Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  “What about your mother?” Sarah asked.

  Mary Ann looked away. Her anger seemed to vanish in regret, perhaps even guilt.

  “What if I put her on the stand,” Sarah persisted. “If I pressed her hard enough, would she still support him? Suppose they parted company …”

  “No.”

  It was said with sudden intensity. Surprised, Sarah modified her tone. “She wouldn’t? Or you don’t want me to?”

  Now Mary Ann, too, spoke more evenly. “I don’t think she would, Sarah. And I don’t want you to. I know him, and it could ruin them.”

  This simple statement was filled with a depth of feeling and perception which startled Sarah. In the crucible of the trial, Mary Ann seemed to have grown, becoming less blind to consequence, more compassionate in her choices, than her father’s beliefs permitted him. He doesn’t deserve this much compassion, Sarah wanted to tell her—neither of them do.

  Mary Ann seemed to square her shoulders. In profile, she was slight, a silhouette with a stomach so distended it looked painful. “So,” she said coolly, “I really have to testify.”

  There were many things Sarah could have said to discourage her—that Mary Ann would harm her family further, that she might win without speaking for herself. What stopped her was respect.

  “Yes,” Sarah answered. “I think you do.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “DID YOU want to get pregnant?” Sarah asked.

  Mary Ann Tierney sat on the witness stand, wearing a floral print maternity dress which hung loosely, partly concealing the shape of her belly and, Sarah hoped, the unsettling nature of a late-term abortion. To Sarah, she looked like what she was—a young girl overcome by circumstance, dragged from the secretiveness of teenage life to explain herself to the world.

  The courtroom was preternaturally still—even Patrick Leary was subdued, his only motion to fidget with a pencil. Martin Tierney’s gaze at his daughter was penetrating, yet deeply sad. From the front row Margaret watched them both with wounded eyes, her manner veering between protective-ness toward Mary Ann and shock that she would testify against them.

  “No.” Mary Ann’s voice was wispy. “I was scared of that.”

  Sarah nodded her encouragement. Gently, she asked, “Why didn’t you use birth control?”

  Mary Ann gazed at the floor, choosing a middle distance well short of her father. “I didn’t know how, or where to get something, and Tony said it wouldn’t feel good. When I was with him, I tried not to think about it. Just about him.”

  “What about asking your doctor?”

  Mary Ann blinked. “He was their friend, not mine. Even if there was something I could use, I was afraid to have it.” Pausing, Mary Ann looked at Sarah in exhaustion; they had stayed up late rehearsing her testimony, then tried in vain to sleep, and her eyes were as puffy as Sarah’s felt. “My mom was the one who cleaned my room,” she explained in a reluctant voice. “I always thought she looked for things, even in my purse.”

  Whether this was true or not, Sarah reflected, the Tierneys’ regulation of thought and action had left Mary Ann with little sense of privacy, except in those moments—as with Tony— when she secured it through deception.

  “Did you believe using birth control was wrong?” Sarah asked.

  “I didn’t know. I just knew we couldn’t talk about it.”

  “After you found out you were two months pregnant, Mary Ann, did you talk about abortion?”

  “Never. My father believed it was a sin. So did Father Satullo, the people at my school, everyone I knew …”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She believed that, too.” Sadly, Mary Ann glanced toward Margaret Tierney. “At first it was hard. But after a while she started buying baby clothes, decorating the guest room. She even bought a diary, so I could write down what was happening to my body. When I didn’t feel like writing in it, she’d ask me questions, then write down things herself.”

  Sarah had first heard this last night; for her, it sharpened her sense of a girl whose life was, to an unusual degree, the product of her parents’ iron beliefs and subconscious desires.

  “Did you feel ready to be a mother?” Sarah asked.

  “It didn’t matter,” Mary Ann said softly. “I was one. I knew I’d always love my baby, and protect him.”

  The words were not rehearsed, and reminded Sarah that, however blind she thought him, Martin Tierney knew that this abortion would cause Mary Ann great anguish.

  “What changed your mind?” Sarah asked.

