Trial by Fire

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “Don’t be self-conscious,” Sam said. “I’ve already seen the scar on your face, remember. It isn’t that bad, Stella. With the way you wear your hair, it’s not even noticeable.”

  “You think that’s the only scar I have,” she told him. “It’s not, Sam.”

  “So,” he said, maintaining their eye contact without flinching, “whatever it is, I can handle it. You look fine to me. You’re beautiful, Stella. I don’t know why you don’t realize it. Everyone else does.”

  When she began speaking, her voice was a low monotone. “Handicapped people are very resourceful, Sam. Girls with deformed hands learn to wear long, ruffled sleeves to cover them. Boys with no ears wear caps with flaps. People with atrophied legs learn to cover their lower extremities with blankets.” She stopped and cleared her throat, her eyes glistening with tears. “I’ve spent months in burn units, seen people with injuries so horrifying and disfiguring that I couldn’t understand why the doctors kept them alive.” She sighed. “I guess the will to live is so strong, the fear of death so overpowering, that thousands of these poor people go out into the world every day, accepting people’s stares and careless remarks. But I’m not like those people,” she told him. “I can’t function if I know the person I’m with sees me as deformed.”

  “Come here,” Sam said, a look of tenderness softening his face. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’ll never again ask to see your body. I promise.” He held his arms out, beckoning her to come to him.

  Stella slid into the bed, pulling the sheet up over her and resting her head on Sam’s chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I ruined our celebration.”

  “Listen to me,” he whispered. “Don’t talk, just listen. I know something about scars. When a person dies of cancer, they don’t just die. They cut you away a little at a time. Liz underwent a double mastectomy before they realized the cancer was terminal. Do you think I no longer found her attractive? Do you think for one minute that her scars disgusted me or horrified me?” He softly stroked Stella’s hair as a parent soothes an overwrought child, his voice strained with emotion. “She was as beautiful to me when she died as she was the day I married her. I didn’t fall in love with her skin, her breasts, her hair, her various parts and components. Beauty isn’t superficial, Stella. Beauty comes from inside.” He drew in a deep breath. “Real beauty comes from the heart. When you look at someone, you’re only seeing a reflection of the person inside.”

  Stella felt Sam’s chest rising and falling. Even though his words were comforting, she sensed something else, something no words could ever capture and identify.

  He understood.

  At that moment, Stella truly believed he could accept her, even give her the type of love she had always longed for and had never been able to find with Brad. But could he really understand the bitterness she carried in her heart, more ugly and repulsive than any scar? “I went to a shrink,” she said. “It was years ago, not long after the fire. I wanted to remember, you know, but I just couldn’t. It was a woman psychiatrist and I let her hypnotize me, hoping I could remember what happened the night of the fire.”

  “Did you?” he said. “Were you able to remember?”

  “Some things came back,” she said, “but they were like snapshots, sort of frozen images that I must have plucked out of the chaos of that night. Either that, or the memories were planted by my therapist and were not real at all.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I saw my father’s face,” Stella said, her voice quavering. “He had this terrified, anguished look, and then I saw something flashing in his hands.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I don’t know what I saw,” Stella said, her words mumbled against Sam’s chest. “At first I thought it was a knife, but it was too big to be a knife. And it wasn’t chrome or shiny like a knife. It looked dark and rusted, like some kind of gardening implement or a tool of some kind. I saw my father holding it up in the air, as if he were about to bring it down on my head.”

  “Do you think your father set the fire, Stella?” Sam asked, shocked at what she was implying.

  “No,” Stella said, lifting her head up, “my father would never have done something like that. He loved me. We were very close. Like all the Catalonis, he had a temper and occasionally got carried away, but until the night of the fire he never once struck me. He was just a basic man, a workingman, you know, a man who believed in the family, the value of life.”

  “You mean he wouldn’t let you have the baby aborted?”

  “Yes,” Stella said, her features becoming hard. “I know it had to be Randall. He wanted to get rid of me, get rid of the baby. He was immature and selfish, the big football star. When my father insisted he marry me, he became terrified that his life would be ruined. He must have just reacted and set the fire, wanting to make it all go away.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “Nothing,” Stella sighed, falling back on the pillow. “The shrink tried to tell me that I couldn’t remember because it was my father who set the fire, that my father had been molesting me, possibly even fathered my unborn child. She said the realization of this was more than my mind could handle. Therefore, every time I went back in time to the night of the fire and saw my father’s face, my mind simply shut down.”

  “Do you think she was right?”

  “Absolutely not,” Stella said, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. “See, I recall almost everything that happened before the fire. None of those memories seem to be impaired. How could I forget something as sick as my father molesting me? If he’d fathered my child, I doubt if a pregnancy would have resulted from a single incident, so that means it had to have been going on for some time. It just didn’t happen, Sam,” she said. “I’ve never once felt anything but love and admiration for my father. Even when I recall the image of him holding something in his hands, it’s frightening, but I’m certain he wasn’t trying to hurt me.” She stopped speaking and fell silent. Sometime later, she said, “No one will ever convince me that my father set the fire.”

