Page 10 of Courtroom Drama
where I learn what I’m up against
Her brown bob is stick straight, unreasonably shiny. I’ve noticed that shine on TV, but it’s borderline distracting in person. She’s tall, standing formyentrance (okay, standing because of a judge-ordered call to rise for the jury entrance generally), and her perfectly linear posture emphasizes her long, straight torso. There is no bend in her neck, no curve in her shoulder line, no jut of a hip. She is a razor-sharp vertical line, severe as her customary demeanor. She wears a subdued but stunning skirt suit, black with white frayed edges at the hem and wrists and gold buttons—a beauty filter personified.
The first time I came to know of Joe and Margot Kitsch was seven years ago, during the premiere ofAuthentic Moms of Malibuand the start of the franchise as a whole—Margot, the first cast member introduced. The scene began with a drone shot above the Kitsches’ sprawling estate, owned by Joe for many years before Margot’s arrival, afforded via his Hollywood production company, Kitschy Pictures. He produced no runaway box office hits but enough straight-to-streaming action films with solid B-list actors and actresses to keep him agreeably wealthy.
One night after two bottles of wine and the season sixAuthenticMomsfinale, Mel and I looked up Joe’s IMDb page and were surprised to see just how many low-budget movies he had produced that we had never heard of, and over decades. Movies with horrible plotlines and highly attractive lead actors. We chose one at random to watch that night, a film from the nineties titledHustle and Grace, where a broke twentysomething lives on Fruit Roll-Ups and canned pinto beans while trying to earn a ticket to New York City via a big break in the competitive modern dance world. The film had a measly six percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the same asGigli.
The acreage they had is rare in Malibu, as the other Moms were sure to point out when visiting her home for the first time for afternoon tea in episode two. Instead of oceanfront property, the estate is a green expanse, with topiaries shaped like cones and a spread of flat grass that looks too pristine to be real. But itisreal, I know, thanks to the mouthy landscaper who landed a few cameos in later seasons. He once even called Margot’s castmate Tenley Storms “trash” when he overheard her suggesting Margot’s cork trees were purchased from the wholesale nursery down the street rather than imported from an independent tree farm in Portugal, as Margot claimed.
Margot paid for all three of that landscaper’s children to attend private school.
In that first episode, the camera panned to the pool where Margot sat, clad in a black one-piece bathing suit with so many cutouts I wondered how one might successfully climb into such a thing, her face covered by a cartoonishly wide-brimmed straw hat. As the camera approached, she tilted her head upward, making eye contact with it, the slightest hint of a wiley smirk across her rosy lips. She was both familiar and mysterious, and she oozed main character energy.
I was nineteen, still living with my father, whom I stayed with after my parents’ divorce. My mom set off to “find herself” and belatedly experience some version of the youth she’d missed because of me. The cliché of it didn’t seem to give her any pause. My father, a pilot, flew ten days on, three off, and when home, he slept at indiscernible intervals. So I essentially lived alone. I desperately wanted to beactuallyon myown, but there wasn’t enough money with my self-paid tuition funded by work at the sandwich shop down the street.
In college, I’d rush to finish my communications-based projects and papers before the show’s seven p.m. airtime. For seven seasons, Margot and the cast have accompanied me from living with my dad and waitressing at the sandwich shop, to my job as a front office assistant at the law firm within walking distance from his house, to my arbitration job and eventual first apartment. And then, to Mel.
The woman I’ve watched all these years—the one who gave me some escape from the isolation of living with my dad, the fiercely measured and shielding mom I sometimes wish I had, the one with the jealousy-inducing gravitas she wears like a ball gown—perhaps some might call it pathetic or sad, but Margot has been indispensable to me in a multitude of ways. As silly as it may seem, she and the show have provided me with the long-standing stability and comfort that has otherwise eluded me my entire life. And now, I have a chance to do something for her.
Margot and I make eye contact briefly, and I have a hard time looking away. It’s not just me, I soon realize. Members of the public gallery lean this way and that to steal a view of her. The bailiffs remain in their professional stances, but their eyes deceive them, beelining to her every chance they get. She’s a magnet for observation.
One of the only times I can recall having all eyes on me (outside of arbitrations) was during my sixth grade choir concert, when my skirt was tucked into my underwear through the entirety of “Eleanor Rigby.” Damon was in the audience that night, front row.
Judge Gillespy claims the room’s attention to indicate it’s time to commence, and opening statements begin before I’ve even had a chance to take in that the trial is officially underway. I take feverish notes, wanting to collect and remember every detail of the case.
D.A. Jackson Stern stands and buttons his suit jacket. He makes his way from the prosecutors’ table and positions himself before us, pillowy hands clasped behind his back, a black ballpoint pen bouncing between his fingers.
I was first exposed to the prosecutor (and Judge Gillespy and the defense team) during jury selection, when I showed up to jury dutywith no knowledge of case details or of who would be involved. D.A. Stern stood out to me then because of his imposing stature.
Today, D.A. Stern reminds me of a freshly shaven, modern Abe Lincoln—strikingly tall with a basset hound face, prominent ears and nose. He clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak, and I’m prepared for something akin to the Gettysburg Address.
“Joe Kitsch was a family man,” he begins.
Damon, I notice, is jotting something down on his notepad for the first time. He’s left-handed, and I’m distracted by the familiar way his hand uniquely curves as he puts pen to page.
His handwriting pulls me backward in time.
The letters.
The box of them still in the back corner of my closet.
He didn’t text or call or even speak much back then. But he wrote. He wrote jokes. He transcribed song lyrics. He drafted meaningful things he was going to do and places he wanted to see.
He told me I knew him in a way nobody did.
“Better on paper,” he used to say.
Stop. Focus.I press firmly into my seat to ground myself.
Damon stops writing and moves his pad toward me behind the jury box panel. I shift my weight and glance quickly around the room before looking down at the pad. It reads:
HIS NAME WAS JOCK ITCH?
I look up at Damon, and we make eye contact. He’s got the barely there hint of a smirk, and I can’t tell if he’s serious.
No, he can’t be serious.
I look around the room briskly again before scrawling my response.
