Trial, page 31
With a faintly accusatory air, Jennifer Kent asked Chase, “Congressman Brevard, why is this interview the first time you’ve acknowledged that Malcolm Hill is your son?”
As planned, Allie touched Chase’s arm, as if to prevent him from answering. Then she turned back to Kent. “I never told him, Jennifer. Three weeks ago, he saw Malcolm’s photograph on the news and saw himself. Chase came to Georgia as soon as he could.”
Kent’s eyebrows shot up. “For eighteen years, you concealed from the congressman that he had a son?”
“Yes,” Allie answered, carefully softening her voice with regret. “He never knew Malcolm existed. That was my doing.”
“Why?” Feldman interposed in an incredulous tone. “Didn’t you think he had the right to know?”
Allie looked at her directly, as if they were two women talking only to each other. “I questioned my decision every day for every one of those years. I feel guilty about Chase, and even more guilty about depriving our son of a father.” Through the briefest of pauses, she suggested the depth of her misgivings. “But we were only twenty-one. My decision was about who we were then—where we came from, and what we wanted to do with our lives.”
Watching Allie, Chase was struck by her pitch-perfect presentation; only he could know how much this performance was costing her. “Was this a casual relationship?” Feldman asked.
Allie’s lips compressed, a sign of annoyance she swiftly banished. “Never for Chase, I know.” Looking at Chase, she added softly, “And never for me. Not then, and not now.”
Meeting her eyes, Chase joined Allie in pretending they had no audience. But they did, and he could not know whether the affection in her eyes was truly intended for him, or to draw in those watching.
Allie turned back to their interviewers. “When we first met, I saw a good-looking guy with a great smile and so much money that I thought he just floated above other people’s worries. What I discovered was that he was way more aware of himself and others. Me included.” Glancing at Chase again, she summoned the wisp of a smile. “I’d tease him, or complain to him, or mock him for being a rich white elitist. It never seemed to bother him. Instead, he did the most surprising thing for a man that age, maybe any age—he listened, and worked at understanding who I was. He made me feel like the most special woman he’d ever met.”
Briefly touching his hand, Allie kept watching the reporters. “So I started trying to understand him. Not just who he was with me, but who he was. I’m the least surprised person in the world that Chase cares more about our son than his own career.”
Kent leaned forward. “According to you, he only discovered that he was a father because of charges against Malcolm for his alleged murder of a white sheriff’s deputy.”
Allie stared at her, erasing the softness from her expression. “Malcolm didn’t murder anyone,” she snapped. “He defended himself against a racist who was stalking him at night for the crime of helping people of color to vote. As a mother, it’s tearing me up inside. As someone who’s dedicated her life to making this country what it can and should be, it makes me unspeakably angry and sad. I don’t think you, or anyone but Chase, can understand how that feels. So forgive me if I resent the premise for your question.”
Watching Kent’s reaction, a brief and clearly involuntary display of surprise and defensiveness, Chase realized that Allie intended to take over the interview. “But you were asking, Jennifer, why I deprived Chase of a son, and Malcolm of a father. So I’ll go back to the beginning, the decision that changed everything for all of us, and the reasons I made it.”
Glancing at Chase, she modulated her tone to one of somber remembrance. “Toward the end of our time together, we went sailing on Martha’s Vineyard. Chase fell overboard in a sudden squall. The water was cold, and he nearly died from hypothermia. I desperately tried to make him warm, all the time thinking I couldn’t let his life end this way. But God answered my prayers, and he lived.
“That’s when I realized I loved him. Even then, I thought I might never love anyone else that much, except perhaps my own child.” Pausing, she turned to Chase, looking into his eyes as if she needed him to know and remember what she was about to say. “I even considered staying up north to be near him, at least for a while. Maybe, I told myself, with a little more time we could see if there was a life for us somewhere.”
In his surprise, Chase wondered if she was using this public ordeal to tell him what she had never been able to say. Then he remembered, yet again, that she had once been an actress, Black Juliet, long before she became a public persona so gifted that she could take an audience in her hands. Wondering what was truth and what was performance, he sensed that she was giving a performance illuminated by truth, made all the more affecting by the calculated device of facing him at the optimal moment. As she turned back to the reporters, their expressions attentive and respectful, Chase realized how completely Allie had taken control—in part by giving them the theater they wanted.
“Then I found out I was pregnant,” she continued, “as much because of my own carelessness as his. As a matter of personal belief, I was going to keep our child. I knew that if I told Chase, he’d offer to marry me. I knew that he’d want to. But he had a future in Massachusetts, and I was committed to working for change in Georgia.”
Her voice became quieter, as if she remembered how grounded her choice was in her feelings for Chase. “I wanted him to live the life he deserved. I told myself that he’d find someone whose own life wasn’t so different, someone who loved him and belonged in his world. So I told him our relationship was just too hard, and ran out the door and back to Georgia for my parents to help me raise their grandchild, sick with thinking Chase would hate me for the rest of his life.” For an instant, her voice caught. “When Malcolm was born, I wanted him there so much, I nearly gave in to it. But I didn’t.
