"No, I—hadn't quite braced myself up to telling her the situation. I kept it to small talk, on the phone. She sounded very friendly—well, she always did. She happened to mention that Jimmy had gone to New York for overnight, and that's when I asked if she'd come over—said I wanted to talk to her about something. I don't suppose I made it sound important—as I say, I hadn't fully made up my mind about telling her anything."
"Were you in a different mood that day, Callista?"
"Very different. Some other things—nothing to do with Jimmy, or with Ann—had been sort of cleaned up for me, the night before." As she spoke, Callista was meeting her mother's gaze across the courtroom for the first time that day. Her words had no visible effect on the fixed pose of sad quiet, the dignity of the rejected Mother deeply wronged. Callista deduced that the Face of The Mother was saying: "You see how it is: I her Mother am not even allowed to testify." "I'm not sure, Mr. Warner, if it's what you call relevant."
"Well, Callista, your mood, your state of mind at that time, is certainly relevant in the ordinary sense. Legally, the question of relevance gets difficult when we're dealing with subjective matters. If I correctly understand the rulings during previous testimony, the Court is taking a generous and realistic attitude on this question. The nature of the case demands it, since, as I said in my opening words, we are not contesting most of the circumstantial evidence. Subject to correction by the Court, Callista, I'll leave it to you whether you think that a mention of what happened the night before would help the jury understand your situation. If you feel it would, go ahead and tell it, and we can check you if it seems to be going too far afield."
"I think it might help to explain things. But I'll leave out the details—they don't matter." By the way, Mrs. Chalmers, I'm your daughter—remember? They tell me I'm on trial for murder. "It had to do with my relation to my mother, Mr. Warner. There had been some—tensions between us for quite a while, and that Saturday evening—it was the 15th, wasn't it?—yes—we sort of cleared it up. In a way." Mrs. Chalmers, Mrs. Herbert Chalmers, I am about to smile at you, toward you anyway. Will it make any difference? "You remember, sir—Miss Welsh testified about my going out to Shanesville that Saturday evening, and how bad-mannered I was—and I don't doubt I was too, I can be pretty stupid—call it a one-track mind. Though it's a fact I just didn't know Ann Doherty was there on the porch, until Miss Welsh testified to it. She must have been back in the shadows, I suppose, and I was thinking so hard about what I wanted to talk over with my mother that I didn't hear her speak." Callista felt her lips curve. It was surely a smile; she meant it for a smile. "I guess I was in a fog." Yes, fog—as inexorably as deepening fog, the realization came over Callista that Mrs. Victoria Johnson Blake Chalmers was quite simply not listening. Present in the courtroom, knowing at least as well as most of the other spectators the general story of what was going on down here in the arena; but not listening. Mrs. Chalmers was maintaining a Face; a very necessary thing to do. She would have been perfectly willing to smile back, Callista guessed, if she could have divided her attention, listened just enough to understand that it might be appropriate, right now, for the Face to smile. "So I went indoors to—see my mother, and we—talked." Fog—words pushed into fog move sluggishly, as if through pain.
"Miss Welsh also testified to overhearing a few things. Was that testimony accurate, Callista?"
"Oh, reasonably, so far as Miss Welsh knew, I'm sure. Mother was crying a little at one time, and I guess I did quote something or other from Shakespeare. I was sort of making a fool of myself." Ten minutes from now, Mother, will it dawn on you what I said? You see, I haven't a notion what I'll be saying ten minutes from now. By the way, Mama, I don't see Cousin Maud. Is she home with the Plum Jam? "What Miss Welsh didn't hear, couldn't very well know, Mr. Warner, was that at the end we did get things sort of cleared up." All right, stranger—no smile, just sad maternal forgiveness. One of Callie's little emotional upsets, you know—children are SO difficult! "And—here's why I thought it might not be out of place to mention it—that evening, that's when the suicidal depression left me. I wanted to live again. After I'd—said good-night to Mother." Mama darling, why don't you lean over the rail, ask that fat guy at the press table, the bald one who looks intelligent—I think he'll tell you this is a murder trial. They're trying the funny-looking broad with the gimp leg.
"It left you suddenly, Callista, the depression? Like the end of a sickness?"
"Yes." Cecil, I love you. "Yes, it was very much like that, Mr. Warner. Like coming out of a fever, or pain all at once ending. There was—too much upswing also, I guess you might call it. I was back with some of my illusions. I mean the illusions about Jimmy. I'd once more talked myself into imagining there might be—you know, a separation, what I'd been trying to write Jimmy about in that letter I never mailed. Most of the day, and even while I was talking with Ann on the phone, I was able to fool myself with that. Self-deception, it's like walking a tightrope, I guess: so long as you don't look down at the fact of the ground a long way below, you can truly believe there's no danger, you're just walking. I think that all that day, until Ann came, I was—living inside of that illusion. Wanting something so much I couldn't see how ridiculous it was to expect it." Look, Mother: I know I hurt you plenty of times. I was always nasty and hellishly difficult until I escaped from Shanesville and from you—but I never hurt you THAT much.
"I think now, Callista, you might go ahead and tell, in your own way, everything that happened that Sunday evening and night. I realize you'll be mostly repeating what you told Mr. Lamson last August, but I believe the jury wants to hear it direct from you, so—so just go ahead, my dear—take your time, try to remember everything important."