by Beth Harden
“Walk with me. I want to introduce you to someone,” I say. Bowman follows along with a snappy new lift to his steps. He hums some discordant song and rarely looks up to see who is around him. I stop in front of the chapel wing. Bowman grows suspicious and clams up. I rattle the gate and the rover comes meandering by to let us through.
“I hate God too, Miss,” says Bowman.
“That won’t be a problem, I don’t think,” I reply. Immediately the sound of an upbeat jam fills the corridor. The melody lifts and swells as we approach the main auditorium-size room that serves all faiths equally. Pastor Fargo greets us at the entrance and waves us inside. His long gray braid dwindles to a meager point at his belt line. Today it is the Protestants who are ruling the roost here. A weekly praise service will be commencing after evening chow. Along the wall is a larger-than-life mural that depicts various religions, nations, and tribes rendered in a collage of portraits by many gifted hands. These are the faces of the inmates who have confessed and converted, worshipped and died as members of this incongruous congregation. It’s an impressive tribute to the universal fact of faith under fire. Speaking of which, a pungent smoky odor permeates the religious services area.
“They’re smudging today. Our sweat lodge ceremony,” says Pastor Fargo.
“Native American?” asks Bowman. The Pastor nods.
“Chippewa,” he states. We have a place for you…,” says the spiritual man. “In our praise band and in our fellowship of believers.”
“Passamaquoddy,” replies Bowman.
“Brothers all,” replies his new mentor. The two shake hands and Bowman follows him to the platform in front where a collection of diverse souls are playing their hearts out to the Spirit-Maker, whomever he or she may be. An empty chair with an electric bass has been arranged for him. It’s just like heaven where our Father goes and prepares a room with our name on it the day we are born, just in case we take a wrong turn and end up there earlier than He expected.
#
Death, the great game-changer. The first time it arrives like a train wreck, knocking out power, throwing people off their feet, upsetting the entire landscape with the force of a cowcatcher snagging soft flesh. The worst part is the knowledge that comes afterwards, the undeniable fact that our perfect world has been irreparably plowed over.
My dad died instantly behind the wheel of his oil truck when it ran top speed into a grove of birches. The explosion immediately engulfed the scene. He was cremated spontaneously in a pyre of diesel fuel and all that was left to denote the spot where his feet left this earth was his grease-stained Aroostook Oil Service cap. Russell Braum would have turned fifty-eight the following week still palming the wheel over the rugged hills of lupine and down through valleys of hemlock singing his Randy Travis tunes and spitting out the hulls of sunflower seeds with no thought of retirement on his mind. We would have played that rematch of backgammon I planned to win fair and square; instead the game chips were flung deep into the dug well where they would lie cashed in for eternity.
Within days of his passing, Dad’s things were gone; half the house removed in a four-hour operation. Like surgery, gaping holes and missing parts were what glared back in the aftermath. A creamy square on the wainscoting where age had grayed around the now-displaced dry sink that went to his brother; a length of pine shelving without a single World War II book on it, all his periodicals packed and given to the VFW hall. The queen box spring and mattress were dragged through the gravel and dropped in the dirt like an old bleached bone. Mom settled into an economical-size twin bed, guaranteeing there was no possibility of ever sharing it with anyone else. Our good years were pulled out by the corners and seams and shuttered away in taped cartons from Cutter’s dry goods store. February 23, 1991, the date we stalled, the exact moment I plowed headlong into the realization that if I was ever to outlive the wreck of my life, I had to go it alone right then and crawl as fast and furiously away from the scene of my own accident as I could. Crippled as I was, I knew I’d eventually need to rise to my feet and toddle towards the rescue light before the unbearable heat of defeat consumed me.
I can empathize with Bowman. I am an orphan-girl of grown-up proportions.
