The Body in Question

by Jill Ciment

  “Who are these people?” her husband asks.

  Hannah thinks that she recognizes a few faces from the courtroom gallery, among them the old guy in stretch-waist jeans who followed her into the staff elevator and practically asked for her autograph. His sign reads “Arrest the Jury.” Why such belligerence now? Next to him, a young woman—his granddaughter?—has duct-taped her mouth shut, cut a heart-shape opening to breathe through, and lettered with a marker across her forehead “Silence for Caleb.” But something else unnerves Hannah more than the vitriol. All the signs are the same size of white illustration board, and all the lettering is the same color, a muddy red-black.

  “Look, someone came prepared with blank signs and poster paint,” she says. “The protest wasn’t spontaneous. Someone organized it.”

  “Please tell me the judge promised not to release your names,” her husband says.

  “Is she allowed to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  · · ·

  Despite an Ambien, her own bed and pillow, the familiar weight of her husband beside her, she can’t sleep.

  What else wasn’t the jury told?

  She wakes up her tablet to find out.

  According to the barrage of articles, the defense counsel had complained daily about the lack of time to go over evidence it claimed the prosecution had withheld. The judge ruled against the defense’s attempt to admit, as evidence, a motion-capture animation of what the defense claimed had happened the night Caleb died. It was built of footage from security cameras in the adjacent neighbors’ houses. The prosecutor called the footage speculative and irrelevant, an animated cartoon. After that hearing, the defense moved to have deleted texts from Stephana to her friends admitted. The expert who extracted the texts had read a few in court—among them, Stephana telling a friend that she was going to smother Caleb if he didn’t shut up. The prosecution alleged that the texts were a distraction, and the judge agreed. The jury never got to hear Stephana’s next text to Tim: i gave c one of gran’s codeens. come over.

  The prosecution read Tim’s response, LOL, and claimed the text was a joke, a distasteful but harmless joke.

  The prosecution also asked the judge to consider whether or not the defense violated witness sequestration rules after it was revealed that Stephana had been present in the courtroom during the voir dire.

  Tim had an impressive criminal record—grand theft auto, battery—that was never revealed in open court. What had F-17 said about Justice’s blindfold? Something about the lack of light awakening other senses. Had she known that Tim had a rap sheet, would she have changed her mind, again, and gone back to her original not-guilty vote, caused a mistrial, made Mrs. Butler grieve through another trial? She hardly remembers Tim’s testimony—only that he clenched his molars and ranked Stephana over Jesus. Would she have remembered more of what Tim had said if she hadn’t been distracted by the notes her lover had written to her in his jury notebook and then angled the page so she could read the words from one row back, two chairs over? F-17 was rigidly certain of himself during deliberations. When he read the observations he had written during the trial to establish a point, Hannah was astonished by the precision and specifics of his note taking. She also observed that he’d ripped out his notes to her before reading his meticulous annotations aloud.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Next morning, reading the local paper, her husband discovers that the Orlando Sentinel has petitioned the court to release the jurors’ names.

  Furious, he calls their lawyer and his closest friend, Lenny. The two men met almost fifty years ago, when Hannah had just turned three. Her husband was covering the Chicago 8 trial, and Lenny was Abbie Hoffman’s lawyer. A perennial bachelor, Lenny disapproved of Hannah when her husband first introduced them. He had pegged her as one of those beautiful young women who use old men’s vanity to catapult themselves up the ascent, nearer to the volcanic heat of power and the swag of renown. Only later, when Hannah’s left eyelid sank to half-mast again, and her burnish dulled into adequate, was Lenny able to accept her.

  “Lenny says the petition is most likely perfunctory,” her husband tells her after he gets off the phone. “He reminded me that even the Times petitioned the court for the jurors’ names in the Central Park jogger case, but they never released them. I’m writing a letter to the Sentinel, in any case.”

  Hannah can tell that her husband thinks his name still glitters with fairy dust, that the editor who wasn’t yet born when he won his Pulitzer will recognize his byline.

  He composes the letter all afternoon, reads her the final draft aloud. He cites the Casey Anthony trial after the judge released the jurors’ names. One woman reportedly quit her job and fled the state because of death threats. Others were scared to leave their homes. He doubles down with the Zimmerman jury, noting that even after a six-month community cooling-off period, the release of the names ruined lives. He closes with the rash of memoirs written by the O. J. Simpson jurors, accounts of stress and collapse.

  * * *

  · · ·

  After dinner, when she goes out for a pack of cigarettes, she offers to mail the letter. On the way home, she finds herself driving past F-17’s house. It is eight o’clock, nearly dark, but she doesn’t need to slow down to read the poorly lit addresses on the mailboxes. She already knows what his house looks like—modest, manicured. She looked it up on Google Street View earlier in the day.

  The lights are on.

