Page 8 of Courtroom Drama
He told her she was overreacting. I stared at my knockoff Converse, feeling the heat rise to the tips of my ears as another family passed and my parents did nothing to quiet their argument in light of onlookers. I did what I always did. I stood quietly to the side, working hard to avoid adding to their frustration.
Quiet and helpful, not a bother. It was my childhood mantra.
The family of four passed cautiously, and I made eye contact with the younger child, perhaps a year older than me. We exchanged a look of solidarity. The other parents looked confused, if anything. My mother was young, too young by most standards, to have a child my age. And my dad, ten years her senior but already gray in his mid-thirties, made the three of us appear an odd group. My mom loved telling anyone who would listen that she was barely eighteen when she had me, basking in the salaciousness when people did the quick math. Sometimes she’d even go so far as to parade around pictures of infant me at their wedding, just to further play into our nontraditional familial origin.
Our days on those trips consisted of my mom and me wandering the strip and taking in the sights while my father played the penny slots at the MGM, downing as many free drinks as possible. The year I turned ten, just as I was hoping this would become an annual trip—that we could dosomethingnormal families did like take family vacations—my mom canceled the trip. She never told me why, but I was convinced I had done something wrong. Had I just been more fun, more agreeable, more what they wanted, there might have been another vacation, but that was it.
As I await my turn to climb out of the van, I wonder about Margot Kitsch’s accommodations and if they are at all comparable. She is, of course, out on bail. I bet she’s holed up at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where paparazzi often catch her lunching, or at the chic downtown penthouse of one of her wealthy connections. It’s ironic, I think, as I stare at the automatic sliding glass door entrance of the Singer Suites, that Margot is largely free and the jury is on lockdown.
I see Damon again in the lobby as we await our room keys. He somehow ends up beside me again. His stance—legs apart, hands claspedbehind his back—reminds me of high school him on the sidelines of the lacrosse field waiting to be called into the game. It’s quickly becoming evident he isn’t trying to avoid me the way I am him. “So, what do I need to know from the last ten years?” he asks.
I try and fail to hold in an affronted sigh at his attempt to make small talk as if our implausible history doesn’t exist.
When I don’t immediately respond, he continues. “We’re gonna be sitting next to each other all day, every day.” He eyes me, and heat rises to the tips of my ears, some bothersome combination of unease and embarrassment.
His eye contact has always had a way of disarming me. He stares, but not in a creepy or awkward way. It’s more of anI see through to your soulway, which is, currently, annoying as hell.
“I suppose we are,” I say, looking back to the front desk. There are a million questions I want to ask him. What hashebeen doing for the last ten years? When did he get the tattoos? Who has his little sister, Kara, become? Why did he leave me?
“So I gather you’re ecstatic to be here,” he fills in when I fall silent.
I shake my head. “I’m not ecstatic. Just... intrigued.”
“Intrigued,” he says, as if it’s a word he’s never spoken before and is testing the weight of. He makes a noise, some cross between ahuhand ahmm. It’s effectively neutral. “So?” he presses. “The last ten years?”
The truth is I hate the question. And more important, I don’t trust him. When shit went down, he just... left. Why should I give him the rundown of a life he made it a point to miss?
“It’s okay, I get it,” he says, his voice low once more.
This time when I look up at him, his eyes catch mine, and he flexes his jaw, that thin muscle slicing the right side of his jawline lengthwise into two halves.
What does he get, exactly? Why I don’t want to open up to him, even with the slightest overview of my life? Does he get that after he left, I went into a shell? Or does he get why I’m interested in the case?
When I still don’t respond, his eyes quickly sweep me, up and down, before he is called to the counter.
Right.
In line getting our key cards at the Singer Suites isn’t exactly the appropriate time to revisit our tangled history.
I see him again as I scan my key card at the door to my room—he’s entering a room two doors down from my own. He acknowledges me with a squint of those blue-green eyes.
I enter my room, close the door, and release a hard breath in relish of the solitude before evaluating the small space. There’s a TV mounted above the dresser, but I know it won’t work. A room phone sits atop the nightstand, but it will only call the hotel lobby for emergencies. Judge Gillespy made it clear she would take extreme measures to shut out any media access since the Margot Kitsch story iseverywhere. Faded cream-and-gold-striped wallpaper clings to the walls, falling away at the corners, and a ceiling fan clicks at equal intervals as it spins aimlessly. At the window, I splay the sheer white curtains to find a view of the parking garage’s empty ground floor.
Collapsing onto the bed, I find it gives so flimsily that I’m more enfolded in a hammock than flat on a mattress. I stare up at the too-low popcorn ceiling, trying to ignore the nervous hum at my core. Home sweet home for my foreseeable future with Damon just two doors down.
5.
Defendant (n.)
an individual, company, or institution sued or accused in a court of law
the reason I’m here
My alarm pings at six a.m., but I’m already awake and staring at the ceiling as the first flecks of early-morning light creep in through the gauzy curtains. I’ve focused on the crooked fibers of the popcorn ceiling for so long they’ve begun to take on intricate shapes, reminiscent of watching the clouds in my childhood backyard. Damon’s little sister, Kara, used to love lying in the spring grass, staring up at the clouds. She’d see everything from puppies and kittens to a clown riding a motorcycle or a half-eaten taco. She’d point out each shape with a definitiveness that made me see exactly what she did every time.
I shake the thought and refocus on today. I can recall very few times in all my twenty-six years that I’ve been filled with more anticipation. Since becoming an adult, the days and weeks and years of my life have somehow bled together into a routine of chasing success. My childhood wasn’t necessarily brighter; when I look back at it now, all I see is my parents’ ugly divorce. Before that, their ugly marriage. Then my move a few hours south from Bakersfield to Los Angeles with my father at sixteen, when my mom finally left my dad and within six weeks was engaged to a truck driver in Sacramento. And finally, my graduation from Los Angeles Valley College, for which my dad was stuck in Orlando onan unintended layover because of a tropical storm. My mom did attend, with her newly minted third husband, Caleb. Genevieve’s birth, which fell a week before my twenty-sixth birthday earlier this year, causing my mother to forget my birthday entirely.
Under these circumstances, and back in Damon’s presence, I can’t help but wonder what it’s all meant. I’ve refused to spend significant time dwelling on these things. I’ve refused to feel sorry for myself. So many people have itwayworse. But with Damon here, my once-drowned memories are resurfacing, bubbling distractingly at the surface.