#
I e-mail Dr. Brennerman, the therapist who runs the sex treatment program to ask for his help. I know him only as the bespectacled man in a sweater vest who rounds the pedophiles up into a cozy semi-circle twice a week, turns the lights down, has them shut their eyes and practice meditation. A year or so ago, a brand-new, very attractive intern had tried the same routine with a slight variation. Being young and enthused about her new assignment, she eagerly joined the men in the exercise and closed her own eyes as the sounds of the sea tide washed back and forth, back and forth from her CD player. At the end of the session, she opened her eyes to find three of the offenders masturbating. To be sure, those men left that group more relaxed than they’d been in years, but the female worker was so traumatized, she never returned. It’s a rare person who’s cut out for that type of work.
Brennerman is an oddity in this environment, one who dismisses the blatant hatred levied against sex offenders and plods onward into the murky swamp water of this mutated species. He’s a different sort, socially skittish and dry as cork but I sense that behind his academic aloofness, the man has real compassion. So I’m not altogether surprised when he agrees to meet with me and take the time to listen to the plight of Mr. Willis who has been mandated to complete his program but is fighting fiercely to have that stigma removed.
“You must understand, as convoluted as it sounds, the treatment is voluntary on the part of these offenders with the caveat that if they reject the need for it, they will be put in the Denier’s track. This then places them under intense scrutiny and maximum supervision both in and outside the walls. Not only that, it limits their housing options, their earning capacity in the employment world and guarantees a lengthy stay on the electronic monitoring bracelet,” he patiently explains.
“So, what you’re saying is, they really don’t have a choice.”
“In all truth, no. Not if they have been convicted of a sexual crime,” Brennerman clarifies with a sigh of protest. He is soft spoken in presentation, but firm with the assurance of someone who knows what he’s talking about.
“Mr. Willis is not a Denier. He is innocent,” I explain.
“Well, if you believe that, I am willing to look over the folder of documents you’ve got there. I promise to call Mr. Willis in and speak with him in person.”
“Well, I will rest better tonight, knowing I have done my part in putting this issue into the care of someone with the expert eye to decipher it. Thank you,” I add, shaking his mealy hand with genuine enthusiasm. Brennerman squints and grimaces, his version of a tense smile.
#
Two days later, Brennerman flags me down in the corridor just outside my office. I retreat back into the room and wave him over to join me. He sits down on the blue plastic chair, his turkey eyes aglow with information.
“I want to tell you how very impressed I am with Mr. Willis’s comportment. He did an impressive job of representing himself. I think he has real cause here.”
“Does that mean we can we get his score removed?” I ask.
“I am going to bring Ms. Dalton in from the Harvard School of Psychiatry. She’s our consulting expert. After she assesses him, we would have to go before a Special Review Board. I also spoke with the Director of Population Management. They have requested all the original testimonies and the pre-sentence investigation records. As skeptical and hard-ass as he can be, he agreed there’s a chance this kid got royally screwed over. I can’t promise Mr. Willis anything but I can make sure he gets a fair shake.”
“Thank you for this good news. We’ll see where it goes. It will be up to Mr. Willis to convince them,” I say. Dr. Brennerman and I have more in common than a first glance would reveal. Beyond the fringe of unkempt beard that creeps in a haphazard trail down the side of his
neck and the tiny globule of dried spit that rests at the corner of his cracked lip, he has a handsome soul that shares a kindred spirit of advocacy.
Willis continues to come to class, humbly taking his seat among the others and acting as if the private conversation never happened. For my part, I make no move to open the discussion again. There’s always the chance that this is part of a master plan, a manipulation to undermine the overlord. I know this game. The grooming starts early; the formula is pat and proven. Look for the new kid, the rookie, one of the probationary cops whose naiveté makes them particularly malleable. Or perhaps a plain middle-aged woman who finds herself especially lonely in this age of shrinking fertility. Once the weak link is discovered, trust is ferreted out. I’m special, thinks the target host, the first and ultimately fatal step of their undoing. But at the end of the day, every day, I answer to my own conscience. I am no duck and I’ve got my sources. There’s always someone willing to talk if he thinks he might win a little extra favor. From what I hear, Willis spends his free time in the cell writing various public officials, magistrates and politicians in both Massachusetts and Washington. His requests come back with patronizing instructions to follow the chain of command and start at the bottom with his correctional counselor, which of course, he has.
