They hadn’t really shaken off the courtroom yet as they drove down one of New Jersey’s last remaining ‘back-roads’. There’s a strange lasting feeling of uneasiness you get when you spend the day going through the motions of a process that isn’t your own. Rebecca’s high heels lay under the passenger seat and her husband’s tie was undone and sitting sloppily on his neck. She looked out the widow as he drove, seeing what she could of the cornfields in the thick darkness. He had forced her to move out here and for someone who grew up in New York, it’s silence that makes your hair stand up. The only noise, besides the car engine, was the clicking of his tongue moving around his mouth, which hadn’t recovered from the nervous dryness induced by being on the stand. She desperately wanted to turn on the radio, but knew that he would think it rude, or awkward, or both. She didn’t look at him. Not because she was still mad, but because she was aware that he would be aware she was looking.
In the end he had done nothing wrong. In the end he had refused to be a ‘character witness’ for Mark, instead he just went up in front of the court and told the jury that Mark had come to their house at this time and left at that time. That was it.
And yet,
as
the car
turned a curve
and he
slowed it down,
her eyes instinctively shot forwardAnd yet, as the car turned a curve and he slowed it down, her eyes instinctively shot forward, looking to see some sign of human presence somewhere beyond the fields, someone who could be watching them. But all she could see was dead corn. She knew he had done it, Mark, but not how or where. Whether it was in Mark’s house (one as beautiful as their own) or in a field. She knew as soon as they found his wife’s body in the street’s retention pond that it had been him. She knew it, even as her husband ran over to console him and wipe his phoney tears.
“You hungry? You want to get something to eat or something?” he asked as his blank face watched the road.
“No. I’m okay.” she replied (it was their first exchange in weeks). She was starving, but didn’t want him to stop the car anywhere until they were home. And then what?, she asked herself, tensing up.
She had berated him for his original disbelief (Jane had been her friend long before Mark), but now wished her husband would speak freely on it. Because she had a terrible feeling that his silence, his quick smile as they entered the court–which she was sure she saw–, and even his lack of clarity on the stand, that they were not do to disbelief, but to something else.
He slowed it down again. She repeated her scan, still no one. Then, looking down, she saw her high heel shoes laying on the floor and slightly smiled, wondering how far she could run. Through the corn and, maybe, back to the city.
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
