The Body in Question

by Jill Ciment

  As Cornrows heads off to her room, C-2 turns to signal F-17, but his door is already closing behind him.

  * * *

  · · ·

  An elderly stranger’s face fills the screen when it is C-2’s turn to Skype. Only when the frowning lips smile does she recognize her husband.

  A deputy sits within hearing distance, in case C-2 is tempted to bring up the trial.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” her husband says, unaware that their conversation is being monitored.

  “Me, too,” she says. She means it. The face is becoming more familiar the longer she looks at it.

  “You doing okay?” he asks. “You need anything else?”

  “A bathing suit.”

  “How is the hotel?”

  “The sheets are made of cheesecloth.”

  “I’ll buy you a set of sheets from that Beyond place and bring them Saturday. Maybe we can test them out. I hope you asked for conjugal visits.”

  C-2 can see her own expression in a corner of the screen. She is blinking almost as much as Anca, though her left eyelid, always weaker, takes a beat longer to retract.

  Back in her room, she looks for paper and pen, but the Econo Lodge doesn’t provide stationery. She tears a page from her court notebook, keeps the message short and cryptic, doesn’t sign her name. If F-17 should overlook the note she is about to slip under his door, and Cornrows’s boyfriend’s sister should find it while she is cleaning tomorrow, the note will prove nothing.

  Tonight was our last night, it reads.

  The minute she slips the folded note under his door, she starts waiting for his response, even though the note was a statement, not a question.

  She opens the thriller her husband recommended. Had she slipped that same note under her husband’s door thirty years ago when they first started their affair, her husband would have taken it for what it was: an invitation.

  She skips breakfast the next morning so that she isn’t tempted to have a cigarette with F-17.

  In the van ride over to the courthouse, she engages in a conversation with the schoolteacher, who Skyped last night with her dying uncle in his hospital room. It takes a force commensurate with pressing two opposing magnets together to keep her mind on the schoolteacher’s sorrowful description of her ravaged uncle. F-17 sits on the schoolteacher’s far side. C-2 doesn’t understand why this quiet man with his bad skin and inability to decipher an invitation in a denial has taken up so much of her thoughts.

  In the jury room, C-2 continues to avoid him, joining the church lady and the alternate on the sofa. She registers the church lady’s chatter as distant birdcalls.

  As she files into the courtroom two places behind F-17 and takes her seat, her stomach growls. She is annoyed with herself for not eating anything on the first morning of testimony. One more reason she made the right decision to end the affair.

  Tim Rush, Stephana’s boyfriend and the state’s only eyewitness, takes the stand. He is short, sinewy, buzz-cut, and he clenches his jaw as if he were biting down on rawhide.

  The prosecutor’s opening questions are gentle.

  Tim—Timmy to his friends—grew up with his single mother in Ocala, attended Forest High School. Tim calls the prosecutor “sir” and the judge “ma’am.” He admits to a bumpy childhood and a stint in juvy. He credits his turnaround to Stephana, Jesus, and Mr. and Mrs. Butler. He met Stephana when Mr. Butler brought his Mercedes into the garage where Tim worked as a mechanic. He would define his relationship with Stephana as “real serious.” He says he knows what the prosecutor means by “intimate,” and the answer is yes.

  C-2 opens her notebook and writes:

  1st. Stephana 2nd. Jesus

  She looks over at F-17’s notebook. He has already filled his page.

  The prosecutor asks Tim to tell the jury in his own words what happened on the afternoon of the fire.

  “I punched out of work fifteen minutes early so Steph and me could make a movie. We were meeting up at her house first.”

  He has told this story so many times by now that his tone is rote and rapid.

  C-2 writes:

  delivery sounds closer to an auctioneer than to a hero

  “I pulled into the Butlers’ driveway around five. I was going to wait in the truck for Steph to get home from Popeyes when Anca comes screaming out of nowhere and starts banging on my window. ‘Fire!’ she yells. ‘Where’s Caleb?’ I ask. She’s all hysterical like. I see flames in the nursery window. I grab my fire extinguisher and try to save the baby. I had to kick down the nursery door. It was stuck or something.”

  The prosecutor interrupts Tim’s affectless delivery. “What did you see when you entered the nursery, Tim?” he asks in a fatherly voice.

  “The baby was on fire,” Tim says. “I aimed the hose and sprayed him with that foamy stuff. I was scared that stuff might be poisonous, but what else could I do?”

  “How long did you remain in the nursery after you realized that Caleb was dead?”

  “Couple of seconds.”

  “Where was Anca?”

  “Outside, waiting for me. I told her Caleb was dead. It was like she didn’t hear me, so I said it again.”

  “How did Anca react to the news of her brother’s death?”

  “She ran off to see if her dogs were okay.”

  F-17 has flipped open his notebook to a previous page, the one with the large block letters: SMOKE? BEFORE LUNCH.

  * * *

  · · ·

  After Gladys takes the jurors’ orders, F-17 asks C-2, “Cigarette?”

