Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"Is that an informed opinion?"

"Of course. A middleaged divorce is harder than a hockey match."

Her delivery was lighthearted and Stern smiled. He could see that Helen was from the self-improvement school of life. Very much a citizen of the late century. She believed in the power of Will, or, as it was thought of in contemporary terms, self-determination. Existentialists one and all, we could be whomever we chose, with proper instruction.

Something about yourself that bugs you? Chuck it out. Let the shrink refurnish. A deeply conserX, ative strain in Stern distrusted these conclusions. It was all a good deal harder to bear than that. He could see that Helen and he subscribed to different philosophical services. He chose a joke as a diplomatic exit.

"I shall talk to you, instead."

"Sold," said Helen.

They smiled, celebrating the survival of a difficult instant, but then lingered a few seconds in the gloom.

Helen at last asked about Kate. For the remainder of the meal, they trod reliable ground, speaking of theft children.

At nine, promptly, she stood. She was late for her meeting.

Stern saw her to the door, thanking her lavishly for the meal.

"You are a friend, Helen."

"I mean to be," she answered.

"This was the most pleasant evening I have had in some time." He found, upon saying this, that it was a considerable truth and, out of a sudden swell of gratitude, he added, "We must do it again."

"Let's," responded Helen. They stood looking at one another. He was too new to this business to have realized before he spoke what he had gotten himself into, and now, otherwise at a loss, he took her hand and in the briefest, politest way kissed it.

Helen rolled her eyes as she opened the door,

"Oh, my God," she said. "Charming, charming!" She shook her head and, with her large purse and fawn-colored coat, went off laughing down the walk.

O the distant subdivision where Kate and John had bought a compact suburban home, newly constructed and as weakly made as a child's toy, Stern ventured on occasion for a meal.

This house was so far from the urban center that there were still cornfields about, and the clods ran clear to the front door, as Kate and John had not yet been able to afford sod. In the front lawn, near the parkway, a single skinny sapling stood, its tiny leaves riffling like a fringe whenever there was wind.

Kate scurried about her father, attempting to comfort him, but as ever, the best of her attention went to her husband.

Every now. and then, the newspapers reported on twins so preoccupied with one another that they developed a language of their own. So, too, Kate and John. They were forever lost in their small sounds: whispers, murmurs, Katy's wispy laugh. A universe of two. Stern had known other couples like this, tuned in to each other's peculiarities like some strange music, and high on it like Opium smoke.

They had been together since high school and, so far as Stern could tell, were the only man or woman the other had ever really known. This na'ivete had its own beauty. To one another they were the entire realm of otherness: Adam and Eve. Yin and Yang.

It was difficult to imagine the entry of a child into this world of two dimensions, but Kate's pregnancy, if anything, seemed to have intensified the thrill of love. John raced behind his wife's chair to help her up, kissed her with abandon as they slid into the kitchen, clearing plates.

Watching his daughter's dark eyes fast upon her husband, Stern felt strangely affected by her love for him. Poor John was a schlepper of the first order. His most important achievement to the world at large would probably remain having been the best tight end in a decade at a high school that traditionally fielded mediocre teams. The higherpowered jocks, with greedy visions of agents, bonuses, and the NFL, had literally run over him at the University of Wisconsin. John, the coaches said, had the size and talent, but not the drive. This was hardly news to Stern, who had come back with his own scouting report years before. But here was an important late addendum: he treated his wife with unfailing kindness. In a hard world, where decency seldom thrived, a realm full of the brutish, the harsh-or even those well-meaning but emotionally landlocked, like Stern himself-John was a standout, a man of gentle disposition and great tenderness. If he had failed to find in himself a killer's ruthlessness, he had discovered something else, which he nurtured with Kate. Who among us might not be willing to trade?

As John trekked through the yard with the evening trash, Stern stood with his daughter in the kitchen. She and John had just finished washing up the dinner dishes and she sopped a cloth.

"Cara, I have been meaning to ask," said Stern. "An item came through in the mail the other day which made me wonder if there was any recent occasion when' your mother went with you to the doctor?"

Kate looked at him uncomprehendingly. Even in sandals, she was an inch or two taller than he, dark and beautiful, with her straight hair and perfect features.

"Recently?"

"Within the last few months."

"No. Of course not. I told you, she had no idea."

"But perhaps-is there no way your mother might have received the bill for one of your tests, some procedure?"

"Daddy, what in the world?" Kate had stepped back from the sink. She remained tense and emotional at any mention of Clara, and he suddenly thought better of going on. She had provided a sufficient answer.

He touched her on the shoulder to soothe her and stepped into the family room, still furnished with boxes and card chairs, and joined John, who had gone straight to the TV set upon reentering the house. At these instants Stern found himself full of almost religious ratitude for the invention of television sports, which could occupy the few moments he felt obliged to pass with his son-in-law.

Tonight, the Trappers, the tri-cities' traditionally woeful big-league baseball team, were on the air, and Stern and John swapped thoughts about the prospects for the season just under way. The story with the Trappers was always the same: young stars traded away when their salaries increased, pitchers who hit it big as soon as they escaped the Trappers' pocket-sized park. Stern, who had made baseball one of his most passionate studies in learning the American way of life, enjoyed his son-in-law's insights.

John had an athlete's eye for the nuances of physical performance: the shortstop threw off-balance. Tenack, the magnificent right fielder, was trying, as he did each April, to upper-cut the ball. Wearing glasses for his TV viewing, John poked his frames back up on his nose from time to time as the images of the green field floated on his lenses. He appeared transfixed, childlike, still bound heart and soul by the grace and glory of the fields of play; when John watched, you could almost hear the hot roar of the stadium crowd in his ears.

Long moments passed while Stern awaited John's occasional observations, to which he could add some knowing comment of his own. Stern rarely asked John about work; it had become clear long ago that he would never answer honestly, fearing that his responses, which were likely to verge on complaint, would find their way to Dixon. John had had a slow start at MD, passing bewilderedly through the accounting and compliance departments before finding a home on the order desk, where, Stern took it, his performance was still not stellar. They sat on either side of the glowing screen, John's zombie-like attention to the game undoubtedly increased due to the presence of his father-inlaw, while Stern recalled similar dumbstruck reactions, at the same period in his life, to his own imposing father-inlaw, Henry Mittler. In these reflections, he felt for John, especially since at heart Stern always remained half ready to revile him for not being better, smarter, more adept, more able to rouse in Kate something laudable, rather than, as it seemed, allowing her to drift to rest on the soft seabed of the commonplace.