Chapter 8.
8.
Adjournment (n.)
the temporary suspension of proceedings until the next scheduled session
when jurors come to life
W e eat dinner at the hotel, in the same narrow dining area off the lobby where we grabbed breakfast. The evening of the first day of the trial, dinner includes clearly once-canned green beans, liquid-y mashed potatoes, powdery dinner rolls, and two mystery meat options. I opt for three dinner rolls.
I sit down next to Tamra at one of the five round tables. Today, she wears a brown-and-white-spotted muumuu that reminds me of a cow, though, somehow, it’s incredibly flattering on her.
“Hi,” I say, setting my plate beside her, feeling a bit like it’s the first day of school.
She nods politely, and we exchange form introductions before she returns to circling her spoon in her puddle of mashed potatoes. “My cousin was on a jury once. They got Outback Steakhouse,” she muses, staring at her plate.
“Lucky them,” I say, placing the roll I’d been holding back on my plate, opting to stare at it rather than eat.
I know I should be making small talk, building relationships with the other jurors, but I can’t stop mulling over today’s revelations in court.
Tenley met Joe on camera at a dinner during her first week of filming in season three, a birthday celebration for Meredith, another cast member. A few weeks later, he attended her book signing at the Ripped Bodice in Culver City while Margot took their kids to see Wicked in New York.
Tenley told us of how she and Joe began sharing phone calls. How he told her his marriage was “ornamental,” which I found a curious description. How Margot learned of the affair two months in because of that naked selfie with her face cut out. How, on cross-examination, Durrant Hammerstead got Tenley to admit she continued the affair for ten more months after Margot found out. How, after confronting her, Margot never brought it up again, despite four more seasons and countless events and hours filming together. That Joe’s reaction to Tenley when Margot learned of the affair was simply telling her, “Margot and I have an understanding.”
The thrown wineglass doesn’t seem to indicate an understanding.
Tenley then told us of how she eventually met the man who would become her now husband and immediately cut Joe out. That was nearly a year before he died.
Occasional bad behavior does not make Margot a murderer. But I know how these things go. Margot is likely to be judged more harshly for her lack of decorum at finding out about Joe’s affair than Joe will be for the actual affair. I just hope the other jurors will give her the allowance to be human while considering her fate.
As her time on the stand wound down, Tenley was sure to take the opportunity to plug her book. “It’s called My Real House Life . It tells of my life with my ex Harry, all the sordid details,” she crowed, eyes circling the gallery. I picture the cover of her book as I did when she made the statement, which I’ve seen splattered across social media—hot pink with a close-up of her smiling face taking up most of the area, her blond curls wrapping around its edges.
I stare at the dinner roll on my plate as my thoughts shift to Joe, of the husband I had thought he was, of the love story I had thought he and Margot shared—all of it shattered with the first witness on the first day.
“Hold me closer, Tony Danza,” I mutter to myself on an exhale.
“What was that?” Tamra asks, leaning closer.
“Oh,” I say, only now realizing I spoke the words aloud. “It’s just this silly thing I’ve done since I was a kid. If I’m nervous or in a bad mood, I say incorrect song lyrics. It’s just this thing that somehow makes me feel better.”
Tamra takes a long blink and then smiles kindly. “Hold me closer, tiny dancer . Elton John. I get it,” she says with an accepting nod, and I appreciate that she doesn’t seem to be judging my quirk.
Damon and the baby-faced one make their way to our table, Damon taking the seat beside me. Despite his niceties today and attempts to break the tension, my first instinct is still to flee, but I know I can’t do that in front of the other jurors. I have yet to figure out how I’m meant to act when it comes to him or why he keeps materializing beside me.
“This food is shit,” the young adult muses, though his plate is heaping. Tamra winces, seemingly at his choice of language. “I’m Cam,” he says, eyes flicking between Tamra and me in a bare-bones introduction.
“Nice to meet you, Cam,” Tamra says in what I deem an innate need for politeness.
“Sydney, hi,” I offer.
“How ’bout that Tenley Storms today?” Cam leans in and grins at Damon like they’re old buddies evaluating the “talent” at a bar over beers and a bowl of dirty nuts. Damon gives him a slight lift of the chin in a gesture I find indecipherable.
“We are not allowed to talk about the trial,” Tamra gently scolds. “Not until deliberations.”
“I’m not asking if you think Margot Kitsch offed her husband. I’m simply referencing something that happened today. How are we supposed to sit in the same room all day, listen to the same information, and then be expected not to talk about it?” Cam says, a forkful of green beans positioned in front of his mouth.
We all exchange glances. He’s got a point. But I also need to stay in Judge Gillespy’s good graces.
