“Your Honor, having no further witnesses, and reserving the right to recall, the plaintiff rests.”
Amy sits there a bit surprised.
No more witnesses? They’re that confident in the black-and-white of this issue?
“So be it. This being Friday, we’ll adjourn early. Jurors are reminded they are not to discuss the case with anyone. Neither reading, nor viewing, nor listening to any media coverage related to this case is permissible. Court is adjourned.”
The pounding of the gavel is like the ringing of the school bell. Amy sits while everyone around her stands to leave. She watches Tom lean over and talk to Grace. His client doesn’t say anything for a few moments as she listens to him. He’s not expressive, so it’s hard to know if he’s sharing an opinion or an overview or giving her more facts.
I need to ask her some questions. Before she leaves. Before the weekend.
Amy makes her way outside the doors to find the best place to hide out. She’s become a master of sneaking up to strangers and stopping them with a series of questions. She no longer ambushes people in order to manipulate their words and show them in a bad light, however.
This won’t be an ambush.
It’ll be an opportunity for Grace to make a definitive public statement.
And it’ll be an opportunity for Amy to use her gifts for building up instead of breaking down.
30
“I HATE HAVING to literally run away from those reporters,” Grace says.
We’ve made it to the parking lot a block away from the courthouse. I told Grace to park there in order to do exactly what we’re doing—staying away from the reporters. It’s not like they’ve been waiting outside by the dozens, but there were still enough to make it difficult to avoid them. I pulled my best arm-around-the-shoulder-with-other-arm-blocking lawyer routine that I’ve never had to do before. But I’m beginning to really think I’ve never had a case like this one.
“Don’t worry about them,” I say. “Nobody followed us, so it’s all—”
“Excuse me.”
I see the auburn hair first and am about to tell the woman who has obviously followed us after all to go away when I realize it’s the reporter I spoke to the other night.
“Hi, Tom,” she says. “I’m sorry to follow you guys. I just wanted to get some sort of statement from you. Is that possible?”
Grace looks at me and waits to see if I allow one.
“I’m Amy Ryan. I’m a blogger.”
Amy extends a hand and Grace shakes it.
“We don’t want to make any public statements yet,” I say.
“Off the record, then. I promise.”
I glance at Grace. “It’s up to you.”
“Sure,” she says.
“These people are looking to destroy you,” Amy says. “And not just financially. Do you really think it’s worth it?”
For a moment, Grace just looks around the parking lot, thinking. “I hope so,” she says.
“So do I. Do you feel the questions they’re asking about you are valid? Do you see their point of view?”
“She shouldn’t answer that,” I say. “We feel the whole thing is out of line. Their point of view is like you said—trying to destroy a teacher. I don’t think anybody would really like that.”
“Grace . . . personally, is this impacting your faith?”
“Yes.”
I’m surprised to hear this and am about to ask her how, but Grace continues.
“It’s making it stronger.”
“How can that be?” the reporter asks.
The cars on the nearby street emit a steady buzz. The glow of the afternoon sun is starting to tilt, but I can still feel beads of sweat as we talk. I want to get some shorts and a T-shirt on. I look at Grace and find her calm expression refreshing.
“I’m praying a lot more these days. Of course, I guess I have a lot more time to pray, right? Since prayer isn’t allowed at school.” Grace pauses and looks at both of us, then shakes her head. “That was a joke. Okay, so it was a Christian joke. I guess those aren’t that funny. But I am praying a lot, and I’m trying to find peace by reading Scripture.”
“And that works?” Amy asks.
“Yes. It really does. The passage I read this morning was Romans 5:3-5. It says we should be happy when we run into bad situations in our lives. Those things develop endurance, and endurance develops character. We can have hope in this and know God loves us. I was thinking about that during the testimony, especially the moments where they were questioning my motives as a teacher. Or when they were saying I was doing something wrong in my classroom.”
“Are you ready for tomorrow?”
I nod at Amy. “Yes, since tomorrow’s Saturday and we’ll have two more days to focus on the trial.”
“I meant Monday.”
“We’ll be more ready come Monday morning,” I say. “Listen—Ms. Wesley’s had a busy day . . .”
“Thank you both. Really—I want you to know I’m on your side.” Amy reaches into her purse and pulls out two business cards. “I just had them made. Here. I’ll be posting a new blog this weekend.”
I look at the title of her blog. “Waiting for Godot? Sounds like some kind of art-appreciation website.”
“Look up that play. Maybe it’ll make sense once you see what it’s about.”
With that, Amy takes her cue and thanks us and shakes our hands again before she leaves.
I watch her walk down the sidewalk before saying anything to Grace. “You still feeling good? Honestly?”
Grace nods. “Yes. I didn’t like what they were saying today. I’m just curious what the jury was thinking. They were always engaged.”
“That can sometimes make me nervous,” I say.
“How do you feel?”
“Good. I just need to get some kind of hook, you know? Something I can lock into the jurors’ hearts so I can pull them onto our boat.”