  “Not just the sonogram.” Still Mary Ann’s tone was soft. “The look on my mother’s face when the doctor said what it meant. The sound of her voice when she asked if I could have more babies. And I knew—all at once, I just knew—that I shouldn’t try to have this one. Because he wouldn’t live, and I might never have another.”

  “Could you tell your parents that?”

  “No.” Mary Ann looked down at her stomach, tears filling her eyes. “I knew what they’d gone through for me, what having me had cost them. Telling them felt too selfish.” Mary Ann’s voice became husky with misery and protest. “That’s what my father called me when I finally said what I wanted— ‘selfish.’”

  Martin Tierney stared fixedly at the defense table, as though shamed by the exposure of so intimate a moment. Quietly, Sarah asked, “Would knowing you were afraid of infertility have changed their minds?”

  Mary Ann shook her head. “They know now,” she answered. “And look at where we are.”

  Glancing at the camera, trained on a fifteen-year-old girl by his own order, Leary seemed chastened. Martin Tierney seemed to gaze into a void: he was sorry, Sarah supposed, for implying that Mary Ann was fixated on perfection, not the threat of infertility. But nowhere near as sorry as Sarah intended to make him.

  “So what made you defy them?” she asked.

  “My mother. I mean she had these beliefs, but sometimes she was just so sad.” Mary Ann stopped, as though moved by an indelible memory. “After the sonogram,” she finished, “I found her in the guest room just staring at the crib, tears running down her face. That was when I knew for sure I had to do this.”

  At the corner of Sarah’s vision, Margaret Tierney closed her eyes. Facing Mary Ann, Sarah silently implored her not to notice, or retreat. “How did you know where to go?”

  “I didn’t. Then I remembered that Father Satullo—our priest—led prayer vigils outside an abortion clinic. Looking up the address was all I knew to do.”

  “How pregnant were you?”

  “Five months.” Mary Ann’s voice trembled. “When I went, Father Satullo was there, kneeling on the sidewalk …” She paused again, voice trailing off.

  “So you left.”

  “Yes. After that, it was like I was trapped. My mother used to talk about how I moved inside her. All I could think about was that my baby never did.”

  “Is that why you came back to the clinic?”

  Mary Ann’s cornflower blue eyes, though wide, seemed to have turned inward. “I kept remembering my mother, crying. She needed to believe in something so much that she was suffering, all over again, by helping him make me suffer.”

  Mary Ann kept surprising Sarah: there was a lucidity to her thoughts, a rueful clarity, of someone reaching her own terms with life. “Then you met me,” Sarah said. “And said you wanted an abortion.”

  “Yes. So you told me about this law. About what I’d have to do, and how hard it all would be. Especially having to face my parents in court.” Pausing, Mary Ann seemed to squirm, perhaps at the discomfort of her pregnancy, perhaps at confronting her parents. “I didn’t want to face them. I didn’t want to go to court.”

  For a moment, Sarah let this linger. “Did I ever say you should?”

  “No. Only that if I wanted an abortion, that court was the only legal way. Whether to go was my decision.”

  Sarah hesitated, giving Mary Ann a brief respite; the girl was visibly tiring, and Sarah wishe
d to make her point, then sit, leaving Mary Ann with the reserves of mind and spirit to withstand cross-examination. “After you filed,” Sarah inquired, “did your parents tell you to drop the lawsuit?”

  “Yes.” Mary Ann’s voice held a quiet vehemence. “They both did.”

  At this, Margaret Tierney seemed to blanch.

  “What did I say?”

  “That if I wanted to bail out, I could. You treated me like a person, not a puppet.” Now Mary Ann looked directly at her father, speaking clearly and distinctly. “My father made me come here. He’s the one who says I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m not even capable of seeing what’s happened to my own mother. But when I listen to him talk about me, it’s not like me at all, but someone he made up.”

  Pausing, Mary Ann took in a breath and her voice was thick with emotion. “Now he says that all I cared about was having a perfect child. That’s the worst part—they’re still calling me selfish, and I was trying not to hurt them.”

