Lauren Takes Leave

by Gerstenblatt, Julie

  “I did,” the suit replies, sounding defeated.

  “Well, maybe you won’t be right for the case,” I add.

  “Yeah,” the guy from the waiting room agrees. “To get out of a case, I plan on being a total ist,” he confides.

  “An ist?” several of us echo back.

  “You know.” He gestures, his right hand raised, pushing against the air for emphasis. “Racist, sexist, communist, whatever it takes. I’m goin’ in as a total asshole.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” the woman with short hair sings under her breath.

  “What was that, sweetheart?” he asks, moving toward us as the elevator doors open. He’s a stocky guy, wearing ripped jeans splattered with paint. Seven hundred keys jangle from his hip as he pushes through the crowd.

  I turn and smile. “Oh, it was nothing! She just hopes that strategy works for you!”

  “Sweetheart!” she adds. We power walk to keep up with the bailiff as he takes us down a long hallway.

  “By the way, I’m Lauren.”

  “Carrie. Glad to meet you.” She makes a little wave in the air as we are ushered into a big room with modern windows. A few rows of white folding chairs are neatly lined up in the center of the room, but the bailiff instructs us to sit in other chairs around the perimeter of the room for now.

  Entering behind the bailiff are two men in suits. One is tall with sandy hair and the other is short, with jet-black, slicked-back hair and a goatee. Right away, I don’t like him.

  I’m so impartial.

  Think like a juror, become a juror. This little mantra enters my mind and I hold fast to it. Think like a juror, become a juror. No one is guilty until proven so. No, wait. That’s wrong. Put it in the positive. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

  The tall guy speaks first. “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I am Mr. John Silvan, and to my right is Mr. Thomas Parnell. We are the lawyers on this case. We are here to speak with you this morning because we need to assemble a jury.”

  “And we need to do it quickly,” Parnell adds.

  Silvan nods his head. They both clutch clipboards with little pieces of paper attached to them. I feel like I’m in CSI: Alden. That’s why, in my head, I’ve decided to call everyone by their last names. I am imagining the crisp television theme music playing in the background as these guys speak.

  “This is a civil case in which a mother is suing a daycare for neglecting her child,” Silvan explains.

  Oh shit. Really? I sink back in my chair, instantly deflated. Of all the voir dires in all the world, I have to walk into this one. Child neglect! I bet when the lawyers sat down this morning to imagine an ideal jury, they were like, You know, what we really need to balance out this jury will be a mother of two who is also a teacher. Someone really on the inside, with lots of experience and bias. As soon as I open my mouth, I am so getting kicked out of here.

  Parnell picks up where Silvan left off. “Now, whether the accused did or did not do this, and to what extent the law is in the daycare’s favor or the working mother’s favor, is what you will decide if you are placed on this case. For this trial, you will merely look at the facts, hear from several witnesses, and examine the law to decide if the facility and its owners are at all guilty of any wrongdoing.”

  “Now, I am going to call forward a few of you to sit here, in the twelve seats in the center of the room,” Silvan says.

  I’m the fourth one called. Carrie is also called, as is Sweetheart. Before long, there are twelve of us seated, two rows of six, with a circle of others looking on.

  There are a lot of people here trying to get out of jury duty, but I am not one of them. I take a furtive look around the room to size up the competition.

  There’s one. She’s a gray-haired black woman actually knitting in the corner. She’s got all the markings of your typical juror—old, domestic, with time on her hands—and I scowl at her, trying to will her away. She looks up through her bifocals, probably having felt my death stare. I turn away just in time.

  Today she’s going down.

  Because I have to get put on this case.

  I have to get a leave of absence from my life.

  “Please raise your hand if you have children.” Up goes my hand.

  “Please raise a hand if you have ever spent time away from your child or children. Perhaps you have traveled overnight on a business trip, or taken a vacation without them. Perhaps, like the defense in this case, you are a working parent who has put his or her child in daycare or preschool.” Not all of the people with children raise their hands, but several do. Including me.

