Chapter 13.
13.
Discovery (n.)
formal process of exchanging information between parties about witnesses and evidence to be presented at trial
all the things I never knew
“ W hat are you doing here?” I ask as the chocolate and peanut butter disintegrate in my mouth. I collect the waxy wrapper and shove it in my pocket to ensure no evidence of us having been here. We’ll have to solve for the beer cans later, too.
“I told you, I took the key from the maid’s cart.”
“No, what are you doing here ? On this jury.”
He lifts up from the table and shoves his hands in his front pants pockets again, my attention drawn to his joggers once more. There’s something about the fit of them. They’re not tight, not loose, either. Comfortably snug, perhaps. I swallow.
“I got called for jury duty, didn’t think much of it. But shit, who knew it would be so intense.” He takes another sip of his beer.
“You feel it, too,” I say, though it’s more of a statement than a question. I turn and look out the sliding doors, half-heartedly watching a Jamba employee heave three trash bags into the alley dumpster.
The reality is I was wholly naive thinking being a juror on this case would be thrilling. Margot Kitsch is fascinating, yes, but it’s unnerving more than anything being fed the closed-door particulars of her marriage, not to mention the impending details of the abrupt end of Joe’s life. It was far less real on my couch with Mel—an extension of the show’s storylines, social media creating a layer of anonymity and entertainment to it all. It was all so much better when I knew just enough, when my views didn’t have any real bearing on someone’s life.
I take another sip, but it does nothing to lessen the stress of the stakes. I find Damon’s eyes on me. “What?” I ask.
He shakes his head once. “Nothing.”
“You’re a man of few words.”
“I’ve been called a closed book.”
“More like the secret padlocked diary of a twelve-year-old girl.”
His eyes and jaw constrict. “You didn’t have a diary when you were twelve.”
I take a step toward him. “And you didn’t used to be this way,” I say.
“What way?”
“So quiet.” I think about how else to describe him. “Internal.”
He squints. “How did I used to be?”
I cross my arms as I evaluate him. “More... happy,” I say, eventually settling on a word that still doesn’t feel quite right.
His jaw ticks. “Yeah, well, ten years is a long time.”
I continue to watch him, wondering if I prefer this version of him or the old one. “So, this new you is quiet and adventuresome and writes punny roadway signs.”
His blue-green eyes narrow. “You’re making a list?”
“Purely for the sake of the trial. I should know what I’ll be dealing with when deliberations begin.”
We both take a sip, eyeing each other as we do. His gaze burns my skin.
Finally he relents, tilts his head back, and finishes the can. “I have a list, too,” he says, setting down the empty can and taking a step toward me. “About you.”
“Really?” I raise my eyebrows, imploring him to go on.
“An Authentic Moms superfan,” he begins. I open my mouth to object, but he continues before I can. “Rule follower, or so I thought.”
This makes me smile, the idea of his perception changing in such a short time. He goes quiet, staring at me, his eyes focused on me with an intensity that makes my stomach twist. I look away first, out the window at the remnants of the colorless sunset. “What else is on the list?” I ask, playing with the tab of my beer can with my thumb and index finger.
“Beer drinker,” he says. I watch as he returns to the mini-fridge and pulls out the two remaining Natural Ice cans. He walks over and hands me another. I accept, though the one in my hand is still half full.
“This list makes me sound...” I trail off, wondering how much of this register was built from before versus now. If he has also found differences in me that he’s attempting to reconcile.
“Fascinating?” he offers, though I can’t tell if he is serious or teasing. His face never gives him away, always tidy with barely any expression. I find myself laser-focused on him when he speaks or when I’m looking for some kind of reaction, watching for a twitch of his chin or flex of that jaw muscle that curves around the bone for insight into his thoughts. They rarely offer much.
“Is that the whole list? About me?” I ask.
“No,” he says, though he doesn’t continue. He opens the new beer, takes a long sip, knowing I’m watching and waiting. I eye his throat as he drinks, regard his Adam’s apple as it bobs.
“Are you really not going to tell me what else is on it?”
His mouth does that playful, barely there frown thing, and I bite at the inside of my cheek. This is the first time we’ve been alone—really alone—since the trial began. I want to bombard him with feelings and questions about the past. Say all the things I’ve kept bottled up for ten years. Ask him why . I’m annoyed that I haven’t already. But I’m equally afraid to broach the subject, fearful I’ll show him (and myself) just how much I am still consumed—and hurt—by it all.
As if reading my mind, he speaks into the silence the words I’ve waited ten years to hear. “I am sorry, Syd.”
I attempt to laugh, act as though I don’t know what he’s apologizing for. But I know exactly what he means both because of the seriousness of his demeanor and some intuitive understanding that this is the time. “For what?” I say through an awkward chuckle.
“For back then.”
I swallow a cough, causing my chest to ache.
“That I didn’t handle it all better,” he goes on. “That I didn’t stay in touch.” His eyes are sulky and narrowed, aged from a moment ago. It looks as though he has more to say, but I don’t allow it.