  “I’m quitting,” C-2 says.

  “You should try the patch,” Cornrows says, rolling up her sleeve to reveal a nicotine Band-Aid on her stringy bicep. “I’m quitting, too,” she says.

  Without taking his pleading eyes off C-2, F-17 sits back down again. “I guess I’m quitting as well,” he says.

  On the two-minute ride back to court, he sits beside her. Her need to talk to him presents itself as a ringing in her ears.

  Once in the jury box, she opens her notebook and focuses on her pencil point, but she accidentally presses down too hard and snaps the lead.

  The defense counsel’s opening questions for Tim aren’t nearly as gentle as the prosecutor’s.

  “Why do you keep a fire extinguisher in your truck, Mr. Rush?”

  “I used to be a volunteer fireman,” he says, but he sounds confused, as if he isn’t sure if he should be proud of this past service, or if it will sink him. He looks beseechingly around as if for someone to guide him. Stephana? Jesus?

  “When did you stop being a volunteer fireman?”

  “Year ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Steph wanted me to go to community college.”

  “You were acquainted with some of the volunteer firemen at the scene?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you characterize them as friends?”

  “I knew them from around, but I wouldn’t say friends.”

  “Around where?”

  “Baseball,” Tim says.

  “Didn’t you play in a league with some of these men?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you purchase the fire extinguisher?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Your credit card statement says you purchased it three weeks before the fire.”

  “I guess if that’s what it says,” Tim says.

  “Four weeks before the fire, didn’t you ask Mr. Butler for a loan to open your own garage and he turned you down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Mr. Butler eventually set you up in business?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was that, Mr. Rush?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “Af
ter the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  C-2 wishes she hadn’t broken her pencil so she could write down what the defense counsel has left unsaid—that Tim started the fire with the intention of rescuing Caleb so that in gratitude Mr. Butler would reward him with a loan, or, better yet, his own garage.

  The defense counsel uses up the rest of her time bulleting her argument—Tim knew where the accelerant was kept because he helped Mr. Butler paint the nursery; he smoked cigarettes and would have had matches. But her main point is made, and C-2 doesn’t have a workable pencil to jot it down. Another validation of her decision to end the affair.

  The prosecutor’s rebuttal is simple. “Tim,” he asks, “when you pulled into the driveway on the afternoon of the fire, did you see Anca running out of the burning house?”

  “Yes,” Tim says.

  * * *

  · · ·

  In the van, on the way back to the motel, the deputy announces that tonight’s dinner is at Red Lobster. He asks for a show of hands for takeout.

  C-2 waits to see what F-17 will do. Whatever he does, she will do the opposite.

  He hesitantly raises his hand, while his eyes implore her to lift her hand too. When she doesn’t, he continues to stare at her with questioning eyes.

  At promptly 6:30, C-2 joins the other jurors for the interminable meal at Red Lobster.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Though it isn’t yet nine o’clock, she has already entered the fugue state as the microcrystals of Ambien erase notions of time and space. She has no idea how long she’s been asleep when she hears her door open and close. It is so dark with the blackout drapes shut, she can only locate him by the sound of his breath. Without the benefit of sight, his body language comes to her tactilely. She can sense his unabashed hurt and the small bravery it took to plead his case.

  “ ‘Tonight was our last night’?” he says. “Did you mean what you wrote?”

  Her husband would never have asked that tiresome question, for which there never is an answer.

  He stands by the door waiting for her reply. “I don’t know what this is, but I know we can’t stop,” he says.

  She finds him and kisses him. With Cornrows in the adjacent room and the church lady below, they have silent sex, which turns out to be even sexier than noisy sex.

  After he leaves, C-2 turns on the light. She needs to write a note to herself in case the Ambien prevents her from remembering what just happened.

  The only paper she can find is her court notebook. She hesitates before desecrating court property with her dear-diary entry. She might as well crib a line from the new translation of Madame Bovary.

  I have a lover!

  A flat-screen monitor is positioned in front of the jury box.

  The prosecutor inserts a time-stamped DVD of Anca’s confession, which he has been arguing to admit for the past hour. The date is two weeks after the fire.

  C-2 rallies all her focus and humanity to listen and watch as if it were a matter of life or death, which it is.

  Anca sits alone in an interrogation room. Her hair is black, her bangs at half-mast. If she is worried, her body language doesn’t reflect it—no fidgeting, no twisting a hank of hair as she did during the prosecutor’s opening statements. Her blinking, too, seems within the range of normal.

  The interrogation room door opens and Anca’s head revolves at the same incremental speed that C-2 witnessed before. An overweight detective with unusually long arms and a rolling gait comes into the small room. He plants his hands on the table across from Anca and leans over her.

  “Anca,” he says, “we know it was arson.”

  He then disappears from the frame and sits—or stands—behind the camera.

  The choice of where to place a camera in an interrogation room may seem immaterial to the other jurors, but not to C-2.

