A Thousand Doors

by J. T. Ellison

  And where was Mike, you might ask?

  Taking one of his patented twenty-minute morning showers. That these had survived the arrival of both of our children should’ve been another sign. While my hair went unwashed for days, his was always perfectly arranged. His morning workouts survived, too—thirty-minute runs on the same trajectory around our neighborhood, rain or sun or snow. Sometimes, when the kids were three and one, and the smell of their poopy diapers seem to cling to the inside of my nose, I used to wish he would die on one of those runs. Get hit by a car or have one of those widow-maker heart attacks. Then the boys got older, and my hygiene improved, and we moved on, reconnected, starting having regular sex again.

  Not enough sex, I guess. That’s why people have affairs, right?

  I was standing in the middle of chaos thinking: I’m prettier than her, I’m prettier than her, and then Jake threw something and Keira walked in on her phone, not even apologizing, and I wasn’t very nice about it. I may have lost my shit, in fact. I may have raised my voice and spoken through gritted teeth. And this mild girl who’s worked for me for three years and has always been treated kindly (assuming she doesn’t take the occasional “I hate you!” from a three-year-old personally) put her hands on her hips and threw back her head as if she’d been planning it all along and said, “I quit.”

  The living room became awfully quiet. Sometimes even unruly kids know when to shut it. They turned and looked at me, waiting for my reaction.

  Am I so awful, I thought, that even my own children expect me to explode at something that’s perfectly reasonable to lose it at? Is this why Mike cheated on me? Did I do this?

  I tried to count to three in my head, but I only made it to two before I turned away and yelled, “Mike!”

  ————

  She doesn’t look like me, and yet she does. Mike. Mikhala. It’s like she has my face if I’d made different choices in my life—worse choices, perhaps, though maybe not after this morning.

  I hate myself for thinking about this, even for one minute.

  I hate Mike. My Mike. Soon-to-be-ex-husband Mike.

  And yet I needed him this morning to wrangle the children and let me escape out the door because I can’t be late for court. I’ve never cancelled a court date, never not made it on time, and I can’t start now. You see, Your Honor, there was this text… No. No.

  Oh, Mike, why couldn’t you have said no?

  ————

  I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet, but I am sure of one thing.

  I’ll get away with it. I’m not going to prison for him or for her or for anyone.

  When a wife is killed, the husband is always the first suspect. But when the opposite happens? There are so many other possible explanations.

  Crossed business deals and jealous lovers and… Why do police think that only men have the passion to carry through with something when their life is crossed? Why can’t we have the passion for it, too? Or is this all some TV-made-up myth? The police probably suspect wives, too, especially when there’s an affair involved.

  I need to think like a cop.

  ————

  Our courthouse is a dingy affair. The carpet is from the seventies, and I start coughing and sneezing as soon as I walk in the building. It’s a “sick” building—asbestos, vermiculite? I’ve blocked out the details—and a few years ago the clerks brought a class action lawsuit against the county that was settled out of court.

  My cell rings right after I get out of security.

  It’s Mike.

  “Yes?”

  “What is up with you this morning, Gracie?”

  I feel my face flush. Grace is my middle name; Gracie is Mike’s nickname for me. Only, he hasn’t called me that for months, I now realize. I should’ve realized. I should’ve known. Oh God. Fuck you, Mike. Fuck you for turning me into a scorned woman in the time it took me to drive to work.

  “You were there, you saw what was going on.”

  “You mean the nanny?”

  I close my eyes. His voice in the phone sounds echoey, a bad connection. “Yes, the nanny. And our children, and…you know I have a big trial today.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  Now I want to throw the phone against a wall. How am I going to do this? There is no standard operating procedure for finding out your husband’s cheating on you. Or maybe there is. Maybe I should pack up all his stuff and put it on the lawn and light it on fire. The blaze would feel like a victory.

  Only, I won’t get away with killing him if I do that, and the children will see.

  The children. Fuck.

  “You weren’t listening. Again.”

  “You’re right, I should listen more. But I’m worried about you, Gracie. I know you get stressed, but this seems like… something else.”

  He’s fishing. Goddamn him, he’s fishing. He knows me. He knows I get stressed, but not this stressed. And he’s on the watch, careful, worried about being found out. The first thing he probably did this morning was check his phone, his texts… but I deleted all the conversations I had with Mike last night. I deleted the whole thread. Did he sigh in relief when he saw there was nothing? Will she reference our conversation in their next?

  I can’t worry about that right now.

  “It’s just this case. I have to nail it.”

  “You will.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, G. I mean it. You are…amazing.”

  I open my eyes. My co-counsel, Daniel, is standing in front of me, smiling but also looking concerned. I feel tears spring to my eyes, but I can’t release them. Daniel is a shark, and a crying female lawyer is the chum in the water he’s been waiting for.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “I will.”

