The First Time Page 4

  He shook his head. He knew she was really asking what the hell had happened, but since he didn’t know the answer any better than she did, he said nothing.

  “Is something wrong with Mattie?”

  He shrugged.

  “She said something strange to me this morning,” Shannon continued when Jake failed to respond. “Out of the blue, she said she wanted to change her will.”

  “What?” Jake’s head snapped back, as if someone had yanked a fistful of his hair.

  It was Shannon’s turn to shrug. “Anyway, if there’s anything I can do …” she offered again, her voice drifting away.

  “You can keep this quiet,” Jake said, although he could feel Shannon Graham already rehearsing her speech to the other lawyers in the firm even as she walked away. There was something anticipatory, even eager, in her gait, as if she could barely wait to get where she was going. It didn’t matter. Mattie’s outburst would be old news before Shannon Graham left the building. The legal profession was the same as any other in that regard. It loved gossip. Exaggerated tales of his wife’s behavior were no doubt already sprinting through the hallowed halls of justice on their way across town, leaping from the rundown corner of California Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street where the courthouse was situated to the swank Miracle Mile of Michigan Avenue, home of Richardson, Buckley and Lang. “Did you hear about the stunt Mattie Hart pulled in court today?” “What’s the matter with Jake Hart’s wife?” “It was the damnedest thing. She just started laughing—right in the middle of his summation.”

  Sometimes he wished she would just disappear.

  Not that he wished Mattie any actual harm. It wasn’t that he wanted her dead, or anything like that. He just wanted her gone, out of his life, out of his head. For weeks he’d been thinking of ways to tell her it was over, that he’d fallen in love with someone else, that he was leaving her. He’d rehearsed the words as if preparing his closing argument for the jury, which was exactly what it was, he thought now, the summation of his marriage, with Mattie the jury, the judge, the Lord High Executioner.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” the speech always began, then faltered, because truth be told, it was somebody’s fault. It was his fault. Although it was her fault as well, a little voice now interjected. Her fault for getting pregnant in the first place, for insisting on having the baby, for pouncing on his reluctant offer of marriage, even though she knew it wasn’t what he wanted, that they weren’t right for one another, that it was a mistake, that he would always resent her.

  “We’ve given it our best shot,” the speech continued. But he hadn’t given it his best shot, and they both knew it. Although Mattie wasn’t altogether blameless, the little voice insisted, louder now. In the beginning, she’d wrapped herself totally in the cloak of motherhood, nursing Kim at all hours of the day and night, shutting him out. And while it was true that he’d had no interest in changing diapers, and babies made him nervous, that didn’t mean he didn’t love his daughter, or that he liked being relegated to the role of casual observer in her life. He envied the easy rapport Kim shared with her mother, was envious of their bond. Kim was definitely her mother’s daughter. It was too late for her to be Daddy’s little girl.

  And then last month Mattie had suddenly floated the idea of having another child, slipping it into the middle of a casual conversation, trying to disguise her enthusiasm as indifference, as if it were just another idea, something she hadn’t been thinking about night and day. And he’d known then that he couldn’t afford to wait much longer, or he would be trapped again. He had to tell Mattie he was leaving.

  Except that he hadn’t told her. And now there was the distinct possibility that he’d waited too long, that she was already pregnant, that her confused and raging hormones were responsible for her strange behavior in court this morning. “Please, no,” he heard himself say out loud. “Anything but that.”

  “Anything but what?”

  He looked up at the sound of her voice, reached out his hand for her to take, felt a rush of excitement as her fingers laced themselves through his. What the hell? Who cared who saw them together? Besides, the courtroom was empty. It was easy to be brave.

  “That was your wife, wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice full of late nights and too many cigarettes. She lowered herself into the defendant’s chair, leaning her head toward his so that her thick red curls brushed against his cheek, like a cat against a bare leg. Just last night he’d gathered those auburn curls inside the palm of his hand and squeezed them, mesmerized by their softness. And she’d looked up at him and smiled that wondrously wide smile that threatened to spill over the borders of her round face, her lips parting to reveal a bottom row of charmingly crooked teeth. What was it about her that he found so incredibly attractive?

