The Child

by Sarah Schulman

  “He’s not my child.” Hockey was quiet.

  She shut up and so did he. They were all silent after that. So silent that the sounds of traffic overwhelmed them. Hockey was now officially different. He had put all his vulnerabilities behind him. He now identified with the strong. Eva could see this.

  “Do you want to get Dave a life sentence? Honestly, Eva, they are charging Stew as an adult. This is not a gay rights issue. Gay rights is not about child abuse, nor is it about murdering little boys. It’s not about fucking little boys, and it’s not about killing little boys.”

  Eva looked at him and tried to smile, but inside she was furious and trying to think of a plan. Okay, Hockey did not have sympathy for Stew, or if he did, it was not the first thing on his mind. Eva couldn’t be mad at him for that. She got up from behind the keyboard and Hockey got up from behind his. They both walked to the center of the room, facing off over Thor, who was deep in thought, chewing on an unlit cigarette. She had to appeal to logic. She didn’t have anything more powerful to fall back on.

  “Hockey, listen.” She knew she couldn’t be bigger than him, so she tried begging. “We have to go in there and argue that Stew was pathologized for being a gay kid. They drove him crazy.”

  “Now you’re crazy. Stew is not our client.”

  “Let me ask you something, Hockey.”

  “Yes, Thor.”

  The old man stood up out of his chair like he was doing deep knee bends. Like he did them every morning for forty years while holding two thirty-pound weights. “How old were you the first time you had sex?”

  “Twelve.”

  “How old was the other guy?”

  “Nine.”

  “And the next time?”

  “Twelve.”

  “When was the first time you had sex with an adult man?”

  “I was fourteen.”

  “How old was he?”

  “In his twenties?”

  “Were you molested?”

  “It’s not the same thing.” Hockey was pissed. “I didn’t go out and kill somebody.”

  “I was sixteen.” Eva felt sick like she had done something wrong. She had done something wrong—she had helped Stew trust an untrustworthy man.

  “Late bloomer,” Thor said with a funny gravity.

  “We’ll argue double jeopardy.” Suddenly Eva knew she wasn’t going to get her way. She realized something deep about herself. She didn’t know how to fight ruthless people. She didn’t know how to fight unfair systems. She didn’t know what to do about cruelty. She only knew human complexity and the difference between right and wrong. Stew was a victim. He was driven crazy, and now he was acting crazy. He was just a gay kid, like she had been, and his family and the system treated him like a criminal until he became one. If they had just loved him, everything would have been all right. It was like Mary. She was driven crazy. If she had been able to be herself, she could have been. But the powers that be treated her like someone who doesn’t matter, and now she was acting that way.

  Hockey wanted to argue in court that Stew was responsible for his actions, in order to get David off the hook. But that was not the truth. Stew was driven to murder. But not by Dave. He was driven to it by people who would never be put on trial. Eva couldn’t pretend it was any other way. She loved Mary and she loved Stew. She could understand. She realized that she was not afraid to be uncomfortable.

  “It’s not your case, Eva. How many times do I have to say that? The kid is gone. We’ve got to save Dave. If you go in there with a gay rights rap, he’ll never see the light of day again. It doesn’t matter what happens to Stew. David is our client, and David can’t go to trial. I’m going to plea bargain and that’s that. I wouldn’t represent Stew even if I had the chance. He’s a murderer.”

  Eva was quiet, but her mind was churning. What can I do? She thought. What must I do?

  They all smoked that day. Even Hockey, who had once had pneumonia, had a cigarette. The three of them sat in the office puffing and watching CNN. They called in for Chinese takeout, but no one ate it.

  Then CNN showed Stew being led to court. It was the first time any of them had seen him. It was really upsetting. Even to Hockey. Stew just looked like a little kid.

  “He’s so short,” Thor said.

  “Look at that kid,” Hockey said.

  Eva stared at him. He was a droopy boy with waist irons and chains on his legs. He was her child. Her.

