by Noel Obiora
“You know that’s not true, right?”
“What’s not true?”
“That I’ve been exposed to publicity all my life. If anything, I’ve been shielded from it far more than most people. My family often finds out that we are going to be in the news before it’s published and are able to steer us away from reading it or finding out about it.”
“Oops. Sorry. That’s not what I was told.”
“I wonder what else they might have told you.”
“That you are a rather nice person…”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Her. Not him.”
“Melissa?”
“No, Candace.”
Amy looked puzzled.
“You don’t know who she is, do you?” Amy shook her head. “A college friend of mine. We were both military brats. She went into the intelligence services but left early after being injured and works as a security consultant for uber clients.”
“Like Thomas…” Amy said.
“Yes, there…finally, the elephant in the room.”
“He was never really in the room between us, as far as I was concerned. I’m sorry to have brought him up.”
“How have I spoken to you that was different from today?”
“You have always spoken to me like a subject to be given instructions and sent off on errands, not as someone who was emotionally relatable.”
“I get that a lot here, not just with you. Like I told you, I was a military brat. Work is work and then there is a time for everything else. Perhaps I had my defenses especially up for you, but there was never any animosity intended.”
“No, I didn’t think there was,” Amy said.
Kate stood up to leave. “Well, take care of yourself. If either of us were not here, they would replace us in a heartbeat, so don’t worry too much about this place when you’re not here.”
Amy looked up at Kate, this time sizing her up just as Kate had sized Amy up when they first met, and, like Kate, never caring whether it was obvious or not. She could see why someone might think that Thomas would be attracted to Kate. Amy also got up to leave.
•••
The day after their night out with Angela, Neda had called to tell Amy that Kenneth deserved to know it was the threat from Omar Jones and Paul’s father that was keeping them apart.
“But it wasn’t,” Amy had said. She had not told Neda that Kenneth’s father had visited her.
“It’s a good enough explanation for him. He thinks he did something wrong when he didn’t. This would let him off the hook,” Neda insisted. Much to her surprise, Amy agreed. Finally, Kenneth also stopped calling. Then her isolation truly began. Cut off from Kenneth and Thomas, distanced from Alana, unable to drink with Neda, and afraid of getting far too close to Angela before Edward made his intentions clear, her circle of confidants, already depleted after her last social disgrace, became nonexistent.
She had resisted doing a pregnancy test, fearing it would be positive and she could not tell anyone until the trial was over. Now she had to do one so she could take care of herself and whomever had taken residence inside her. Fate always throws her a dice of ironies, she thought, and began to cry in her car.
30
Season of Atonement
Amy took the test that confirmed she was pregnant and called Angela, who got on a plane the following day to be present when Amy told Alana, and she confirmed it also to Neda.
Neda joined Amy and Angela for lunch on Friday after Angela arrived. It was the only time she could see Amy that weekend because Amy had decided to drive home to tell Alana rather than tell her over the phone. Her decision to see Alana in person came out of her conversation with Kate after the visit with Rachel and Amber. It had felt so easy clearing the air with Kate once Amy made known her issues with the way Kate treated her. Going over all her meetings with Kate in her mind, even after Thomas confronted Kate, Amy realized so much of her angst with Kate came from motivations she presumed and ascribed to Kate without ever discussing or verifying them, even with Thomas or Melissa. Once she aired those motivations in that conversation in the conference room, she understood Kate better. This child inside her appeared to be pushing her to clear the paths of her life of any mines that were laid for her so that they would not hurt her child incidentally. It made her bold, if not fearless, to confront nemeses she preferred to ignore in the past, knowing they could not hurt a Wilson anyway, even if they dared. Suddenly, she realized they were hurting her, mentally. And they had been for so long. Every time she had chosen to ignore someone who approached her with a familiarity that presumed she was predictable, they had nonetheless extracted a measure of her brain matter, if only with stress. The Wilson name and resources could protect her from physical harm but not from mental harm. She had never thought of it in those terms and could not wait to confront Alana with it. Alana had taught her that to ignore them was to rise above them.
Neda picked up lunch for three downtown and drove to Amy’s apartment.
The three women were sitting over Neda’s take-out lunch when Alana called. Amy put Alana on a speaker, because she could not bear a conversation alone with her mother before telling her she was pregnant.
“Did you think about what we talked about last week?” Alana asked.
“Which part, Mom? What are you talking about?”
“What you were giving up for Lent…”
“Oh yes, I gave what you said some thought.”
“So, what are you giving up?”
“Guilt, can I give up guilt?” Amy said. Angela quickly covered her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing, and Neda’s mouth fell open without words. There was a protracted silence on the other end of the line. “Mother, surely the good Lord can take a joke from someone trying to starve herself for forty days and forty nights.”
“I’m more concerned about where the joke is coming from than how it is received,” Alana said.
