I was thanked and sent back to my seat. Out of pure reflex, I glanced toward the back wall.
The deputy was watching me with an expression I hadn't seen before—approval?
Not that his approval meant anything to me.
I picked up my knitting and passed the rest of the day making more of the prosthetics for my beloved cause. I'd be able to submit more than my usual number of items for the month, so at least one good thing would come from my short stint as a prospective juror.
At the end of the session, the judge called more juror numbers to dismiss. I braced myself to hear 247.
But it wasn't among them.
July 17, Friday
FRIDAY HADa different energy than the rest of the week—a closing-in feeling, like the last chapter of a long book where things start to happen faster.
Both legal teams arrived looking as if they'd spent the previous evening comparing notes over something stronger than coffee. The prosecution table was buried in paper. The defense side looked equally buried but significantly more theatrical about it, their lead attorney—the bombastic one, who seemed to consider the whole proceeding a personal showcase—making regular trips to confer with colleagues in voices low enough to be private but gestures large enough to broadcast.
The judge received them both at the bench separately, reviewed documents, made notes, received more documents. The whole morning moved with the deliberate pace of important people making irreversible decisions, and those of us in the gallery made do with watching.
I'd stopped counting how many knitted prosthetics I'd produced. My hands were feeling cramped. I stopped to massage them and found myself studying the people around me who were left. You can't sit in the same room with the same strangers for days without starting to read them whether you mean to or not.
There was the retired teacher—late sixties, silver bob, who sat with her hands folded and processed every development in the room with the measured patience of someone who'd spent thirty years dealing with teenagers.
Next to her sat the loud businessman who seemed incapable of entering or leaving without making it an event—jacket adjustments, sighing, the audible shuffling of things that didn't need shuffling. Whatever courtroom this man ended up in, you'd know he was there.
Two rows ahead of them sat the college professor, who I suspected was grading papers in his head during the slow stretches. And in the aisle seat of the fourth row, the man who fell asleep every afternoon with the punctuality of a scheduled train. Not dozing—asleep. Head back, fully committed, undisturbed by the bailiff's announcements, apparently untroubled by the small matter of federal court proceedings occurring six feet away.
I had opinions about all of them. Not judgments, exactly—more like working theories. Assessments. The realization settled over me somewhere around noon that I missed being around other adults, having adult conversations that had nothing to do with orthodontists' bills and a quote to fix the leak in the utility room.
The judge might have been onto something when he said I'd learn things about myself.
By mid-afternoon, the lists went up to the bench for the last time. The judge reviewed them both, made some marks, and began reading numbers of jurors that were dismissed.
I steeled myself. The teacher's number was called. The businessman's. The professor remained. The man in the fourth row slept through his own dismissal and had to be nudged.
My number wasn't called.
Judge Arnold looked up. "The remaining panel will please return Monday morning. We'll continue with additional rounds of questions at that time."
Chairs scraped. Bags rustled. People moved toward the doors with the loosened, end-of-week energy. I tucked my knitting away and joined the shuffle toward the exit. Out through the lobby. Out through the heavy courthouse doors into the late afternoon heat.
I stood on the courthouse steps and waited for the wave of relief to have two days of my life back before returning to thecourtroom Monday to endure more of the slow, grinding process of the legal system.
Instead, I was dreading being home.
July 18, Saturday
ON SATURDAY,everything I'd been deferring all week arrived at once and expected to be dealt with immediately.
I was up at seven. By seven-fifteen I had walked Tucker and identified four full laundry baskets, a kitchen suggesting nobody had wiped a counter for days, and a refrigerator containing one Greek yogurt, a jar of olives, and an empty milk jug. By seven-thirty I was at the grocery store, which on a Saturday morning is its own endurance event.
The next six hours were a relay race with no baton. Groceries unpacked. Lily to conditioning. First load of laundry in. Back out for Josh. Bathroom scrubbed. Second load. Walk Tucker again. Lily picked up from conditioning, dropped at the nail salon—do not ask about the nail salon. Kitchen floor mopped; something sticky of unidentified origin near the refrigerator, now neutralized. Third load. Josh's soccer snack bag assembled, because apparently he is still in elementary school. Lily retrieved. Fourth load. Dinner eaten by teenagers in under six minutes because they both had evening plans. Teenagers gone.
By seven p.m. the house was clean, stocked, and empty, and I felt like I'd qualified for something that didn't offer a medal.
I called Elaine.
"Can't talk, I'm on a date," she said, with the warm distraction of someone standing somewhere considerably nicer than my kitchen. "Call you later?"
