Chapter 37.
37.
Testimony (n.)
a formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law
the opportunity to be heard
M argot rises from the defense table and glides regally to the stand. Today, she wears a cream-colored skirt suit with a burnt sienna laced edge and an understated olive-colored silk top underneath. Her stick-straight brown bob is parted down the middle and pulled back in a barely there ponytail at the nape of her neck. She appears calm, confident, and ready to finally speak.
Once seated, she turns to the jury and forces eye contact, one by one, offering us each unique smiles of acknowledgment. She is sworn in before she can get to us all. I wonder if whatever might be happening inside her compares to the electrical storm in my own stomach.
I left Damon’s room last night, desperately wanting to stay, avoiding the disappointment in his eyes as I snuck out. I put myself to sleep with visions of him adorning me with various forms of affection. The feel of his hand squeezing my knee. His lips pressed to my forehead, lingering. I suppose it was my form of cute animal shows, if those animals were all in heat.
Today, Damon is striking. He’s wearing a deep purple, almost maroon button-down shirt that makes his eyes more piercing than I previously thought possible. We exchanged quick pleasantries this morning, and I did take the seat beside him on the shuttle, though we were both quiet. Nonetheless, I felt the comfort of him as I always do.
He tilts his notepad toward me on his knee. I can’t help but smile. He’s drawn a small owl on the top right corner of the sheet.
It’s an exceedingly unexpected development—that the day Margot takes the stand, it’s Damon who dominates my thoughts. When I reiterated that I should leave his room last night while I could still get the words out, he hung his head, then kissed my forehead—one long, lingering kiss—before releasing his hold of me. That forehead kiss, like so much of him, was protective.
I took a lukewarm shower when I returned to my room, hoping the blast of water would soothe the nagging want at my base. Instead, I pictured Damon behind me, his broad chest pinning me against the wet tile. My fingers slid back and forth as I envisioned his tongue making the motion. It was the fastest climax I’ve ever reached.
The courtroom buzzes with excitement. Margot on the stand is the grand finale the collective gallery has been awaiting—less, I imagine, for the sake of proving her innocence, but rather because everything she says or does on the stand today will be scrutinized by the masses as soon as it’s reported.
Durrant Hammerstead slowly rises and approaches the stand, buttoning his deep gray pin-striped suit with one hand. He rests his hands atop the rail, his face only a few inches from Margot.
“Let’s start at the beginning of your time in California,” he says after his standard pleasantries to ease his prime witness in. “What brought you here?”
Margot leans forward, and her deep, punctuated voice instantly captures my attention. She’s sat so silently in this courtroom for nearly two weeks, I’d almost forgotten her voice. “I had spent my entire life in Minnesota. I felt like I was... meant for something else. A different life. I was itching to get out. And I thought L.A. was the place to go for something more.”
“Take us back, if you will, to the beginning of your relationship with Joe once you were in California.”
Margot stares forward, taking a moment before she begins. “I was twenty-one. I met Joe during my second year in L.A. My roommate Kelly and I were eating at Don Antonio’s, our favorite Mexican food spot. Joe was seated at the table beside us at some business dinner.” She smirks to herself, flicks her eyes briefly to the ground. “Kelly and I were getting ready to leave, and the waiter told us our meal had been paid for. Joe and I closed the place down after that, drinking and talking. He made me laugh a lot. I told him he was funny. He told me he had to be, with his face.” She hints at a smile. “That was important to me, someone who could make me laugh and who could laugh at himself.”
“And how did your relationship progress after that first night?”
“He courted me pretty heavily. I’d told him that first night I missed the Polish sausage from Von Hanson’s, this small place in St. Cloud. That I couldn’t seem to find anything as good in L.A. There was a bouquet of sausages at my front door the same week. I didn’t even know how he figured out where I lived. I was sharing a tiny apartment in Westwood. It was far more phallic than he likely intended that sausage bouquet to be. That became an ongoing joke between us as well, one we retold often, how ill-advised that bouquet was. Somehow, it only added to his charm. After that, there were extravagant parties and dates, even a private jet to a beach dinner in Tulum.”
“How did you feel about all of it? About him?”
“It was overwhelming, honestly. I was young. I had barely been anywhere but St. Cloud. I had no frame of reference, so I didn’t know if this was just how men and relationships in L.A. went.”
“What about the age difference between you two? How did you feel about being courted by a man twenty years your senior?”
She makes a motion of tucking a hair behind her ear, though it’s already pulled back. “He was definitely the oldest man I’d ever considered dating.” There’s a light chuckle from the back of the room.
Margot is coming across well. She’s not antagonistic or cold, speaking calmly and openly in a way that allows us to connect with her. Then again, D.A. Stern hasn’t had his turn with her yet.
Margot continues, “But he was funny, as I said. And I felt overwhelmed when I came to L.A. He became a bit of a safe space.”
I think of Damon, avoid glancing at him.
“And when was the first time you learned of his infidelity.”
I swallow hard. Damon beside me looks over, and we make eye contact. It’s charged, a plug smashing into a wall socket.
“It was five months in.”
He courted her extravagantly, then was cheating on her almost immediately, and then ongoing for the next twenty-four years?
“What were the circumstances that first time?”
“She was a model. I found that very, I don’t know, insulting. The idea of being cheated on by my forty-two-year-old boyfriend of five months with an L.A. runway model. A text came up on his phone while he was in the shower. A... picture. It turned out he had a thing for collecting pictures.” She speaks with certainty, a factual retelling of events she is equally sentimental about and detached from.
“What was Joe like when you confronted him?”
She exhales a hard breath. “Glib. He downplayed it, told me it was nothing.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Confused. But also, it sort of was what it was. I accepted it as part of my life with someone like him.”