“How could I ask him to give up his dreams when I couldn’t give up my own? How could I tether him to a woman and child in Georgia, the last place on earth that was right for him? How could I claim the right to change the course of his future?”
Pausing again, she shook her head in wonder and dismay. “Because of this tragedy involving our son, I ended up doing that very thing. Part of me feels terrible about that. But not all of me. Because Malcolm and I don’t have to go through this alone. Most of all, because he now has a man who cares for him at a time he most needs that.”
“What is the future of your relationship with Congressman Brevard?” Feldman asked.
Allie gave her a mildly incredulous look. “Our son is facing charges of capital murder. If that’s not enough, both of us have responsibilities to others we asked for long ago: Chase, to his constituents in Massachusetts; me, to all the people in Georgia who racists and reactionaries don’t want to vote. There’s no time for us to consider the future of our relationship.” Turning to Chase, she added, “I’m just grateful we have one again.”
With this, Allie saw, Feldman decided to home in on Chase. “That raises the question of your political future, Congressman Brevard. There’s been speculation that you plan on running for the United States Senate in 2024.”
Chase gave her a thin smile of irony. “Sorry, Nancy, but I’ve been a bit distracted. That’s what fatherhood will do for you, I’ve discovered. I’m a little more concerned with what happens to our son than I am with some theoretical race two-plus years from now. Ask me again once Malcolm goes free.”
“As we speak,” Feldman rejoined, “the voters of the Fourth District of Massachusetts are already asking. What do you say to them?”
Chase paused to compose his answer. “That I deeply appreciate their confidence and the opportunity they’ve given me to represent them in Congress. I take that very seriously. But I also believe that most people in my district will understand what I’m experiencing right now.
“Three weeks ago, a young man I didn’t know became the most important person in my life. The second most important is his mother. We both know that Malcolm is innocent, just like we know that the deputy targeted him because of Allie’s work.” His voice became at once fatalistic and firm. “I don’t know how I’ll feel about politics if this case doesn’t turn out like it should—all because the right-wing stalkers in politics and the media see our son as an opportunity to scavenge for money and votes, and to destroy all that his mother has worked so hard to accomplish for others…”
“But you’re on the ballot this November,” Feldman interrupted. “That’s less than five months away.”
“So I recall. I’ll leave worrying about my future to the voters in my district. With the help of my terrific staff, I’ll do my best under the circumstances to keep up with my responsibilities in Washington. But my most pressing concern is to do everything I can, whatever that may be, to help Malcolm get his life back. If some people don’t like that, too bad.”
Watching him, Allie experienced Chase on two levels—admiration for his gifts as a politician and, much more deeply, an overwhelming relief that he had become her partner in caring for Malcolm. But Feldman pressed on. “But realistically, Congressman, what can you do to affect your son’s very adverse situation?”
“Legally, or personally? As to his case, probably not much—he’s got a very good lawyer for that. But part of what you call my son’s ‘very adverse situation’ is that his beloved grandfather died, and that he had no father. Now he does.” He paused, looking at the camera, speaking past Feldman to an audience of one. “I want to claim Malcolm as my son in reality, not just by birth, and I want him to want that. But these things take time. I intend to give it.”
On the drive back to Cade County, neither Allie nor Chase spoke for a while. In the passenger seat, Chase watched the exurbs of Atlanta become countryside.
“I keep thinking about Malcolm,” Allie said at last. “Yesterday and now. What he’s thinking and feeling, all alone in that cell. What he’ll think when he sees us on television, if he hasn’t already. Compared to that, our national mortification is nothing.”
He watched her weave in and out of traffic more aggressively than normal, as though to dispel how soiled she felt. “We did the best we could. Both days.”
“Did we? Anyhow, I liked what you said at the end. I hope Malcolm hears it.”
“So do I.” He turned to her. “But for the setting, I appreciated everything you said. Including the things I hadn’t heard before.”
She shot him a glance. “That I thought about giving in back then, staying up north? Yeah, I thought that part was especially poignant.”
Chase hesitated. “But was it actually true?”
Considering her answer, Allie seemed to exhale. “Of course it was. Which made leaving you all the harder.” She changed lanes again, passing a truck and another car. “Anyhow, now we’re America’s semisweethearts. At least on reality TV.”
“And our reality now?”
For a moment, she was quiet. “I don’t know whether this is reality,” she answered, “or the foolish wish of a Black girl from Georgia, who discovered at Harvard that she’s more of a romantic than makes any sense. But when I woke up to you yesterday morning, before I remembered why you were here, I wanted that wish to be our reality.”
Two hours later, sequestered in Chase’s hotel suite with a guard outside the door, he and Allie had dinner from room service and watched their televised images dominate cable news in a seemingly endless loop.
Chase took another sip of his martini, feeling the quick medicinal hit of gin course through his limbs. “Jesus, I’m tired.”
Narrow-eyed, Allie sipped her glass of red wine, watching and listening intently as commentators interspersed clips of their interview with presumptively sagacious assessments of their performance and its impact on Allie’s leadership of Blue Georgia, Chase’s political future, and—least important, it seemed—the murder charges against their son.
