Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  “What makes you think women would be easier to deal with than men?”

  “I suppose. If anyone should know how difficult women can be, it’s nuns, right?”

  “Ruth!” Eileen laughed, but it was true.

  Ruth tilted her head. “What about you? I get the feeling you’re dealing with some challenges. Anger? How are you going to get rid of it?”

  “I’ll join you at the chopping block. We’ll make enough food to feed the multitudes.” A little laughter felt good. “Taruk wants to know about the NJ-STEP program.”

  “Does he?”

  “He wants to take care of his family when he gets out. I said he’d need a degree.”

  “Or a marketable skill, yes. I’ll talk to him. Keep in mind, though, not everyone is cut out for university. Taruk has impulse-control issues. No patience. And his reading is awful. It would take a lot of work and dedication for him to handle the courses. However, he’s a whiz with engines. He would be a first-rate mechanic. Auto mechanic technology. Master mechanic. He’s expressed interest in airplane mechanics. Once he gets out of his head and into his hands, he’s a magician.”

  “Ah.”

  “He didn’t tell you we’d been talking about that?”

  “No.” Eileen jiggled her leg and then stopped. “Why wouldn’t he tell me? Bit of a waste of time, then, today.”

  “He’s got nothing but time, and he might have thought you’d respect him more if he showed interest in college.”

  Bells went off in the hallways. Time for inmate movement again, for the first tier to head to the chow hall. She imagined the plastic trays, the brown unidentifiable mush (or the greenish unidentifiable mush), the slice of white bread. Apparently, there had been a time when the food was, if not good, then at least better, but since food services had been privatized it was wretched and the inmates complained they were hungry all the time, since who would eat that slop? Only those who had no one on the outside putting money in their account for canteen food, especially since sometimes the food made the men sick. There were reports of maggots. None of this helped morale. It was all just so unrelentingly grim.

  Someone knocked on the door. One of the guards with an inmate to see Ruth. Ruth opened the door and thanked the guard, ushering the man in. He looked young, and his hair was matted, sticking up in nodules all over his head. Eileen had no idea if this was a new fashion. He wore the thick-rimmed black plastic frames all inmates who needed glasses were issued, the kind that had become so fashionable with hipsters who had no idea where the trend originated.

  “Carl, have you met Sister Eileen?”

  “Hey,” he said, barely looking at her. “We gonna talk? I made an appointment, right?”

  “I was just leaving,” said Eileen. “Nice to meet you.”

  EILEEN AND RUTH SAT with bowed heads, praying. It was nearly nine at night. Anne and Caroline had retired to their rooms. The Himalayan rock salt lamp on the bookshelf gave Eileen’s small room an orange glow, and other than the crook-necked bedside reading lamp, was the only illumination. The room smelled faintly of the roast chicken they had eaten for dinner, and from outside came the occasional whoosh of car tires. The women were praying for the inmates at the prison.

  Eileen raised her head and opened her eyes, waiting to speak until Ruth had done the same. How tired Ruth looked. She ran three miles daily and had the leathery, almost stringy physique of a marathoner. There was no fat on her to blur the edges of distress. The relationship between the two women was deep. When Eileen had returned from a retreat, years ago, at which she’d first confronted the demons of her past, first faced the sexual abuse and trauma, she had known she was skinless and fragile and that the Sisters with whom she lived would have to be told, so they would know how to help her and live with her as she healed. Ruth had been the one she told first, knowing that Ruth had a difficult past herself, one that involved not sexual abuse, but violent physical abuse from a brother who was eventually jailed for life after killing a man in a fit of rage over a parking space. Since that time, Ruth had been the Sister of her heart, which was not perhaps a friendship such as those outside the religious life shared, but rather a relationship focused on their mutual love of God and desire to please God. They felt safe with each other, which is not to say she didn’t feel safe with the other Sisters, but there were bonds with Ruth, born of their mutual understanding of the other’s traumas.

