In fact, she wasn’t even a girl; she was in her early twenties, one of the established pros. Apparently she and one of her girlfriends had been joking about his friend Nate and him, and it wasn’t quite a bet, maybe more like they dared each other. “It wasn’t romantic or anything. Some people were hanging out in one of the condos, and she grabbed my hand and took me into one of the bedrooms.”
Caitlin didn’t want to hear about this. “At least I hope you were smart about things.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You didn’t use a condom?” Caitlin stood up from the swing. “Seth, are you kidding? Don’t—”
“Don’t I know about your sister? Yes, I do. I didn’t think about it. But apparently she told some other people about it afterward, and one of older guys came and talked to me, saying that she knew that she was okay, on the pill, and tested for stuff, but that I shouldn’t assume that that was always true.”
“You were really stupid.”
“I know that, and it wasn’t much fun having everyone know about it either. “
He clearly wanted to—well, confess or something like that. It had been a crappy experience for him, but she couldn’t listen. It was all too... What had actually happened? Had they undressed all the way? No, why was she thinking that way? She didn’t want to know.
Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket. It was Trina. She didn’t always answer her sister’s calls, but anything was better than sitting here trying not to look at Seth’s crotch.
Dylan was asleep, and MeeMaw was home. Trina could come over and pick Caitlin up. Then they could go to the Dairy Queen or something.
“I’ve got my bike,” Caitlin told her, something that Trina knew perfectly well. “It’s too hard to fit it into your car. And Becca’s got to take a friend of hers home anyway.”
“She doesn’t give up, does she?” Seth asked when Caitlin had hung up.
Caitlin shoved her phone back in her pocket. She might have been bitching about Trina the whole time she had been here, but for someone else to be criticizing her... “You can’t blame her. She’s lonely.”
“But it’s not fair to you, that everything is about her all the time.”
“Well, what about you and your sisters? Isn’t everything about you and snowboarding?”
“They don’t mind.”
“How do you know that? How did they feel about your mom being gone so much? I treat my mom like she is the enemy, but I would have died if I’d had to go to my dad when I started my period, and I bet that your sisters had to.”
He muttered something. She wasn’t fighting fair. What could he possibly say about his sisters’ periods?
Well, he had had sex, hadn’t he? “And what about the money?” she demanded. “Aren’t your sisters in the same boat as me? Only a lot more so. All your skateboarding has to have cost tons more than Dylan does.”
He glared at her. “You’re wrong. I got all my expenses paid this year, and on top of that—”
“But you’ve been doing this for years, and your family never said that you had to quit, and they could have. We can’t quit. We can’t tell Trina to stop being a mom and turn Dylan over to Social Services. We can’t do that.”
Just then the kitchen door opened. More light flooded the grass. His sister and her friend were ready to leave. Becca asked Seth if he wanted to ride with them, but he said that he needed to help their dad with something.
Trina was waiting on the front porch. She still wanted to go to the Dairy Queen.
“Won’t it be closed?” Caitlin did not want to go.
“No, I called. They’re open until ten.”
Caitlin was suddenly weary. I can’t fix this. I can’t make you like you used to be. I can’t.
But she could go to the Dairy Queen, couldn’t she?
Trina just ordered a Diet Coke, so it wasn’t as if she wanted ice cream. Caitlin went full out with a banana split, three scoops of ice cream with three different toppings and whipped cream. Caitlin didn’t know what thrilling things Trina thought would happen—the kids hanging out in the DQ parking lot were the sort that Trina wouldn’t have said two words to back home—but they sat at one of the picnic tables, and Caitlin ate slowly so they could stay until the place closed.
Her phone buzzed. It was Seth. He must be calling to apologize. Caitlin longed to talk to him, but no, this was her sister’s time. She couldn’t see that sitting here was doing Trina any good, but Caitlin taking a call from Seth would make it worse.
She called him the instant she got back to her room.
“I don’t like fighting with you,” he said.
“No. Me neither.”
“You’ve got to try to come back for longer next summer.”
“It’s not up to me. You know that.”
“This really sucks. It seems like we never get to see each other. Why can’t we decide things for ourselves?”
“Because we can’t. Because we’re kids.” Caitlin was feeling sick. She hadn’t finished the banana split, but she had eaten too much of it. “But you go to more places and do more things than most kids.”
“But they don’t involve seeing you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Seth was called to the jury box immediately after lunch on Tuesday. He was seated in the back row with one person between him and her.
He was asked if he had ever been victim of financial fraud. “If I have been, I don’t know about it yet.”
Caitlin could see people start to smile.
Then he was asked if he knew anyone who had been the victim of financial fraud. He thought for a moment. He knew some people who had lost a lot of money, he said, but he had no idea if they had been defrauded or had made bad decisions. “Knowing the people involved,” he added, “I’d bet it was bad decisions. Really bad ones.”
People in the room started to laugh a bit, but the judge frowned and cut it off.
