Present Tense

by Gil Hogg

  “You all right now, Mom?” she asked, finally.

  “Of course I’m fine! Don’t stand there staring at me, please. Go and get a cookie from the kitchen. Only one.”

  Rosemary, the shrewd one, appeared to replace her sister, her head leaning against the door frame. “Why are you dithering about, Mom?”

  I sank onto the bed, my hands in my lap, my eyes on the copper beech on the lawn, riffling in the wind. I reasoned that even if Chadwin was the Chadwin, he was now a mature man with an influential wife and a responsible job. What could I ever have to fear from such a person?

  “I’m not dithering,” I said, as resolutely as I could.

  “Really?” Rosemary said, raising her eyebrows and poking out her tongue in disbelief.

  This was how I stumbled forward to that meeting at the Abbott’s Point clubhouse.

  2

  That night after seeing Chadwin again, I untangled myself from Greg in our bed, and lay rigid, remembering events that I never ever wanted to recall.

  Fifteen years had passed since the stiflingly hot summer day when I was a witness at the Westchester County Court, at Yonkers, New York for the prosecution of Dwight Chadwin and Duane Schultz, on charges of forcible rape and assault.

  I went to court that day thinking that this would be an end of the pain, and I could start forgetting. My sister Grace, aged eighteen, wasn’t in court. She was a patient in a psychiatric hospital. I hadn’t fared so badly as my sister. I still had a brace on my neck to keep my jaw-line straight. The bandages were not long off my nose and left cheek. The deep bruising was going, leaving a yellow stain which the doctor said would go too, eventually. But my nose would never be the same. The bone, and the cartilage in the bridge had been smashed, and there were medical difficulties in setting my broken jaw.

  After I had known Greg for a while, he took my head in his hands one day, and said my face was beautifully irregular. I told him I’d been in a car crash. I was clear in my mind that it wouldn’t help to tell Greg about Chadwin then. I didn’t rule out ever telling him. I just didn’t want to pollute a pure and decent and loving relationship with a vile event of the past. And I certainly hoped that the need to tell would never arise.

  It’s probably not surprising that Chadwin didn’t recognise me at Abbott’s Point. The face of a woman in her mid thirties, compared to the face of a nineteen-year-old girl he saw for perhaps half an hour, and then wearing a neck-brace in court, all those years ago.

  I remember that the corridors of the court building smelled with the sourness of sweaty, depressed people. They moved woodenly, enclosed in their separate veils of worry. My persistent enquiries from officials located Mr Bronstein, the Assistant District Attorney who was going to try the case. I knocked at the door of counsel’s room, and eventually he came out, blinking.

  “Ah, yes, Miss Reynaud,” he said, trying at first I think, to fit me into his crowded morning.

  Then he examined me with a penetrating look. “How are your injuries…?”

  “Nearly better. I’ll soon have this thing off.”

  He took me to an interview room, windowless, with brown stained walls, and a flickering fluorescent light. He was intense and nervy. He had bitten fingernails, and a low, sensitive voice.

  “Look, Miss Reynaud,” he said, without any preliminaries, other than to point to a chair. “I’ve been reviewing the evidence, and talking to counsel for Chadwin and Schultz.”

  He paused, held my stare with his watery eyes, and I got the idea that he was preparing me for something, not actually asking my approval, but wanting it.

  “We can get a guilty plea to assault, but if we press the rape charges, it’s going to be a full trial in front of a jury, and you’re going to get a hard time under cross-examination.”

  “I don’t mind that. I can only tell what happened.”

  “It’s an ordeal, Miss Reynaud, believe me.”

  “It can’t be worse than I’ve been through!”

  Bronstein was in his early thirties. Hard work showed in the permanent furrows in his brow, and his skin pallor. Thin black hair straggled across his scalp. I suppose he had tried a lot of cases. His sympathy for me was swamped by his cynical knowledge of court procedures. He gave me a sincere look that seemed genuine, and sat down in the chair beside me.

