Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

He looked at her across the table. He had exhausted the excuse that brought him here. He rose, slapping his sides.

Sonny yawned.

"Believe it or not," she said, "I think I'm going to sleep.

' '

She insisted he take an enormous bag of berries. As they approached the door, he made her promise to say goodbye for him to Sam. Then she grabbed him, applying a quick comradely hug, coming close enough to bump her firm belly against him and sweep her wet hair across his cheek. His arms came together slowly and never reached her before she was gone again. / brief ache of some kind, of deprivation, rose up and subsided.

"You were most kind to have me," he said from the other side of the screen.:

"We'll do it again," she'said. As he trudged up the stairs, her voice, full of her own ironic laughter, reached him in the dark. She'd had. an afterthought remained Dixon's sole hope, and a faint one at that. If John's memory failed in some critical regard about who had instructed him to place the error orders, there might be a minute space in which to turn a sly pirouette. Yet that was not likely. The prosecutors had the critical proof in hand now. The walls were closing in on Dixon, as on some Poe character; the light was growing weak. Here, supercharged by the presence of this young woman, the weight of these developments did not really seem to settle upon Stern fully.

"You really like him, don't you?" Sonny asked, after watching him a moment.

"I care greatly about my sister. Perhaps my feelings for Dixon are merely force of habit. But I am very sad to hear this."

"This is just between us," Sonny said. "Stan would hang me."

"You have told me nothing." He crossed his heart, a schoolboy habit from Argentina, from a time when Gentile friends demanded the gesture, never understanding his reluctance. "There will be no communication. To anyone. No hint. My promise."

He looked at her across the table. He had exhausted the excuse that brought him here. He rose, slapping his sides.

Sonny yawned.

"Believe it or not," she said, "I think I'm going to sleep.

' '

She insisted he take an enormous bag of berries. As they approached the door, he made her promise to say goodbye for him to Sam. Then she grabbed him, applying a quick comradely hug, coming close enough to bump her firm belly against him and sweep her wet hair across his cheek. His arms came together slowly and never reached her before she was gone again. / brief ache of some kind, of deprivation, rose up and subsided.

"You were most kind to have me," he said from the other side of the screen.:

"We'll do it again," she'said. As he trudged up the stairs, her voice, full of her own ironic laughter, reached him in the dark. She'd had. an afterthought.

"If I'm still married to Charlie."

HE arrived home near one, after traveling down the dark country roads and then the highway, tugged through the night by the beam of his headlights, and the heavy currents of his own thoughts. He had tuned the radio to the mumble of a Trappers game, but after a time snapped it off and drove enftrely in silence, dominated by sensation-the heat and scent of the strawberry field, the reverberating charge when she had slid so quietly into the water. At moments, of course, he pondered about Dixon. Soon they would have to seriously consider the alternatives. For a few minutes Stern worked at it all in his mind, probing, tangling and untangling, but he saw no avenues of quick escape.

He thought, naturally, of his sister then. Silvia would suffer. Full of high emotion in the dark, he endured that pain anew.

Inside the door of his home, Stern plunged his heavybottomed body down on the antique milking chair in the front foyer, his thick legs poked out before him. The bag of strawberries, moistened now by their own juice, lay in his lap. Across the hail, he caught a piece of his reflection in the wig-stand mirror and saw how ridiculous he looked; he had been in that tub more than an hour and never let a drop of water touch his head. The little pouches of haft on either side, brittle with the sun, were lifted out like chemb's wings, and two or three dirty streaks of dried sweat ran from his crown to his cheeks.

Licking his lips, he could still taste the dried salt gathered in the hollow beneath his nose.

He was exhausted. But there was no resisting in the safety of his home the measure of his own excitement. Here in this known space, close and his alone, something finally gave way, and riding up in him he felt at last the full expression of what had waited throughout the day. He made a sound'out loud as the longing radiated through him and he sat riveted by passion..This was remarkable. His blood carried an electric charge.

His heart and male organs were affected by an aura of desire which was not just that deep body-wanting thing, that longing like a stifled moan, but something else, something needier, softer, and more yearning. He wanted, simply, this young woman. To be with her.

To hold her and be held. My God! It passed over him in waves as he marveled at the overpowering, transforming feeling of it all. The rest of life did not exist, not simply the boundary lines of circumstance, but the hobbling limits of personality. Here, for a moment, all limitations could be exceeded. He would croon beneath her window or, more simply, confess to this wild yearning. He had half a mind to go directly to the phone, until he recalled that he had seen none in the cabin. This was what drove grown men to shirk their families and young men to foolish daredevil acts. He sat gripping the arms of his chaff.

Oh, it made no sense, but that was hardly the point. The empire of dreams, the region where images preceded words and sensation was supreme, had given up this fixation and there was no logical quarreling with it. How much, really, did we ever understand about this? He'd had prescriptions from everyone, advice from every soul on earth about how to run the remainder of his life. But this was what he had been awaiting-to find what was beyond humdrum propriety or custom and to learn his own true ambition. And it was this young woman, troubled but straggling each instant, no matter how else she faltered, to be the real thing, her best and most authentic self.

But, of course, nothing would happen.

The thought swung through him like the closing of a heavy door. Not a thing would actually occur. He had proved that convincingly when he sat inches from her, naked as Adam and Eve, and had been powerless, inert.

Her troubled talk of leaving her husband was just that-angry idle talk.

She was merely becoming accustomed to the fact that the pathways in her life were, finally, marked out, established. At the age of fifty-six, he had now managed to lead the emotional life of a seventeen-year-old, full of moonstruck fantasies that would never be fulfilled. The anguish sang through him for a short time with the perfect reverberations of a high note rung from crystal.

And somehow, then, he thought of Clara. The association was not direct, for his thoughts were actually bittersweet, some admiration of the pure sentience of his present state.

He had been immobile throughout, but now a new shock passed through him, for he recognized, with a precision that passed beyond the realm of any allowable doubt, what it was that Clara had been seeking when she turned away from him.

Just this: the mercy of passion. And here in his chair he was equally certain-sure, if he had learned a thing about her in the decades-sure not merely that she had never found that grace but that she had discovered that for her-in her -it would never be attainable. Never.

In this instant, there was not a grain of ill feeling, only comprehension, definite-complete. Eyes wide, he sat, somehow rebuked by the enormous silence of the large home and the harshness of these judgments which he made about himself and his entire life. His blood was coursing; the image of that young woman a hundred miles away still seemed so near, so compelling, that he remained half inclined to lift his hand in greeting. And yet he held that thought of Clara at her ultimate moment, grappling with desperation, as the biblical figures were portrayed in lush oil paintings wrestling God's winged angels of death. Never, she had thought. Never, he thought now. Never.