The Juror Read online

  Then Juliet happens to look over at the monitor. It reads 70 and falling.

  She yells to the second-year: “Get it UP, god damn it! GET IT UP!”

  The voice on the phone: “Doctor?”

  She slams the phone down. Charges the second-year.

  “Ninety!” she screams. “I want it at ninety!” She wrenches the ambu-bag from his grasp. She starts pumping it furiously.

  He says, “Sixty-five is perfectly satisfactory. Sixty-five, he’ll—”

  “Sixty-five, he’ll be a vegetable for the rest of his fucking life! ’Cause your thumb is sore!”

  “Now wait, wait a minute,” the second-year begins.

  “Go get the attending! Tell him to call White Plains, request a transfer. You hear me? GO! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT! DON’T COME BACK!”

  He flees.

  “Henri,” she says. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You think you’re looking at the witch of St. Ignatius?”

  “Precisely so.”

  “You think I treated him like dogshit?”

  “Precisely.”

  “He is dogshit.”

  Says Henri, “I seem to remember when you were a second-year trying to put an IV into a sailor. I believe you tried fifty times. His arm was looking like a target range.”

  “Who says he was a sailor?”

  “He had a tattoo of a sailing ship.”

  “Where?”

  “In this very hospital.”

  “No, I mean where was the tattoo?”

  “Oh.” He shrugs, and smiles. “I don’t seem to recall.”

  She says, “It’s your fantasy that he was a sailor. He was a junkie, Henri. He didn’t have any veins left.”

  She slowly works the 02 sat back to 90.

  Says Henri, “I recall that eventually that young man took the needle from you, and put it in himself.”

  “That proves it. He was a junkie.”

  “You were so embarrassed, you were about to die.”

  “Not my fault he had no veins.”

  “I kept a suicide watch on you all day.”

  “And the sailing ship, Henri, which you recall perfectly well, was tattooed across his ugly junkie butt.”

  She keeps pumping. When her thumb starts to ache, she switches to the other hand. After half an hour of this, when both thumbs are killing her, she begins to regret having spoken so harshly to that second-year.

  She says, “You know what? Annie broke up with me the other day.”

  “She did what?”

  “She told me to get the hell out of her life.”

  “Annie did?”

  “She seemed—I’ve never seen her like that. She said I was a bad influence on Oliver. But she knows I’m in love with Oliver. I love him more than anybody in the world. Except Annie. So why did she say that, Henri?”

  “Annie said this?”

  “You know what bothers me, Henri? What bothers me is that I’m working such long fucking hours I don’t even have time to feel hurt. That’s what bothers me. Can you can work this thing, honey?”

  “The bag? Try.”

  “All right, when I count to three you take it. One two three.”

  He takes it. The sat dips, but not too much.

  She picks up the phone and calls White Plains again. The graveyard asshole tells her that help is on its way. Any minute now, they’ll dispatch an ambulance.

  “Yeah, right,” says Juliet. “Any little minute.”

  She comes back and takes the bag from Henri. “You know what, darling? I have a feeling we’re going to be here all goddamn night.”

  OLIVER eats his Apple Jacks. He sits silently across from his mom, who’s working on half a slice of toast. Her cheeks are hollow, her skin is grainy. Her big eyes, when she raises them to meet his stare, are bloodshot, with milky sleep-scum caught in the corners.

  He eats as quick as he can. When he’s done he gets his lacrosse stick from the porch and wedges it into the loops on the back of his bike. He puts his schoolbooks in the basket and he’s about to head off when Mom shows up at the screen door.

  “Why aren’t you taking the bus?”

  “Lacrosse after school.”

  “I thought lacrosse was Wednesdays.”

  “Kind of a special practice today. We got that game with Brewster next week.”

  She stares. He waits for her to say something else, but she seems to have slipped into her world again. He starts up the hill.

  But at Warbler Hollow Road, instead of turning left toward school, he keeps straight. He slowly climbs Onion Creek Ridge. Past the ravine of the old quarry, past the rock spring. Then he coasts for two miles. Takes the left-hand fork and at Allen’s Grocery he dismounts and walks the bike down a flight of stone steps.

  Juliet lives here, in the apartment beneath the grocery.

  Her car’s not in the drive, though.

  He cups his hands to look in the window. Her bike’s here, but no lights, no movement. Of course he could have expected this, since he knows she spends ninety percent of her life at work, but still. Shit.

  He’s wondering should he leave a note and go, or should he camp out on her lawn all day? Or maybe he should try to call her at the hospital?

  Then suddenly her ancient VW bug turns into the drive.

  She gets out. She’s puzzled to find him here.

  “Oliver?”

  “Hey.”

  “How’d you get here? You rode your bike?”

  He nods. He notices that both her thumbs are wrapped in bandages.

  She says, “It’s not a school day?”

  He shrugs.

  “You’re supposed to be in school and you—”

  “I had to see you.”

  “Well, I’m kinda, I haven’t slept much. I was going to, um. Sleep all day.”

  Then she squints at him. She must have some clue that something’s up, because her tone changes. “What’s the matter?”

