The Hearing

by James Mills

  Books by James Mills

  NONFICTION

  The Underground Empire

  On the Edge

  The Prosecutor

  FICTION

  The Hearing

  Haywire

  The Power

  The Truth About Peter Harley

  The Seventh Power

  One Just Man

  Report to the Commissioner

  The Panic in Needle Park

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1998 by James Mills

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.,

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-57114-2

  To Jill

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  1

  Gus Parham felt as if he’d been pushed off a cliff. The air pressure changed, and along with it his orientation, perspective, priorities. Everything hurtled by, robbing him of breath and reason. He’d be dead in an instant.

  “So what that means, Judge Parham, is she’s alive. You want to meet her or not? If you want to meet her, there are certain conditions.”

  “Where? Where is she?”

  “Certain conditions, Judge Parham.”

  “May I see it again?”

  “Certainly.”

  So they watched the video again. How beautiful she was. Eleven years old, short black hair, slender, smiling, going somewhere and happy about it. He had never seen anyone walk like that. Head, shoulders, hips, legs—everything was in that walk, as if she were headed for a brick wall and knew, just knew, she could go right through it.

  Gus said, “What do you want?”

  “Withdraw.”

  “But … How will …” Mumbling, babbling. He was still falling.

  “I can’t hear you, Judge.”

  “I’m sorry. I just—”

  The man punched the eject button and removed the cassette.

  Gus said, “I’ll have to talk to my wife.”

  “Show her this?” He held out the cassette.

  Gus took it.

  The man opened his attaché case and handed Gus a manila envelope. “This too.”

  Gus took the envelope.

  The man said, “You’ve got three days. Close of business Monday, we have to know.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Alternatives. You won’t like them.”

  An hour later Gus sat with his wife in the kitchen of their rented house in Vienna, Virginia. It was smaller than the kitchen in their home in Montgomery. The walls were yellow and the table was round and small. They’d moved here three weeks ago when he’d been nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court. The confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin in a week. And now this. What would this do to Michelle? Their marriage was perfect, they had never stopped loving each other.

  She looked at him, worried. She could see it in his face.

  “Michelle …”

  “Gus, what is it? You look like someone died.”

  Alternatives. Television, newspapers, exposure, humiliation.

  He put the cassette on the table, reached across for both her hands, and said, “Michelle, I love you. I will always love you. No matter what.”

  “What is it, Gus?” Her eyes fixed on the video. “What is that?”

  Thirteen years ago, before they were married, she had said she was ending the pregnancy. He had believed her, for all those years. She had let him believe the lie—to save his feelings, out of love for him and their marriage, but a lie nevertheless. He understood, he loved her for taking all the pain on herself, but how would she react? He wasn’t sure.

  He stood. “Let’s go in the living room.”

  They sat on the sofa, still holding hands. Her face was dark, sensing trouble.

  “I’m afraid, Michelle, that when I say what I have to say there may not be a chance to tell you again how much I really love you.”

  She was staring into his eyes, scared to death.

  “Tell me, Gus.”

  He said, “Honey, I know you didn’t end the pregnancy.”

  Her fingers tightened around his hand, but her eyes did not leave his face. “Who … How do you know?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. There’s something else.”

  Her eyes went to the video in his other hand. “What is it?”

  He got up, put the video in the VCR, and came back and sat next to her with the remote in his hand.

  She hugged herself and shivered.

  Gus said, “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t feel well. I’m freezing.”

  “Do you want me to get you something?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Let me see it.”

  He pressed the button.

  She tilted her head forward, looking up, tentatively. The girl came on the screen, walking. Michelle didn’t move. Her face didn’t change. Short black hair, slender, smiling, determined. When the screen went blank and it was over, she said, “She’s very pretty.”

  Her face was frozen. Then she smiled, a thin, false smile he had never before seen on her face. She let out a small mirthless laugh. She laughed again. She put her head on her knees and laughed and laughed and laughed. There was more pain in the laughter than there would have been in sobs. Gus touched her arm. She jumped from the sofa and ran back into the kitchen. She cleared the dishes from the table, dumped them noisily into the sink, turned on the water, and began scrubbing blindly.

  He didn’t know what to say, what to do.

  Her hands full of soap and plates, she put her head back, took a deep breath, and released an almost inaudible shriek of pain.

  Gus grabbed her and she collapsed against him, gasping for breath, sobbing. He carried her to the bedroom, laid her on the bed.

  “Michelle, it’s all right.”

