Sisters

by Patricia MacDonald

  ‘Oh. OK,’ said Alex. She walked over to the machine and read the instructions, depositing a ten-dollar bill. The machine clanked and spat out a card.

  ‘You just hang onto that,’ said the woman.

  Alex did as she was told. She sat down across from her. The woman looked over her half-glasses at Alex.

  ‘First time?’ she said.

  Alex nodded.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ the woman said grimly.

  ‘I guess you’ve done this before.’

  ‘My daughter’s here. Six years. Selling drugs.’

  Alex grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who you here for?’

  Alex somehow found the words possible to say. ‘My sister.’ Then she hesitated, trying to think how much to explain about the nature of Dory’s crime.

  ‘Number four hundred and twelve,’ the guard barked.

  The woman put her book down on her chair seat and got to her feet. ‘That’s me,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘Thanks again,’ said Alex.

  The woman nodded and walked over to the door beside the guard’s window. Alex watched her wait for a buzzer to sound and then the woman sighed, pushed the door open and went in. Alex shifted in her seat, sitting on top of her clammy hands, and waited for her number to be called.

  The time dragged, and no one offered any explanations. Although she was not used to being treated rudely, Alex realized that she would accomplish nothing here by causing a fuss. Patience, she reminded herself. You don’t want these people looking askance at you. Finally her number was called. She waited for the buzzer, opened the door and entered. The guard told her to stand in front of a scanner and empty her pockets. Luckily, she had been forewarned.

  ‘I just have this card for the vending machines,’ she said.

  The guard nodded disinterestedly. He ordered her to pass through and, when she got to the other side, directed her to a room across the hall. ‘In there,’ he grunted. ‘Sit down at a table. Doesn’t matter which.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alex politely. She wanted to ask if Dory was already in there, but she didn’t dare. She walked across the hall and entered the room, which was mainly empty. Her companion with the romance novel was seated at the far end across from a young woman with a rag tied over her hair and deep circles under her eyes. A tray of food rested, untouched, on the tabletop between them. Neither woman looked up at Alex.

  Alex glanced around the room. She picked a table away from the others and sat down. It was Saturday and she had expected the place to be teeming with visitors but, in fact, it was almost eerily empty and silent, except for the constant barrage of announcements over the PA system.

  She sat down, her heart pounding, and watched the door. She did not have long to wait. A guard came in with a prisoner in a dark blue jumpsuit. The minute Alex set eyes on her sister, she realized, with a start, that there was no doubt.

  Dory Colson was tall and slim with frizzy, reddish-blonde hair in a ponytail and pale eyelashes. Her face was covered with a thin veil of freckles. She could have been a younger, slimmer and more beautiful version of Alex’s mother, Catherine Woods.

  Dory looked around the room and her vacant, gray-eyed gaze settled on Alex. She stared at her, unsmiling.

  Alex stood halfway up in her seat and raised her hand. Dory spoke to the guard who had accompanied her and came gliding toward Alex. Alex stepped out from behind the table. She felt a sudden panic that she didn’t know what to do. She felt as if she should embrace this person who was her sister, but she didn’t want to. Then again, it seemed too weird to shake her hand. Dory settled the problem for her. She nodded abruptly and sat down in the chair across from Alex. Relieved, Alex resumed her seat.

  ‘So,’ said Dory in a low murmur, ‘you found me.’

  Alex was startled by those words and felt compelled to protest. ‘Well, not me. Not really. My attorney has an investigator who . . .’

  ‘I meant the prison,’ said Dory.

  ‘Oh,’ said Alex, feeling flustered. ‘Yes. It wasn’t hard to find.’

  She couldn’t stop staring at Dory’s face, at once so alien and so familiar. Unlike her mother, Dory’s eyes were flat and lusterless. That wasn’t the only difference. Where Catherine was warm, Dory was cool. There was a distant quality to her voice and her fleeting smile. But the ineffable resemblance in the arrangement of their features was uncanny. Alex felt almost angry at this prisoner for resembling her mother so closely. It seemed wrong, somehow. As if she had a claim to their mother that Alex never would.