  When Ruth ended her prayer, her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “So many stories to break your heart,” she said.

  “Who are you thinking about?”

  “Morgan.”

  “He’s the one who came in so young.”

  Ruth nodded. “Fifteen, transferred to the adult jail two years ago. Another four years to go before he’s eligible for parole.”

  “A long sentence for someone so young.”

  “He says it wasn’t really his fault. He was only trying to rob someone, but the man chased him, and they fought. Morgan had an ice pick. Says he was fighting for his life. Stabbed the man in the ear. He says the man would have lived except his family pulled him off life-support, wanting him dead for some shadowy reason.”

  “What do you think?”

  Ruth leaned back in the plaid-upholstered rocker and said with a shrug, “I think unless he comes to terms with what happened, really happened, and how he’s responsible, he’ll continue to be a mess.” She shook her head and pressed her lips in a sort of smile. “At fifteen, no parents to speak of, raised by his grandmother or his cousins or a stepfather at one point, briefly … and all this over what? There was less than a hundred dollars in the till. There wasn’t anyone to pay for a defence, so he pled down. They almost all do. Remember Randall?”

  Eileen did. She’d met Randall a couple of years earlier when he participated in a writing class she taught. A born-in member of the Bloods, without a single tattoo, for if your family was in the Bloods for generations, you didn’t need them. A high-ranking member, running a large and profitable crew, he was caught up in a sweep. Randall knew he was, at least technically, innocent of the charges, since he was smart enough never to carry either drugs or guns on his person, or in his car, save for a legally obtained handgun he kept close to hand at home if he was alone. He had money. He had prestige. He knew a thing or two, and so Randall decided he would do what the rich white kids do and hire himself an expensive lawyer. Let the other guys plead out; not him. And there, alas, his smarts ran out. A Black twenty-one-year-old from Camden walks into court with a high-priced lawyer. The prosecution, annoyed as hell at having to try the case, couldn’t stop laughing. The rest of his crew received two, three- and four-year sentences. Randall got eighteen years.

  Eileen also remembered how charismatic he was, how the intelligence just shone out from his eyes. The first time she’d met him, he’d handed her an essay he’d written. “Universal Justice: Does It Exist or Not?” It wasn’t a perfect essay, but Eileen couldn’t deny how well-argued his position was.

  “I guess he wishes he’d pled down,” she said.

  “Yes, probably. He’ll be under forty when he gets out, providing he survives it. Who knows, but he may still do something wonderful with his life. Not impossible.” Ruth bowed her head for a moment, and then breathed in deeply. When she raised her eyes, her expression had softened. She asked, “And your day? What about you?”

  Eileen noticed a stink bug crawling on the inside of the pink plastic shade on the lamp beside her bed. The bug bumbled about for a moment and then settled. They were terrible flyers. One could so easily scoop them up and toss them outside. They were such ordinary insects. Mundane. Okay, they smelled like acrid slime, but what kind of a superpower was that?

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  There was no point in burdening Ruth, who had so many people leaning on her already, with her problems. She’d talk to her spiritual director, Felida, soon.

  Angela

  It was a Saturday, Connor’s seventeenth birthday. He was home at the end o
f spring break, having spent a week in Bermuda at a friend’s beach house.

  He stumbled downstairs into the kitchen shortly after nine. His feet too big for the stair treads, he reached out for the railing before he fell. In sports he had an almost balletic grace, but coming down the stairs, or even walking down a hallway, turned him into a clumsy galoot. Angela had learned not to shriek at his missteps. His dark hair stuck up every which way. He’d thrown on sweatpants, sneakers (untied, of course), and a ratty old sweatshirt, but he obviously hadn’t taken a shower. Philip sat staring into his cellphone and Angela was reading the paper at the other end of the old refectory table.

  “Hey, birthday boy,” said Philip.

