Chapter 6.
6.
Opening Statement (n.)
an initial speech made by each side in a trial, summarizing the main points of the case they will make for the jury
where I learn what I’m up against
H er brown bob is stick straight, unreasonably shiny. I’ve noticed that shine on TV, but it’s borderline distracting in person. She’s tall, standing for my entrance (okay, standing because of a judge-ordered call to rise for the jury entrance generally), and her perfectly linear posture emphasizes her long, straight torso. There is no bend in her neck, no curve in her shoulder line, no jut of a hip. She is a razor-sharp vertical line, severe as her customary demeanor. She wears a subdued but stunning skirt suit, black with white frayed edges at the hem and wrists and gold buttons—a beauty filter personified.
The first time I came to know of Joe and Margot Kitsch was seven years ago, during the premiere of Authentic Moms of Malibu and the start of the franchise as a whole—Margot, the first cast member introduced. The scene began with a drone shot above the Kitsches’ sprawling estate, owned by Joe for many years before Margot’s arrival, afforded via his Hollywood production company, Kitschy Pictures. He produced no runaway box office hits but enough straight-to-streaming action films with solid B-list actors and actresses to keep him agreeably wealthy.
One night after two bottles of wine and the season six Authentic Moms finale, Mel and I looked up Joe’s IMDb page and were surprised to see just how many low-budget movies he had produced that we had never heard of, and over decades. Movies with horrible plotlines and highly attractive lead actors. We chose one at random to watch that night, a film from the nineties titled Hustle and Grace , where a broke twentysomething lives on Fruit Roll-Ups and canned pinto beans while trying to earn a ticket to New York City via a big break in the competitive modern dance world. The film had a measly six percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the same as Gigli .
The acreage they had is rare in Malibu, as the other Moms were sure to point out when visiting her home for the first time for afternoon tea in episode two. Instead of oceanfront property, the estate is a green expanse, with topiaries shaped like cones and a spread of flat grass that looks too pristine to be real. But it is real, I know, thanks to the mouthy landscaper who landed a few cameos in later seasons. He once even called Margot’s castmate Tenley Storms “trash” when he overheard her suggesting Margot’s cork trees were purchased from the wholesale nursery down the street rather than imported from an independent tree farm in Portugal, as Margot claimed.
Margot paid for all three of that landscaper’s children to attend private school.
In that first episode, the camera panned to the pool where Margot sat, clad in a black one-piece bathing suit with so many cutouts I wondered how one might successfully climb into such a thing, her face covered by a cartoonishly wide-brimmed straw hat. As the camera approached, she tilted her head upward, making eye contact with it, the slightest hint of a wiley smirk across her rosy lips. She was both familiar and mysterious, and she oozed main character energy.
I was nineteen, still living with my father, whom I stayed with after my parents’ divorce. My mom set off to “find herself” and belatedly experience some version of the youth she’d missed because of me. The cliché of it didn’t seem to give her any pause. My father, a pilot, flew ten days on, three off, and when home, he slept at indiscernible intervals. So I essentially lived alone. I desperately wanted to be actually on my own, but there wasn’t enough money with my self-paid tuition funded by work at the sandwich shop down the street.
In college, I’d rush to finish my communications-based projects and papers before the show’s seven p.m. airtime. For seven seasons, Margot and the cast have accompanied me from living with my dad and waitressing at the sandwich shop, to my job as a front office assistant at the law firm within walking distance from his house, to my arbitration job and eventual first apartment. And then, to Mel.
The woman I’ve watched all these years—the one who gave me some escape from the isolation of living with my dad, the fiercely measured and shielding mom I sometimes wish I had, the one with the jealousy-inducing gravitas she wears like a ball gown—perhaps some might call it pathetic or sad, but Margot has been indispensable to me in a multitude of ways. As silly as it may seem, she and the show have provided me with the long-standing stability and comfort that has otherwise eluded me my entire life. And now, I have a chance to do something for her.
Margot and I make eye contact briefly, and I have a hard time looking away. It’s not just me, I soon realize. Members of the public gallery lean this way and that to steal a view of her. The bailiffs remain in their professional stances, but their eyes deceive them, beelining to her every chance they get. She’s a magnet for observation.
