“You look kind of yellowish,” she replied. “Have you been ill? Or maybe it’s just what I’m used to seeing.” She sat down next to me. “I’ve just come from three weeks of sickly kids.” She told me about her trip to a town in Guyana where ptomaine poisoning had felled a schoolful of children. I ordered a dirty martini, and for her, the usual, a club soda with a splash of pineapple juice. She plucked the straw from the glass and gnawed on it.
“So?” I said. I could tell she was full of something portentous.
“I’m getting married next week.” She blinked at me.
“That was fast.” I gulped the martini, welcoming the shock of it, harsh and saline, on the roof of my mouth.
“Gary wants a baby,” she said.
“Yes. Well.” I felt as if my bar stool had begun tilting and bobbing, like a buoy. “Marriage would be a logical first step, then.”
The straw was mangled now. She dropped it on the bar. “You should have made it to that surprise party, Frank.” Her voice thickened.
The surprise birthday fiesta. My idea, but she discovered it, of course; you don’t hide things from Winnie. She took charge. She ordered the cake, edited the menu, chose the tequila brand for the signature cocktail. Because, she said, “You don’t have the feel for social things, Frank, you’re awkward in that area. All you have to do is walk me in there.” Then the Fehler thing happened. I mean, that day, the day of Winnie’s birthday. I forgot all about the party. She ended up having to show up alone.
“You dropped the ball.”
“I didn’t intend to.”
“It was like a marriage of convenience with you most of the time. Like something arranged for expedience. Remember my wedding toast?”
“Let’s not rehash.”
A microphone in her hand, her puffy skirts ballooning around her, the band behind her in sparkling sequined bow ties. My parents standing to one side, pretending to be happy, though they didn’t approve of Winnie because she had said my mother’s poor housekeeping triggered her allergies, and they thought she undermined me. Her parents, pretending to be happy though they made it clear they considered me a very poor catch. I couldn’t remember her toast.
“I said that I felt our union was based on sound reasoning. And that because of that, it would probably last a long, long time. I was wrong, though.”
“Yes.”
“Love doesn’t require sound reasoning.”
“No.” I thought about M.
As we were leaving, Winnie turned to me. “Should I invite you?”
“Nah.” I helped her on with her coat. “Probably not.”
Winnie and I had lived separate lives in close quarters, and that was about all you could say for our two years of marriage. I watched television in the living room, she read in bed. She fell asleep at ten, I drifted in around two. She didn’t wake when I slid into my quadrant of our California king. She’d leave for the airport in the dark before dawn, and I woke up as a bachelor, padding around the apartment boxer-shorted and alone.
AND SO I WAS AGAIN, BACK IN OUR GLOOM-FOGGED APARTMENT. Seeing Winnie had reacquainted me with certain truths. I was drawn to M, in a mysterious, and perhaps even extraordinary, way. Something about her wrapped itself around my psyche from that first moment I glimpsed her in the clattering hallway outside the typing classroom, and had never really let go. But was that enough to lead me to put my entire life at risk? I didn’t have much to lose, in terms of material goods, and I had no bright future ahead. But still. This apartment, my brother and father, even the cat. I had these things.
And I had that possibility, the possibility of making the good and right choice. You get to keep that, do you not, until you let loose your final lungful of oxygen? Until then, the possibility is yours.
The sofa beckoned. Truffle appeared and stretched himself along its back, behind my head, a neck pillow, a bit rank but warm. I found an old western playing, Ride Lonesome, and stayed with it late into the night. Randolph Scott’s stoic resignation seemed instructional. A life of solitude is brutal but clean.
M was the woman I had hoped for my whole life. Not sensible, not convenient. The one. Plain and simple.
But this was folly. A prison break is a federal crime. I could end up in some place much worse than the wretched prison where I now worked. An orange jumpsuit in Attica or Auburn or even Leavenworth.
I vowed I would not see her again. I would not.
Bloom where you are planted, for once in your life.
12
November 1999
November unnerved her. The waning of the year. The election days of her childhood, always so fraught. The cries of geese as they fled in the V formation that seemed to her an urgent symbol, a sign of warning. Get out while you can. Get out.