  I end the call and slip my phone into my purse. I take a deep breath and force myself to smile at Daniel.

  “Everything all right at home?” he asks.

  Daniel is thirty-four, ambitious, and single. He never has to leave early to pick a kid up or go to a soccer game. He can sleep at the office if he needs to. Sometimes, I think he sleeps at the office when he doesn’t need to, just to drive that point home.

  “Of course.”

  “Good, but if you need…”

  “I got it. Have you seen Davidson?”

  “I sent him upstairs.”

  “Great.”

  “You ready?”

  “I’m always ready.”

  ————

  Davidson vs. News Association is a rare civil case that has attracted a lot of media attention. Davidson is that Davidson, the nightly face of the nightly news, right up until he was accused of plagiarism, his passionate weekly editorials matched up in a devastating YouTube video with famous words delivered by Cronkite. He was dismissed, but he didn’t go quietly. He was the first African-American to host a national nightly broadcast, and he’d endured years of discrimination to get there. He’d screwed up—he admitted that, but not with intention. And the company hadn’t given him a chance to redeem himself. Others who committed similar crimes, that guy who claimed he was in a gunfight when he wasn’t, that other guy who slept with every junior staffer for years—they’d all been given second chances. Yanked from the nightly news, but allowed to atone in the morning, or worse, midday, until people forgot and they could come back from hiatus.

  He’d come to see me—not one of the senior partners, but me—because we had kids the same age who played in the same kindergym class on the weekends. He was an involved dad; he didn’t have to be into work until late, he had the weekends off.

  We’d struck up a friendship of sorts, and I’d appeared on his program a few times—a legal talking head there to discuss some case in the news. When he’d been faced with bringing a lawsuit, he’d rea
ched out. I’d been flattered and scared, knowing my staid bosses wouldn’t want to rock the boat. I’d argued to the management committee why we should take the case, and they’d agreed. They’d also made it clear that if I messed it up, that was going to be on me.

  Daniel and I take the elevator to the second floor. Darnell is waiting for us outside the courtroom, in a clear standoff with the press. They advance toward me like a swarm with their microphones, and I give my patented We’re glad to finally be at this stage and look forward to righting this injustice. I’m boring and won’t be prodded, and so they leave me alone after a moment.

  I lead Darnell into an interview room—smaller rooms that are there for attorneys to speak to their clients out of earshot. We sit across from one other. Darnell’s wearing a well-cut dark blue suit and a red tie—a conservative uniform, a signal to the court that he’s taking this very seriously and that he belongs to the institutions he hopes will protect him.

  “Did you sleep?” I ask.

  “Some. You?”

  “Some.”

  He smiles. “I had one of those dreams…an anxiety dream, I’d guess you’d call it. I’d signed up for a class I’d forgotten.”

  “Ah,” I say. “That dream. I know it well.”

  “It’s like a kind of shared consciousness,” Daniel says. “Everyone dreaming the same thing.”

  I shoot him a look. We’ve spoken about this. These moments before court begins are for me to bond one last time with the client. To transfer my confidence before the ups and downs and the trial begin to take their toll. He looks away, chastened.

  “So, today we pick a jury. Tomorrow, opening arguments.”

  “And we want a mixed jury, right? People with open minds.”

  That had been our strategy. That we would use our challenges and other techniques to weed out the closet racists and get down to a group of men and women—preferably women—who would see this case for what it was.

  “I’ve had a thought about that,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “I think we should take them as they come.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to use any challenges.”

  Darnell frowns. He’s a meticulous and well-thought-out man, and this new plan of mine is anything but.

  “I don’t follow.”

  I lean forward. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, something I’ve always suspected but pretty much know for sure now.”

  “Yes?”

  “Anyone who says they can tell what someone is thinking is a liar.”

  “But…”

  I push the thoughts of Mike and Mike from my mind. “I really think this is the way to go. We need to think outside the box here.”

  Darnell leans back in his chair and strokes his chin. I can feel Daniel vibrating behind me. Whether it’s with excitement at my idea or glee at the thought that I’m screwing myself for sure, it’s hard to tell.

  “Can I wait to see who the potential jurors are?”

  “Sure, that seems like a fair compromise.”

  He smiles. “I need to win this.”

  “I know.”

  We stand and leave the room. The journalists are still there, and they look at me expectantly. I shake my head and they walk away, defeated.

  I know the feeling.

  ————

  Never have you seen a group of people so desperate to get out of something than jury selection. It’s pathetic, honestly, the excuses people come up with. The elderly parents who suddenly need care, the sick uncle, the work project that cannot be postponed. And yet, if they were sitting where Darnell is, they’d be desperate for people just like them to be on their jury. It was a great disappointment in my life to learn that lawyers can’t sit on juries. Apparently, they fear we’d be too influential, or give different instructions on the law than the judge. But what I know we’d be—to a woman—is eager.