  “It’s an ordeal of a different kind, Miss Reynaud,” he said, gesturing feebly to try to cover so much that was too complicated to explain, and glancing at the clock on the wall. “The lawyers for the accused men are very sharp…”

  “Are you afraid of them?”

  “I can’t stop them taking you apart, Miss Reynaud,” he said stiffening.

  “Let them try.”

  “They may look like your daddy…”

  “My father’s an unemployed auto-worker.”

  Bronstein sighed and thumbed his file distastefully. “What I’m saying, Miss Reynaud, is that I can’t get convictions for rape. The evidence isn’t there. And I don’t want to put you through an ordeal.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying Mr Bronstein. One guy raped Grace. The other raped me. And they beat us up!”

  Art Bronstein looked at the clock again. He was in a hurry. He now seemed to have half a mind on me. He mumbled something about other witnesses to see. He looked uncomfortable, as though he had indigestion.

  “I know, and I believe you. I think it’s a terrible case. But I have to prove it. Your word alone won’t do it.”

  “The doctor said it was rape.”

  “No, he did not,” Bronstein said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “The doctor confirms that you and your sister had bruising and abrasions in the area of the vagina, and that you were sexually penetrated very roughly.”

  “Isn’t that enough?” I asked, incredulously.

  “No, Miss Reynaud, it isn’t. The doctor will have to admit, if pressed, and he will be, that the injuries could be consistent with the kind of struggling which happens between consenting parties.”

  “Mr Bronstein that is … complete rubbish!” I said, crying now.

  Bronstein nodded sagely, a man who had been through a version of this dialogue more than once.

  “Let me tell you, Miss Reynaud, that many young women get injuries similar to these because they neck for hours on a park bench, or in the back of a car, performing contortions in awkward places, wrestling with belts and buckles and tight clothing, and eventually consent to sexual intercourse.”

  “Chadwin raped me. And Shultz raped Grace, and she couldn’t say a word!”

  Bronstein went on evenly. “And some people have sex roughly, when the woman isn’t lubricated, and there may be medical evidence of internal abrasions, but it doesn’t necessarily amount to evidence of rape.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling the wet lines down my cheeks.

  Bronstein patted my arm encouragingly. “I understand. I believe you, but…”

  “What about Grace?”

  Bronstein riffled his papers to find Grace. “She’s part of the problem. We need her evidence. She hasn’t been able to make a statement. May be in hospital indefinitely.”

  “But what do you expect, Mr Bronstein? She’s been frightened nearly to death!”

  Bronstein traced the lines of a report with the chewed fingernail of a thick, white forefinger. “Your sister’s mental condition is documented before the incident.”

  “She’s autistic. This punk put her in hospital.”

  “I realise that, but the law doesn’t presume your sister is in hospital because of what Schultz did to her. She was already a sick girl.”

  “Surely it’s obvious after what she went through.”

  “Not to the law,” Bronstein said, mildly.

  “What’s the law for, if not to protect people like Grace?”

  Bronstein ignored me and pressed on. “Grace isn’t in hospital because of her physical abrasions. We can’t tell whether her mental condition is a result of what Schultz did to her. T
he doctors can’t say. She can’t talk to us.”

  “God! It’s plain!”

  There was a long pause. Bronstein looked at me apologetically, his upper lip damp, and the growth of blue-black hairs on his hastily shaven cheeks casting his face in shadow. I could see it was no use pursuing my argument.

  Bronstein said he would arrange for a guilty plea on the assault charges. “Chadwin and Schultz will go inside for six months, something like that. I mean, the serious facts will come out in court, Miss Reynaud.”

  It seemed wrong to me but I knew nothing of the workings of the law. Bronstein looked hard at me, willing my agreement.

  “No.”

  “Whaddya mean?” Bronstein frowned.

  “I think the case should be heard by the jury.”