I venture a quick sweep over the jury. Is Margot doing enough to win them over? Is she doing enough to win me over? Coming into the trial, there was no need. I was already on her side. But I can’t unlearn all the damning things that have come out since then. How could these things not make me question her?
“And how many more times did this happen throughout your time with Joe? Where you found out about other women in his life?”
“There were fourteen that I know of.”
A light gasp echoes from the far corner of the courtroom.
“This is why I’d choose the bear,” juror number twelve, Kate, mumbles behind me.
How many affairs did my father have? There were six I knew of, though I’m positive there were more. He never remarried after my mom, which I took as a selfless act on his part.
“What number was Tenley?” he asks, and I wonder why this matters.
“Number twelve, I believe.”
Durrant Hammerstead hangs his head as if in mourning. Then, “On the topic of Tenley, I have to ask, since the prosecution seems quite fixated on it,” he says almost apologetically. “Margot, do you know anything about the tarantulas in her backyard?”
Margot huffs. “Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even dignify that with a response.”
“Yes, well, here you must,” he says with a broad smile in an attempt to minimize his scold. Margot assures us she does not know anything about tarantulas generally nor about the ones specifically from Tenley’s backyard, and I’m growing frustrated with Durrant Hammerstead and his line of questioning. But then, finally, I see where he is going.
“In any of those instances of Joe’s affairs, did anything ever grow... concerning? More concerning than just the idea of your husband’s potential indiscretions?”
I hold my breath, anticipating something headline-inducing.
“Yes. There are three I can think of. The first was two years into our marriage. She was a fitness influencer,” Margot says with a flippant eye roll. I wince, knowing how hard Margot has been working throughout this trial to come across as kind, poised, humane. Sure, she can be crass and even a bit bullish on the show, but it makes her unapologetically successful. And the unequivocal star of the franchise. How easily all her hard work could be undone with the slightest lapse of composure here, now. Margot continues, “I came home from a lunch to find her scrawling all kinds of foul words across the windows of our home with red paint.” Margot gives an impassioned shudder.
“That must have been awful.”
“It was. When she saw me, she just walked off casually down the driveway. She only stopped to tell me, ‘I could have him.’ ”
“Did you or Joe ever press charges?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Durrant Hammerstead questions.
“Because that would have made the incident public. We valued discretion.”
“And what were the other two situations?”
“The next was when I was pregnant with Emblem. This particular woman he met in his cycling club. She emailed saying she had been sleeping with Joe for several months and that he deserved to die for what he did.”
The ever-waiting murmur recurs from the gallery.
“What is it she claimed he did that he deserved to die for?”
Margot shakes her head. “She never said.”
Durrant Hammerstead allows a quiet moment to lapse so we can sit with this news, and I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I wonder if that email will be an exhibit me and the other jurors will be able to examine during deliberations. I imagine it will be.
“Did you ever follow up?” he asks eventually.
“No. I hardly saw the point of grabbing lunch or drinks with a woman who wished my husband dead.”
Margot goes on to explain the third woman was a Whole Foods sommelier who showed up at her kids’ school during pickup, claiming Joe had been “with her” for several months.
I had come to terms with Joe as a cheater after Tenley Storms’s testimony, but hearing the details of multiple affairs from Margot’s point of view... I don’t know how she was able to tolerate it. I attempt to swallow down the angry mound in my throat as memories of my father flood my mind.
“So, clearly, there’s a slew of women over the years who have had issues with Joe Kitsch, who have felt scorned by him.”
Judge Gillespy agrees with an objection from D.A. Stern.
I sense Damon’s movement before it begins, and the sheer notion of the innocuous thing he’s about to do causes a sharp zap between my legs. He leans into me as he marks a tally in my notebook. He does it all so achingly slow and deliberate he might as well be running his fingers along my naked body.
Everything in me is heightened after last night, after these past twelve days. Too heightened. And Damon’s slightest touch is absolutely the crack that can burst the whole dam.
I clear my throat, shift in my seat.
Durrant Hammerstead continues. He pulls at the bottom edges of his suit jacket, though it’s already straight and wrinkle-free. “After any of these fourteen affairs, did you ever attempt to seriously injure your husband?”
Margot looks to the jury and sets her sights on either me or Damon, I’m not quite sure. “No,” she says.
Then why would she after the last one? I allow myself to go where Durrant Hammerstead leads us.
The courtroom is silent as Margot rubs her lips together, forward and back. The gallery seems to hang on her next words while she concentrates intently on the jury, her eyes roaming purposely among us. Then, in the attentive silence, she catches a tear with her forefinger before it can fall.
The thought I have next is one I can’t shake. Margot can cry on command. It’s a party trick of sorts, which she has demonstrated on the show. The most recent example I can recall was when Alizay’s seven-year-old daughter, Besos, gifted Margot a handmade Christmas ornament of glitter and clay, and Margot feigned touched tears.
I stare at Margot.
Fourteen affairs. A slew of scorned lovers. His ownership of her business.
I could even understand why she might want to burn it all down.
A foreign feeling overtakes me as I evaluate Margot on the stand. I wish I could hug my mom right now. Tell her that I, perhaps for the first time, understand why after all of it she might want a do-over family.
“Margot,” Durrant Hammerstead says, his tone clipped, indicating a change in direction. “Much has been made by the prosecution about your disappearance at sixteen, about where you were and if it significantly impacted you. Your father alluded to the fact that your estrangement from your family came directly after. Can we talk about that?”
I press the tip of my pen to the pad, ready to transcribe every word. Of all the things that have come out in this trial about Margot and Joe and their lives, this is the thing that has nagged at me most.
I need to know that whatever happened in her teenage years didn’t wholly determine who she would become.