Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"I was engaged," said Clara that night as they sat in the dark car over the river, with 'the sweet julep smell of the liquor around them. "We broke it off a year ago last June."

It was nearly December now. The street lamps and scattered light from the sky, vaguely refracted, cast deep shadows; he could see only the movement of her eyes as she looked ahead through the car window. Some spirit of bravery gripped her, though. There was a finer, noble look to her as she spoke; Stern Was impressed, as he had been often lately, by her beauty. "His name was Hamilton Kreitzer. Do you remember him? From law school?"

The name meant nothing to Stern. He had the vaguest image of a fellow with a callow, luminescent smile and half head of wiry blondish hair.

"He's older. Than we are. Than I am. He had left Easton before 1 started. But, well, he was glamorous. You know, he came driving out on the weekends. He had that little English car, whatever it's called. The roadster. He,d come flying onto campus with the topdown in the middle of the winter and his scarf blowing behind him. He went out for some time with Betty Tabourney' s sister. He had a terrible reputation. But girls don't ever know what they really like, do they? He's very handsome. You have to give him that. He's got a tiny little mustache like Errol Flynn.

And, of course, he's quite well-to-do. His father is one of Daddy's clients. They make candy. You see it in all the five-and-dimes.

Packaged stuff. It's been stale whenever I've bought it. At any rate."

She stopped to adjust herself in the seat. She was probably not accustomed to speaking at such length. For a moment, even in the dark, Stern could discern some tentative reflex: she was not certain that she wanted to go on. Then she straightened somewhat and continued, looking again through the front window, raising that fine profile. "They call him Ham. Nice name for a Jewish boy." She laughed. "Of course, my parents liked that. You know how they are. They don't like anything to be 'too Jewish,' which means Jewish at all."

Stern made a sound of acknowledgment, assent. He knew what she was saying.

"At any rate, I saw him one night at a dance, the Grover Hospital Cotillion. He was just Out of the service, going to law school. I was with another boy, but we spoke, you know how that is, flirted, and he called me up the next week and asked me to be his date at another of these dances. I knew half a dozen girls who had gone out with him, and not one of them with a decent thing to say, but I was so thrilled. Oh."

She closed her eyes, she shook her head, overwhelmed. "I was so delighted to have all my friends, everyone I knew, see me with Ham Kreitzer."

She found her drink in her hands-she seemed to have forgotten it-and nipped at it briefly. He could see it was not much to her taste.

"I was quite surprised when he called after that. But he honestly seemed to enjoy my company. He told me how I'd blossomed since college." She threw a hand in the air for expression, then regained herself and made a sound that led Stern to believe that in the dark she might have blushed.

"Well, I had grown up a good deal. I suppose he was attracted to 'the side of me that didn't think he was all that important. Which was there, even though you wouldn't know it to listen to me now. He enjoyed the challenge of winning me over. And, of course, I listened to him. He liked to talk about himself. So many men do."

Across the seat from her, Stern smiled, but she was too caught up to find any special meaning in her remark.

"But when you got to know him, he was like everybody else.

He had so many schemes. He hates his father, despises the poor man, and naturally, after he was dismissed from law school, he felt he had no other choice, and so he has to work beside his father every day. He wants to break away so desperately and of course he never will." She turned to Stern. "I felt something for him. And I believe it was mutual. But he was also at the age at which it was expected that he would get married. He'd had his flings or wiM oats, or whatever you call it. And I'm socially acceptable. My parents are, that is. So we were engaged. I loved to sit and hold his hand, just watch him. He is such a handsome man. I couldn't believe he wasTnine. It all seemed so magnificent.

My," she said. For the first time in the dark, she touched her eyes, but she drew herself together. She had her own momentum now.

"Of course, that's: not the end of the.story. We were engaged for fourteen months. I had to have a June wedding.

Two weeks before the 'ceremony, I got a phone call. I could tell he was far away. 'Darling,' he said, I'm afraid I can't go through with it." I wasn't surprised. I'd realized by then that he was really quite a little boy. I knew he would be terrified. He didn't say where he was.

It turned out that he was on Catalina Island. And that one of the girls had disappeared from the packaging line-I'm sure she was on Catalina Island, too. I didn't care about that. It was me he didn't want.

Whether he preferred someone else was beside the point. And then, of course, there was one more problem." Across the seat, she turned in Stern' s direction, while the heat purred, pouring up thickly from beneath the dash.

"I was pregnant," she said.

He realized she was watching him to see if she could catch some flicker of his reaction in the dark. And she had judged him correctly. Her news instilled not merely shock but something close to panic. But as a child in a home rife with torment he had learned to save all expression and he showed nothing now; not a ripple to the surface.

"Are you shocked?" she asked.

He drew his breath and reflected.

"Yes," he said at last. There was no avenue for diplomacy.

"I was, too. Not at how it had happened, naturally. And I don't want you to think that I was taken advantage of, or that I was left behind like some dirty conquest. We had carried on that way for many months. I think, frankly, that I liked the idea of it better than anything else.

The secret. The romance. Wasn't this what the world was supposed to be about?" She stopped. "Well, listen to me."." She seemed to consider looking over once more, but even she was not that courageous. Stern fought back the same cold panic. He regretted suddenly that she was telling him all this; but that, he realized, was the point. Somewhere down.the bank, voices, a man's and a woman's, were raised, then passed.

"Naturally, I couldn' t believe I was in that state. It was only a month. I hoped for a while that something would happen. But it didn't.

Then I thought about killing myself.

And I very nearly did. I actually got hold of some sleeping pills. I fell asleep one night holding the bottle in my hands, and I remember'

'-she laughed and tossed her head-' 'that after an hour or two I jolted awake and I thought I had done it, and I actually accepted it, the whole idea, for just that one second, and then was glad I had the chance to think better of it. I was sure that telling my parents would be the worst thing I'd ever done, but it was even more difficult than I'd imagined. Lord," she said suddenly, I never want to do anything like that again."

Again she touched her eyes. "My father was monstrously angry.

Monstrously. And of course they wanted me to marry Ham, which was out of the question. We quarreled about that for another week. But finally my father took me to Mexico City. The flight was eleven hours each way.

We had to fly through Chicago. And I was so sick coming back, I thought I would die. But it was taken care of.

"And I really have very little now. I know how silly that sounds. I have so much compared to most people. And even compared to what I had before, there's no real difference.

But I feel as if the whole world's changed. I gave up my job before the wedding. Because Ham wanted me to. That's what brings me around the office. And naturally I'm ashamed I really don't know who's heard about this. I imagine everyone. I go into a movie theater or a store or the concert hall and I assume that every person knows. That they're whispering. You know how unkind people are.