  Like the expensive silk blouse and faded denim jeans she’d artfully combined, everything about Honey Novak was mix and match. Her hair might be red and curly, but her eyebrows were defiantly black and straight. Her bosom was too big for her otherwise spindly frame, her legs too long for someone barely five foot two, and her nose slightly bent and off-angle, giving her a vaguely scattered look. She wasn’t a great beauty by anyone’s definition, and at thirty-four, hardly anyone’s idea of a younger woman. Objectively speaking, his wife was the more attractive of the two. And yet he’d always been intimidated by Mattie’s sunny, all-American good looks. They made him feel like a fraud.

  “That was Mattie,” he agreed.

  Honey said nothing, which was typical of Honey, who rarely spoke when she had nothing to say. They’d met several months ago at the health club in his building. He was on the treadmill, walking a brisk 4.5 miles per hour; she was jogging along beside him, the mileage on her machine registering an impressive 7.2. He made casual conversation; she replied with assorted smiles and grunts. After a few weeks he’d asked her out for coffee, and she said yes, despite the fact she knew he was married. It was just coffee, after all. The following week, coffee spilled into dinner, and the week after that, dinner served as merely an hors d’oeuvre to a passion-filled night at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. One of many, although the locale quickly shifted to her charmingly cluttered one-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Park.

  He hadn’t meant to fall in love. Love was the last thing on his agenda. Didn’t he already have enough complications in his life? A one-night stand was one thing, a casual affair, as meaningless as it was brief; that was all he thought he’d signed on for. The same for her, Honey confided later. She was newly divorced, childless by choice, working as a freelance writer while trying to write a novel, and looking after two ornery cats recently abandoned by a neighboring tenant in her building. The last thing she needed, she’d told him one night, as she perched naked on his stomach in the casual chaos of her bedroom, the cats playing with their exposed toes, was to fall in love with a married man.

  “Do you think she knows?” Honey asked finally. “About us?”

  Jake shrugged, as he had shrugged earlier. Anything is possible, he thought, a notion that once suggested limitless freedom, but which he now found almost overwhelmingly claustrophobic.

  “What are you going to do?” Honey asked.

  “I can’t go home,” he told her, his voice flat, his eyes flashing rage. “I don’t think I could look at her.”

  “She looked scared to death.”

  “What?” What was Honey talking about?

  “I saw the look on her face when she was leaving,” Honey explained. “She looked terrified.”

  “She has good reason to be terrified.”

  “This goes beyond reason.”

  “That’s for sure.” Jake slapped his hands against his thighs, relished the sting. “Anyway, one thing at a time.” He patted the burgundy silk tie Honey had given him for good luck the night before.

  “You had them,” Honey said, nodding toward the empty jury box. “You’ll get them back.”

  Jake nodded, his mind already racing ahead to when court resumed. What would he say
? Mattie had disrupted the most important trial of his career by laughing out loud in the middle of his summation, exposing him to ridicule, and his client to a possible mistrial. The jury, indeed everyone in the courtroom, would be waiting to see how he handled it. He couldn’t just ignore what had happened. He had to use it. Use it to his advantage.

  To do that he had to wrap his anger at Mattie’s startling outburst into a neat little packet and tuck it away in a back drawer of his mind, to be opened later. This would be difficult, but not impossible. Jake had learned, almost from infancy, that his very survival depended on his ability to compartmentalize, and now someone else’s survival depended on it as well. Douglas Bryant’s fate, indeed his life, was in Jake’s hands, and Jake would save him because he understood him, because he had been privy to the same rage and frustration that had driven the boy to kill. There but for the grace of God go I, Jake thought, suddenly stiffening in his chair, dropping Honey’s hand, as the doors of the courtroom opened and people hurried to reclaim their seats.