  “Don’t talk about it anymore,” Sam said, softly stroking Stella’s breasts under the sheet. “Sometimes it’s better to let the past go.”

  “I can’t do that, don’t you see?” she said, sniffing back tears. “They’re going to put me on trial for killing my parents. I have to be able to reconstruct that night, be able to tell them what really happened and who was responsible. It’s the only way I can clear myself.”

  “But Randall set the fire,” Sam said, somewhat confused. “Isn’t that what you’ve said all along?”

  “Yes,” Stella said, “but I’m not one hundred percent certain. And Randall is dead, Sam. Making him the scapegoat will appear too convenient to the jury, particularly since they’ll know that I’m accused of killing the bastard.”

  As an attorney, Sam was beginning to understand Stella’s predicament. “The more dirt you throw on Randall,” he said, “the more you establish a motive why you might have killed him.” That’s precisely what I mean,” she said. Whatever I testify to in that courtroom, or let’s say I don’t testify and merely present evidence that Randall set the fire, it’s all fair game. Reporters can print whatever they want, whatever they hear, anything they see or suspect happened that night. They’ll paint me as the crudest person alive because that’s the story the public is clamoring for, the kind of story that sells newspapers. Potential jurors in the Randall homicide will read that shit and be prejudiced by it before they even get their jury summons in the mail.”

  “That happens with any criminal case,” Sam said. “Whenever there’s any notoriety, you always have a problem finding an impartial jury panel, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  “But the more circumstantial a case is,” she argued, “the more important public opinion becomes.” Stella heard someone insert a key in the door next to them, and her ears pricked at the metallic sound. “My strongest mem
ory was not something I saw, Sam, but something I heard,” she continued with greater intensity. “It was a clicking noise, broken by a different sound, sort of metallic and abrupt, then followed by another clicking noise identical to the first one. Not long after I heard this, I realized my bed was on fire, and I smelled this awful, pungent odor that had to be my skin burning.” Stella bolted upright in the bed, placing her hands over her face, without realizing that she was mimicking the exact movements that she had made the night of the fire. “If I could only identify that sound, Sam. I know that’s the key.”

  “The arsonist had to set the fire somehow,” he said, thinking. “The clicking noise you heard was probably a cigarette lighter.”

  “I’ve considered a lighter,” Stella said. “I’ve listened to dozens of lighters, though, and the sound I heard that night is different, more distinctive, more metallic.”

  Sam continued stroking her beneath the covers, his hands roaming over her breasts, down her stomach, and drifting lightly over her thighs.

  Stella pushed his hands away, and tossed the sheet aside. Then she got out of the bed and stood beside it. Without speaking, she moved her legs apart and watched as Sam’s gaze fell to the scars on her inner thigh.

  Of all the injuries Stella had sustained, the ones on her thigh had been the most devastating. The flames had burned away so much of her flesh that she had required numerous skin grafts. Even now, it looked as if someone had taken a ice cream scoop to her leg. Glancing at her shadow on the opposite wall, she saw how uneven her legs appeared and shivered, knowing Sam could see the same thing.

  Sam didn’t blink or recoil. He only sighed, the air leaving his lungs with a faint whistling sound. Stella turned around and walked to the bathroom, letting him see the white squares on her buttocks and upper back where the surgeons had removed the skin for the grafts. Now that he had seen her, could he ever make love to her again?

  Glancing in the bathroom mirror, Stella blew her nose, and then returned to the bed. Sam didn’t speak, but he held Stella tight against him. After an unknown period of time had passed, they slowly began making love. The experience was so emotionally charged, their feelings for each other so genuine, that when Stella finally cried out in pleasure, Sam broke down and wept. “Oh, Sam,” Stella said, “look what I’m doing to you.”

  “Since Liz died, I’ve been so empty,” he said, using the sheet to dab at his eyes. “I’ve been with other women, but I never felt anything. It was like I was dead inside. I went through the motions, but that’s all they were, motions, gestures, a brief shot of pleasure. I’ve never felt I was making love to these women. It was sex, plain and simple. You’ve convinced me that I’m still alive, that I can feel again.”

  Sam had moved to the edge of the bed. Stella crawled over and held him from behind, rocking him back and forth in her arms. Hours passed in the now dark room and neither of them made a sound. Sam finally shut his eyes, and they both fell asleep.

  At nine o’clock the following morning, Stella drove Sam to the airport to return to Dallas. She had decided to stay in Houston. Brenda Anderson was already entrenched at the Holiday Inn making inquiries, and Stella wanted to start feeding her leads. Sam had insisted that she keep his rental car rather than renting another one under her name. Dropping him off at the curb, she got out and embraced him. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassured her. “You’re going to get off, Stella. I’m certain of it.”

  “It’s not that, Sam,” she said. “It’s just that last night went so fast.”

  “We’ll have other nights, Stella.”

  “We better,” she said, kissing him quickly and then circling around to the driver’s door. As she drove off, she watched him in the rearview mirror. He looked so handsome in his pinstripe suit, standing there with his briefcase and duffel bag. She wanted to throw the car in reverse and go back for him, beg him to stay with her. Instead, she floored the car and sped off. She had work to do. If she didn’t clear herself, she would lose him. She couldn’t let that happen.

