Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Melanie?’

‘Right. The next thing I know she’s bought two tickets and they’re off to see Pearl Jam. She drove Danny to the city in the new Jag Jack bought her. It was the last straw.

‘I didn’t know about it. Julie told me in the corridor outside the courtroom. I just snapped,’ she says. ‘I just lost it. When I saw her standing there with you and Jack, talking like nothing had happened, I could have killed the bitch,’ she says.

I look at the microphone and pray that no other ears are listening.

She fades a little beyond the glass, her shoulders drooping like some wilted flower.

To Laurel her kids were everything. More than a soft place in the heart, they made the world go round. She would have left Jack years before, in the flash of an eye, but for Julie and Danny. She stayed, putting up with the man and his nights of wandering lust, because of the children. Now Jack had left her for a younger woman, a manipulator who at least in Laurel’s eyes was making moves to entice Laurel’s children away, buying them the things she could not, while Jack bludgeoned her over custody. Embattled and alone, fighting for everything she valued in life, to the reasoned mind Laurel’s flash of anger in the courthouse that day might seem perfectly plausible. But to a jury weighing charges of homicide, it could also provide the specter of a motive for murder.

Downstairs, Harry and I drop the visitor badges in a box at the front counter and head through the lobby of the jail. I’m five steps from the door when he walks through and almost into my arms. Baseball cap drawn to the ears, the only kid I know who wears the bill to the front, Danny Vega sees me and smiles.

‘Uncle Paul. Did you see Mom?’ he says.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Visitors’ day,’ he says. ‘First time they would let me in.’

Looking at the tattooed crowd of tough faces, Danny is a little taken aback, but seems a bit relieved to have run into us.

‘Do you wanna come up with me?’

‘I’d love to, but I have a client waiting at the office.’

I introduce Harry, but Danny’s not looking. Instead he is studying the escalator to the mezzanine, the route taken by most visitors to see friends or relatives. He scans the ceiling, nearly three stories over his head, light fixtures like star bursts.

‘Whoa. What a place,’ he says.

To Danny, whose generation has lived out their school life in portable classrooms, that taxpayers would foot the bill for a structure on this scale is, I suppose, a novelty. He is lost in other thoughts, checking it out, I can tell by the look, fantasies of hang-gliding down from the ceiling dancing in his mind, or the raucous ride a skateboard could do down the escalator.

‘I haven’t been here before,’ he says.

I can tell.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Vespa’s across the street at the library,’ he tells me, ‘in the bike rack.’

‘Does your father know you’re here?’

He gives me a look, Tom Cruise in Risky Business .

Jack doesn’t have a clue. What’s worse, I know, is the only thing that would bother Vega is that the kid is here to see his mother. But for this, I suspect Jack couldn’t give a damn where Danny was.

‘How’s Mom?’

‘She’s fine. A little tired,’ I tell him. ‘Otherwise she’s okay.’

‘Are you gonna get her off?’ There is an urgency in his soulful eyes. This is Danny. Cut to the quick, bottom line, why mess around?

‘We’re going to try.’

‘How does it look?’

‘We’re still collecting evidence,’ I tell him. ‘It’s going to be a tough case.’

‘It looks that bad?’

‘Not to worry,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll deal. We’ll cope. Your mother is a tough lady.’ A lot of brave talk without an answer to his question.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But she didn’t do it.’

‘I know,’ I tell him. ‘We’re gonna do everything we can.’

‘Can’t you talk to the judge?’ he says. To Danny the elements of justice are simple.

‘It’s not that easy,’ I tell him.

‘I know,’ he says. The boy’s hands are suddenly everywhere, nervous gestures like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Finally he reaches out to Harry. Shakes his hand.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he says. ‘I gotta go.’ He nods to me, a big smile, the same one I remember as being toothless when he was seven. He turns and saunters toward the line leading to the escalator.

I watch for a moment as Danny walks through the metal detector. Beepers go off and they send him back. A guard passes a hand-held magnetometer over the boy’s jeans. Danny empties his pockets, a handful of loose keys and a folding knife that they take in return for a claim check.

As I watch him disappear up the escalator, I want to spit at the self-indulgence of my generation. My guilt as a father simmering deep inside, vapors of shame. We are a society that sheds spouses and takes on new lovers faster than a raja can work through his harem. We dissolve entire families on a whimsy of lust. We pursue bald ambition as if it were the true religion, leaving our children to come home to empty houses, to fix their own meals, to cope with the crippling insecurities of adolescence, while we engage in an endless chase after the grail of possessions. And we have the audacity to wonder who killed the innocence of childhood.

This morning is what they call an early-dismissal day at Sarah’s school. Class is out at eleven so that teachers can attend a conference. I am doing lunch with my daughter, a treat at one of those pizza places with big singing dummies where they dispense tokens to play games and take all your change.

We’re sprawled at a table over a twelve-inch disk filled with cheese, the processed kind a cow would never recognize, sharing a pitcher of Coke. Sarah is big round eyes and smiles, struggling with a string of cheese that has stretched longer than the reach of her arms.

It snaps and she chews. She rubs her mouth with her sleeve.

I hand her a napkin.

‘Kevin’s been kissing me again.’ She says this out of the blue with her mouth full, reaching for her Coke.

Kevin is the little second-grader in her class who has taken a shine to my daughter. He hasn’t heard that girls are yucky yet. I am told that disease sets in among the boys about the third grade. I can’t wait.

‘Tell him to stop,’ I say.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I kinda like it.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘We’re not French kissing,’ she says.

I roll my eyes skyward. Nikki, I need you. ‘Where did you hear that? ’ I say.

‘Hear what?’ A face of toothless wonderment, her two front ones gone.

‘About French kissing.’

‘Courtney showed us, at the sleep-over. She knows all that stuff.’ Courtney is one of her little girlfriends, a foot taller than Sarah but the same age. She is the authority on everything. It seems size at this age is a big thing.

‘We will talk about this later,’ I tell her.

I need some time for perspective. I will talk to Laurel.

‘Why do we have to talk?’

‘Never mind. Just tell Kevin to stop kissing you.’

‘All right. I’ll try to remember,’ she says.

She grabs a bunch of tokens, still chewing on cheese and half-cooked dough, and heads for the helicopter ride. She’s been waiting for ten minutes to get her chance.

I take the opportunity to call the office from the pay phone near the rest rooms. I can see Sarah across the way as the thing lights up. She pulls the control stick and the little chopper lifts on its hydraulic arm, maybe four feet off the ground.

I dial and get the receptionist.

‘Hello, Sally, it’s Paul. Any messages?’