The Forgotten Hours(62)
A. Yes, it’s next to the kitchen.
Q. So anyone in the kitchen or the hallway, or even coming out of the living room, could look into the den? It would be right in view of anyone who was in the house?
A. It was the middle of the night. It was, like, dark. Everyone was asleep.
Q. Is the den in view of many of the most heavily trafficked places in the house or not?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Okay, thank you. I’d like to play a tape now, from the resource center. Your Honor, could we play the tape, please? Lulu, you’re nervous?
A. Yes, I, I . . . sort of.
Q. You don’t have to be nervous.
A. Okay.
Q. Just listen to the tape, and you’ll be okay. Just answer my questions.
A. Okay.
This is where they would have brought in the expert witness, Katie thought—they would have wanted to follow up Lulu’s devastating direct examination with a cross that questioned her ability to recall events properly. They would have put someone on the stand who testified that if she had been raped as a young child—before she was adopted—Lulu might simply be wrong about what she was remembering. She wasn’t lying, exactly; it was just that her memories were jumbled up.
Katie’s forehead was covered in a filmy layer of sweat, her hands cold and clammy but her body too hot. A lurch and a tug in her stomach, the need to get air. She hated this. She wanted it to be over.
Q. So you say on the tape that it just “popped into your mind” that the defendant had touched you, had had sex with you? During class one day, it “popped into my mind,” you said. Correct?
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Q. Where were you when the assault popped into your mind? Why did you not remember it earlier, say, the day afterward when you were with your own family, your adoptive mother, again?
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Q. You do not need to be upset. Just answer my questions.
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THE COURT. Let’s take a break.
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Q. Could you please speak up?
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Q. Your Honor, I think we may need to take another break.
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Q. Lulu, Lulu? We will resume tomorrow. There’s no need to be so upset.
PART THREE
28
Katie drove back to the city, her thoughts so scrambled that she missed her exit and became lost in the confusion of highways by Secaucus, thinking at one point she might have to pull over to blow her nose and look at a map to reorient herself. Every muscle in her body ached as though she were getting the flu. Her stomach clenched in on itself like a fist. The day was heavy with bluish clouds low on the horizon, and the air was shockingly warm, the temperature almost seventy degrees, as though the earth were battling with itself about how spring should unfold.
When she arrived back at her apartment, she flung the windows open and gulped down a few glasses of water. Jack had texted her earlier that morning, and she’d resisted responding right away. But she looked down at his words now—Can I see you again?—and could not bring her mind to focus on anything else. He wanted to see her, and she wanted to see him. She ignored thoughts of Zev, so far away at just the wrong moment. After all, she and Jack were old friends. Would it be so wrong to meet up with him again so soon? How could she possibly wait longer when it had been so many years since she’d last seen him, and he was the only one who really understood what she and her family had gone through?
Yes, let’s, she texted back, and she jumped in the shower. By the time she got out, he’d responded with a time and place. The relief and anticipation that flushed through her pushed all other feelings aside, and for the first time that day, she felt almost normal again.
They met up at an Italian place called Luigi’s in the Village after work the next day. The restaurant was worn out, flattened velvet drapery and ripped banquettes, stuffing bursting out like swollen gums. A cliché of family dining from another era. This was the kind of place her father would have loved: $12.99 all-you-can-eat buffet between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. Half-price beers and double well drinks. A couple stood at the bar, the woman wearing an orange polyester dress, the man with a head of bottle-black hair. Jack was already seated in the back corner. He looked very tired, his chin unshaven, sharp creases fanning out from the outer corner of his mouth. A black T-shirt, fitted.
“I ordered you a martini,” he said without preamble, nodding toward the frosty glass sitting in a small puddle next to a basket of bread. “Figured you could maybe use some fortification after your weekend.”
Katie slid onto the bench. She’d applied lipstick and brushed her hair before leaving the office, and it fell loosely around her face, clean and wavy, smelling faintly of coconut. She tilted her head toward the empty martini glass and the half-full beer in front of Jack. “Am I late? You’ve been here awhile?”
“Nah.” He hesitated as though considering whether to address the obvious. “I’m sorta on the wagon with one foot, you know? Sometimes I get off and then jump right back on again.”
A sensation uncomfortably close to pity pulsed in her chest. “Isn’t that just called ‘drinking’?”
He studied his hands; his fingers were elegant and articulated like those of a musician. “Some people can do it. It depends.”
Katie took a sip of her drink. This was no artisanal cocktail made with carefully sourced elderberries or garnished with a sprig of caraway thyme from Majorca. Pure vodka, three fat, briny olives. Jack unsettled her, and yet it was not a bad feeling. They were both known to each other yet utterly unknown. For long minutes at a stretch, they sat without talking at all, and it was just fine. The conversation worked its way around to whom they were dating. Jack had met a girl on vacation in Greece, and they were hanging out, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. She was a student, originally from Alabama, training to be a physical therapist. When Katie told him about Zev, his gaze became pointed, his entire body listening. “So it’s serious?” he asked.