Line of Vision

by David Ellis

  58

  MOM’S GONNA BE MAD. SHE SAID IF ME OR JAMIE ever got sick, we’re supposed to tell the camp instructors. That’s what they told us the first day; I remember they made us repeat it back to them. Don’t leave, they said. Talk to one of the instructors. No one’s allowed to leave without telling.

  But that’s just for little kids, like Jamie. I can leave if I want. It’s only two blocks to my house. I’m old enough. I’m eight and a half years old. And I’ve got the key. I reach into my pocket and run my finger over the jagged side of the single key attached to the ring. I can go home if I want to. I don’t need to ask permission.

  I was standing over by the woods near the baseball diamond, and nobody saw me slip into the trees and cut through to the next street over. And now I can see my house. My stomach hurts and I feel kind of dizzy, and I can go home if I want to.

  One of the counselors yelled at me today because I swore. But I’m old enough to swear. He’s not my dad or my mom. He can’t tell me what to do. And I’ll go home if I want to.

  The front door is locked. I figured Mom wouldn’t be home yet, because she grocery-shops on Fridays. But I’m just gonna use the key. I’m gonna go upstairs and lie down.

  I close the door behind me and think about getting something to drink. But I don’t want to. I think I might throw up. So I go upstairs. I’m gonna lie down. Mom will come home and make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some grape juice with ice.

  I turn at the top of the staircase and head for my room. But I hear a sound behind me. I stop for a moment and hold my breath, but it’s my mom’s voice. She’s laughing.

  I could call out to her, but I don’t. I walk toward her bedroom door. The lights are out; I can tell because there’s a little crack between the door and the frame. It’s dark.

  Then I hear a man making a sound, a kind of grunting sound. Then my mom does, too. Like her stomach hurts. Then the man makes the sound again.

  Someone’s hurting my mom.

  I tiptoe-walk to the door. I should push it open, but I’m scared. Maybe he’ll hurt me, too.

  I stand there. My hand is shaking hard, but I touch the door gently. Then I hear my mom laughing again. So she’s okay.

  So I just push it a little. Just enough to peek in.

  I see the man first, just the curly hair and kind of a beard on his face, like my dad’s on the weekend when he doesn’t shave. He’s lying on the bed.

  Then my mom. She’s on top of him. Her head is back, so she’s looking up at the ceiling but her eyes are closed. She’s breathing funny and making a groaning noise. She’s naked. I can see her boobs. They’re kind of flopping up and down as she moves. I saw them only once about a year ago when I walked into her bathroom and I surprised her and she told me I should knock before I come in because I’m a grown-up now, kind of.

  The man pushes up with his waist and makes a noise. She does, too, a louder noise like she’s almost in pain, like he’s hurting her. Then his hands move from the sides and grab her by the waist. She circles her head around.

  “Like that,” she says. “Just like that.”

  I exhale and take a swig of the soda I brought with me to the cemetery. Well, happy birthday, Adrian. I hope you’re resting comfortably up there. I’m sure you are.

  Are you with Dad? Does he know now what he didn’t know then? I turn to my father’s tombstone, next to hers. The stones are small, raised slightly off the grass, with a concrete urn that rises from between them. I touch my father’s marker, run my fingers over the outline of his engraved name.

  Dad would understand. He would’ve understood then, too, with the same blend of practicality and love he brought to every situation. But I never told. Never told anyone, Adrian, what I saw you doing. I let you make a fool out of Dad, out of Jamie. I let you do it. I let you make me a conspirator.

  Did you know? Did you figure it out, when the camp counselors told you I was AWOL for half an hour? Did you think, maybe just maybe, that I could’ve slipped home without you knowing?

  I suspect not, but then, what did I know back then? Your naïve little boy didn’t even know what he was seeing. All I knew is that I saw something bad. Bad enough that I knew I should slip back out of the house and say nothing. How bad, how deceitful, I did not know; it was just a general awareness that something covert, something seemingly so intimate, was not supposed to take place with someone outside your family.

