Protect and Defend Read online

  Despite her success in court, there were rumors that the managing partner was looking for a way to end her involvement. Part of Sarah resented this intrusion; another part, which she admired less, conceded that this might be an act of mercy. Sometimes one’s best decisions were made by someone else.

  But today’s decisions were hers: how best to protect the women who came here; whether to call the police for help. The first patient was due in fifteen minutes.

  Scanning the crowd, Sarah noticed a young woman watching her from across the street.

  She was a girl, really, with short red hair and a waiflike slimness. But despite the flowered dress she wore, Sarah noticed, her belly had begun to show. Immobile, the girl gazed at the clinic as though it were a thousand miles away.

  Two weeks ago, before the court order, Sarah had seen the same girl.

  The clinic had been ringed with demonstrators, blocking access. For some moments, as now, the girl had not moved. Then, as though panicked, she had turned abruptly, and hurried away.

  This time she remained.

  For perhaps five minutes she stood rooted to the sidewalk. Bowing her head, she seemed to pray. Then she started across the street, toward the clinic.

  Turning sideways, she entered the crush of demonstrators, eyes averted. She managed to reach the walkway before a dark-haired young man stepped in front of her.

  Gently, as a brother might, the man placed both hands on the girl’s shoulders. “We can find you clothes and shelter,” he promised her, “a loving home for your baby.”

  Mute, the girl shook her head. Leaving the porch, Sarah hurried toward them.

  As she pushed through the bubble, the stranger turned toward her. Sarah placed a copy of the court order in his hand. “You’re violating a court order,” she said. “Let her pass, or I’ll call the police.”

  The man kept his eyes on Sarah, staring at her with a puzzled half-smile which did not reach his eyes. Softly, Sarah repeated, “Let her go.”

  Still silent, the man took one slow step backward.

  Grasping the girl’s hand, Sarah led her past him. The chill on the back of Sarah’s neck was from more than the cold and damp. When at last they reached the clinic, the girl began crying.

  Sarah guided her to a counselor’s office and sat beside her on the worn couch.

  Bent forward, the girl’s frame shook with sobs. Sarah waited until the trembling stopped. But the girl remained with her face in her hands.

  “How can we help you?” Sarah asked.

  After a moment, the girl looked up at her.

  Though her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, her face had an unformed prettiness: snub features, rounded chin and cheekbones, a pale, fresh complexion lightly dusted with freckles, and, somewhat startling, blue irises which glinted with volatility. Except for the eyes, Sarah reflected much later, she had looked like a cheerleader in trouble, not a human lightning rod.

  “I need an abortion,” she said.

  THREE

  KERRY RODE down Pennsylvania Avenue in a black limousine, Mary Kilcannon beside him, waving to the onlookers who thronged the street and covered the steps of public buildings. At the suggestion of his advisers, Lara was not with him: before Kerry asked the public to treat her as a First Lady, they opined, she should be one. And it was right, Kerry thought, that his mother share this day.

  Briefly, she touched his hand.

  “I’d say I’m proud of you,” she told him. “But that’s like saying I had anything to do with this.”

  He turned to her, a still handsome woman of seventy with steel-gray hair, but the same green eyes which, as long as he could remember, had symbolized love and faith.

  “You did, Ma.”

  Silent, Mary shook her head. In the world of politics, the gesture said, the Kilcannon family served as useful American myth: the two immigrants from county Roscommon, a policeman and his wife, who together had raised a president. But inside this car the myth’s survivors could acknowledge the truth—that, at six, Kerry had cowered while his hulking father had beaten Mary Kilcannon; or that the brutality had continued until, at eighteen, filled with anguish and love for his mother and a rage that had never quite left him, the smaller Kerry had beaten his father unconscious.

  “The ones that hate you,” she told him, “don’t really know you.”

