by Ayad Akhtar
The bailiff announced Judge Darius’s arrival. We stood; she made her entrance; we sat. A short woman with a sallow face behind thick lenses, she beckoned both counselors to the bench, where she addressed them in a measured tone. The court’s atmosphere, silent with expectation, was so much like that moment backstage before every show when actors are called to their places and the stage manager makes the final rounds to ensure all are ready to begin.
Quiet envelops the audience.
The lights dim.
The curtain rises:
(As the attorneys return now to their seats, the Judge looks over to the Bailiff. He rises.)
BAILIFF
The court calls the plaintiff’s first witness, Corinne Hollander.
(On the other side of the aisle in the audience, a portly, plodding lady stands and slowly makes her way down the aisle. She has a washed-out mien: her silvering hair, her skin covered with chalky powder. Against this mask of white, her thin lips are drawn in crimson. The effect is almost ghoulish—also by design, I assume. She sits just as the soughing sound coming through the ceiling vents stops. The Bailiff steps forward.)
BAILIFF
Please raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
CORINNE
I do.
(The Bailiff returns to his seat as Slaughter rises from his place at the plaintiff’s table and takes hold of a walking cane I only now notice has been dangling from the end of the table.)
SLAUGHTER
Hi, Corinne. How are you doing today?
CORINNE
I mean…fine. Fine.
SLAUGHTER
(approaching, his gait assured despite the limp) A little nervous, maybe? It would make sense if you were, right?
(He’s standing before her now, the palm of his free hand flat against the corner of the witness box. She nods.)
SLAUGHTER
So we spoke about this last night. And last week, too, when we went through what to expect. All you have to do is answer the questions to the best of your ability.
(Slaughter’s voice is louder, clearer than it needs to be. A robust tenor whose primary audience is not Corinne but the room. Again she nods. Her eyes glance across the faces of the jury. I see her steal the briefest of worried looks in the direction of Father’s table.)
SLAUGHTER
And if you don’t understand a question either I or anyone else asks you, ask to have it repeated or clarified. Don’t be shy.
JUDGE
(interrupting) Counselor.
SLAUGHTER
Your Honor?
JUDGE
If the witness needs guidance, I’ll be the one to provide it.
SLAUGHTER
Of course. My apologies.
JUDGE
(curt) Go ahead and get started.
(He nods in a show of respect, shoots the jury a sheepish look—and a rakish smile. His appeal is undeniable.)
SLAUGHTER
Just so everyone’s clear, Corinne. You were Christine Langford’s mother?
CORINNE
Am. I am her mother. That’s how I still think of it.
SLAUGHTER
Of course. I’m sorry.—She was the eldest, am I right? Of your three children?
CORINNE
That’s right.
SLAUGHTER
When did you and your husband realize Christine had a heart issue?
CORINNE
After the death of our other daughter.
SLAUGHTER
Kayleigh?
(She nods. When she speaks now, we hear her reedy, nasal voice properly for the first time.)
CORINNE
When she died is when me and Christine started having trouble. That was when we got ourselves tested.
SLAUGHTER
Trouble with your hearts.
CORINNE
Yes. Problems with our heart rhythm.
SLAUGHTER
How old was Kayleigh when she died, if I can ask?
CORINNE
Nine.
SLAUGHTER
And she died in her sleep—isn’t that right?
(She seems as if she’s about to speak, but she doesn’t. Her silence answers the question. Slaughter waits before prodding anew, now more gently—though still with enough volume to be heard by all.)
SLAUGHTER
Do you mind telling us what happened?
CORINNE
She’d spent the day with her grandfather on the farm.
SLAUGHTER
Kendall Dairy, is that right?
CORINNE
Yes, that’s right.
SLAUGHTER
They make their own buttermilk, don’t they?
(A titter of recognition ripples through the jury.)
CORINNE
It’s true. Folks tend to love it. They make it a different way. Something about the enzymes. A lot of stuff I don’t know anything about.
