The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  She is. She’s been off welfare since her promotion a few years ago, and doing okay, but the money some of these places charge is ridiculous. Even a state school like Binghamton is asking way too much. She wants to know what’s going on in Casey’s head. Is he really interested in going to Elmira? If he isn’t, then there’s no sense applying there. All he’ll say is “I’ve got to work on my list,” like he can’t take the time to think about it right now.

  His spring break’s in late March, the only time they can do the college tour. She pulls out the calendar and sits him down to choose. Together they’ve driven the Horizon to Clinton a dozen times; it’ll get to Boston, if that’s where he wants to go.

  He does.

  “That should make your father happy,” she says.

  And can they stop at Rensselaer in Troy? Also Amherst, halfway across Massachusetts.

  When she checks the map, she sees he’s thought it all out. The only long drive is the one home.

  “What about Cornell?” she asks. “We could go up that Friday, just for the day.”

  He agrees, for her sake, just as, that fall, when it’s time to apply, he applies to Binghamton as one of his backups. The full list includes MIT, Cal Poly, Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer, Amherst, Cornell and Syracuse. Patty doesn’t even have to look at the map: except for Cal Poly, all of them are closer than Clinton. And yet, the more she reads about Cal Poly, the more she’s convinced that it’s the best place for an independent kid like Casey. So she’s not sure how to feel in the spring when he gets rejected. She says she’s sorry, and though he tries to shrug it off, she knows he’s hurt, and she wonders if he was depending on it, if that was his plan all along.

  He doesn’t make it into MIT either. Tommy doesn’t understand—he’s got straight A’s.

  Everywhere else, he gets accepted. Now he has to choose. They can get state aid to go to either Rensselaer or Cornell, but she makes it clear to him that it shouldn’t influence his decision. Wherever he goes, it’s going to be expensive.

  Tommy’s rooting for Cornell, since it’s good and close. Patty is too. When he picks Rensselaer, she congratulates him as if she’s happy with his decision. Troy’s only three hours across 1-88, she says, as if it’s convenient. She doesn’t have to say it’s right on the way to Clinton.

  SWEET TOOTH

  SENDING CASEY OFF THAT FALL, SHE REMEMBERS HOW DIFFERENT his first day of school was, how he cried and made himself sick so he could stay home. All summer he’s been preparing to leave, winnowing his CDs, choosing what to take from his room. He packed his car last night, pointed toward the road, so all he has to do is kiss her mother goodbye, and then her.

  “Be good,” Patty says. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” he says, but normally, like he’s going to hang out with his friends and he’ll be back for dinner.

  She can only wave as he pulls out, the tailpipe of the loaded-down Tercel scraping the drive. He’s busy shifting, crossing the long flat at the end of the yard, but then his hand appears in the window, flailing in their direction. He keeps it up even after the engine complains, until he’s swallowed by the line of weed trees at the edge of the meadow.

  “You should be proud,” her mother says inside, because she can see from Patty’s expression that she’s lost. The feeling stays with her all morning, pursuing her through the empty house. She has food shopping to do, so she gets her list from the fridge and pokes through the cupboards to see what they need. With just the two of them, their grocery bill should be tiny.

  She feels weird at the store, not picking up the usual three gallons of 1%. No Diet Dew, no Fig Newtons, so she splurges on some mint Milanos, as if they might console her, and has them with a cup of coffee, watching some awful sci-fi movie.

  Later, straightening up his closet, she finds a stash of candy bars in a shoebox. KitKats and Snickers, Mr. Goodbars. There must be twenty bucks’ worth. She can’t tell how old they are. Over the years, they tried all kinds of diets to help him slim down. She remembers the expensive shakes, the vitamin supplements that came in the mail. She caps the box, sets it back in its place.

  She could find worse things, she thinks.

  The house seems quieter without him, though she knows it’s not true. If he were home—which he wouldn’t be, Sunday afternoon—he’d be in his room with his headphones on. The most they’d hear from him would be footsteps, maybe the toilet flushing.

