Double Delight

The Trial

A sun-dazzled but cool, windy day: June 17.

The first time Terence Greene saw Ava-Rose Renfrew, several blocks south of the Mercer County Courthouse, Trenton, New Jersey, he had no idea who the striking young woman was, of course; nor even that, in the midst of rush-hour traffic, he’d slowed his car to stare fixedly at her. A gypsy girl? Here? In Trenton? He was lost in the unfamiliar city—if not exactly lost, he’d missed his exit off Route 1 and had had to take the next exit, hurriedly, fearing being shunted across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania; now he was winding his way back toward Broad Street, in a maze of narrow one-way streets, skirting the edge of what appeared to be an economically devastated neighborhood—weatherworn brick rowhouses, debris-littered sidewalks, abandoned hulks of cars at the curbs. Where was the courthouse? As in one of those panicky dreams of things falling, slipping, sliding, melting even as you reach out to grasp them, Terence envisioned circling the courthouse forever.

All weekend, Terence had been anticipating Monday morning with a thrill of expectation. Instead of commuting to New York by train, he would be driving to Trenton in his own car. Instead of disembarking at Penn Station and walking to the Feinemann Foundation offices on Park Avenue, where everyone deferred to him, he would be checking in at the Mercer County Courthouse, as an anonymous New Jersey citizen. His number, 551. How his heart lifted!

And then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, as Terence turned a bit blindly onto a busy street, the young woman ran heedlessly, against the light, in front of his car. How curiously she was dressed! How splendid her waist-long mica-glinting hair, whipping in the wind! Terence smiled to see her. Other drivers sounded their horns, a truck driver whistled out his window in masculine derision, but Terence merely smiled. His impression of her was imprecise, but he guessed that she was in her mid-twenties; very pretty; snub-nosed, with a fair, healthy complexion. She wore an exotic silk jacket or smock, emerald-green, with a multicolored design on its back; her legs, slender and urgent in running as a dancer’s, were a startling daffodil-yellow. Distracted from driving for a moment, Terence followed the running girl with his eyes. He saw her continuing without hesitation across a second street, this time with the light, and bound up the steps of a squat gray building—Trenton Police Headquarters.

Terence Greene would always remember: The morning of June 17 was raw, bright, and gusty, like flags flying.

There was no entry to the Mercer County Courthouse except by way of the front doors. Terence half-ran up the hill, and then up a flight of stone steps; he carried his attaché case, bulky with documents, and a copy of that morning’s New York Times. How imposing the courthouse was, looming above him: a sepulchral public building, built in 1903, grim gray granite, stolid columns, a portico like a heavy brow. Terence felt the weight of it, the sinister dignity, as an indicted man might feel it being brought to his trial.

Why this urgency, this expectancy. Breathless from the steps.

Inside, though he was already late by five minutes, Terence had to wait in line to pass through a metal detector overseen by a sheriff’s deputy. Hurrying then, with a pack of men and women who appeared as unfamiliar with their surroundings as he, down a long corridor and to a stairs, led by signs for the Jury Assembly Room. Inside, the courthouse was far less formidable than its exterior. It was an antiquated place, poorly lighted and poorly ventilated, smelling of disinfectant, backed-up drains, human perspiration. Terence passed the Mercer County Clerk’s office, the Mercer County Family Services office, the offices of Juvenile Welfare, Adult Probation, Drug Counseling, Dependent Children. How somber the atmosphere, how subdued the men, women, and teenaged children, most of whom were black, who stood about waiting in the corridors! As soon as Terence saw the Jury Assembly Room—a long, cavernous, low-ceilinged and fluorescent-lit room in the basement, so crowded that a line backed out into the corridor—he began to wish that he was somewhere else.

But, politely good-natured as always, he smiled at the brisk female administrator who oversaw the line; he signed in, received his JUROR badge, threaded his way through the crowd until he found a seat as far away from the television set (which was on, and loud: a game show in frenetic progress) as possible. On all sides, people were chatting, laughing. Not one of them looked like a Queenston resident. Most were dressed very casually—sports clothes, work clothes, T-shirts, jeans, even, on one massive, muscular young man, brief runner’s shorts. Terence in his navy blue gabardine suit felt uncomfortably out of place. At least he had brought a newspaper, and his work. The crowded atmosphere, the noise and bustle, agitated his nerves, but he would lose himself in the privacy of his own thoughts.

Pursuing Justice?—and why, and where.

Hettie’s boy. Too late?

And so, with maddening slowness, the hours passed.

The hours passed, and, to Terence’s disappointment, no panel of jurors was called to the courtrooms on the fifth floor. Had he come so far for nothing? He read the newspaper thoroughly, he took a sheath of grant applications out of the attaché case, read, made notes, tried not to be distracted by the damned television set.… One of the grant applications was from a woman poet now in her early eighties, who had had a distinguished career in the 1950s, as Terence recalled, but, in recent years, had been eclipsed by the virtual flood of younger poets, and nearly forgotten. Poor Myra Tannenbaum! Terence had assumed the woman was no longer living.