“Sounds like you want to kill them,” Grace says.
I laugh. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to do that. I know it’s been a long day for you, so I’ll let you go. But does it still work to get together tomorrow to go over some more files?”
“Sure.”
“I wish I had a whole staff that could do that, you know?”
“It’s fine. Whatever I can do to help.”
Something in me wants to say more just to keep talking, but I know she needs to go. And so do I.
“Get some rest,” I tell her. “I’ll text you tomorrow, okay?”
She slips into her car and starts it up. I head back down the sidewalk to my parked car. It’s strange because I get this weird feeling inside.
I really didn’t want to see Grace go.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
It doesn’t take me long this evening to ask my grandmother a personal question. I’m tired and don’t really want to make small talk about something like a will that is all just to make her feel comfortable. I think it helps bringing her another Beanie Boo stuffed animal. This time I gave her a little pink elephant. It’s funny how roles get reversed. I feel like a grandfather giving a gift to a grandchild.
Evelyn is sitting in her wheelchair on the side of the room. She’s already had her dinner at the old folks’ hour of 5 p.m. Wheel of Fortune is thankfully off and she isn’t watching television; she told me the only shows on now are those murdering-spouses-for-sex-and-money kind.
“Carolyn? She doesn’t ever visit me anymore. I don’t know why.”
I’m not sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse for Grandma not to know her only daughter is dead. I never try to correct her when she says things like this. I don’t want to freak her out.
“She’s a gentle soul,” Grandma says. “I remember her father always being so hard on her and never understanding her sensitivity. But that’s why she was so good with children. Carolyn wanted a little sister. Would’ve been the best big sister. But I knew it wouldn’t have been right to try to bring another child into this wo
rld with that man. Two were enough with Bob. He managed to ruin Edward and it took everything I had to protect Carolyn.”
Wow, she’s talkative. Must’ve had her Mountain Dew.
“Does Carolyn take after you in that area?”
“Me?” Grandma laughs. “Oh, dear heavens, no. I think it skipped me. Really it was from my mother. She was a dear soul. But folks were different then.”
I wish I could tell my grandmother just what a wonderful mother I’d had and how she had indeed been a gentle soul for as long as her soul lasted on this earth. Too short a time. Way too short.
“Carolyn wanted to be a teacher, and she worked so hard at it. She’s still teaching, I imagine. But I just—I don’t understand why she never comes around. You might want to find her. Maybe you can ask her why.”
I’ve heard Grandma say bad things about Mom, so this is refreshing.
“I might try that,” I tell her.
I don’t know what else to say to someone missing a dead person whom she thinks is still alive.
I miss Mom every day. I’d do anything to believe she was still somewhere out there, waiting to just knock on my door.
It’s late Friday night and I can’t sleep. I went by the office after seeing my grandmother. The emptiness depressed me, so I texted several people to see if anybody was around to hang out. Everybody had plans. My long list of three friends I texted. So it turns out I had a hot date with a dog named Ressie.
I’m rethinking the day in court and everything that was said. Somehow I end up thinking that it used to be the men would set out to be the hunter-gatherers, fending off the few who would try to prey on them. They would kill or be killed and they would split skulls and watch blood spill. Primitive and primal at the core.
Sometimes I think things haven’t changed one bit. We simply strike with rhetoric and laws and objections and arguments. But we’re still stomping over one another, trying to get ahead, trying to simply survive.
God might be alive or he might be dead, but I know nobody really, truly cares about that in a courtroom. They only care about being right.
Grace cares.
And once again I’m pulled back, pulled to that place, pulled to the picture I don’t want to see again. I know deep down why I suddenly care so much and why Grace is more than a simple client.
Mom cared.
Yes, she did.
Mom did indeed care. And believed. And lived that out. And then died.
Mom cared. Past tense.
Life can be lived in present or past tense. And you can be a first or a third person. It’s a choice we all have to make.
This savage life that needs only one single letter to become salvage. Yet we grasp and can’t find the nails to drive into the plywood sheets protecting us from the coming hurricane.
I close my eyes for a moment and know I’m tired. Not from tonight or this week but from spending the last decade trying to find those nails.
Visiting Grandma wiped me out.
The weekend has arrived, and it welcomes the weary. I’m one of them, and I’ll sit out of the sun and the rain and try to get my mind in order. This sort of head-case spiraling got me into trouble years ago and it looks like I haven’t changed my ways.
I don’t want to admit the obvious, but I have to. I have to make an objection to my melancholy mind.
Saving Grace isn’t going to save Mom.
And it’s certainly not going to save me.
31
Seeing in Color
A POST FOR WAITING FOR GODOT
by Amy Ryan
We’re all color-blind when it comes to professing our views. We only see the black-and-white when the world is so full of grays.
A few allow some red to seep in, but blue and gold and purple would paint pictures so much more beautiful.
We mark our messages in Sharpies that won’t come off of dry-erase boards. Our views. Set in some kind of stone we built. Tiny altars to ourselves.
