by Amanda Cross
“That’s because he didn’t punch you in the gut,” Blair said. “Not that I’d put it past him. The problem is—”
There was a knock on the door, and whatever Blair’s problem was remained unexpressed. He went to the door and admitted a woman Kate recognized as Bobby, Reed’s assistant director of the clinic.
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry to intrude.” Kate introduced her to Blair. “Nice to meet you. I’ve come to waft Kate off to Staten Island. You don’t mind if I call you Kate, do you? I don’t want to presume on one dinner and a working relationship with your husband.”
“You’re not presuming. Why should I go to Staten Island?”
“Because Betty Osborne has agreed to see you, and Reed thinks it ought to be this afternoon. She could ask for you through regular channels, and you’d get a visitor’s pass, but Reed thought maybe we better strike while the iron was hot. So I’m to drive you out there. If you want to call Reed at home, he’ll explain. But hurry, he won’t be there long.”
Kate stared at Bobby for a worried moment; then she crossed the room to the telephone.
“It’s me,” she said when Reed picked up. “You’re supposed to tell me why I have to leave for Staten Island this very minute.”
“Betty Osborne asked to see you. We talked our way into seeing her, Bobby and I, when we were out there this morning with some of the students. We managed to arrange for the coordinator to let you see her this afternoon. He won’t be there tomorrow, and I don’t know when else. We’ve got to grab this opportunity, Kate. They could well change their minds, and insist on your applying as a regular visitor through the proper channels. I told them you’d be there this afternoon.”
“Can’t you come with me?”
“I can’t, Kate. Didn’t Bobby tell you? I have to go to court with a student. Bobby will go with you; she knows the way, and the drill, all that. She’s got a prison ID for you to wear.”
“Am I supposed to be a lawyer?”
“Of course not. The ID just means you’re connected with a properly registered lawyer—me—and with Bobby, who they know is working with me. Okay then?”
“Okay then,” Kate said. “But just tell me, why did she ask for me?”
“She’s heard of you. Ask Bobby. I’ve got to go. See you at home.”
Kate turned to Bobby. “All right,” she said. “I’ll make a pit stop first. How do we go?”
“I’ve got a car. We take the Verrazano Bridge.”
“You mean I don’t even get a ferry ride?”
“It’s faster. Come on, Kate. We said you’d be there by four-thirty at the latest.”
“Not till you tell me why me?”
“She was a graduate student in English, at your university, I think. She seems to want to talk to a literary type. Maybe all she wants is to argue with you about the English novel. Come on, Kate!”
Kate looked at Blair, who shrugged his shoulders. “Talk to you later,” he said. Kate picked up her bag and marched down the hall to the women’s room.
“Don’t take forever,” Bobby said.
Kate wanted to stick out her tongue at her, but decided that Bobby’s eagerness was on Betty Osborne’s behalf, no rudeness to Kate intended.
So it went on, one argument predicating another, until the only logic was the fiction, and the fiction was a web that enmeshed everyone who tried to sweep it away.
—JOHN LE CARRÉ
THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL
Eight
ONCE they were away in the car and free of the worst of the traffic in lower Manhattan, Kate looked at Bobby, intent on her driving. “I still don’t understand why we have to go today, right off the bat like this. Why wouldn’t tomorrow do?”
“You don’t understand how it works,” Bobby said.
“Of course I don’t understand. I also don’t understand how the law school works, how any law school works. God only knows what I’m doing there, or here with you, for that matter.”
“Sorry,” Bobby said, glancing over for a moment at Kate. “You see, we regularly visit the prison on Wednesday afternoons. The people there have to be notified of the clients we wish to see by noon of the Monday preceding our visit. You can’t just add names. Getting you in there this afternoon took a lot of special pleading. It’s a favor to Reed, who really saw the chance to learn something about this woman, and pulled a lot of levers to make it possible for you to see her right away. I understand he did this because you particularly asked him to. That’s why all the hurry. I’m sorry if I was too pressuring about it.”
