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FIFTY-SEVEN
Matty’s trial lasted two months. The jury deliberated for two weeks.
‘It’s a good sign,’ he told my mother. ‘Shows they’re undecided.’
He still called most days.
‘Speaking to him keeps me going,’ she told me. ‘But it undoes me too.’
Her hair was limp, her skin dull. Her big eyes raw and bloodshot.
‘Keeps you going for what?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer.
I was getting ready for school when the phone rang. Early spring and freezing cold. The Ides of March, as our drama teacher had informed us the day before. We were studying Julius Caesar in class. I was reading the part of Brutus.
It was seven fifteen in the morning. My mother and I looked at each other. No one ever called at seven fifteen.
Her hand was shaking when she picked up, though I suspected only part of that was down to nerves. She was ‘taking the edge off’ all the time now. She didn’t start before I’d left for school, but I don’t suppose she waited till long afterwards to pop the first pill.
She leaned against the wall, winding the telephone wire around her finger. I watched, every muscle primed. A pulse beating hard in my carotid.
‘Today?’ she said, voice barely a whisper. ‘Are you sure?’
Her eyes flitted to the bottle of Gordon’s on the side. The caller said something I couldn’t hear.
‘Right,’ my mother answered. ‘I see.’ Then, ‘I can’t make her.’
‘What?’ I mouthed. I knew ‘her’ meant me.
She cupped the receiver.
‘Mr Hart says they expect a verdict today. Matty really wants us there.’ She paused. ‘Both of us.’
‘No,’ I said, suddenly shaking all over, a body on the end of a rope. ‘I can’t.’
‘It would mean a lot to him, darling.’
‘No,’ I repeated, more forcefully. Practically shouting.
I went in the end though. Penance, probably.
The air in the courtroom was dry as sand. It stuck in my throat so I couldn’t breathe. A headache drilled through my left eye. My lumbar ached.
My mother and I were seated at the front of the balcony. I had the sense of being watched, thought I heard my name whispered. But even so, I felt invisible, like a ghost. Like I wasn’t really there.
Matty was in the dock. He looked up at the gallery and winked. My mother sent him a reassuring smile back, though I’m not sure it was her he was winking at. The viewing area was packed, she and I were sitting pressed together so close I didn’t know if it was her trembling or me.
‘All rise.’
Judge Krause came in, an old man who looked as though his robes had outgrown him or else he’d shrunk inside them. He said a few words I didn’t take in and then asked the foreman if the jury had reached a verdict.
An angular woman who reminded me a little of Miss Bacon stood up and said, yes they had. When the judge asked if it was unanimous, she told him it was.
I reached for my mother but her hands were clutched together and pressed to her lips. From the way she was staring fixedly ahead, I knew she was praying.
‘How do you find the defendant?’
‘Guilty,’ the Miss Bacon lookalike pronounced.
My mother gasped as though winded. The murmurings in the gallery got so loud the judge had to call for order. I covered my mouth, thinking I might be sick, uttered a single word.
Matty glanced up again. This time he was looking directly at us.
His face had gone very white. His lips peeled open.
Caesar bleeding out.
Et tu, Brute?
