by Caleb Crain
4.
From across the courtroom Julia’s mother and then father met her gaze, smiled, and tentatively waved. For once her mother had taken off her reading glasses altogether—she must have put them in her purse—instead of parking them up in her hair like the goggles of a speedster who had just stepped away from the racetrack. Her mother had such lovely, thick hair. She left it silver.
It was a pleasant enough courtroom. The little banisters that fenced off the chancel or whatever it was called were a honey-colored wood. The room didn’t smell, and though it was vile to notice smells, the fact is the smells hadn’t been too good up to now and the not-too-goodness had been a pretty salient aspect of the setting. The ceiling in the courtroom was too high for anyone to scratch into it, or pick at it, or smear it with the brown, dried, brittle-looking, fingerpainted swirls that Julia, downstairs, had at first feared were feces but eventually pieced together must be peanut butter, scooped out of the insides of the provided sandwiches. Which was resourceful.
There was solemn coughing. A lamp or a glare from a window had caught in her father’s eyes, and the reflection glittered there almost uncannily, in a way she had never seen in real life before, though she had seen it in animated movies.
Her lawyer, Kenneth, was clasping his hands over his crotch, in the style of a pallbearer or a groomsman. She imitated him. Under the circumstances there wasn’t much else one could do in the way of making oneself look presentable.
“Julia Di Matteo?” said, in an almost conversational tone, a young black woman who had been standing silently next to the defense’s table since before Julia had been brought into the courtroom.
“March fifth, nineteen eighty-five,” Julia supplied.
The woman smiled, and Julia felt stupid for being all promptness and compliance.
“Docket thirty-six five twenty-seven,” the woman said, in a voice that was now one of proclamation. “The People against Julia Di Matteo.”
What a horrible thing to say.
“Consent to waive the reading, counsel?” asked the judge, who, at his remote desk, had flipped open a manila folder.
“So waived,” said Kenneth.
“Your Honor, a few notices, if I may,” said a tall man with a politician’s pompadour, who made no eye contact with Kenneth or Julia or even the judge before speaking. He was standing at what had to be the district attorney’s table, since its placement mirrored that of hers and Kenneth’s. “Hereby give notice that our office will be presenting the case of People versus Julia Di Matteo to a grand jury.” He went on to give several more notices, droningly, rocking on the balls of his feet as he did so.
The judge registered his words with irritated glances. After the man finished, there was silence for a few moments as the judge flicked through papers in the folder before him.
“You have a proposal?” the judge prompted.
“Computer trespass and criminal possession are Class E felonies, Your Honor,” resumed the man with the pompadour, “and the accused and her co-conspirators had reason to know they were breaking into the network of a contractor working with the city police and through the police the Department of Homeland Security. These are serious charges, Your Honor, and we don’t currently know the modality of the break-in or who else might be involved. Because we believe that through her family the accused has access to considerable resources, we’re asking for bail of one hundred thousand over twenty-five thousand, with a ban on all internet and computer activity.”
“Counsel?” the judge said to Julia’s lawyer.
“Your Honor,” said Kenneth, “we will be contesting all these charges, as you are aware, and not even my colleague here has suggested that there was any vandalism or any intent of personal gain. My client was born and raised in the city and owns an apartment here, which is her primary residence. Her parents, who are present in the courtroom, also live in the city. Her father is a respected member of the investment community, a position that my colleague makes allusion to, and her mother works here as a college professor of, I believe, art history. My client told me, just now, that last year she performed her civic duty in this very court system as a juror. She belongs to this community, Your Honor, and we ask that she be released on her own recognizance.”
Looking down at his papers, still rocking on his feet, the man from the district attorney’s office shook his head and silently, admiringly mouthed the words civic duty.
“Bail is set at five thousand over fifteen hundred,” pronounced the judge, “with an absolute ban on all computer and internet activity. Counsel will explain the ban to the accused carefully. I don’t want her saying she didn’t know her phone was a computer when we have to put her back in jail.”
Kenneth spoke again: “Your Honor, my client’s father would now like to post bail on her behalf.”
“He may approach the clerk.”
Julia’s father put a palm up like a schoolboy and left his seat in the gallery.
Kenneth had told her only a few minutes ago, in the waiting cell, that the judge was likely to forbid her to use the internet, and she still had a little trouble believing in the condition. How would anyone know if she read the newspaper later tonight on her mother’s tablet? Of course her mother would feel obliged for Julia’s sake to keep the tablet away from her, and at the moment she hardly wanted to worry her mother further or force her mother into the position of having to try to deny her something in order to protect her.
“I wonder, ma’am,” Kenneth said to the woman who had read the docket number at the start of proceedings, “whether, as a courtesy, the officers of the court would be willing to provide for a private egress.”
“But, Kenneth—,” Julia interrupted.
“Julia?” he responded. To the woman beside them: “One moment, ma’am. My apologies.”
