The Forgotten Hours(56)
When he didn’t answer right away, she turned to look at him and was surprised to see his face suspended in a kind of painful hesitation. His expression was open, as though he was about to say something. There was an entire story playing out behind his eyes, those intelligent, soft eyes; he was always waiting to see other people’s reactions, gauging his impact and adjusting himself accordingly, like a chameleon. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I really don’t know what I think.”
That wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for. As they said goodbye, promising to meet up again in the city, he tried to hug her, but she was stiff and unyielding. When he turned around on the front stoop one last time, his eyes did not stop communicating with her, even though something was holding him back and he was not speaking his mind.
25
John Gregory is stoic, the faint smile on his face like a placeholder for better things to come. He sits at his lawyer’s table in the Deloitte County courtroom, the top of his head glistening under the harsh overheads. Local TV news cameras aim at him, perched on tripods. The cameramen swivel on their hips, bored. Their eyes land on the Gregory family as it enters, calculating which shots are worth getting. The air in the courtroom is stale, the hum of air-conditioning resoundingly absent. Katie has dressed so carefully, praying that it will make some kind of difference: if the judge remembers how nice they all are—this man’s family that loves him, stands by him—maybe she’ll give him a light sentence, let him stay at home while awaiting his appeal. In the oppressive heat, her mother’s borrowed silk shirt clings like a damp spider’s web to the rise of Katie’s breasts; she plucks at the material with thumb and forefinger and surveys the courtroom.
Amid the apple faces, shiny and upturned, there are four or five seats across the room that remain conspicuously empty. As before, Herb has warned Katie not to look for Lulu, but as soon as she enters, she begins scanning the room for her. It isn’t a conscious decision; she just does it. Eyes strafing the rows, searching—she sees nothing but the emptiness of those seats. The vacuum caused by Lulu’s absence leaves Katie disoriented.
It’s only now that she realizes that she thought there would be some kind of final reckoning between them. Last time they exchanged glances, it was Lulu who dominated, telegraphing her separateness. She seemed done, done with Katie, done with the Gregorys, whereas Katie had been expecting some brief connection, a thread that bound them. Now that she sees the empty chairs, she understands that there will be no reckoning. She will not have a chance to see Lulu, to convey with a glance and a squaring of the shoulders that she will not allow this to destroy her. That whatever Lulu has done and for whatever reason, Katie and her family will forge ahead.
And yet Lulu is not here, and nothing passes between them.
“Katie,” her mother says under her breath, spitting out the t. “Stop fidgeting, will you?”
Charlie’s dress bunches up in folds around her narrow hips. Her body is small, thinner than ever before. She’s tied her brown hair back at the nape of her neck. Her skin is as pale as skim milk. Tortoiseshell reading glasses perch on her nose, which is strange because she usually never wears them in public and certainly not when she isn’t reading.
Twice Grumpy has laid an enormous, wrinkled hand on Katie’s thigh in an attempt to still her quivering. It takes everything in her to resist pulling away from him, lifting that concrete hand off her leg. Her love for her grandfather is rooted in the idea of his invincibility, and seeing him cowed throws her.
David sits on the bench swinging his feet above the scuffed wood floor. In his blue blazer and red tie, he could be attending a confirmation or a wedding. He is thirteen, his face an angry terrain of pimples. The tender flesh around his lips is brutally swollen and cracked. It shines with Vaseline.
Judge Sonnenheim enters, and quiet falls over the room. She is far prettier than Katie remembers from when the trial ended a few weeks earlier. Her lips are brownish red, her hair soft and styled away from her face. Every eye in the room tracks her movement. She calls the room to order and begins talking. People are standing up and sitting down again. Her mouth with its painted lips opens and closes. Katie’s forehead is burning up. The sun on her back brands her through her shirt. Sweat gathers at her waistband, under her armpits.
Herb has sent the judge dozens of letters from supporters. They tell of how John Gregory runs a Saturday chess club for public school kids. That his jokes turn run-of-the-mill backyard barbecues into parties. That he babysits for neighborhood children, cooks for his family, washes their laundry, teases his wife mercilessly because he adores her. All this is true; all this is her father.
But as soon as the judge starts talking, Katie understands that none of this makes any difference at all. This judge doesn’t care about her family one bit. Not about her little brother or her, her mother or Grumpy—and least of all about her father. The reason the judge is wearing lipstick today is because of the television cameras. This is not about dinners and laundry; this is about making a statement.
“I recognize that the defendant is considered an upstanding member of his community,” the judge is saying. “But one must consider the lasting damage he has done—the psychological trauma. I have a letter here, a statement from the victim . . .”
This is really happening, and it is not going to go as her father or Herb promised.