Double Delight Page 5

  So time passed, but slowly. The judge and the two attorneys conferred at the far corner of the judge’s bench, out of the jury’s earshot, and, again, fidgety now, Terence worried that the trial would end before it had begun.

  Noting with sympathy how the courtroom stenographer typed, typed, typed, every word, every phrase, no matter how inconsequential or much repeated. Moving her keyboard to the corner of the judge’s bench, brisk as an automaton, continuing with her typing, face blank and expressionless, eyes slightly upturned. Phyllis’s age, solid-bodied, but with a faded cast to her skin. Because you’re selfish, off in a world of your own. No wonder the children don’t respect you.

  The trial resumed. Terence, swallowing hard, sat straight and tall, listening to every word.

  Now, at last—Ava-Rose Renfrew.

  The young prosecutor stood irresolutely at the front of the room, waiting for his witness, whom one of the deputies had gone to bring into the courtroom. Everyone watched the opened doorway, which was at the very front of the room, just beyond the jurors’ box: But no one appeared. As in a play in which actors seem to have stumbled over or forgotten their lines, there was a palpable air of embarrassment and tension. Terence could see the young prosecutor’s Adam’s apple shifting in his throat. Where was the witness?—what was wrong? After several minutes, the deputy returned, flush-faced, and spoke quietly with the judge; the judge signaled the prosecuting attorney to come forward to speak with her; clearly, the witness was not where she was expected to be.

  There were comings and goings in the courtroom. Visibly nervous, the young prosecutor conferred with an assistant. At the defense table, T. W. Binder sat stiff and huddled, head slightly lowered, not knowing where to look. Annoyed, but speaking with magisterial calm, the judge apologized to the jury—“You see, it isn’t quite like television. Things don’t happen smoothly.” The deputy left the room another time, by the same door, and everyone watched that door expectantly, even as, breathless as if borne by the wind, there appeared at the rear of the courtroom, unannounced, the young woman herself—“Oh! I’m so sorry! Are you-all looking for me?”

  It was the gypsy-girl, the running girl, Terence had sighted the day before, on the street.

  Still breathless, the color in her cheeks and her crinkly hair windblown, Ava-Rose Renfrew, the prosecution’s main witness, stood pert and contrite as a little girl before the judge’s bench. There was a moment’s flurry, a nervous giggle, when, it seemed, she confused her right hand with her left as the bailiff held out a Bible to her for the swearing-in. Terence could see how her left hand, obediently raised, trembled.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “Oh, I do! Surely! That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  There were startled smiles throughout the courtroom. The pretty young woman’s voice was low, hoarse, and crackly, as if she hadn’t quite cleared her throat. But how pretty she was, with her heart-shaped, creamy-pale face, like a flower’s petals!—and how strangely dressed!

  Ava-Rose Renfrew was wearing a long, drooping skirt made of diaphanous layers of mauve, pale gold, and green; and a gorgeous purple silk jacket with flaring sleeves, chunky iridescent-purple buttons, and embroidered or appliquéd designs—crimson roses, creamy gardenias, hummingbirds, butterflies, rainbows. The designs were made of metallic thread, velvet patches, sequins, colored beads. There was a small fan of feathers stitched to a pocket. Her slender legs were encased in gauzy tights and the skirt trailed over flat black “ballerina” slippers of the kind high school girls used to wear in the 1950s. And she wore a red satin rose in her hair, and turquoise feather earrings, and several bracelets on each arm, and several glittering rings. And there was a sweet fragrance in the air, in her wake, as of a flowery perfume.

  Terence Greene breathed in this scent, enraptured.

  Terence Greene stared, enraptured.

  The exotic young woman, an incongruous sight in the witness chair, amid such somber surroundings, glanced nervously and eagerly about. Her eyes seemed to be tearing—she dabbed at them frequently with a tissue. She licked her lips, fingered one of the feather earrings. Yet when asked by the judge to identify herself to the court, she spoke readily, even buoyantly, in her odd throaty voice, as if in the presence of friends. “My name is Ava-Rose Renfrew, Your Honor. My place of residence is 33 Holyoak Street, Trenton—that’s on the west side, by the river?—where I live with my family, my great-aunt and -uncle and my boy-cousin and my twin nieces and any other Renfrews coming through town. My sign is Pisces and my life’s vocation is The Craft of Beauty.” She paused, glancing at the jury, adding, “That is, The Craft of Beauty is my business, too. I am a businesswoman. I make my own special things and sell them in Tamar’s Bazaar at the Chimney Point Shopping Center?” Her voice lifted, as if she expected nods of recognition.