  “I love you, Jason Hart,” Honey told him.

  Jake smiled. Honey was the only person in the world he allowed to call him Jason, the name his mother had given him, the name she’d screamed while beating him—Bad boy Jason! Bad boy Jason!—until the words blended together, merged as one in his mind. Badboyjason, badboyjason, badboyjason. Only on Honey’s lips did the words separate, become something other than a curse, something other than an all-inclusive definition. Only with Honey could Jason Hart leave the bad little boy behind and become the man he’d always wanted to be.

  “You need a few minutes alone,” Honey stated simply, already on her feet. Mattie would have put a question mark at the end of the sentence, forcing him to make the decision, to feel guilty for shutting her out, for sending her away. But Honey always knew when to approach and when to withdraw.

  “Don’t go far,” he told her, almost under his breath.

  “Seventh row, center,” she told him.

  Jake smiled, watching her sly wiggle—sly because she knew he was watching—as she made her way back to the visitors’ block. Seconds later the jury filed back into the room, and Douglas Bryant resumed his seat at the defense table.

  “Seat’s still warm,” Douglas Bryant observed.

  Jake smiled reassuringly, patting the defendant’s hand as the clerk called the court to order and the room instantly stilled. The judge returned to her seat, dark eyes wary, scanning the courtroom for potential trouble spots. “If there are any more outbursts,” she warned, “I’ll have this room cleared of spectators.”

  Jake thought the warning unnecessary. Never had he heard a courtroom so still. They’re all waiting, he thought. Waiting to see how I handle things, waiting to hear what I have to say.

  “Is the defense ready to continue with its closing argument?” Judge Berg asked.

  Jake Hart rose to his feet. “Ready, Your Honor.”

  Ready or not, Jake thought, taking a deep breath, looking toward the jury, taking another deep breath, then looking directly at the seat Mattie had occupied earlier. “You just heard a woman laugh,” he began, acknowledging the incident head-on, though not the woman’s identity. “We don’t know why she laughed. It’s not important, although it certainly was unsettling.” He chuckled softly, allowing the courtroom to chuckle along with him, to relieve some of the tension still remaining. “But the truth can be equally unsettling,” Jake continued, gently grabbing the jury by its collective throat, “and the truth in this case is that Douglas Bryant is on trial for his life.” He paused, training his deep blue eyes on each member of the jury, allowing angry tears to fill those eyes, knowing the jury would mistake his fury at Mattie for compassion toward the defendant. “Douglas Bryant is on trial for his life,” Jake repeated. “And that is no laughing matter.”

  The jury sighed, like a lover responding to a well-placed caress. He’d done it, Jake thought, watching several of the women shed compassionate tears of their own. Mattie had inadvertently handed him the biggest win of his career. He’d get the not-guilty verdict, the great publicity, the offer of partnership.

  And he owed it all to Mattie. As usual, he owed everything to his wife.

  FOUR

  Mattie stood on the outside steps of the Art Institute of Chicago, feeling the cold breeze whip across her face. “Harder,” she muttered under her breath, pushing her face forward as if daring the wind to strike her. Go on, knock me down. Send me flying. Humiliate me in front of all these well-heeled patrons of the arts. It’s no less than I deserve. Payback time for the way I humiliated my husband in court this morning. “Go on,” she whispered, still trying to make sense of what had happened. “Give it your best shot.”

  “Mattie?”

  Mattie spun around at the sound of her name, her mouth opening in an exaggerated smile as Roy Crawford, a man with the weathered face of a boxer and the lithe build of a dancer, approached, gray eyes twinkling beneath a full head of gray hair. He walked with his shoulders, Mattie observed, studying him as he strutted confidently toward her, right shoulder, left shoulder, right shoulder. Definitely cock of the walk, in his casual black trousers and cream-colored turtleneck, no coat, despite the increasing chill. Roy Crawford had made his first million before the age of thirty and had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday by shedding wife number three and moving in with his youngest daughter’s closest friend.