  This, too, Kerry understood without words—his mother’s guilty belief that Kerry’s heritage of anger, transmuted by self-discipline into an iron resolve to achieve his goals, was as misunderstood by others as the reasons for it. If so, Kerry thought, let it be: he did not believe in calculated self-revelation, or that piercing his mother’s fiercely held privacy was the necessary price of public office. His defense was humor, as when a reporter had asked him to describe the traits of the child Kerry Kilcannon. “Sensitivity,” Kerry had answered with a smile. “And ruthlessness.”

  Now, quiet, he took his mother’s hand, even as the death of Roger Bannon shadowed his thoughts.

  At dusk—after hours spent on a bullet-proof reviewing stand watching his inaugural parade which, by actual count, had included seven hundred thirty horses; sixty-six floats; and fifty-seven marching bands—Kerry Kilcannon entered the West Wing for the first time as President. As he did, he felt the White House encase him: the eight guardhouses with uniformed protectors; the surveillance cameras; the seismic sensors planted on the grounds to detect intruders; the trappings and safeguards which flowed seamlessly from one occupant to another.

  At Kerry’s request, Clayton Slade and Kit Pace, his press secretary, waited in the Oval Office.

  Looking from one to the other, Kerry crossed the room and settled into a high-backed chair behind an oak desk once used by John F. Kennedy.

  “Well,” he inquired of his audience, “what do you think?”

  Eyeing him, Kit suppressed a smile. “Reverence aside, Mr. President, you look like a kid in the principal’s office. Your predecessor was six inches taller.”

  Kerry’s amusement was muted; he sometimes resented reminders that he was, at most, five-ten. “They say Bobby Kennedy wore elevator shoes. Maybe you can find some for me.”

  A smile crossed Clayton’s shrewd black face. “Won’t help,” he told his friend crisply. “Lose the chair before the White House photographer shows.”

  “‘Scandal in the White House,’” Kerry said sarcastically. “‘Dwarf Elected President.’” But he got up, closing the office door, and, waving Clayton and Kit to an overstuffed couch, sat across from them.

  “I take it he’s dead,” Kerry said.

  Kit nodded. “Massive stroke.” Softly, she added, “He might have lived longer if he hadn’t despised you so much.”

  Kerry accepted this for what he thought it was—not callousness, but fact. “Do we have a statement?” he asked.

  Kit handed him a single typed page. Scanning it, Kerry murmured, “I suppose it’s a mercy, at moments like this, that we so seldom say all we feel.” He paused, then asked Kit, “How’s his wife?”

  “Numb, I’m told. His death’s hardly a surprise, but they’d been married fifty-two years. Three kids, eight grandchildren.”

  “I’ll call her before the inaugural balls start.” Turning to Clayton, Kerry inquired, “What do we do about them?”

  “For sure not cancel. You’ve got thousands of supporters here, waiting for that night they’ll tell their grandchildren about. You owe them, and the country, a new beginning. And Carlie“—referring to Clayton’s wife—“has a new dress.”

  Kerry smiled briefly. “So does Lara. I’ll just have to find something appropriate to say at every ball, perhaps after a moment of silence. What else?”

  Clayton leaned back on the couch. “For openers, you’ve got a new Chief Justice to appoint.”

  Once more, Kerry had a moment of disbelief—first that he was President, then that he would be tested so soon. “Not tonight, I hope.”

  “Soon. We’ve got a four-four split on the Court— conservative vers
us moderate-to-liberal—with a full calendar of major cases. And it’s not like anyone thought the Chief Justice would be with us that long—our transition team already has a shortlist of names, and they’ve started up files on each.”

  “Good. Run them by our political people.”

  “Your constituent groups will want to weigh in, too,” Kit observed. “Hispanics, blacks, labor, pro-choice women, trial lawyers. They all think you owe them, and they’re right.”

  “Haven’t they seen the Cabinet?” Clayton rejoined. “We’ve at least made a down payment.” He turned to Kerry. “What we need here is a consensus choice—the Republicans still control the Senate, and Macdonald Gage is laying for you. Maybe Palmer, too, now that he’s in charge of running the hearings on whoever you send over. I think we should look for a moderate Republican.”

  “I thought they were an endangered species,” Kerry said dryly. Standing, he told Clayton, “Get me the list tomorrow. Along with a new chair.”