They rode in silence for a bit, over the traffic-clogged routes to the bridge. It never failed to amaze Kate, the few times she ventured out of Manhattan, through Queens to the airports or, today, through Brooklyn, how the roads were always jammed, no matter what the hour, and how there always seemed to be an accident of some sort to add to the congestion. Bobby, like Kate and Reed, drove a standard shift, so that she had continually to change gears on this start-and-stop trip, grunting with impatience at each plunge of the clutch.
“Why don’t you talk, Bobby?” Kate said. “It beats sitting here seething at the traffic, as though it were a watched pot that wouldn’t boil.”
Bobby, changing lanes, said nothing. Even in the new lane, which now stopped moving just as the old one had, she still said nothing.
“What do you know about this woman I’m going to see?” Kate asked. It seemed a reasonable question.
“No more than you do. She shot her husband; she got the gun from someone. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it. All she said was that she wanted to talk to you. We haven’t even got the papers yet, because we haven’t got her case. Maybe you can arrange that—to get her to ask for Reed to manage her appeal, I mean. Surely you can manage that.”
They reentered the zone of silence. Kate decided, as they approached it, that she had never before been across the Verrazano Bridge. Well, who, after all, did she know on Staten Island? In her extreme youth, she had ridden on the ferry, but only for the ride. It occurred to Kate, not for the first time, that she knew remarkably little beyond Manhattan about New York City. But, she comforted herself, she knew more than the city’s employees, policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, bus drivers, most of whom lived somewhere beyond the city limits, even in New Jersey. Policemen in Japan, she had read, always lived in the district they policed. What interesting facts one picked up and remembered in strange boroughs.
After a time Kate decided to break the silence. She turned a bit in her seat to face Bobby more directly.
“You’ve fallen in love with Reed, haven’t you?” she asked, as gently as she could. “I’ve always thought the phrase fallen in love particularly apposite. I mean, that’s what happens, isn’t it? One minute we’re on firm ground, the next minute we’re in a free fall.”
Bobby turned to look at her so steadily that Kate grabbed the handle just above the door. “Watch it,” she said. “However you may feel at the moment, nothing will be solved by our crashing into something on the Verrazano Bridge. Think of the traffic. Think of the prisoners. Think of that dreadful law school.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t know, please believe me. It’s just my craziness.”
“I would be very surprised if he didn’t know,” Kate said. “But he will never let you or even himself face the fact. That’s the male way of dealing with things, and I have to admit, reluctantly, that from time to time it works.”
“You don’t mind. Not that you have anything to worry about …”
“Let’s say I’m not exactly in any position to mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” Kate said. “Reed is very attractive and very lovable. Is it hard, working with him every day?”
“It isn’t every day, it’s just twice a week; once when we go to the prison, and once in the office when he comes in to look things over. Mostly, I’m there keeping the records, answering the phone, checking up to
see the students come in at least once a day to get messages and see how their cases are going.”
“Bobby,” Kate said, sighing. “Please keep your eyes on the road. You don’t have to look at me, just listen. Help Reed to get on with his clinic, and it will pass, I promise. Just don’t act on any of these obsessions when you’re working with him, and by the end of this semester a lot of this will be over.”
“What I can’t imagine,” Bobby said, eyes forward, “is how I can get the hots for the husband of a woman I admire, who is, in any case, far too old for me. The husband, I mean, not the woman. And if you come up with some Freudian thing about fathers, I’ll never speak to you again. Except in the line of duty, of course.”
“Bobby, why not tell me what the rest of the problem is? It’s not just Reed, although you do have a crush on him.”
“A CRUSH!”
“I withdraw that patronizing word. You feel drawn to him, you like to be with him, you want him, or think you do. It’s thrown some kind of spanner into the works; you’re worried beyond your feeling for Reed, which ought, I think, to be both painful and pleasurable, like pushing your tongue against a sore tooth.”