  She misses him most at meals, and in the morning, the daily scramble to get out the door. Some nights she still waits for the sound of his car in the driveway, the sign that he’s finally home from work.

  He’s busy, and doesn’t call as much as she’d like. Sometimes she feels like it’s purposeful, as if he’s punishing her. He sounds okay on the phone. His classes are interesting; there’s a lot of homework. As always, she wishes he was more enthusiastic, but that wouldn’t be him. The difference between talking to him and talking to Tommy is almost funny, one so glum, the other so interested. Because she and Tommy know how to use their minutes now.

  Every time she talks to Casey, she has to resist asking him to come home for the weekend, to come with her up to Clinton to visit. Instead, she writes him letters he doesn’t answer and doesn’t mention, or only when she brings them up. She doesn’t remember him taking so much of her time, except now she finds herself faced with even more empty hours. She tries to read but ends up watching TV, clicking through the channels when nothing’s on or playing his handheld Yahtzee. One night she cleans the stove and while she’s waiting for it to bake off the gunk, wipes down the miniblinds. Her mother tells her she needs a hobby.

  “Like what?” Patty asks.

  “I don’t care,” her mother says. “Pick something.”

  The next day at work, Patty signs up for an after-hours computer class. She already uses one to make the monthly schedules, but she really ought to know more. It passes the time, and some of the stuff is actually fun. Now when Casey tells her about what he’s doing, she almost knows what he’s talking about.

  Fall break, he comes home for the week. Patty has piled up comp time, and takes off work to be with him. She does his laundry, makes chocolate chip waffles. She expects him to be different somehow, changed, more mature, but except for being ten pounds heavier, he’s exactly the same. He keeps his door closed and barely speaks. He sleeps till noon, then heads over to Adam’s, stops back home for dinner, then stays out late, cruising around town with his friends.

  After a couple days of this, Patty can’t hold back. She ambushes him at dinner, hoping he’ll see how selfish he’s being. “Look,” she says, “I know you want to see your friends, but I took time off to be with you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “You don’t have to ask people you love to do things for you. They just do them.”

  “I’ll stay home tomorrow, okay?” He makes it sound like he’s been wronged, but she doesn’t want to argue. Later, when he comes home that night, she gets him to sit with her in the kitchen and they both say they’re sorry.

  It’s the best conversation they have. Sunday he leaves, saying he probably won’t be back till Thanksgiving.

  It’s okay, she says, to him and to herself. It’s only six weeks. That’s not so long.

  MEDIUM SECURITY

  JUST BEFORE HALLOWEEN SHE GETS A LETTER THAT SAYS TOMMY’S being transferred to a medium security facility. It’s standard procedure with long-term prisoners. He’ll be reassigned in late November, five years in advance of his first parole date. She’s tried not to look that far ahead. Getting excited will only make the time go slower.

  They’re hoping for somewhere close, like Cayuga, at the bottom of Owasco Lake, just south of Auburn. There are dozens of mediums all over the state, half of them built since Tommy went in, part of the War on Drugs. There’s Gowanda and Wyoming over by Buffalo, and Oneida and Mohawk up near Syracuse. Even Wallkill or Otisville down in the Catskills wouldn’t be too bad. Almost anywhere would be close
r than Clinton.

  DOCS won’t tell her anything—for security purposes. She relies on Prison Families to fill the gaps. Like maxes, not all mediums have an FRP, and mediums are actually more dangerous. With so many inmates doing short bids, their populations aren’t as stable.

  They have a last visit the Friday after Thanksgiving, all three of them, Casey driving most of the way up. The weather’s warm and there are tons of buses, but it’s not as bad as it will be Saturday. It amazes Patty how little changes. After twenty years, there’s still the fear, going in, that they’ll be turned away on some technicality, that he’s been transferred early and no one’s told her, that the whole place will go on lockdown, but no, they’re on the list, Casey’s college ID works, everything’s cool.

  Tommy’s been there so long they’ve graduated to the honors visiting room, with regular tables like at Auburn. They can hold hands and play footsie as long as they’re discreet. Casey sits quietly to the side as she tells Tommy everything Prison Families told her. Tommy reassures her; wherever he goes, he’ll be fine. He’s made it this far.

