The Good Wife by Stewart O’Nan Page B

shocked that Patty could ever think otherwise, and instead of letting loose with her stockpile of evidence to the contrary, Patty holds back.
    She spends that night calling around town, trying to scare up a crowd. One by one, the team begs off, wishing Tommy luck. They’re guys; some of them don’t even have phones. She doesn’t bother calling Perry. Shawn’s girlfriend says she’ll let him know. Russ she has hopes for, but he says he’s got to work, and she doesn’t shame him with her silence, just hangs up and keeps going down the list. It’s no surprise; she’s known all along that they’re alone in this, but she can’t give up. She finds the next number and dials, closes her eyes and waits.
    In the end it’s just the four of them. That morning her mother comes over early to help her get ready, swaying with Casey as Patty pinches in her earrings. Only Cy feels like eating; the rest of them get by with coffee and cigarettes. They’re quiet as they leave the house, solemn as bank robbers. It’s a bright day, springlike. The school buses are running, people going to work. No one talks for a while. It reminds Patty of following the hearse at her father’s funeral, the gloom reinforced by their separateness.
    “Thanks, everybody, for coming,” she says. “I’m making dinner tonight, okay?”
    “You don’t have to,” Eileen says. “It’s worth it to see him in his suit.”
    “What are you making?” Cy asks from the back.
    “Whatever you want.”
    The vote goes to her chicken parmesan, an easy dish, quick.
    “Look how high the river is,” her mother says, because they’re free to speak now.
    “It’s the snowmelt,” Cy guesses.
    Patty’s stomach clenches. She can’t disarm her body with small talk. It’s only a hearing but it’s the most important one so far, and she’s begun to fear the courthouse. It’s like stage fright, it hits her as soon as she thinks of Elsie Wagner sitting across the aisle.
    They’re early enough to get a decent parking spot. She holds Casey to her shoulder while Cy lugs the carrier. The photographers hustle into position, clutching their cameras, kneeling to shoot like soldiers. She has to shield Casey from the flashes. Again, he’s magic; for the first time the reporters part for her. “Mrs. Marion,” the ones who’ve done their homework call out, and she thinks it was a mistake asking her mother to come.
    “Is it always like this?” her mother asks inside.
    “Pretty much.”
    In the courtroom she recognizes faces among the spectators. Donna’s already taken her place in the front row—all by herself in a white turtleneck and dark wool skirt Patty’s never seen before—leaving room for her behind Tommy’s chair. Elsie Wagner’s bench is empty. After they say hi to Donna and get settled, Patty keeps looking back at the doors, expecting her and her husband to come bursting through at the last minute.
    The procession begins without them—the DA and the lawyers, the court reporter, the deputies herding Tommy and Gary along. Tommy’s gotten his hair cut, and shaved, but he’s still in his scrubs.
He tips his chin at her mother, smiles at Eileen and Cy all duded up. Thank you, he mouths, and she wonders if the lawyer’s coached him to do this. The whole time, Casey sleeps beside her, snuggled into his carrier, a bubble on his lower lip. He only stirs when the bailiff calls the court to order, shuddering and curling his hands as everyone stands.
    As the judge comes out, her mother leans across Casey and touches her on the arm. “I know him—that’s Ronald Sherman. I went to school with his sister.”
    Patty just nods and sits down again. Is that piece of trivia supposed to help them?
    Tommy’s lawyer goes first, reading a brief outlining the motion point by point. He speaks precisely, as if reading instructions, explaining the rules of a complicated game. “We ask the court to grant relief from prejudice as it is anticipated that our defense and the