Each year, the Feinemann Foundation gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to artists. Poets, prose writers, painters, sculptors, playwrights, composers … the only criterion, apart from excellence, being that the artist be an American citizen. Nelson P. Feinemann had been a controversial financier of the 1920s who had had a reputation for his ruthlessness with business rivals and associates alike; in some quarters, even at the present time, his name was synonymous with duplicity. (Had not one of his vice-presidents gone to prison in his stead? Had not one of his sons committed suicide?) Yet, like his predecessors Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Andrew Mellon, among others, Feinemann had left a considerable fortune for philanthropic purposes, and so his reputation had wonderfully improved. Never in the eight decades of its operation had the Feinemann Foundation encountered an artist who refused its largess, whatever his or her publicly proclaimed standards of personal integrity. Quite the contrary! Thousands of applications flooded into the office, and it was the responsibility of Terence Greene, and carefully selected panels of judges, to decide among them. A task that seemed to grow more onerous each season …

Trapped. Am I trapped? They’d said that his mother had gone away but they had never said anything about his father and so for years, for more years than seems possible, Terence had believed that he was so special a boy, he had had no father. Isn’t he a sad case! Poor little bastard.

Why had I wanted, what it was I’d wanted?

His handsome leather attaché case had been a gift from Phyllis for Terence’s forty-fourth birthday. She had bought it as a substitute for Terence’s old briefcase, battered and creased as an old shoe, which he’d owned as a young academic. The sleek new attaché case boasted the initials TCG in gold; it was made of Italian leather, with a Gucci label. Dreamily, Terence found himself thinking of the horse chestnut tree behind the sprawling farmhouse in Shaheen, for the smooth leather case, which smelled still of newness, was a deep russet-red, the hue and even the texture of horse chestnuts. He and his cousin Denton, who was two years older than Terence, had collected the most beautiful horse chestnuts and hidden them away in a drawer in the room they shared until, weeks later, forgotten by the boys, the chestnuts were discovered by their Aunt Megan, softened, rotting. Boys, what is this? What a smell!

By noon, Terence hadn’t yet been called for a jury. He was feeling cheated, impatient, angry. No choice but to have lunch at Mill Hill Tavern across the street, amid a maze of tables, customers, cigarette smoke, an odor of grease. He ordered a glass of beer, a sandwich. Almost, now, he wished he were in New York, in his comfortable office where frequently he ate, excellent food delivered from a deli on the first floor. He opened his attaché case, determined not to waste time. Shuffled through papers. X was applying for a $40,000 grant for the purpose of. Y was applying for a $49,000 grant for the purpose of. Strange that Terence Greene should be determining people’s lives when he’d had so little to do with determining his own.

Hettie’s boy. What a laugh, see him now!

Terence smiled. For after all no one did see him now; no one from his old, lost life.

By degrees he’d become aware of customers at a table to his right, talking animatedly together, laughing frequently and loudly. There were three of them, seemingly related, grandparents and a teenaged grandson; they ate their lunches avidly, sharing portions. Bowls of steaming soup, enormous stuffed sandwiches. The man was perhaps seventy-five years old, snowy-haired and -bearded, with a heavy, flushed face and eyes crinkled at the corners: He talked the most, as if giving instructions, while the others nodded, or interrupted, or challenged him. He wore a nautical cap, a white dress shirt that strained against his hefty chest and stomach, and a black clip-on bowtie, slightly askew, that shone like dull leather. The woman was both grandmotherly and girlish, in her late sixties perhaps, and hefty too, with a moon-shaped, good-natured face, enormous bosom and hips that jiggled when she laughed, and crisp dyed brassy-blond curls atop which was perched, with quaint propriety, a black pillbox hat of the kind Jacqueline Kennedy had made fashionable in America, many years ago. And the boy—a tall hulking kid built like a linebacker, but with a droll baby face, and a giggle that erupted like firecrackers. He wore a cheaply cut sports coat in which he seemed to feel uncomfortable, and a Phillies baseball cap reversed on his head.

What were they talking about so intensely?—a trial? (Terence thought he heard the words D.A.—judge.) What was so urgent?—so funny?

Trying to be inconspicuous, Terence slipped his work back inside the attaché case, and set the case on the floor directly behind his chair, for safekeeping; his sandwich was brought him, and a second foamy glass of beer, and, feeling happy suddenly, Terence ate his lunch while eavesdropping on the diners beside him. He could not follow the thread of their remarks, nor could he decode them, but he was fascinated. From time to time the snowy-bearded patriarch would lean close to the others, tug at his beard, and murmur something severe, in a lowered voice. And the woman would giggle, and shiver. "Yes, yes! Amen to that! And the boy would stretch his muscled shoulders suggestively, as if primed to fight. Man, yeah! They better!"

Once, startled by the vehemence of the boy’s response, Terence involuntarily glanced over at him, and the others. He saw them, suddenly silent, looking at him.

The moment passed. Terence looked quickly away, to the food on his plate. He was embarrassed to think that the old couple and the boy might suspect him of eavesdropping.

His fleeting impression was that the elder pair frowned a bit at him, though more searchingly than critically; the boy, handsomely blond when seen full face, though with a mildly blemished skin, narrowed his eyes, then, unexpectedly, like a small child, smiled.

Friendly, good-natured people. Perhaps a little simple.

Terence, who’d been enjoying his lunch thoroughly, saw with regret that it was time to leave. He drank down the last of his beer, went to use the men’s room, returned to his table, picked up his check and paid the waiter, and left a generous tip. Quite deliberately, he didn’t glance at the party at the table beside his (though noting that the woman had left the table) but walked briskly out into the bright June day, which was warmer now, but breezy. How good he felt, and how simple life