  “So how’s it going?” he asks Casey, touching his arm. “I hardly ever get to talk to you anymore.”

  “It’s going good,” Casey says, nodding, and tells him about his classes, ignoring the second half of the question. There’s a phone in his suite but he’s got two roommates who wouldn’t understand why he’s getting collect calls from his father. He couldn’t pay for them anyway. As much as Patty’s worked to make sure Tommy’s a part of his life, she can’t force Casey to give him the number.

  It’s hard to leave, not knowing when and where she’ll see him again. She takes Casey’s hand as they move between the checkpoints, and he suffers it. Their stamps glow a toxic lemon-lime under the ultraviolet lights. As they cross the lot, the main entrance at her back, she has an attack of nostalgia. This is the last time she’ll ever be here. She won’t miss the giant white fortress or its dumpy gray town. She won’t miss the six-hour drive or the claustrophobic bus ride through the pines. So why, driving away, does this sadness grab at her?

  The long weekend ends. Casey goes back to school; she goes back to work. Riverview’s growing so fast they’re having serious understaffing problems, and she’s been given the job of recruiting new employees on top of her usual duties. She likes being a supervisor. The beeper is annoying sometimes, going off while she’s driving or in the middle of dinner, but it also makes her feel appreciated. With no distractions at home, she’s able to concentrate, and has gone from just trying to keep busy to actually being good at her job. Sometimes, like the week after Thanksgiving, she accuses herself of hiding in her work. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. Like the waiting, the uncertainty never gets any easier.

  It’s Friday when he finally calls from Bare Hill.

  The name of the place hits her like a verdict. Ever since she found out he was being moved, she’s been studying the different mediums. Bare Hill is forty miles northwest of Clinton, even farther in the middle of nowhere, and like a lot of the mediums, doesn’t have an FRP.

  “Fuck,” she says.

  “Yeah,” he says. “What you said.”

  UPSTATE

  THERE ARE TWO NEW PRISONS SEPARATED BY A CROSSROADS OUTSIDE of Malone, and a third going up right beside them. At the crossroads stands a brand-new mini-mart and the only stoplight for miles, the concrete that holds up the aluminum poles it’s hung from still raw and white. The land has been cleared for farming, and wind sweeps over the plateau. Every time Patty gases up here and grit sandblasts her paint job, she wonders what state senator sold DOCS on this location.

  Tommy says it’s not bad. She knows he misses his little black-and-white TV, even if he says he’d rather have more package privileges anyway. Instead of cells, they have open dorm rooms with bunkbeds. They have a lot of windows, a lot of light. And it’s well insulated; he doesn’t complain about the cold half as much as he did at Clinton. It’s quieter, and clean, and everything works. Patty can verify that from the near-sterile neatness of the visitors’ center; instead of a bus station, it feels like a hospital waiting room.

  On the whole, the place is less oppressive than the old maxes they’re used to. The walls aren’t solid, just two silver stands of chain-link fence topped with razor wire, a gravel road running around the outside. Instead of long, massive cellblocks like factories, the housing units are groups of low, red-brick barracks, with softball diamonds and basketball courts scattered here and there among them, a football field inside a lined running track. Someone driving around lost could almost mistake it for an army base or community college. Franklin, the other medium half a mile down the road, looks exactly the same, making it seem even more impersonal. Over time, she realizes this lack of personality has something to do with the fact that it’s out in the middle of nowhere. As ugly as they are, Auburn fits Auburn the way Clinton fits Dannemora. Bare Hill’s just there.

  Visiting is strictly weekends only. With no FRP, she doesn’t look forward to it as much as she used to. Malone’s an hour farther than Dannemora, and the county roads are a nightmare in winter. It’s one reason she finally gets rid of the Horizon and buys a used Subaru. She still ends up missing visits when they get any real weather.

