The Body in Question

by Jill Ciment

  She finally raises her hand along with the others, and he moves to the head of the table. The gesture seems oddly ceremonial, or maybe he just wants to get away from her—they had been sitting opposite each other.

  He proposes that as the first order of business they review the charges so that everyone understands them.

  “We don’t need to study, Doc, we have a cheat sheet,” says the alternate, holding up the laminated sheet.

  First-degree murder (willful and premeditated)

  Second-degree murder (intent)

  Second-degree murder (depraved indifference)

  Manslaughter (reckless indifference)

  “Let’s take a straw poll,” suggests the schoolteacher.

  “Yeah, maybe we can go home tonight,” says the alternate.

  “We are not rushing to judgment so that you can go home,” F-17 admonishes him. “Which of the charges are we voting on?”

  “We can decide what she’s guilty of later,” says the alternate.

  “How many others want to take a straw poll?” F-17 asks.

  Though C-2 agrees with F-17 that they should thrash out the charges first, she casts her vote with the others.

  He neatly tears six pages out of the special pad provided by the court and passes them around. He empties a glass bowl filled with Hershey’s Kisses, and everyone drops their folded page inside. He stirs the sheets around, lest anyone be able to tell whose vote belongs to whom.

  He reads the votes silently to himself. The act of keeping everyone in unnecessary suspense annoys her until she sees his apprehension.

  “Four guilty, two not guilty,” he says.

  She tries to catch his attention, so that they can exchange a shared look. Despite their own personal travails, they will have to work together to convince the others of a not-guilty verdict, or, if they fail at that, a hung jury. But F-17, in his new authority, has other duties.

  He asks if everyone would be willing to reveal their vote.

  Cornrows abstains, even after F-17 explains that they will know her vote by process of elimination.

  “I just don’t want to say it first,” she says.

  “Fine, I’ll go first. Guilty,” the chemical engineer begins.

  “Guilty,” says the alternate.

  “Guilty,” says the schoolteacher.

  “Not guilty,” C-2 says.

  “Guilty,” says F-17.

  His disclosure is so astounding and disquieting to C-2 that the other jurors momentarily become frozen shadows, and she and he are alone at the table, under the bright squares of fluorescent light checkerboarding the acoustic-board ceiling.

  His eyes are filled with hurt, yet the pupils are already hardening into recalcitrance.

  “Who would like to explain the reasoning behind their vote?” he asks the others, but he looks only at her.

  “Why don’t you begin,” she says.

  “Fine,” he says. “She confessed.”

  “I didn’t believe the confession,” she says.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  “The camera’s placement was from the vantage point of the detective. The focus was entirely on Anca’s face.”

  “She was the one confessing.”

  “That kind of close-up without context is manipulative. The detective could have been pointing a gun at her, for all we know.”

  “Are you implying that the detective was pointing a gun at her?”

  “Of course not. It’s only an example of how untruthful a picture can be. We are only allowed to see what the cameraperson wants us to see, and in this case, the cameraperson was also the interrogator.”

  “No one laid a hand on her. She was in there less than an hour. She wasn’t deprived of anything. There was an open can of Coke on the table,” he says. “Or do you think the police are doing product placement?”

  “Look, I make my living standing behind cameras. A lot happens behind the camera.”

  “Supposition isn’t the same as facts,” he says, turning to the schoolteacher.

  “I voted guilty because of the story by Patricia Highsmith,” the schoolteacher says. “Anca used it like a manual on how to burn down a house.”

  “The prosecution never proved that Anca had ever read the story,” C-2 says.

  “It isn’t your turn to speak,” F-17 says.

  The chemical engineer is next.

  “My vote is for second-degree murder. The choice of accelerant and the fact that it was splashed around the house indiscriminately demonstrates both desperation and a low IQ. I haven’t yet decided whether or not it was depraved indifference or intent.”

  “Guilty,” the alternate says. “I think Tim and Stephana seem like good kids. I didn’t like the way the defense attorney kept harping on the eyelashes. I burn trash all the time, and my eyelashes seem fine to me.”

  “Not guilty,” Cornrows says. “But only because I didn’t want to vote guilty on the first ballot. I have reasonable doubt about her being not guilty.”

  “Reasonable doubt means not guilty,” C-2 says.

  “Reasonable doubt is a state of mind,” F-17 says.

  “It is the standard of proof for convicting someone,” C-2 says.

  “We haven’t yet finished discussing the evidence, and you want us to debate legal terms?” he says.

  “You’re the one who didn’t want to rush to judgment,” she says.

  * * *

  · · ·

  No one wants to go out for dinner. Pizzas will be delivered to their motel rooms.

  When the Domino’s guy knocks on C-2’s door, she is taking a bath.

  “Just leave it outside,” she shouts from the tub.

  When she finally retrieves the box and opens the lid, she finds the pie polka-dotted with pepperoni. She is about to run outside in her robe to catch the Domino’s guy and tell him she got the wrong order when she hears the alternate complain that he didn’t get any pepperoni.

  Tomorrow morning she is going to wink at him, and he’ll never know why.

