Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  “So the Tierneys should force Mary Ann to have this child. Even if she never has a child like Matthew?”

  Hesitant, Marlene paused. In a smaller voice, she answered, “Yes.”

  The courtroom was very still. Quietly, Sarah asked, “What about the father who beat your friend. Should he also have that right as a parent?”

  Faltering, the girl looked at Saunders. “Objection,” he said angrily. “That’s hypothetical upon hypothetical.”

  “Agreed,” Leary said.

  Sarah had done what she could. Bewildered, Marlene Brown watched from the witness stand, mired in the tyranny of her own goodness, a girl whose beliefs—having been rewarded by God or good fortune—now formed the basis for how all others must live.

  “Thank you, Marlene,” Sarah told her. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  NINETEEN

  ALONE IN Sarah’s apartment, Mary Ann felt too miserable to cry, too sick at heart to eat.

  They thought she was a murderer, and there was nowhere, now, to hide. If she went to school, or even to the corner store, everyone would see this slutty girl who got herself pregnant, by a boy who didn’t care about her, in the back seat of a car, then wanted to kill a baby as sweet as Matthew Brown. Now the whole world knew Marlene Brown, and loved her for saving Matthew; the whole world hated Mary Ann Tierney for her selfishness, and thought her parents were right.

  It wasn’t fair. They didn’t know her. Sarah had kept her from testifying, and all that anyone believed about her came from other people. They didn’t know what it was like to look at a swollen head on a sonogram; or carry a baby that barely moved at all; or be scared of what would happen when they sliced her open. They didn’t know what it was like to be afraid of being sterile, or of telling a husband who loved you that you couldn’t have children with him. They didn’t know what it was like to have your mother and father decide your whole life for you. They didn’t know what it was like to be so helpless.

  No one knew. Not even Sarah.

  With deep and bitter regret, Mary Ann thought of her life six months ago—her friends, her room, the clothes she could wear, her unquestioning belief in her parents and their love. It all seemed precious and irretrievable, a distant dream— shattered by how dumb she was with Tony, and then more terrible things than anyone deserved. She was not sure that she wanted to believe in a God who was so mean and petty that He would ruin her life for one mistake.

  As soon as this thought came over her, Mary Ann was assaulted by fear.

  She was so alone.

  The buzzer to the intercom snarled.

  Instinctively, Mary Ann cowered. She could not answer.

  It buzzed again.

  Mary Ann swallowed, fighting the dryness in her mouth and throat. Maybe it was Sarah; maybe she’d forgotten her key. It felt like Sarah was her only friend.

  Sluggishly, Mary Ann stood up. Her belly felt distended, her legs and ankles thick; sometimes it hurt to move, and now she was afraid to love the baby who caused this.

  Pushing the button to the intercom, she asked, “Sarah?”

  “Mary Ann?” a woman’s voice asked in some surprise. “This is Tina Kwan, from Channel Five. Can we talk a minute …”

  “Go away.”

  Still Mary Ann kept her finger on the button, as though she feared her loneliness as much as she feared the voice. “All I want is a minute,” the woman urged. “For your sake.”

  Finger still on the button, Mary Ann pressed her face against the intercom.

  The voice was soft now. “If you’re still listening, Mary Ann, I’d like to help you. No one really knows you.”

  When Mary Ann opened her eyes, tears filled them. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

  When her windshield wipers began to squeak, Sarah angrily switched them off.

  She was exhausted. She had enjoyed a brief respite from the trial, a dinner with friends who had ordered up buttons which said FREE SARAH DASH. Once at her office, she was briefed by three associates who had summarized the prior depositions of the Tierneys’ proposed expert. But working there—though necessary—involved so many distractions that they amounted to harassment: constant calls from media; the patent disapproval of the chairman, John Nolan; the well-meaning visits of encouragement from women and other friends at the firm; the kibitzers who, fascinated that their peer was fighting a televised trial, dropped in with comments or advice, some of it remarkably insensitive.

  “Too bad about that baby,” one observed. “Hopefully yours will turn out to be a really bad connection.” By that standard, the starfuckers—who broke Sarah’s concentration merely so they could tell their friends they’d talked to her about the trial—had been a relief.

