by Wally Lamb
I thought about what Lolly had said about my father—how, after he returned from his war, he’d drink himself useless rather than talk about it. This was healthier, right? Talking about it? Getting it out? I just wasn’t sure why Kendricks had picked me to be his sounding board.
“I was…I was thinking about that paper you wrote a while back—the one where you said that, post-Iraq, you felt like Sisyphus, pushing a heavy rock up a hill every day.” He nodded in recognition. “How’s that going? Things going any better on the home front now?” I asked.
He stiffened. Looked at me directly for the first time since he’d sat down. “Why are you asking?” he wanted to know.
“Oh. Well…that paper. How you were reading your daughter a story and, in the middle of it, you had…what was it? A flashback?”
He stared at me and swiveled, not answering.
I grabbed at anything. “So how does that thing work, anyway?” I asked, indicating his artificial hand.
He extended his arm, so that the hand was halfway between us, six inches or so above my desk. “Battery-powered,” he said. It opened and closed, opened and closed. “There’s wire sensors in the fingers that read the electrical impulses in my muscles and nerves.”
“No kidding,” I said. “And were you—are you—right-handed or left?”
“Left.”
“Well, that’s a break at least, huh? Less to have to readapt to.”
Open, close, open, close, open, close.
Did I own this awkward silence, or did he? “This uh…this guy I knew? Grew up with? He developed schizophrenia when he was in college. His freshman year, I think it was. In and out of the state hospital most of his adult life. And then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait back in—when was that? Nineteen ninety? Guy goes into the library over there in Three Rivers, sits down, and cuts off his hand. Some kind of crazy antiwar sacrifice, I think it was supposed to be. And after? I’d see him sometimes. Him and his brother. Twins, they were. I’d see them at the grocery store, or in Friendly’s. The brother and I had run track together in high school, but I knew them both. They were twins. Did I say that?…Anyway, that guy—he just had a stump. Nothing high-tech like you’ve got. I mean, sensors in the fingers: wow…. Sad story, though, that guy. He drowned. Suicide, I guess it was. The paper never put it in so many words, but that’s what people were saying at the funeral.”
“And are you telling me all this because you think I’m crazy, too?”
“Oh, God, not at all, Kareem. I didn’t at all mean to imply that—no, no. Nothing like that.”
Apropos of nothing, he asked me if I knew what the seven acts of Christian charity were.
“The seven…?”
“Acts of Christian charity. There’s the seven deadly sins, the seven contrary virtues, and the seven acts of Christian charity.”
What the hell was going on, I wondered. Why was he here? I shook my head. “I don’t know them. No.”
“I’m not surprised. I take it you’re like most professors.”
“How do you mean?”
“You’re a nonbeliever, right? Too highly educated to humble yourself to a higher power?”
It’s none of your business what I believe or don’t believe, was what I felt like saying. Instead, I spouted off some bullshit thing about how my policy was not to discuss my personal beliefs with my students. For emphasis, and a little facetiously, I guess, I stuck out my index finger and, in the air between us, drew a question mark.
We stared at each other for five or six seconds. Then Private Kendricks closed his eyes and spoke slowly and deliberately, with exaggerated enunciation. “Feed the hungry…. Give drink to the thirsty…. Clothe the naked…. Shelter the stranger…. Visit the sick…. Bury the dead…. Minister to the prisoner.” His eyes sprang open. “Speaking of which, how’s your wife?”
I leaned back a little. Grabbed onto the edge of my desk. “My wife?”
“That day you told us she was in prison? I looked her up on the Internet. She got five years for killing that boy, right? Negligent homicide?”
“Vehicular homicide. She’s okay, thanks. How’s your wife?”
His blinking became rapid. His smile was bizarre. “I couldn’t tell you because she’s taken out a restraining order against me. That’s how off-base the justice system in this country is. She’s the one who broke the ninth commandment, but I’m the one who gets court-ordered to stay away from my own home.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was, too, but I was also just about done with this conversation. I stacked some already-stacked papers. Looked up at the clock. “So you have that appointment at four, right? I guess we better—”
“This is the value system I risked my life to protect? So that some clueless female judge can sit there and accept another woman’s lies as gospel? Tell a father who’s served his country to the best of his ability that he can only see his child for one hour, twice a week? Under the supervision of a social worker?”
He stood up, but rather than heading for the door, he walked over to my bookcase. His back was to me. I felt a trickle of sweat from my underarm. Proceed with caution, I told myself.
“You know, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “I’m not at all saying that you’re…but are you getting any counseling? Because, after all you’ve been through, it might be good to talk with someone who can help you over the rough spots. Get you back on track with…your domestic situation. Maybe someone who works specifically with vets on these kinds of—”
He did an about-face. He was wild-eyed. “I’m not a vet. I’m active duty.”
“Oh. Okay, sure. My only point is, talking to someone could—”
“I am talking to someone,” he said. “I’m talking to you.”
