Here She Lies

judge, I knew she had met those appalling tests. I knew and I would always know. Everyone could punish her endlessly and it wouldn’t change a thing; and it wouldn’t change the fact that already, in one significant way, we had already shared a punishment: we had lost each other. And yet... I had to admit that, in my heart, I felt no craving for her to spend the rest of her life in jail. Even if she deserved it. Even if she was dangerous. Even if she hated me. Even if she had killed someone. Julie was my twin; love didn’t even cover it. Our entwinement was unassailable and indefensible, as fixed as history; and my mind couldn’t bend that, because it was simply true. As Detective Lazare and I had agreed, it was all about the DNA.
    “What now?” I asked Elias.
    “Tomorrow we go before the judge. We present the new evidence. And we request that the charges be dropped in light of the new evidence.” He gathered his papers, stood up. “The judge will see how weak the state’s evidence is now, considering you have an identical twin.”
    “Why tomorrow? Why not today?” My plaintive tone seemed to echo through this room of cold, hard surfaces, uselessly, joining the ghosts of all the other voices that had asked the same question right here, every day, over the years.
    “Scheduling,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    And he was gone.
    For all the minutes of all the hours of the rest of that day and night, I paced my room or lay on my cot, letting the inertness of my body calm my racing mind. Julie: a murderer. I recalled my photos of Zara’s fadingoutline on the street in front of Julie’s house — here she lies, the last shadow of a woman’s life — and wondered what her final thoughts had been. She was the one person who knew everything about her death and the only person who could not be asked.
    In the morning, a guard brought me a breakfast of watery gray oatmeal, which I nibbled at, and half a plastic cup of canned pineapply-tasting orange juice, which I sipped at. I was hungry. When the guard returned an hour later to pick up my tray, she told me that my lawyer would be by for me at eleven o’clock and left behind a bag containing the clothes I’d arrived in: jeans, sneakers and a black T-shirt that smelled as if they had been stored in a damp cave. I could only imagine what the judge would think of me in these smelly, wrinkly clothes, but I had nothing else to wear. (I’d never thought I would wish for my beige suit, still hanging in the Manhattan studio, but I did.) Then, just before eleven as I waited impatiently for Elias to come and spring me, the guard reappeared with a box.
    It was from a women’s clothing catalog, it was addressed to Julie’s house and it had been opened. When I peeled back the tissue paper I found a crisp envelope with a card showing a long-limbed woman at a cafe table. Inside, the card read I’m sorry in Julie’s writing. She was sorry. I knew she was. Tears formed in my eyes as I read and reread those two words, her terse apology that was like the Dutchman’s finger in the dike. I’m sorry. So much was packed into those two little words: guilt, sorrow, regret, loss... it was a definition without end.
    I was sorry, too.
    Inside the box I found chocolate brown linen pants and a pale pink blouse. Beneath the clothes was a slender box with hammered-silver button earrings and a matching necklace. At the bottom of the box were Julie’s own cowboy boots, wrapped in tissue paper. She had even included a bra, underpants and a pair of socks. Sundance catalog: everything on page seven, please. It was pirate’s loot, was what it was. If I wore the outfit, wouldn’t I be consorting with the enemy? But it was clean and mostly new and better than what I had on. And it was more than just clothes: Julie had sent it over; she was saying good-bye.
    I stuffed my old sweaty clothes into the box and put on my new duds. Elias arrived promptly on time and escorted me to the judge.
    The courtroom was cavernous and austere, with no wooden paneling or scrolled details to comfort you or make you feel connected to history or even the idea of justice. It was all here and now, a place of business. Broad linoleum floors, gated windows, rows of fluorescent lights — all the bright, chilly atmosphere of a megastore.
    Bobby was waiting at the aisle end of the spectator benches, beside a slender woman with a pitch-black chignon and a bald man in a pressed denim shirt buttoned to his Adam’s