One of the only times I can recall having all eyes on me (outside of arbitrations) was during my sixth grade choir concert, when my skirt was tucked into my underwear through the entirety of “Eleanor Rigby.” Damon was in the audience that night, front row.
Judge Gillespy claims the room’s attention to indicate it’s time to commence, and opening statements begin before I’ve even had a chance to take in that the trial is officially underway. I take feverish notes, wanting to collect and remember every detail of the case.
D.A. Jackson Stern stands and buttons his suit jacket. He makes his way from the prosecutors’ table and positions himself before us, pillowy hands clasped behind his back, a black ballpoint pen bouncing between his fingers.
I was first exposed to the prosecutor (and Judge Gillespy and the defense team) during jury selection, when I showed up to jury duty with no knowledge of case details or of who would be involved. D.A. Stern stood out to me then because of his imposing stature.
Today, D.A. Stern reminds me of a freshly shaven, modern Abe Lincoln—strikingly tall with a basset hound face, prominent ears and nose. He clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak, and I’m prepared for something akin to the Gettysburg Address.
“Joe Kitsch was a family man,” he begins.
Damon, I notice, is jotting something down on his notepad for the first time. He’s left-handed, and I’m distracted by the familiar way his hand uniquely curves as he puts pen to page.
His handwriting pulls me backward in time.
The letters.
The box of them still in the back corner of my closet.
He didn’t text or call or even speak much back then. But he wrote. He wrote jokes. He transcribed song lyrics. He drafted meaningful things he was going to do and places he wanted to see.
He told me I knew him in a way nobody did.
“Better on paper,” he used to say.
Stop. Focus. I press firmly into my seat to ground myself.
Damon stops writing and moves his pad toward me behind the jury box panel. I shift my weight and glance quickly around the room before looking down at the pad. It reads:
HIS NAME WAS JOCK ITCH?
I look up at Damon, and we make eye contact. He’s got the barely there hint of a smirk, and I can’t tell if he’s serious.
No, he can’t be serious.
I look around the room briskly again before scrawling my response.
What? No. JOE KITSCH.
I write back knowing my brain will now forever translate his name to Jock Itch every time I hear it, may he rest in peace. I know enough about Damon to know he’s not intending to be insensitive; rather he’s attempting to defuse the tension he feels emanating off me. At least, that’s what the old Damon would have done. I tell myself not to fall for it.
I’m grateful for D.A. Stern’s continuation. “He loved his kids, Dover and Emblem. He loved his parents, Glenn and Jackie. He loved his sisters, Jayne and Erika. And above all, he loved his wife, Margot.” At this, he extends an arm, the tip of his pen pointed toward the defense table where Margot sits tall and still, watching, hands clasped in her lap. Under the table, her right foot taps vigorously at the indistinct carpet. I know from the show that she’s not particularly skilled at being still or quiet, and I imagine this must be difficult for her in more ways than one.
D.A. Stern returns to the prosecution table and picks up a clicker. All heads turn to the pull-out screen adjacent to the witness stand as a slideshow begins. Photos of Joe and Margot on their wedding day. Joe on a golf course, the shaft of his putter in the air, pressed against his shoulder. Joe with his kids on Halloween, the three of them dressed in elaborate octopus costumes. I remember this photo in particular. Margot had posted it alongside a video to her social media, showing off the motorized tentacles and professional makeup.
Joe was an attractive older man. He had that opulent aging quality where his features grew more defined and his face took on more character as he aged. Even in his late sixties, his blue eyes were wide and bright, he still held a thick mane of gray hair, and he maintained the physique of someone much younger. He always dressed in that casual way truly wealthy people do, still with an air about him even in jeans and a T-shirt.
The prosecutor continues. “His wife of nearly twenty-five years, Margot, to whom he gave the world, came from humble Minnesotan roots, and Joe introduced her to her lavish lifestyle. What Joe couldn’t have known was that Margot Kitsch, Margot Frankel at the time, would end his life in a premeditated plot, fueled by vengefulness and embarrassment. And because of his deep love for this woman and the family they built, Joe Kitsch never saw it coming.”
I miss what comes next in the D.A.’s statement, distracted by Mar got’s foot still pounding the floor and stuck on the characterization of her as vengeful and embarrassed. The description strikes me as misleading. What did she have to be vengeful or embarrassed about?