SLAUGHTER
Best buttermilk around these parts, in my opinion.
HANNAH
(from the defendant’s table) Objection, Your Honor. Relevance?
JUDGE
Sustained. Chip, please spare us the scenic route.
(Slaughter looks entirely unconcerned by the instruction. He leans into his cane, turning away from the jury and back to his witness.)
SLAUGHTER
So your daughter Kayleigh had been on the farm that day…
CORINNE
Helping her Nano with chores. She loved being outside with the animals. My dad used to say she was going to keep the farm going when she grew up. Anyway, when she got home, she said she wanted to take a nap.
SLAUGHTER
Was it a normal thing for her to be taking a nap in the afternoon?
CORINNE
Napping in the afternoon on weekends is something everyone in the family tends to do. When they were kids, it was usually because we made them do it. Not because they wanted to.
SLAUGHTER
But on this afternoon, it was her idea.
CORINNE
It didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with her. Just a long afternoon.—She was sleeping on the couch in the family room, and I was in the kitchen. It had just started raining—and I heard the strangest sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Some kind of gurgling. I thought maybe the window in the family room was open, that there was something going on in the gutter from the rain. When I went in to check what was happening, I saw the saliva coming out the side of her mouth. She looked…limp. Like she just wasn’t there anymore. (after a long pause) She never came back.
(The jury is rapt. The emotion on her face—and in the room—is undeniable. This is when I realize that the mise-en-scène has worked: the lifeless makeup, the offhand accumulation of details about things like naps and buttermilk, even the Judge’s reprimands—all have built to this moment of startling emotional purity: before us, a mother remembers the death of her child. I hear a sniffle from the jury box. I can feel the pity and sorrow in my own throat, too.)
SLAUGHTER
I know this is hard.
CORINNE
—It’s okay. It’s for a good reason.
HANNAH
Objection. Leading.
JUDGE
Sustained. (gently) Please, Mrs. Hollander, stick to answering questions.
SLAUGHTER
How long after Kayleigh dying did you all start developing heart problems of your own?
CORINNE
It’s hard to know if one thing started the other. I’ve always been a little short of breath, shorter than normal, even as a kid. Doctors looked into it, but no one found anything.
SLAUGHTER
You were tested for cardiac problems?
CORINNE
Not the way I was after Kayleigh’s autopsy—and the episode Christine had.
SLAUGHTER
Could you tell us about that?
CORINNE
It was a
few weeks after Kayleigh died. We were out in the front yard. It was Christine and her brother, the cousins, me. We were expecting the in-laws, and when they pulled into the driveway, we saw the front grille of the car was covered in blood and fur. They’d hit a deer on the way over. When Christine heard them say that, when she realized she was looking at parts of a dead deer, she just went down.
SLAUGHTER
She fell down?
CORINNE
Like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t find a pulse on her. She had that limp look like Kayleigh did. I was in shock. I mean, I’d just lost one kid. Here I got the other on the ground. I started screaming, and, I don’t know—it seemed like maybe she heard me. She came back.
SLAUGHTER
That’s when you all had tests run?
CORINNE
On Kayleigh’s tissues, too. Turned out me and her had the gene for this thing. Long QT. I mean, I was already in my midthirties, and nothing’d ever happened to me. But I’d had it all along.
(She pauses, briefly glancing in the direction of Father’s table again.)
CORINNE
I mean, I know whatever happened to Christine in the driveway isn’t usual for the long QT we’ve all got—which I guess is supposed to happen when you’re sleeping. At least I know that’s what the doctor from the city thought.
SLAUGHTER
Dr. Akhtar? Sitting over there?
CORINNE
He kept mentioning that Brugada. I guess he’s some specialist of it.
SLAUGHTER
When did you see Dr. Akhtar?
CORINNE
After Christine saw him. She got pregnant and was worried about the beta-blockers. So she went in to get an opinion. He told her to get off it. She came over that night after the appointment and told me I should do the same.
SLAUGHTER
Get off the beta-blockers?
CORINNE
Yes.