  The jurors, Terence Greene included, sat stony-still, resisting any sign of sympathy. Wasn’t this their obligation, as jurors?

  Now more composed, the young prosecutor led his witness through her testimony by asking a sequence of pointed questions. To each, the young woman answered thoughtfully; sometimes half shutting her eyes, with a look of pain. Terence, listening mesmerized, found that he was clenching his fists. What an outrage, what an obscenity!—that any man should beat so delicate-boned and lovely a woman!

  When Ava-Rose Renfrew was asked by the prosecutor to point out her assailant, she did so, with the alacrity of a child, pointing her forefinger at T. W. Binder. “That’s him, sir. There.” The defendant had begun to huddle in upon himself as soon as Ava-Rose Renfrew appeared in the courtroom; now he lowered his head further, though stealing a cringing look at his accuser. His eyes moved jerkily in their sockets. His face had turned a dull brick red and was oily with sweat. Ava-Rose Renfrew cried sharply, as if in rebuke of something Binder had said, some urgent silent communication, “Yes! You! Wanted to kill me, at Christmastime! Didn’t you! They’ve got you now! Aren’t you ashamed!”

  The defense counsel was on his feet, protesting; and the judge instructed the prosecutor to restrain his witness. Ava-Rose Renfrew’s eyes spilled tears glittering as gems which she wiped away quickly with a tissue.

  She continued. “Yes, sir. A terrible beating with intent to kill. Because I wouldn’t see him any longer, and he threatened me, telling people to tell me, he’d kill me and then himself—thinking I’d be scared, and marry him! Marry him, that wanted to kill me!—and talked of burning down our house, with all of us asleep some night! As if I would do such a thing, a Pisces! So he came over uninvited, he’d been drinking all day, this was December 27, yes sir, around dusk because the Christmas lights were all lit up—we make a big to-do about Christmas, strings of lights outside and in, on trees outside and on the fence and roof, and a big Christmas tree inside, that he knocked over out of meanness—and my cousin Chick tried to stop him but he pushed through the door, and there I was coming down the stairs, and he ran up the stairs to grab hold of me, and Darling was on my shoulder—he’s our African gray parrot, he’s thirty years old and losing some of his feathers out of nervousness, so we try to be nice to him, to talk to him so he doesn’t feel trapped he’s a parrot—because they’re incredibly smart, African grays: They know they’re parrots, not like other birds don’t have a clue which end is up—so it was so specially nasty, so cruel, and he knew it, to grab me like that and terrify Darling so the poor fellow hardly leaves his cage now, doesn’t trust anyone on two legs, who can blame him!—and most of his tail feathers, beautiful scarlet feathers, have fallen out! Well! That man sitting over there grabbed me on the stairs, and near-about tore my hair out of my head, and punched me in the face, and threw me down the stairs, hitting, and kicking, and there I was like a puddle on the floor begging him to stop but he wouldn’t stop, kicking me in the head with his nasty leather boots! And my cousin Chick was trying to pull him away, and my Aunt Holly Loomis ran out of the kitchen to help me, but T.W. knocked them aside,
imagine!—a boy, and an older woman of sixty-nine!—hitting them!—like a maniac crying, ‘I’m gonna kill you all! I’m gonna kill you all!’ My nose was bleeding, and my eyes, I couldn’t believe how vicious he was, kicking me in the eyes!—and I lost consciousness right in the midst of him kicking me, and next thing I knew it was later, and I was in the hospital, in the emergency room. They put in stitches all over my face, and did some surgery on my left eye where they said the tear duct was torn, but it was lucky, they said, real lucky, that I hadn’t lost my eyesight. So I believe the Almighty took pity on me, seeing that he had not.”