On her lap, a weighty book: Pathways to Adult Literacy. She aspired to be a better tutor. On the book, a sheet of paper, carefully, neatly, detached from a legal pad, yellow with red rules. At the top of the page: Dear Ms. Hance.
And then blankness.
Down the unit, she could hear someone singing: My name is Michael, I got a nickel.
The yellow page stayed yellow and blank, devoid of what she was unable to write down.
Ms. Hance, I have died and come back. Life won’t leave me, and I must live it. I understand that now, Ms. Hance.
And if, Lenore Patterson Hance, after committing unbearable wrongs, I am to live a life of any worth at all, I must be redeemed. I must be redeemed. If possible. If at all possible. If remotely possible.
Is it possible, Lenore? Is it acceptable for me to call you that? I think not, I suspect you’d hate it.
I think of him hourly, Ms. Lenore. How many brook trout did he catch, on that Saturday morning? At around six, early light, he headed up to Otego Creek, just up by the state forest, he had a spot he liked there, below the falls. He would always bring a Coke and a bag of peanuts, and that would be his breakfast Saturdays.
I remember you saying that, Ms. Hance. Ms. Hance is better, is it not?
The day after, you also said, the day after the event, we all hiked up there, we were in shock you know, me, my son Wade. And my dad, even with his bad knee, he made it up there. Peanut shells all over the bank. We picked them up, brought them home.
It was a Jif peanut butter jar, Ms. Hance. The shells were dirty and the plastic jar was smudged and clouded. Your lawyer smacked it on the table, not three feet away from me. Jif, blue top.
For you, Ms. Lenore Hance, for you, maybe there is nothing I can offer. Only just my apology every moment of my existence, and this I intend to do. In here, in the blocks and units and workrooms of Milford Basin State Correctional Facility, I will be toiling for your brother, accomplishing whatever small good deeds I can.
Would it help to know that torments fill most of my waking moments? Would you rest better hearing about the daily tragedies?
The sentence—the punishment that is my life as it is lived now—is proving effective. Even in here, my losses keep mounting, my pain multiplies, and I will not run from them. Perhaps, Ms. Hance, this information might provide a measure of peace.
THE DAY BEFORE, THEY HAD SUMMONED MIRANDA TO APRIL’S ROOM. “She is bugging, she is freaking,” Cherie had yelled.
April was standing on her bed, her fists wrapped around the window bars. She seemed to be addressing herself in a very reasonable tone.
“Hey.” Miranda came up and tugged at her pants leg. “Come on down.”
April turned to her and slapped her. Miranda stumbled backward.
“You don’t touch a fucking sergeant at arms,” said April. Her eyes were not quite set right in their sockets. Too much whiteness.
Miranda tried to remember—did she ever mention a history of seizures, or epilepsy, or God knows what?
“You hear ‘Taps,’ you stop and salute, even if you’re in the gym or the PX parking lot. This one lady didn’t stop and I reamed her out, you know. She just kept walking, and I shouted, you respect your flag, bitch!”
“April.” Miranda managed to turn her from the window.
She sank to the bed. Her eyes still untethered, bright and empty. “You ever been on the subway over there? It’s so fucking clean.”
April buried her face into her pillow. Miranda approached her cautiously, kneeling by the bed.
Then from behind the privacy curtain, a voice. “Nicholson, who’ve you got in there now? I have to charge you?”
Beryl Carmona pulled the curtain aside. The Velcro gave way with a nervy rip. “No guests in the cell when the curtain is closed. Now what part of that rule is so hard to understand? Greene, you oughta know better.”
“April’s having a hard day,” Miranda said apologetically.
“Don’t you think I’d love to write up two tickets this morning?” Carmona smiled. “But I’m in a good mood. Just placed my nut bars in a gift shop upstate. I’m an entrepreneur.” She hooted. “I’ll be quitting this job soon enough, right, Missy May?”
“Right!” Miranda smiled so hard at Carmona she thought her face might break.
“Leave the curtain open, ladies. I don’t care if you’re having the worst day in world history.”