  This is kinda fun.

  “Please raise your hand if you work full-time, outside of your home.” Two women do not raise their hands, but the rest of us do. Stay-at-home moms, I think.

  Just for the fun of it, I wiggle my fingers around in the air, like the A-plus students in my classes do, so that I can really be seen and remembered.

  But, instead of noticing me, the lawyers start asking those women questions. Things like: “Do you work from home?” “Do you work part-time?” and “What is your primary occupation?” As I expected, both are stay-at-home moms. They are so off the case. I picture them walking out of the courtroom together a few minutes into the future, honking good-bye to each other from identical minivans.

  Sayonara, I think.

  “Please raise your hand if you work with children,” Parnell asks, and suddenly, it’s show time. I will make this work to my advantage. I push my hair from my face, raise my hand, and meet his eyes.

  “Ms.…” Parnell scans his clipboard for my name.

  “Worthing,” we say simultaneously.

  “Yes, Ms. Worthing. Could you tell me what exactly it is you do?”

  “I try to teach eleven-year-olds where to put their commas,” I say. Good-natured laughs are sprinkled around the room. Parnell joins in, sport that he is.

  “Yes, well. And for how long have you been…teaching English, I presume?”

  “Fifteen years,” I say, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it, at the way time has passed, at the fact that my students have moved on, growing and changing, while I am still in that same classroom year after year, the same Harry Potter posters clinging to the walls, without anything but a Teacher of the Year plaque from the last century and a trophy of a golden apple to show for it.

  “Ms. Worthing, are you all right?”

  “Oh, great!” I shout, too loudly for the cramped room packed with hostile potential jurors. Keep it together, Lauren, I chastise myself. Keep your eyes on the prize.

  “I was just wondering…how are those commas coming these days?”

  “Great! Love ’em!” I say.

  “Really?” he asks.

  I sigh and think about the last pathetic quiz I gave. I know that I should be upbeat and firm about my commitment to education if I want to get a coveted spot in the jury box, but I just can’t muster the energy to lie like that. Martin and Martha already took all the lying I could dish out.

  But I really need this case.

  Don’t I?

  I look around the room and into the eyes of these two lawyers in their cheap suits, and I just feel tired. All these people get up each day and do their work and come home and fight with their kids and make love to their spouses and fall asleep only to do it all again the next day.

  Life is boring, predictable. And no amount of jury duty is really going to change that. Not in the long run, anyway.

  I open my mouth. What comes out is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

  “No one knows where to put the commas. Ever. Did you know that there’s something like eleven uses for them in the English language, and that sixth graders can’t think of more than three? And the great irony is that just when you’ve actually taught the children all the uses of commas, it’s June and they leave you, only to be replaced by children who do not know where to put their commas! My life is like a broken record, playing the same v
erse over and over again. I’m Sisyphus!”

  I notice the hush that has fallen over the room.

  Parnell gives Sylvan a look. The he approaches me. “So, Ms. Worthing, would you say that overworked teachers—good, decent people like yourself—might not always be recognized and appreciated for all they do? Might, in fact, require mental-health breaks from time to time?”

  Voir dire. To speak the truth.

  I sigh. “In fact, that’s why I’m hoping to stay here, to get put on a jury. For a little break. From grammar. And…my husband, my kids…other stuff. I’d kind of like to volunteer for service.” I’m so fucked.

  “Jury duty as a break from life…” Parnell looks up at the crowd. “Now, that’s a new one!”

  Suddenly, the guy’s a comedian. This is the jolliest voir dire on record at the Alden County Courthouse. Everyone’s slapping their knees and wiping their eyes, it’s all so funny.

  To everyone but me. Hey, people, I want to call out, this is my life. I have to use jury duty as an excuse to get a little me time! You should all be sobbing at my feet, it’s so pathetic.

  After asking a few more questions, the lawyers take a five-minute conference break, absenting themselves from the room. I stand and look around, preparing to move back to my seat by the window, and possibly to the parking lot, since I’m sure to be dismissed. But then the bailiff is asking us to sit again and Parnell and Silvan are back.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to do just one more thing here with the twelve of you before moving on.”