  The camera cut to the on-location reporter interviewing a neighbor in Van Buren Township. Betty Podolsky, a beautician for thirty years who did Mrs. Mulcahey’s hair. She had known Stew since he was born.

  “I hope he gets raped in prison,” she said.

  “Tell me one more time,” Eva asked. “What are you going to argue in court?”

  “That Stew is an adult, thereby consenting to sex with our client, and equally responsible for the act of murder.”

  “Okay,” Eva said. “I’m out.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Out of the case. I’m not going to court to fight for David on grounds that will scapegoat Stew. It’s not good for anyone.”

  “Eva, honey. Listen to me.” He said it with pity. “What you want to do will never work. You understand? We are lawyers. We can’t do things with other people’s lives that aren’t going to work. We have to make tough choices.”

  “I think my way would work.”

  “I thought you wanted to win,” Hockey said. “I thought you wanted to know what it was like to win.”

  “Not that badly.”

  “Then,” he said softly, “you will never win.”

  Eva found herself walking down the street with her stuff. She hadn’t gone through a process of deciding to leave and saying good-bye. She hadn’t laid out all the possibilities and thought through their consequences. She just did it.

  She did what Mary would have done.

  At the corner she felt scared, regret. But by the time she got to the subway, she had another idea.

  If I don’t do what I really think is right, then I am lost. What is the most important thing in my life? What is the one thing I can fight for, no matter what?

  That night when she got home to her empty apartment, Eva wrote a minimum balance check of $250 to MasterCard. Then she cried. She talked out loud to Mary for a while, like she would have if Mary were in the tub. Then she said the word “Mom?” She had a cup of tea and dialed Mary’s number. It was the machine. She left a message.

  “This isn’t fair. I love you. If we can talk, everything will be okay.”

  But there was no response.

  31

  The next day Hockey rode the Amtrak to meet with District Attorney Bernard South. This was his chance to plea bargain for David. Dave had not cried on the phone; he was too doped up by the prison shrinks to respond. The guy was a suicide risk, and Hockey wished they’d just let him do it. Get it over with. But they would rather watch a man squirming on the meat hook. They couldn’t let him get off as easily as death unless they were the ones who imposed it. Hockey’s own prognosis was quite the opposite: he was being sentenced to life by lethal injection.

  He wore his best work suit and set his notes on the train’s plastic folding tray. When he got back he would buy more clothes. Barney’s. That was the place to shop. He’d heard the name enough. He’d go in and buy three suits, no matter what they cost. It was a promise. Hockey took out his pill dispenser and swallowed four white tablets, two blue capsules, three orange pills, and emptied some powder into a bottle of Evian. Then he took a red pill and a red capsule and three yellow pills. Then he looked at his notes. These were the treats he had brought with him on the train.

  It was clear to Hockey that the protease inhibitors had kicked in again, and he was back at the gym on a regular basis. His arrogance was also back. He was the boss again, and no one was ever going to forget it. Now he was finally angry. Angry that some force had dared to threaten to take his life away, just like it had taken away J
ose’s. Hockey had always secretly suspected that an early death could never happen to him, and now he was sure. Deep down, as much as he loved and grieved Jose with every breath, he had somewhere considered that Jose was more vulnerable than he was, and that’s why Jose died. The train stopped at Hastings.

  Jose was so sweet. He had been dead for years now, but Hockey had never put away his clothing, never dismantled Jose’s altars or given away his shoes. He still had everything placed in the apartment right where Jose had placed it. He’d never bought anything new. Hockey had thought he was going to die, too, and that this was to have been the entirety of his life. Now, however, he was sure he was not going to die, so he resolved to get rid of Jose’s stuff, but he couldn’t. There were events that had taken place against these settings, engraved on his body like DNA. They represented his real life, his life with Jose, the only time he had not felt alone. The person who had the decency to stand up for him, to be for him, no matter what anyone would think. How could Hockey ever put that in a box? Then it would end. Forever. And he would be back in the world of strangers. At least Hockey’s HIV was the same genetic material as Jose’s. The merging of their molecules or paramecia or whatever. It was their child.

