Alive in Shape and Color Read online

  He explained how jury selection would work. They would call sixteen names at random, and those sixteen people would sit in the jury box, where the judge would ask them each a series of questions. The attorneys might decide, based on the answers to the judge’s questions, that one or more of the sixteen were not right for this case, and they would be dismissed. More names would be called, and the judge would ask the new people the same questions. Once they had sixteen who made it past the judge’s questions, the attorneys would address them as a group. All of this would happen in the courtroom. Each of us would be present. No phones, no computers. He started talking about the importance of an impartial jury, and I stopped listening.

  Micheline. I hadn’t thought of her in years, but I could picture her in my mind like I’d seen her yesterday. Those braids. At school, everyone called her Braidy. Braidy Grady. Because Micheline was too long, too hard to say, too foreign for our sleepy New Jersey town. But I only ever called her Micheline. I’d practiced, alone in my room, learning to say it right, like she did, like her mother did.

  Micheline and I were best friends. I’d chosen her, from a classroom full of first graders, the way you might choose the best-looking apple from a bushel at a farmstand. She was my first friend who was truly my own, whose mother wasn’t already friends with mine, who hadn’t been shoved toward me, told to go play, while the grown-ups talked. Of course I’d chosen her. From the first moment I looked at her, I couldn’t look away. She was different, not like the rest of us. Not just her name, but her manners, her accent, her clothes. She was wearing Petit Bateau, and the rest of us were wearing Danskin outfits that our mothers brought home from JCPenney.

  Everyone wanted to be her friend. Even Mrs. Turner, with her thick ankles and glasses hanging on a chain around her neck, was utterly enchanted by Micheline. What was so amazing to me, even then, at six years old, was that she chose me back. She was my best friend and I was hers, with an unquestioning certainty that I have never known since. About anything. We were Braidy and Nicki. Micheline and Veronica.

  The judge sent us out into the hallway for a ten-minute break. He said that when we returned, they would assemble the first group of sixteen and we would get started, going all day, with a break for lunch from one to two fifteen. I picked up my bag, turned on my phone and joined the crowd exiting the courtroom. Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me, I said to myself. Waiting in line to use the ladies’ room, I scrolled through the emails that had come in while my phone was turned off. Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me. I put my phone away, without having opened any of the emails. Let me do this, I thought. Let me fix it. Let me do this for Micheline.

  It was twenty-five minutes by the time we were all back inside, seated and ready to go. The clerk began reading names from the cards he pulled from one of those metal barrels that you turn with a crank. Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me. He read a name, and then spelled it, first then last, I guessed to make sure the court reporter would get it right. I sat up straight in my seat and shifted a little to the left so that if he looked up, the clerk would have a clear view of me. He’d called ten names. Six to go. I closed my eyes and took a slow breath in. Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me.

  He didn’t pick me.

  I was disappointed, but I knew that there would be other opportunities for my name to be called. I paid attention to what the judge was saying to the sixteen they’d chosen. He asked the same questions, in the same order, to each person, one by one. By the time he started asking the fourth person, I had the questions memorized. “Where in Manhattan do you live?” “Where are you from originally?” “How much school did you complete?” “Are you currently working?” “What type of work do you do?” “With whom do you share your home?” “Are your children school-aged?” This was going to be easy. I had lived on the Upper East Side for almost thirty years, since I moved there after grad school. I lived alone, didn’t have kids, didn’t work with kids. “Have you or a close friend or family member been the victim of a crime?” “Do you have any close friends or family in law enforcement?” “Do you know anyone who has been charged or convicted of a crime?” “What do you like to do in your spare time?” Most of the people answering the questions spoke so softly that I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, even though the attorneys kept asking them to speak up. The people sitting in the front rows on the right side of the room, closest to the jury box, laughed at one lady’s answer to the question about who she lived with. I looked over and saw that the judge was smiling, too. I wondered what she’d said.

  When the guy in the Buffalo Bills shirt answered yes, that he or a close friend or family member had been the victim of a crime, the judge asked if he had described it in his questionnaire, and the guy said yes. Oh, shit. I remembered the question, but I had answered it without much thought. I was pretty sure I answered no. Or if I said yes, I had only been thinking about the time my wallet was stolen in Paris, so I probably just wrote something like “pickpocketed, 1984.” I hadn’t been lying. Not on purpose, anyway. I honestly didn’t think of Micheline that way. We were eight years old.

  The fact that I hadn’t said anything about it in my questionnaire felt like another sign that I was supposed to be there. That I was there for a reason. Before knowing what this case was about, I totally could have answered that question “yes,” and I could have written something about what happened, and I was pretty sure that would have been enough to get me sent home. Which, at the time, was what I wanted, right? So it wasn’t like I didn’t mention it on purpose. I wanted to get released. If I’d thought of it, I would have said yes.

  After the judge finished asking his questions to the seventh person, we broke for lunch. I walked and walked, trying to decide what I should do. Should I tell them, or should I not? Of course I knew that I should. There was a reason they were asking the question. And we had sworn, or taken an oath or something, that we would tell the truth. But I also knew that if I told them it would prejudice them against me. They would assume I couldn’t be impartial. That I couldn’t distinguish between this case and what happened to Micheline.