“I’m worried, Kate. I think I’m some sort of monster. Well, not monster really, but, well, not normal.”
“Normal is absolutely my least favorite word,” Kate said. “It is a statistical and conventional approximation, no more. When my mother was young, it was not normal to have intellectual ambitions, if one was a girl. Later normal meant being a virgin till you got married, and then moving to the suburbs. Normal is what sells fashions and face creams and other consumer items. Now that we’ve made that clear, what the hell are you worrying about, Bobby? I think you’re great, apart from eyeing my husband, of course.”
“I always hated being a girl. Not because I wanted to be a boy, but because I’ve always hated all the things girls are supposed to like: clothes, fashion, makeup, cooking, hostessing, gardening, sewing, being ‘with it’ in any way. I can’t think it matters, well, if things go together, or if your hair is frizzy or straight, or about eye shadow. I’m being incoherent, I know. But more and more I felt that way; sometimes I met girls who agreed with me, or, even better, liked me even if they didn’t agree with me. But I’ve always had to pretend ‘feminine’ interests which I don’t feel. That’s one of the reasons why I want to be a corporate lawyer. I’ll have to dress up, but it will be a costume, the way I would have to wear a uniform if I joined the army. One day I hope I’ll be a good enough lawyer to act the way I want and wear what I want.” Bobby sighed.
“Surely you must know,” Kate said, “how many young women there are, women your age, who feel the same. My god, they’re even in detective novels these days.”
“Only written by much older women who are usually married and living in decorated houses.”
Kate laughed. “Well, you may be right about that. Nonetheless, you’re an accepted sort of character; you’re you. Why not just be happy with that; Reed thinks you’re great and I think you’re great, and infatuations, maybe even obsessions, pass in time.”
“If I was gussied up, Reed, just for an example, might take me seriously.”
“Why on earth,” Kate said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice, “should you want a man to take you seriously when you’re being false to yourself? You can’t have it both ways, as I daresay you know. You want permission to be your sort of woman, and yet you want to be the other sort for a man. That’s not only illogical, it wouldn’t even work. I promise you, Reed would far prefer you, or any woman, as herself. That’s one of his most endearing characteristics, of which he has many. Bobby, there has to be more to this than what you’ve said.”
“When I was a kid, I thought, well, that means I’m a lesbian. That’s how everybody describes lesbians, isn’t it? And then I turned out not to be, to want men, but not to want them all the time, not to be anybody’s permanent acquisition. Oh, shit, I’m not making any sense.”
“You’re not,” Kate said with some firmness. “Your view of lesbians, just for starters, is ridiculously stereotypical. Most of the lesbians I know adore cooking and flowers and dress like something out of Vogue. If the problem is deeper than you’re managing to convey, maybe you need some sort of professional help, some sort of therapy. But I think you’re just muddled, because of Reed and maybe other reasons I don’t know about.”
“You’re right,” Bobby said, sniffing. “I’m sorry.”
“Now”—Kate assumed as chipper a manner as she could—“tell me what to expect when I get there. Not the woman, but what happens, what sort of a room do we meet her in?”
“Just an ordinary room; you sit across a table. You can’t hand her anything but legal papers, nor she you, not even a letter to mail. That’s a criminal offense. But there’s no reason for you to hand each other anything.”
“Can I take notes?”
“Yes. The only other thing, but Reed will tell you this, is do nothing without telling the client. I mean, Reed is the lawyer, and he has to keep his client up to date on everything. This is all rather confusing, since she’s not his client yet.”
“She seems to have studied literature in graduate school,” Kate said, “so she’s probably nutty as a fruitcake, like everyone who studies literature. If she had actually gotten a Ph.D., I would have given the case up as hopeless before we even got there. Oh, my, so this is what a prison facility is like?”
As they pulled up at the entrance and Bobby stopped the car to speak to the gatekeeper, she put out a hand and touched Kate. “Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me,” Kate said. “If you lay a hand on him, I’ll kill you, of course; I’m a very jealous woman.”