  ADRIAN VIVRIANO KALISH

  1934–1996

  DEVOTED MOTHER, LOVING WIFE

  These are not the words I would have chosen. And probably not the ones she would have chosen, either. Who knows, maybe she did choose them—I really have no idea, Jamie exclusively handled the funeral arrangements—but I don’t expect that Adrian Vivriano Kalish would have chosen to define herself solely by her kids, and certainly not by her husband.

  I still remember Jamie’s worn face at her funeral, her then-husband at her side. This was before Jeannette was born, four years ago, and Tommy was too young to comprehend a whole lot. Jamie absorbed the loss for all of us, took all of the pain for the remaining Kalishes (that being Jamie, me, and an aunt) and did a collective mourning. Jamie just stood there through the entire service, including the burial, with the same immovable expression, which I can’t summarize in any other way but to say she was numb. She stared at the casket throughout the burial, never lifting her eyes, the only sign of life being the strands of hair that blew in her face.

  And me? How would a bystander have summed up my appearance that day? Bored, probably. Distracted. That’s pretty much the way Jamie described it to me the next day with a rebuke. But she was wrong. To say I was indifferent would be off the mark. Even after almost an entire lifetime of detachment, of nearly complete emotional (and in the later years, physical) separation, there was still something between my mother and me. I don’t think there was ever a time in my life, in fact, when I felt closer to her than when she died. Not the tender kind of closeness, there was never that. And it wasn’t born of sympathy, either; the anger hadn’t subsided, not even temporarily, upon her death. But maybe by dying, she was now somehow inside me, etched in my soul, in a way she never could be during life. I could not shun her in death, could not scold her with silence, could not turn my back on her or sting her with a sarcastic remark. So somehow, in some small measure, I just accepted her.

  The flower arrangement rests in the concrete urn, a truly beautiful array of purples and yellows and reds. This, I’m quite sure, she would have liked. I wasn’t too receptive to Jamie’s idea that I bring flowers, but the truth is that, for all my bluster to my sister on the phone, I was planning to come here today anyway. Haven’t missed a birthday yet, Adrian. Probably never will. Don’t ask me why.

  I gently touch her headstone, like I rested my hand on hers the day she died. And like that day, no words will be spoken.

  59

  SEVEN WHITES, THREE AFRICAN-AMERICANS, AN Asian, and a Hispanic. Seven men, five women. These people will decide whether I live or die.

  A multitude of others left the courtroom over the two days of jury selection, either happy to avoid service or disappointed not to be a part of a media spectacle. Regardless, they will tell their husbands or wives or children or friends that they came this close to serving on the jury for that murder of the doctor from Highland Woods. Did you see him? their friends will ask, referring to me. Was he in the courtroom?

  All of them will answer yes, they saw me. Well, what did he look like? Was he scary? I sincerely hope that the answer to that last question is no. I have practiced, over the last few weeks, how not to look threatening. My smile in court can’t be too big or toothy (can’t look unremorseful), or too tiny (don’t want to look cold-blooded); rather, just a polite, gentle, toothless smile that doesn’t hide my pain but shows I’m making an effort to get through this. I’ve run through how I will sit at the defense table, too. Can’t lean my head on my hand; it comes too close to looking bored or even disrespectful.
Can’t lean back against the chair and cross one leg over the other, either; it seems too flippant and overconfident. Sitting forward, hands resting comfortably in front of me, will be the position. Humble, composed, attentive, hopeful.

  My movements, whatever they are—a turn of the head, a raising of the hand—must be at medium-speed. If I move too quickly, I might startle, give some indication of an impetuous, fiery side. Too slowly, I’m the calculating killer with ice in my veins.

  Hair will be short and dry; no grease, no long bangs, just your average haircut, on the short side but not too short. Clothes will be unfashionable. Plain white shirts, button collars. I’ve got four suits that are either gray or blue, which I will alternate. I have picked out four ties, some of my least favorite, one a deep blue with cream paisleys, two red ones—one navy-striped and the other patterned with yellow teardrops—and a brown one with muted swirls of yellow.

