“If I could sit you down and force you to watchMean Girlson repeat as punishment right now, I would.”
“That wouldn’t be a punishment,” he says in that same grumbly tone, ensuring his hand brushes mine as he moves past me toward the courtroom door.
The first witness D.A. Stern calls for the day is Jackie Kitsch, Joe’s mother. As I watch her enter the courtroom and amble cautiously tothe stand, I’m surprised by her appearance. In my pretrial deep dive, I didn’t come across a single recent photo of her. I expected an old money glamorous woman with plastic surgery and pearls. Instead, Jackie Kitsch is unassuming, adorned in an unremarkable black sheath dress below a tight white cardigan and no jewelry other than her plain gold wedding band. She’s charmingly frumpy, her gray hair a little frizzy. It’s an endearing surprise, how ordinary she appears, despite being the mother of a Malibu near-billionaire.
As she grows closer, I see the blue-hued bags under her eyes and forehead lines etched deep even when her face is at rest, and despite her testifying against Margot, I feel a swelling ache of compassion for this mother who has outlived her child. What a thing to go through in the last years of her life.
I look to Margot, imagining her mash-up of emotions toward this woman. Margot looks on longingly, as if she wants to stand, rush to Jackie’s side, and hug her.
As Jackie Kitsch is sworn in, I attempt to recall what I know about this woman. Joe was raised in the Pacific Palisades in a 1940s Spanish colonial passed down from Jackie’s parents, whose family wealth dates as far back as the California gold rush. She stayed home with Joe and his sisters, Jayne and Erika. Joe spoke about her briefly but lovingly on the show, though never in detail, and she was never filmed. I can’t recall Margot ever even mentioning her, now that I think about it.
D.A. Stern approaches the stand with his lips flattened together in a sympathetic frown. “Mrs. Kitsch, let me first just say, we are all very sorry for your loss.”
Her eyes are immediately wet, and the ache in my chest grows. She raises the already frayed tissue in her hand to the outer corner of her right eye and taps it there briefly, before returning it to her lap. “Thank you,” she offers.
At D.A. Stern’s prompting question about “who Joe was,” Jackie Kitsch tells us of how Joe wasn’t particularly good in school but always seemed fated for “something more.” How he was funny and outgoing and always managed to find himself in “mild trouble.” She speaks with pride, and it’s not hard to be endeared to her or her description of Joe.
“When did you first meet Margot?” D.A. Stern asks.
Jackie Kitsch straightens expeditiously, as if having taken a shock to her spine. “A few weeks after they got engaged.”
D.A. Stern feigns surprise. “From my understanding, that was over a year into their relationship. Joe waited that long to introduce his fiancée to his family? Why?”
“We didn’t meet many of his women.”
D.A. Stern looks on as if she might say more. When she doesn’t, he asks, “What was your initial impression of Margot?”
Jackie Kitsch exhales mightily enough for the microphone to amplify it, looking in Margot’s direction for the first time. Margot’s eyes plead with her, and the women exchange a full conversation in those few silent seconds, one I wish I could decipher but am sure I don’t grasp the complexities of. “She was polite, well-mannered.”
Again, D.A. Stern awaits more words that don’t come. “Did you two get along?”
“We did. We didn’t have mother-daughter date nights or spend much time one-on-one, but we were mutually pleasant. She ensured we were invited over for holidays and that we see the kids regularly.” Her eyes pool at the mention of the children.
“How did you learn of Joe’s passing?” D.A. Stern asks, his voice insinuating he must be as fragile as possible with this particular line of questioning.
My breath catches in my chest as I think of Mallory Bradburn, of her commonalities with Jackie Kitsch. I look over at Damon, whose eyes are wary as he stares on at the witness stand, and I know he’s thinking about his mother, too. I wish I could take his hand, offer him some connection in this room full of strangers.
After learning of her son’s death from her daughter Jayne, who learned via a call from Ms. Pembrooke, the house manager (notMargot, she points out), D.A. Stern fast-forwards to the day of Joe’s funeral. Jackie Kitsch hesitates, concentrating on her lap where she picks at the small bits of tissue clinging to her dress, before addressing the circumstances around that day. “Margot had him cremated within threedays of his death.” She stops and looks to the jury. “She was just so... cold after he died. Void of emotion.”
She shifts in her seat with a pained expression. I find myself struck by the way everyone keeps describing Margot as “cold.” How many women have been maligned simply because they aren’t endlessly warm and bubbly?
“After the funeral,” she continues, “we went back to their home for an intimate gathering, just family and close friends.”
“How did you spend your time at your son’s funeral reception?”
“I greeted guests, thanked them for their condolences.” She hesitates, and I can feel her growing closer to some pivotal element of this case. I infer from the sharpening silence that the gallery can sense it, too. Jackie Kitsch continues, “Later, I was visiting with Emblem in her room. She didn’t want to go downstairs and be required to talk with everyone. And she was frustrated with the itchy dress Margot had her wear that day.”
“What happened in Emblem’s room?”
“We got to talking. She was showing me her collections. She loves collecting things. She had seashells from every beach she ever visited. Rocks, too. Some interesting and unique, some plain old rocks.” She smiles, her pruned lips growing thin. “She even showed me a collection of tampons once. She’d steal them from under Margot’s sink or from restaurant bathrooms, then she’d pull the cotton out and use them as pillows for her doll beds.”
“Charming,” D.A. Stern muses. “Did Emblem show you anything that day that caused you... alarm?”
My heartbeat quickens at D.A. Stern’s choice of words. Between pretrial social media theories and opening statements, I know something happened the day of the funeral. Something that made Jackie Kitsch question Margot’s involvement in her son’s death, enough so that it just may have been the catalyst for this trial.
25.
Unreliable Witness (n., phrase)