  Angela got up, kissed Connor, which he allowed, and wished him a happy birthday. He smelled of boy, that goatish scent of hormones and sports equipment. She went to the fridge to get the pancake batter. A tradition: blueberry pancakes on birthday mornings.

  “Hungry?”

  “Sure,” he grunted. Not one of nature’s morning folk.

  Angela put a cast-iron frying pan on the huge, six-burner-plus-grill stove that would have been better suited to a restaurant. It always made her feel guilty, that stove. She felt she should be taking in the homeless, foster kids, refugees. She should be feeding the world with that stove. The gas whooshed on.

  “So, plans for the day?” Philip asked.

  Angela ladled the batter into the pan. “We’re having dinner tonight, yes? I made a reservation at Mistral.”

  Connor poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d started drinking it last summer and Angela found his affectation at adulthood rather sweet. When he was home, she mixed in half decaf.

  He scratched the back of his head and shrugged. “Do we have to?”

  It pinched Angela’s heart. “You don’t want to?”

  He’d be off at college next year, studying law and political science. He’d been accepted at Princeton but didn’t want to go to school so close to home, which Angela could almost understand. He’d wanted to go to Stanford. They’d settled on Harvard, where Philip had gone. Lawrenceville was, after all, the alma mater of several governors, senators, two chiefs of the Cherokee Nation, ambassadors, congressmen, and at least one president of a foreign country. Big things were expected.

  She said, “This might be our last birthday dinner.”

  “No, of course it won’t!” said Philip. He stood up and stuffed his hands in his pockets, jingling coins, something he did when irritated, impatient, or excited. “Boys his age don’t want to hang out with their parents, and besides, he might want to drive his friends down to the shore or something.”

  Connor’s head came up. “You gonna loan me the bimmer?”

  “Nope.” Philip grinned. “Better.”

  “Better?” Connor’s grin matched his father’s.

  Philip pulled his hand out of his pocket. He dangled a key chain. “Much better.”

  “Get out!” Connor yelled. “For real?” He reached for the keys.

  It didn’t quite register with Angela until Connor made a dash for the front door.

  “You didn’t,” she said.

  “Hell, yes.”

  Philip followed Connor, and, because Angela felt she had no choice, she turned off the flame under the frying pan and went, as well.

  Parked in the circular driveway was a large red beast of a vehicle with a black roof. The silver plaque on the grille read LAND ROVER.

  “Where did that come from?” Angela was sure it hadn’t been there earlier.

  “I had a guy from the dealership drive it over this morning. He’ll mail me the second set of keys.” Philip was so puffed up one would have thought he’d built it in the garage from a kit. “Hey, Connor,” he called to his son, who was already behind the wheel, touching the dashboard, running his hands over the leather seats. “Connor! Double overhead cam, V6, 8-speed shiftable automatic, GPS, of course, Meridian premium stereo with eight speakers —”

  “You got the upgraded speakers? Wow, Dad, this is great. I mean, really great!”

  The engine roared to life. Connor fiddled with dials. Country music blasted.

  Angela’s hands flew to her ears. “Connor!”

  He turned it down. “Sorry.”

  He pulled his phone out of the pouch on the front of his sweatshirt. Philip leaned in the window and showed him how to connect it. A moment later, rap music flooded the cab. Angela poked her head in the passenger side.

  “I don’t want you on that phone when you’re driving. I’m serious.”

  She might as well have been talking to the squirrel chattering from the poplar at the side of the driveway.

  “I’m gonna drive over and show Jake, maybe pick up Meghan and Emily.” Connor was texting furiously. “Okay?”

  “What about breakfast?” Before the words were halfway out of Angela’s mouth, she knew how idiotic they sounded. Pancakes, blueberry or otherwise, could not compete with a double cam overhead whatever.

  “Yeah, of course, go on. Hey, wait! You got your licence?” asked Philip.

  “Sure, yeah.” Connor pulled his card-holder out of his pocket and waved it.