  She parks across the street, under sword-shaped leaves. She believes that if she can just observe him, even from a parked car a hundred yards away, she will begin to understand why it is impossible for her to let go of this person with the bad skin and the beautiful feet.

  Framed by a window, he is standing under a kitchen fluorescent facing the street. She can only see him from the chest up. Whatever his hands are occupied with below the sill doesn’t appear to interest him.

  She would swear he is staring at her if she weren’t positive that the kitchen fluorescent has turned his window into an opaque mirror.

  She takes out her cell. She has his number from the time she asked for it, less than a month ago, so that she might photograph a dissection during his Gross Anatomy class. She looks down at her screen, at his name, Graham Oliver, and his phone number tempting her to press the icon of an old-fashioned receiver and hear his voice. Would she hang up after that? He would know it was her. She yearns for a time, not too long ago, when you could hang up on your ex-lover anonymously.

  When she looks up again, Graham is holding a cat. He never mentioned that he had a cat. Who took care of the cat while he was sequestered? She knows nothing about him. She puts her phone down, but she doesn’t drive away. She smokes a cigarette and watches him stroke his cat, from one hundred yards away.

  Her husband is at his desk when the doorbell rings Friday morning. Hannah is still at the kitchen table, her coffee getting cold while she wonders again, Who took care of his cat?

  “Are you going to get it?” her husband shouts from his study, where he plays Solitaire for the first hour of his working day to calm his nerves and muster the stamina to shoulder his memoir another half page forward.

  “Could you?” she calls back.

  “I’m working,” he shouts, though they both know he is reshuffling the deck.

  “All right,” she says, but by the time she enters the foyer her husband has opened the door.

  A sheriff’s deputy asks for her by name, Hannah Pilar, hands her a manila envelope, and abruptly leaves before she has a chance to ask what this is about.

  The document inside is a “notice to appear” on Monday before the judge in the Anca Butler case.

  “You know what this is about?” her husband asks.

  “I assume it has something to do with the release of our names.”

  �
��Is everyone on the jury being summoned?”

  “I would guess.”

  “It makes no sense. Why call the jury into court to release your names?”

  “Maybe she’s giving us a heads-up so we can flee the state.”

  * * *

  · · ·

  Graham is seated in the front row of the gallery when Hannah enters the courtroom Monday morning. He doesn’t turn around. He must know it’s her, because the rest of the jurors are already seated, spaced apart on the gallery pews, as if they are about to take a written exam and the judge doesn’t want anyone cheating. No one speaks. The bailiff points Hannah to the back row.

  One by one, not necessarily corresponding to their juror numbers, they are summoned to the judge’s chambers—the schoolteacher first, then Cornrows, next the chemical engineer, and the alternate, who grins at Hannah when he sees her. The chamber must have a secret back door, Hannah assumes, because no one ever comes out again.

  Graham and she are the only ones left. He occupies the farthest seat. He must have been the first juror to arrive. Did he come early in the hope of having a moment alone with her, or was he upholding his status as jury foreman by arriving early? He has cut his hair: the Platonic ringlets have been shorn, the back of his neck is freshly shaved. His ordinariness astonishes her. Only after his number is called and he is almost at the judge’s door does he allow himself a glance back at her. What does that look hold? Want? Hurt? Confirmation? Of what? Or maybe he is as astonished, as she had been, by the other’s ordinariness.

  He is in there a long time, longer than the others. He must have prepared a lengthy statement filled with syllogisms arguing the logic of keeping the jurors’ names secret.

  When it’s finally her turn, the bailiff closes the chamber door behind her.

  The judge’s office isn’t paneled with mahogany, as Hannah had imagined. The decor is therapist, MSW not MD—neutral blond couch, blond desk, a soothing abstract painting, and no hierarchy of chairs.

  Both attorneys are present, but not the defendant. The blousy court reporter loads another roll of paper into her stenograph machine before reminding Hannah that she is still under oath.

  The judge begins, “One week ago, I received this letter, which I’ve shared with both attorneys.”

  The letter is open on the judge’s desk. It is handwritten. Hannah can’t make out the signature, though she tries.

  The judge reads, “I feel it is my duty as a juror and a citizen to report that two of my fellow jurors had sexual contact on more than seven occasions during our nights at the motel. I was very upset by how lightly these two jurors took their responsibility in such a serious case. I am willing to testify that I heard sexual noises coming from one or the other’s motel room on six occasions.”

  Hannah can see that the letter is longer, by at least ten lines, but the judge stops reading.

  “Did you have sexual relations with another juror?” the judge asks.

  “Yes,” Hannah says.

  “Did the two of you ever discuss the case while you were alone?”

  “No.”

  The defense counsel interrupts: “You never offered an opinion on how the trial was going during your pillow talk?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” admonishes the judge. She turns back to Hannah. “Did your relationship in any way determine or influence how you reached your verdict?”

  The longer Hannah hesitates before answering, the more her answer will sound untruthful.

