Free Lauren Takes Leave by Julie Gerstenblatt

Laney has not been a great
help. Why is preparing dinner nightly my job? Why are all the things I
did when not working—like scheduling doctors’ appointments, getting presents
for birthday parties, going to the supermarket and dry cleaner’s—still my job exclusively now that I work full-time again, just like Doug? Sometimes I
wonder who put me in charge.
    And then I wonder what would happen if I just decided one
day not to be.

Chapter 6
Tuesday
    I roll down the window of my car and pull up to the
security booth at the courthouse parking lot. As instructed, the special juror
permit is on my windshield, and I motion to it while saying good morning to the
guard. He barely looks up from his newspaper as he waves me through. “Thanks!”
I call. “Have a nice day!”
    Making my way up to the main entrance, I’m feeling rather
cheerful indeed. My first day as a juror! I have purchased a new notepad for
the occasion, as suggested by the bailiff yesterday, to jot down any technical
notes from the case that I might need to recall during deliberation. While
waiting in line at the metal detector, I sip my coffee and imagine the jury
deadlocked. Flipping through my notebook, I will find the one loophole to knock
the whole case wide open. Juror number four saves the day!
    Law & Order has messed with my head.
    I enter the juror waiting room attached to our courtroom
on the fifth floor. “Morning,” I say to the group.
    “That it is, doll,” Sweetheart says. No one looks up.
Carrie gives a little wave, but her eyes are glued to her BlackBerry.
    “You smuggled yours in, too?” I ask. She nods faintly in
reply, not looking up from her screen.
    It was a risky move, but I really wanted to listen to a
new mix I made off of iTunes, so I hid my phone deep in my pocketbook and told
the security guard that I didn’t have my phone on me.
    I thought I was being such a rebel. Apparently, I was only
following the herd.
    No one’s chatty this morning, so I take out my iPhone and
pretend to be busy. Something catches my eye as the incoming e-mails unroll
down the screen. There’s a message from “lkatzenberg.” Lenny. I scroll back
through the uploading messages to find it, but just then a bailiff enters and
clears her throat. I drop the phone into my pocketbook.
    “Hello, jurors, my name is Delilah and I am the bailiff
assigned to this case.” Delilah is such a feminine name for this woman standing
before me, with no makeup on her cocoa skin and her black hair pulled back
tightly into a bun. Women in uniforms always look like men to me, even if they
are wide hipped and big bosomed like Delilah. She fingers the gun in her
holster and I snap back to attention.
    “The judge and the lawyers for the case are in chambers
right now, preparing for the start of the trial. Until the judge tells me to
call you in, you will stay here. In this room, you may eat, you may talk to
each other, and”—she looks my way—“you may use your cell phones, as long as the
other jurors don’t mind.” She then tells us how to find the bathrooms on the
floor and warns us to be prepared to wait for a while. “Could be up to an hour,
give or take, depending.” She shrugs before leaving the room.
    “Depending on what?” Sweetheart asks after she’s gone.
“That doesn’t make no sense!”
    “Any,” Carrie says emphatically. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Exactly.” He nods in agreement and smiles at her. Carrie
returns the smile hesitantly. Then she looks my way and rolls her eyes.
    One older woman takes out some Sudoku puzzles and another
one picks up the novel she’s been reading. A young guy gets up to stretch and
tells us that he’ll be on a call in the hallway. “Come get me if the judge
needs us, okay?” I remember him from yesterday, the guy with a new job. Poor
thing. He thinks work matters.
    Then I remember the e-mail. Leonard. I can’t remember our
last exchange, exactly, except that I had the feeling I’d somehow pissed