Olivia’s long, sensuous face dips slightly, as if she knew this part of the story wouldn’t be left on the cutting-room floor. Remembering her coldness at the probable cause hearing I ask her, “If you do testify tomorrow, how reluctant a witness are you going to be?”
Instead of looking at me, Olivia stares at Andy as she answers, “I had no intention of hurting Andy’s case last time.” “But you did,” I reply, not bothering to conceal my anger.
This is ground that Olivia and I have covered before, but it can’t hurt to remind her.
“When I questioned you, your manner suggested you wanted to put as much distance as you possibly could between your own participation and what occurred.”
“That’s understandable,” Andy says, gently rebuking me. “Olivia was not only angry at me but also upset at herself.”
Since he has been in the same room with her, his large and soulful eyes, the color of pennies found on a river bank, have become melancholy.
“It may be understandable,” I say, irritated by his defense of her, ‘but she’s got to be a hell of a lot more forthcoming next time or she shouldn’t testify at all.”
There is an air of unreality in the room. We might as well be rehearsing Our Town for the high school senior class play.
More sullen than she has a right to be, Olivia asks, “How specific do I have to get?”
With her Queen of England attitude, this woman is fast getting on my nerves. I explode at her: “Tomorrow’s going to be the second most horrible day in your lives! Jill Marymount will eat you alive, and the judge is going to let her, no matter how many objections I make, so you better be prepared to be pretty goddamned specific if you want to come out of this with any credibility. You’re going to need an explanation for everything that both of you did starting from the day you met and ending with this meeting today, and if you’re not prepared to do that, you better keep off the witness stand.”
For the first time since I met her, Olivia looks scared, as if she is about to cry. I can’t say that I blame her. I can’t always explain my own life even to myself, much less to the people I love. How much more difficult would it be for her to have to justify her life to twelve people, some of whom will regard her as an evil witch as soon as Jill finishes her opening statement. Pour boiling water on one child and then give him up? Put her other child in an institution? Have her shocked? Love a man (a black one, for God’s sake!) who is willing to send enough electricity into the child’s body to kill her? Even if you forget the damn money, how innocent can she be if she is willing to admit to all of that? If I didn’t dislike Olivia so much, I’d feel sorry for her.
My speech gets some results, after a bit of hemming and hawing, and for the next two hours I get to play the role of Jill Marymount and ask every question I can think of that will incriminate either of them. When I am finished, I don’t have a clue as to what a jury will do with Olivia’s testimony, but at least she has a complete story.
“Are you in love,” I finish up, as mockingly as I can, “with the defendant at this very moment?”
Love! The burdens we place on that word. Olivia, exhausted as we all are, shakes her head.
“I don’t know how I feel anymore.”
At one time I would have believed her, but no longer. I now think she has manipulated Andy every step of the way.
Her past has grown too long. Honesty, a scantily clad virtue usually born of necessity, is Andy’s only hope. The trouble is that people lie so much it is hard to recognize the truth when it appears. Without enthusiasm, I follow Olivia’s rehearsal with an abbreviated reprise of my opening statement: “Whether you approve of it or not, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happened and why it happened….” On the assumption she will testify as she has rehearsed, I summarize many of the events from Olivia’s perspective, but barely mention the issue of race. If I can put enough of a tragic spin on Olivia’s story, perhaps the white women on the jury (and they should be in the majority) will empathize with her enough to realize that if their circumstances had been different, they could have been faced with the same choices.
Though I do not say it (so as not to set off Andy), I firmly believe white women are less racist than white men.
By six o’clock, when we have finished, the emotional climate in the room precludes idle chitchat. Olivia looks as if she has learned she has two months to live, and Andy doesn’t seem much better. Saying goodbye in the conference room, I let Andy escort Karen and Olivia to the elevators and go look for Morris. He is in my office, on the phone, with his feet propped up on my desk. Barely glancing up at me, he continues his conversation, apparently to someone in one of his businesses in Atlanta. I wonder if I’m paying for his calls.
His speech is laced with the most profane epithets and scatological references imaginable. Yet at this moment I’d rather talk to him than to his brother.
When Andy returns a moment later, he tells me he wants to talk to me, and we return to the conference room and sit down on opposite sides of the table.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” he demands, his voice angry, “what you were going to say to Olivia?”
I am sick of his defending her, but I keep my voice level.
“I didn’t want you to tip her off. As far as I’m concerned she’s still got a lot of explaining to do.” At this moment Morris walks in and sits down beside me. It is as if he and I are the relatives in this case.
“She doesn’t owe you the time of day,” Andy says, his voice more hostile than I’ve ever heard it.
“Her life’s been a living hell, and all you can do is try to set her up.” Quickly, for Morris’s benefit, he recounts Olivia’s latest problems.
Morris, who has nervously begun to drum the table with the knuckles of his right hand, stops.
“You’re still fucking the bitch,” he says sharply, “aren’t you, brother?”
As if charged with electricity, Andy’s eyelids flutter twice, as obvious as a stammer.
“Hell, no.”
The hell he isn’t! I can’t believe I have been so stupid. By the way Olivia had been acting, I was certain they weren’t seeing each other.
“Of course, he is!” I say to Morris, jabbing his arm with my finger.
“She’s still playing him like a goddamn violin.” Why didn’t I see this? Andy’s so pussy whipped he can’t remember his own name. Needlessly, I add, “She couldn’t manipulate him any better if he were a hand puppet.”
Morris shakes his head mournfully at his brother.
“You stupid, stupid little nigger.”
Andy pushes back from the table and in an agonized tone, pleads, “Can’t either of you understand that I love this woman? Olivia’s gone through more in the last sixteen years than most people endure their entire lives. Neither of you knows her at all!”
I look at this man, who is as intelligent as anybody I know, and wonder how he can possibly be this dumb. Black people have been getting screwed by whites in Arkansas for more than 150 years, but Andy is competing to be this year’s poster child.
“She’s about to love you to death,” I say, more to Morris than to him.
Morris chuckles ruefully, looking at his brother.
“The boy’s been fucked blind. The bitch could shoot six people dead, and you’d say her finger just got stuck while she was testing her gun.”
Andy stares balefully at his brother as if they were picking up an old argument. “I don’t really expect you to understand, Mo,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“You’ve always hated yourself as much as you hate whites.”
In a bored tone, Morris replies, “Now, don’t start trying to fuck with me, boy. I came to terms with myself a long time ago. I’m not gonna be the one with my pecker hanging out in the middle of the courtroom tomorrow.”