“Thank you, Officer.” She smiled with all the force she could, trying to get the CO to leave the room. At last Carmona moved on.
Miranda crossed quickly to the place where the guard had stood, with her big sneakered foot, her enormous foot with insteps that rolled out over the sole, just touching the little item that lay exposed on the floor. Carmona had nearly kicked it. Thank God her feet didn’t feel it. Thank God she couldn’t see down over her midriff.
Miranda picked up the tinfoil crack pipe and stuffed it down her shirt.
“THOSE ARE GODDAMN GOOD CIGARS.” EDWARD GREENE LOOKED past her, over her shoulder, toward the security desk at the door to the visiting room. “Montecristos. You think I’ll get them back?”
“No telling,” said Miranda.
He shrugged, loosened his striped tie. “I forgot I had them in my pocket, tell you the truth.” He smiled at her. “The old lobbyist’s credo. Always carry a couple of good cigars.”
Miranda attempted to return his smile but found this very difficult.
“So I learned something on my trip last week.” He seemed to be trying another conversational angle. “Bahrain is a shithole.” He rubbed a hand over his bald head, gazing at her. “I’m sorry it’s been so long, sweetheart,” he said. “You have a right to be angry, of course. It’s a lot harder for me to get here than I would have expected. Busy season. November. The elections. New faces.”
Miranda was determined not to cry. “So the firm’s doing well.”
“Well, the Bahraini thing is a good deal.” He frowned. “You look dog-tired, Miranda. How are you managing, really? Do you need anything?”
“No,” she said.
“About the appeal.”
“I don’t want to focus on that.”
He leaned toward her, lowered his voice. “Sweetie, we are looking into further options. This thing is not over.”
“I need to focus on what’s right in front of me.”
“That judge—bad luck, what can I say. Bloomfield may be a bastard but I know he’s giving a hundred and fifty percent to us. And we’ll keep pushing.” He nodded determinedly. “We’ll keep pushing this thing up the line.”
She nodded. “But please. No shady maneuvers.”
The CO with the strangely twisted lips strolled up to them. “You two need to go to the bathroom? I’m escorting folks to the bathroom.”
“Thank you, Officer, no.” Her dad flashed a broad smile. He waited for the woman to move away again.
Then he angled himself toward Miranda, scooped her hand into his larger one. How many years since she’d held his hand? “Nothing shady. Promise.” He squeezed her fingers a bit as if testing their thickness. “But to circumvent obstacles, we always have options,” he said. “We just have to determine what those options are. Take it from one who knows. Find a way around the obstacle, and the obstacle disappears.”
Her father looked dog-tired, too, thought Miranda as she waited at the traffic checkpoint to be searched after his visit. His decade and a half as a lobbyist, years of halfhearted promises and humbling concessions and too many twelve-ounce ribeyes and thirty-year whiskeys and sixteen-hour flights. All this showed on his face. After his failed congressional comeback, he’d signed on with one of the big K Street firms. But there’d been clashing styles, never a great fit, Edward Greene would be the first to admit. Then the firm was investigated for influence peddling, and his more established partners—a former majority whip, a former secretary of commerce—tried to set him up as the fall guy. At least, that’s how Edward Greene painted it. The charges didn’t stick, in any case. Now he ran his own firm out of an office suite above a pasta restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. Miranda had never been there. Alan Bloomfield said the place smelled like Ragu.
The funny thing is, said the attorney—this was during the trial, when Alan and Miranda had spent a lot of time locked up in antechambers waiting for things to happen and he’d make idle chitchat to take her mind off the disaster at hand—is that the place is right across from the Woodley Funeral Chapel. Well, not funny, certainly. But odd, he said. Odd. The place used to be white brick, though, didn’t it? Now they’ve done it over in some godawful kind of gleaming metal, and it looks like an industrial refrigerator. Awful.
