was suggesting that I could very easily have planted the rope in the shed, the rope they later found linking Travis to the murder.

  “I told you, I didn’t even know there was a shed.”

  Travis also didn’t look up when Ms. Fassett-Holt asked me to explain to the court what I was doing in the Lembeck backyard in the first place. She didn’t seem that satisfied with my answer. But then maybe she never had a cousin who was murdered, maybe she never had to go down to the morgue with her mother to identify a body and then return home feeling bad because she hadn’t been a good-enough friend to that body when it was alive. Maybe she didn’t understand that sometimes a person needs to reach out to someone who won’t ask a lot of stupid questions, but instead will just place his hand gently on her breast and tell her it’s all right. Ms. Fassett-Holt wanted it to seem like a romantic thing between Travis and me, like a sex thing. She wanted details about our “prior date,” as she called it, on the Fourth of July.

  “It wasn’t a date,” I told her. “It wasn’t, like, planned or anything. It just happened.”

  “Yes, but you kissed on that occasion. Isn’t that right?”

  If Travis had been looking up at this point, he might have seen a lot. He might have seen me blush, for instance, and if he’d turned around in his seat, he might have seen my mother take a deep breath and turn her head toward the ceiling, which is her way of appealing to a higher power and at the same time registering her exasperation with what’s going on here on earth. She didn’t like where this was going any more than I did. But what could we do? Of course, though I was trying desperately not to look over at Travis, I couldn’t keep myself from looking at him. How could I not? Ms. Fassett-Holt couldn’t have known about the kissing unless he had told her.

  “But you kissed.”

  She said it again. And how was I supposed to respond? I mean, there are laws about perjury.

  “Yes, we kissed.”

  I hated her and I hated her cheap royal-blue Ann Taylor–knockoff double-breasted suit with its black plastic buttons and sewn-up pockets. She was like a bad actress on an episode of CSI.

  “Is that all you did? Kiss?”

  “Yes, that’s all we did.”

  “And yet wasn’t there another date?”

  “It wasn’t a date. He gave me a ride.”

  “Did you kiss then as well?”

  “Yes.”

  She then asked me if perhaps I felt “spurned” by the defendant when there hadn’t been a follow-up to our first date. Spurned? Who says spurned? Spurned isn’t a word people use anymore. Someone should have told her. When I sarcastically repeated the word “spurned” back at her, I instantly sensed the jury beginning to shy away from my version of the story. I was a hostile witness who was actually turning hostile. But really—spurned? Characters in novels by Brontë feel spurned. Edith Wharton heroines actually get spurned. Those of us in the twenty-first century get dumped. Maybe we feel bad about it and sit at home reading trash novels, eating too many peanut butter snack packs while cursing the guy in question; but we don’t usually plant phony evidence in a backyard shed or try to frame anyone for crimes they didn’t commit.

  “And the money clip?” she asked me. “It was you who found the money clip. Isn’t that right? Tell me about that.”

  So I told her. I told her about that day at the mall when Leonard came running up to me all hysterical, because Travis and Curtis had stolen the money and the clip from Leonard. I explained how the clip was Leonard’s most prized possession, and that he never would have parted with it. Ever. I told her how that day at the mall Curtis accused me of being a lesbian just because I was hanging out with Leonard, and how I kissed Travis on the mouth to prove there was no danger of my being anything like a lesbian. It was all bravado, I explained to the court. Ms. Fassett-Holt raised her eyebrows at the word.

  It didn’t matter that all Travis and I ever did was kiss. My life was suddenly and inexplicably linked to his. We had become part of the same story, and thanks to Ms. Fassett-Holt, it was the kind of story that everyone on the jury could relate to—girl meets boy, girl kisses boy, boy spurns girl, girl tracks down boy and makes him pay. And no matter wh
at I said up there on that witness stand, Ms. Fassett-Holt made it seem as though I had planted the evidence out of spite, as an act of revenge.

  “I’m not asking you if you did it, Phoebe. I’m asking you if it was possible that you could have done it. After all, you had the opportunity.”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled. The witness will answer the question.”

  But I just sat there unable to speak, seething in my own truth and probably looking like someone’s picture of a spurned girl.