  When she was first arrested, Stella had anguished over what people would say, how her predicament would affect her career, her standing in the community, any chance that she could ever run for public office. Brad had always told her she didn’t understand about life, that she didn’t recognize the things that were truly valuable. Stella knew now that her husband had been right. A loving relationship was far more important than winning a case or rising a few more notches at the office. She could win all the cases in the world, and her success would never compare to the way Sam made her feel. In many ways, Stella knew she had taken Brad for granted, that she had neglected their marriage until he turned to another woman. She couldn’t go back and change the past, but she could fight for her future. Squinting into the bright morning sun, she vowed to use every skill she possessed. She would bury Holly Oppenheimer in a blizzard of paper, filing every motion the law allowed. Glancing in the rearview mirror again, she brushed back her hair and examined the scar on her face. She’d suffered enough punishment. She wasn’t about to go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit.

  The situation with Mario filled her with fear. Instead of going to the Holiday Inn to confer with Brenda Anderson, she drove straight to Mario’s apartment. Seeing his car in his assigned parking spot, she raced up the stairs and pounded on his door. When she heard footsteps approaching from inside, she moved to the side so Mario couldn’t see her through the peephole.

  “Who’s there?” he yelled through the door.

  Stella remained silent, reaching her arm over and knocking again, then stepped back to her previous position.

  “I can’t see you,” Mario said. Finally curiosity got the better of him and he flung the door open.

  Stella stepped out of the shadows. Mario stepped back inside and tried to close the door in her face. “Don’t you dare,” Stella shouted, pushing her way in despite his attempts to bar her way.

  “Why are you doing this?” Stella asked him. “Why are you avoiding me? You didn’t even come to see me at the jail.”

  “I knew you were going to blame everything on me,” he said, refusing to look at her. “You always blame everything on me.”

  “I do not,” Stella said, her voice booming out over the room.

  “Yes, you do,” Mario yelled back. “It’s always been my fault that you got burned. I’ve heard you say a dozen times that you wouldn’t have been burned if you hadn’t gone back down the hall to get me. Sometimes I wish you’d just left me there.”

  “That isn’t true,” Stella said, walking around in a small circle. “You’re just throwing this shit at me to avoid the real issue. Where were you when Randall was shot? Tell me, Mario. I have to know and I have to know right now.”

  “I spent the night with my girlfriend, Stella. I wasn’t aware that constituted a capital offense.”

  ‘ ‘Which girlfriend?” she said. “The stewardess?”

  “You really think I’m responsible for Randall’s death?” he said, shaking his head.

  “Well,” she said, stepping closer, “are you? If you are, why don’t you admit it? Then I’ll know what to do.”

  Mario tried to walk off. Stella stepped in front of him and seized him by the shoulders. “I’m going to start digging into Randall’s death,” she said, shaking his shoulders the way she used to when he was a kid. “I’m going to dig and dig until I get to the truth. Is that what you want, Mario? Do you want me to find out the hard way? Uncover things that might put you in prison? Do you want me to launch an investigation against my own fucking brother?”

  Mario wrenched away. “I didn’t do it,” he insisted, a pouty, childish expression on his face.

  “What about the cocaine?” she said, refusing to let up. “How long have you been using?” She suddenly noticed how small his pupils were, and at the same time, saw what she had failed to see before—the telltale redness and irritation around his nose. Her eyes took in the room and she suspected he had been holed up in the apartmen
t for days. The ashtrays were spilling over with cigarette butts, beer cans had toppled over onto the carpeting, and she spotted several rolled-up dollar bills and a razor blade on the coffee table. “You’re high now, aren’t you?” she snarled. Lashing out with her hand, she slapped him across the face. “How could you do this?” she screamed. “After all I went through for you, how could you poison your body with drugs?”

  Mario was no longer defensive. His anger fueled by cocaine and years of guilt, he knocked Stella off her feet, watching as she slammed back into the wall, then slid in a heap to the floor. Snatching his keys off the coffee table, he stormed out of the apartment.

  chapter

  EIGHT

  Stella stood in the shower, letting the icy water splash over her face. She had arranged to meet Brenda at the Holiday Inn at noon, but called and asked her to come to Mario’s instead. The humidity in Houston was so oppressive that by the time she’d finished putting the apartment in order, her clothes were sticking to her body and she was drained and miserable.

  Mario would return, she hoped, and this time she would try to deal with his problems in a rational manner. Pressing her forehead against the cool tile, she realized she would have to get him professional help. One of the reasons she had encouraged him to move back to Houston three years ago was that the lifestyle was somewhat slower. Dallas was notorious for its flashy nightclubs and fast-paced social scene. A handsome bachelor like Mario could easily get caught up with the wrong crowd. Had he been using again even before he left Dallas? Had she been so immersed in her work that she had failed to see it?

  In his drugged-out state, had her brother shot and killed Tom Randall?

  Stella felt herself shivering. She turned off the water and got out of the shower, quickly dressing and setting up her paperwork on the kitchen table. A few moments later, the doorbell rang and Stella admitted Brenda Anderson into the apartment.