Loitering: New and Collected Essays

by Charles D'Ambrosio

have to admit to large amounts of unprofessional rock-butt and boredom, which I was able to alleviate by occasionally shifting in my seat and closing my eyes and listening to the sounds of people’s voices. But with my eyes closed I made a discovery. I heard the prosecuting attorney speak in two distinct voices. She used a sarcastic, dismissive voice while grilling Dr. Moore and another, really irritating voice, hard to describe, but sort of storybook sorrowful, the kind of voice you dip down into to read a tale’s sad parts to a child, when she was giving her summation. Now I come from a pretty much jail-free family and none of us are lawyers and so my courtroom experience, before that morning, was nil. And attorneys I’ve seen in TV shows need to convince me primarily as actors and only secondarily as lawyers—the TV case, in other words, is decided on good or bad drama, not law—so nothing had prepared me for the bad acting, the transparent, awful acting, on the part of the real-life prosecutor, Lisa Johnson. Especially during the summation, her voice tried to offer the aural image of concern, of gravity, of direness, but it was nowhere near the real thing itself. Her voice carried no genuine conviction and came off as sentimental, attempting to force on me, the listener, a feeling that was not there, that wasn’t earned. And while I understand she’s a lawyer, not an actor, still, that day, she played two different characters in court and then a third outside, using three ver...