SLAUGHTER
Why would she think you should be going off of them, too?
CORINNE
I mean, that’s what didn’t make sense to me, neither. But this new doctor was saying it was worse to be on them with our long QT. And even worse if we had this Brugada thing. I’d never heard of it. And anyway, we didn’t have any problems while we were taking the beta-blockers. For years we didn’t. Not her, not me. That’s what I told him.
SLAUGHTER
Do you remember what else you may have told him?
CORINNE
When he told me I should get off the beta-blockers, I told him what happened when another doctor tried to get me off them before. It was scary. My heart racing and whatnot. I ended up in the emergency room. I wasn’t going to do that again.
SLAUGHTER
What’d he have to say to that?
CORINNE
Frankly, not much…
(Her dry delivery draws an audible laugh in the jury box. I see Hannah shoot Father a sidelong look at the defendant’s table.)
CORINNE
Anyway, it was a short visit. He took a look at my chart. Made some diagnosis about maybe there being this Brugada problem. Told me I should get off the beta-blockers. I told him what happened that one time when I did. Then he was out the door. That’s what I remember.
SLAUGHTER
And you didn’t go off the medication like your daughter?
CORINNE
Hell, no. Anyway, I wasn’t pregnant, so there was that, too.
SLAUGHTER
Did you advise your daughter to stay on it?
CORINNE
She was a grown woman. Wasn’t my place to tell her what to do. That’s not the sort of parents we’ve ever been.
SLAUGHTER
Was that the last time you saw Dr. Akhtar?
CORINNE
We saw him again maybe a week after Christine died. Nick, her husband. My husband, Hal. The family doctor.
SLAUGHTER
What was the purpose of this second visit?
CORINNE
To figure out what to do about me. Now I had two kids dead from this thing. We wanted to make sure I wasn’t next. Though the way I was feeling then, I wasn’t sure I much cared if I did end up next.
(Pause. For the first time, the emotion Corinne has been fighting the entire time breaks through. Slaughter pulls out a pocket handkerchief and offers it to her. She considers the cloth square for a moment, then shakes her head. She’s not going to let herself cry. She dabs at the corners of her eyes with her closed fist. Slaughter folds the handkerchief and returns it to his inside jacket pocket. He steals a glimpse at the jury, and I realize his job with this witness is finished. Her portrait is complete, the various images of her now richly fused into the vivid personage seated before the jury: a devoted and still-suffering mother; stoic; humble; the scion of a beloved local dairy family; an appealing witness and reliable narrator of her own travails—and because of all the foregoing, a trustworthy guardian of her dead daughter’s continued interests among the living.)
SLAUGHTER
What do you remember about that appointment?
CORINNE
My husband asking him point-blank why he took her off that medication cold turkey. “Why didn’t you taper her off it?” I remember Hal using that word. Taper. It’s what we saw on the internet. You’re never supposed to just stop with the beta-blockers.
SLAUGHTER
Did you tell him that?
CORINNE
I don’t remember what I told him. I’d just buried my second child. I was in no state.
SLAUGHTER
What did he say to your husband?
CORINNE
He didn’t answer. I remember him being pretty nervous.
SLAUGHTER
Can you say more about that?
CORINNE
I remember him coming in and saying he was sorry, saying he’d just gotten in from Milwaukee. But then he looked away from me the whole time. Away from all of us. Looking at the walls, the floor when he talked. He looked guilty to me.
HANNAH
Objection, Your Honor. Inflammatory.
JUDGE
Sustained. Mrs. Hollander, please refrain from that sort of…
CORINNE
I just meant he looked like he was feeling guilty.
HANNAH
Your Honor? Please?
JUDGE
Mrs. Hollander. Find a different word for it, please.
CORINNE
Okay. I didn’t mean anything. Just that he felt bad about what happened. Like that was the reason he couldn’t look any of us in the eye.
(Slaughter’s gaze dances across the jury, settling briefly back on his witness. Then he turns to the Judge with a half smile…