  Drizzle speckling her windshield, she drove into the cavernous garage of her apartment building, grateful for the elevator at its center. She had seen no strangers outside. Her phone number was unlisted; with luck, it would take the media and the Christian Commitment a few days to find out where she lived. Any respite was precious.

  But any solitude, she discovered in the empty elevator, allowed too many vexing questions to reemerge.

  Was she good enough? She had done well so far, but tension and fatigue, the extreme highs and lows of a trial unlike any others, were sapping her resilience and dulling her judgment. Sarah envied Martin Tierney the partnership, if not the company, of Barry Saunders.

  There were other doubts, too, which no lawyer trapped in the savage single-mindedness of a trial could afford to entertain.

  What if the baby were normal? Should a woman have the absolute power of life and death over the unborn, when Sarah scorned the Tierneys’ assertion of power over Mary Ann? What about Martin Tierney’s apocryphal mother, empowered to abort a fetus with the wrong eye color, or one with a “genetic predisposition” to be gay? Was Sarah blind to the implications of her own arguments? And what would become of Mary Ann if she prevailed?

  Friends were Sarah’s buffer, a touchstone to reality; her dating life was at least a pleasant diversion, which sometimes held the hope of more. But Sarah had no time for either. She was living in a bell jar, with only Mary Ann for company. Although, before, the girl’s presence had added to her pressures, tonight it would almost seem a blessing.

  Fumbling, Sarah missed the lock with her door key— another sign that she was running on fumes. The second try, inserting the key with exaggerated care, was accompanied by a slow release of breath. Then she opened her door, and looked into the startled face of a stranger.

  * * *

  As the woman rose from her couch, Sarah wondered why she looked familiar. All at once she understood.

  Mary Ann remained on the couch, staring at Sarah with startled, guilty eyes, a tiny microphone clipped to the collar of her blouse. Standing next to Sarah’s stereo was a technician with a Minicam.

  The woman composed herself, extending a hand. “I’m Tina Kwan.”

  Sarah felt herself shaken by outrage and fatigue. As Kwan crossed the living room, the camera followed her. For a split second, Sarah imagined the scene on television.

  Sarah took the woman’s hand. “Sarah Dash,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d turned my living room into a television studio.”

  The woman seemed impervious. “We’re anxious for Mary Ann to tell her story.”

  “Then let’s talk—alone.” Without waiting for an answer, she took Kwan by the arm, and guided her from the room. Mary Ann and the technician watched them in surprise.

  Sarah led her to the bathroom; she did not want this woman in her bedroom. Pushing Kwan inside, she closed the door behind them.

  Kwan stepped back a little. Sarah glimpsed their reflections in the mirror, two profiles above Sarah’s vanity, strewn with her makeup, toothpaste, and—unfortunate timing for a trial—an open box of tampons. “You’re losing the PR wars,” Kwan said. “You can’t win this trial without winning in the media.”

  The woman looked perfect—short hair carefully cut, a glossy black; her
face made up to accent her exotic features for the camera. Briefly, Sarah felt off balance, trapped in a hall of mirrors in which this woman’s claims were true.

  “This isn’t a PR war,” Sarah answered. “It’s a girl’s life. I don’t want it trashed.”

  Kwan shook her head. “You’ll trash it,” she retorted, “if you let these Bible thumpers make a Martian out of her.”

  The woman’s bluntness muted Sarah’s outrage. “When I decide it’s right for Mary Ann,” she replied, “we’ll consider talking to you. But only if you give me whatever film you have, and leave.”

  Kwan squared her shoulders. “Mary Ann wants to talk to us,” she retorted. “Why don’t you let her decide?”

  The woman’s aggression took Sarah aback. As though seeing this, Kwan brushed past her, opened the door, and walked back into Sarah’s living room.

  The camera was aimed at them. “Mary Ann,” Kwan said, “your lawyer says no interview. I want people to see you as you really are. Only you can decide.”

  It was a nightmare, captured on videotape. Sarah composed herself. “They’re trying to exploit you,” she told Mary Ann. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Mary Ann gazed up at her—by turns frightened, sullen, resistant, and confused.