“Please,” I say dismissively. “We were kids. It was ten years ago.” I swipe my hand in the air for good measure. I’ve been waiting for this moment—this conversation. But now that it’s begun, I know I’m not ready. My self-preservation kicks in, willing me to shield myself from really going there with him.
“Yeah, but—”
Not ready to face it, not ready to alienate him with my upset, I make a sharp turn. “She’s not a villain, you know.” I press the tab of my can back and forth until it snaps off. I set it on the table. “Margot.”
He leans against the table again, elbows back with his hands bracing the corners. He lifts his right hand and rubs at the back of his neck. He seems to be contemplating whether to allow my subject change or to press. Finally, he says, “No one is the villain of their own story.”
His words singe my esophagus. My heart burns.
Needing to look away, I walk over to the sliding door and focus on the alleyway. “There’s this one episode of Authentic Moms , season four I think, when Margot and Joe were eating with their kids at Neptune’s Net,” I say, then continue, largely in avoidance of the alternative conversation about us . “It was funny because picture Margot— this Margot”—I turn to face him and reference with my hand in the general direction of the courthouse—“sitting on an outdoor bench just a few feet away from the PCH, with paper baskets of fried shrimp and fish and chips next to a table of bikers.”
He huffs, and the corners of his mouth bend upward, ever so slightly, in acknowledgment. I appreciate his willingness to allow me to turn the discussion.
Until that point in the show, I had only ever seen Margot consume arugula salads and lemon ginger kombucha, with the occasional emotionally induced double cheeseburger. “Anyway, they’re sitting there, and Dover runs off to watch the water from the patio rail. Emblem was just a baby. And Margot tells Joe she’s had a miscarriage.” I stop, wanting to gauge his reaction. Damon nods, losing the tension along his eyebrow ridge in a flash of empathy. Just a flash, gone as quickly as it came.
It’s not hard to imagine what he thinks—or, at least, what he thought before this case. That Authentic Moms is a trivial show about rich, apathetic housewives living lives of privilege who drum up drama with one another because they’re bored with their lack of responsibility and purpose. And perhaps there is some truth to that. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned watching, it’s that these women, though wealthy and glamorous, they deal with it—life and all its tithings.
“They’d been trying for a while, since just after Emblem was born. Thankfully she wasn’t too far along, ten weeks I think, though I doubt that made it any easier. She fought back tears, stealing glances at the kids. And do you know what Joe’s reaction was?”
Damon shakes his head. Once.
I swallow. I know I shouldn’t be telling him this. It’s a clear violation of jury rules. It could color his—our—interpretations of the case. But I want him to know. I want him to understand Margot as more than a character built for entertainment, more than the “cold” woman he sees in the courtroom.
I need him to be on the same side of something as me this time.
“He reached across the table, placed his hand on top of hers, and said, ‘It’s not your fault.’ ”
Damon presses his eyebrows together again, listening.
I shake my head lightly. “It wasn’t pointed or derogatory. He meant it. And he said it because he knows her. Knew her,” I correct. “And he knew she would blame herself. His first thought was not only of the baby they just lost. It was also for his wife.”
I stand quietly, pressing my thumbnail into my palm and then releasing, watching the color rush back to the spot of impact. I think he knows what I’ve lost in the courtroom a few days into the trial. The picture-perfect family I invested so much of my time into over the last seven years, shattered with one sharp pull of the curtain. It may not seem so bad to someone else, but he knows why. That after living the breakdown of my own family, I needed the love story I’ve invested so much time into to be real.
He breaks our connection first, stares out the sliding glass doors with the vacancy in his eyes that seems to come in tense moments. I watch him closely, and it’s clear he’s gone somewhere else entirely. My pulse accelerates, though I’m unsure why.
“Kara died,” he says. His words are delivered so flatly that it takes me a few seconds to register them. When I do, my chest is struck windless and nausea invades from my gut to my throat.
“What?” is all I can seem to manage in return. I’m certain I haven’t heard him right.
He’s silent for a long while, and I don’t know what to do. Kara was barely seven years old when I last saw her.
I picture Kara sitting outside Damon’s bedroom door, listening to our conversations, as she did so often. It was hard to get mad when we’d see her little feet pressed up against the space at the bottom of the door. She was our constant third wheel, always angling to be a part of whatever we had going on.
“It was a year after we moved,” he says, and at once I shut my eyes, fighting back incensed tears.
She was eight .
I think of Gen, barely five months old, and my animosity toward that faultless micro-human, my sister , brings me a flash of fierce shame. “I can’t believe it,” I say, my voice cracking, and at first, I really can’t. How could I have not found out about this? How did no one tell me? But, after they moved, I suppose nothing and no one really connected us anymore. I shut down all social media, and my whole world became intentionally only what was right in front of me. To this day, I have burner accounts, and only for the sheer purpose of following AMOM cast members and various pop culture accounts.
If only I had googled him or his family one of those many times I ached to.
He runs his hand down his face. “Turns out she had a heart condition nobody knew about.”
I wince.
