Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"I could represent you," Marta said. "I've had a couple clients get grand jury subpoenas, nothing like this but, you know, you could tell me what to do. I don't havea lot of experience in court, but I'd love to try. it. I'm licensed Indeed, thought Stern, not to mention in three other states.

Nonetheless, as a holding action, the idea held some appeal. Stern would never feel completely comfortable as the client of one of his competitors. And criminal lawyers gossiped so freely.

He would hate to read some clever item in the papers about his visit to the grand jury. All in all, this was the sort of thing he would be just as,lmppy to keep in the family "?,ring it along,TMsaid S' " ' her. tern. We can speak over dinMarta ran upstairs. There were things of Clara's she had discovered during her afternOOn sifting through the dressers that she wanted Stern to see.

That, stud Stern, "is a cameo your grandfather Henry gave her when she was sixteen. I have not seen it in years."

Stern held the pendant above a small silver-stemmed menu light on the table. By the same warm glow, Marta studied the female silhouette.

"It's beautiful."

"Oh, yes. Henry had a fine eye for such things."

"It's strange she nevtr gave it to one of us. Don't you think?"

Perhaps she could not bear to part with it. Or to think about her father. Perhaps this was marked for the first granddaughter. It piqued him to think that Clara had some plan which had gone unfulfilled. He asked Marta what else she had discovered.

"This is amazing." Marta peered into her enormous bag and withdrew a huge ball of tissue, from which she slowly unwrapped a splendid sapphire ring. The stone was very large, guarded by a row of diamonds on either side, the setting platinum or white gold.

"Dar Lord," said Stern as she handed it over. It was the kind of item, so grand, that these days one could not even afford tO insure it. He studied the ring at length. "Where on earth did you find these things?"

"There was a little Japanese black lacquer box at the bottom of her second drawer. I guess it was her private place or something." Marta touched the ring. "You don't know where she got that? It looks old."

Her rivate place, indeed, thought Stern. 'Could Nate possib13 have provided a gift so lavish? Once more, he had that sensation of the earth failing beneath him, as he grappled with Clara's secrets. Then he clenched his eyes, stabbed b uilt. Oh. he was a shabby, suspicious fellow.

Y g,, ' -ndoubtedlv the ting your mother "ThiS, Sall, ' received the first tune she was engaged."

"Engaged!" cried Marta.

Stern smiled a bit. "You did not know that your mother married me on the rebound?"

"God, no," said Marta. "Tell me. This sounds juicy."

She had leaned across the table and the waitress had to shoo her back in order to set her dinner down before her.

The establishment was called Balzini's, a glamorized neighbor hood place in Riverside, with an Italianate theme and fake fireplaces and tablecloths of crimson linen. The steaks were reliable. He would always be enough of a s)n of Argentina to enjoy a piece of grilled beef, Iut it was hardly what he would have expected Marta to choose. Apparently, how ever, over the years she had found that they made a generous chopped salad.. ' 's and that the court He told her Hamilton Kreir name, ship had ended precipitously. But he said no more. If Clara had not wanted to share this part of the past with her children, it was not his place to do so. Her privacy now remained Clara's final and most valued treasure.

At the same time, Marta was the least likely of the three to be thrown off by any revelations. Marta, whose relations with Clara were most difficult, in some ways knew her best.

Stern's most telling recollection of the two would remain seeing Marta at ages four and five, dark-eyed, standing beside her mother at the sink and questioning each habit: Why do you peel the carrots? Why do you wash your hands before you touch the food? What if we just went outside and ate vegetables off the ground? How can germs hurt you if you can't even see them? On and on. Clara, a woman of some patience, was inevitably exhausted. 'Marta, please!" This became the signal, as it were, for more intense inquiry.

There were occasions when Marta actually drove Clara from the room.

Having become acquainted early with her mother's vulnerabilities, Marta was less' inclined to worship Clara than her brother and sister were; she saw her mother more as others very likely did. These were not, in all measures, pleasant observations; overtime, Stern had acquired a strong flavor of Marta's opinions. Her view of her mother probably came down to a single word: weak. Marta had little use for Clara's homebound realm, her music and her garden, and the occasional synagogue functions and teas. She regarded her mother as inert, with her dignified manner and cultivated habits sheltering her from turmoil, inner and outer, that she lacked the spirit to address. Marta saw the world by her father's measure: action, achievement. Her mother was not a doer, and was accordingly diminished in her daughter's eyes. Over time, they had come to have a relationship that could be described as proper. Clara was wounded by Marta's reproaches. Still, she remained available to her. In the universe of relational disasters-Peter and his father, for examplemMarta and Clara had managed to make do. They recognized and reverenced, in spite of misgivings, their world of attachments.

"Was this her broken heart?" Marta asked, touching the' ring her father held.

"Perhaps. Is that.how you saw her, Marta-a person with a broken heart?"

"I don't know. Sometimes." The judgment, like most of Marta's observations, cut him deeply. She went on with no recognition of that.

"It's hard for me to think of you guys floundering. Having sad romances. When I was achild, I thought what every kid thinks: that yoU two were perfectly matched, that you'd just been out there waiting for each other. Silly, huh?" Marta looked up shyly, her small eyes flickering her father's way. No doubt, over time, Marta had also developed an unforgiving view of her parents' marriage. Stern long assumed it had contributed to her ambivalence about men, her shifting attachments. But now, suddenly, her line of sight rose far past Stern, carried off by recollections. "God," she said, "I can remember one night-I must have been eleven or twelve, and I found myself sitting up in bed, in the dark. Kate was sleeping, it was warm and the wind was slapping the blinds, and I thought, Oh, he is out there! This one man, this perfect man. It was so exciting, that thought." She closed her eyes, shook her head, suffering. "Did you ever think like that?"

Stern wondered. His adolescence, as he recalled' it, seemed full of other passions: the stalled complex of feelings that arose around the memory of Jacobo; his fiery determination to be American. At night, in bed, he planned: he thought about the clothes he sawwhe could remember being preoccupied with a pair of red suspenders for weeks-the way the young men dug their hands into their pockets; he mumbled phrases in English, the same words again and again, with the same sublime frustration, feeling each time that he could not quite hear himself for the sound of his accented voice. There was not much romance in him then, yet he knew what Marta meant: that romance of perfect union: heart on heart; each word, each gesture immediately..known; the soul's image reflected, a fit l'dce puzzle pieces. He was still now, his blood suddenly racing as his mind lit once more on the image of Sonny.

Already, the picture was fading somewhat, was a fraction more remote S ,principle' of reality had begun tr,;,, [, om.e. bracing neart with much ao, -; v.."y,,:.*n=, oumsling his ,,o,,,,tc loam ano a teeling of injustice.