  I have practiced the look on my face for the different occasions. Eye contact with the jury, with rare exceptions, will be a no-no. But when it happens, I will be ready. No smiles, however appropriate. My lips will tuck in slightly—a grim pose—suggesting dignity, sadness, peacefulness. My eyes will narrow a bit, as if I were smiling, and the combination with my straight mouth will show the jury that I’m trying to be pleasant to them, trying to be polite—that these things are part of my basic nature—but in all my sadness and fear I cannot bring myself to smile. I will let them break the eye contact, unless they hold it for a long time, which I don’t expect.

  For any humor in the courtroom, I will give the smile I’ve decided on but will not laugh. I will be the one person who is unable to enjoy the moment. When Detective Cummings testifies, I will look at him curiously, mouth suspended slightly, eyebrows tilted to the center, eyes intense, head craned forward a little. If Cummings says anything controversial—anything that contradicts our story—I may even raise my hands off the table momentarily, lean back, maybe cast a glance at Mandy with disbelief, before returning my eyes to the witness, closing my mouth in frustration. During these moments I will not look at the jury, so my reaction won’t seem contrived; it will just be a private moment with my trusted attorney, and if the jury sees it, well, so be it.

  All of these things I have rehearsed in front of my bathroom mirror for the past two weeks. I brought in a chair from the kitchen table and just sat there, staring at my reflection, changing wardrobes and expressions and mannerisms and gauging imagined reactions.

  Paul laughed at me when I asked him for advice. “The jury isn’t going to think you live on welfare,” he said. “They’ll expect an investment banker to look like one. Flashy is out—we agree on that—but professional is not. You want to look neat.” Paul was less flippant about my mannerisms. “Keep one thing foremost in your mind. You are innocent. You should be humble, easygoing, and calm. And above all, Marty, innocent. These charges are outrageous, and the inferences the prosecution is drawing from what evidence they have are absurd. You’re a personable guy, Marty, a nice guy and a successful guy, who would have no reason to put his life in jeopardy by committing murder. The prosecution wants you to be an obsessive, brooding, jealous man capable of anything.” Paul shook his head. “But that’s not who you are. You just have to show them that. Be yourself.”

  So that’s what I’ve practiced those two weeks, being myself as described by Paul Riley. On the bathroom counter, just across from the chair I had dragged in for my rehearsals, I placed a single sheet of white stationery from McHenry Stern, the words descending vertically with bullet points:

  • professional

  • neat

  • innocent

  • humble

  • easygoing

  • calm

  • outrageous charges

  • personable

  • nice

  • successful

  • not obsessive

  • not brooding

  • not jealous

  • not obsessive

  • NOT OBSESSIVE!!

  As expected, I did not sleep a wink either night. I was neatly combed and pressed today, but my face must have shown the strain of the last few months, the dark circles, the crow’s feet that were not present three months ago, the permanent wrinkles etched now across my forehead. This, I realize, is not necessarily a disadvantage. Let the jurors see what this has done to me.

  Seven men, five women. We had some image of the ideal juror—an intelligent, liberated minority. African-Americans, in particular, are wary of the criminal justice system, so the wisdom goes. And some women might be inclined to take the side of someone who killed a wife-beater, no matter the circumstances. Some men might, too. But above all, we wanted smart, open-minded people. There will be testimony that I lurked outside Rachel’s house, that I was an obsessive, lovestruck child. We need people who will look beyond that. If there was one phrase that Paul uttered over and over again during the jury selection, it was keeping an “open mind.”

  Jamie calls me around eight o’clock. We say very little to each other. I can hear little Jeannette playing with her toys in the background. Not for the first time, Jamie offers to come to town to be with me. But I’m stubborn on this point. I don’t want her here.

  I lie on my bed and stare at the clothes sprawled on the floor. Tonight, for the first time, I do not pick up my underwear off the floor. I do not clean up the cartons of Chinese delivery. When I do get off the bed, I move gingerly, like an athlete with an injury. My hands are in a slight but permanent tremble; a dull pain has taken up residence in my gut. I lie on the bed with eyes open, not expecting or even wanting to fall asleep. I am numb, like my sister at my mother’s funeral; maybe the analogy is apt, maybe we are looking at death from opposite sides here.