“Seriously, Alana. Lent isn’t the time for righteous condemnation. Besides, I have never needed a mother’s love more —” Amy said and stopped as she was close to crying, much to everyone’s surprise.
“Are you alright?” Alana asked.
“I was going to call to tell you I’m coming to the Bay Area tomorrow.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“No, I just want to spend the weekend with you guys and Nana. I want to see Dad, too. I hope he’s not travelling.”
“No, he’s not.”
Alana suggested they both fast together, to seek discernment in their love lives.
“You mean discernment for me, between Thomas and Kenneth.”
“And for me with your dad.”
“I thought you guys shelved the divorce?”
“Well, he shelved it. But does doing that make him happy, or is he just going along to make your grandmother happy?”
“It doesn’t matter. He should find a way to make it what he wants.”
“That’s what I believe, too. I also believe that if you love someone, you give them a chance to find what makes them happy.”
Amy had never heard her mother espouse such an open-minded view, especially of marriage.
“Are you saying that divorce is fine with you now?” Amy asked, her voice appearing to crack again.
“No, of course not, honey. I don’t know what I’m saying. Why should I be the one with all the answers?”
“Because I don’t, Mommy. I was hoping someone had them,” Amy said slowly and began to cry, though she was not sure if she was crying for herself or for her parents.
Angela came from behind, hugged and held her as she shivered through bursts of sobbing.
“Honey, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Amy said, collecting herself.
“Are you really c
oming up tomorrow? Because if you don’t, I will have to come down.”
“I’m coming,” Amy said, and after a while added, “I’ll give up dinner and chocolate; I already gave up alcohol, so you should, too.”
“Oh, that is cruel!” Alana said. “I was going to do it with you.”
“I have a lot to atone for, Mom.”
“Don’t we all, dear,” Alana said before she begrudgingly agreed to the same, and Amy bade her goodbye.
“That was cruel,” Angela said. “I can search this apartment right now and not see a single chocolate, but your mother literally has chocolate everywhere, like it’s her youth that she’s holding on to.”
“And I have never seen you even buy one,” Neda said.
“You’ve never seen me miss dinner, have you?” Amy asked.
“Is that safe?” Neda asked, one hand unintentionally over her stomach. Amy shrugged, then buried her head on her lap and wept again.
After they had lunch, Amy returned to the office to see Kate.
“I’m in, if you still want me on the case,” she told Kate about People v. Jackson. “But there is something I must tell you first.”
“What’s that?”
“I gave Kenneth the insurance policy that would pay his attorney’s fees. After I found out that his clients did not have the money to pay him and were promising to do so over the course of his career.”
Kate smiled a more genuine smile than Amy had ever seen on her, with eyes glittering and a palpable energy flowing through her.
“I wanted to hear you say that; I knew already. I will sit in to help you, but all the ethical issues are now yours to deal with. Good luck.”
Part Two
31
War Room
On the far side of town, near the border of the city of Encino, Kenneth and Cassandra pored through boxes of papers and cases in Cassandra’s living room alcove. Systematically, they moved from the beginning of the trial to the middle of the trial, throwing up ideas and playing the roles of witnesses.
They first looked at the jury selection process, which Kenneth thought would be a good idea to entrust to Omar Jones, being an early and important visible role in the proceeding, and one where Omar’s trial experience surpassed his and Cassandra’s. Nancy had pleaded with him to involve Omar in the trial, if he could, to appease Mallam Jackson. Kenneth had already decided to do so, but only on the condition that Omar agreed to whatever rules and conditions Kenneth set for the trial. Omar agreed. A jury consultant had given them a report on the kind of jurors who would likely acquit Paul, and if the pool lacked such jurors, then the next in order of preference, and if the pool lacked those, they had another level of preference. The jury consultant’s recommendation ran contrary to what Kenneth would have done otherwise.
They made a point to keep calling Goldie “Footsie” in preparation for doing so at trial and contemplated the order the DA would introduce witnesses.
“They usually start with the police, and proceed chronologically from the discovery of the crime, unless they have something more memorable and dramatic like the 911 call in the O. J. trial. They don’t have anything that dramatic in this case.”
“Conrad Wetstone would be their most dramatic for discovering the body,” Kenneth said.
“But he is also our greatest challenge, so they won’t start off with someone so difficult. Plus, they know we obtained a computer simulation of Footsie’s apartment and they are sure it is for him. So, they know we are prepared.”
Large pictures of Footsie’s apartment, every room, every window, the kitchen, and the bathroom where her body was found, were placed against the walls in the alcove. An aerial picture of West Los Angeles hung on Cassandra’s living room wall with the location of Paul’s club, the ATM he used, and Footsie’s apartment complex marked.