  The judge had several questions, intended to amplify the witness’s testimony (one of them was Ava-Rose’s weight: 105 pounds); then the prosecutor asked her to please approach the jury box, to show the jurors the “permanent facial injuries” she had suffered as a consequence of the “vicious and premeditated” assault. As the young woman obeyed, self-consciously, brushing her hair nervously out of her face, Terence Greene felt his pulse quicken; a mist came over his vision. He’d been clenching his fists so tightly, he realized that his nails had dug into the palms of his hands. Not wanting to feel like this. Not wanting to feel anything at all. But there, hardly more than twelve inches from Terence, the young woman stood, a faint blush heating her face but her head uplifted, eyes clear. As the prosecutor read from a medical report, in his flat, reedy voice, Ava-Rose Renfrew turned her head from side to side, like an obedient (but somewhat embarrassed) child, indicating tiny, near-invisible white scars on her face—at a corner of her mouth, at her chin, beside and above her left eye, trailing like a cobweb through her right eyebrow. How unnerving: The young woman was very pretty, yet, if you looked closely, the fine white scars were like cracks in porcelain. The prosecutor noted that she had had, as well, a concussion; three sprained ribs; a sprained finger; numerous cuts and bruises; and the tear duct in her left eye was permanently damaged, so that, at times, it watered uncontrollably and affected her vision.

  Not wanting to feel. Not anything. Staring his eyes misting over at the young woman standing so awkwardly close, her head uplifted and her gaze (a shimmering amber-green) fixed resolutely to a point on the wall above the jurors’ heads. Her hair!—longer and fuller and more beautiful even than his daughter Kim’s!—it tumbled down her back and shoulders like a mane, crinkly as if with static electricity, many hues, streaks, silvery-brown, blond, ginger, with single hairs that glittered like metallic thread, cascading to her slender waist in tattery waves and curls.

  Terence, with a gentleman’s sense of propriety, cast his eyes down, as the prosecutor continued to speak. So far as Terence Greene, juror number five, was concerned, the trial was over: T. W. Binder, a brute who would attack a woman like Ava-Rose Renfrew so viciously, was clearly guilty as charged—if not guilty of more.

  When the trial was recessed for the day, in late afternoon, the judge cautioned the jurors in what they must not do, under penalty of being expelled from the jury and perhaps causing a mistrial: They were not to discuss the trial with anyone—“‘Anyone’ means just that: any member of your family, any fellow juror, any stranger”; they were not to read local newspapers, watch local television news programs, drive in the vicinity of Trenton in which the alleged crime occurred.

  When Terence left the courthouse, he crossed the street to the Mill Hill Tavern, to make another inquiry about his lost attaché case. But it had not been found—“Sorry, mister! Guess it’s gone.” Terence sighed, though he wasn’t surprised. No wonder the children don’t respect you.

  He glanced into the bar, where, amid a gauzy cloud of smoke, a few men stood, drinking. One of them was the tall, big-bodied old man Terence had seen at lunch, the white-bearded patriarch with the booming voice—now talking to the bartender, laughing and jabbing at the air with a forefinger. He was wearing the nautical cap as before, perched jauntily atop his head. Terence, seeing him, was about to speak; then halted. For what would he have said?

  At dinner, Terence must have been lost in a dream, scarcely tasting his food, for both his daughters teased him at once—“Daddy, where are you?” And Phyllis, who had been telling one of her lengthy, bemused anecdotes about a Queenston friend, or a new client of hers, reacted sharply, hurt. “Your father is in Trenton, in court—he’s a juror. He takes it all very seriously.”

  At once his daughters joined forces to tease and interrogate, though Terence had explained his vow of confidentiality.

  “Daddy, what is the case? Why can’t you say?”

  “Nobody will know, Daddy! Come on!”

  Terence said, patiently, “I gave my word, you know. I would never violate it.”

  Cindy, the more aggressive, leaned forward, elbows on the table. Her voice was high-pitched, aggrieved. “Is it a murder trial?”

  “Honey, I just can’t talk about it. When it’s all over, I—”

  “But why can’t you tell us, we don’t have anything to do with it, we wouldn’t tell! I think you’re silly, Daddy!”

  Phyllis tapped Cindy’s arm, gently. And gentle too was her murmured admonition—“Cindy, not so loud.”

  “Oh, damn! Always me! Always I’m to blame!” Cindy cried, incensed. She was short-tempered these days because, after weeks of dieting, she had lost only a few pounds; her plain, pudgy face had not changed at all. “Daddy, why can’t you tell? Who would know?”

