Testimony

by Anita Shreve

  From the corner of my eye, I see a basketball arc into the stands. It hits a woman on the side of her face and knocks her sideways on the bench. She puts her arms out, flailing, and another woman catches her. For one second, there is silence. Everyone is standing, looking in the direction of the woman who has been hit. People are murmuring Silas’s name. The woman is being led up the aisle by Mr. Bordwin, our headmaster, who must have been sitting near her.

  When I turn to the court to look for Silas, he is already gone.

  Rasheed

  Rasheed glanced again at the opened letter on his cluttered desk, and for a moment he’d felt a flicker of interest, a desire to say what he’d wanted to say almost two years ago. He made the impulse die quickly. It wasn’t that he bore the researcher at the University of Vermont any particular animosity; it was simply that he didn’t want to have to think about the scandal. He didn’t want to experience the anger. He had moved on. Basketball was behind him. It had been a part of his life, like an arm he’d had once and then lost in an accident. He didn’t want to be the guy walking around without an arm, everyone asking him what had happened to it.

  But the memories rankled just the same: the injustice of it; the firing of the coach; the rest of the schedule canceled. Rasheed had been a junior, and without an opportunity to play, he found that even the smaller schools hadn’t had a chance to scout him. In the mayhem following the scandal, Rasheed had gone home to North Carolina to talk to his father. A family practitioner in Greensboro, Rasheed’s father had urged him to study the sciences in preparation for college and possibly medical school. Rasheed had good grades but not outstanding ones, primarily because he’d put so many hours into basketball. When he returned to Vermont, having to pass through locked gates, he’d had a different agenda than he’d had in the fall.

  Rasheed hoisted his backpack over his arm, left his college dorm, and climbed the hill to his first class after lunch. Shakespeare was a reach for him, since most of his other classes were in the sciences. Despite the grueling labs, Rasheed was handling those well. When he reached the top of the hill, he turned and gazed over at the view of the city of Boston, which he hoped had a place for him one day. He didn’t think he had a chance at Harvard Medical, but he’d been advised that Tufts University School of Medicine or Boston University School of Medicine might be within his sights.

  Nearly every guy Rasheed had met in the dorm the first few weeks of college that fall had assumed that because of his height and his color, he would play basketball for Tufts. In the beginning, he’d had to fend off dozens of casual invitations for pickup games. In fact, Rasheed had played only once since arriving on campus: in the gym, by himself, practicing drills, shooting threes. The ball had felt good in his hands, but the experience had left him feeling empty and a little sorry for himself, something he’d promised his father he would guard against. When he got his medical degree, his father had said, he could allow himself a day, maybe two, of wallowing in self-pity. By then, his father had calculated, Rasheed wouldn’t care anymore.

  Rasheed was early to class. He stood outside the brick hall that was the English Department, even though it was November and cold and he had only a sweatshirt on. But all his height was in his legs, and they cramped up under the small desks, so that by the time class was over, Rasheed could barely straighten his knees. To avoid that, he tried not to enter the classroom until the last minute, which he knew some teachers read as a reluctance on Rasheed’s part or even insolence, but that was the way it had to be.

  Fuck the letter, he thought, scraping his boot back and forth against the stone step.

  The team had known that Faye Academy would be tough competition, and the coach was eager to take a reading. If they could beat Faye, they might be able to beat Vermont Academy later in the season and then go all the way to the tournament. It had been a long time since Avery had had an awesome threesome like J. Dot, Rob, and Silas. Rasheed was fast becoming nearly as valuable, as was his best friend, Irwin. J. Dot elevated the game, and Rasheed, though he didn’t like the guy much, watched his every move; he knew he could learn from the PG. J. Dot had all the rebounds and slashed hard to the basket. He had swagger on the court, more swagger than Rasheed had ever seen on a white boy.

  Right from the get-go, though, the game with Faye hadn’t gone well for Avery. They threw the ball away four times, once booting it out-of-bounds. They were nervous, and the coach told them to simmer down. Faye was playing terrific defense, trapping Avery into a half-court game. Silas was missing his threes, and Rasheed could see that the more he missed, the more frustrated he became. Once, Rob slipped to the floor and lost the ball. Then Irwin successfully blocked two consecutive Faye shots. Rasheed moved in for the rebound and sank two on successive possessions — beautiful shots, no rim — and Avery for the first time all game was up by one point. He could hear the fans going crazy in the stands. Three minutes remained in the half. If Avery could go into the locker room up by four or even five, Rasheed knew, the team would win. It took nearly the whole first half of a game for the team to settle down, to find its rhythm, but when it did, they won. It had happened so often last season and this, that it had become almost a psychological necessity for the players: Avery had to be up by the half.