  She turned onto her stomach, buried her face in the blanket, and cried like a child. Gus dropped to his knees beside the bed, laid his arm across her shoulders, squeezed her, and pressed his cheek to her hair.

  Ten minutes later her breathing steadied. Thinking she had fallen asleep, Gus rose silently and went to a chair by the bed.

  Her face still buried in the blanket, she said, “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  She turned to face him.

  “Who knows where she is?”

  “The attorney who gave me the video.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Someone who doesn’t want me confirmed, doesn’t want me on the Court. He works with the Freedom Federation.”

  “So if you don’t withdraw they won’t tell us where she is.”

  “They’ll do worse than that, M
ichelle.”

  2

  Gus’s grandfather had made all the money, and his father took care of it. Gus thought that not having to make any himself had robbed his father of the joy of struggle and conquest, of his manhood. All he had to do was fight off the vultures, and spend, spend, spend—more money than anyone in the family could ever need for anything they could ever want. They spent wildly but quietly, observed only by others doing the same. Don’t let the common people see beyond the iron gates, tinted car windows, protective expressions of grace and breeding.

  Then Gus went to Harvard. Wow! Deep end of the pool, never learned to swim. Who were these people? Where had they come from? Across the hall, a Polish boy with a twisted, half-paralyzed face who picked his nose. Upstairs, an eighty-five-pound, pop-eyed anorexic girl who played the trombone, knew the Koran by heart, and beat everyone at poker. He was outside the gates, on the other side of the tinted glass, and the sights were shattering. Where had these people been all his life? He loved them.

  The one he loved most was called Michelle Bart. He met her his senior year. She was a freshman, eighteen, just arrived, beautiful inside and out. What would his mother say of a girl named Michelle? “Is that—is that French, dear?” And what could anyone make of Bart? Even more exotic, she was from Alabama. She was dark and rare. Sultry didn’t begin to describe it. Her words came out rich, warm, and damp. Just listening to her made him sweat. If she breathed on something, it began to grow. She breathed on him.

  He graduated, moved over to the law school. His destiny appeared to be money management. His father couldn’t go on forever, and Gus had no brothers or sisters to look after the family’s wealth. He and Michelle kept dating, fell in love. It was months before she went to bed with him. They were on a skiing weekend in Stowe. After dinner, at the door of her hotel room, the resistance crumbled. Nine weeks later, when she told him she was pregnant, he was stunned.

  “How could you be pregnant?”

  “You know how I got pregnant, Gus.”

  “I mean, you take the pill.”

  “Not till we got back from Stowe.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d never taken it. I wasn’t having sex.”

  “You were—”

  “A virgin.”

  Could you make love with a virgin and not know it?

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to change your mind. I’d decided.”

  “Well, when you decided, you should have decided to take the pill.”

  “Don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not angry, I’m just—what are you going to do?”

  “We can get married and have the baby, or we can not get married and I’ll have the baby by myself.”

  “Or you can—”

  “I won’t do that, Gus.”

  That night he went for a walk. He had solid ideas of how he was going to get married and under what circumstances. He didn’t want the kind of marriage his parents had, the kind of family it had produced. As long as he could remember, when the bickering and battles, the accusations and counteraccusations became unbearable (“All you ever had was money!” “All you ever wanted was money!”), he comforted himself with the knowledge that this was only half his life, the half he’d been born into, had no control over. The next half—his own marriage, his own family—was his to pick. He’d pick his wife carefully, take all the time it took, and he’d be sure. He wouldn’t spend the second half of his life the way he’d spent the first.

  And now. Pressure. Coercion. Blackmail. Michelle wasn’t blackmailing him, but something was. Circumstances. Violation of a lifetime promise. The wrong decision, and he’d spend the rest of his life regretting it.

  The next day he said, “Michelle, I’ve made a decision, I—”

  “Don’t say it, Gus. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you want to—if you don’t want me to have the baby, I won’t.”

  Release.

  They went to a doctor and a counselor. Michelle made it clear she wanted to have the baby, but she wouldn’t force him. She didn’t want a forced marriage, even if he loved her. In the end, she agreed to terminate the pregnancy. “But not around here. I couldn’t do it here. I’m going home.”

  The next day, when he called her, her roommate said she’d packed up and left. She hadn’t even said goodbye. She didn’t want his help.

  3

  Michelle saw her coming, Auntie Dana. She wasn’t Michelle’s aunt, she wasn’t anyone’s aunt, everyone just called her Auntie Dana. She was in her eighties, bald, wore a white wig, never married, a lipsticked mouth pouring forth honied venom and sweet slander. Wedding receptions like this were her natural habitat. Half of Montgomery was here. She’d have heard of the pregnancy, come laden with stones to cast.