  Had the camera been behind Anca, had the screen been filled with the threatening body language of the detective, Anca’s mumbled admissions might have look coerced.

  C-2 starts to write detective’s POV when she sees the words, written in her own hand though she has no memory of writing them: I have a lover!

  By the time she recovers her concentration again, Anca has already confessed.

  * * *

  · · ·

  At Nic & Gladys, F-17 tells the deputy he’s going outside for a smoke.

  Cornrows opens her purse and offers him a nicotine patch.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” he says. “I’ll quit after the trial.”

  C-2 rises from her chair. “Me too,” she says.

  Cornrows makes her the same offer.

  “You’re a stronger woman than I,” C-2 says.

  Outside, he asks, “May I come back tonight?”

  She wishes he wouldn’t ask permission.

  “I’m not paying attention in court,” he confesses. “If I know I am going to see you later, I’ll be able to listen. We both will.”

  The logical mind that had conjured up the syllogism during the voir dire is scrambling.

  Inside the restaurant, Nic carries out the first servings. C-2 realizes that everyone has been watching them through the window. She grinds out her cigarette. Gladys arrives with a plate of peas, collards, and rice just as C-2 joins the others.

  “How come you never eat the main course?” Cornrows asks.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” C-2 says.

  “Does it help you lose weight?” asks the church lady.

  “I don’t know, I stopped eating meat when I was five,” C-2 says.

  “Your parents allowed that?” the church lady says.

  “I hated vegetables as a kid,” Cornrows says. “What did you eat?”

  “French fries.”

  In the van, he sits behind her. She can practically feel his breath on her neck.

  * * *

  · · ·

  The flat-screen monitor is still facing the jury box when C-2 and the others file in.

  A volunteer fireman takes the stand. He acknowledges that he filmed the footage the jury is about to see. He was making a training film when the alarm went out. He had no idea he was filming a crime scene.

  The court’s lights are dimmed to make allowance for the overexposed amateur footage.

  Six firemen, shouldering axes, jog the perimeter of a large Spanish-style house, searching for the source of the smoke, which is thick. The camera pans, and C-2 spies an almond-shaped flame in a window. The nursery window? The camera turns around and films two men attaching a nozzle to a hydrant while a third man uncoils a length of hose from the truck. Why is the jury being shown this footage? Then C-2 understands. Tim is now in the picture—you might even say he is the star. He is the only man without a helmet and fire-retardant gear. Bareheaded, in his street clothes, he charges into the burning house first.

  She glances over at F-17. In the darkened courtroom, the firelight is kind to his bad skin. His eyes look so intelligent and thoughtful as he studies the footage.

  When the lights come back on, C-2 worries that one of the other jurors might have seen her staring at F-17, until she notices that everyone is staring at the church lady, whose head is lolling. She has dozed off.

  An arson expert takes up the remainder of the afternoon, explaining the chemistry of combustion. C-2 pays strict attention, though the effort it takes is proportionate to running a race while balancing an egg on a spoon. She doesn’t understand any more about what the expert is saying than she did when she took high school chemistry and had to repeat the course in summer school. The teacher finally gave her a pity C.

  She writes:

  pyrolysis of solids

  exothermic reactions

  gasification equation

  By the time she finishes phonetically soun
ding out the words in her head in order to spell them, she has forgotten the definitions—just like in high school.

  To pay attention to something you don’t understand when there is such an alluring narrative waiting to take over your thoughts proves undoable. The only clear memory she has of last night is the silence of the sex. The arson expert refers to a back draft as a “vacuum of air,” and the words “vacuum of air” become synonymous with the way she thinks about the implosion of her breath last night. The arson expert leads the jury back in time, room by burning room, to the origin of the fire, but C-2 keeps getting lost in the motel room. He came to her just before dawn. He must have been awake all night, planning his entrance. Or did he wake up and surprise himself, as he had her?

  All she remembers after three hours of testimony is that there is no scientific test that will determine whether the arsonist used a disposable diaper or a pile of rubbish to start the fire.

  It’s Friday night at TGI Fridays. Alcohol is allowed during dinner as long as the jurors pay for their own drinks. The mood is celebratory. Tomorrow their families are visiting.

  C-2 orders a martini. She misses her husband terribly, but she doesn’t miss helping him fill his pillbox every morning and then crawling around the kitchen floor to find the pills he has dropped. If she is honest with herself, she dreads his arrival.

  After dinner, as they are smoking near the restaurant entrance in sight of the deputy, F-17 says, “You never answered me. May I come over tonight?”

  “My husband will be here tomorrow,” she says.

  “I’ll be gone by then.”

  She could say, You knew I was married. But she loves her husband too much to conscript him into her mendacity.

  “I’ll come to you,” she says.

  To wait in her bed for her lover to arrive is one thing—more an acceptance than an act. To sneak out past midnight, open his door, and feel her way across the carpeting to his bed is quite another.

  He is already erect.