  After Faye finished a fast break, Rob took possession with under a minute to the half. He passed to Silas, who scored straightaway. The Avery stands went nuts. With maybe twenty seconds left, Silas got possession again and went for another three. The ball took flight but then appeared to die in the air. It fell to the floor as if filled with bird shot. Silas had choked. He almost never did that. Rasheed blocked a shot, and with seconds left, he could hear Silas shouting for the ball. Thinking Silas wanted to redeem himself before the buzzer, Rasheed passed it to him. Silas held the ball too long — the fans were screaming, Shoot! Shoot! — turned his back to the basket, and let it fly into the stands. Rasheed couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed.

  The ball hit a woman in the face. The team watched as the injured fan was taken out of the stands. The ref threw Silas out of the game and sent him to the locker room. Rasheed remembered glancing over at Irwin, and the two locking eyes, each asking the other what the hell was going on. Both knew that Silas had meant to aim that ball into the stands. Neither had ever seen anything like it. The buzzer had rung for the half, and they’d headed for the locker room, but Silas wasn’t there. Rasheed wondered if Silas had just walked out of the building in January in his sleeveless jersey and basketball shorts.

  The second half, without Silas — with the team just poleaxed — was all but a rout. The home team came out onto the court dead flat. Avery couldn’t take care of the ball, and Faye won by an obscene margin.

  Two days later, on a Monday night, Rasheed’s roommate had called to him when he’d walked into his dorm room after dinner. “Take a look at this,” Shawn had said. Rasheed had glanced over and had seen what looked like porn on Shawn’s computer screen. “Why do you watch that shit?” Rasheed had goaded him.

  “No, seriously,” Shawn had said. “Isn’t this an Avery dorm?”

  Rasheed stood over Shawn and looked at what appeared to be a short portion of a home movie. He saw sneakers on the floor. It might be an Avery dorm. Whoever had posted it on YouTube had blocked the faces out, though the action was apparent enough. He was about to turn away when he noticed the shirts on the floor — Silas’s green flannel and J. Dot’s sweatshirt with the sleeves cut just above the elbow. Rasheed looked up at the ceiling. He knew right then that basketball was all over.

  He couldn’t prevent the stories in the press that blamed the whole team. It was when he’d most wanted to speak out, to defend himself. But his father had counseled caution. Move on, he’d said. They’ll twist what you say. Be silent. And so Rasheed had been, even when they’d fired the coach and canceled the rest of the season. Even when the newspapers wrote about the “entitlement” of the team or the “streak of lawlessness” within it. Rasheed wondered how peopl
e could get away with writing something that was completely false, but the reporters did.

  Rasheed again glanced over at the city of Boston and in doing so saw his professor climbing the hill, head down against the wind that snapped at the campus in the late fall and winter. Rasheed slipped through the door and into the classroom. He sometimes wondered what had happened to J. Dot and Rob. They hadn’t kept in touch. In the beginning, Rasheed had been hurt that Irwin wouldn’t answer his calls. Rasheed folded himself into the small wooden desk. Under his picture in the freshman directory, it read AVERY ACADEMY. Guys still asked about the scandal. Even some of the teachers had taken him aside to get the inside scoop. Rasheed wondered if the questions would ever go away. And it wasn’t just he who’d been derailed, he thought as he reached for his book in his backpack. What about Irwin and Jamail and August and Perry? No one who had been on the team that year, even the promising freshmen, would ever have an opportunity to play college ball. Four, five guys with possible futures, shut down. If the team was just now starting back up again, Jacob what’s-his-name would be a senior already, and it was too late, after such a long hiatus, to attract the attention of any scout. Rasheed wondered where it was written that a school, under pressure, could do that to a team and to its coach without so much as an apology. Because Rasheed sure hadn’t gotten an apology.

  But he wouldn’t think about that anymore, because it would just get him going. When he got back to the dorm, he would toss the letter from the researcher, get it out of his room. Whatever the letter was about, it no longer concerned him. He had other things in life to think about now. He had work to do.

  Anna

  I saw the letter. You left it on the table. Why did you do that, leave something that would remind me? That is not like you. I saw it when I went down for water. I saw some words and knew. More people wanting to talk about Silas.

  Will you call her, the researcher named Jacqueline?

  I lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling. I wish that I had not seen the letter. How can you have been so careless — you, who are usually so careful? Were you interrupted by the telephone? Were you rushing out the door?

  I try to think about the ceiling, about the structure of the house behind the wallboard and the plaster, about how the unseen rafters and boards rise to a peak. I lie on the blue quilt, the one I made after our wedding. I cannot remember making the quilt. I do not want to remember the wedding.

  Some days all I do is remember.

  We never talk, you and I. We say small bits of sentences once or twice a week. Questions, mostly, or statements. I made a meat loaf for dinner. Have you seen my brown boots?

  I stand up and draw back the quilt and the top sheet and crawl into the bed. I punch the soft pillow into a mound and mold it around my hair and face. Will you tell the researcher from the University of Vermont, as you never said to the press, as you have never even said to me, It all happened because of my wife?

  You will not. I cannot imagine you saying such a thing.

  But it is true, and you are entitled to say it. It all happened because of me.

  It all happened because I wanted.

  How much easier to have no memories of the crime. Of the crimes, repeated. I have stopped asking why. It isn’t a question that can be answered.