The lawyers had their usual little meeting to discuss the jurors. Then, as before, they approached the judge to share their conclusions. Every other time this conversation only lasted long enough for the judge to glance at the list of names before reading them aloud. But now the judge was frowning, gesturing for the lawyers to step closer, wanting to talk to them.
It was pretty clear to Caitlin that they were talking about Seth; two of the lawyers kept glancing at him. Did the lawyers want Seth on the jury, and the judge didn’t? It couldn’t be the other way around. Finally the judge waved the lawyers back to their seats and began to read names. Everyone now knew that it was good to hear your name. The person to Caitlin’s left gasped with happy surprise when her name was called. Then the clerk started reaching into the box to call up more people.
Seth’s name had not been called. He was on the jury too. She looked over at him. He was sitting upright, his head pulled back; he was not expecting this. The woman who had been sitting between them had to ask him to pull his feet back so she could get out.
Maybe this served him right for assuming that he wouldn’t be seated. Would it have made a difference if he had explained about New Zealand? He wasn’t just “busy at work.” He was going to make a video of himself snowboarding in the backcountry as a promotion for Street Boards. The company had gotten permits, arranged transport and lodging for a crew, and hired guys who were willing to hang out the open door of a helicopter with a seventy-thousand-dollar camera in one hand.
But she was glad. Of course she was. They could have fun in the evenings. Why had she been so worried? A week, maybe a bit more, however long the trial was going to last, wasn’t too big a challenge for a “friends with benefits” relationship, was it? That wasn’t long enough for things to get messy, for people to have their hearts broken because someone else was deciding between Lenox and Kate Spade china.
The chair between them was now vacant. More names were called. After
the empty seats in the first row were filled, a heavyset red-faced man approached the second row. He had to hitch his way up the little step. He rested his hand on the back of a chair in the first row, which caused that occupant to turn her head sharply. He was having trouble moving past the other jurors, so Seth stood up and started to move to the seat next to Caitlin.
That would be nice, to be sitting next to him.
“No, Mr. Street,” the judge suddenly barked. “You must stay in your assigned seat. You can’t move to sit next to a pretty girl. This is a court of law, not a dating service.”
Pretty girl...dating service... Caitlin couldn’t imagine her father ever talking like that in his courtroom.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Seth said and stood in front of his own chair to let the man pass.
The heavyset man collapsed onto his chair. A musty, acrid scent came down with him. He was a smoker.
Please dismiss him. Please. Please. Don’t make me sit next to this.
He was seated. Apparently smoking and being overweight were not disqualifying conditions.
A whole new set of people had to be called into the juror room, and they went through the judge’s welcome and the prosecutor’s explanation of the court system yet again. As the next round of jurors was being questioned, Caitlin noticed that the heavyset man had inched his chair close to hers. He must be trying to give himself more room for his bulk. A few minutes later he put his forearm on the right arm of his chair, jutting his elbow out until it hit Caitlin.
No. You do not touch me.
This morning Seth had let his arm rest against hers. That was different, so different. She shifted in her chair and sat up very straight so that the man wasn’t touching her.
In another twenty minutes the man forgot about his turf war. He started to fidget, then grew agitated, clearing this throat, pressing his fingers to his temples as if he had a headache. He needed a cigarette.
When only two seats remained to be filled, one of the candidates interrupted the lawyer, “No, I can’t give a fair verdict.” He was a young man. “I couldn’t sit still. I won’t be able to listen.”
The judge reminded him that it was his civic duty. “You are an American citizen, aren’t you?”
“I don’t care about that.” The man was not shamed. “I’ve been going nuts today. This has been the worst day of my life. I can’t do it again. Put me in jail if you want. That has to be better than this.”
The heavy man was slumped forward, his hands gripped behind his fleshy neck, desperate for a cigarette. Over his back Caitlin could see Seth.
“He can’t sit still?” Seth said softly. “What about me?”
The judge motioned the lawyers forward, and after a brief conference, he dismissed the juror. He was harsh, criticizing the man’s citizenship, but it didn’t matter what he said. That young man was free. He had gotten out of serving. This was not sitting well with the other jurors. Why didn’t we think of something like that? Caitlin glanced at Yvette, the juror sitting next to her. She was sitting like an obedient first grader, her hands neatly folded on her lap. At lunch she had said that she worked on the line in a poultry processing plant. It was a horrible job. She didn’t care how long the trial lasted, anything to keep her from having to go to work.
At four o’clock they finally had all sixteen jurors. They were sworn in again and given the red badges that they were to wear on lanyards around their neck whenever they were in the courthouse. The judge admonished them not to talk about the case among themselves, which wasn’t a big challenge for Caitlin because she still hadn’t a clue what the case was about. He then told them about the procedures for the next day, where they could park for free, how they were to report not to the assembly room, but to their own jury room off the courtroom, et cetera, et cetera. They could use their phones or the internet as long as they signed affidavits, pledging not to research the case. He said that the testimony would probably last until the middle of the following week.
