One Good Turn

by Judith Arnold

  At the moment, her girlish cheeks bore the evidence of a recent crying jag. Clutching a soggy tissue in one hand, she collapsed onto the nearest chair, kicked off her sandals, balanced her feet on the edge of the seat cushion and hugged her arms around her knees. The position made her look even younger than her twenty years.

  “I’m really sorry, Ms. Perrin,” she mumbled hoarsely.

  “That’s okay,” Jenny murmured sympathetically. “I know that what I’m asking you to do is very hard.”

  “I just—” Trisha dabbed at her eyes with her tissue, swallowed and began again. “I just don’t think I can do it. My mom keeps saying if I don’t testify Matt’ll go free, but...but there’s always a chance he’ll go free even if I do testify, so what’s the point?”

  “The point is, if you testify, you’re contributing to justice.” Jenny sensed the protest rising to Trisha’s lips and continued before Trisha could interrupt. “I know you think I’m exaggerating, but I’ve been involved in a lot of criminal proceedings. It’s cathartic for a victim to testify. It’s cleansing. It’s a chance to be heard. Otherwise, you go through life with this unresolved thing inside you. It will eat at you, Trisha.”

  “It’s already eating at me,” the girl moaned, swabbing at her face with the tissue again.

  “I don’t mean this facetiously, but if you’re going to feel bad either way, why not at least go with the way that might bring a conviction?”

  “Because you said—” Trisha’s gaze moved around the cozy porch. “You said Matt’s lawyer is going to ask me all kinds of questions about how I told Matt I loved him and everything, and like, how far I let him go with me on other dates and stuff, and... it’s going to be so embarrassing. Like, it’s so personal, what he did to me, and—I mean, how do you talk about something like that? It’s, like, my body, and...” Her arms tightened around her shins and she rested her chin on her knees.

  “You have nothing to hide,” Jenny reminded her in a soft, heartfelt voice. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “But what he did to me—”

  “If he attacked you with a gun, would you be ashamed to talk about it in court? If he attacked you with a knife? He assaulted you, Trisha. What he did to you had nothing to do with sex. It was an act of violence. Maybe it’s embarrassing if you think about it as a sex act, but it wasn’t a sex act. It was an act of violence, only he used his body instead of a gun or a knife. You’re the victim of a violent crime. You’re not to blame. You did nothing wrong. This boy did a vicious, hurtful thing to you, and he deserves to be punished, just as much as he would deserve to be punished if he beat you with his fists.”

  Trisha stared at her. A few tears trickled down her cheeks, but she didn’t argue. “I guess...” she mumbled, swabbing her cheeks one last time. “I guess, when you think about it that way...”

  “That’s the only way to think about it.”

  “Okay,” Trisha capitulated, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll testify.”

  * * *

  IF LUKE HAD BEEN impressed by Jenny’s performance in court on Thursday and Friday, he was spellbound on Monday. It was obvious that she was dealing with a dreadfully skittish witness in Trisha Vincent, yet Jenny’s gentle, sympathetic questions elicited the most devastating testimony the prosecution had produced.

  Over the weekend Luke had tried not to think about her. He’d been about as successful as he’d been trying not to think about her seven years ago—which was not very successful at all. At Taylor’s request, he had taken Ellie, the vacationing financial whiz, out for pizza and miniature golf on Saturday night so Taylor could woo her cousin without interference. Suzanne had appeared at the breakfast table with Taylor Sunday morning, which implied that they’d had a more exciting night than Luke and Ellie had.

  Not that they’d had a bad time. They’d gotten along well enough, and they’d both understood that they were doing a good deed for the lovebirds. But before tackling her second slice of pizza Ellie had asked Luke pointedly whether he was involved with someone else, and before he could stop himself he’d replied that he was.

  Admittedly, that involvement was an unfathomable thing. Jenny didn’t love him. She wouldn’t give him more than friendship. And she’d all but admitted she couldn’t be totally honest with him.

  He was challenged, puzzled, frustrated...and wildly, dangerously tempted.

