Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow Read Free Book Online Page B

the prospect of a moment just like this that left me in a state of excruciating unease a couple of days ago when I realized that I would have to phone Barbara to tell her what had happened. I could not ignore it; that would pretend too much. My call was for the announced purpose of telling Barbara I would be late. The office, I explained, was in an uproar.
    Carolyn Polhemus is dead, I added.
    Huh, said Barbara. Her tone was one of detached wonder. An overdose? she asked.
    I stared at the receiver in my hand, marveling at the depth of this misunderstanding.
    But I cannot divert her now. Barbara's rage is gathering.
    "Tell me the truth," she says. "Isn't that a conflict of interest or something?"
    "Barbara—"
    "No," she says, standing now. "Answer me. Is that professional — for you to be doing this? There are 120 lawyers down there. Can't they find anybody who didn't sleep with her?"
    I am familiar with this rise in pitch and descent in tactics. I strive to remain even.
    "Barbara, Raymond asked me to do it."
    "Oh, spare me, Rusty. Spare me the high purpose, noble crap. You could explain to Raymond why you shouldn't do this."
    "I don't care to. I would be letting him down. And it happens to be none of his business."
    At this evidence of my embarrassment, Barbara hoots. That I realize was poor strategy, a bad moment to tell the truth. Barbara has little sympathy for my secret; if it would not pain her equally, she would put it all on billboards. During the short time that I was actually seeing Carolyn, I did not have whatever it is — the courage or the decency or the willingness to be disturbed — to confess anything to Barbara. That awaited the end, a week or two after I had become resolved it all was past. I was home for an early dinner, atoning for the month before when I had been absent almost every evening, my liberty procured with the phony excuse of preparation for a trial, which I ultimately claimed had been continued. Nat had just gone off to his permitted half hour with the television set. And I, somehow, became unglued. The moon. The mood. A drink. The psychologists would say a fugue state. I drifted, staring at the dinner table. I took my highball tumbler in my hand, just like one of Carolyn's. And I was reminded of her so powerfully that I was suddenly beyond control. I cried — wept with stormy passion as I sat there — and Barbara knew immediately. She did not think that I was ill; she did not think that it was fatigue, or trial stress, or tear-duct disease. She knew; and she knew that I was crying out of loss, not shame.
    There was nothing tender about her inquisition, but it was not prolonged. Who? I told her. Was I leaving? It was over, I said. It was short, I said, it barely happened.
    Oh, I was heroic. I sat there at my own dining-room table with both arms over my face, crying, almost howling, into my shirtsleeves. I heard the dishes clank as Barbara stood and began clearing her place. 'At least I don't have to ask,' she said, 'who dropped who.'
    Later, after I got Nat into bed, I wandered up, shipwrecked and still pathetic, to see her in the bedroom, where she had taken refuge. Barbara was exercising again, with the insipid music on the tape thumping loudly. I watched her bend, do her double-jointed extensions, while I was still in deep disorder, so ravaged, beaten, that my skin seemed the only thing holding me together, a tender husk. I had come in to say something prosaic, that I wanted to go on. But that never emerged. The unhindered anger with which she slammed her own body about made it obvious to me, even in my undefended state, that the effort would be wasted. I just watched, perhaps as long as five minutes. Barbara never glanced at me, but finally in the midst of some contortion she uttered an opinion. 'You could have. Done better.' There was a little more which I did not hear. The final word was 'Bimbo.'
    We have gone on from there. In a way my affair with Carolyn has provided an odd kind of