  After lunch, they picked up where they’d left off. The judge continued to ask the same questions, and the people in the jury box continued to answer them. I closed my eyes.

  All of a sudden, I had this memory. It was vivid like a dream, but I was wide-awake, perfectly conscious of where I was, sitting in the courtroom, with the hum of questions and answers in the background. We were in second grade. I knew that because Ms. Jordan was there, and we had her for second grade. We loved her, because she was so young and pretty. Especially after Mrs. Turner the year before. A policeman came to our class that day, to talk to us about traffic safety. Stuff like looking both ways and only crossing at the corner. When the policeman finished and asked if anyone had any questions, two kids raised their hands, Timmy something, who moved away the summer after fifth grade, and Micheline. Timmy asked the policeman if he’d ever shot a gun. And then Micheline asked what were the safety rules for walking past a haunted house.

  Everybody laughed, including the policeman and Miss Jordan. But I knew she didn’t mean to be funny. Micheline and I walked to and from school together every day. It seemed impossible, thinking back, that our parents allowed it. We were six or seven years old. But it really was a different time. All the kids from school who lived out toward the lake walked in the same direction at the same time. Not quite together, but none of us really alone. Micheline and I lived the farthest out, so it was always just the two of us when we passed the Red House.

  We had already come up with some safety rules of our own. We had to hold our breath while we were passing the house. We’d breathe in a big gulp of air at the mailbox, and we’d hold it until we got to the tree on the other side and touched it with our hand. We walked as fast as we could, but we couldn’t run. And we couldn’t look at the house. We would look straight ahead, and we would try not to blink. I don’t know
why we didn’t just cross the street.

  After the judge finished questioning the last person, he talked to the attorneys for a few minutes. He asked the people in the jury box to wait around in the hall for a little bit in case the attorneys had any questions for them, and the rest of us were done for the day. We were told to be back on Monday at ten. It was nice out, and too late to go to the office, so I decided to walk home.

  I hadn’t really believed the Red House was haunted. I don’t think I even knew what haunted meant. It was an old house, the paint faded and peeling, and no one lived there. The front lawn was overgrown, and the driveway didn’t get shoveled when it snowed. One of the steps up to the front porch was broken. I remembered when I was home from college for a visit, and I saw that it had been torn down, that a new house had been built on the property. I couldn’t believe it—the Red House was gone. I asked my mother what she knew about it, who had owned it and when they’d sold it. She said she didn’t know what I was talking about. The old red house? That she’d driven by thousands of times? Maybe tens of thousands of times? The one Dad used to call a “goddamn eyesore”? Nope. She had no recollection.

  I was careful to stay busy, not wanting to spend the weekend thinking about the case. The judge had told us that we were not to talk or read about it, and that we had to avoid any articles or news stories or conversations about it. He said it was okay for us to tell people which case it was that we were being considered for, but that was it. I decided not to. I didn’t want to risk anyone saying something to me about it. Or about Micheline.

  I never understood why, but Micheline’s disappearance hadn’t gotten the national attention that the Milo Richter case got just a few years later. It was, of course, a huge deal where we lived. I didn’t really know how much I remembered, and how much I knew from having read or been told about it since. What I knew was that Helene had gone in to wake Micheline up for school, and her bed was empty. She was gone. Her father was out of town for work, so it had been just the two of them at home. Their back door wasn’t locked. But lots of people used to leave their doors unlocked. Helene had been drinking. In the newspaper articles I read later, there was a lot of attention to the fact that there had been an empty wine bottle in the trash and a half-empty bottle on the counter. She’d fallen asleep on the couch. Whatever had happened in the house, she slept through it.

  Helene wasn’t like the other moms, and she didn’t have many friends. She and Pete met when he was working in France. They’d moved from Paris when Pete got transferred to his company’s New York office, the summer before Micheline and I started first grade. Helene wasn’t one of the moms who came on class trips, or who volunteered in the school library or helped with the Halloween parade. My mom had been very critical of her. Probably all the moms were. I was sure it didn’t help that I would come home from Micheline’s with stories about how Helene said I could call her Maman, how she sprayed us with her perfume, or that she let us help her bake and how she’d laughed at the mess we made, that we’d gotten powdered sugar everywhere. At my house, Micheline called my mom Mrs. Ellis, and as a treat we were sometimes allowed to eat TV dinners on tray tables in the den. My mom had said it just didn’t seem right that Helene had dressed so nicely for the funeral, that she’d put on lipstick and a scarf. I remembered my mom saying to my dad, “What kind of mother would even think to put on a scarf to go to her child’s funeral?”

  DAY THREE

  Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me. The day started with the clerk choosing people to replace the two who had been let go based on the judge’s questions. I tried to remember who had been sitting in the empty seats, what they’d said that got them sent home. The clerk turned the crank and pulled out a card identifying the new person for seat number three. Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me. Not me. Next name, for seat number nine. Not me. The judge asked his same questions of each of the new people. When he was done, he and the attorneys had a whispered conversation, I guessed to make sure the two new people were okay, and then said he was just about ready to give someone else a chance to talk. He explained a little about the voir dire process and told us in the audience that we should pay attention and think about how we would answer the questions being asked, and then he turned it over to the assistant district attorney.