  She lets her pie grow cold. She has no appetite anyway. All she can think is, He voted guilty? How did she get him so wrong? Are people that unknowable? Who did she believe those beautiful feet belonged to? She accepts her responsibility. She ended the affair. Is his petulance a form of anger or anguish? Are they distinguishable? Why does she have to practically restrain herself from going to him now? How is he so confident about his verdict? I can’t stop thinking about you, he had said, I should be thinking about the trial. She certainly isn’t certain of her verdict. Maybe he is right? Maybe reasonable doubt is a state of mind, the only state of mind.

  Before throwing the pie away, she picks off the pepperoni to feed to the feral cats. On her way to the pool, where a tabby and a tuxedo have taken up residency on the chaises, F-17 finds her.

  “I’m sorry I acted like such a prick today,” he says. “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

  He offers her a cigarette. It is hard to read his expression in the restless underwater light from the pool. Lit from below, everyone looks haunted. When he lights her cigarette, his fingers hold the burning match a dangerously long time, and she has to blow it out for him. She isn’t positive, but she is fairly certain that he is on the brink of tears. No one appears to be around. She reaches for his face, but he jerks away.

  “I think we should tamp down the hyperbole,” he says.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Suggesting that the detective questioning Anca might have had a gun,” he says.

  “It was an example of what might not be in the picture, not an implication.”

  “That nuance might be lost on some of the jurors,” he says, and leaves her to smoke her cigarette alone.

  * * *

  · · ·


  Back in the jury room, where coffee and bagels have been provided for breakfast, C-2 asks to see the video of the confession again.

  The judge sends back a note, which F-17 reads aloud. “In order for you to view the video, the court will have to summons both attorneys and other pertinent court personnel. That could take some time, given that this is the weekend. Could the jury rely on their collective memories of the taped confession instead? Are they sure they need to see the video?”

  “I don’t need to see it,” says the chemical engineer. “My vote is based on science. The origin of the fire has to be the nursery. She was the only one home.”

  “You said so yourself,” the schoolteacher addresses C-2. “We’ll never know what’s behind the camera.”

  “How many want to see the confession again?” asks F-17.

  Only C-2 raises her hand.

  F-17 looks exasperated as he pens a note back to the judge. Whatever the note says, it takes up half a page.

  The judge answers promptly: The jury must cease deliberations until after the viewing.

  The schoolteacher walks over and sits disturbingly close to C-2, who is now alone on the sofa, shunned by the others. The schoolteacher says loudly enough for the others to hear, “I know why you are doing this.”

  “I’m doing this because I want to be sure before I send a teenager to prison.”

  “You’re doing this because you had a fight with your boyfriend.”

  * * *

  · · ·

  It is after two when the jurors are finally marched back into court to watch the confession again. The flat-screen monitor awaits them.

  Before the judge calls court in session, she waits for the defense counsel to give instructions to a man, presumably the defense counsel’s husband, who is holding a screaming toddler. The prosecutor, texting under his desk, wears shorts with black dress socks and tennis shoes.

  The video begins: Anca alone in the interrogation room; her head revolving in slow motion as the burly detective enters; his disappearance from the frame; Anca mumbling yes to his accusations. Finally, Anca’s first full sentence.

  “I did it.”

  “You did what?” asks the detective.

  “I killed him.”

  C-2 doesn’t remember hearing those exact words before. She remembers hearing “Yes” after the detective accuses Anca of killing her brother, but she doesn’t remember Anca taking ownership of the act: I killed him. How had she missed that? She knows. The previous time she had seen the confession had been the morning after F-17 slipped into her shower and they had had sex for the first time.

  “May we see it again?” C-2 asks the judge.

  “Is that what all of you want?” the judge asks the jury.

  F-17, as foreman, answers for the others, “No, we don’t need to see the confession again.”

  Back in the jury room, F-17 asks if revisiting the confession changed any minds.

  Cornrows raises her hand. “I voted not guilty, but I’m changing my vote to guilty.”

  “What made you change your mind?” F-17 asks.

  “It was the Coke can. I didn’t notice it the first time. I don’t know why. I drink Coke. Anca didn’t seem as scared to me this time. I mean, if a detective was waving a gun at you, would you take a drink of Coke?”

  “Can we take another vote?” asks the alternate.

  “I think we should discuss the evidence against Stephana and Tim first,” C-2 says.

  The schoolteacher loses it. “What evidence?”

  “The fact that no one tested Tim’s clothes for accelerant? The fact that it was Stephana’s handwriting in the diary entry that mapped out the crime?”

  “She was only copying a story,” Cornrows says.

  “Do you still not believe the confession?” the chemical engineer asks C-2.

  “Let’s tell the judge we got a hung jury,” says the alternate.

  “It’s too early to call a hung jury,” F-17 says.