  Bronstein’s intelligent hazel eyes showed understanding – how an ignorant kid of nineteen had the nerve to say this. Then he brushed his palm over his scalp, and pulled himself back to his morning’s work. He sneaked another look at the clock.

  “Whatsamatter?” he demanded loudly, the brotherly manner slipping away. “Six months in the pen not enough?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

  “You want vengeance?” he asked, accusingly.

  “I want it to come out in court like it happened.”

  A cop in shirtsleeves came in with a note for Bronstein, and he stood up to go. He read the note, and turned to me, preoccupied.

  “Like it happened?” he echoed.

  “Yes. I want to tell the judge.”

  Bronstein moved to the door in his crumpled, shiny suit, the file jammed under his arm. He was on another case now, another problem, and the intimacy of our talk had gone.

  He turned back at the door, detached. “Yeah, that’s what everybody wants. Like it happened. But no can do. This is a court, Miss Reynaud, not a replay of a real life video. All we have is evidence. Evidence is never like it happened. Never.”

  I was in Court 2 when the People versus Chadwin and Schultz was called, hours later.

  The defendants were summoned to the dock, two very innocent young-looking men, in neat ties and dark suits, with white shirts, their hair plastered down.

  Rows of people sat in front of me, hunched and uneasy on hard seats. The room was dark-panelled and gloomy, the temperature over eighty. Moisture trickled under my arms. The air was stale with disappointment. On the bench a wrinkled old man in a gown, flapped like a black bat.

  The judge called counsel to approach him. Bronstein went forward, showing the bagginess of his suit, and the bald spot at the back of his head. The two defence attorneys had sleekly draped suits, and barbered layers of dark grey hair. The lawyers huddled with the judge like birds pecking at crumbs.

  When counsel returned to their seats, the judge announced that the cases would be dealt with together, on guilty pleas to assault. It was like a case which didn’t involve me and my sister. The judge said he was grateful to counsel for saving the court’s time, and he would hear counsel in mitigation, and give sentence.

  Bronstein stood up and gave a fluent outline of facts which I hardly recognised; it was neutral, uncritical, devoid of interpretation. Two girls had been picked up by the defendants in a car, and taken to a place where sexual intercourse had occurred between the girls and the defendants. The parties had argued, and consumed alcoholic liquor, and each of the girls had been assaulted. Bronstein detailed the injuries. In my case a broken jaw, and bruising to my face and vagina. Grace had bruising to her breasts and vagina. He said she had not yet been discharged from hospital, but was suffering from a pre-existing psychiatric disorder. Bronstein’s clinical words made the event sound unimportant and ordinary.

  After Bronstein, Chadwin’s lawyer spoke. He conjured up a scene which made you think you were in a scented garden, instead of a smelly court. He spoke of Chadwin’s family, how community minded they were, perfect American citizens. And Bucky, what a credit he was to them; president of his class at Maplehurst College, one of the best collegiate footballers of his day, destined in future without doubt to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University.

  When the lawyer referred to what happened on that fateful Saturday afternoon, he might have been talking about two women whom I didn’t know. Two clean-living and attractive young men made the mistake of giving two hitchiking girls from Tarrytown a ride. He implied that the girls were undiscriminating about who picked them up, and did this for fun. The men were not used to dealing with girls of this background. The lawyer put this gross proposition so delicately, that it seemed perfectly understandable. The men were innocents who were placed at a disadvantage. They concluded quite reasonably that the girls were willing to have intercourse. They all shared some drink which the girls showed a readiness to consume. The men were encouraged.

  What followed, the lawyer said, was deeply regretted by Chadwin. It was a momentary loss of self control which was unforgivable, but understandable. His client had lost his temper when Loren Reynaud, who was drunk, bit his tongue.

  I rose slowly to my feet to protest that there were so many lies, but my voice was dry in my throat. The people behind were muttering at me to sit down. The police orderly came down the aisle, gesturing at me to sit, or leave. I sank back on the seat.