I put it off as part of my job. If I did it for one, I’d do it for all. But is that the truth? Was this a select move born from a special spark? Naw, not a chance. Most offenders expect to be granted a ready platform for their cries of mistreatment. Many are litigious and just waiting for the right circumstance so they can snap the trap on the State. Fewer still accept the blame and take their lumps in stride. But every once in awhile, along comes someone like Terran Willis who’d been roped in, hog-tied and then hobbled by a faulty system. Willis was not blameless by any stretch. His rap sheet contained fourteen arrests with a total of twenty-one convictions running the gamut from petty larceny all the way up to Robbery First. Sprinkled into the mix were numerous assaults, firearms and narcotics charges. It was a pedigree any hardened perpetrator would be proud of. But the shady facts of the purported crime that had launched him on his criminal bent in the first place, these were sealed in his Youthful Offender file. Arrest Zero, the one that never appeared on public record had become the catalyst for all others; and on this one false claim, the system had hedged their bets and played their hand.
It occurs to me how damaging the separate sexes can be, particularly in youth when hormones are the logic that precedes all action. Whether in love or hate, how easily we can undo one another and how hopelessly impossible it is to find repair.
#
“It’s time!” Dale says dryly with a rasp of resistance as if his esophagus is ready to cough up a piece of stale biscuit. But very little comes up. It’s like peristalsis trying to work the resentment down, forcing him to digest it, along with all the other shit he’s had to swallow because of me. He doesn’t have to say it; none of them do. My big brother was good up front with fists cocked stepping ahead of his pretty sister to ward off the horny boys, but when danger circumvented that strut and struck her down, all the fight went out of him. He dropped his hands and never picked them up in my defense again. My other siblings were staunchly polite but once the damage was done, they too gave up and went to find pretty girls of their own. All the sons turned their attention back to the mother matriarch who had lost track of them during the years of our family crisis and was now suddenly alone in her clapboard cave. We no longer talked about our own stories and only reluctantly shared excerpts from the ongoing history that joined us, my mother’s tale of stoic denial. Everyone was keeping an arm’s length away from the God’s honest truth that none us knew how to fix things anymore.
“Time for what?” I ask, perplexed.
“A surprise. Here, hold on,” he says. The receiver is fumbled in the hand-off. I can hear pillows being plumped and the hum of the hydraulics that raise the head of the bed.
“It’s your mother,” Mel says faintly.
“Finally! It’s been forever, Mom. How are you feeling?” I ask. A nervous laugh of relief fills the gap.
“I will be fine,” she answers matter-of-factly.
“I know it,” I say.
“I want you to promise me something,” Mel says with a rush of breath.
“Of course,” I reply.
“When you come up in August, I want you to keep a good eye on your brothers, especially Brock. His blood pressure is up and ever since Dolly left him, there’s no one around to oversee his medications. He’s working the boat most of the day but if he’s not likely to cook up anything fresh at the end of a long day. It’ll be fried clams or cheeseburgers, neither of which he needs. So, there are two chest freezers full of our garden harvest from last year and a dozen roasters all quartered and ready to cook.” Her words come out in choppy exhales riding the outgoing tide, broken only by short gasps of backwash as she pools up energy for another. All this focus on food when the poor woman couldn’t stomach more than a ladle of applesauce.
“I’m on it. He’ll be in the best possible hands. Second to yours, of course.”
“You still like your job, honey?” she asks, switching subjects. It takes me off-guard, this sudden interest in my adult life. Very rarely has she ever wanted to talk about what I do in an environment she believes is toxic for any civilized female. If conversations come up about politics or religion, Mel is firmly entrenched in the discussion. These are the big-box storehouses of generic fact and general opinion that anyone could safely enter into. But if it involved her family or her feelings, she simply got busy in the pantry.
“I’ve got a great group going right now. I see some real signs of change taking place,” I say.
