Sol Stein - Other people

"March twenty-second."

"I don't suppose there was a witness?" he asked.

"Is there usually?"

"No."

"I thought you didn't need witnesses any more."

"The law's changed, but juries haven't. If you're going to sound convincing to twelve citizens who've never been raped, we'll need corroboration from objectively ascertainable evidence besides your testimony."

"Jesus! You mean women are no better off than they used to be?"

"Not in front of juries. Your father said you went to the hospital. Did they get a semen specimen?"

"Mr. Thomassy, when Koslak left, the first thing I did was take a long hot bath. I felt disgusted. I douched four times."

"What did they do in the hospital?"

"When I told the nurse I'd douched, they didn't bother. They put something on my wrists for the rope burns that stopped the smarting. They couldn't do anything for my face."

"What do you mean?"

"It's gone away now, but he slapped me so hard I had a red hand mark right here."

"Did they find any bruises?"

"The only bruise I had was not from him. It's a black and blue mark on my left thigh from bumping into an open dresser drawer."

"Did the doctor note the bruise?"

"I told you it wasn't from Koslak."

"Really? How badly do you want him in jail?"

"Boy, you're in a nasty business."

"The nasty business is what happened to you, and if you think fairness will get you anywhere in court, you're mistaken. We're not dealing with New England probity. Miss Widmer. We're dealing with a man who forces sex on another person. A normal human being doesn't chance getting locked up for a bit of sex."

You wouldn't, would you?

"It takes someone with an overriding compulsion."

"You don't have overriding compulsions?"

"Sure I do. Not about sex."

"It's just like a good meal. Take it or leave it."

"It's not just like a good meal. You're getting off the track."

"No, I'm not," I said. "We're talking about hiring you, and I'm finding out more." I already know about the rapist.

"Maybe your father ought to steer you to a lawyer with more time on his hands."

"Maybe."

We sat there in our discomfort, each waiting for the other to talk. His eyes avoided mine. Look at me.

Finally he said, "I apologize. I shouldn't have said that. I am interested."

"In rape?"

"In you. As a client."

"I won't lie about the bruise."

"I didn't ask you to lie. Did the doctor make a note of it?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. Did he give you a morning-after pill?"

"I refused one. I'm on the regular pill."

"Because?"

"Because I don't want to get pregnant."

"The right answer is because you don't know when you might have sexual relations and you want to be prepared, which means that you've had them in the past and expect to continue to have them."

"Don't you?" I asked.

"The defense counsel won't be trying to impeach my testimony by making me out to be promiscuous and enticing."

"I thought they're not supposed to do that any more."

"Oh, he could get cut down by the judge, but the jury will get the message, one way or the other."

"That's awful."

"That's realistic. What else did they do at the hospital?"

"They gave me a shot of penicillin, just in case."

"That's good."

"What do you mean?"

"It means they believed your story that you were raped."

Story! "This is hopeless."

"I don't deal in hopelessness, Francine."

"Oh?"

"Oh what?"

"May I call you George?"

"It won't get your fee reduced. Call me anything you like. Now then, can we start at the beginning, the day of the rape?"

The sun's rays were no longer in the window. Thomassy got up, drew the blind wide open again, turned his desk lamp on.

"How much time have we got?" I asked.

"You're my last appointment for the day. Well, next to last. I've got a dinner date at seven. Shoot."

Who knows a daughter better than a father? Her suitors are afflicted with the nearsightedness of passion and the clangor of the chase. They meet a matured young woman. They lack biographical perspective, which is as much a failure in perceiving people as the lack of an historical perspective is a failure in perceiving events. A father knows his daughter as a child growing up, and can see the woman she is today through the gauze of all those years.

Even as a baby, Francine seemed more quickly exploratory of the world around her than her sisters had been. When she was six or seven, there seemed an aura of sexuality about her I hadn't detected in her sisters, though I must admit that when Joan and Margaret were that age, I was preoccupied with my career, and Priscilla carried most of the burden of their upbringing.

From school the reports were that Francine was aggressive. I went down to see the principal — he knew who I was of course — and it turned out that what Francine's teacher had characterized as aggression was pure precocious energy battling its way into the world. She was accelerated through school fast enough once they understood.

Francine was six when Priscilla told me the story of coming upon her and the little Crocker boy, who was younger than six, stark naked except for their socks and shoes.

"What were they doing?" I asked, stifling any visual image of the scene, knowing that I would think something far worse than had actually happened.

"They said they were playing doctor."

"What were they doing?" I was annoyed that Priscilla was taking it all so lightly.

"They were examining each other's orifices."

"Simultaneously?"

"Prurient interest, Mr. Widmer?"

"For God's sake, Priscilla," I said for the third time. "What were those children doing?"

"Well, at the very moment that I saw them, he seemed to be looking very closely at her private parts."

"Which parts?"

"Her vagina, if you must. Didn't you ever play doctor as a child?"

Of course I had. I felt absurd for having pressed Priscilla for the details. "I trust it won't happen again," I said.

Priscilla just looked at me. Finally she said, "They were just children playing. You're acting as if someone has trespassed on your lawn."

"That's a ridiculous comparison," I said, closing the matter, though when next I saw the Crocker boy my instinct was to throttle him. That very night I dreamt I was getting older year by year, though the years whipped by like minutes, yet Francine remained the same age as she was then, nine, and the growing gap between our ages seemed like a fault opening in the earth into which my child or I would fall if we attempted to reach across to each other. When I awoke I felt that I had been witnessing something obscene, and remember thinking that dreaming was an invention of Viennese Jews, a disease they had passed on to upset and weaken us.

In waking life, Francine also grew — too fast! What I noticed most was her quality of mind, quite different from her mother's. Priscilla's mind flits about like a hummingbird, poised before a flower for seconds, then off again for nourishment somewhere else. Francine in her very early teens seemed able to pursue a thought to its conclusion, in fact she had a relentless quality that to me still seems strange in a woman and something I more readily associate with a scientist or a trial lawyer building a case toward the making of a new law. Of course I realize that a scientist can be a woman as well these days, and a lawyer too. I speak from the perspective of what was customary in my own generation.

When Francine's breasts were no longer buds but of a size as to be apparent whatever she wore, it was more difficult for me to hug her to me when she accomplished something particularly pleasing. It was as if she wore a notice board warning me.