All while the truth stares at us. Wondering when we’ll look up and see the promise. That rainbow, the mark of the one who can move mountains.
Yet most don’t look up but only down. Staring at the shoes we spent so long picking out that scrape a line in the sand while we forget about the beauty of the sea in front of us.
We remain pale under the golden sun. Sunblocked. Sedated with our stern belief. With our rightness. And our rights.
32
MEETING WITH MY TUTORING GROUP on a Saturday is unusual, but they’ve agreed to get together this morning since I’ll be in court next week. I guess all my wisdom about law is really that valuable.
Or maybe these students have no lives.
I can tell Martin Yip is still not himself. His usual curiosity seems muted this morning. He’s the last to leave our conference room, so I casually ask him what’s going on.
“Nothing,” Martin says.
It’s one of the least convincing “nothing” responses I’ve ever heard. Especially since he’s barely moving toward the doorway.
“You’re acting like some girl broke up with you. But I don’t remember you having a girlfriend.”
“I don’t, which is a very good thing. I wouldn’t be able to afford her.”
“My friend,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “You will never be able to afford ‘her,’ whoever ‘her’ might be.”
Martin turns to me and looks desperate.
“My father has cut me off,” he says. “He showed up at my dorm room and demanded that I come back home with him. I refused, and he—he slapped me and said my entire family was disowning me. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I cannot pay my tuition even though I’m working two jobs. I’m not sleeping. I can’t even afford groceries. I just—I don’t know what to do.”
I didn’t expect this. For a tiny moment I’m at a loss for what to say.
“I’m sorry to burden you with this,” Martin says.
“No, no—don’t apologize. I’m sorry to hear about all of this. Why did your father do it?”
“Because—because I told him I had become a Christian. That I had found faith. I told him there was a God. I told you I was in the same class as Josh Wheaton, the student who stood up to the professor. That was how it all happened. Or—I should say how God orchestrated it to happen.”
I nod. I think again of the article I read where Josh mentioned that Martin was the first one in his class to join him in declaring, “God’s not dead.”
“I just thought—I assumed my father would respect me. He’s always admired stepping out and taking chances. Coming to school in America was one of those chances I took.”
“There’s no way to communicate any more with your father? For him to see your side?”
Martin only shakes his head.
“Have you talked about this with anybody else?” Like someone who believes what you believe?
“No. It just happened and I—it’s not like any of my fellow students would care.”
“What about—I don’t know—” For some reason I think of the pastor on the jury. “What about going to see your pastor? Do you go to a regular church?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Then why don’t you go there? Talk to someone who might know what to do.”
“I thought you might have some advice.”
How about you tell your meddling father where he can go?
“I’m good at knowing about the law,” I tell him as I lean on the edge of the table. “But I’m bad at anything to do with fathers and sons.”
“You don’t get along with your father?”
“Nope. My situation is kind of the opposite of yours. But—like all family dysfunction—it’s complicated.”
“This isn’t. It’s really simple. He’s cut me off and I’m done.”
I pat him on the back this time. “Listen, Martin. You’re a smart guy. Go talk to your pastor and see what advice he gives. Let me ask around—there might be a cheaper place to stay. And listen—forget about pay
ing me anything for the tutoring.”
“Mr. Endler—I can’t do that.”
I shake my head. “What you can’t do is call me that. I already told you guys. Mr. Endler is my father. And I don’t want to be him.”
We head outside the library to the stormy clouds resembling a sky full of how Martin’s feeling. As I follow him to the parking lot, I grab my wallet and see what’s in it. Sometimes I actually have cash. Today is one of those lucky days.
“Here—take this,” I tell him.
“Please—I can’t—no—”
He looks like I’ve just handed over a dirty, leaking diaper.
“Martin—it’s forty bucks. Actually, it’s only thirty. Take it. Get some groceries. Don’t go to the fancy organic-fresh, name-brand place where lettuce costs thirty bucks. Go find a place you can get some real food.”
The poor guy looks like he might actually cry.
“You’re trying your best, you know?” I say. “That’s all you can do. I’ll see if I can help out however I can. But reach out to others.”
Boy, it’s way easier to give advice than to take it.
“Thank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”
I nod. “I know fathers can be cruel. I’m sorry for that. We need to start a fight club.”
“Where we beat each other up?”
“No,” I say. “Where we beat our fathers up.”
This finally gets through. I see Martin laughing as he gets into his car.
When I get in mine, I wonder what it would be like to have a child. No, to have a son. Would I be the same unforgiving sort who would completely destroy the relationship by the time the kid became an adult? Or might it be possible to have one of those rare father-son bonds that I’ve seen only a few of my friends have?
Having any child in this world these days is dangerous. It’s hard to imagine. But then again, I can’t even seem to find someone I’d like to go on a second date with.
That makes me think of Grace. I quickly try to ditch the thought, however. Thinking like that won’t help her or the case or my mind-set or my life.
Maybe I need to go see that pastor.
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