  The lawyers call out some of our names and have us rearrange ourselves accordingly. “Yes, Mrs. Worthing, please take the fourth seat right there. And Mr. Grady, seat five, and Mrs. Anglisse, yes, right there…” He scans the seats in front of him before finishing his thought. “And that makes ten of you, correct?”

  Parnell looks at the two rows of us, and we look back at him. The two stay-at-home moms have been ousted and are fidgeting awkwardly in the corner, like the last ones picked for kickball.

  “That’s it. Eight jurors and two alternates. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and patience. We have our jury.”

  Okay, maybe it is a little bit funny.

  Actually, hysterical is more like it. It’s 12:30 on Monday and we’ve been dismissed for the day. “Report back to the courthouse tomorrow morning at nine thirty sharp,” the bailiff tells us, handing out our special parking passes. “Place these on your dash and you’ll get in to our jurors’ lot. It’s located directly under this building, where the spots are not metered. No need for quarters!”

  “Great!” I exclaim.

  Carrie is not amused. “I’m on a case. I knew it. This sucks.”

  “Indeed!” I add. “Wanna go shopping? Get some lunch?”

  She studies me hard before responding. I meet her eyes, which are rimmed in too much black eyeliner. She’s older than me, by about a decade, perhaps. End of her forties. “Lauren, I gotta get back to work. If this case is going to go on for a full week like they say, then I need to use this time to get set in the office.”

  “Oh, of course!” I nod in agreement. “I just thought, you know, something quick before heading back to work.” I look at my watch. “I guess I should just go now, too. If I hurry, I can be there in time for sixth period.”

  We head down in the elevator together, Carrie checking her watch and me pushing back some cuticles on my right hand.

  In the glossy marble hallway on the first floor, we part ways. “Well, see ya tomorrow, I guess,” Carrie says with a nod, half-distracted by thoughts of work.

  “Yeah…see you then.” I wave, turning the other way and pushing through the heavy glass doors of the modern high-rise.

  The crisp sun surprises me, and I look up to see that the clouds have disappeared.

  My mind knows that I should return to work, to the overachieving students in my sixth-period honors class, all of whom read more than I assign, even though I ask them not to. Do you know what it’s like to read the rumble scene of The Outsiders aloud to an audience that has heard it all before?

  It’s a drag.

  I find my minivan, drop some more quarters into the meter, and keep on walking.

  Bye-bye, sixth period. So long, Ponyboy. It’s a beautiful day indeed, I think, as I head down the street in search of a salon and a deluxe mani-pedi.

  Chapter 4

  “No, you did not!” Kat screams in my ear.

  “Yes, I so did!” I scream back. The ladies in the nail salon are shooting me dirty looks, so I cradle my cell phone under my ear, collect my stuff, and head outside. “I got on a civil case. For an entire week.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know. I would hate me, too, if I were you, stuck in school. Kat, you were so right.”

  “Now, that’s a shocker.”

  “They also selected jurors for a criminal case today, manslaughter or something, and that one’s supposed to go on for like two or three weeks, but, you know, the one I got on is still pretty good.”

  “Manslaughter.” Kat sighs. “What a beautiful word.” There is silence on both ends as we let this sink in. “So, where are you now? At the courthouse?”

  “Nope. Salon! Got out at twelve thirty,” I say, finding my way back to the parking lot behind the county office buildings.

  “Will you come visit me in my prison cell later, like you said you would? I’ve really got something to tell you.”

  “Why so mysterious?” Gingerly, I reach into my bag for my car keys, trying not to smudge my nails.

  “Because the Oompa Loompas are on their way back from art.”

  “Catchy. You should use that term at the open house next year.”

  “I should find a new job, is what I should do.”

  “Yes, I believe we’ve been over that one before. Maybe teaching isn’t your calling.” I start the car and pull into traffic.