By consensus, except on Fox, they had proven to be a compelling couple, and flash polls from Atlanta and Boston showed public opinion running in their favor.
“Allie Hill and Chase Brevard,” opined a commentator, “provided a master class in the art of molding public opinion. She, in particular, showed a level of vulnerability that made her strikingly dimensional and appealing.”
Abruptly, almost angrily, Allie turned off the television. “I never want to do anything like that again. Ever. The mercy is that it’s actually working.”
Chase drained his drink. “It’ll keep on working. Especially once your communications director discloses that we were both shot at, and Al Garrett confirms it. Nothing like a near-death experience to arouse public sympathy.”
She turned to him, her expression weary. “Here we are,” she said with muted bitterness, “hiding in a hotel room with a guard at the door, watching ourselves sell our souls on television while we calculate the public relations benefits of being shot at. It’s like a virtual reality experiment in dehumanization, with the three of us as subjects, and no exit as long as the legal system is holding Malcolm hostage. You must be sorry we ever met.”
If nothing else, Chase thought, this was a day for telling truths. “I was, sometimes. But not now, looking at you, even after all this. It’s the damnedest thing, Alexandria Hill.”
Her eyes softened. “Would you like me to stay over?” she asked.
“Very much.”
“Then so do I.” Allie touched his hand, this time not for the cameras. “That way I can wake up to you again.”
52
On the screen appended to the wall of his cell, Malcolm watched clips of his mother and Chase Brevard revealing to America how he had come to exist.
He felt humiliated, conflicted, and, despite himself, compelled to watch. They had loved each other, it seemed clear, and perhaps still did. But what struck him hardest was when this man said that he wanted to claim Malcolm as his son.
He had come to Georgia, risking his career. Perhaps, like Malcolm, this congressman had discovered how it felt when a piece of you was missing.
There was a knock on the door, and Sheriff Garrett came in. He had no gun on; it was as if he had come to visit. Looking up at the screen, he said, “Mind if I watch with you?”
Malcolm shook his head. Sitting beside him, Garrett contemplated the clips.
Finally, they ended. Malcolm turned off the television.
“Must be something,” the sheriff said. “Watching that.”
“Yeah. It’s something.”
Garrett was quiet for a while. “Me, I never had a father. Mine never showed.”
Malcolm turned to him, surprised. “What’s that like?”
“Strange. Not a day goes by I don’t still wonder about him.”
“Are you still angry?”
Garrett’s heavy shoulders shrugged. “At your age, I was. But now I’ve got two boys of my own. So I’ve put those feelings into being for them what I never had. The man cheated himself is how I try looking at it.”
Malcolm considered this. “What do you think about him?”
“The congressman? Got shot at, and he’s still here. That tells me something.” Garrett paused for a moment. “I’ve been on both sides of it, yours and his. You want what I wanted then; he seems to want what I’ve got now. The way I look at it, you two are the only chance each other has.”
“You saying I should accept him?”
Slowly, Garrett shook his head. “No. All I’m saying is that he showed up here, with you in trouble, saying he wants the job. So you’ve got something else I didn’t—a choice.”
Feeling the sheriff’s solid presence, Malcolm had the painful realization that what he wanted was a father like Al Garrett, a familiar Black man who reminded him of Wilson Hall. But what he had instead was a white man with whom he had nothing in common, yet who had left his inescapable imprint on Malcolm’s face and, with the woman who seemed to love them both, the essence of who he had been since birth.
“It’s a lot to think about,” Malcolm said, and all that had happened overwhelmed him again. Still, he was glad the sheriff had come. The loneliness was feeling impossible to bear.
It was Friday; Chase intended to stay until Tuesday morning, when Congress would be back in session. He meant to spend time with Allie when she wasn’t busy working and hoped, perhaps vainly, to see Malcolm.
In the meanwhile, his hotel room became his workspace. He talked to Jack Raskin, who allowed that Allie had done him some good, had Zoom calls with his staff and scheduler to keep up with his duties, and monitored the cacophony stemming from the interview. His office was inundated with calls and emails—most favorable, but commingled with some calling him a cop hater and others that were rankly racist. The unsourced assertion that he patronized Black prostitutes rocketed through right-wing websites; other fabrications, directed at Allie, marked the sordid intersection of bigotry and misogyny—including that Malcolm had resulted from her serial copulation with eight members of the Sophocles Club in less than an hour.
By now he was accustomed to falsehoods and ugliness directed at him. But, though other colleagues had experienced the slandering of parents, siblings, spouses, or children, Chase had not, and that these effusions were directed at Allie and Malcolm seared him far more. So he was grateful when the speaker of the House called to check in.
“I’ve been wondering how you were,” she said. “Not just wondering—worrying. This must be pretty overwhelming for you, Allie, and your son.”
This was like her, Chase thought—she was so tough and savvy that people forgot she was a mother and grandmother capable of thinking about her members as people, not just votes. “Sorry,” he said. “Usually your wards have more parochial problems. Can’t think of anyone who got shot at and announced that he was the father of a kid on trial for murder. At least not in the same week.”