  “I don’t know,” Hannah says.

  “ ‘I don’t know’ means ‘yes’ in this case,” says the judge. “Let me put this another way. Did the juror with whom you were having a sexual relationship in any manner coerce your verdict?”

  “No,” Hannah says.

  “I won’t ask you anything specifically discussed during deliberations, so let me ask this generally: Did your sexual relationship impede or influence any of the other jurors?”

  “You’ll have to ask them,” Hannah says.

  “I have,” the judge says.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Graham flashes his headlights, once, as she walks past his car in the underground garage. Her phone rings as soon as she shuts her car door.

  “Follow me,” he tells her.

  She follows his car to a truck stop ten exits south on the interstate, parks between his sedan and a semi with a flat tire and a garland of retread around the axle. Graham opens her passenger door, sits beside her.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  The concern in his voice almost makes her unable to answer.

  When she does speak again, she can already hear the girlish rise in her throat—as if in married life, her natural voice is contralto, but with him, her voice ascends to mezzo-soprano.

  “You?” she asks.

  “I never saw it coming.”

  “What did you say when she asked?”

  “I said it was no one’s business. Did you admit to the affair?”

  “We were under oath.”

  “Who wrote the letter?”

  “The schoolteacher,” she guesses.

  “The church lady,” he says.

  “But she was thrown off the jury.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you think the judge will declare a mistrial?”

  “We both swore under oath that the affair didn’t influence our verdict.”

  “I told the judge that I didn’t know if the affair influenced my verdict.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “How could it not be true?”

  “We never spoke about the trial.”

  “We didn’t have to.”

  “I miss you,” he says.

  “I drove by your house,” she says.

  “I knew you were close by.”

  The motel next to the truck stop doesn’t provide blackout drapes as the Econo Lodge had, only gauzy curtains covering a view of a propane tank. The sun is low. They undress for the first time in daylight. He is flaccid. She stands more like a soldier than a seductress. She has never seen him naked, or he her.

  They allow themselves a moment to stare unabashedly and without judgment. It no longer matters what each thinks of the other’s nakedness—the pitted back, the flattening buttocks. It no longer matters if they disappoint or excite. This is the end of the affair.

  Their sex is slow, methodical, comfortable, the closest they have ever come to matrimonial sex. Familiarity is always said to be the blanket that suffocates passion. But familiarity can also be passion’s accelerant.

  They lie side by side without touching. A thrumming fills the space. It must have been there all along, though Hannah is only now aware of it. The noise is coming from the woods, insects rubbing one body part against another. The indifferent ceaseless rubbing speaks of life eternal, the insects that will be there long after she and Graham have gone their separate ways, after the motel has gone bankrupt, and the woods have taken over, after her husband has died, and her own vision has narrowed and she can’t remember where to put her hands and feet, and her photographs are long forgotten.

  But she would never call the sound mournful.

  He doesn’t ask her to promise she will see him again. Why pretend that is even possible now?

  They share one of her cigarettes before going their separate ways.

  “What took so long?” asks her husband before she can put down her keys. Her hands still carry the scent of the afternoon.

  He follows her into the kitchen, leans against the counter as she washes her hands.

  “So, is the judge releasing your names?”

  She turns off the spigots.

  “She hasn’t ruled.”

  “Why were you summoned, then?”

  “She wanted t
o know what concerns we had about our names being released,” she says, surprised at how easily she can lie.

  “Please tell me no one wanted their names released.”

  “I don’t know. We were interviewed individually in chambers.”

  “What did you say to the judge?”

  “I said I wanted my life back.”

  Is this guilt she feels? She doesn’t think so. Shame? It feels nothing like shame. She thinks it might be love in its most unstable state, but she doesn’t know for whom that love is being summoned—her husband, who is now standing behind her, massaging her neck as she dries her hands, or the man holding his cat in the kitchen window.

  That night, while her husband sleeps, Hannah enters her studio, a perfect cube facing the lake. One wall is glass, the other three are white and bare. Not even a pushpin remains of the failed series she had been working on for the past six months. The week before jury duty had started, she took down the photographs and deleted the images from her computer. The series had finally revealed itself for what it was—derivative. Not of some other photographer’s work, but of her own, younger self.

  When she still used a darkroom, and negatives, and an enlarger, and developer, and stop bath, and scissors, and fixer, the ritual of destroying failed projects had more pageantry. She could tear down the prints hanging by clothespins, crumple them up, stomp on the negatives or slam open the darkroom door to let daylight erase her work, rather than coldly press Delete.

  Her husband salvaged more than one roll of film after she threatened to burn it in melodramatic doubt. A younger man, a man her own age, might have let her burn her negatives to teach her a lesson, might have been jealous of a melodrama from which he was excluded. Her husband merely waited for the tempest to pass and returned the untouched rolls of film the next morning.