I GOT TO THE PRISON late, and once I did, they took their sweet time calling her up from her unit. By the time I was okayed to enter the visitors’ room, we had twenty minutes.
She studied me as I approached her, the way she always did. We embraced across the table and sat. “Crazy day,” I said.
“I can see that. Something wrong?”
“Nope.” I smiled. “You look nice today. You get a haircut?”
Mo smiled back. Cut and styled, she said. She’d finally gotten an appointment with someone in the cosmetology class. First time since she’d become an inmate that she hadn’t had to cut her bangs with her nail scissors.
“They teach cosmetology here?”
“Oh, yes. Hairdressing, industrial cleaning, nurse’s aid training, data entry. They’re traditionalists here at DOC. They like to prepare us for the kinds of crappy minimum-wage jobs that are waiting for us when we get out.” She reached up and touched her hair. “Thanks for noticing, Cae.”
“Hey, no problem.”
“So why was your day so crazy?”
I gave her an edited version: told her about the in-class skirmish between Ozzie Rivera and PFC Kendricks, but nothing about Kendricks’s office visit later on. (I was still trying to process that one.) Told her about the shimmy in my steering wheel, but nothing about Eric and Dylan’s having shown up in my class. Had to have been a mini-version of that “vicarious flashback” I’d had up at the Mark Twain House, I figured. I’d never told her about that episode either. Figured the less said about flashbacks—vicarious or otherwise—the better. Far as I knew, she hadn’t had any in quite a while. But maybe I was getting the edited version of her life, too.
“So what else is new?” she asked.
“Well, let’s see. Moses told me cherubs&fiends.com has started turning a profit. They’re getting two, three hundred hits a day some days. Says he has to hire a third person to keep up with the orders.”
“What’s selling better?” she asked. “The cherubs or the fiends?”
“Oh, the fiends, definitely. Four to one, he says.”
“And what about the civil suit? Anything new there?”
I shook my head but must have given myself away because she looked skeptical. “Well, maybe t
here is. Junior left me a message. Says he’s talked with the Seaberrys’ attorney and wants to run a few things by me.”
“Are they talking about a settlement?”
“I don’t know, Maureen.” I said it a little more defensively than I’d meant to. “I haven’t had a chance to call him back yet.”
“You haven’t had a chance, or you’re avoiding calling him back?”
I cracked a half-smile. “You know me too damn well. You know that?”
“Well, I just know how hard it must be for you to think about losing the farm. It’s so tied up with your family history. I must say to myself fifty times a day, ‘If only I hadn’t—’”
I stuck my hand up like a traffic cop. “Don’t, okay? Wasted energy. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.”
“But this Brandon guy you hired: he’s good, right?”
“Lena LoVecchio thinks he’s good, so that’s what I’m going on. Hey, speaking of my family history? I’ve been reading the thing Janis wrote about that ancestor of mine. It’s pretty interesting, actually. Old Lizzy was quite a gal.”
She reached across the table and took my hands in hers. “I love you, Caelum,” she said. She was blinking back tears.
“I love you, too. And you know something? After you get out of here, we’re going to have a decent life again, you and me. No matter what we end up owning or not owning.”
The mic clicked on. Tap, tap, tap. “No handholding, Miss Quirk. You know the rules.” Maureen withdrew her hands from mine and gave the CO an apologetic nod. Held up her palms so that he could see them. I looked over at him, sitting up there on his elevated platform like Zeus on Mount Olympus. I flashed him a snarky smile and held up my hands, too. Clenched and extended them the way Kareem Kendricks had done a few hours earlier.
“So how’s Velvet?” Maureen asked. “I haven’t seen her for a while.”
“She’s good, I guess. Moze has been giving her some creative license with those gargoyles of theirs, and she’s come up with some pretty freaky variations. Not that that’s any big surprise. She’s heading up to Boston this weekend for some big rave thing—bunch of bands that play the kind of noise she misidentifies as music. The Micks are away this weekend, too. Nancy Tucker and I are gonna have the whole place to ourselves.”
“Nancy’s doing okay?”
“Getting a little forgetful about where the litter box is,” I said. “Follows me around squawking, wanting to eat, after I’ve already fed her. You think there’s such a thing as feline Alzheimer’s?”
Maureen smiled. “How’s she getting along with the Micks’ cat?”
“Just fine, now that they’ve got separate accommodations and never see each other,” I said.
“So where are they going?”
“Hmm?”
“You said the Micks are going away this weekend.”
“Oh. Different directions, actually. He’s heading down to New York for some big trade show at the Javits Center. Trying to woo some bigger accounts, I guess. He’s a pretty good businessman, that guy; his wheels are always turning. And Janis: she’s flying down to New Orleans. Proposes her dissertation game plan on Monday, and if that goes okay, she’s well on her way to getting her Ph.D.”
Maureen said she wished she could read Lizzy’s story.
“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly carry it in here and hand it to you. How about if, after I finish it, I mail it to you?”
