The Woods

I closed my eyes and waited.

“It’s Chamique. She wants to recant.”

My office is in the center of Newark. I keep hearing that there is a revitalization going on in this city. I don’t see it. The city has been decaying for as long as I can remember. But I have gotten to know this city well. The history is still there, beneath the surface. The people are wonderful. We as a society are big on stereotyping cities the way we do ethnic groups or minorities. It is easy to hate them from a distance. I remember Jane’s conservative parents and their disdain for all things gay. Her college roommate, Helen, unbeknownst to them, was gay. When they met her, both her mother and father simply loved Helen. When they learned Helen was a lesbian, they still loved her. Then they loved her partner.

That was how it often was. It was easy to hate gays or blacks or Jews or Arabs. It was more difficult to hate individuals.

Newark was like that. You could hate it as a mass, but so many neighborhoods and shopkeepers and citizens had a charm and strength that you couldn’t help but be drawn in and care about and want to make it better.

Chamique sat in my office. She was so damned young, but you could see the hard written on her face. Life had not been easy for this girl. It would probably not get any easier. Her attorney, Horace Foley, wore too much cologne and had eyes spaced too widely apart. I am an attorney, so I don’t like the prejudices that are made against my profession, but I was fairly confident that if an ambulance drove by, this guy would jump through my third-floor window to slow it down.

“We would like to see you drop the charges on Mr. Jenrette and Mr. Marantz,” Foley said.

“Can’t do that,” I said. I looked at Chamique. She did not have her head down, but she wasn’t exactly clamoring for eye contact. “Did you lie on the stand yesterday?” I asked her.

“My client would never lie,” Foley said.

I ignored him, met Chamique’s eyes. She said, “You’re never going to convict them anyway.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You serious?”

“I am.”

Chamique smiled at me, as if I were the most naive creature that God had ever created. “You don’t understand, do you?”

“Oh, I understand. They’re offering money if you recant. The sum has now reached a level where your attorney here, Mr. Who-Needs-A-Shower-When-There’s-Cologne, thinks it makes sense to do it.”

“What did you call me?”

I looked at Muse. “Open a window, will you?”

“Got it, Cope.”

“Hey! What did you call me?”

“The window is open. Feel free to jump out.” I looked back at Chamique. “If you recant now, that means your testimony today and yesterday was a lie. It means you committed perjury. It means you had this office spend millions of tax dollars on your lie—your perjury. That’s a crime. You’ll go to jail.”

Foley said, “Talk to me, Mr. Copeland, not my client.”

“Talk to you? I can’t even breathe around you.”

“I won’t stand for this—”

“Shh,” I said. Then I cupped my ear with my hand. “Listen to the crinkling sound.”

“To what?”

“I think your cologne is peeling my wallpaper. If you listen closely, you can hear it. Shh, listen.”

Even Chamique smiled a little.

“Don’t recant,” I said to her.

“I have to.”

“Then I’ll charge you.”

Her attorney was ready to do battle again, but Chamique put her hand on his arm. “You won’t do that, Mr. Copeland.”

“I will.”

But she knew better. I was bluffing. She was a poor, scared rape victim who had a chance of cashing in—making more money than she would probably see again in her lifetime. Who the hell was I to lecture her on values and justice?

She and her attorney stood. Horace Foley said, “We sign the agreement in the morning.”

I didn’t say anything. Part of me felt relief, and that shamed me. JaneCare would survive now. My father’s memory—okay, my political career—wouldn’t take an unnecessary hit. Best off, I was off the hook. It wasn’t my doing. It was Chamique’s.

Chamique offered me her hand. I took it. “Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t do this,” I said, but there was nothing left in my try. She could see that. She smiled. Then they left my office. First Chamique, then her attorney. His cologne stayed behind as a memento.

Muse shrugged and said, “What can you do?”

I was wondering that myself.

I got home and had dinner with Cara. She had a “homework” assignment that consisted of finding things that were red in magazines and cutting them out. This would seem like a very easy task, but of course, nothing we found together would work for her. She didn’t like the red wagon or the model’s red dress or even the red fire engine. The problem, I soon realized, was that I was showing enthusiasm for what she’d find. I would say, “That dress is red, sweetie! You’re right! I think that would be perfect!”

After about twenty minutes of this, I saw the error of my ways. When she stumbled across a picture of a bottle of a ketchup, I made my voice flat and shrugged my shoulders and said, “I don’t really like ketchup.”

She grabbed the scissors with the safety handles and went to work.

Kids.

Cara started singing a song as she cut. The song was from a cartoon TV show called Dora the Explorer and basically consisted of singing the word backpack over and over again until the head of a nearby parent exploded into a million pieces. I had made the mistake about two months ago of buying her a Dora the Explorer Talking Backpack (“backpack, backpack,” repeat) with matching talking Map (song: “I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map,” repeat). When her cousin, Madison, came over, they would often play Dora the Explorer. One of them would play the role of Dora. The other would be a monkey with the rather interesting moniker “Boots.” You don’t often meet monkeys named for footwear.

I was thinking about that, about Boots, about the way Cara and her cousin would argue over who would be Dora and who would be Boots, when it struck me like the proverbial thunderbolt.

I froze. I actually stopped and just sat there. Even Cara saw it.

“Daddy?”

“One second, kitten.”

I ran upstairs, my footsteps shaking the house. Where the hell were those bills from the frat house? I started tearing apart the room. It took me a few minutes to find them—I had been ready to throw them all away after my meeting this morning.