  Now that they were face-to-face, Alex suddenly struggled to think of what to say. Her brain felt utterly empty of any thoughts, except for an urgent desire to get out of this place which smelled of stale fried food and disinfectant. Then she remembered the card which she was squeezing in her hand. The corners of it were cutting into her palm. ‘I got this card,’ she said. ‘Would you like to get something . . . from one of the machines?’

  Dory gazed at the array of vending machines with a flicker of interest that faded immediately. ‘No. No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m watching my figure.’

  ‘Really?’ Alex asked, nonplussed.

  Dory looked at Alex almost pityingly. ‘No. I don’t need anything.’

  She may as well have added, ‘from you.’ The implication was there.

  ‘I imagine the food’s not too great here,’ said Alex, feeling stupid that the only thing she could think of to say to this new-found sister was a comment about prison food.

  ‘No. It’s not good,’ said Dory. ‘Rice and potatoes. That’s basically it.’

  ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like a hamburger or something?’ Alex asked, gesturing vaguely toward the machines.

  ‘I think they make those hamburgers out of potatoes,’ said Dory.

  It took Alex a moment to realize that Dory was joking, and then she laughed.

  Dory smiled briefly. ‘So. According to you, we are sisters.’

  ‘Oh, we are sisters. Now that I’ve seen you, any doubts I might have had . . . If you knew how much you look like my mother . . . I brought along some pictures I wanted to show you. Of my mother and her family. I thought you’d be interested to see your relatives. But the guards made me leave them outside.’

  Dory shrugged. ‘There’s a million rules around here.’

  ‘You look just like her,’ Alex said.

  Dory frowned.

  ‘Looking at you . . . It’s like looking at a younger version of my mother. It’s really . . . bizarre.’

  A look of annoyance flitted across Dory’s features. Alex abruptly stopped talking. She could see that Dory was irritated by this comparison.

  ‘I mean, obviously, you look like yourself . . .’ she stammered.

  ‘What happened to her?’ said Dory. ‘You said she was dead.’

  ‘My mother? She and my father were killed in a car accident in the spring. A drunken driver ran a red light.’

  ‘Too bad,’ Dory said evenly.

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  Alex knew it would be polite to ask about Dory’s family. She was trying to mentally frame the question when Dory asked, ‘Did your detective find out who my father was, too?’

  Alex immediately thought of what she had heard about Neal Parafin, the troubled young man who shot himself as his car sat in the driveway of her mother’s childhood home. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, maybe . . .’

  ‘What is it? Yes or no?’

  ‘There’s some possibility that it was this guy named Neal . . .’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Dory said, flicking her long, freckled fingers as if to dismiss the question.

  There was something about Dory that made Alex feel anxious and hapless. ‘I can do some more digging if you’d like,’ she said. ‘Try to find out for sure.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I don’t really care. They didn’t have any use for me.’

  ‘It wasn’t that my mother didn’t want you,’ Alex protested. ‘She was just a young gi
rl at the time. She couldn’t take care of you. And Neal . . . Well, he wasn’t even alive when you were born.’

  Dory raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not? What happened to him?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m not certain that he was your father.’

  Dory peered at her. ‘What happened to him?’

  Alex swallowed hard, wishing she had not even mentioned Neal. ‘He . . . He committed suicide.’

  Dory nodded and pursed her lips, staring at the tabletop.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you that,’ said Alex. ‘It must come as a bit of a shock.’

  Dory shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said, a studied indifference in her voice and gaze.

  Silence descended. Alex felt almost panicky. Somehow she had thought that the biological bond between them would make it easy to talk, but the opposite was true. The fact that they had not even known about one another their whole lives made it seem almost futile to try and ‘catch up’. Alex didn’t want to bring up the crime which had precipitated Dory’s long sentence in prison, and there didn’t seem to be any way to ask about her older sister’s past without mentioning it.

  For her part, Dory seemed to have lost all interest in their conversation. She glanced up at the clock on the wall.