When he finally excused the jury, the smoker next to Caitlin was on his feet, shoving his way past Seth and the other jurors, all of whom drew back to let him pass except for a tiny middle-aged Asian woman at the end of the row. She thrust out her arm, making it clear that he was to wait his turn.
It was late enough that she called her parents to pick her up on their way to MeeMaw’s. When she told her parents that Seth was also on the jury, her father cautioned her. “You know you can’t see him. No judge is going to like jurors socializing with each other during the trial.”
Wait, no? Not see him? “We wouldn’t talk about the case.” I just want us to have bedroom sex.
“I know that. But it wouldn’t look right. You can’t do it.”
* * * *
“Are you kidding me?” Seth said when she told him the next morning. “We can’t see each other?”
“That’s right.”
“What is this? Some kind of flashback? Are we kids again?”
“No, we aren’t kids. We are a jury of someone’s peers.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I really wanted to spend more time with you.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Of the sixteen people on the jury there were ten women, six men; ten whites, five African Americans, and one Asian; four seemingly retired people, two women and two men. The rest of the women were of various ages while among the men, besides the two retired ones, were Fred the Smoker who was probably in his forties, and three young men, Seth, an African American man dressed with quiet elegance, and a sandy-haired, rabbity-looking fellow.
Except for the nicely dressed black guy, none of them were the sort that Caitlin had ever had any dealings with back in San Francisco. They were so...she didn’t want to finish the thought because it made her sound like the artisanal/organic/vinyl-records San Francisco snob that she had probably been back when she’d collected a Silicon Valley paycheck.
But good military kid that she had once been, she did make an effort to learn names, starting with the older people. The men whom she assumed were retired weren’t. Keith, the white one, was still farming his lands, and Dave, the black one, was driving an interstate truck. Apparently farming and trucking didn’t have the pension plans that the navy did.
As to be expected in a room with at least one Southern woman, there was food. One of the two older women had made brownies, and the other one had made banana bread. A young woman who worked in a bakery had gotten her boss to contribute a platter of little Danish pastries.
“We need to set up a snack schedule,” Kim, the Asian American woman, announced. She already had a piece of paper and was drawing lines and writing dates. She passed the paper to the young well-dressed man on her left.
“What should I do?” Yvette whispered to Caitlin frantically. It seemed that Yvette was going to cling to her throughout the trial. “I live with my sister. She doesn’t like me to use the kitchen.”
“Sign up for the last date,” Caitlin suggested. “Maybe the trial will be over by then.”
The paper had now reached Keith, the farmer. He was shaking his head. “There’s no way I am going to ask my wife to do this. She’s going to have to kill herself to keep up with the chores, what with me not being around during the day.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been taking any of what was here today,” Kim snapped. “Not if you aren’t going to take a turn.”
The women who had brought the food were all insistent that they had brought for everyone, that they didn’t expect, et cetera, et cetera.
“Then from now on we will do it this way,” Kim announced. She clearly did not tolerate being disagreed with.
So exactly how did that make her a good candidate for a jury? Caitlin couldn’t imagine entering in deliberations with her. Or with Fred. How could they ever reach a unanimous verdict?
Unless that was what someone was hoping fo
r. Was a hung jury part of a strategy? Were they being set up to fail?
A middle-aged woman in a deputy’s uniform asked for their attention. Her uniform was exceptionally unflattering. The khaki color washed her out, and the tucked-in shirt emphasized her low bust and barrel waist. She identified herself as the lead deputy, but said that it was fine if they called her Sally.
She collected their affidavits about the internet and said that court might be starting a little late.
“What time will you usually start?” someone asked.
“The official start time is nine.”
“But then why do we have to come in at eight?” The man speaking was the sandy-haired, rabbity one. Caitlin thought his name was Teddy.
“Because they can’t get started without you.”
“But then it is okay if we come later, just so long as we are here by nine?” His voice had a thin, whiny sound. “My wife really hates getting up this early. She can’t do it.”
“No,” Sally said patiently. “You need to be here by eight.”
She then told them that during testimony they would be allowed to take notes; notebooks and pens would be on their seats in the courtroom. Caitlin was glad of that. She could listen better if she had something to do with her hands.
Then she tried to settle down to work. It was a little hard to concentrate. A lot of the other jurors, especially the women, were chatty, and one of them, a redhead, had an annoying laugh, like a hyena having an asthma attack. Fred was already asking for a smoking break.
The morning dragged on. Finally at eleven Sally came back and told them that the trial was about to start.
The jurors put their belongings in the bins assigned to them and got in line in the order in which they were seated. It took them a minute to get this straight. Caitlin supposed that they would soon get pretty good at it.
She was surprised to see how full the courtroom was; the observers were crowded close to one another on their benches, and there were more lawyers at the tables. So this trial must be some big deal.
The Fourth Summer Page 6