  “I gotta talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About Mom.”

  She leads him into the kitchen, with its low ceiling and the bay window that looks out into her garden. The faint smell of damp basement plaster. Juliet’s home surprises him on every visit by how small and humble it is. Whereas in his dreams it always looms, immense and exotic.

  “Want something?” she says. “You thirsty?”

  “Water.”

  “Just water? No Coke or juice or anything?”

  “Water.”

  She gives him a glass. Nods toward a chair and he takes it. She takes another chair and leans her elbows on the table. He has a swallow of water. Studies the bubbles clinging to the edges of the glass. Can’t get started. He says, “So. Juliet. Did you just get off work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why those bandages?”

  She shrugs. “I was squeezing this, this, sort of like a lung? All night. I had a newborn with breathing troubles.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Finally an ambulance came from White Plains and picked the kid up. About an hour ago.”

  “Is it gonna be all right? The kid?”

  “No idea. It’s out of my hands. Oliver?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh. Well, I mean. I don’t know. I mean, well, you won’t ever tell anybody this?”

  She does a thing that he’s always liked: this little rabbit twitch of her mouth—her pursed lips sliding in a bunch to the left. “I won’t unless I need to. What’s wrong?”

  “You gotta promise.”

  “What’s wrong, Oliver?”

  “There’s this guy? He gave Mom some money for her art. Then—you remember that guy? That day you came over, she had a date—”

  Juliet nods. “I remember.”

  “And then the next day Mom was crying. She didn’t say why but she wouldn’t talk about that guy, she just wouldn’t. At all. And she’s still crying. It
’s like she’s lost her mind.”

  “You think she fell for him?”

  “Fell?”

  “In love.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You think he hurt her?”

  “I think, well I think he threatened her. Just tell me if you think this is all my imagination. OK? But I think it’s true. I think that guy? He’s got her. In like a trap. The way she’s always snapping now—it’s like she’s in some kind of trap.”

  “What kind of trap?”

  “Do you know who Louie Boffano is?”

  “The Mafia don? The one on trial?”

  “Yeah. OK. Well, OK, listen. She’s on that jury.”

  7

  the cold discipline of Orion, the sweet wild confusion of the Pleiades

  ANNIE’s upstairs in her room, Oliver stands at the door, and she tells him he’s got to be out of his skull. “Not a chance,” she says. “If it’s so important you should have remembered to ask me earlier.”

  “Mom, I didn’t know this practice was going to be so late. I went right after school, but there was nobody there, so I called Coach and he told me it doesn’t start till five. By the time it’s over it’ll be dark, I could take my bike but I know you don’t want me on my bike when it’s dark.”

  “I don’t want you on that team,” she says. “Wednesdays are one thing. If it’s going to be Tuesdays too, if I have to drive you—”

  “Just this once! A special practice. I mean, Mom, if I don’t go they’ll call me a fag.”

  “Stop it, Oliver.”

  “Don’t blame me for what they say, Mom.”

  She shakes her head. But really, what difference does it make? She can sit and worry, she can simmer, as easily in the car as she can in her room.

  “You’ll get a ride home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “Let me call Jesse, he’s got my helmet. I got to tell him to bring my helmet.”

  “For Christ sake, let’s go.”

  She rattles her keys impatiently. She goes downstairs and out to the car, and waits for him.

  But he’s so slow. Always so slow. She honks the horn and finally here he comes.

  They pull out onto Seminary Lane. She glances in her rearview mirror, as she always does—ever since this started. But there’s no one back there. She heads up the hill. Takes a right on Warbler Hollow, and then drives four or five miles through pastures and blazing autumn hardwoods. When they’re almost to the school she checks the mirror again and this time there is a car.

  The beat-up VW bug that belongs to Juliet.

  It’s something Annie’s been afraid of every time she’s gone out: that she might run into Juliet. She leans forward a bit so the mirror can’t track her eyes.

  They turn into the big parking lot beside the phys ed fields. It’s almost empty at this hour. She peeks in the mirror and Juliet is pulling into the lot right behind her.

  Maybe I can pretend I don’t see her. Drive away the moment Oliver gets out—

  “Mom, there’s still nobody here.”

  “Huh?”

  She looks, and there’s not a soul on the lacrosse field. Or in the bleachers.

  “Oh man,” says Oliver. “What, did I get it wrong again? Wait. Maybe they’re using the back field. Wait here, let me check, wait, I’ll be right back.”

  “No, Oliver, I’m not going to—”

  He jumps out. Doesn’t seem to notice Juliet’s car, he just runs off on a path through trees toward another open field.

  Annie gets out and stands by her door and shouts after him, “Oli-ver! Get back here!”

  But he’s gone, and Juliet has parked her VW and she’s walking toward her. Annie sees no choice but to turn her way and smile a little.

  Says Juliet, “We need to talk.”

  “I’d love to talk, Juliet—I can’t now. I’m late, I’ve got to run but let’s—”

  But Juliet has already taken Annie’s arm. She gets a good grip and commands, “Walk with me.”