  I was lonely and I wanted.

  No, that’s not true. I wasn’t lonely. I had you and Silas. But still I wanted.

  It was obscene, that wanting.

  I watched as the EMTs took him from the car, that sturdy Volvo that refused to buckle, even with the tremendous force of its tumble. He tried to stand, but they wouldn’t let him. I watched them hoist him onto a stretcher and slide him into the ambulance. I minded that I didn’t even know his name. Later, in the newspaper, I saw his name. It was Gary who told me he was with the school.

  If he hadn’t come back to the house to apologize and to offer to pay for the damages, would I have forgotten all about him? Would the reaching out to hold his arm have become one of those small things in life that seem sweet or meaningful in the moment but are forgotten before you’ve even reentered the house?

  I knew the day he came to the house to pay for the damage that I wanted to see him again. It was not a real desire. It was a series of questions and answers that seemed to be moving in a certain direction. I asked to visit the school.

  I am responsible for Silas going to the school. You didn’t want that. You didn’t want him to go.

  For months, I thought I was doing it for Silas.

  It wasn’t true. I did it for myself.

  I remember his visits. I remember the blue oxford shirt and his tie. The jacket always taken off and carefully laid over the kitchen chair, even when it was chilly. He smelled of lime and sometimes of sweat as we sat together, looking over the applications and then later talking about the parent-teacher association. Later still, he came to dinner.

  Once, after we had been to bed together, I picked up his shirt from the floor and inhaled the scent. Just touching that shirt had been, for years, my only concrete fantasy.

  He came with wine. I reached across the kitchen table and covered his hand. He was shocked. I could see that. His eyes met mine and then slipped away. We were drunk, or I was drunk. I wouldn’t have had the courage to touch him otherwise. But I was glad I had done it. I can feel it still, the rough skin of his hand, the knuckles knobby, the fingers warm. I pulled away.

  He called, and I knew that it would happen.

  Was I afraid? Was I at any point afraid of the consequences?

  That afternoon, I waited for him, watching the low sun turn the fields pink, making a sharp silhouette of the mountains against the navy sky. I was happy then. I opened the door as soon as he set foot on the back porch. I had worn a gray sweater and a black skirt. He did not immediately embrace me, and I knew that he was nervous, too. I took his coat, and, as always, he shrugged off his sport jacket and laid it on the back of the kitchen chair. He seemed to be calm and waiting. The way he had in the tumbled car. The box with the leftover wine was on the floor near the table.

  “Can you stay?” I asked.

  I saw confusion on his face. He put his hands on his hips and looked in the direction of his car, as if he might have important places to go. But I knew that he would stay.

  “A cup of tea?” I asked. “A glass of wine?”

  “I never say no to a glass of good red.”

  It was a relief to both of us to have that over with.

  He took the bottle from my hands as I went to get the corkscrew. I reached for two glasses from the cupboard. “You knew I’d say yes,” he said.

  I moved toward the table. I sat down.

  He poured the wine, and his hand was steady. I took a sip. When I glanced up at him, I saw that he was smiling at me. It had been a long time since I’d seen such a fond look on any man’s face.

  “Tell me about the evening,” he said.

  I could not imagine you, my husband, being interested in the doings of the parent-teacher association. But that is not why I did it. Not at all. I didn’t care that you didn’t care. It was only that I wanted.

  My voice quavered when I spoke, and I tried to bring it under control. I had a sudden and frightening impulse to cry. I pressed my lips together to stem the urge. He stood and moved in my direction.

  He lifted me up from my chair. I put my hands flat against the front of his shirt. Not to push him away but simply to touch him. He kissed me. I leaned against him.

  “The risk for you is tremendous,” he said.

  “You said that last night.”

  “I’m saying it again.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t talk me out of this.”

  He kissed me again.

  “Are we safe here?” he asked.

  “Owen’s away, and Silas has practice,” I said.

  I know now that those six words were the most treacherous of my life. The implied forethought. The planning.
The imagining. All confessed. All revealed.

  He put his hands in my hair and lifted it away from my scalp, surprised by its weight. He held one of my breasts in his hand. I tilted my head, and he kissed my neck.

  I pushed away from him. I brought my hair to the front of my sweater and combed it with my fingers. I was thinking: I can stop this now.

  There, that was the moment I made it happen.

  I climbed the stairs, and my skirt swayed against my bare legs. I had shut the door to the bedroom that you and I shared then, but I had forgotten to shut Silas’s door. He might have seen Silas’s unmade bed, the poster of LeBron James on the wall. I led him to the guest room. I watched him take it in, the double bed covered with the floral-printed quilt, the dresser with the doily my mother had crocheted. I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the mirror over the dresser and straightened my shoulders. I turned and walked behind him and shut the door.

  I removed my skirt and sweater. I had on a white slip. I saw for the first time the same want on his face that I knew was on mine. As I moved toward the bed, he took off his clothes.

  “I’ve liked you from the first moment I saw you,” he had said on the telephone.