  Of course, disappointment has a different flavor to it now.

  ————

  As I sit and listen to the judge explain to the prospective jurors what’s going to happen today, I try to convince myself that I didn’t propose this new strategy to Darnell in order to give myself enough time to think of how I’m going to kill my husband.

  I fear it might be, though. Because it does give me time to do just that.

  But how can I do it? Despite my bluff to myself earlier, I know that if Mike dies suddenly, I will be the prime suspect. The police will investigate and they’ll uncover the affair and that will be it for me. The kids will have no parents—oh God, the kids, I can’t think about them, I can’t—and I’ll be rotting in jail for the rest of my life because of that cheating bastard.

  One bad decision and my life will be over.

  But I can’t let him get away with it, either. He needs to be punished somehow. Because he won’t be punished if I don’t do anything. His guy friends will be a little uncomfortable around him for a while, and some of the women might stop talking to him, but then again, maybe not.

  “Shall we begin?” the judge asks.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  The first potential juror is called into the witness box. A woman in her seventies who—according to her questionnaire—was a school librarian for forty years.

  I rise and walk to the witness box.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Holiday.”

  “Good morning.”

  She smiles nervously. This is a normal reaction. I smile back to show her that there’s nothing to fear here, certainly not from me.

  “Have you heard of the plaintiff, Darnell Davidson?”

  “I’ve seen him on the news, if that’s what you mean?”

  “Sure. And have you heard or read anything about this case?”

  “Hard not to.”

  “Do you think you’ve made up your mind about it?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Would you call yourself a fair person?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Thank you. We have no objection to this witness.”

  I can feel the surprise of my opponent without looking at him. I’m known for asking a long series of questions driven by jury consultant data. I’ve never taken the first juror presented; I’m also known for having a superstition about that. But all my intuition and superstitions have led to nothing—no, worse. They’ve led to me having no clue that my husband was sexting and probably more with some other woman. That’s out the window now. I’m George Costanza on Opposite Day. I’m ignoring my instincts for good.

  My opponent—an ambitious guy at a rival law firm, named Chris Top—stands and starts to ask his questions. I half listen as Darnell shoves me a note. Are you sure? I nod. She’s an ordinary woman—a mother of two, retired, lives in a good neighborhood. Why can’t she be a good juror? If we can’t convince twelve ordinary people of our arguments, maybe they’re no good.

  I don’t say this out loud, of course. I’m addled, but not yet stupid.

  The potential juror has other ideas. “I don’t think I can serve, though, sir.”

  “Why’s that, ma’am?”

  “I look after my grandkids.”

  “What about their parents?”

  “They’re going through a tough time right now. My son… my son cheated on his wife and she’s…well, something like that changes a person. She needs my help. Her and the kids both.”

  My throat constricts. Courtrooms are life. I think of my own parents, and my in-laws. Would my mother-in-law stand by me the way this woman seems to be standing by hers? Unlikely. She always had a hesitancy about me, something she held back. And Mike is just the type to turn her against me so he has an ally.

  My parents live in Florida, and they’ve never been close to the kids. Would I want them to raise them?
r />   What the hell am I thinking?

  And just like that I know: I can’t kill Mike.

  But I can make him suffer.

  ————

  We break for coffee at 11. By that time, I’ve said yes to eight jurors, six of which have been nixed by my opponent. I can tell my accepting everyone is throwing him off his plan. I should’ve done this years ago. Who knows what the result will be with the jury, but it probably won’t make any difference. We have a strong case. Darnell’s a good witness—he knows how to charm people. And, despite everything, I still believe in the innate goodness of most people.

  Everyone but Mike, that is. And the other Mike.

  I take my phone with me into the bathroom and lock myself in a stall. Something about it reminds me of last night when I was sitting on the bathroom floor. What led me to write her back? Why did I slow down and watch that accident, exacerbate it even? And what can I do about it now?

  Life is full of turning points.

  Sometimes, they’re imperceptible. A red light. A slowdown in the train. These things happen to us every day, and we never think of the consequences. But what if we did? What if we thought about how each micro decision we made had some massive impact down the line? I’m not talking about the butterfly effect—some rain forest a world away impacted because I sneezed. I’m talking about a real-life tornado in your own life. What could I have done differently at this moment, that moment, at any moment to keep myself from ending up here? Sitting in a bathroom thinking about how to get revenge on my husband.

  But here I am.

  I hold my phone and start a new text thread with the digits I memorized.

  Hey, it’s me. I had to change my number. Use this one now.

  (…)

  Hey you. Why the new number?

  I think my wife might suspect something… So, if you get any messages from my old number, just ignore them.

  !!!

  I know, it’s okay. It’ll blow over.