  Kit frowned, as if unwilling to drop the subject. “Without pro-choice women, Mr. President, you couldn’t have carried California, and none of us would be here. As Ellen Penn no doubt will remind you.”

  At this mention of his feisty new Vice President, formerly the junior senator from California, Kerry feigned a wince; arguably, he owed his election to Ellen, and she would not be shy in pressing her views. “Spare me. I’ll be hearing from Ellen soon enough.”

  “With reason,” Kit persisted. “The pro-choice movement is scared to death—you’ve got this damned Protection of Life Act the Republicans just passed, which your predecessor was too scared to veto. Even you were conveniently absent for that vote.”

  “The pro-choice movement,” Kerry answered, “can be too damned hard to please. I was running for President, not auditioning for a supplement to Profiles in Courage. One vote in the Senate wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “Exactly. So pro-choice women gave you a pass, expecting you’d look out for them once you got here. Especially on the Court.”

  Kerry folded his arms. “I’ve been President for about five hours, I’ve got eleven balls to go to, and I’m still struggling to remember what to do if there’s a nuclear attack. If it’s all right with you, Kit, I’ll reserve the Supreme Court for my first full day on the job.”

  As though to short-circuit Kerry’s irritation, Clayton intervened. “Even with Bannon’s death,” he told Kerry, “people will remember your inaugural address. You made it sound even better than it read. CNN called it the best since Kennedy’s.”

  Kerry smiled, mollified, and noted with amusement that he still needed Clayton’s reassurance. At once Kit caught the spirit. “You were terrific,” she averred. “The only thing that could have gone better is if the Service had let you get to Bannon before Palmer did. He’s gotten too much airtime.”

  Clayton gave a short laugh. “The most dangerous place in Washington,” he agreed, “is the space between Chad Palmer and a Minicam.”

  As he was meant to, Kerry smiled at them both. But beneath their mordant humor, he understood that Clayton and Kit already saw Chad Palmer as his chief rival, and that this would be the prism through which they viewed everything Chad did. And so, they were warning, should Kerry.

  “That’s all right,” he answered. “Let Chad be the hero. He earned the right, when I was still in college.”

  FOUR

  “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” Sarah inquired.

  The girl looked down. “Mary Ann.”

  Sitting beside her, Sarah waited for her to look up again. Then she asked, “How far along are you?”

  Once more, Mary Ann turned away, as if the question were a rebuke. “Five and a half months,” she murmured.

  “And you’re how old?”

  “Fifteen.”

  So far, Sarah thought, it was as bad as she had expected. “Are you living with your parents?” she asked.

  The girl’s face grew taut. Her answer, a quick nod, resembled a hiccup.

  “If you haven’t talked to them …”

  “Please …” Swallowing convulsively, Mary Ann burst out, “My baby’s not right. I’m afraid of it.”

  The moment she saw the technician’s face, Mary Ann had known there was something wrong.

  A sonogram was routine, the woman had said—afterward there would be pictures and, if Mary Ann wished to know, they could tell her the baby’s sex. Her mother, tight-lipped and alert, held her hand: there were times when it felt to Mary Ann that this was her mother’s pregnancy.

  For a while, the whole thing had seemed like it was happening to someone else, or maybe in a dream. Her first time, in the back seat of Tony’s car; crying from the pain of it; feeling abandoned after Tony, with a hurried kiss, dropped her at the corner; resenting the lie she told her parents about seeing a movie with a friend. In her room, she had undressed, studying her body in the mirror. Then she turned out the lights. Alone in bed, she felt confused again, yet proud that a boy so much older and more popular had wanted her. She went to sleep wishing that Tony were next to her.

  He never called again. It was like the secret grew within her until it became a baby, and her mother found her vomiting in the bathroom. This time she could not lie.

  Her mother took her to the doctor.

