by Bill Rowe
“Yes, I said. Yes, I did read a lot about sexual abuse after it happened to me. And it gave me some comfort to know I was not entirely alone in my youthful overconfident stupidity and my years of shame and anguish. And I can assure you that the terrible feelings you yourself read about in the literature are absolutely true.”
“I am sure they are—in actual cases of abuse. But I put it to you, Miss O’Dell, that you were indeed in love with your stepfather as you have said, that naturally he did not reciprocate your love in the way you wanted in your confused twelve-year-old state at the time, that you felt he liked your beautiful younger sister more than you—we shall have evidence of that— and that you became pathologically jealous, and you fantasized at the time all the things you allege against him now, out of obsessive revenge or spite or a misguided sense of spurned love. I am not saying you don’t believe they happened—you quite possibly do believe them all—but if so, they are a product of your ill imagination at the time. Miss O’Dell, you are either lying or suffering from mental delusions. Tell us which it is.”
Rosie’s face turned red and she strained forward against the side of the witness box. “It did happen,” she shouted. “It all happened exactly like I said. I can describe to you something unusual about his genitals, if you don’t believe me. How could I do that if it didn’t happen?”
“Pardon?” said Dylan. “You can what? Describe his genitals? Something unusual? All right, describe away.”
Lucy Barrett was on her feet. “Objection, My Lady. The complainant’s description of Dr. Rothesay’s genitals is not relevant or useful one way or the other, as she may also have observed them in other contexts in a family environment.”
“Yes, that is what I would contend as well regarding what she actually observed, my Lady,” said Dylan. “But once again, I didn’t raise the matter. It was the complainant herself who offered to describe something unusual about the defendant’s genitals. She can’t be permitted in the interests of a fair trial to throw out a provocative statement like that and then just drop it, to the prejudice of my client.”
“Overruled,” said the judge. “We will hear her answer for what it’s worth, and I shall then decide on relevancy.”
“Thank you, My Lady. Miss O’Dell, what was unusual about Dr. Rothesay’s genitals?” Rosie’s hand was on her face and she remained silent. “Miss O’Dell? Please answer.”
She muttered, “His penis was huge, way too big, nearly twice as big as normal, I would say.”
“I see. And are you an expert in penises? I don’t mean to be flippant, but what is your standard of measurement regarding the size of penises?” When Rosie didn’t answer immediately, he went on, “How many penises, precisely, have you seen in your life?”
“Personally? In real life?”
“Yes, let’s stick to real life for a change.”
“Two. But I’ve seen more in medical books and magazines.”
“Two in real life. And whose might they be?”
“His and my boyfriend’s.”
“Thomas Sharpe’s?” Dylan turned and bored amused eyes into me. “And your comparison of Dr. Rothesay’s penis with Mr. Sharpe’s has led you to the conclusion that Dr. Rothesay’s is huge, nearly twice as big as normal.”
Rosie looked down. “Uh huh.”
Dylan turned to the judge. “My Lady, I am so convinced that all this is a fabrication of Miss O’Dell’s imagination that I ask to have Dr. Rothesay’s and Mr. Sharpe’s penises compared with each other. It may turn out that the contrast in their sizes is as Miss O’Dell suggests, in which case it may tend to corroborate her evidence. Or it may turn out they are more equal in size, in which case it may have the effect of weakening her credibility. I am willing to abide by the result, and I am sure my learned friend would be prepared to do the same.”
“I am prepared to do no such thing,” snarled Lucy Barrett. “The whole suggestion is ridiculous and scandalous. The result, whatever it turned out to be, would have no evidentiary value whatsoever. The perception of a prepubescent twelve-year-old girl being raped vaginally, orally, and anally every night is not comparable in any respect to that of a physically mature young woman. Similarly, her memory of the ugliness involved in the acts, the violation of her orifices by the organ in question, may have coloured her recollection in retrospect.”