  “All right, then.” Philip saluted him.

  “Wow. This is really amazing. Thanks. Thanks so much.”

  Angela had to step back; the beast was already moving. “For God’s sake,” she called after him, “be careful.”

  He waved without turning around, the way you do to a stranger who has let you into their lane.

  A dinner they’d been to at the Morrisseys’ a few years earlier popped into Angela’s head. One of Lynne and Walt Morrisey’s beautiful daughters was home from Vassar. Sybil, a round-faced freckled girl with a habit of twirling a lock of her red hair around her finger when she was thinking, was talking about what a pain the traffic was driving from Poughkeepsie. Angela mentioned she hadn’t even learned to drive until she and Philip moved to Princeton from the city, when she was nearly thirty. Sybil looked as though Angela had just coughed up a hairball onto the salad plate. “Oh my God,” she said, “you didn’t have a car? How did you get by?” Angela told her that until she met Philip, she couldn’t afford a car, let alone gas, insurance, and all that.

  “Really?” Sybil had looked sincerely puzzled. She picked up a spear of asparagus and nibbled it, then cocked her head. “Well, I guess if my parents hadn’t bought me mine, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it, either.”

  Had this just occurred to her?

  “But you know,” she said, “it’s just a Honda. SUV, sure, but just a Honda. A lot of the kids at Vassar have a Lexus or Mazda.”

  Angela had vowed Connor would never talk like that. By this she meant he would never take such luxury and plenty for granted, not that she wouldn’t want him to have a fine car. When had this shift happened? The idea of being able to give her beautiful boy everything he wanted and more had once been a hope, a dream, an aspiration. Now, she watched her son disappear around the corner onto Stockton, a street Angela thought far too busy. She felt scooped out inside, not as though a dream had been fulfilled, but rather that some greater hope for Connor had just died.

  “I wish you’d talked to me about this first.” She shivered in the chilly wind.

  Philip put his arm around her. “Come on, every kid his age needs a car. He’s got his licence.”

  “That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have to work for his first car; that he shouldn’t have to earn it.”

  Philip’s face set in that way it did when he disapproved of her, of her ideas, of her opinions. Disapproval wrapped in disappointment. He dropped his arm from her shoulder.

  “Connor’s job is to go to school and get good grades, and he’s performing well. That’s how he earned his birthday gift, if you want a rationale.”

  “I want to be consulted.”

  “Like you consulted me about taking on yet another good-works project?”

  Angela had come home from the Pantry excited about the community garden and had foolishly t
hought Philip would be enthused, as well.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She turned and stalked back into the house.

  Philip followed her in, through the hall, past the portraits of his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents — robber barons and debutantes and at least one rum-runner.

  Angela poured a cup of coffee and put the remainder of the pancake batter back in the fridge, thinking maybe it would keep until tomorrow morning. She sensed Philip behind her, seething. It had been a bad week for them; lots of sniping, several instances of turning him down for sex, a smart remark or two about his cigar-smoking, a dig here and there about her drinking.

  Let him seethe, she thought. She kept her back to him, staring out the window into the garden. The statue of the girl holding a lotus flower was leaning slightly, made unstable by winter’s earth-heave. She made a mental note to call the gardening service and have them fix it. Philip slammed a cupboard and she jumped.

  “Stop behaving like a spoiled child,” she said.

  “That’s rich, pardon the pun, coming from you.” He rattled the coffee pot, stomped to the fridge for cream, and stirred his coffee as if he hated the cup.

  Angela turned and leaned against the counter. Philip stood on the other side of the island, leaning on his hands, the fingers splayed out against the granite. He looked every inch the boss man in the boardroom about to dress down an employee or launch a hostile takeover.

  He pointed a finger at her. “You better get yourself in line, Angela.”

  “In line? Are you kidding me? What are you, my drill sergeant? Well, yes, sir!” She saluted in a mockery of the one he had given to Connor.