  So what if, in pursuing Jenny, his ego got knocked around a little? That would be preferable to spending the rest of his life in ignorance. It had taken him seven years to learn as much as he now knew about her. He was desperate to learn more.

  At least that was what he’d thought about over the weekend. In court on Monday, what he thought about was her deft, sensitive handling of her witness.

  The girl was obviously tense, but Jenny’s questions soothed her. She spoke quietly, addressing the witness personally, injecting just the right amount of compassion to console the girl without patronizing her. Jenny’s demeanor awakened Luke’s memory of the night, long ago, when she had approached a bum at Dupont Circle. She hadn’t castigated the poor man or condescended to him. What she’d given him was her attention, her concern, her humanity.

  “The thing is,” the girl was saying, sitting tall in the witness box, looking directly at Jenny, at the jury, even at the accused, “it didn’t matter whether he loved me or I loved him, because what he did was violent. He was angry and he did it to hurt me. He wrestled me onto the bed and he pinned me down and he said, `I’m tired of you holding out on me,’ and he told me to shut up, and he hit me in the mouth. He told me I had to do this because he had taken me out a lot of times and I owed it to him. He told me most girls put out on the first date and I must be sick not to want it, and then he did it. It had nothing to do with love.”

  “Did you say no when he asked you for sex?” Jenny asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he hear you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you scream?”

  “Yes, until he hit me in the mouth.”

  “Did you fear for your life?”

  “Yes.”

  Luke wished he could take back the fatuous comments he’d made last Friday, about how men made assumptions about the women they dated. No wonder Jenny had gotten so angry. What this girl had suffered had nothing to do with the behavior of frisky young men high on their own hormones.

  Jenny questioned the girl a bit more, then thanked her and invited the defense attorney to cross-examine. As he’d been doing throughout the trial, Sullivan’s attorney frequently raised his eyebrows skeptically and shot conspiratorial looks at the jury. “Did Mr. Sullivan force you to go to his room?” the attorney asked, and with marvelous aplomb the girl replied that going to a boy’s room wasn’t the same thing as agreeing to sex. Luke issued a silent cheer.

  The defense attorney worked hard. He did whatever he could to cast aspersions on the girl’s character. He mentioned a previous boyfriend of hers, and Jenny sprang to her feet with an objection. The defense attorney questioned the girl about the prevailing morality on campus, and she’d shot back that peer pressure was no reason to have sex against your will. The lawyer jabbed, but she refused to go down.

  By one o’clock the cross-examination was done, and the judge excused the girl with the reminder that she might be called back as a defense witness. She nodded with great dignity and walked to the prosecution table to wait for adjournment. As soon as the judge banged his gavel and swept out of the courtroom, the girl crumpled in her chair. Jenny wrapped her arms around her and hugged her.

  The sight moved Luke. No matter how aloof Jenny behaved with him, she still had an abundance of mercy to shower on those who needed it. Maybe her own experience as a crime victim enabled her to empathize with what Trisha Vincent had been through. But he’d be willing to wager that even if Jenny had never had a personal brush with violence she’d be just as sympathetic. She’d cared about street people without ever having lived on the streets, hadn’
t she? She’d cared about Luke without ever having felt neglected by her father.

  No matter how much she’d changed—no matter how much she’d tried to change—she was still generous and empathetic toward others.

  With one arm still wrapped around Trisha’s shoulders, Jenny walked the girl up the aisle to where an older woman sat. After thanking Jenny, the woman escorted Trisha out of the courtroom.

  Jenny turned to Luke. She appeared both drained and exhilarated.

  “You won,” he said confidently. “That was incredible, Jenny. You won.”

  “I wish.” She looked heavenward for a moment, then laughed. “Tomorrow Stewart Shaw is going to start the defense, and we may lose everything we gained today. But—” she cut him off before he could argue “—we gained a lot. She was great, wasn’t she?”