  The other lawyer followed in the same vein. You would have thought that Duane Schultz was preparing to take holy vows. He had intercourse with Grace Reynaud with her full consent, and when the argument between Chadwin and her sister occurred, Grace had become aggressive. All Schultz was doing was to defend himself against her, and he had no intention of using force that bruised her breasts. He very much regretted what he had done. The lawyer was very careful to emphasise that Grace had seemed to Schultz to be in every respect a perfectly healthy girl. Shultz couldn’t be held in the slightest way responsible for the disability which kept her in hospital.

  The speeches shook me. I felt like shouting out, but my head was a jumble of words. What was being said was so unbelievably distorted and wrong.

  When the judge began his sentencing speech I realized, with relief, that he was angry. His eyes were wide and accusatory in his dark face. He had seen through the fine words! He had experience. He saw it from a different angle.

  “You behaved like wild brutes!” he said in a raised voice to Chadwin and Schultz. “You cruelly beat up two young women whom you should have respected and protected. It doesn’t matter what part of town they come from!”

  Chadwin and Schultz were buffeted by the storm of words as they faced the judge. The atmosphere of an unfortunate, boyish incident, which their lawyers had created, had vanished. The smirky dimples at the corners of their mouths had been replaced by gritted teeth.

  I brought my mind back to what the judge was actually saying. Now, suddenly, he had changed his tone. The wrinkled old man on the bench had switched from savagery to benevolence, like an actor auditioning for a part, one moment fierce and threatening, the next wise and generous. It was as though he had thought it was necessary to scare Chadwin and Shultz, or give the journalists a headline for the local papers, and that was all done now.

  “I have to take into account your clean records, the excellent family backgrounds you both have, and your promising future, which leads me to conclude that you won’t offend again,” he said, with a slight smile.

  “I have to note that the young women went with you willingly, in circumstances where you had grounds to assume that they were prepared to have sexual intercourse…”

  “No!” I shouted.

  I couldn’t control myself. The pile of untruths had mounted so high.

  “Quiet!” the court orderly said in a ringing tone.

  “It’s not true!” I said, standing up as a meaty, bare-armed police officer advanced aggressively down the aisle towards me.

  People turned round and stared at me, a girl with a neck brace on. The judge continued his soft speech, taking no notice.

  “The young women had been drinking, and that must cas
t confusion over their words and actions…”

  “It’s a lie! A lie!”

  The police officer pushed the people near me aside, dug his fingers into my arm, and hauled me bodily into the aisle.

  “You wanna contempt charge?” he hissed.

  The officer jostled me to the back of the court, by the swing doors.

  “I should send you both to be locked away,” the judge was saying in a deeper tone, reverting for a moment to his irate citizen pose.

  “Let me hear this please,” I begged the cop.

  The judge growled on in a monotone. “But in the circumstances, I’ll suspend conviction and sentence, subject to you both being placed under strict supervision for six months on a community service programme. In addition you are each ordered to pay a two thousand dollar contribution to the costs of the case. If you don’t comply with the conditions of the programme you’ll return to this court, and I’ll enter convictions and sentence.”

  “No!” I yelled, and the cop opened the doors, and pushed me into the hall.

  I was almost fainting in the crowded hall when Bronstein found me. He placed a warm hand on my shoulder, and pleaded with me to try to understand. His voice was gentle, full of real sympathy.

  “The case has been dealt with now. It’s over. Go home Miss Reynaud, and try to forget.”

  “All over?” I choked, my chin sticking in the neck brace.

  Bronstein rubbed his forehead uncertainly. “Look, I didn’t think the old man would impose community service. I think he completely misjudged it…”

  Just then, Chadwin and the others, the lawyers, parents, brothers and sisters, came sweeping through the doorway from the court, their heads up, disdainful of the grubby crowd which loitered in the hall. Two young men with their hands in their pockets slouched behind the rest, satisfaction smeared across their baby-smooth faces. The phalanx went past me looking straight ahead, as though they could discern the pleasurable future which lay before them, and I guessed they could.