  From the defense table, Martin Tierney stared at his daughter with an expression close to wonder. “How could you keep from hurting them?” Sarah asked.

  Mary Ann seemed to gather herself, turning from Margaret Tierney’s stricken look of comprehension. “By not talking about my mother,” she said with weary finality. “Not to them, or even to you. I didn’t until my father testified against me.”

  As the courtroom fell silent, Margaret Tierney bent her head.

  Seeing this, Sarah fought back her own regret. “No further questions,” she said, and went back to her chair.

  THIRTY-TWO

  FOR SARAH, the recess—a mere ten minutes—felt endless.

  She sat in a bare witness room with Mary Ann, watching a schoolroom-style clock measure out the time before the girl faced her cross-examiner. That so much of this experience involved her mother’s trauma was devastating to both parents and child, and Mary Ann’s exposure of her family’s wounds seemed to have left her listless and depressed.

  “You were good,” Sarah encouraged her. “All you need is to stand up for yourself for one more hour.”

  Mary Ann’s eyes flickered, the only sign that she had heard. Sarah could feel her absorb the aching knowledge that her relationships with both parents, and theirs with each other, were being changed forever.

  This brought Sarah face-to-face with her own responsibilities. She had made decisions as a lawyer would, marshaling evidence and hammering at the Tierneys’ weak points without remorse. As a lawyer, she found little in herself to fault. But though Sarah could tell herself that Congress had written this conflict into law, she could not escape her role in bringing it to this climax. Now the best she could hope for was that Saunders or Thomas Fleming, not Martin Tierney, would cross-examine Mary Ann.

  Glancing at the clock, Sarah said, “It’s time.”

  Approaching his daughter, he stopped at a respectful distance with his hands shoved in his pockets. As she watched him with apprehension, the exquisite cruelty of the moment made Sarah wince.

  “Mary Ann,” he said softly, “I’d like to apologize.”

  The girl’s vigilant expression softened, then stiffened again. Sarah wondered at the skewed intimacy she witnessed—a loving father, so estranged from his daughter that he must broach his regrets on television—even as she questioned the motives of the complex man who was her adversary.

  “You’ve never been selfish,” Tierney continued. “I was too emotional, it seems, to see how much you wanted to protect your mother, and worried for us both. I, who should know you better than anyone. Except, perhaps, your mother.”

  Hope and distrust fought for control of his daughter’s face. “Would it have changed your mind?” she asked.

  Tierney shook his head. “Not my mind. My heart. To have been so blind shames me, and my failure to understand your fears, and to comfort you, is beyond excuse. Forgive me, please.”

  The spectators were rapt—torn, Sarah suspected, between sympathy and the desire to look away. Perhaps only she was detached enough to credit Martin Tierney not just with love, but with the diabolical cleverness granted only to parents: to know the means of undermining his daughter’s resolve.

  Slowly, Sarah stood.

  “Your Honor,” she said in muted tones, “I appreciate Professor Tierney’s sentiments, and fully sympathize with his regrets, however belated. But this is not cross-examination, nor does it address the issues raised by his intervention. Unless his apology includes consent, my client is trapped in this trial, and in a tragedy we should bring to a close.”

  Tierney faced her, his translucent gaze level. “No one, Ms. Dash, wants to end this more than Margaret and I. But you’re an advocate, concerned with winning—as is your privilege. We’re parents, and cannot be so single-minded. No result would compensate for our prior failings toward Mary Ann, or our failure to seek forgiveness sooner.” Pausing, he added, “But I’m through now.”

  Sarah was filled with relief, believing that Martin Tierney would sit again, sparing his daughter the worst. Then, turning, Tierney said to Leary, “I’ll ask my daughter only what I must.”

  In disbelief, Sarah stepped forward. “A father cross-examining his daughter? What apology can compensate for that?”

  “Who better?” Tierney rejoined, and faced Leary yet again. “We’re a family, with a shared history of fifteen years. With respect, neither Mr. Saunders nor Mr. Fleming—nor Ms. Dash—knows the questions a father should ask his own child.”