“You are a bit, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “But I try to deny it with every fiber of my being. What a horribly depressing place this is.”
It seemed no less depressing as Kate sat facing Betty Osborne across a table in an otherwise bare and crumbling room.
“I don’t suppose you have a cigarette,” Betty said.
“I do, as a matter of fact.” Kate handed over a pack of cigarettes. Reed had told her long ago that lawyers, even those who never smoked, always took cigarettes with them when interviewing prisoners in holding cells. They always wanted cigarettes, and had run out. She had remembered this, and lifted cigarettes from Harriet before setting out. Harriet had asked who they were for. Kate told her. “The best of all good luck,” Harriet had said.
“Keep the pack,” Kate now said to Betty Osborne.
“Only for now,” Betty said. “I’m trying to give it up, I almost have, but I need to smoke under extreme stress; like this.”
“You asked to see me. That needn’t be stressful. Some people have even been known to talk to me without any stress whatever.”
“I took one of your courses. A lecture, ten years ago maybe. I was getting my M.A. You talked about Hardy’s women in a remarkable way. I remember that. Later you wrote a book on him, and I bought it and read it. I was taken with Hardy; you can see why.” She laughed sharply. “I’ve become a Hardy-esque heroine. Tess, that’s me; we kill the men who do us wrong. Only they hung Tess, didn’t they? I sometimes wish they could hang me.”
“If you have turned into a self-pitying mess, there isn’t much I can do for you, is there? It was not something Hardy’s women allowed themselves.”
Betty laughed again. It was a hollow laugh; Kate realized for the first time the condition that had inspired that cliché. Hollow, because there was no joy in it.
“Well,” Betty said, “that’s the script, I guess. You give me backbone, and persuade me to reopen my case. The thing is, I have a certain distrust of lawyers—hell, I detest them, them and doctors both—but I thought with you as a sort of intermediary, we might, well, at least talk about it. Not very invigorating, am I?”
“Didn’t you plan to go on for your doctorate?”
“Sure, I planned to. I planned lots of th
ings. And then I met this man—isn’t that a cliché?—and we married, and I got pregnant, and then he started drinking, or started again, as I afterward learned, and beat up on me. Often, even when I was pregnant. And then in front of the kids. It’s an old story by now, isn’t it? Old and boring and hopeless.”
“Where are the kids now?” Kate asked.
“With his parents. They got custody. They’re not bad, it’s probably the best arrangement. Of course, since I killed their son, I’m not exactly their favorite person. Probably you could guess that.”
“Haven’t you any family who could have helped out?”
“No. No one. This is home now. It’s not as bad as it is for the women who have their babies in jail.”
Kate found herself lost for words, an unfamiliar condition, but one that had occurred lately more than she might have expected. Perhaps we are likelier these days to face situations for which there are no words, she thought.
“Whatever the situation,” she finally said, “I do think it would make sense to attack your conviction. I understand that you have a chance, under the now more general acceptance of the battered woman syndrome. Why not ask for Reed Amhearst as your lawyer, and give it a try?”
“Is that what you would do?”
“For god’s sake,” Kate exploded, “I haven’t the least idea what I would do. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, and do please know that I’m not unsympathetic, but I have difficulty imagining staying with a man who battered me, even once. Which, of course, is a meaningless thing to say. I do understand how battered women become afraid, and victimized, and without any place or person to turn to. But since I’m not you, I don’t know what I would do. Which is to say, if I were in your situation, I would certainly do everything I could to get my life back.”
“I can’t get my kids back.”
“Even that isn’t certain. If you are freed, the court would have to reconsider custody or at least visiting rights. Do you think you’re free of him now—not literally free, of course you’re that—but free inside yourself of dependence on such a man? I mean, Betty, if you were a character in a Hardy novel, you would have to ask yourself that, and answer yourself.”