Mo reminded me that inmates could only receive books shipped directly from Amazon or Barnes&Noble.com “Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?” I said. “That the history of how this esteemed institution came into existence would be disallowed as contraband?”
Mo said that I could donate a copy of the manuscript—mail it to the prison library. Then she could check it out and read it.
“Good. Great. You know how Lizzy’s campaign for a separate female penitentiary got started? She was on this committee for the betterment of prisoners or something, and while she was taking a tour, this one inmate slipped her a letter. Back then, they used to throw ‘fallen women’ in with the men. I guess the conventional wisdom was that they were just throwaways, anyway. Beyond saving. So in her letter, this woman describes how the women who let the guards and trustees have sex get special treatment, and how the ones who don’t got abused. So Lizzy reads the letter, starts lobbying for a separate women’s prison run by women. She kind of got sidetracked by the Civil War, I guess—that’s the part I’m up to now, but…What is it, Mo?”
A sadness had come over her face. Things hadn’t changed much, she said; sex was one of the few things that women on the inside could barter with, and some of them weren’t above making deals with the officers who were interested. It was all about power and powerlessness, she said. “I think the ratio of fiends to angels may be about four to one at this place, too. Some of those fiends get to go home at the end of an eight-hour shift and some don’t.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but a tap-tap of the CO’s microphone interrupted me. “Miss Quirk, I need to see you for a moment.” Oh, Christ, this wasn’t about our handholding, was it? Mo and I exchanged worried looks. Then she got up and started across the room.
As I watched their exchange, I thought about the coincidence: how Maureen had just said the same thing Janis had said out on the back stoop that morning—that from era to era, nothing really changed. And they were right, to some extent: about all the ways that blacks were kept down, still. All the ways that women were exploited. But they were wrong, too. After Columbine, every damn school in the country developed a lockdown policy, same as the prisons. Schools weren’t safe havens anymore. Every damn parent in America sent their kids out the door in the morning and, for the rest of the day, kept an ear cocked for trouble…. And 9/11: chaos had come rushing in that day, too. Mohammed Atta and his henchmen fly those planes into those buildings, Bush says “Bring ’em on,” and now we’ve got Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib. Torture’s okay now, Cheney says, because these enemies live in the shadows, the dark places, and so we’ve got to go to those dark places, too. Kareem Kendricks goes off to fight a war against the wrong enemy and gets his hand blown off and his mind fucked up. Comes home again, and he’s older than his father….
Mo came back over and took her seat. “Everything okay?” I asked. She nodded. There’d been a message. They wanted her to go over to the Med Unit after our visit. One of her hospice patients was asking for her.
“How’s that hospice thing working out for you, anyway?” I asked. “Not too depressing for you, I hope.”
Just the opposite, she said. It made her feel good to be useful again. And some of the deaths she’d witnessed were beautiful.
“Beautiful?”
“I don’t know, Cae. I guess it’s one of those you-have-to-be-there things. I witnessed death all the time at the nursing home, and a lot of them were moving, too. But it’s a different experience here. Near the end? Their last couple of days? They finally get to put down all their pretenses and defenses, all their guilt and regret. And this…peacefulness comes over them. And, hey, death isn’t pretty, especially for someone dying of AIDS-related complications. But I don’t know. I guess it’s their smiles that are beautiful. Their courage. Strange as it sounds, I’m finding that hospice is the most hopeful and life-affirming place on this entire compound.”
“Reminds me of something I read in a Flannery O’Connor story once,” I said. “This selfish old lady’s about to get shot, okay? By this escaped criminal? And right at the moment when he lifts his rifle to blow her away, she reaches out to comfort him. And O’Connor says something like, it’s too bad we can’t all be dying all the time, because that’s when we’re our best, most decent selves.” The smile dropped off Mo’s face and she looked down at the table. Too late, I realized what a stupid fucking idiot I was—that Mr. English Major’s stupid literary reference had just sent her back to Columbine.
“Mo, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
She looke
d up, smiled bravely. “It’s okay, Caelum.”
“So tell me,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “How are things going with the new roommate?”
“Crystal? Oh, it’s just so sad. Prison is the last place that poor kid should be. She’s just a scared little girl.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen. But she looks and acts like she’s about twelve. And she’s slow. I’m not sure, but I think she may be mildly retarded.”
“You find out what she’s in for yet?”
She nodded. “Homicide. Her baby wouldn’t stop crying, so she shook him until he stopped. Dislodged his brain. Sunshine, she’d named him; he was only three weeks old. The father was her mother’s boyfriend.”
“Jesus, that’s…” I couldn’t even find the words.
“There’s this group of women on our tier who are so cruel to her. It’s like a blood sport, you know? They’ll do that here: travel in a pack, pick off the weakest member of the herd. At night, after lights out? They do this thing where they call to her. ‘Mmmomm-my, ssss-stop shhhh-shhaking me.’ And they laugh. They think it’s hilarious.”