  I liked her at first. She seemed like she was going to be good. She spoke loudly and with authority, and seemed comfortable speaking to a group. She talked about the evidence that she and her team were going to present and what it was going to prove. She also talked about the evidence the defense attorneys were likely to present. When she started asking questions, you could see that she’d memorized the names of who was sitting in which chair. “Ms. Cantone, you will you be able to listen to the evidence and use your common sense to determine if it is reliable, right?” Ms. Cantone said yes. “And you, Mr. Wald. You too? Will you be able to apply your life experience and common sense to the evidence that is presented?” Mr. Wald said yes. “Everyone else? Is there anyone here who will not be able to use your common sense? Mr. Lometo? Am I saying that right?” I could see that poor Mr. Lometo didn’t know which of her questions he was supposed to answer.

  She explained that the prosecution’s first witness would be Wendy Richter, Milo’s mother, and she was likely to be very emotional during her testimony. “It has been thirty-eight years since Milo was kidnapped and murdered. Does anyone—?”

  “Objection. Allegedly kidnapped and murdered.”

  The judge turned to the people in the jury box. “Unless it is proven that a kidnapping and murder took place, please keep in mind that it is only alleged to have occurred. Go ahead.”

  She began again, emphasizing the word alleged like she was indulging a petulant child, asking if anyone thought that it was time that Wendy Richter “just get over it already”? A collective no. When she asked if everyone could agree that real life isn’t like an episode of Law & Order, I tuned her out.

  For a long time I believed that what happened to Micheline was my fault. One day, when we were walking by the Red House on our way home from school, something made me look. I barely turned my head at all, moving my eyes way to the left so I could see. And then I stopped and turned. A man was sitting on the front steps, pulling at the splintered wood of the broken step. I grabbed Micheline’s hand and pointed. “Look! A monster.” We ran to my house as fast as we could. We didn’t say anything about it to my mom. I was afraid that we’d get in trouble for having broken the Red House Rules. I wondered what would have happened if we’d told someone what we’d seen. If everything might have turned out differently.

  We saw the Monster three more times after that. Twice, he was sitting in a dirty white car parked in front of the Red House, and once he was on the porch, standing by the front door, smoking a cigarette. He was a regular-looking guy, a grown-up but not old, with glasses, long hair, and baggy clothes. That last time we saw him, he smiled and waved to us. We were terrified.

  The lawyer continued to ask these rhetorical questions, and the people in the jury box continued to give all the right answers. “As jurors, you will be required to follow the judge’s instructions. Will you be able to do that? Yes? Ms. Chen? Mr. Frawley?” “Just because someone is uneducated, do you think it is possible for them to be truthful?” It was frustrating. Her questions were so dumb. How was this going to help her decide who should be on the jury? I took out my book and read until we broke for lunch.

  The defense attorney was better. At least I could tell what he was trying to learn about the people he was questioning. He spent a lot of time talking before he started asking questions. He talked about the burden of proof and reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence. He talked about the challenges in the prosecutor’s case, that there were no eyewitnesses, no DNA, no video footage from security cameras. That Milo’s body had never been found.

  Micheline’s body was found in the lake three days after she disappeared. She’d been strangled and was alre
ady dead when she was put in the water. I didn’t know any of that at the time. It was years later before I was able to get my mom to really talk to me about it. What do you tell an eight-year-old whose best friend has been taken from her bed, while her mother slept, murdered and thrown in the lake?

  I’d known right from the start that she was missing. That first morning, everyone was too freaked out to make up an age-appropriate story. After her body was found, my mom told me that Micheline was someplace so far away that she was not ever going to be able to come back. I only figured out that she was dead because some of the churchier kids at school said that she was in heaven. My mom must have heard or read somewhere that it was important to get me to talk about my feelings, so when she put me to bed that night, instead of telling me some sanitized version of the truth, she asked me to tell her what I thought had happened. I said it was the Monster. That the Monster from the Red House had gotten her. My mom said later that she’d figured that that was as good a story as anything she and my dad were going to come up with, so she gave me a hug and lay down with me until I fell asleep.

  The lawyer asked a bunch of questions about IQ and psychological testing. Had anyone ever had their IQ tested? Were people familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test? He didn’t ask yes-or-no questions like the other one had. He asked different people, sort of jumping around, what their experience was, or if they had an opinion about something. He talked about mental illness, and asked people what kind of contact they’d had with mentally ill people. He said that there would be testimony about the defendant having used drugs for several years in the 1980s and ’90s. He asked how knowing that about the defendant might affect what they thought about him, about his likelihood to commit other crimes. Same thing with domestic violence. There had been a couple of incidents of domestic violence between him and his ex-wife. I could see what he was doing. He was putting it all out there. Not pretending for a minute that this guy was an angel. But asking these questions to see who was going to be able to listen to all of this ugly stuff about him and not automatically assume he’d done this other thing.