The look the judge lowered upon Jack was not fatherly at all, but was truculent, hostile, and terminally unsympathetic. “And just what, Mr. Pine,” he wanted to know, “do you and your expensive attorneys have in mind?”
“This is all my idea, Your Honor,” Jack said, as his expensive attorney approached the bench, looking worried. “May I proceed?”
“Just a minute, Your Honor,” the expensive attorney said, and he turned his unbelieving and disapproving frown upon Jack, saying, “Jack? What are you up to?”
“This won’t take long,” Jack assured both the judge and the expensive attorney. He turned on the judge his most winning smile, saying, “May I, Your Honor, take just a minute? My own idea.”
“His own idea, whatever it is,” the expensive attorney confirmed, in a voice of doom.
The judge considered. He didn’t believe Jack’s winning smile for a second, but he had to believe the expensive attorney’s disapproving frown. “You may proceed,” he told Jack, giving the fellow enough rope, and sat back to enjoy the results, whatever they might be.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Jack said, with simple sincerity. Facing the courtroom, raising his voice just a bit, projecting like the stage actor he’d been trained to be, he said, “Lorraine, would you rise, please?”
Lorraine, not knowing what was going on, bewildered that Jack would have come to a plan of action without having first talked it to death with her, uncertainly and with an obvious reluctance got to her feet.
“Thank you,” Jack said, and called a bit louder: “Marcia, would you mind, please? Would you rise and come forward and stand next to Lorraine?”
Everyone in the courtroom watched as Marcia Callahan stood from the midst of the spectators — on the media side, not the Kallikak side, which was why she hadn’t been noticed before, she could have been just another blond news co-anchor — and walked forward down the aisle. A bailiff opened the gate in the railing, and Marcia stepped through, turning toward Lorraine. Although her career had faltered in the last few years, she was still well enough known to be recognized by just about everybody in court.
Lorraine, watching Marcia approach, did what’s up? semaphores with her eyebrows, but Marcia merely shrugged and shook her head; she didn’t know what was going on, either.
Meanwhile, Jack was nodding, reassuring his expensive attorney with little smiles and pats of the hand, and now he spoke up again, calling, “Denise. Angelica. Simone. Would you all come up with Lorraine and Marcia? Just come up and stand beside them.”
Three incredibly beautiful women rose from their places in different parts of the courtroom — but all on the media side — and made their way forward. The bailiff’s hand shook as he held the gate in the railing open for them, and they passed through, looking about with some curiosity, at one another, at Marcia and Lorraine, and over at Jack, who nodded and smiled and encouraged them with little hand gestures to line up in a row, all five of them.
Once all five were in position, Jack rose and turned to face the jury, which looked at him with hostility and suspicion. Pretending to see nothing but cheery faces, Jack gestured to the five women standing there and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that is my present wife, Lorraine, and that is my former wife, the well-known actress, Marcia Callahan.”
Expressionless now, the two ladies and four gentlemen of the jury looked at Lorraine and Marcia, and then looked back at Jack.
Who smiled and gestured at the other three women, saying, “Denise and Angelica and Simone are just three of the many attractive and highly intelligent women with whom I have had deliciously satisfying affairs over the last several years on various continents.”
Everyone in the room gazed with close concentration on Denise and Angelica and Simone, all three of whom looked startled but game, standing there under all that surveillance. Lorraine and Marcia gave these three new women very measuring looks.
Jack’s smile now was pitying. He gestured toward the plaintiff’s table. “And there,” he said, “is Miss, uh, Kallikak.”
Rubelle removed her infant from one flopping breast with a moist pop sound and attached it to the other.
The jury looked at Rubelle. The jury looked at Lorraine and Marcia and Denise and Angelica and Simone.
Jack spread his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “...I ask you.”
“But, I don’t know,” I tell O’Connor, shaking my head at the memory, “sometimes you can’t win for losing.”
Flashback 17C
Into the booklined airy living room of the Malibu house came Jack and Lorraine, arguing, she coldly furious, he bewildered but beginning to get sore. “Darling,” he said, as they entered the room, “we won.”
“But despicably, darling,” Lorraine said through clenched teeth. “I’ve never seen such utter and total male-chauvinist piggery in my entire life.”
“Would you rather we had lost?” Jack demanded. “Would you have liked that no-doubt brain-damaged infant to have been a part of our lives from now on? Would you have liked it to live with us?”
“We have to live with ourselves, darling,” Lorraine said, cold and furious, her face dead-white except for two high splotches of color.
Buddy entered the room from deeper in the house before Jack could think of the proper response. Grinning from ear to ear, Buddy spread his arms wide and marched across the room toward Jack as to a conquering hero. “Congratulations, Dad!” he cried. “It was on the radio.”
“Thanks, Buddy,” Jack said, beginning to smile, turning with relief to this evidence of approvaclass="underline"
Buddy wrapped his arms around Jack and gave him a bear hug, grinning over Jack’s shoulder at Lorraine, saying, “What do you think of our boy, Lorraine?”
Lorraine didn’t answer. Buddy’s grin became knowing, while Jack’s shoulder blades tightened as he became aware of the lengthening silence. At last, he disengaged himself from Buddy and turned to see Lorraine studying them both, her expression enigmatic, thoughtful, calculating. “Darling?” Jack said, unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “What are you thinking, darling?”
“I’m thinking, darling,” Lorraine said slowly but emphatically, “that you two probably do deserve each other, but I don’t deserve either of you.”
Thunderstruck, Jack cried, “Darling! You aren’t leaving me!”
“Oh, but I am, darling,” Lorraine said, with the calm confidence of someone whose mind is made up at last. “But before I go, there’s just one thing—”
Jack ducked and leaped over the nearest sofa. He stood behind it, alert, ready for anything. Lorraine ignored this odd behavior, ignored everything except her own exit line: “Just one thing I want to tell you,” she said. “Buddy Pal, your oldest friend in all the world, several times in the course of our marriage tried to rape me. Fortunately, I minored in judo.”
Having delivered her exit line, she turned about, square-shouldered, and made her exit. Jack, staring at her back, coming out from behind the sofa, shrillness in his voice, cried, “You’re just trying to make trouble!”
Lorraine kept going. A door closed, not forcefully. Jack turned his wide-eyed stare on Buddy, who shrugged and grinned, completely at his ease. “That bag of bones?” Buddy said. “Not my type, Dad, you know me.”
Jack continued to stare at him, not responding, not changing in any way. Buddy crossed to him, the same crooked confident grin on his face, and gave Jack a light but meaningful tap on the arm, saying, “You do know me, Dad, remember? From the very first girl. Remember?”