“I am glad Ms. Barrett has come around to my view of the complainant’s defective perception and memory, and her lively imagination,” said Murray Dylan. “But on the point at issue, Miss O’Dell herself brought it up, and I am willing to abide by the result and whatever evidentiary value your ladyship may ascribe to it.”
“Mr. Dylan,” asked the judge, appearing to struggle to keep an earnest face, “how would you propose to make the comparison?”
“A professional photographer would take pictures of the respective organs in a state of erection while the length and girth of each was being measured with a plainly marked tape. That would be clear and graphic evidence for the jury to examine. And we would request the owners of the organs in question to identify them in the photos and to confirm the measurement.”
The judge looked gravely at Lucy Barrett, who responded, “This is nothing but a blatant attempt to embarrass the complainant and her boyfriend and drive a wedge between them. I object to every aspect of the scandalous proposal.”
The judge contemplated the matter for a moment. “I shall take the matter under advisement and consider it over lunch hour and give my ruling this afternoon. Mr. Sharpe, please stand.” I rose unsteadily. “You are Mr. Thomas Sharpe?” I nodded, and I was so unbalanced that the small movement of my head nearly threw me forward upon my face on the floor. “As you have now become a potential witness in this case, I would ask you to leave the courtroom and wait outside in the witness room until you are called or excused.”
I went to walk, but my legs wouldn’t work right. I lurched and then stumbled across the courtroom floor. My only physical sensation was the heat in my face. And mentally, except for my feeling of terminal mortification, I was senseless. At the door I grasped the handle before I was quite near enough, almost falling forward again as I pulled the door open. Then, misjudging its weight badly, I slammed it hard against the wall. I teetered through the doorway, off centre, banging my hip on the jamb. Outside in the lobby a few people were left from the earlier crowd. I didn’t know which way to turn. I took one step this way and one that way and a third another way before I heard a uniformed attendant ask, as if from the bottom of a well, “Can I help you, young fella?”
“No,” I croaked, “you can’t.” And I staggered for the door to the street.
Standing at the top of the steps by herself, smoking, was Suzy. She looked behind me to see who was with me and, seeing no one, asked, “What’s going on? Am I up already?”
I leaned against the wall. “Lord fucking Christ Jesus,” I breathed.
“What?” said Suzy. She pulled the door open a little and looked in. “They’re coming out.”
I straightened myself up and settled myself down and went back into the lobby. Among the people walking through the courtroom door came Rosie, her eyes darting about her. Seeing me, she strode over and seized my arm. “I’m so sorry, my love,” she said. “I didn’t mean to drag you in like that. I sort of lost my head and blurted that out. Tom, I’m so, so sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I muttered.
“What’s going on?” asked Suzy.
“Court is adjourned for lunch,” said Lucy Barrett. “Rosie was great on the stand, wasn’t she, Tom?” She grinned. “Don’t look so worried, the world is not coming to an end. The judge won’t go along with that. Rosie and Suzy, we’ll talk over sandwiches in my office. I can drop you off, Tom, if you’d like.”
“I’ll walk, thanks.”
As the others went out the door towards Lucy’s car, Rosie told them she’d catch up. She kissed me on the cheek and hugged me, whispering, “I love you very, very much.”
“M
e too,” I said for the sake of form in a robotic, monotone rasp. But all question of anyone loving anyone else seemed preposterously out of place right here and now.
Chapter 11
MY PARENTS’ CARS IN the driveway made me want to keep walking. Normally, neither of them came home to lunch. What fresh disaster had brought them both home today? I forced myself in. By way of greeting, my father shook a document at me and said in a tone that could easily be taken as holding me responsible, “Rothesay’s lawyer had your mother served with a subpoena. Rothesay!”
“The bailiff came to the hospital this morning,” said Mom, “and marched right into my office.”
“It requires Gladys Sharpe to testify,” said Dad, “as a witness for the defence.”
“What is going on, Tom?” asked Mom. “I thought Lucy had me down as a witness if she needed me, she said, to add something substantial to Rosie’s case. She didn’t say anything about the defence lawyer calling me.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” I said.