  Alex felt a sudden flash of anger. She had come all this way, torturing herself with worry and doubt. And now, a woman in prison was too busy to spend any more time with her. ‘Am I boring?’ she asked coldly.

  Dory seemed unfazed by her sister’s chilly tone. ‘I’m expecting a visitor.’

  You have a visitor, Alex wanted to say, but she stopped herself. ‘I thought there would be more visitors here,’ she said instead, ‘since it’s the weekend.’

  ‘Weekends are no better than the week,’ said Dory. ‘Except for Sunday.’ Ever since Alex arrived Dory had seemed uninterested, but now, suddenly, her eyes lit up and her pallid skin gained a faint but discernible glow. ‘On Sundays they bring in dogs from the animal shelter and they let you work with them out in the yard. I love animals, especially dogs. That’s what I used to do. I used to be a pet sitter and a dog walker. That’s how I made my living.’

  ‘Really? I love animals too,’ said Alex. ‘I always had a dog and cats when I was a kid. I can’t wait for my life to get a little more settled so I can get some pets.’

  Dory’s enthusiasm seemed to fade. ‘I never had pets.’

  ‘Not at all?’ asked Alex, feeling privileged and guilty.

  ‘My sister was a singer and she was allergic to pet dander. So we couldn’t have animals around. Even after she left home and moved to Missouri, my mother said no. We couldn’t risk it. Had to keep the place dander-free in case she came home unexpectedly.’

  ‘Oh. That’s too bad,’ said Alex, startled by the offhand reference to the murdered Lauren.

  A prison guard came up to the table where they were sitting, leaned over and spoke into Dory’s ear.

  Dory nodded and looked at Alex. ‘My visitor is here. You’ll have to go ’cause I can only have one visitor at a time.’

  ‘Oh. OK,’ said Alex.

  Dory looked over Alex’s shoulder anxiously. ‘Marisol!’ she called out. ‘Over here.’

  Alex, who was already standing, turned and saw a stout, brown-skinned woman in sensible shoes, a brightly-printed overblouse and a skirt, walking toward them. She wore glasses and carried a briefcase. Dory stood up, her frame graceful even in her prison jumpsuit, and briefly hugged her new visitor, who patted her on the back.

  Dory then pointed to Alex, but spoke to Marisol. ‘This is my sister. If you can believe it.’

  ‘No kidding?’ said Marisol. She turned her pleasant gaze on Alex. She was about Alex’s age, with keen, dark eyes, straight white teeth and dimples. She extended her hand. ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Marisol Torres.’

  ‘Alex Woods.’

  ‘Marisol is trying to get me out of this hellhole,’ said Dory.

  ‘Working on it,’ said Marisol.

  ‘Are you an attorney?’ asked Alex.

  ‘I’m in my last year of law school at New England University,’ Marisol said. ‘I volunteer for the Justice Initiative.’

  ‘One visitor at a time,’ bellowed the guard. ‘You’ll have to leave, miss.’

  ‘OK,’ said Alex, nodding. As had been the case when she arrived, she was uncertain how to take her leave. She wondered if she should embrace Dory, or at least take her hand. Once again, Dory eliminated the question.

  ‘Sit, Marisol,’ Dory insisted, taking her own seat. Then she looked up at Alex. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘It was . . . interesting to meet you.’

  ‘For me too,’ said Alex.

  ‘Will you come back?’ Dory asked.

  ‘This is not a coffee klatch, ladies,’ the guard barked. ‘Let’s go.’

  Luckily for Alex, there was no time to answer.

  SIX

  Alex burst out of the front doors of the prison as if she had just finished serving a sentence herself. The January day had turned gray but the cold air was bracing. She felt as if she had been holding her breath the entire time that she was inside the facility. How could anyone survive in there? she thought. There was nothing about the place that would make you even want to live. Alex remembered that program with the dogs which Dory had mentioned. She lived from week to week, waiting to play with those dogs for a brief while. Obviously the most ordinary of pleasures was priceless behind those walls.