“People always seem so interested in how . More than anything, more than wanting to know about her, about who she was, they want to know how it happened. Morbid curiosity, I suppose.” He rubs at his right earlobe absentmindedly, and I note its blazing red tip. “But you... you knew her.”
I try to swallow down the new wave of nausea flooding my throat.
I’ve wondered about her over the years, of course. Every January thirtieth, on her birthday, I’d acknowledge her new age and wonder how she might be celebrating. I’d imagined her looking more and more like Damon.
Damon was sixteen when his family left, but Kara was just seven. I’m ashamed to admit she was an afterthought during it all. Had I only known what was going to happen... maybe I would have done something differently. Tried harder to stay in touch, with her at least. The nausea in my belly and throat swells, as I think of the last ten years. I cursed Damon, angry at him for leaving, for never tracking me down or making any attempts at reconciliation. I assumed it was because he never cared about me like I did him. I believed he couldn’t get over what had happened between our parents. I never imagined he was dealing with another, far more significant tragedy.
His palm moves to the back of his neck. “When she died, I wanted to call you.” His voice is deeper than just a moment ago, granular. “I needed to hear your voice to help me deal with it. I missed my friend, the person I knew would understand. I wanted you .”
Without hesitation or thought, I make my way over to him and throw my arms around his neck, press my body into his. I squeeze. I did know her. I know him. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes back, pressing my face into his neck, and my entire body is enveloped by his. He is warm. So warm. He exhales so forcefully as we embrace that it sounds like he’s been holding his breath for ten years. His hand cups the back of my head. In our hold, it is sadness and comfort that surges between us. Since the start of the trial, he has fractured my shell one memory at a time. This feels like the irrevocable shatter.
I have missed him. So, so much. This notion is something that, just three days ago, I never would have been willing to admit to anyone, let alone myself. But it is a fact I can no longer refute.
I’m not exactly sure how long we stay this way, wrapped together. It is a moment of respite. The trial, Kara, the last ten years—all of it goes on pause as we hold each other. When we finally release, he pulls out a chair from the dining table and sits. I follow suit.
I watch Damon, the ache in my chest so expansive I feel as though I may pass out from the pressure.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know. I would have...” I don’t know how to finish the sentence or the thought. What would I have done? Would I have gone to him? Would I have shown up at his door, hoping all the embarrassment, disappointment, and disgust would dissipate, overtaken by the loss? In truth, I probably would have stayed away, out of fear I’d make things worse.
And because I still don’t have the right words, I move my hand across the table and press it atop his. He looks at my hand, then into my eyes, his own eyes expansive and filled with so much I can’t decipher. But now I get it. It is a sadness I’ve noticed in him since we’ve come back together. One he can mask everywhere except his eyes.
I’ve held his hand before. I held it on the bus back to school from a field trip to the Bakersfield College planetarium in the sixth grade when our bus nearly rear-ended a semi and skidded into a ditch on the 178. I held it when he led me blindfolded into his backyard on my fifteenth birthday to a surprise sushi picnic he’d set up for me and my few close friends, who, if we’re being honest, were mostly his. But this is the hand of a man—thicker, rougher—with ten years of life I know nothing about. It’s déjà vu and a brand-new experience rolled into one massive weight in my gut.
Then he says the thing that causes a tremble across the length of my body. “We all just do the best we can with the circumstances we’re given.”
Tears sting at my eyes, and I try desperately to push them back. I don’t want my grief to upset him.
I think of my parents. How my mom was quick to move on and my dad seemed to always be counting the hours until his next flight to somewhere that wasn’t with me. How hard I’ve worked to be a daughter they could be proud of, to seemingly no avail. But Damon’s tragedy runs so much deeper and wider than my repetitive fractures. I realize trauma is not a competition, but his—his is as agonizing as they come.
“Seeing you again, this trial, it brings it all up again. Maybe it’s the constant talk of the end of someone’s life. I think about Kara a lot, about all the ways she could have been saved had we all been paying more attention...” I expect him to hang his head, but instead he looks at me square on. “How we’re all just one decision away from a completely different life. How quickly it can all just... end.”
We stare at each other, and I can’t help the heat on my skin, the thump of my heart. I’ve gotten the slightest bits of him in these past few days, most of which have come in this suite, and I have the overwhelming desire to crack what’s left of his eggshell against the pan, letting his remaining gooey parts ooze out. I’m anxious, knowing that his shell will likely regenerate again, quickly.
One decision.
It’s impossible to hold the line with him.
I look down at my hand, still wrapped around his, and I squeeze. Our eyes lock, and his are both a mirror and a window, where I see so much— too much—all flashing through him like the still frames of his heart. Anger. Sadness. Regret. Something else, too. Something like... hope.
Heat surges between us, a scalding current through our sorrowed but powerful touch.
One decision.
The light ting of the elevator comes from the other end of the hallway, and we both sharpen, the intrusion of sound breaking the connection between us. We listen as a barreling noise begins and grows louder.
It sounds like the maid’s cart. And it sounds like it’s heading straight for us.