“I want to see the others. They’re ahead of me, aren’t they? They’re probably just outside. I want to see them just for a minute.”
“I don’t think they’ll still be outside, sweetheart. Because of the press.”
“Oh, the press is just writers.”
“It’s your decision.”
“Then I think that’s what I want.”
“It looks like we’ll make our way out of the building on our own steam, ma’am,” Kenneth said to the judicial officer. “But thank you for your consideration.”
The clerk finished a third counting of Julia’s father’s hundred-dollar bills.
“Adjourned to Part F,” the judge declared, and rapped his gavel.
“That’s it?” Julia asked.
* * *
—
“Oh, I know,” Julia said, when Kenneth reminded her not to speak to the reporters. She embraced her parents. “Momma, I want to go home with you and Daddy. I don’t know if I’m going to spend the night, but I want to go home with you for now, anyway.”
“We can order Szechuan.”
“No, something with vegetables.”
“We can get Szechuan with vegetables.”
“I want vegetables that look like vegetables. My god, I’ve been dreaming of vegetables.”
“Julia,” interrupted Kenneth, “you and I need to have a little more conversation, so if you don’t mind, I’ll ride uptown with you. Can I call you a taxi?”
“Daddy can call one.”
“No, I got it. I got someone I work with.”
“Oh, that’s lovely. Momma, I just want to see my friends first, on the way out. Really quickly.”
Her mother looked to Kenneth, but he was talking to his driver. “I’ll just tell Eileen that we’re ordering food and to go ahead and feed Robbie,” her mother said, taking out her phone. “I haven’t told Robbie anything yet.”
“There’s plenty of time,” said Julia.
“They may need the courtroom for another hearing,” said her father, who had been monit
oring the looks that they were getting from the bailiff.
Julia was aware, as she neared the door, that a file of people were now glancing up from their phones at her, despite being still so intent on their texting that they occasionally wrong-footed themselves. She wasn’t going to be afraid of them. She needed to see Raleigh, if only to find out what she was feeling for him, which seemed to have hidden. Of course she wanted to see the others, too.
“Kenneth, you’re coming with us, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m right here.”
She pushed her way into the gloomy marble corridor. Greenish stones like these were known as verd antique, she remembered. Men and women crowded near the doorway looked at her at first unseeingly and then with something like alarm. “Julia,” one said, holding out his cell phone. “Julia Di Matteo,” said another, making the same gesture.
How unpleasant to be beckoned as if one were a dog.
“Kenneth, you’ll stick with my mother and father, won’t you?” she asked.
She shoved firmly, and once she had broken through the crust of reporters, she wheeled around, scanning for her comrades. The reporters watched her, appalled; they hadn’t expected a person in her position to run their gauntlet. She hesitated, in their presence, to call out her friends’ names. Where were they? She had been looking forward to telling them the whole story, starting with the way the police had woken her up—by calling her landline and ringing her doorbell at the same time. It had been unnerving.
She made a little dash down the length of the corridor. The pattering on marble of the reporters’ footsteps behind her—as they hurried to narrow the gap she had briefly put between herself and them—sounded like soft, reluctant applause.
They must not have waited. Maybe they had wanted to but hadn’t been able to.
“Were the others in the same courtroom?” she asked the nearest reporter.
“Did you have an arrangement to meet them?”
“Oh, you’re no help, are you,” Julia said. She had the mad idea of trying to picture where her friends had gone as if they were a misplaced set of keys. But she knew without any conjuring that of course they had returned to their homes on the far side of the river. She hadn’t been aware until this moment of how much strength she had been borrowing from the idea of her solidarity with them and theirs with her.
“Julia,” appealed one of the journalists.
“Julia,” appealed another.
The reporters were typing into their phones notes about the look of dismay on her face. It was a strange way for a person to make a living.
“We just push on ahead, sweetheart,” said Kenneth.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she reassured him. She smiled for her parents and took her mother’s arm.
* * *
—
It was a luxury, in a city so crowded and expensive, for one’s parents to have preserved a shrine to oneself, even a slightly stripped-down one, and Julia sat on the limp, quilt-covered bed in her lamplit childhood bedroom with appropriate gratitude. Appropriate and familiar. On top of a lime green dresser stood a bowl full of spools of ribbon. The room was now usually vacant and therefore private, and on that account her mother found it to be a convenient place to wrap presents. Beside the bowl of ribbons was a wooden carrousel, painted in candy colors, which played a folk tune when wound up. It was too babyish and too girly for Robbie, and it should have gone to Goodwill long ago, but perhaps it had become a sentimental favorite of her mother’s. Still hanging on the wall was Julia’s poster from when she was in high school of poker-playing puppies. Such an excellent poster, and it wasn’t just out of loyalty to her younger self that she thought so.
“How long are you staying?” asked apple-faced Robbie, at the threshold.