  The train stopped at Poughkeepsie.

  Hockey was alive now, and the person he owed the most to was dead. Nothing. He was not grateful for being alive. No one had handed it to him on a silver platter, life. His lover was dead. For that he was supposed to be grateful? No way.

  He was a very lonely man. He wanted to have friends, but it was hard to find the ones who would listen with compassion. Most wanted to tell him how to feel and what to do. Some were so afraid of his suffering that they couldn’t bear to know the truth of it. They tried to control what he would say. If he told the truth about how he really felt, they would cut him off. They didn’t want to hear it. Some wanted to pretend that nothing bad had happened. “That’s all behind us now.” Never being uncomfortable was more important than the truth of Hockey’s life.

  At times he found himself starting to adjust, slightly. Starting to peek into what his life might now be like. And waiting there in his future each time was the lovely face of his sweet Jose. The thought of learning how to live without him was a whole new obstacle. Dying without Jose was hard enough, but living? Hockey wasn’t prepared. It meant his worst suffering was before him. It would always be in front of him. It lined the path to his future. His future was strewn with death, fear of death, absence, fear of absence, incredible pain, incredible discomfort, Hickmans, pills, torturous treatments, unpredictable diarrhea, adjusting his fucking medication, side effects, malfunctioning organs, fatigue, emaciation, terrible skin problems, wasting in his face, fat in his gut, rashes, shingles, mollusks that had to be frozen off his cheeks, rashes on his dick, terrible itching skin, so much depression he couldn’t get into the bathtub. Today he felt good, except for the diarrhea. But all that pain formed his psyche. The past was his destiny. Why wouldn’t anyone else let him say so?

  Every night when Hockey came home, he came home to some familiar remnant of Jose. It had all become so codified that those remnants now were Jose. Jose did not exist, so no new evidence that he had ever existed would ever be created. That’s why the merest shifting of a shoe destroyed the evidence. It was forensic.

  Hockey couldn’t wait to take his pills. He loved leaving his office, going to the gym, having sex in the steam room, going home and taking his pills. He loved sitting in the familiar chair in his familiar house, the house where he had spent the best days of his life. The most horrifying. The days that lay before him.

  The train arrived at Van Buren, New York.

  32

  Kevin Bart was an enormous, blobby, emotional wreck. He was so suburban, beefy, and emblematic that Hockey could see the bad pop music, and the after-work Jell-O shots. His fear made him that transparent. The rest of the fellows were a bit more upsetting.

  There were the two guys from the FBI who never said a word. There was David, pasty and disoriented. He was sweating at the table in his orange prison jumpsuit, hands and waist manacled. He seemed to Hockey like a cinematic child molester. He looked like a child, but he was a man. He had that effeminate pudginess that prison food produced in certain kinds of clients. It made them unsympathetic to others. Stew was also at the table. So tiny, this kid. Hockey was surprised at how small and thin he was. A runt. Too small for his age. It made David look even more like a child molester, having the two of them there in the room. Then there was Bethany. She had obviously coked up in the bathroom; the blood vessels in her nostrils were flaring. And Stew’s parents. Like anyone anywhere. Distressed, uncomprehending, absolutely unequipped to deal with anything complicated or real.

  Hockey’s job was to blame everything on Bart. Nobody else could handle the responsibility, and Hockey had long ago learned that in court, as in life, you have to blame the person who can shoulder the blame. It makes it easier for others to go along with it. Blame the strong if you can’t get the guilty. The justice system is not about justice; it’s about order. If punishing the true perpetrator will create disorder, no one will go along with it. Kevin Bart’s back was big enough for this burden. He’d get over it. He was young. He could get a second career in real estate.

  “We expect you to drop all charges,” Hockey said.

  “Don’t be absurd.” That was the district attorney, Bernard South.