  Kat is quiet for a minute and I switch to speakerphone. When she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper. “Maybe it isn’t. But then…what is?”

  I sigh, thinking about my own questions and uncertainties, my own life’s dilemmas. “I don’t know, Kitty-Kat. I really don’t. See you in an hour or so.”

  “Where you off to now?”

  “Sophie’s.”

  “Ooh…have fun.”

  I pull up Sophie’s long, winding driveway and find a space between the Porsche convertible and one of the handyman’s trucks. There is always commotion at Sophie’s. Today, several workers are on the flat-topped roof of the contemporary glass fortress that is Sophie’s home, calling out in Portuguese as they pass tools and supplies to one another. The gardeners are here as well, their mowers drowning out the sound of the four dogs of different shapes and sizes barking on the other side of Sophie’s front door.

  I think I ring the bell, but actually cannot hear it, so I wait, waving and talking to the anxious pooches pawing the other side of the glass. “Where’s your mommy today, huh? Do you have lots of goodies to show me, doggies? New merch?” They jump on top of one another and push one another out of the way, nails alternatively clawing against the floor-to-ceiling windows and tapping against the marble entryway.

  “Hold on! Hold on! I’m coming!” I hear Sophie call as the churn of the lawn mowers die. She glides across the landing from the far side of the house, a brown toy poodle nipping at her heels.

  Sophie is about fifty years old and very round. Because of her amorphous size and shape, she tends to wear lots of black, flowy clothes that carry the breeze in them and balloon up around her, so you cannot tell where she ends and the fabric begins. On top of the outfit is always a colorful shawl or a scarf or a wrap of some sort that adds a bit of gypsy flare. Her hair is permanently helmeted into a stiff, glossy black bob. She wears bright lipsticks to match the shade on her long fingernails.

  “Lauren!” she cries. She hugs me with one arm while simultaneously using her boots to kick back the dogs and close the door behind m
e. “Long time no see! What a nice surprise! It’s not even time yet for your annual birthday purchase, is it? When you called, I was like, no way! And then I looked at the time and wondered why you weren’t teaching. Not that it’s any of my business.” One penciled-in eyebrow is cocked as if to add, but of course I’m hoping you’ll tell me why anyway.

  I delay answering her by asking about her daughters, Gigi, Bebe, and Coco, all of whom I taught at some point in middle school and none of whom I can tell apart.

  The girls are all doing well at college, and we continue making small talk as we head up the stairs and into Sophie’s expansive living room. The entire thing is done in crisp white, from the couches to the brick fireplace to the shelves lining one wall. The far wall has the same floor-to-ceiling windows as the foyer, beyond which lies the recently manicured lawn and a pool, not yet open for the season.

  But what makes the living room unique is not the all-white décor or the breathtaking view beyond. It is the handbags.

  Covering every nook in every couch, covering every inch of every shelf, lined up neatly across the glass coffee table and against the fireplace, and propped atop, astride, and next to the Mies van der Rohe chair and ottoman, are handbags.

  Sophie’s pristine, high-ceilinged, light-filled living room is holy.

  Here is where rich ladies come to pray.

  Gucci, Prada, Chanel. Amen.

  Judith Leiber, Louis Vuitton, Ferragamo. Amen.

  Balenciaga, Chloe, Bottega. Amen.

  And, every once in a while…Hermès Birkins and Kellys! Can I get a Hallelujah from the crowd? Amen.

  Sophie, who used to work in fashion, had been searching for a way to work from home when her kids were small. She contacted some fab friends looking to trade their bags for cash, and the next thing she knew, her living room was open for business.

  Sophie gives an entirely new meaning to the concept of the mom who works from home.

  “I’m the bag lady!” she boasts whenever I introduce her to a new client. “Look at me. I have bags under my eyes and bags under my chins. I even have bags under my arms that I won’t show you for fear of scaring you away. I do not have a body made for clothes.” Here, she always pauses dramatically and takes a step closer to the newcomer. “I have a body meant for handbags. And I want to share my love of bags with you.”