  I was wearing a skirt, and the wood under my bare thighs was literally heating up. Every person who’d ever sat there had agreed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Maybe some of them had lied outright to save their skins. Maybe some of them had told the truth like they were sworn to do. Maybe some of them had lied so often to themselves, they couldn’t tell the difference. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because as I sat there on the witness stand, the truth suddenly became as slippery as that seat under my bare thighs. Under the circumstances, a person can be made to say things that are technically true, but at the same time are not the God’s honest truth.

  “Yes, it’s possible.” And then I quickly added, “But I didn’t plant the rope. And I told you, I found the money clip on the dresser.”

  Travis was definitely not looking up at this point. He missed how Ms. Fassett-Holt turned to the jury and, with a half smile on her face, said, “Yes, as you were on your way out of the defendant’s bedroom. And what time would you say that occurred, Miss Hertle?”

  Why didn’t she just call me a slut and get it over with?

  Then came the part of Ms. Fassett-Holt’s performance that was truly remarkable. She had saved the best for last. She pretended that she had one more question for the witness, and if the court would indulge her, she would keep it short. Judge Gamble gave her the go-ahead, and Ms. Fassett-Holt straightened her jacket. There was a pencil in her right hand, which she kept twirling between her fingers like a tiny baton. She practically shouted the question at me from across the courtroom.

  “Phoebe, I just want to get this straight. You testified that you were able to retrieve Leonard’s money clip from Travis that day at the mall. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Just so we understand, can you tell us exactly how you got the clip from Travis?”

  The jury didn’t know me, and they had no reason to believe a word I said. As far as they were concerned, I was just a girl—possibly spurned—who was involved with both the defendant and the victim. I had been the link between the two, the common thread. I was also, it should be remembered, the person who, after allegedly finding the money clip in Travis’s bedroom, alerted Officer DeSantis that he could be a suspect in this case, a possible murderer. If the jury chose to believe me, it would be because of my character, because I seemed sincere, honest, trustworthy, a respectable citizen just doing her civic duty in apprehending and convicting a criminal. Ms. Fassett-Holt’s brilliance was in knowing how to hold up a light to my actions so that it would cast a shadow on my character.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear the question.”

  “I stole it.”

  “I’m sorry. Could you speak up?”

  “I said I stole it. I stole the money clip from Travis’s pocket.”

  After that, it didn’t matter what I said. I was definitely out of the running as a reliable witness or as a respectable citizen. As far as the jury was concerned, I was a girl who stole things, a girl who cried murder, a girl who kissed boys in the backseat of cars on the first date, a girl who vandalized homes in the middle of the night. Jersey Shore white trash. Standard issue.

  She had another question for me, and the way she announced it, I just knew it was going to be a whopper. I’d watched enough episodes of Law & Order to know the telltale signs.

  “Is it true that prior to Leonard’s murder you actually had a plan to smother him with a pillow?”

  “Objection!” called out Mr. G from across the room.

  Just ’cause no one catches you doing something wrong, well, that doesn’t mean you won’t suffer consequences, does it? It was Bethany again, her voice inside my head. Obviously, she was never going to leave me alone. It’s true—that day in the auditorium I had announced my wish to kill my cousin. But as Nana Hertle used to say, “Wishes are horses without riders.”

  “I didn’t mean it,” I cried. “It was like a joke.”

  Honestly, I can’t remember much about Mr. G’s cross-examination except the first few questions, which were about my relationship with Leonard. After that, it’s all a blank. Although I do know that I broke down crying. I cried hard. So hard I had to bury my face in my skirt. The pressure had been too much, and I cracked.

  I was told later that Travis actually did look up from the table when I started sobbing. I was sorry to have missed the moment, because if I had seen his face, I would’ve been able to tell if it was the evil in his heart or the goodness that made him steal a glance at me. Deirdre said she couldn’t tell which it was, because she was seated behind him in the courtroom, so she didn’t have a clear view of his expression. But even if she had, she told me, she doubted whether she would’ve been able to tell what he was thinking.