  There is no remorse; really, there never was. There is no sadness. There is no fear. A defense mechanism, I suppose, a willful suspension of reality. I do not accept what is happening to me. I do not accept that I will spend the rest of my life in prison. I do not accept that I will be forced to breathe cyanide gas in a tiny little room while people watch me choke. I do not accept that my reputation has been destroyed. I do not accept that people will always wonder, even if I am acquitted, whether I committed this crime. I do not accept that a part of my sister’s life has been destroyed.

  I do not accept that tomorrow, twelve citizens will begin their judgment of me. I do not accept that tomorrow will come at all, because I have this time. So I watch the minutes slowly move around the clock, reasons blurring into outcomes, fears into acceptance, energy into surrender, time slipping away like sand through my cupped hand. But it is my time for now, and no one can take it away from me.

  60

  THE SIDE DOOR TO THE COURTROOM OPENS, AND A tall, thin, balding man steps through. He briefly stops to survey the packed courtroom. He’s followed by fifteen others, most of whom also pause briefly to take in the impressive audience. Each takes his or her seat in the jury box and continues to look around the courtroom, for the most part avoiding any glances in my direction. This is fun for them, something they’ll be able to tell their friends and family about.

  Judge Mack explains to the jurors that an opening statement is not evidence, it is merely a recitation of what the prosecutor hopes the evidence will show. Finally, His Honor turns away from the jurors to Roger Ogren. My heart sinks.

  “Is the prosecution prepared to give an opening statement?”

  Roger Ogren stands. “Yes, Your Honor.” He buttons his gray patterned suit and picks up a notepad. He walks over to the lectern, which is centered in front of the jury box, and places his pad on it. Then he steps to the side, squarely facing the jury.

  Be prepared, Paul has told me. If Ogren points his finger at you, be prepared to look the jury in the eye. Don’t hold your gaze on any one of them too long. Don’t challenge them.

  Ogren drops his head before beginning, then slowly lifts it. “This is the story of a man obsessed. A man obsessed with a woman who did not return his affec
tions. This is a story about a man who murdered this woman’s husband out of jealousy and rage. A man who admitted to doing it—who confessed to doing it.”

  Ogren turns and points at me. I stare back, not at the jury, but at Ogren himself. “That man is the defendant, Martin Kalish. The woman who was the object of his obsession is Rachel Reinardt. Her husband, Dr. Derrick Reinardt, is dead.”

  Ogren stops on that for a moment. “This is a story about a man who could not have what he wanted. A man who would make romantic advances toward Mrs. Reinardt. A man who would tell Mrs. Reinardt to leave her husband. A man who would stalk Mrs. Reinardt, who would stand outside her house at night, peering into windows. All of these overtures by the defendant were met with a very clear, very stern no from Mrs. Reinardt.” Ogren scans the jury. “No,” he repeats.

  “The defendant couldn’t have what he wanted. And on November eighteenth of last year, after months of rebukes from Mrs. Reinardt, the defendant finally decided he would have what he wanted. It was finally time that Rachel Reinardt belonged to him. And only him.”

  I hold my breath, hoping to somehow stifle the pounding of my heart. Some of the jurors are looking over at me. This will be as bad as it gets, Paul warned me this morning. Remember you’re innocent.

  “On November eighteenth, the defendant went to the home of Dr. Derrick Reinardt and his wife, Rachel. He stood outside that house, in the backyard, right by the back porch, and he waited. He waited out there, lurking outside their house, and he looked through the sliding glass door into the den. And he waited.” Ogren’s head moves as he looks at each juror. “He waited until Dr. Reinardt came into the den. Then”—Ogren’s voice rises dramatically—“then the defendant finally fulfilled his dream. His dream of killing the man who stood between him and Mrs. Reinardt. She would now belong to him.”