“I caught a report of the trial on the news driving home,” said Mom. “They said the cross-examination was blistering. This fellow Murray Dylan sounds like he’s hard as nails.”
“But he won’t be cross-examining you,” said Dad. “You’re his witness.”
“Oh, yes, right. I’m getting confused about whose damn side I’m supposed to be on here.”
“We’ll talk more about this tonight,” said Dad, rising to leave. “It’ll be all right, love.” He kissed and hugged Mom. But she had her hands to her face, her eyes on the floor, deep in thoughtful mode. “I’ll see you tonight, Tom,” Dad said with a tight mouth and mirthless eyes, more like a threat than a farewell. “Find out what’s going on with this subpoena, will you, and let us know.” Christ, what would he have been reacting like if they’d said they were going to measure his cock?
BEFORE THE TRIAL RESUMED that afternoon I mentioned to Rosie that my mother had been subpoenaed by Rothesay. Rosie replied that Lucy had just told her the same thing, and that she’d said she was not perturbed by it. Rosie made a what-do-I-know shrug.
An hour later, a court official came into the waiting room where I was sitting with Suzy, and said my name. I half expected him to continue with, “Take him out and measure him.” But he said I could go back into the courtroom now, I was not required as a witness. “Well darn that,” said Suzy, grinning and smacking her fist into her hand. The three girls must have had a grand old laugh over their lunch.
When I walked back in, Murray Dylan paused in his questioning to allow every eye in the court, full of merriment, to go to me. Low cackles rose from some spectators. For Rosie’s sake, I took my seat, trying to look as if it were not just a pleasure but a distinct honour to provide their comic relief.
I heard Rosie replying, “Perhaps I do strike others as the epitome of a happy, successful student in school and in my sports, but in truth not a day goes by that I don’t feel hollow and polluted, like a used and abandoned garbage can, empty but coated on the inside with a residue of filth.”
Dylan finished his cross-examination and Rosie answered a few questions from Lucy Barrett on redirect. “Then I fell back in love,” she ended, “recaptured my love with my boyfriend, Tom, and I am hoping that our love will overcome my horrible reaction to any intimacy. But unfortunately our love has not yet conquered all. And that is the dismal story of my life. Because of what my stepfather did to me when I was a young girl, I may never be able to express my love as I truly want to as a woman to the man I truly love.” When she stepped down from the stand and walked over to me, the courtroom stirred as if they had just heard a beautiful aria. She sat beside me and took my hand. Every eye in the jury was on her. Rothesay’s normally motionless head moved back and forth in weak and implausible denial. Jurors turned their eyes to him. Some glanced and looked away as if in pain. Others sustained a glower. Their faces said they were going to crucify that desecrater of this young innocent life.
The spell terminated with a growl from Murray Dylan: “Is Ms. Barrett going to call her next witness, or does she want to milk the moment of its sentimental pathos a little longer?”
Frowning at the insensitive brute she was up against, Lucy Barrett rose and called Susan Martin. Suzy recounted how, in school, Rosie had deduced correctly that she too had been a victim of sexual abuse and had told her of her own experience. Suzy’s narrative jibed with Rosie’s perfectly.
On cross-examination Murray Dylan elicited that Rosie had been subjected to many bullying attempts by Suzy. “I put it to you, Miss Martin,” he said, “that you and Miss O’Dell developed a relationship based on this: she approached you with a fabricated story of her own sexual abuse to pass herself off as a kindred spirit of yours, to win you over from enemy to friend.”
“You put that to me, do you?” said Suzy.
“Yes, Miss Martin, I do.”
“Well, if I weren’t in court, I’d tell you where to put that—where to shove that, is more like it.” The room howled with laughter. Judge Oona Ledrew asked for order and, with a smile, cautioned the witness to answer the questions rather than regaling the court with her personal view of their merit. Murray Dylan didn’t waste any more time on Suzy, and Lucy Barrett announced she’d be calling Janet Pretty, Rosie’s teacher in grade seven, who was flying in from Vancouver today, to testify tomorrow morning.