  Abruptly, she rose.

  Sarah tensed. With the resistant, angry posture of a teenager, the girl turned her back on everyone and walked to her room. The door closed behind her.

  Kwan gazed after her. “Get out,” Sarah demanded, and then decided to bluff. “You’re trespassing, and I can sue you. Use that tape, and I will.”

  It took them fifteen minutes to pack up the camera and gear. Sarah stayed in the living room. No one spoke.

  Sarah opened the door to Mary Ann’s room.

  Mary Ann sat on the edge of the bed, arms folded, staring at the wall. Sitting next to her, Sarah sorted out a riot of emotions: shock at this invasion of her home, a feeling of betrayal—that Mary Ann had violated her privacy and abused her trust—and a sense, slower to settle in, of how lost this girl was.

  “Why did you let them in?” she asked.

  Mary Ann did not turn. “It’s my case, not yours. It’s my baby. It’s my life.”

  Beneath the stubborn words, Sarah heard her fright. “They’re not your friends,” she answered. “You’re not ready to cope with them …”

  “Not ready …” Mary Ann bolted upright, momentarily staggering with the awkwardness of pregnancy. “You sound like him—my father. He makes me look like dirt, and you tell me to let him.” She stopped, words choking at the beginning of a sob. “What will people think of me, Sarah? Who’ll want anything to do with me, after this? Who will my friends be?”

  It was the lament of any teenager, Sarah thought—except that, in this case, the lament was terribly real. She tried to put aside her own feelings. “The first thing,” Sarah answered, “is what you think of yourself.”

  Mary Ann stared at her, and then sat down again. Softly, she said, “When I saw that baby …” Her voice trailed off.

  “I felt it, too,” Sarah answered. “Do you think that means you’re wrong?”

  Looking down, Mary Ann gazed at her own stomach. “What if he is okay?” she said. “And I’ve killed him?”

  Sarah pondered the loneliness behind the question. “If you have an abortion,” she answered, “you run that risk, however small. In fairness to your father, I think that’s part of what he wants to spare you. I don’t think he’s only worried about the fetus.”

  For what seemed to Sarah a very long time, Mary Ann said nothing. Would she be relieved, Sarah wondered, if Mary Ann removed the weight she felt, gave her back at least a semblance of the life she had enjoyed—free of the press, and the sense that her own future was moving out of her control? Then Mary Ann shook her head. “I have to do this,” she said. “For myself. I hope maybe for my husband, someday, and for our babies.”

  There was resignation in her voice—a deep sorrow and, with it, a measure of maturity. The relief Sarah felt answered at least one question—if Mary Ann was prepared to go on, this was what Sarah wanted as well.

  “I was trying to protect you,” Sarah said softly, “not stifle you. When we talk to someone, we’ll choose who, and we’ll dictate the ground rules. Or else it’s not an interview—it’s an ambush.”

  Mary Ann nodded. “Okay.”

  “So can I tell you what went through my head when I saw those people aiming a Minicam at you?”

  Silent, Mary Ann assented with her eyes.

  “I thought of all the women I’ve seen interviewed on television. They’ve slept with a politician, or shot their husband in self-defense. Suddenly they’re famous by accident and forget what they’re famous for. And then they get hooked by pseudocelebrity until they become a narcissistic joke.

  “You’re not a joke, Mary Ann, and the media isn’t reality. If you know you’re a good person, no one else can make you a bad one.” Pausing, Sarah rested her hand on Mary Ann’s shoulder. “You’re doing this to get your life back. Don’t let this become your life. Please.”

  Mary Ann blinked. Then suddenly she was in Sarah’s arms, hugging her fiercely. Sarah’s own gratitude was a measure of how tired she felt. Far too tired, it now seemed, to say anything more to anyone.

  TWENTY

  WATCHING DR. BRUNO Lasch testify, Sarah wished that she had slept better—or at all.