  “I really, I really can’t—”

  “What if I were in trouble?” Juliet asks.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “What if it were really bad trouble?” Juliet asks her, and she leads Annie toward a copse of old maples at one edge of the lot.

  “What, some man? Your job?”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you.”

  This outrages Annie. “What do you mean, if you can tell me? What are you saying? You’re my closest friend, if you’re in trouble, you’ve got to tell me.”

  Juliet abruptly holds up. Faces Annie. “Would you tell me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell me. What’s going on. I know somebody’s hurting you. How can we stop him?”

  “Whoa.” Annie puts her hands up. She backs up a step. “What the hell is this?”

  She glances around her. First toward the silent playing fields. Then to her car in the lot. Inside it, the shape of Oliver, patiently awaiting her return.

  “This is a setup. Isn’t it? You didn’t just run into me. Did my kid put you up to this?”

  “I had to find some way to talk to you.”

  “What about calling me on the damn phone—”

  “No good if the phone’s tapped,” says Juliet, and Annie’s spine tightens. “So what is it, Annie?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh Christ.” This is too sudden. She’s giving it away, she’s losing her grasp. “I can’t. I can’t tell you.”

  She turns and walks toward the car. But her friend quickly catches up with her.

  “It’s because you’re a juror, isn’t it?”

  Annie keeps her head down so Juliet won’t see her crying. “Leave me alone,” she says. “God damn, leave me alone!”

  “What’s he doing to you?”

  Annie stops, and brings one hand up to her face. “Oh Jesus,” she says. She still won’t look up. “Is anyone watching us?”

  “No.”

  “Look all around. Be sure. On the road—”

  “There’s no one.”

  “Are there any cars?”

  “No.”

  “You sure we’re alone?”

  “We’re alone.”

  “OK.” Annie shuts her eyes. “OK. He said if I didn’t help him he’d kill Oliver. He said, Juliet, he said he’d kill my child.”

  JULIET and Annie sit side by side in soft-slung swings, with the huge trunk of a sugar maple shielding them from the eyes of the road. Annie tells Juliet everything, all that she knows and all that she’s guessed.

  When she’s finished she asks her friend, “So what do you think? What do you think I should do?”

  Juliet shakes her head. In a small dry voice she says, “I can’t tell you what to do.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I don’t have a kid.”

  “Still, you love him. You love him almost as much as I do, don’t you?”

  “Annie. You want to protect him. It makes sense.”

  “You think I’m a coward?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me what you’d do, Juliet. Tell me.”

  Juliet sits on the swing without moving. Runs the strategy through her head one more time. Finally she straightens a little. “Well. All right. Everything this guy does, he plans. Right?”

  “He seems to.”

  “He’s orderly? Meticulous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever he does, he does for a reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if he thinks he’s a reasonable man, you can beat him. You know? You make sure there’s a price for hurting you, and you make sure he knows this price. And you have to make it a high price.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You go to the judge. You tell him you want out of this trial. Tell him, tell him your kid’s sick. Tell him he was just dia
gnosed with leukemia.”

  “Oh, come on, Juliet. He’ll never buy that.”

  “He has to. Because you’ll bring him a letter from his doctor. From me. He’s got to dismiss you. Then we send Oliver to Long Island, to live with my folks for a while. And then, well, well then we send a message to that man. You’ll meet with him somewhere. Say, by that reservoir again. And you’ll say, ‘Come near me again and I go to the cops with everything. Or if anything happens to me? Then my friends will go to the cops.’ And then, I don’t know, I don’t know what he’ll say, maybe he’ll laugh, but you’ll say: ‘There’s a few of my friends now.’ And me and Henri, we’ll be across the water, and we’ll wave at him and, and we’ll let him see that we’ve got a camera. And that we’ve been taping everything. OK? And that’s, well I mean that’s it, that’s all.”

  Annie asks her in a tired voice, “That’s what you think I should do?”

  “You asked me what I’d do.”

  All day, while Juliet was working this out, working it over and over in between bouts of nightmare sleep, it had seemed to her a crisp and spare and cold plan. Low risk, high sanity. Outfreeze this ice-fiend. Now it all strikes her as naive and dangerous. That part about waving to the guy and showing him a camera? Weird. Sleep-deprived dementia.

  She watches Annie’s eyes. Annie’s simply looking at her car. Juliet looks that way too, but there’s nothing to see. Nothing visible of Oliver save his forearm and his hand hanging out the window.

  Says Annie, “I don’t know. It sounds sort of crazy.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. The way you’re handling it, it’s probably a lot smarter.”

  “Then why would you—”

  Juliet shrugs. “I don’t know. Because I don’t take orders very well. From monsters I don’t take them at all. But that’s just me. And it’s not my kid.”

  Annie keeps looking across the lot at her car. Those big gray eyes of hers are wide open. Is she thinking? Juliet wonders. She doesn’t say anything. Is she still with us? Is she thinking, or only staring?

  Finally she says, “Well, I can’t…”

  Then nearly a minute rolls by. “I mean I can’t keep doing this.”