I snap back to attention as D.A. Stern finishes his belabored diatribe with, “Through the course of this trial, we will present to you the details of Joe’s death, which will clearly show Margot Kitsch spearheaded a plan to poison her unknowing husband, making it appear as though he died of natural causes, then rushed to cremate his body to conceal what she had done—her own mother-in-law being the first to identify evidence that incriminates her.” He turns to stare at Margot, who does not look away but whose eyes are wary and perhaps a bit scared. It’s not a look I am accustomed to seeing on her face.
I shift in the wooden seat with no give and eye Margot’s defense team, wondering if they will do her justice in their rebuttal.
Virtually all the allegations I heard prior to this case were grandiose and circumstantial at best. But I suppose with so much notoriety and a slow news cycle, the public needed a prominent witch to burn at the stake. And it looks like the prosecution is, in fact, going with the most popular theory circulating on social media—that Margot somehow poisoned Joe despite not being physically present when he died at their kitchen table that Wednesday morning last September. With Joe’s influential family at the helm of said witch hunt, I shouldn’t have been surprised they could successfully get this case to trial.
Sure, Margot has exhibited some bad behavior on the show. She yells, has thrown a glass or two in the direction of her costars—even a pineapple once when the women were vacationing in Maui—but it’s all for entertainment. Margot drums up drama for the cameras because she knows it’s what viewers want. But the glimpses we get into her real life on the show expose her as an unwaveringly doting wife and mother. People just can’t seem to separate the two. Or, perhaps more likely, they don’t want to.
Margot’s lead attorney, in complete contrast to D.A. Stern, is a winningly handsome man who appears quite a bit younger than his counterpart—late thirties or early forties, perhaps. While D.A. Stern sports an ill-fitting dark brown suit with sleeves hanging to the middle of his hands, Margot’s attorney’s suit is a perfectly tailored navy blue with off-color pinstripes so fine it’s possible I’ve imagined them completely. He rises from the defense table slowly, buttons his jacket slowly, clasps his hands behind his back slowly, and finally approaches the jury box with great concentration. Between his finger-wave flapper-style hair, square jaw, and dramatic movements, he reads more like an actor playing an attorney than an attorney himself. His name certainly doesn’t help: Lead Defense Attorney Durrant Hammerstead.
“Margot Kitsch is a reality star,” he begins. “A fashion, beauty, and pop culture icon. A successful businesswoman. A doting mother.” He presses his bottom lip into his top one in contemplation. Then he turns to face D.A. Stern, who sits at attention at the prosecutors’ table, fidgeting with his pen between his first two fingers. The men eye each other, and I can’t help but see the contrast. If Jackson Stern is a basset hound, Durrant Hammerstead is a Great Dane.
“There are things we unquestionably agree on, the prosecution and I, one of which is that what happened to Joe Kitsch is a tragedy. What we will show you, though, through the course of this trial, is that Margot Kitsch had an alibi at the time of Joe’s death. That she had no motive to kill the father of her children. That she had no involvement in her husband’s death.
“The prosecution will tell you that Margot somehow caused Joe Kitsch to experience a fatal cardiac episode alone in their family kitchen while she was miles away with several reliable witnesses. We will show you that Margot is, along with their two children, a victim as well. That her husband’s death, while tragic, was of natural causes, with no evidence of foul play.
“Much has been made of Joe’s cause of death in the pretrial media. The idea that a seemingly healthy man in his late sixties could have died of natural causes alone in his kitchen was deemed a far too lackluster set of circumstances.”
I look over to Margot, whose face gives nothing away.
“Remember,” Durrant Hammerstead continues, “your job here as jurors is not to weigh in on what you think might have happened, or to buy into whatever stories you may have heard online or otherwise before this trial.” He shakes his head. “Your job is to decide whether my counterpart here”—he points to D.A. Stern at the prosecution table—“proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Margot Kitsch is guilty of murdering her husband of twenty-four years.”
He makes some closing remarks and heads back to his table. Margot looks to him briefly as he takes his seat, a slight upturn of approval playing at her features.
And with that, with no pageantry or grandeur, we are dropped into the middle of a war zone as untrained, unarmed civilians with nothing more than notebooks and hope.
D.A. Stern calls his first witness.