  “You were great.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t the one on the stand, having the most intimate details of my life made public.” Beckoning him to follow, she strode back to the prosecution table to pack up her notes. “I will admit to one major accomplishment: I managed to get her up there.”

  “Was there a chance she wouldn’t testify?”

  “Last night she was adamant about not taking the stand. I had to pay her a visit and change her mind.” Jenny snapped shut her briefcase and sighed. “After convincing her, maybe convincing the jury will be a piece of cake.” She smiled wearily and gazed up at Luke. “I’m glad you were here to see it.”

  “So am I.”

  “You weren’t here when the session started, and I thought, damn, he’s sat through all the boring stuff and he’s going to miss my best witness.”

  “It’s hard for me to get to Cambridge by nine,” he explained, savoring the news that she’d been watching for him, wanting him there. “But I made it, and it was worth the long drive and the traffic. You’ve already convinced the jury. You’re home free.”

  She laughed. “What a cheerleader,” she teased, preceding him up the aisle and out of the courtroom. “I ought to get you some pom-poms and a megaphone.”

  “I think you ought to celebrate,” he remarked as they headed down the hall to the stairs. “Can we have lunch today?”

  “Oh, Luke.” She sighed again. “You already know the answer. I’ve got too much work.”

  “Then let’s celebrate with dinner tonight.” He deliberately kept his tone light. He didn’t want her to think he was asking her on a date.

  She scrutinized him for a moment, weighing his invitation. “I’m really beat,” she said. “This morning took a lot out of me. I was planning to head straight home after work. But...if you’d like, I’ll make dinner for us.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked. “I mean, make dinner. If you’re tired we could eat take-out. I’m not fussy.”

  “All right. Take-out.”

  “You’ll have to tell me where you live, and I can pick up some dinner for us on the way to your place.”

  “Do you know Route 9 in Framingham?” She drew him to the side of the hall out of the flow of pedestrian traffic, pulled out her legal pad, and jotted down her address for him. “There,” she said, handing the sheet of long yellow paper to him. “I should be home by six. And I’ll pick up the take-out. I know the neighborhood restaurants. Six o’clock.” She closed her briefcase, gave him a quick wave, and vanished into the crowd surging toward the elevator.

  He spent the day being a tourist in Boston, walking the Freedom Trail with all the enthusiasm of the social studies teacher he was. At five-thirty, after purchasing a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, he joined the hundreds of thousands of rush-hour commuters jamming onto the Mass Pike, escaping to the suburbs for the night.

  Her apartment complex was easy to find, although actually seeing it took him aback. It was exactly as she’d described it: a cluster of modern terraced apartments scaling a hill above Route 9 and overlooking a vast, picturesque reservoir. It seemed like the sort of complex in which a young, upwardly mobile lawyer would live—but Luke was still having difficulty acknowledging that Jenny was a young, upwardly mobile lawyer. She’d been such a free spirit when he’d known her in Washington, waltzing through the city with her hair tumbling down her back and her body clothed in airy earth-mother dresses. If she hadn’t switched tracks somewhere along the line, she would probably be living in an enchanting old Victorian house with plants on every windowsill and wind-chimes clanging on the back porch.

  The setting of her residence helped to remind him that he had not come to Jenny’s home for romance. He had come to drink a toast to the grand conclusion to her prosecution and to learn more about her, to find out why a woman with a heart as big as Jenny’s could be so afraid of opening it to love.

  He parked his Hyundai in a space reserved for visitors, entered Jenny’s building, and rode the elevator up to her floor. She answered the door dressed in a summery slacks outfit of pastel green. Her face was devoid of make-up, her hair brushed casually back from her face, and her eyes seemed brighter than usual, complemented by the lime-sherbet color of her blouse. The Tory button earrings were gone; in their place were gold hoops. Her feet were bare.

  “Come in,” she invited him, leading him through the entry hall into the living room. “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

  “No,” he said, taking in the room’s austere decor—Danish modern couches and parsons tables, a chilly abstract painting on the wall, not a single house plant. He hastily glanced back at her bare feet. The sight of her cute pink toes reassured him, and he smiled and handed her the wine bottle.