  “I don’t know him as well as you do,” she said, with the slightest trace of admiration in her voice. And then just so her point was made, she added, “Obviously.”

  As I made my way back to my seat, I heard Judge Gamble’s remarks signaling the end of the morning’s session and then the sharp crack of her gavel calling a recess until after lunch. That’s when it happened—Travis looked over at me. Our eyes met. My heart stopped, but I could still hear the thudding of blood in my brain, so I knew I wasn’t dead. He silently mouthed the words “Thank you” at me, and then he smiled and quickly turned away, back to whatever it was he was doing. I wanted to speak, but like in those nightmares when your whole life depends on your ability to scream and not a single word comes out of your mouth, I was speechless. I just stood there, paralyzed in the middle of the floor. Days went by, weeks, years, and there I was, still in that room, still wanting to say, Don’t thank me. Please, don’t thank me. And don’t you dare smile. I did nothing. Nothing for you to smile about. If I was helpful, it was not because I wanted to be. I was doing my duty, telling the truth, I was telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But the truth didn’t come out. Not really. Something else was revealed, some shade of truth that may benefit you in the end, but I didn’t make it happen. So don’t thank me.

  But like I said, not a word came out.

  My mother, realizing that I was stuck there in the middle of the floor, came to my rescue. She took my arm and gently led me away. It had been a rough day for me. I was like a shell of my former self, walking around with bad hair and the wrong clothes, unable to speak in full sentences.

  * * *

  The following day we were back in our usual courtroom seats waiting to hear closing remarks from both sides of the aisle. Judging from the expressions of the jury members, I’d say the lawyers each made worthy arguments and came to conclusions that supported their sides of the story. I tried to listen, but after my performance the previous day I couldn’t help feeling as though everyone were looking at the back of my head in a whole new way. I began to imagine that everyone was sitting behind me, thinking that I was Travis’s girlfriend. That’s her! they were saying to themselves. The girl who kissed a killer. Surely my picture would appear in tomorrow’s newspaper with a caption identifying me as “Phoebe Hertle, girlfriend of the accused.” My hair would be an honest wreck, because the photographers would have caught me as I hurried down the steps of the courthouse at the end of the trial. They wouldn’t have cared that I looked like someone ducking flying debris. And with that kind of publicity, I would naturally come to the conclusion that I’d better stay at home for the rest of my life rather than subject myself to more questions, misidentifications, and photographs in broad daylight. Eventually,
everyone would forget about the trial, but by that time I would be a very old woman, famous for never having left her house.

  When they were finished, Judge Gamble gave instructions to the jury and then made a speech about the seriousness of their decision and the importance of justice in the world.

  The jury didn’t even need twenty-four hours to come to an agreement on the verdict, and the very next day we were back in the court, ready to find out the fate of Travis Lembeck.

  A blond woman with a serious puffed-out hairdo, a set jaw, and expensive fingernails had been elected to speak on behalf of the jury. Judge Gamble reiterated the charge against the defendant (murder in the first degree) and then asked the blond woman how they had found the defendant. She stood there and responded in a quavering voice, “Guilty.”

  Judge Gamble said a few words and smacked her gavel down hard. The guards took Travis away, and that was that.

  As we were making our way out of the courtroom, the bailiff slipped us a note from Judge Gamble informing us that she wanted to have a word with us in her chambers. Mom, Deirdre, Uncle Mike, and I hustled ourselves through the chamber door and into a wood-paneled office with high ceilings. There was a big desk plunked down in the middle of the room, and we stood before it in our coats and scarves like overheated students who had been unexpectedly called in to see the principal for who-knows-what.

  Judge Gamble was a very small woman. Down from her legal perch and out of her judicial gown, she was not at all the imposing figure she projected in the courtroom. She had a surprisingly tiny head and very large feet. She had brown hair with gray streaks, and it was cut in a no-nonsense bob that fell just below her ears. Cute. She sat, or rather leaned, on a corner of her desk and offered us water or coffee. There were no takers. She reminded us of the date when the sentencing portion of the trial would take place and then took her glasses off to say that it was very possible that the jury could levy the harshest punishment on the defendant. No one else in my party knew what the hell she was talking about, so I acted as translator.