At home, I watched the suppertime news on the little black-and-white set I had in my room. The trial led off. Because cameras weren’t allowed to capture faces, twenty pairs of feet represented complainant, accused, jurors, witnesses, supporters. I recognized my own shoes alongside Rosie’s before the camera rose high enough to capture our clasped hands, identified by the reporter as “the complainant and her current boyfriend.” The reporter gave an account of Rosie’s and Suzy’s testimony, anonymously, ending with undisguised admiration for the “scathing cross-examination of nationally renowned criminal defence lawyer Murray Dylan.”
The announcer now said she was moving on to other news, and I sank back in my chair and closed my eyes in relief: nothing on Rosie’s contrasting cocks. “But right after the break,” the announcer went on, “we’ll have a lawyer’s analysis of evidence on the relative size of the private parts of the defendant and the complainant’s boyfriend.” I jumped to my feet. Pacing, waiting, I glimpsed my face in the mirror: wild-eyed with terror.
“Lawyer Ralph Johnson, tell us about the potentially explosive evidence,” said the interviewer, “that the pull-no-punches defence attorney Murray Dylan wanted the jury to see.”
“Yes, Jessica, the alleged victim attempted to show that she was intimately familiar with her alleged abuser’s private parts by testifying that his sexual organ was twice as big as her current boyfriend’s. Now the renowned Murray Dylan wanted to have photographs taken of the two aforementioned organs to see if the complainant was right or wrong about the huge difference in their sizes. But the prosecutor objected.”
“I could understand it better,” chuckled Jessica, “if the boyfriend jumped up and objected…”
“Heh, heh, heh, heh,” continued the legal analyst.
“But why did the prosecutor object?”
“On grounds of irrelevancy, and the judge agreed. Ergo, no phallic photos for the jury to compare and contrast.”
“What impact do you think the jury being excluded from interesting evidence like that might have on their verdict?”
“Jessica, I doubt that the effect will be huge or even tiny, no pun intended.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Good stuff, Ralph. Thank you very much for your lawyer’s inside analysis of the complex workings of an important criminal trial.” I sat there terrified at the prospect of ever venturing into school again.
The telephone rang. My mother shouted up that it was for me. “I’m very, very sorry, my love,” said Rosie. “I just saw that atrocious interview.”
“Let’s not sweat the small stuff, no pun intended.” There was no reaction at the
other end. I added, “A little self-deprecating humour there.”
“Oh God, Tom, I was so stupid.”
“How’d your meeting go with Lucy this afternoon?”
“Disturbing.”
“How come? She thought you and Suzy were great on the stand.”
“It’s not that. I’m concerned about your mother.”
“Mom is behind us all the way. Is Lucy afraid of something?”
“No, she’s delighted Dylan called her, because she thinks she can get testimony really helpful to our case from her under cross-examination. I’m not supposed to be telling you this. But Jesus, I can’t start having secrets from you at this stage. I know you won’t say a word. I’m worried about how your mother is going to feel about me after Lucy is finished with her. If I’d known—”
“Hey, Mom’s a big girl. The important thing is to get the truth out. She’s known that from the start.”
“I guess.”
“You sound a bit tired. Tell you what. Instead of getting together tonight, we should make an early night of it. You must be dead after being on that stand so long. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, my love, good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Rosie, you were really great on the stand today.”
“I hope it was good enough. Whatever happens, it’s unimportant compared to us. You are everything to me.”
“And you are to me too. Good night, my love.” I put down the phone. Shitting fuck. My mother! She’d rather be anywhere but in that court tomorrow anyway, and now here she was, being set up by my girlfriend’s lawyer for an ambush. And I couldn’t say a word of warning to her about it. For ten minutes my mind flipped between the disparagement of my penis today and the massacre of my mother tomorrow. Just how the hell had I gotten myself into this?
A knock came to my door. “Tom?” It was my mom, the sitting duck. “Aren’t you going to have your supper?”