The demonstrators might not know it yet, but they’d achieved at least a partial victory in their ongoing war. They’d contributed to the breakup of an abortion doctor’s marriage.
Carver sat down on the white leather sofa, the mass of newspaper clippings in his lap. In the bright light streaming through the open door, he leafed through the clippings. They covered more than two years and were all from the Gazette-Dispatch, articles about protests, threats, demonstrations that had gotten out of hand. There were plenty of photographs. In one, Carver noticed white wooden crosses and what looked like a duplicate of the dead fetus sign the girl outside was carrying, but the sign in the photo was being waved at a terrified-looking young woman by a man with a beard. Another photo was of two groups of people yelling at each other, some of them throwing what appeared to be rocks and bottles, some in the foreground blurred by their motion as they ran toward each other. One group was carrying pro-life signs, the other pro-choice. They appeared equally angry with tortured faces, their mouths distorted by the insults and challenges they were hurling at each other. At the left edge of the photo, uniformed police were visible, apparently recently arrived on the scene. The photo’s caption identified the groups as demonstrators from Operation Alive and angry pro-choicers from a local chapter of the National Alliance of Women.
He was about to put the photo aside when he noticed in the photo’s background a tall man looming above those around him, possibly leaning against a car. He caught Carver’s eye because he appeared to be smiling. The photo was grainy, and the man wasn’t wearing horn-rimmed glasses, but Carver was sure he was looking at a likeness of the WASP. And he didn’t figure to be a member of the National Alliance of Women. Or a cop.
Which left Operation Alive.
Carver folded the clipping carefully, so the face of the tall man in the photo wouldn’t be creased, and slid it into his shirt pocket.
After quickly thumbing through the other clippings, he got up and replaced them in the desk drawer. He looked around the peaceful, well-furnished house and thought it was a shame two people couldn’t find happiness here. Then he went out, setting the latch so the door would lock behind him.
The guy with the bullhorn was quiet, and no one said anything to Carver as he walked from the driveway and made his way to where he’d left the Olds parked. He half expected to find the car vandalized, paint sprayed on it or its tires or the convertible top slashed, but the vehicle sat level and unmarked, and its taut canvas top was unmarred by any new stains or slashes.
As he drove past the Operation Alive demonstrators, they stood motionless and stared at him in the heat with a kind of dull but unmistakable hostility, as if he might be hauling lions to the Colosseum.
At his office, Carver put the photograph of the WASP in an envelope and wrote a short note on the back of one of his business cards to accompany it.
Then he addressed the envelope to Desoto and left to find a mailbox with an early pick-up time.
As he drove along streets so hot that rising vapor danced on them, the screaming voice of the man with the bullhorn echoed around the back of his skull. Along with Leona Benedict’s words before climbing into a cab and abandoning her world: “Eventually they win.”
30
Carver found Dr. Benedict at the hospital that afternoon, seated on the sofa in the cool lobby where they’d talked the day of Linda Lapella’s death. He was reading a newspaper, but when he saw Carver approach, he glanced up and smiled.
“Our conversation shouldn’t be so tragic this time,” he said.
It hit Carver with a rush of sadness and dread: Benedict didn’t yet know about his wife’s departure.
“I was at your house this morning,” Carver said, sitting down next to Benedict. He didn’t want to tell Benedict about Leona leaving him, but neither did he think he should neglect to mention it. At some point the doctor would find out about the scene with the departing Leona and realize that Carver had known.
“Operation Alive is picketing my home,” Benedict said.
“I couldn’t help noticing,”
“That’s part of their strategy, to hound abortion doctors, not allow us any peace at work or at home, put pressure on our families. How’s Leona holding up? I told her to ignore them and stay away from the doors and windows. The heat will get to them eventually and they’ll go away.”
“I’m afraid she’s the one who went away,” Carver said.
Benedict looked puzzled, “Leona? Really? That wasn’t wise. Where was she going?”
“She, er, left,” Carver said.
“Yes, you told me that.”
“I mean . . . left for good. That’s what she said.”
Benedict set aside the paper he’d been reading. Words were becoming thoughts that were boring in, changing his life. The sports page slid from the sofa onto the lobby floor. Carver felt sorry for him. He looked as stunned as if he’d been struck with a hammer.
“I assumed you meant she left the house. But you meant she left me?” He still couldn’t quite let the idea into his mind to stay.
“When I got there, she was packing. I’m sure she’d been drinking.”
Benedict made a little back-and-forth wiping motion with his hand, as if erasing a scene on a blackboard. “No, no, Leona never drinks.”
Carver knew better than to argue with him. Secret alcoholics were among the most devious of marriage partners. “A cab came and picked her up, and she left with her luggage.”
“She didn’t say why?” Benedict was still hoping.
“She said why,” Carver told him. “It’s your work. She said she couldn’t stand the strain and the threats. Before she walked out, she handed me a stack of newspaper clippings about demonstrations and harassment of abortion doctors. You spend too much time away from her, mentally and physically. That’s more or less what she said. She thinks your cause is more important to you than your marriage.”
Benedict sat silently for a while. A nurse walked by and said hello to him, but he didn’t so much as glance up at her. He was lost in the labyrinth of this, his life’s latest tragedy, and possibly contemplating a bleak future alone.
“I thought she understood,” he said finally.
You also thought she didn’t drink. “She understands that you’ll never quit.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
The question surprised Carver. Why should he have any insight into the Benedict marriage? He’d merely happened to be on the scene when Leona walked from the house and took a cab. “I don’t know. She seemed sure of what she was doing. She told me it wasn’t all of a sudden, that the pressure had built over time and she’d been thinking about it.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t tell you her real reason for leaving?”
Real reason? Benedict was still resisting what had happened; he saw himself as a fighter and a winner and didn’t want to be the cause of his marriage’s failure.
“What she said seemed real to me,” Carver said. “It was the pressure of your work, what it did to your lives. That’s what she told me, anyway.” It always amazed him how a man like Benedict, who held and nurtured a grand vision, could be blind to what was going on immediately around him.
Benedict sat forward and leaned down, resting his head between his knees. It was what doctors told you to do when you felt faint. When he straightened up several seconds later, he looked sick.
“You going to be all right?” Carver asked.
“I’ll have to be,” Benedict said in a thin voice. “I have to see a patient in less than an hour.” He looked at Carver and tried to smile. “You understand that, don’t you, that I have to see a patient? You understand how important it is? Not just to me, but to her?”