  Lasch’s credentials were daunting enough: a renowned expert in biomedical ethics, Lasch had taught at Yale, was widely published, and now held a senior fellowship at America’s most distinguished center for the study of bioethical issues. But what he personified made him more formidable yet. From birth, Lasch’s body had been stunted and bent, his hands lacked fingers, and his legs—more vestigial than functional—had consigned him to a wheelchair, now placed in front of the witness stand. Most striking, though, were Lasch’s eyes, blazing with a keen intelligence.

  He was now forty-two. Few had expected him to live this long or, so seriously disabled, to forge such a brilliant career. His iconic standing in the disability community was affirmed by the circle of demonstrators, many in wheelchairs, who had greeted Sarah and Mary Ann with signs saying DISABILITY IS NOT A DEATH SENTENCE. Pale, Mary Ann had taken Sarah’s hand.

  “It seems clear,” Lasch now told Martin Tierney, “that the principal basis for your daughter’s lawsuit is not the extremely marginal threat to her reproductive capacity, but the ‘unacceptable’ nature of her child.”

  His voice was reedy; he paused for breath, twisting his neck to peer at Leary. “By that standard, it’s painfully apparent to me that I wouldn’t be here. And I can’t help but be grateful, every day, that my parents were loving enough, and brave enough, to see past their dreams of the ideal, and see me.”

  His voice quavered slightly. “But I shouldn’t personalize this, Your Honor. My real concern is not to tell Mary Ann Tierney ‘you’re talking about me.’ It’s to ask her, and to ask this court, what kind of society we are—and should be.” He turned to Mary Ann. “What I believe is this: the assertion that the Protection of Life Act is unconstitutional unless Mary Ann Tierney can take this life demeans the value of any life which is perceived as less than ‘normal,’ by whatever subjective standard the mother uses to define that.”

  This was not testimony, Sarah thought—it was a lecture, delivered from the impregnable fortress of Lasch’s cruelly twisted body. But to object would seem petty and disrespectful; there was no way, now, to point out that God had given Mary Ann’s fetus arms and legs but, in all probability, nothing which resembled this man’s extraordinary brain. Beside her, Mary Ann gazed at him in awe, biting her underlip, while her father’s questions held the reverence of a man addressing a secular saint.

  “Could you amplify,” Tierney asked, “your concerns about selective abortion of the disabled?”

  “Certainly.” Once more, Lasch swallowed; he seemed to have trouble breathing, and he sometimes spoke in a painful wheez
e. “The first concern is what I call the expressivist argument—that biology is destiny, that the trait expresses the whole. Or, put personally, that my arms and legs are all there is of me.”

  Sarah winced inside; skillfully, Lasch used himself as an exhibit. “A few years ago,” he continued, “there was an anchorwoman in Los Angeles whose hands lacked fingers. She had a loving marriage, a fine career. But when she became pregnant, and it seemed clear that her baby would also lack fingers, many people asked her how she could give birth to such a child.”

  Lasch grimaced in wonder. “They were upset by the image of a fingerless child, because he violated their idea of beauty, and so should be put to death. As bad, they were telling the baby’s mother that she should never have been born. But even our idea of disability is subjective: in the nineteenth century, on Martha’s Vineyard, deafness was so common that virtually everyone spoke sign language. Which suggests that rather than committing murder, society can—and should—adjust to accommodate difference.”

  Hastily, Sarah scribbled a note with a star beside it. As compelling—and disturbing—as Sarah herself found Lasch’s testimony, she thought it laced with a subtle ingenuousness, which Lasch himself appreciated and intended. And in this, Sarah hoped, might lie the seeds of her cross-examination.

  “What,” Tierney was asking, “are your other concerns?”

  “One is societal, Professor—that we’ve come to view children as commodities, not gifts to be cherished. All too often, parents see a child as an extension of themselves, not an end in itself. And so they believe they’re entitled to order up a child like something in a catalog—witness the couples who advertise on the Internet for eggs from six-foot blond Swedish volleyball players who double as Miss Universe.”

  At this, Judge Leary smiled, arching his eyebrows with the bright pleasure of agreement. Though Sarah bridled at this facile linking of rich and fatuous would-be parents with the embattled girl beside her, the media, a reflection of their audience, closely attended Lasch’s every word.