“Just to say hi.”
“How was your day?” he asked.
“It was so busy! I haven’t been able to take a shower yet, can you believe?”
“Are you stinky?” he whispered.
“I think I am.”
“Momma will let you take a shower here,” he said with confidence.
“She might even make me take one.”
“But you wouldn’t mind,” he inferred.
“I wouldn’t mind,” she agreed. “And what did you do today?
“I had class,” he said almost wearily.
“Which one?”
He sighed. “Nutrition.” He would probably never live alone, but their parents wanted him to know how to. He was only twenty, but his hair was already thinning, and the lenses of his glasses were as thick as ice cubes.
“Did you like it?”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“Are Agnes and Charlie still in your class?”
“Agnes is,” he said. “Do you want to play Life?”
“I can’t tonight, honey. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” he accepted.
“I need to go ahead and take a shower.”
“Okay.” He shuffled out of the room.
Was there ever anyone so heartless, Julia wondered of herself. But Raleigh didn’t have the number here.
* * *
—
There were three space heaters, girdled by their power cords, in the closet of the bedroom, and after her shower, over dinner (undistinguished Middle Eastern, in the end), Julia asked if she could take one back with her.
“Is there anything else you need? Don’t we still have those little phones we bought for Spain? That’s the kind Kenneth wants you to use, isn’t it?”
“We threw them away, remember? While we were still in Barcelona.”
“How wasteful.”
“It was very one-percent of us.”
The glass of the little kitchen television remained dark. Julia knew her parents were refraining from turning it on out of a wish to protect her, and out of a wish to protect them, she refrained from saying that in fact she wasn’t so fragile. Of course they would watch it later, in their bedroom, after she had left. And she would watch it in her bedroom, twenty blocks uptown.
“I’m going, after dinner,” she told them.
“You know they’re still downstairs,” her father said.
“Are they? But the little alleys in back are connected, Daddy. If I go out that way, I can come out to the street two whole buildings down.”
“Through the basement?”
“Behind the basement. The alleys connect in back.”
And that was how she left, after hugging Robbie, who was more solid, in an embrace, than other people. More surely rooted. Edgar, their doorman, took her down in the elevator. She pushed all her hair up under her hat. After Edgar threw the bolt that deactivated the alarm on the rear door, she walked the length of two shallow, unwelcoming cement yards, climbed a fence with the help of two giant tractor tires that had been chained to it years ago by the neighbor’s super, for what purpose no one had ever been able to discover, and from the third yard took an underpass, through which that building’s porters carted out the weekly garbage and recycling. The underpass was lit by only one bulb, weak and jaundiced, and she opened and shut behind her the steel-grate door at the end of it, with two hands, so gently that there was no clang. Only a clean, pleasant snick. Without looking back to where the reporters would be, she walked briskly toward the lights of the avenue, at the end of the block. No footsteps followed her.
At the corner, a taxi slowed, and she got in with a nod, without speaking. Only once she had clapped the door shut did she give her apartment’s address.
“Straight ahead for eighteen blocks is all, really,” she told the driver, the space heater lolling on the seat beside her, in a brown paper grocery bag that her mother had insisted on fetching from the kitchen utility closet.
She had got away. She was herself still.
* * *
—
; How strange, she thought as she noticed her relief, to worry not that one might cease to be but that one might be overwritten. Scripted by other parties.
She wished she could take notes. She was so certain that Kenneth would discourage her that she hadn’t bothered to ask for permission, but she knew she was going to write about this someday, when it was all over. And she would want then to be able to remember not just her perceptions but the textures of her perceptions. Including the taut helplessness of not being able to write anything down while it was all happening. She would have to register as much as she could on her memory. On her self, as it were. The way one writes a phone number on one’s hand.
“Halfway down the block, on the left, where those forsaken-looking people are standing,” she told the driver. This time there was no dodging them. The meter chittered out a receipt as the taxi coasted to a stop.
The reporters began to try to talk through the closed window.
“Is this all right, ma’am?” the driver asked. He had a desi accent.
“No, but they can’t hurt me.”
He opened his window. “Get away. Go,” he said chivalrously, but the reporters only massed at the opening he offered them, and he had to raise the glass of his window again. He shook his head. “Are you famous, ma’am?”
“Tonight I seem to be.”
“And what is your name, may I ask?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, with a little wave. “You are perhaps an actress?”
“I’m a writer.”
“A famous writer,” he said with satisfaction.
“Hardly.”
“Good night, ma’am,” he said, as he handed her the change. “But tell me your book, and I will buy it.”
“I wish I had a book.”
While she was climbing her stoop, she didn’t reply to the reporters, but once inside, she said quietly, through the glass, “You should get some sleep; it’s quite late.” They probably didn’t hear her over their own talking.
While still on the threshold, she heard her landline ringing, and she left her keys dangling in the lock to answer it.