Yes, it had been white brick; Miranda remembered it precisely, glossy white brick with black shutters to disguise it as a charming old house instead of a place for tending to dead girls. It must have just been freshly painted because it blinded with its whiteness that day, an unseasonably warm January day, snow melting, little rushing river along the curb out front. Miranda waited by the glass doors, holding them open as people arrived. She was glad, finally, after three days of sitting around the grief-drowned house, to have something to do. In came Amy’s girlfriends with swollen eyes, clutching little travel packs of tissues, and boys in awkward quiet bunches. Some teachers brought ungraded papers, art projects, Amy’s last schoolwork, to be pressed into the hand of her mother or father. Grandma Rosalie, in a wheelchair. Out front, the youngest cousins fooling with the power windows in the black cars lined up for the cemetery ride.
And then she saw Neil Potocki. He passed through the door without looking her way.
Next, the strangest sound. A low screeching. And out of who knows where, her mother appeared, charging across the carpeted lobby toward him. Was that screeching coming from her? “Get out of here,” she wailed. “Out.” She held her hands in front of her, as if she were going to push Potocki, or wallop him, but at the last moment, they fell limply to her sides. “You are not welcome here,” she said, her voice shaky. “Go.”
A quiet had fallen over the lobby full of mourners. “Barbara,” he said, moving his hand toward her shoulder.
She jumped back at his touch. “Don’t you . . .” she said. “Eddie!” She turned and frantically scanned the dumbstruck crowd. “Where’s Edward?” she demanded of some nearby relatives.
“No, no,” said Neil Potocki. “Please don’t bother.” He turned back to Barb. “I only wanted you and Ed to know that I was thinking of you, and of Amy, on this difficult, terrible day.”
“Don’t you dare say her name,” said Miranda’s mother, and then she broke into sobs. She began to buckle, someone gathered her up, led her into the sanctuary, where an organ version of “Greensleeves”—Miranda’s idea, the only song Amy had ever learned to play on the piano that gathered dust in their living room—warbled.
Potocki turned to leave. Because it was her job, Miranda opened the door for him. “Thanks, cupcake,” he said, and gave her a pat on the head as he walked by.
MIRANDA AND APRIL HAD BEEN RUNNING A SATURDAY NIGHT BINGO game in Building 4D, a min-max ward where tighter security measures meant residents didn’t get out much. This had been part of Miranda’s new leaf. She’d heard about a once-upon-a-time
bingo game up there, highly popular, run by a wealthy murderess who had been released a decade ago. Miranda decided to revive it, talked April into helping her.
The local order of nuns donated money for the cigarettes, plastic combs, toothpaste, scented soap, Twizzlers, and Butterfinger bars they used for prizes. The ladies played mostly for the cigarettes, though. Miranda could only get rid of the soaps and combs when all the smokes and then all the candy were claimed.
But this Saturday night, there would be no bingo. April had used the cigarettes and candy and soap and even the plastic combs as barter for rocks of crack. Miranda found her out in the November-hardened yard, shivering and hugging herself on the bench.
“Who are you getting it from?” she demanded.
“You’ll just rat.” She looked at Miranda haughtily. The skin on her face looked ashen and dry. “And what did you do with my pipe?”
“I flushed it.”
“I wish I could do the same thing to you.” April pulled on her lip. “I have another one, anyway.”
“I hope you aren’t stashing in your room, April. You know we’ve been having all kinds of searches.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said with a scowl.
“Is it Nessa? Did she do something to upset you?”
This made her laugh. Her teeth were outlined in blood.
Then Lu came striding across the yard, her hands shoved in the pockets of her windbreaker. A hand-drawn smiley face embellished the O in the printed NYS DOCS across her chest.
“She’s a mess,” said Miranda, her voice breaking.
Lu shook her head, bobbed hair whipping around in the bluster. Put her hand tenderly on April’s face. April glared at her. “Sweet girl,” Lu said. “This shit will kill you. You want to die?”
“Sure do.” April’s dimmed eyes instantly brimming.
“Come lift the weights with me,” said Lu, tugging on April’s arm. “Who else will spot me as good as you? Please?”
“Leave me alone.” She sniffled. She clasped her knees to her chest and buried her face. A small human compressed into a bundle you could easily slip into a trash bag.
The Captives Page 14