  “Thank you.” She returned his smile, then squinted at the label. “Does it go with Mexican food? I picked up a variety of dishes at El Torrito. I hope you like them.”

  He trailed her through a dining alcove into an efficient well-applianced kitchen. One pristine white counter was spread with take-out containers which emitted spicy aromas. “It smells great,” he said.

  She crossed the room to a cabinet and pulled down two goblets, then produced a corkscrew from a drawer and handed it to Luke. “Why don’t you do the honors while I pop these into the oven?” she suggested as she loosened the lids of the containers. “They could use some heating up.” She organized the containers on a cookie sheet, slid it into the wall oven and adjusted the dials.

  She seemed awfully chipper. Whatever her feelings for Luke, she was apparently happy to have him over for dinner. Away from the tensions of work and the misery underlying her cases, perhaps she was able to shed some of her protective shell. Maybe she would recognize that Luke had come here with no preconceptions, no driving needs or macho assumptions, no desire other than to deepen their friendship in whatever way he could.

  Maybe, if she let down her guard enough, he might be able to find out where she was hurting, why she seemed lonely, how he could help.

  The smile she sent him as she turned from the oven was so bright he was hard pressed to believe she was hurting anywhere at all. Her cheerful expression mesmerized him, warmed him, distracted him so much he fumbled with the corkscrew. “Ow!” he yelled as its sharp point punctured the tip of his index finger.

  Clicking her tongue, Jenny glided to the sink. As soon as he was beside her, she positioned his hand under the spout, washed his finger, and toweled it dry. “That corkscrew always jams,” she said contritely, “and then it pops out and stabs you. I think you need a bandage.”

  Wrapping the paper towel around his finger, she marched him out of the kitchen and down a short hall to the bathroom. Unlike the living room, the tiny bathroom was filled with warm touches. A wicker shelf above the toilet held a spray of dried flowers and an apothecary jar of bath salts; a plush white terry-cloth robe hung from a hook on the back of the door; the towels bore a vivid rainbow design and a mirrored tray beside the sink held Jenny’s toiletries. She opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and rummaged in it for antiseptic and bandages.

  He scanned the shelves in front of him, aiding her search. His gaze s
nagged on a plastic disk containing a circular arrangement of pills. Birth control pills. The realization zapped through him like a jolt of electricity.

  One part of him responded with excitement that she was prepared, that if by some quirk of fate things heated up between her and Luke tonight, she would be ready. Yet he felt a strange disappointment, as well. He remembered the night they’d become lovers, when they’d exuberantly depleted her roommate’s supply of condoms. There had been something innocent about Jenny then, something unpremeditated and natural. The circular container of pills in her medicine cabinet forced him, once more, to acknowledge how much time had gone by, how much Jenny had changed.

  It was a ridiculous reaction, totally unjustifiable. But he couldn’t help himself.

  “There you go,” she said, reminding him that while he’d been lost in thought she’d been taping his finger. “I’ll send you the bill.”

  “Don’t worry—I’m insured,” he joked.

  They returned to the kitchen, where he concentrated on uncorking the wine bottle without further injury. By the time he’d filled the two goblets and handed one to Jenny, his smile felt natural.

  “Let’s go out on the deck,” she suggested, leaving the kitchen for the dining alcove, one wall of which contained glass sliders opening onto her terrace. “It’ll be a few minutes before dinner’s ready.” She stepped into a pair of leather sandals by the door, slid it open, and led Luke outside.

  Her terrace overlooked the reservoir. The surface of the water was glass-smooth, reflecting the verdant woods surrounding it and the cloudless sky above it. “It’s a beautiful view,” he commented, moving past the deck furniture to the railing and leaning against it.

  “The view is the nicest thing about this apartment,” she said, and he had to agree. Joining him at the railing, she took a sip of her wine. “This is good.”

  Belatedly, he tapped his glass against hers. “Here’s to your spectacular performance in court.”