  * * *

  · · ·

  That night, C-2 reads over the notes that she took during the trial. Page one, somebody loves her. Why had she written this? From what hidden need within herself did that sentence burble up? Defendant blinks 68xs a minute. Could Anca’s rapid blinking have been a symptom of daydreaming, as F-17 suggested? Had Anca been daydreaming while the picture of the melted crib was passed from juror to juror? The prosecutor has no idea why she did it. Must there be a reason? C-2 has never before subscribed to the premise that human impulses have reasons. Why now? Because she is confused and has lost herself? Because she needs reasons? Because she needs to be compassionate to assuage her guilt over cheating on her husband? Because she had to have one last dalliance before she got too old? Because she had a fight with her boyfriend? Why did she imagine that expressionless murderess was capable of love?

  She turns the page and sees why.

  I have a lover!

  Part Two

  “So, what was the verdict?” her husband asks.

  He has been waiting an hour for her, idling the car in the weed-rampant parking lot of an abandoned shopping center, a ghost mall, thirty miles south of the courthouse. After the verdict was read and Anca, expressing nothing but nothing, was frog-marched away between two female deputies, the jury was hustled out of the courtroom, into the unmarked van, told only that they would be driven to an undisclosed location where a designated family member or friend would be waiting.

  “Guilty,” Hannah says.

  Two cars over, next to a small sinkhole and a sign that reads “Oy’s Market,” the other jurors exchange phone numbers, promising to stay in touch. No one has asked for Hannah’s number. She has been shunned since deliberations. She looks to see who is meeting F-17, but his ride hasn’t yet arrived.

  When she doesn’t elaborate on her one-word answer, her husband asks, “Of what?”

  “Second-degree murder.”

  “Intent or depraved indifference?”

  “Depraved indifference,” she says. “The defendant wasn’t mentally capable of intent, let alone premeditation.”

  She asks to drive, pretends she has missed driving these past two and a half weeks, but they both know it is because she can’t suffer him behind the wheel with his narrowing vision and his not knowing where his feet are. She pulls into a convenience store nestled between the interstate and the on-ramp. When she comes out with a pack of Parliaments, he says, “You took up smoking?”

  In the chain supermarket, selecting her dinner from the shameless displays of paradisiacal abundance—she hasn’t seen fresh fruits and vegetables in seventeen days—what she really craves is a cigarette.

  “Do we need eggs?” her husband asks, even though he has been home alone for seventeen days.

  In the checkout line, as their choices wobble down the conveyor belt, she glances at the rack of tabloids. A photograph of Stephana, hooded in a hoodie, stares back from the upper right-hand cover of OK! magazine. “CAUGHT IN A LIE,” the caption reads.

  “How much coverage did the trial get?” she asks her husband.

  “It’s Florida,” he says.

  She opens the magazine to read the full story. Turns out, Stephana had tried to pawn a broach of her mother’s last March, before the fire. Why wasn’t the jury told? She flips back to the cover. The issue she is reading came out after deliberations had begun. A statement from the Butler family says the broach in question was given to Stephana by her grandmother. But a source close to the family told OK! that Mrs. Butler would do anything to keep her other daughter out of jail. The reporter’s conclusion: The wrong twin is on trial.

  “Was this the consensus?” she asks her husband.

  “It sells papers,” her husband says.

  After they unload the groceries and stock the refrigerator shelves with enough food for a
week, he says, “Let’s go out to dinner.”

  On the way out of the house, she notices a ball of sheets on the sofa.

  “Did someone stay over?”

  “Jimmy. I didn’t want to worry you, but my leg went to sleep and I couldn’t wake it up. Jimmy drove me to the ER. The doctor said it was a TIA, a ministroke, nothing to worry about, but he also said we should test me if I start to feel dizzy or my speech starts slurring.”

  He smiles at her. The smile is false and rigid, closer to rigor mortis than joy. “Are both sides of my lips curled evenly? That’s the test.”

  Now, when he wakes up confused and dizzy in the middle of the night, in addition to her running for a baby aspirin and water, she will have to remember to ask him to smile.

  The elderly man who can’t possibly be her husband turns off the living room lights.

  At the Indian restaurant—she hasn’t tasted spice in seventeen days—he asks, “Why do you think she did it?”

  “It’s not like reading a novel,” she tells him, “where the characters have motives. That’s why they call it fiction. Because in real life people do inexplicable things to each other.”

  “They lie and cheat,” her husband says, “but they don’t immolate an infant. What did the prosecutor offer as a motive?”

  “Can we talk about something else?” she says.

  She sees the hurt on his face. This is about as interesting as life gets when you sit alone in the woods all day writing your memoir, and she won’t share.

  “He didn’t offer a motive,” she says.

  “That was risky.”

  “It’s difficult to assign motive to the insane.”

  “Why didn’t the defense plead insanity?” he asks.

  “She wasn’t that insane. Please, Hy, I can’t bear to talk about the trial, it’s all I’ve thought about for three weeks.”

  Despite her edict that they not discuss the case, she and her husband watch the eleven o’clock local news—the verdict is the lead story. Heavily powdered to combat the heat, a recent university alum who is working her way up from weather to crime tries to talk over the hoopla outside the courthouse earlier in the afternoon. In the background, a crowd of two dozen hold up handwritten signs that read “Somewhere a Village Is Missing 6 Idiots,” “Jury Guilty of Stupidity.”