  Kim said meanly, “’Cause Daddy doesn’t trust you, that’s why. He doesn’t trust any of us.”

  Evening meals at the Greenes’!—even in Aaron’s frequent absence (he was away that night, with friends), Terence felt the strain on his nerves. Kim was tense, giggly, distracted; unpredictable. By a decree of Phyllis’s, she was forbidden to rush from the table to answer the telephone; she had to sit and listen to it ring, and ring and ring, until, in Terence’s study, the answering service clicked on. Nor was Kim allowed to check the tape until the meal was formally concluded. Phyllis, who had grown up in a household of enforced good manners, felt strongly about this—“We are a family, after all,” she said, “and we owe one another respect.” (Terence wondered if any of the calls for Kim were from—what was his name?—that boy with the ring through his nose. In theory, the boy had been banished, by Phyllis, from the Greenes’ household; but that did not mean that Kim did not see him elsewhere.)

  Terence said quietly, “I would know.”

  Both the girls exploded into laughter as if they had never heard anything so hilarious.

  “Oh, Daddy—who are you!”

  “You won’t tell on you—will you?”

  The pretty, slender fifteen-year-old and the plain, pudgy eleven-year-old giggled, squeezing hands as if they were, not sisters who frequently quarreled bitterly, and could not bear each other, but sisters close as twins.

  That night, as they undressed for bed, Phyllis said, impulsively, “Tell me.”

  Terence glanced up at her, not knowing, for a moment, what she meant.

  He’d been seeing, vivid in his mind’s eye as a waking dream, a human face—pale, floating, fine-cracked, beautiful.

  And that tattery glittering cascading hair all curls and waves.

  He said, stammering, “I—I will, Phyllis. Of course. When the trial is over.”

  Phyllis, seeing a look of pain and guilt in his face, came to him unexpectedly, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Poor Terry! You take everything so seriously, don’t you! I knew you shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  Hettie’s boy. You won’t tell on you—will you?

  Most of the following day in court was taken up with the continued testimony of the prosecution’s main witness, Ava-Rose Renfrew. Today, the young woman was dressed more somberly: in a long-skirted black dress of some filmy Indian fabric, sheer as muslin, and many-layered; with a lavender knit shawl draped alluringly about her slender shoulders, and the brilliant red satin rose in her hair, and her flat black “ballerina” shoes Terence smiled to see. Her mica-glinting hair was brushed to a sheen, and she wore fewer item
s of jewelry—though her earrings, miniature peacocks’ tails made of feathers and sequins, were certainly eye-catching. As she spoke, she glanced about the courtroom, and at the jurors, with a faint smile, as if seeking out friends.

  Now it was the defense counsel’s turn to question the witness. How many hours!—trying, by slow maddening repetition, to trip her up in petty inconsistencies, or to reduce her to tears. Several times, Ava-Rose’s hoarse, cracked voice dipped near-inaudibly, and the judge had to ask her to please speak more clearly. “Oh, Your Honor, I try!” Ava-Rose said, pressing a tissue to her tearing left eye, “—but he’s so mean!” A sympathetic murmur ran through the courtroom and the showy little attorney stepped back, as if he’d been slapped.

  Still, he persisted. Questioning the witness, for instance, about her age. On one document, evidently, her age was given as twenty-nine; on another, thirty-one. When, in fact, had she been born? Ava-Rose hesitated, then said, “Why, I—I’m so embarrassed!—I don’t rightly know. My momma died when I was a little girl, they say she’d just showed up in Trenton one day, with me, no wedding ring or anything, in 1958. Everybody in the family knows when my birthday is—March 12—but nobody knows the birth date. Why does it matter?—any age I am, that man hurt me just as bad, last Christmas; and meant to hurt me more.” Ava-Rose fumbled for a fresh tissue, to dab against her eye.

  Quickly, the attorney tried another tack: questioning the witness about her relationship with the defendant. How long, and how intimately, had they known each other, at the time of the alleged assault?

  Ava-Rose said, quietly, her voice hoarser than ever, that she had known “T.W.” for several years but in different ways—“friendly, real friendly, and not-so-friendly.”

  The attorney pushed his horn-rimmed glasses against the bridge of his nose, and asked, in an insinuating voice, “And how did you first meet Mr. Binder, Miss Renfrew?”