“Tamra’s right,” I say. “No trial talk.”
She smiles at me with gentle appreciation, then grimaces at her plate again.
“Okay, okay. How ’bout a game then? To get to know one another? We’ve got so much time to kill.”
“Poor choice of words,” Tamra mutters to her green beans.
I look around the room at the other tables. Our fellow jurors are conversing lightly, seem to be exchanging general pleasantries, but mainly keeping to themselves.
We have Cam.
“Like an icebreaker? What is this, summer camp?” Damon says, crossing his arms, and his biceps grow. I take in the words etched along his left wrist: I’LL TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT WHEN I SEE YOU AGAIN . He’s mapped a world on his body since I last saw him.
“It’s pretty much summer camp, isn’t it? Except at this summer camp, instead of playing dodgeball or color wars, we have to sit and listen all day.” Cam rips a roll in half and shoves one side into his mouth. “How ’bout two truths and a lie? Could be fun,” he says, his words muffled through the bite.
“Is the fun here in the room with us?” Damon asks dryly.
I close my eyes while Tamra exhales forcibly beside me.
“But wait, you two already know each other, right?” Cam says, pointing at me, then Damon, undeterred. My hope that the other jurors (and the judge and attorneys) would forget this detail once the trial began is squashed.
Damon shakes his head dismissively. “Ten years ago. We don’t know each other anymore.”
Despite his words being true, and almost exactly what I conveyed to Judge Gillespy myself, they somehow sting. I consider if he is downplaying our history to support the judge’s decision to keep us on the jury or if he’s still as callous as he once was. Regardless, we’re now committed on all fronts to minimizing our past. It should be fine. We are, after all, residuals of the don’t-talk-about-it generation.
“I’ll go first,” Cam says, clearly not reading the lack of enthusiasm from the table. “I have forty-six tattoos, I’m thirty-two, and I once shattered my pelvis falling off a cliff at the Grand Canyon while trying to get the perfect selfie.”
We all stare silently, unblinking, across the table at Cam. It’s as though he’s rehearsed for this moment.
“I find all three of these things to be lies,” Tamra says finally.
I nod in agreement.
“Nope, two are true.”
“There’s no way you have forty-six tattoos,” Damon says, looking around at the exposed bare skin of his ankles, wrists, neck, and face.
Cam shakes his head. “There are indeed forty-six. Strategically placed.” I can tell Cam wants us to give him more—ask to see some of his ink, balk at the impressiveness of forty-six tattoos and his inevitable explanations for the meanings of each. We don’t.
“You’re not thirty-two,” I say.
Cam points at me and smiles. “Correct. Almost twenty-one,” he says.
“More tattoos than years on the planet,” Tamra muses.
I wonder what Damon thinks, as I glance at his forearms covered in their own ink, about him and Cam sharing this common interest.
Damon leans into me and whispers, “Do you get the sense Cam is the online sugar-free gummy bear reviewer?”
I look up at him, brows pressed together.
“Do you not know the sugar-free gummy bear reviews on Amazon?” he declares.
I shake my head.
“I insist this be the first thing you look up when we get our electronics back.” He looks down at me with a ruminant stare. His face is strict, jaw firm, but his words are playful. When I don’t speak, he adds, “They’re comedic gold.”
I continue to stare at him, wondering what his angle is here. Does he think I will just ease into joking with him like old friends?
“Okay, you go,” Cam says, pointing to Tamra.
“Alright,” she says, leaning forward, her face contemplative. “I have six grandchildren.” She pauses, looking up at the fluorescent light above us. “I’ve been married four times, and I once had a one-night stand with Bob Dylan after his concert in Nashville in ’88.”
I raise an eyebrow as I observe Tamra. That last one is highly specific.
“Who’s Bob Dylan?” Cam asks, and Tamra and I give him a collective eye roll as Damon hangs his head and shakes it.
“You haven’t been married four times,” Damon says.
She nods. “Been married thirty-four years to my Charles.”
I’m rather impressed with Tamra, both for the marriage and Bob Dylan.
Damon points at me before I can ask Tamra any follow-up questions. “You’re up,” he says, a mild grin lining his mouth—one that seems to feed off my discomfort. I’ve seen that exact stingy smirk so many times before it’s as though we’re preteens again.
“Okay, fine,” I say, sure to showcase a lack of enthusiasm for this game that rivals Gray Man’s enthusiasm for being here generally.
I suddenly feel a bit hot. I don’t care for the attention to be on me, especially regarding personal details. At work, I can command a room with confidence. But when you’re the daughter of the town philanderer, you work mightily to draw no personal attention. And now, all three sets of eyes descend on me expectantly.