  Afterward they sat in the living room. Her father, too contained and gentle to rebuke her, explained what they would do: Mary Ann would continue at Saint Ignatius; her mother and father would support her and the baby; with enough resolve and sacrifice the three of them could assure that Mary Ann went to college. Her mother remained silent and stricken. For her parents, Tony’s role was done: shamed, Mary Ann tried to imagine that Tony—filled with pride, or perhaps remorse—would come for her.

  But Tony would not see her. A few girlfriends were kinder. And it was her mother—whose long silences at the dinner table had been more painful than words—who helped to decorate the guest room for a baby, and who shared Mary Ann’s wonder at the stir of life inside her. With each checkup, her mother had become more animated—until the sonogram.

  Quiet, the technician stared at it. When her mother stood to see the baby’s image on the screen, the woman switched it off.

  “What is it?” her mother asked.

  The technician remained calm. “Dr. McNally will talk to you,” she answered, “as soon as he reviews the pictures.”

  For the next forty minutes, her mother made forced chatter while Mary Ann wondered what the technician had seen growing inside her. Then a nurse led them to Dr. McNally’s office.

  The doctor sat at his desk. Fifteen years before, he had delivered Mary Ann; today his avuncular face, a map of Ireland, was troubled. “Can I speak to your mother?” he asked.

  This frightened Mary Ann still further. “Why?” she said stubbornly. “It’s my baby.”

  McNally gave her mother a glance, then spoke to Mary Ann. “There’s a problem, you see. Your baby’s hydrocephalic.”

  In the silence, Mary Ann saw her mother’s eyes briefly shut. Margaret Tierney placed an arm on Mary Ann’s shoulder.

  “In layman’s terms,” McNally continued gently, “his head is swollen with water. Often, unfortunately, it doesn’t manifest until several months into the pregnancy.” He looked from Mary Ann to her mother. “Mary Ann is twenty weeks pregnant— within a week or two of viability, on average. Nothing is certain. But the condition tends to impede development of the brain.”

  Her mother blanched. “‘Tends’?” she repeated.

  McNally faced her. “There’s a slim chance the brain will develop normally. But the condition obscures it: we can’t tell from a sonogram what cerebral development is occurring.” He paused, his reluctance palpable. “In all likelihood, the baby will die soon after birth. But I’m afraid it’s a matter of wait and see.”

  To Mary Ann, it was like she could not move or speak, yet could hear everything around her. As she fought back tears, her mother moved still closer. “But she’s barely fifteen. A head that si
ze …”

  “Trust in us. We can perform a classical cesarean section, for Mary Ann’s protection.”

  To Mary Ann, his words seemed to arrive slowly, as if from a great distance. She felt her mother kiss the crown of her head; for a time her mother’s face rested there, as though Mary Ann were small again.

  “What about future pregnancies?” Her mother’s voice was tight, a signal of fear. “The risk of not bearing children.”

  Head lowered, Mary Ann closed her eyes. Softly, McNally told her mother, “I understand, Margaret. Believe me, I do. But these days the risk is relatively small.”

  “How small?”

  “Five percent, at most. Probably far lower.”

  Only then did Mary Ann begin to cry, tears running down her face.

  Watching the memory flood the girl’s eyes, Sarah envisioned her waking from a dream state.

  “When did this happen?” Sarah asked.

  “Three weeks ago.” Abruptly, the girl stood, as though propelled by anguish. “I’m all alone. My parents are making me have this baby, and there’s no one else to help me.”

  FIVE

  “IT’S A SHAME about Roger Bannon,” Macdonald Gage said, passing Chad Palmer a glass of single malt scotch. “For the best of reasons, he stayed too long.”

  The two men were alone in the Majority Leader’s commodious office, a suite of walnut and leather reminiscent to Chad of a men’s club. As always, Chad marked Mac Gage’s seamless courtesy: Gage never forgot that Glenlivet was Chad’s scotch of choice, or that he liked precisely two shots served over ice in a cocktail glass. These were the kinds of small attentions, combined with an unflagging grasp of detail and a shrewd knowledge of what motivated ninety-nine other men and women, that had made Macdonald Gage the master of the Senate.

  “He was dead by the time I reached him,” Chad remarked. “Absolutely nothing for it.”