  She misses more visits—and work—the next fall, when she strains her back mucking out the gutters. She can’t sit for more than a couple of minutes without having spasms. There’s nothing the doctors can do except prescribe rest and anti-inflammatories. She lies on the couch while her mother waits on her. Having spent so much time around patients, Patty’s aware of how demanding they can be, and tries not to complain.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?” her mother needles, delivering her grilled cheese with pickles. “I’m the old lady here. When do I get to be sick?”

  Tommy tells her she shouldn’t have been up on the ladder in the first place. Where the hell is Casey?

  “I’m not going to ask him to come home just to do the gutters,” she says. “I’ve been doing them for twenty years. It’s no big deal.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I was there.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she says, though she’s had the same exact thought about a million things over the years. “I’m out of shape and I tried to do too much, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

  It’s true, but she needs to be careful. Later that winter, getting out of her car in Eileen’s icy driveway, she slips and only saves herself by grabbing the door, but twists something doing it, and for weeks she has to use her father’s old heating pad. Now when she wants to lift or move something heavy, her mother makes her wait until Cy can come over.

  It must be the age, because the years Tommy’s in Bare Hill are full of changes for all three sisters. Eileen is diagnosed with breast cancer and has a lumpectomy, losing her hair and forty pounds to the chemo. When she recovers, she and Cy split up, and then, after Cy goes through rehab for his drinking, they get back together again. Since Kyra and Randy are already gone, Shannon and Marshall take advantage of his early retirement package and move to a condo in Hilton Head. Every year her mother invites them for Thanksgiving, and every year the answer’s the same: they’d love for her to come down.

  Patty’s changes aren’t as dramatic, but they seem big to her. When Carol Henry leaves Riverview, she takes over as full supervisor. For the first time in her life she has her own office. Semester after semester, Casey makes dean’s list. She likes to believe he owes at least some of his consistency to her own steadiness, her determination to keep things together.

  On his end, Tommy’s been writing to Cy, and though he hasn’t had a drink since that night, in sympathy he enrolls in a substance abuse program that will look good on his record.

  His work assignments at Bare Hill are different. Since it’s a medium, he’s actually allowed out. He’s part of a supervised crew that helps renovate Malone’s ice rink, and in the spring of ’98, when a huge ice storm knocks out power from Albany to Montr
eal, they’re tapped to provide emergency services, turning the visitors’ center into a shelter. Besides his work assignments, he’s taking vocational training. As Casey’s preparing to graduate, interviewing with GE and IBM in a beautiful suit she picked out for him, Tommy’s piling up certificates—even one in computers.

  He’s so proud of Casey getting job offers. Over the phone, he laughs that everyone in his unit is sick of listening to him brag about his genius of a son. Patty says she’s the same at work. She updates him on which way Casey’s leaning this week. All of the places seem far away, but she trusts Casey has a plan. She and Tommy agree: it’s his life. They don’t want him staying home to babysit her. They discuss the possibility all that spring, so when he eventually accepts a job in New Mexico, she can’t say she’s shocked.

  It rains the day of his graduation, and the pictures come out dark, but there’s a nice one of the two of them smiling, showing his open diploma. Beside him, she seems tiny. She makes a copy for Tommy and frames the original. The big console TV her father and Tommy used to sit on is long gone; she and Casey join them on the sideboard in the dining room. Walking through, she sometimes stops to admire the resemblances and ends up brooding on Casey going away. Looking at Tommy and her father, she thinks it makes sense that she’d lose him too.

  Casey stops home for a few days on his way west. She can’t believe he’s really leaving, that he won’t be back to work summers at the Parkview, that Adam won’t be cruising by to pick him up. It’s a great job, and they’re paying for his grad school, so she can’t argue with his choice, but in many ways he still seems like a teenager.

  “When am I going to see you again?” she asks as he’s gathering his things.

  Tommy tells her to look at it logically. He can’t come back for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, the plane tickets are too expensive. She needs to invite him for just one.

  Christmas is longer, and Casey has time off. He flies into Syracuse and rents a car and spends the week visiting his friends around town. They’re supposed to go up to Bare Hill, but it snows, so he heads back on New Year’s Eve without seeing Tommy.