“That’s nice,” she replies, her courteous way of curtailing things. “I’m getting awfully tired. Let’s talk again soon,” she adds. I want her to say something else though I don’t know what. Maybe a rant of frustration or a bellowing yell against the fact that her monotonous circle of safety became utter mayhem against her will. She could demand credit for all the heart-wrenching hours she stood by watching me crawl hand over fist on a gym mat or tolerating the sickening specter of her intelligent baby reduced to mouthing vowels like an infant. What was her faith telling her now? Was it still the consoling whisper that believed God was perfectly capable of miraculous intervention but if He withheld it, then He had something else in mind that was far better? Or had it changed its tune into an anguished hiss, hollering out, ‘Jesus, woman! Wake up and see how many levels of fucked-up this is. Cancel your reservation in the upcoming rapture.’
“Let me speak to Dale again, okay?” I say. The phone is passed back.
“Yep…?”
“I’d like to come surprise her this weekend. What do you think?” I suggest.
“You know Mom. She doesn’t want anyone to see her in this state. Once she’s through the chemo and out of the hospital, you can come up,” he mumbles. Reluctantly, I cave in to his wishes or more accurately, hers. Mom knows she’s not coming back home. Why else would she have Dale and family all moved into the house? He’s subbed out his lobster traps to his oldest son and has taken on the farm chores. If the hospital can’t keep her when her condition becomes chronic, she’ll be transferred over to a nursing home, at least until they can pump her with liquid nutrition and manage her pain. Dale is the only one she allows in to visit. He’s probably bringing in Egg Fu Yung and watching Animal Planet with his dirty corduroys thrown up across the thin porous blanket that’s come loose at the end of her bed. That’ll drive her crazy; not the muddy farm boots on clean linens but the top sheet she can’t reach and tuck into neat hospital corners like she’s always done at home. Screw my brother’s conservatism. I try to patch a call through to the nurse’s station several times over the ensuing days, but I’m told she is getting washed up or having her vitals taken. The mold of silence has steepened and is cast like plaster. There’s little hope of breaking through now.
&n
bsp; #
“So, run that theory by me again. Methinks I can punch some holes it,” I tease. The lemon drop martini is just a puddle of liquid in the bottom-heavy glass. “Didn’t I order another one of these?”
“That is the other one you ordered,” laughs James. He cranes his neck, peers down the length of the massive oak bar and spots our bartender holding the remote aloft at the far end. The channel switches from Rory McElroy in bright red pants to Big Papi spitting and smacking his red batting gloves. You can’t drink in a Boston swill-house and not be caught booing P.K. Subban or tossing curses at the Yankees. The city thrives on rivalries and racism. But the Stanley Cup is done; the Bruins are back in their den hibernating for a season. All attention has turned back to Fenway even if the team stats are as soggy as the tarp-covered field.
“Finally! Real men don’t wear red pants and leprechaun jackets,” I say.
“Unless they’re Irish,” James says. He’s gotten the bar maid’s attention, orders another extra dirty, dirty martini, which amounts to a handful of engorged olives floating in a salty brine of vodka, and a blueberry basil martini special for me. Buckman Tavern is an eclectic mix of New England history and West Coast cuisine, a salute to Paul Revere and a high five to the French Laundry menu. The tables are boxed in elbow to elbow with no standing room. This part of the North End is a squeeze at best, its cobblestone alleyways so narrow that one grandmother can reach out her second-story window and snip dead pansies on the neighbor’s rooftop garden.
“I believe we were designed to love many people in the course of our lives. There are multiple dimensions to love that can’t possibly be discovered with just one person,” he repeats. I cock my head slightly, fold my leg under my rump and lean forward excitedly.
“So in essence, what you’re saying is that men were never created to be monogamous? Am I right?” I tease. “Quel surprise!” The front of my navy blue cocktail dress buckles and dips down in the middle revealing a crease of cleavage. I instinctively grab my linen napkin and tuck it in front like a bib. James smirks.