  From the stand, Mary Ann watched this colloquy in bewilderment. “Of course,” Leary answered somberly. “That’s your right, Professor. And, one might think, your duty.”

  There was a note of reproof in Leary’s voice—not for Tierney, but for Sarah. She had no choice but to sit and watch.

  Turning, Tierney faced his daughter. “Do you love your child, Mary Ann?”

  The girl blinked. In a near whisper, she answered, “Yes.”

  “And before he was part of our lives, you believed that taking any innocent, unborn life was wrong.”

  Mary Ann hesitated, and her voice fell to a whisper. “Yes.”

  “Do you still believe your son is a life?”

  Involuntarily, Mary Ann glanced down at her stomach. “Yes,” she answered. “But he probably won’t have a life.”

  Now her father paused. “Do you think that you should take his life, Mary Ann, because God may have given him a disability?”

  Mary Ann stared at the floor, as if penitent. “No,” she said. “Not if that’s the only reason. But it isn’t.”

  Tierney looked back at her, his face expressing so perfectly his puzzlement and doubt that Sarah had a startling, swift perception—that, whatever his feelings, Martin Tierney had an actor’s gifts. “So now you would take your own son’s life out of God’s hands, and into yours? And, having done so, end it?”

  Now Mary Ann looked up. “They don’t think my baby has a brain,” she answered. “But God gave me one, to make decisions. I don’t think it’s a sin to want more babies who will live.”

  She was holding her own, Sarah thought. But Tierney seemed undaunted; armed with a father’s knowledge, he had another question for every answer. “Like Matthew Brown?” he inquired.

  Mary Ann’s lips parted. “That was a miracle,” she answered. “His mother said so herself.”

  “Matthew’s mother,” Tierney responded, “left him in God’s hands. Do you think she was wrong?”

  Not if that was her choice, Sarah willed the girl to answer. But Mary Ann looked down again. “No,” she said.

  At once Tierney’s face became a portrait of compassion and concern. “Suppose that you take this baby’s life, and then discover that he had a normal brain. How will you feel then?”

  Mary Ann still could not look at him. “Terrible,” she said in a trembling voice. “Worse than that.”

  Angrily, Sarah turned toward Margaret Tierney. How can you sit there? she wanted to ask. But the girl’s mother, though pale, watched h
er husband without flinching.

  Tierney moved closer to their daughter. “You’d wish you hadn’t taken his life, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “To you, that would be a sin.”

  Mary Ann hunched on the witness stand, as if protecting herself against a chill. “I wouldn’t mean to do it,” she protested. “What it means is that I had to make a choice.”

  “No,” Tierney responded, “you don’t have to. Do you understand now, Mary Ann, that your mother and I are trying to spare you the terrible consequences of making such a choice?”

  Slowly, Mary Ann looked up again. “Maybe you are,” she answered. “But it’s also about your own beliefs. They’re so strong, and you’re so sure, that what I believe doesn’t count.”

  This sudden challenge begged a question which, though palpably reluctant, Tierney was forced to ask. “And what do you believe, Mary Ann? Or think you believe.”

  She sat straighter, drawing from a reserve of strength that Sarah had not been sure remained. “This baby doesn’t have much of a chance,” she answered. “But if I have him, maybe he’ll be the only baby I’ll ever have, and I’ll have to watch him die. No one but me should make me live with that.”

  Though firm, Mary Ann’s response had, to Sarah, the sound of the girl approaching the limit of exhaustion. “Do you remember,” her father asked, “what Dr. McNally said? That there may be as much chance your son will be normal as there is of infertility? And that any risk is extremely remote.”

  Mary Ann looked down again. “I remember,” she said stubbornly, and then suddenly she faced him, bursting out, “I understand as well as you do—even better, because it’s me. You say I don’t, because I’m fifteen. You want to force me to take that chance. You want to tell me what’s ‘remote.’

  “That’s not about me—it’s about you. You, and what happened to my mother. You, and what you believe.

  “Maybe I’ll have the abortion and feel terrible. Maybe the baby will be another miracle. But how will you feel—and my mother—if I can’t ever have more children?”