My mental circus, inside and out.

a day in court

Saddled and bridled and booted rode he,
A plume in his helment, a sword at his knee.
but toom [empty] came his saddle, all bloody to see
Oh, home came his good horse, but never came he.--Bonnie James Campbell

Sometimes, a sad Scottish ballad is welcome.

Today, Emma traveled down to witness the sentencing of Casey, her brother's killer.   First, she stopped by her father's house, where he fed her a chicken sandwich and a cup of Italian wedding soup.   At the island in his kitchen, her father told her that  he cared nothing or other about Casey, but he knew that David, a devoted teacher, would have cared about this young man, and would have said to him, "You have wasted twenty-seven years of your life already.  Do all you can not to waste the rest of it."  Casey's father, he said, had come to him 3 weeks ago outside the court and apologized, and Emma's father had admired the courage of this man, who was so obviously, understandably  frightened.   Tomorrow, Emma's father would go on a journey to his own brother's, a trip that would ease his grief.

The courtroom was crowded.   With David's life partner, Roy,  three of her sisters, her stepmother, her daughter, and her father, Emma sat in the front row of the gallery, just behind a row of lawyers who chitchatted through the entire proceedings.   Emma's stepmother wore the pin she had worn on every court date for months now,  David's laminated picture, taken on the day of Emma's book signing. Only one member of the family would be allowed speak, and that was to be Roy who told Emma that he had gone over and over this moment every night.  Now, he said with relief, it would finally be over. He was tense and energized, and Emma imagined that he would deliver the greatest speech of his life, like Olivier doing Lear.   

A line of prisoners was brought in, handcuffed and chained together, wearing worn coveralls, and they took seats in the jury box.   Emma knew that Casey and his family were sitting behind her, in the back row, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him.  She had never seen him, and she dreaded the moment of seeing him for the first time, dreaded the reality of him, dreaded the banality of him.  

He was called to the bench, a small, furtive man with a bad haircut  in a leather jacket over a sleeveless teeshirt (Emma could see the lines of it).  Then the judge began to mumble.   Something about a code classification, something about a lack of resolution, something about the importance of detail when meting out justice, and then something about postponing sentencing for another three days.

What?? You have got to be kidding.

Casey's family stood up.  Emma's family stood up.

Apparently afraid of violence in this violent place, the guard would not let Emma's family leave before Casey's had gone out the door. Now Casey had three more days of freedom, while Emma's brother would never feel the freedom of life again. Out in the hall,  Emma stood with her daughter and her sisters in their dark winter coats.   No one could say anything. Roy was busted down with tension and grief.  He and Emma's father and stepmother drifted on ahead in a knot of lawyers, victims' advocates, and news reporters.  A big security guard was keeping an eye on everyone, as if these two old men and a group of women were an explosive threat, as if the women would begin a bacchanale and tear Casey limb from limb.   

Turned inward by sadness, Emma suddenly heard a man sobbing loudly, and looked down the hall to see her father standing in front of Casey, and it was Casey who was sobbing with surprising humanity.   Emma herself began sobbing at the excruciating pain of the scene.  Then so did her sister, and they held each other.  Later, Emma's father told her what he had said to Casey:  ""You have wasted twenty-seven years of your life already.  Do all you can not to waste the rest of it." 

Then Casey stood in front of Roy, but down the long cold marble hall,  only these words of Roy could be overheard:  "You have taken everything I ever loved."

All the while, the television camera was bearing down on them.

Already in the papers tonight, the brief interview with Roy he gave after the scene with Casey:

  -- Justice has been delayed for the family and friends of a local high school teacher who was hit by a car and killed.

According to records, 27-year-old Casey O has not had a valid license since 2003. However, he was driving on the afternoon of September 2nd, 2005 when he hit David L, a popular math teacher at OH High School.

Family and friends of David L sat quietly in court Monday, waiting to find out the punishment for Casey O. The case was especially hard on Roy W, who was David's life partner for 18 years.

"Every day is just hell. What is there to get up for?" says Roy.

In September, Ottinger, whose license was under suspension, ran a stop sign and hit David. David rode his bike to Ottawa Hills High every day and was on his way home when he was hit.

"The impact threw Dave, as I understand it, up into the air and onto the windshield and he was killed instantly," says Roy.

The judge continued sentencing until Thursday, noting he needed more time to research part of law. Outside of the courtroom, family members cried after a tearful Ottinger apologized.

"Said 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' He just kept saying that over and over and was weeping quite profusely," Roy says.

Still, Roy believes O should do prison time for causing an accident that killed a well-known teacher and a vibrant man.

"I think it should be somewhere between five and eight to be quite honest because I think he needs to be in there and think about what he has done," says Roy.

O was convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide, which is a second degree felony. The judge could give him between two and eight years behind bars.

According to SM Court, O also has a pending case for a drunk driving arrest in 2004.

Posted by: EmmaPele at January 31, 2006 07:01 | link | comments (1)

Nasdijj exposed

The furor over the James Frey memoir has spilled over into another case, the fake Navaho writer, Nasdijj, whose memoir of his allegedly brutal childhood on the reservation earned a New York Times notable book.  Turns out that Nasdijj is really a psychotic Scottish-American sadomasochist  porn writer who grew up close to where I live in a nondescript auto town.  Frey, the inflated junkie, is from right down the road.  Also from here is Steven Segal, the allegedly reincarnated  Treasure Revealer of Palyul Monastery.  It is possible that this region breeds fantasists who routinely confuse autobiography and fiction to create elaborate personal constructs, there being nothing much better to do around here.

