Rose Connors - Temporary Sanity

We eat as if it’s Thanksgiving in Italy, then move into the living room, closer to the woodstove. No need to fuss with the dishes, we all agree. They’ll still be here tomorrow. I realize my claim even to mediocrity is slipping.

By eleven, Luke and I are all but asleep in our overstuffed chairs, and Danny Boy is snoring by the woodstove. Maggie is wide awake, though. She has the sofa bed all set up, and she’s propped on two pillows, reading a Glamour magazine and painting her fingernails.

Luke rallies enough to bid us good night and head for the stairs. Danny Boy stretches and yawns, then follows him. I steer toward my own room, relishing the thought of my old, heavy quilt.

“Don’t read too much longer,” I tell Maggie. “There’s school tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to school tomorrow,” she says.

Luke stands still on the staircase. Danny Boy does too. He looks down at me, then stares up at Luke, as if one of us should give him an explanation.

I lean against my doorway. “You’re not?”

“No.”

This doesn’t sound negotiable. I move back into the living room. “Maggie, it’s the last day before the break. It would be crazy to skip.”

“I want to go see my mom.”

Of course she does.

“I called there today,” she says. “They’ll let me see her at one o’clock tomorrow. For half an hour.”

She’s a self-sufficient little thing.

“I was hoping I could ride over there with you-when you go to work. I don’t mind waiting around. I’ll watch your trial.” She finishes a fingernail and smiles up at me. “It’ll be educational.”

I sit back down in the overstuffed chair. “Maggie, I know you want to see your mom. And she wants to see you. But tomorrow’s the last day of school before Christmas. Don’t miss it. You can go with me on Thursday. Thursday and Friday, if you want.”

Luke steps back into the room. “I have to go in tomorrow,” he says to Maggie. “I have practice.”

He has to go in tomorrow for more reasons than that. Classes, for instance. I bite my tongue.

“But if you wait until Thursday, I’ll go with you,” he says. “If Mom will lend us the car, we can go to the mall while she’s working. I still have Christmas shopping to do.”

Yikes. Christmas shopping. All hopes of maternal mediocrity are dashed.

Maggie caps the nail polish, considering. The educational opportunities afforded by watching my trial apparently pale compared to Luke’s idea. “Will you?” she asks me.

“Will I what?”

“Lend us the car.”

I can’t help but remember my first meeting with Maggie, the newly initiated driver. Hard to believe it was yesterday. “Yes,” I tell her. “But Luke does the driving. All of it.”

She laughs and turns out the lamp. “Okay, okay. I’ll go to school tomorrow. And I’ll go see Mom on Thursday. Thursday and Friday, just like you said.”

Luke heads upstairs again, but I catch his eye before he disappears onto the second floor. I give him a thumbs-up, and he smiles. He really is the best.

During the weeks leading up to Buck Hammond’s trial, I worried that I’d be unable to sell the temporary insanity defense to our jury. I worried that my unspoken doubts about the validity of that defense would render my words in support of it hollow, unconvincing. And so I returned, night after night, to the words of Mr. Justice Paxson, hoping his words would help me choose mine. Not all of them did.

Chief Justice Lewis has said that moral insanity bears a striking resemblance to vice, and further, it ought never to be admitted as a defence, until it is shown that these propensities exist in such violence as to subjugate the intellect, control the will, and render it impossible for the party to do otherwise than yield.

And again, this state of mind is not to be presumed without evidence, nor does it usually occur without some premonitory symptoms indicating its approach.

A striking resemblance to vice. Sounds like something Stanley would say.

Wednesday, December 22

The front-page headline of this morning’s Cape Cod Times proclaimed: “Defense Attorney Puts On Magic Show.” The article accused me of trying to pull an acquittal from thin air. Seeing myself identified in print as a defense attorney caused a momentary jolt. For the past six weeks I’ve thought of myself as Buck Hammond’s lawyer, but never as a garden-variety defense attorney. I’d better get used to it, I guess.

The Boston Herald wasn’t so jocular. “Justice Undermined” screamed its page-one banner. The article that followed condemned my “thinly veiled” call for jury nullification and criticized any juror who might “buy into” it. The reporter lambasted Judge Leon Long for his tolerance of my “subversive tactics.” Generous quotes from District Attorney-Elect Geraldine Schilling, along with a few sarcastic remarks from Stanley, were sprinkled throughout.

It occurred to me as I finished the piece that I must be a defense attorney after all. No one called me for a comment.

The good news is that the news doesn’t matter. Thanks to the street smarts of Judge Leon Long, our jury is sequestered for both the trial and the deliberations. From now until the verdict is returned, the members of the panel will hear none of the media hype. The press will try its case in the court of public opinion for the foreseeable future, of course. And, to some extent, the prosecution will too. But I will try mine only in this courtroom, before the men and women who will decide Buck’s fate.

We’re delayed this morning. Yarmouth police officers picked up Dominic “Nicky” Patterson late last night, and he’s scheduled to face the music here before our trial resumes. Nicky is one of the Cape’s better-known deadbeat dads. He gets hauled in every year or two, signs off on a payment schedule, makes a few installments, then disappears again. This time the Kydd has been appointed to defend him.

According to the courtroom clerk, Wanda Morgan, it was close to midnight when the Kydd got the assignment. He was still in the office when the night clerk called, intending to leave a message on the answering machine. Wanda shakes her head sympathetically when she delivers this news. She’s at least as old as I am, but I think she’s taken a shine to our young associate. I wonder how the Kydd feels about forty-something women.

The Kydd hustles into the courtroom and hurries down its crowded center aisle, scanning the front of the room for his new client. He doesn’t seem to notice Wanda, though she clearly notices him. His eyes find only Harry and me. His grin is halfhearted.

“Where’s dear old dad?” he asks, joining us at the counsel table. His eyes are bloodshot.

“Not here yet,” I tell him.

“You’re going down, Kydd,” Harry threatens, leaning toward him and laughing.

The Kydd frowns at him. “Why the hell are we here?”

It’s a valid question, but we all know the answer. Deadbeat dads are usually handled across the parking lot, in Family Court. There’s only one way this particular deadbeat ended up in Superior Court. Judge Leon Long requested him.

“You’re going down, Kydd,” Harry says again, laughing harder.

“Stop it,” I tell him, fighting back my own laughter. The Kydd’s been dealt a lousy hand. And he hasn’t been practicing law long enough yet to separate himself from it. There’s nothing he can do. One of the county’s chronic deadbeat dads is about to face a judge who views supporting one’s children not only as a legal obligation but as a sacred moral mandate as well.

The errant father comes through the side door, cuffed, shackled, and flanked by armed guards. His clothes are disheveled and his hair sticks up at odd angles. He looks like he had a rough night. He doesn’t know it yet, but his morning will be worse.