Cassandra had three law students helping them on the case. A petite African American girl with dreadlocks; a young man in his early twenties who seemed to always be in dress pants, shirts, and patterned leather shoes; and a red head in her late twenties with a quick smile and brooding eyes. The students prepared a file for every witness and some tenants at the complex where Footsie lived. Each file contained information about each tenant’s alibi along with a general dossier, curriculum vitae, and criminal record if any. These preparations would take them into the weekend, sifting through treatises and old cases, anticipating objections, and arguing back and forth the motions they intended for suppressing evidence.
Kenneth reserved a suite for the duration of the trial at the Intercontinental Hotel, a few blocks from the criminal court building, to keep from having to return to Long Beach each day during the trial. He and Nancy checked into the hotel the weekend before the trial.
On the eve of the trial, the three defense lawyers had lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel and agreed on what each was supposed to do, including who would present certain motions, respond to certain objections, voir dire jurors, and even how they would sit at various times during the proceeding. Strangely, it seemed to Kenneth that Mr. Jones was looking forward to his role with enthusiasm.
If there was a moment when the mood of their team captured the weight of their responsibility for Kenneth, it was this time in the restaurant. Less than twelve hours to the beginning of trial, with the man who questioned his ability to represent Paul having just left them, Kenneth contemplated again what losing this case would mean. He noticed Cassandra looking at him intently.
“What’s going through that mind of yours?” Cassandra asked.
“I’m thinking it’s good we brought Omar in. He’ll help in dealing with Paul’s family’s expectations.”
Cassandra nodded.
“And you, what were you thinking?” Kenneth asked her.
“I was thinking how much your mother helped me finally understand you,” Cassandra said.
“What did she say?”
“She told me how she discovered a stash of Playboy magazines you had hidden in the basement when you were seventeen years old. Ever since you were eight, you’d buried your head in books, always alone in your room reading. But when you turned fourteen, fifteen, and she still was not noticing any teenage issues from you, she began to worry. Then she found your stash.”
“I was reading the articles,” Kenneth said.
“Yep, she said you actually said that, and she quizzed you on quite a few of the articles, which you answered correctly. I told her if there was a seventeen-year-old I would believe if he said that, it would have been you.”
“Thanks,” Kenneth said, avoiding Cassandra’s eyes.
“Never mind that. Anyway, she was already beginning to worry about you when she found them. It made her so uncomfortable that she went to see someone about you, find out if she needed to send you to your father. With no steady male role model in the home, she feared that you were emotionally repressed and worried that someone outside might have taken you under their wings.”
“It wasn’t the only time she worried about those two things. They were basically her constant refrain all my life.”
“Well, she really was worried. But the man, I assume he was a shrink…she kept calling him ‘the man.’”
“I know, right. God forbid Black people have to see a shrink, never mind all the bullshit they have to deal with on a daily basis in this country, most are more comfortable telling you they went to jail than that they went to a therapist.”
“Anyway, the man told her that you were none of those things. You escaped into books as a perfect foil for the harsh reality of losing your father in Vietnam and then finding out it was all a lie that was made up because the man did not have a relationship with you in the first place.”
“I remember the man. My mom never told me why she made me see him; I thought it was because she was afraid I would turn into a deviant as they used to say, but before then other kids were a
lready looking at me weird, and calling me queer. The man said they only called me queer because their vocabulary was so limited that the only word they had to describe others who weren’t like them was ‘queer,’” Kenneth said.
Cassandra laughed. “There was something else the man told her that she never told you,” Cassandra said.
“What?”
“He told her it may take another painful event or a harsh reality to bring you out of your world, and into our shared reality. A maturity of sorts. When your mother asked him what kind of incident that might be, he told your mother that she was the only complete good in your life, and her death might well be such an incident. So, she should not worry because when she is not here, you will be fine.”
“I don’t know about all that,” Kenneth said.
“Your mother said this case was that maturity. And she was glad that you did not have to experience a harsh reality or her death to allow her to see it while she was still alive.”
Cassandra could not tell it, but Kenneth was close to tears at that moment. He reached for his wine glass, and tried to force a smile, and drank some wine.
“I almost told her that losing Amy again was that harsh reality for you.”
He chuckled and seemed to choke a little on his wine, coughing.
32
A Familiar Name
Men carrying television cameras and microphones milled outside the courthouse, looking for people with any connection to Paul Jackson’s trial.
Nancy had arranged for Paul’s mother and sister to meet Kenneth and Cassandra at the Intercontinental Hotel instead of the courthouse. Kenneth and Cassandra wanted to tell the women what to expect. Omar Jones was with Mallam Jackson and his followers. They hoped he was doing the same.
“The beginning of a trial is a very technical affair. First, we lawyers bring motions to exclude evidence that we don’t want the jurors to see or hear. We do this when the jurors aren’t in the courtroom. Then we select jurors,” Cassandra explained.