  This was a pretrial hearing attended by all parties, where each tried to reframe the paradigm, to restate the terms to their own advantage. Hockey was here to make sure David’s case never went to trial. Child molesters don’t do well with jury trials, and child molesters of child killers don’t do well in front of nervous elected judges and newspaper reporters. He was there to blame the state. Bethany was there to blame David or the state. The state was there to fry two fags, but if they could be satisfied with only one, Hockey’s job was to make sure it was the kid, not David, his client.

  “Let’s face it,” Hockey said. “The biggest hole in the state’s argument is that you coerced a minor into participating in the prosecution’s case against David. A coerced confession is not admissible in the courtroom. No point in pretending that it is.”

  So far, so good. That was the truth and everyone there knew it.

  “Your Honor,” Bethany piped up. She had a nice voice. Melodic, an alto, it was comforting, “I expect you to remove criminal charges against my client, Stewart Mulcahey, and remand him to a state mental institution. The boy was molested by a vicious predator, which caused him untold duress. Incarceration would be inappropriate in this case. He needs hospitalization and care.”

  “Don’t be absurd, both of you. I can’t drop any of these charges. It’s too high profile and you both know it. These two men are going to trial.”

  The judge was scared. Hockey’s job was to make him more scared.

  “Excuse me, Judge,” Hockey smiled. He was on a roll and feeling great. “Counselor Bliss is right on one point. David was charged based on a coerced confession obtained by Lieutenant Bart that was not psychiatrically endorsed. Bart is required by law to have the approval of a therapist in such matters, and he did not. That makes the confession invalid, and I think that is obvious to all parties.”

  “It was my professional judgment,” Bart slurped. He was going down fast.

  “That Stew could handle the emotional stress?” Bethany was incredulous. She could get work on the soaps. “I don’t believe that’s your profession, Lieutenant. Especially since Stewart resisted your attempt to install a tracking device.”

  It looked good. One point for David.

  “We have an expert witness.” Bethany was giving a great performance. She combined femininity and competence. Played both ways. “He’s ready to testify that oftentimes a child, like Stewart, is just not emotionally ready to confront a predator.”

  Hockey had to nip this one in the bud right away. Especially that word child.

  “Well, we have an expert
witness from the National Center for Protection of Juveniles ready to testify that some teenagers who are engaged in relationships with older men may not share the same values as detectives.”

  This was his strategy. To neutralize whenever possible, play the middle ground. That was the problem with people like Eva. She was great when someone got their food stamps cut off; then you have to cat-fight. But when your client faces a long jail term, manipulation, deception, and lying were necessary. There was no National Center for the Protection of Juveniles. There was a National Center for the Protection of Children, which had refused to offer an amicus in this case. They don’t defend pederasts. But Bernard South didn’t need to know that.

  “Let me add,” Brittany continued, as though Hockey didn’t exist, “that the social service department of Van Buren Township exhibited profound incompetence and let down both Stewart and the Mulcahey family, paving the way for this terrible tragedy.”

  “Completely untrue,” warbled the lawyer from the state mental health agency, Gloria Inzunatto. “Everything was determined to be normal. You’ve read the social worker’s report. There was no indication that Stew had any psychological problems. He passed the examination with flying colors.”

  “Well,” Hockey rebounded. “We’ve got an expert witness, a psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Goldberg. She will testify that teenagers engaged in consensual relationships with adults may not share the vindictiveness that intergenerational relationships create in parents and other adults.” Uh-oh, he’d faltered. He’d repeated that phrase may not share. It made him look like he was running out of ammo.

  “Let me tell you something right now, Mr. Notkin.” South was frothing over that one. “You bring in a gay psychiatrist from New York to testify that it’s okay for boys to have sex with pedophiles, and you’re going to lose this case. Your client is going away, and I mean no parole.”

  “Dr. Goldberg is married, Your Honor, and the fact that Stewart had a relationship with a forty-year-old man shows that he was struggling with his sexual identity.”