  When Alex reached her car in the visitors’ lot, she rolled down the windows despite the cold. She didn’t want to be closed up, even inside her own car. She laid her head back against the seat and gulped in the air. You’re free to go, she thought. And yet, she did not turn on the engine. Her visit with Dory had left her with more questions than answers, but the greatest question in her mind right now had to do with Marisol Torres. Why was she trying to get Dory out of jail? Dory had pleaded guilty. Wasn’t that the end of it?

  It’s none of your business, Alex reminded herself. You came to introduce yourself and now you’ve done it. Nothing more could be expected of you. But still Alex sat in her car and did not move. Sooner or later, Marisol Torres was going to come out of that prison. Whatever reason she had for coming out here, Alex wanted to know about it. If there was a chance that her new-found sister didn’t belong in prison, Alex had to know. She had a right to know. Maybe, for no other reason than that, she cared enough to ask.

  You should probably stay out of it, Alex told herself. But she didn’t budge. She sat and waited. Half an hour passed, and several people came and went through the front door of the prison. As she looked at the dashboard clock for the fiftieth time, Alex was struck by an unpleasant thought. What if there was another entrance? Marisol was only a law student. Maybe she didn’t have a car. Perhaps she came by bus, and entered the prison through another entrance. Alex was just about to convince herself that she must, indeed, have missed the law student’s departure, when the prison door opened and Marisol Torres hurried out, pulling on her jacket. Alex hopped out of her car and met Marisol at the entrance to the visitors’ lot.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Ms Torres.’

  Marisol, lost in thought, jumped at the sound of her name, and then smiled cautiously. ‘Hi, Alex.’

  ‘I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.’ Alex could see her own breath in the cold.

  ‘About Dory?’ Marisol said.

  Alex nodded. ‘I don’t know if she told you anything about me . . .’

  ‘She told me that you two had the same mother.’

  ‘That’s right. And, despite the fact that I never even met her before, I find myself feeling a little bit . . . concerned about her.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ the law student said. ‘She could use the support.’

  ‘I wondered . . . What exactly is going on? I mean, about her case? What is there to look into? I understood that she pleaded guilty to her sister’s murder.’

  ‘She did,’ Marisol said. ‘But last year
the public defender who represented her came under investigation for breach of ethics. He has since been disbarred.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘He made no effort to provide an effective defense for his clients. As you know, the Sixth Amendment guarantees that right.’

  Alex didn’t actually know which amendment was which, but she nodded.

  ‘The cases of all his clients had to be reviewed. A huge job, as you can imagine. The Justice Initiative agreed to help. I was assigned to several cases. One of them was Dory’s. I saw pretty quickly that she was badly served by this PD. I’ve been preparing a brief on her behalf for about six months now.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Dory had a public defender? Isn’t that what you get when you can’t afford to hire an attorney?’

  ‘That’s right. They mostly serve the indigent.’

  ‘Dory’s family wasn’t indigent, was it?’

  ‘Dory was of legal age. Technically, no one else was responsible for paying for her defense,’ Marisol said.

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Alex.

  ‘Anyway, the primary job of a public defender is to arrange plea bargains, to clear the court’s calendar. Which is fine, unless the attorney is deliberately misrepresenting the advantages and conditions of a plea to his client.’

  ‘And you think that’s what happened to Dory?’

  Marisol grimaced apologetically. ‘I can’t really talk specifics about her case without Dory’s permission. Attorney-client privilege.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Alex.

  ‘And I need to get going. My mother is taking care of my daughter and I want to have some time with her.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Alex. ‘It’s just that I feel like I need to know . . .’

  Marisol pulled her car keys out of her briefcase. She walked over to a dented maroon Ford Taurus and unlocked the door. Alex followed her. Marisol set her briefcase down on the front seat. ‘I’ll be glad to talk to you,’ she said, ‘as long as Dory gives her permission. You’ll have to ask her to contact me directly if it’s OK.’

  ‘I’m not sure how she would react to that,’ Alex admitted. ‘She seems a little bit suspicious as to why I wanted to meet her in the first place.’