  “Roy,” she acknowledged, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “I’m so glad you were able to get away early.”

  “I own the company,” he said easily. “I set the rules. That’s quite a grip you’ve got there.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Mattie immediately released her stranglehold on his fingers.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  Nothing to be sorry about, Mattie repeated silently, her mind spinning back to courtroom 703, the memory of what she’d done flashing before her as if caught in a strobe light, revealing images frozen in time and forever seared inside her brain. Nothing to be sorry about. Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Crawford. There’s everything to be sorry about. Starting with her ill-advised trip to court this morning, continuing with the scene she’d created, and not just any scene, the mother of all scenes, the scene from hell. Scenes from a marriage, Mattie thought sadly, knowing her husband would never forgive her, that her marriage was over, her sorry excuse for a marriage, her marriage that never really was, despite nearly sixteen years and the daughter it produced, the only thing in her life that she didn’t have to be sorry about.

  “I’m really so sorry,” Mattie repeated, and promptly burst into tears.

  “Mattie?” Roy Crawford’s gray eyes shifted warily from side to side, his lips pursing, relaxing, then pursing again as he reached for Mattie, gathered her now-shaking body into his arms. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mattie repeated again, unable to say anything else. What was happening to her? First the laughter in the courthouse, and now tears on the steps of Chicago’s famed Art Institute. Maybe it was environmental, some insidious form of lead poisoning. Maybe she was allergic to majestic old buildings. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to leave the comfort and security of Roy Crawford’s arms. It had been a long time since someone had held her with such overt tenderness. Even when she and Jake made love, and their lovemaking had remained surprisingly passionate throughout the years, it was this tenderness that was lacking. She realized now just how much she’d missed it. How much she’d missed. “I’m so sorry.”

  Roy Crawford pulled back, though not away, his strong hands still resting on her upper arms, his wide fingers kneading the flesh beneath her coat. “What can I do?”

  Poor guy, Mattie thought. He didn’t do anything, and yet he looks so guilty, as if he were used to making women cry and ready to assume full responsibility, regardless of his innocence. Mattie wondered for a moment whether this was the way all men felt, if they went through life afraid of the power of a woman’s tears
. “Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.” Mattie offered Roy Crawford what she hoped was her most reassuring smile. But she felt her lips wobbling all over her chin and tasted salty tears burrowing between tightly clenched teeth, and Roy Crawford looked anything but reassured. In fact, he looked terrified.

  Who could blame him? He thought he was meeting with his art dealer to view a photography exhibition, and what did he meet up with instead? Every man’s worst nightmare—a hysterical woman carrying on in a public place! No wonder Roy Crawford looked as if he wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole.

  Still, the look of discomfort on Roy Crawford’s face was nothing in comparison to the look of sheer horror that had overtaken her husband’s entire being during her earlier outburst in court. What he must have thought! What he must be thinking now! He’d never forgive her, that much was certain. Her marriage was over, and it had ended not with accusations and recriminations but with laughter.

  Mattie had fled the courthouse, hooting with laughter as she ran along California Avenue between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Streets, not the best area in the city, she knew, noticing a drunk zigzagging across the street to avoid her. Even the winos want to get away from me, she’d thought, laughing louder, hearing footsteps and looking behind her, hoping to see Jake, instead seeing two black men with knitted wool caps pulled down around their ears, who looked the other way as they hurried past.

  Her car, a white Intrepid in need of a wash, was parked at an expired meter two blocks from the courthouse. Mattie had fumbled in her purse for her keys, found them, dropped them to the sidewalk, retrieved them, dropped them again. Securing them tightly between her fingers, she’d tried repeatedly to open her car door. But the key kept turning over in her fingers, and the door remained stubbornly closed. “I must be having a stroke,” she’d announced to the row of decaying small buildings beside her. “That’s it. I’m having a stroke.”