Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

“Yes.”

“Good. Could you tell me your full name?”

“Nichole Smythe Burnell.” I didn’t mention it, of course, since he didn’t ask, but Smythe is Mom’s maiden name. At school in the fall I was planning to start calling myself Smythe Burnell. No more Nichole. No more Nickie, Nike, Nickie, Nicolodeon. From now on, Smythe.

“Where do you presently reside?”

“Box 54, Bartlett Hill Road, Sam Dent, New York 12950.”

“How long have you resided at that address?”

“All my life. Since December 4, 1975.” I figured I’d throw that in, so he wouldn’t have to ask my age.

“Fine. And with whom do you presently reside at that address?”

“With my parents, Samuel and Mary Burnell, and my two brothers, Rudolph and Richard, aged eleven and ten, and my sister, Jennifer, aged six.”

For a long time, that’s how it went — Mr. Schwartz asking these boring questions, like he was filling out a job application for me, and me answering with the basic facts of my life so far. But I liked it. I liked the way it was so factual and impersonal, almost as if we were talking about someone else, a girl who wasn’t even in the room.

After a while, though, he started asking more personal things, like about my health and my daily activities. I realized that he had done some research already, because it was obvious from the questions that he already knew the answers to most of them. It was like that TV game show Jeopardy, where the MC gives the answers and the contestant has to come up with the questions. Except that here the contestant, Mr. Schwartz, seemed more in charge than the MC, me.

At one point, he asked me questions about how I spent my days now. He wanted me to tell about my new room on the first floor and how I stayed there almost all the time and hadn’t gone to school and so forth. When he asked about graduation, I told him I hadn’t attended it, and I thought he would ask why not, but he didn’t. He was trying to make me look pampered and spoiled, I knew, but even so, I was glad he didn’t go any further into my home life or school stuff than he did. Instead, he wanted to know about the physical therapy I was getting, and I told him; and then he asked me if I was in any pain now, suddenly, just like that.

I said, “Well, no, not really.”

“You’re not in pain?”

“Actually, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, Nichole, that you don’t know?”

“Well, I mean, it’s like I can’t feel it. I don’t have any feelings. In my legs, I mean. From my waist down. That’s why I’m in a wheelchair, Mr. Schwartz,” I said. “It’s not like I’m paralyzed or anything. I just can’t feel anything down there, so I can’t move anything down there. That’s what the physical therapy is for, to keep the muscles from atrophying from disuse. Because even though they’re basically okay, the muscles and bones and all, it’s actually like they’re dead.”

I looked over at Mr. Stephens, and I saw him tighten his mouth against a smile. He said, for Mr. Onishenko’s record, that he would be introducing a set of medical reports along with depositions from Dr. Robeson and the other doctors at Lake Placid Hospital who had taken care of me, and I saw Mr. Garay make a few notes on a yellow lined pad. “And unless the medical records are allowed to go into evidence,” Mr. Stephens added, “I will of course object to this line of questioning.”

After that, Mr. Schwartz wanted me to tell them about my social life.

“Now or then?” I asked.

“Then.”

Mistake. He would not enjoy what I was about to tell him. I started with cheerleading and talked about how big a deal that is to the kids at school, and then I told him about the Harvest Ball and Bucky Waters, even, and Mr. Schwartz started looking flustered. I was telling him the truth, though. More or less. It was Q and A, not multiple choice. On paper or like this, in a deposition, I probably came out looking like Miss Teenaged America or something. I’m talking about before the accident.

I knew, of course, that was where he would eventually have to lead me, to the accident itself, and sure enough, pretty soon he was asking me about what happened that morning.

“Now, on January 27, 1990, did there come a time, Nichole, when you left your parents’ house on Bartlett Hill Road?”

“Yes.”

He asked a bunch of small questions for a while, nailing down details, like what time of day was it, where did the bus pick us up, who was at the stop with me, and so forth. “I was with my brothers,” I said. “Rudy and Skip. Jennie was sick and stayed home that day.”

“Was there anything unusual about the driver, Dolores Driscoll, or the bus this morning?”

“Like what? I mean, I don’t remember a lot.”

Mr. Stephens jumped in. “I object to the form of the question. Note that.”

“Was the bus on time?” Mr. Schwartz asked.

“Yes.”

“And where did you sit that morning?”

“My usual place, on the right side, the first seat.”

“But according to your recollection, there was nothing unusual about the drive that morning,” he said.

“Until the accident?”

“Yes.”

“No. Yes, there was. It was when Sean Walker got on, because he was crying and didn’t want to leave his mother. So I sat him next to me and quieted him down, and Dolores and Sean’s mother talked for a second. Then, when Dolores started up again, a car came around the corner there by the Rendez-Vous and almost hit Sean’s mother. She was okay, but it really scared Sean, because he saw it out the window.”

After that, he didn’t want to ask about individual stops anymore, which was fine by me, because except for when we picked up Sean, the rest of the route was like every other day and I couldn’t be sure if I was remembering something from the actual day of the accident or just making it up from my usual experiences.

“Can you remember what the weather was like that morning?” he asked me.

“I think it was snowing. Not hard, not at first. It wasn’t snowing at all when we left the house, but it was snowing a little by the time we stopped at Billy Ansel’s.”

Mr. Stephens interrupted again. “Unless the report from the National Weather Bureau for the town of Sam Dent of January 27, 1990, goes into the record, I will object to that question.”

“I will offer that report,” Mr. Schwartz said. Then he asked me if I saw Billy Ansel that morning.

I said yes, he was driving behind the bus in his pickup, like he did every morning, following the bus in. I was exact and said I saw Billy’s pickup truck, not Billy himself. “I sit in front; it’s the kids in the back who always watch and wave at Billy.”

“Who were they?”

“In the back? I don’t know: Billy’s kids, of course, and Bear Otto, and a couple of others.”

“Objection,” Mr. Stephens said. “Note my objection. She said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

Mr. Schwartz slipped a quick smile past me, his old friend. “Did there come a time when all the children had been picked up?”

“Yes.”

“You remember that much,” he said. Like, How interesting.

“Yes. As I’m talking, I’m remembering more about it.” And I really was, which surprised me probably as much as it was surprising the lawyers.

Mr. Stephens looked worried. “Note my objection. She said, ‘As I’m talking.’ ”

“Do you remember, did there come a time when the bus turned off Staples Mill Road onto the Marlowe road at what’s called Wilmot Flats?”

“Yes,” I said. “There was this big brown dog that ran across the road up there, right by the dump, and Dolores slowed down so’s not to hit him, and he ran into the woods. And then Dolores drove on and turned onto the Marlowe road, as usual. I remember that. I’m remembering it pretty clearly.”