  “Michelle, you’re looking perfectly radiant. How are you, my dear?”

  “Pregnant, thanks. How are you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  As if she didn’t know.

  “I said, ‘Pregnant, thanks. How are you?’“

  “My goodness, I didn’t even know you’d got married.”

  “I didn’t get married. I just got pregnant.”

  “Is your husband here?”

  “I said I’m not married, Auntie Dana. I’m just pregnant.”

  “But you can’t be pregnant without a husband.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Does your mother know?”

  Michelle saw her mother bearing down, glaring at Michelle, guessing the worst.

  “Ask her.”

  Skidding to a stop, her mother said, “Auntie Dana, it’s really nice to see you.”

  “Michelle’s pregnant.”

  “Yes, Mom, I’d meant to tell you.”

  “Stop it, Michelle. Excuse her, Auntie Dana. I think she’s trying to be funny.”

  “Then she’s not pregnant?”

  “Oh, yes, she is pregnant. And we’re all just delighted.”

  “Is her husband here?”

  “She doesn’t have a husband. The father is a very nice young man.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is. Well, yes, of course he is.”

  Michelle left them. A waiter stopped with a tray of champagne. Michelle smiled at him and shook her head.

  She’d arrived home from Cambridge a week earlier, on a Saturday, and the next day after church, sitting around the living room with the family before lunch, she’d said, “There’s something I have to tell everyone.”

  Weeks ago she’d told them about Gus, but they’d never met him.

  Nolan, her older brother, looked up from the sports section. “Getting married?”

  It was supposed to be funny, but no one smiled.

  She said, “This is really hard. This is the—” Her voice broke. Her mother nudged Nolan over and sat beside Michelle on the sofa. Michelle turned her face to her mother’s shoulder and began to cry.

  Nolan said, “What’s happening?”

  Her father said, “Be quiet, Nolan.”

  Michelle heard the men get up and knew they’d gone to the porch.

  “I’m pregnant, Mom.”

  Her mother tightened the hug but didn’t speak.

  Michelle raised her head and said, “I really love him, Mom.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “But I don’t want to marry him.”

  “Does he want to marry you?”

  “I think he does—I know he loves me—but he doesn’t want to be forced. I don’t want to marry him like that, because he thinks he has to. I want him to marry me because he just can’t not marry me. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do, honey.”

  Michelle wiped the tears.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve prayed about it, and I know one thing for sure—I don’t want to hide that I’m pregnant, lie about it, pretend that I’m not. I don’t care who knows.”

  “I think
you’re right. What do you want to do?”

  “I’m only twenty. Barely. Two months ago I was a teenager.” She hesitated, her eyes watering. “I think I should have it adopted.”

  She didn’t tell her mother that she’d told Gus she was ending the pregnancy.

  “But I don’t want to have it adopted here. I don’t want to spend the next ten years, however many years, looking at every child I see in Montgomery and wondering if it’s mine. I don’t want that for you and Dad, either.”

  “Do you think you should call Gus, talk to him about it?”

  “He’d think I was pressuring him—and maybe I would be. I don’t want to do that. This is my decision, Mom.”

  A pastor at their church asked friends at a Montgomery adoption agency, who recommended an agency in Milwaukee. Six weeks before the baby’s due date Michelle moved there with her mother. A month later she took out a sheet of notepaper on which she had written Gus’s phone number, laid it on the table by the phone in the hotel, and picked up the receiver. She hesitated, thought about it. What would she say? “Are you still sure you don’t want to marry me and have the baby?” Make him say no all over again? Torture them both? Anything she said, even the fact that she’d called, would be misunderstood. He’d be sure to think she was pushing him. He wasn’t going to change his mind. It would be a painful disaster. With tears in her eyes, she set the phone down and put the paper back into the pocket in her purse.

  Two days later, the birth was artificially induced. Michelle, under a general anesthetic, never experienced labor, never saw the baby, never heard it cry, never had any direct awareness of its presence outside her body.

  When she awoke in the recovery room she knew she had lost more than her child, that she was less alive than she had been before the birth. The baby had been hers, it was gone, and something of herself had gone with it. Something had been amputated, and she would never have it back.

  Three days later Michelle returned to Montgomery. She awoke the first morning back and began to cry. At six that evening, she’d been in bed all day, crying and talking to her mother about the baby.

  “How do you think she is?”

  Her mother said, “She’s fine, Michelle. Of course she’s fine.”