Posted by: EmmaPele at January 29, 2006 03:10 | link | comments

flowers, not brickbats

The other morning, Emma, late as usual, rushed into the office to find the staff in a tizzy.   What had happened, they wondered, to have provoked the dozen red tulips and huge purplish arrangement that the florist had brought  first thing.  Imagining yet another in a seeming endless series of tragedies, they watched pensively while Emma opened her office to door, and then followed her in to watch her open the card.  "What has happened?," they asked.  "I have no idea," Emma said.  

Receiving flowers in the office has always made Emma feel emotionally exposed, and she was far more worried that the flowers were from an ardent suitor suddenly popping up,  like a toadstool, and if she had been alone, she probably would have put off opening the card, just as she often refused to answer the phone.  She had to open the card, though, under the pressure of all this nervous expectation, and so she did, and much to her relief, the flowers were from her friend, Lavinia, who was very much like the languishing Alice James (bedridden sister of Henry and William).  The card said only "Lavinia" without explanation. The staff, who already thought Lavinia quite mad, found this all very odd and disappointing.  But Emma was delighted at flowers arriving for no special reason at all from Lavinia, whom she loves as she especially loves eccentrics.   No acknowledgement of mourning. No false or desperate romantic overtures.  (Emma has found that, usually, the more flowers, the more falsity and desperation.)

Only the tulips were actually for Emma. The imposing purple arrangement was for Lavinia herself, who loves purple, especially irises, but it had been mistakenly delivered, making Emma's desk into a sudden garden.

Later, when Lavinia had come to reclaim her flowers, Emma was out of the office.  Lavinia left an envelope on Emma's desk, bearing a Sylvia Plath poem which she explained, in the cover letter, was about agony.  Emma hasn't read it yet.  She isn't really in any agony, although Lavinia has made a wonderful art of it.   Instead, Emma would rather appreciate her tulips as they are, with their bright red  gauze bow, as an early spring.

 

 

Posted by: EmmaPele at January 28, 2006 04:39 | link | comments

Welcome to our show

The management welcomes you to the Emma Pele show.  Here you will find modestly death-defying feats, psychological mysteries and only potential murders,  family dramas not really on the scale of  Ibsen, exposes of arrogance and hypocrisy to no great effect,  costume changes and sleights of hand.  Enjoy our play.  However, the management does ask that you leave your cudgels, shilalahs, and emotional baggage with the attractive coat check guy, and no muddy boot prints upon the carpets please.  Though the management can't provide popcorn, it does believe that this is an essential food group, and advises you to bring your own.   Emma does accept flowers during the bow, but rotten fruit should be redirected at George W. Bush.   Patrons should be advised that the management does not allow anyone to move in and take up residence in the theater,  especially without the express permission of Ms. Emma Pele herself.   Anyone falling in love with Ms. Emma Pele should immediately have their heads examined, or better yet, should examine their own heads carefully before approaching Ms. Pele.  Sincerely, The Management

Posted by: EmmaPele at January 25, 2006 20:16 | link | comments (2)

Maud's clothes

To be honest, Emma is just going to avoid reading any recent responses--however riveting the chaos might be--because she has something else to do: tell a story about Sunday.   Emma stayed in Maud's house on Saturday night, and in the morning, she and her sister, Julie, sat at the kitchen table.  Both of them were reminded how they had often sat at this table, talking to Maud over coffee, and how Maud had always given wise counsel.  Julie listened while Emma hardly ever did, she being a restless sort.   And so now Emma and Julie talked, with something strong of Maud in both of them.   Julie had picked up Maud's practicality, rationality, soberness, and a wee bit of fatalism.  Emma had her mother's questing mind, belief in service to others,  and Maud's odd contradictions of rigidity and ability to change.  The sisters saw much to be fond of in each other.

Julie was living in the house temporarily, watching out for it, and at first she tried to keep everything as Maud had done, but everything soon became disenchanted from Maud's presence.  It is a vast Victorian house, much less romantic when one has to actually care for it.  On this Sunday, some of Maud's possessions were up for family auction. Julie told Emma that she had discarded Maud's underwear, and then been haunted by a dream in which Maud reappeared and had no underwear to put on.  Julie said, "I don't know what's wrong with me.  I haven't been able to grieve."  This struck Emma in two ways.  First, it was almost exactly the thing that Maud had said about her own illness, that she didn't know what was wrong with her for she had lost the ability to cry.  Second, it seemed completely in keeping with Julie's strength of character.  And so Emma told her sister that she thought her perfectly normal, and that it was perfectly OK not to go wailing around like a Norwegian.  (Emma was extrapolating grieving Norwegians from a dim memory of an Ingmar Bergmann film, which was actually about keening Swedes... . the exact scene being of an unconsolable widow of a dead theater owner wailing in the most disconcerting manner.  But it just came out "Norwegians.")

Conspiratorially--since their brother, Rick, had not included most of Maud's dress clothes in this auction pile and was supposedly saving them for later--Julie invited Emma to take whatever clothes she wanted, since Emma was her mother's size.   So Julie and Emma stood in Emma's old walk-in closet, practically the size of a bedroom, now full of Maud's stuff.  An elegant woman, Maud took meticulous care of her clothes, and hung most of them on hangars, complete with accessories, so that necklaces and purses were kept with the best-matching tunics and skirts.  Maud had also kept anything that anyone had made by hand, so that ancient child's dresses, embroidered sweatshirts, and theatrical costumes were in the mix.   (Both Emma's mother and father had once been involved in community theater, a strange tale for another day,)

Julie's toddler, Jake, whirled around and around in Maud's silk scarves,  playing peek-a-boo, laughing and laughing.   How Maud would have loved that.

So now, having avoided the pinks and the more extravagant Edwardian rose patterns, Emma will be wearing Maud's sober grey jackets to work.

 

 

 

Posted by: EmmaPele at January 24, 2006 07:51 | link | comments