The Captives

by Debra Jo Immergut

  She burst through the doors to visiting traffic. There was an inmate already waiting to be processed there, and the station was deserted. As she hurried closer, Miranda was astonished to recognize Lu. “Aren’t you in lockdown?” she said, coming up behind her.

  Lu spun around. “Mimi!” She blinked, stunned. “I am waiting for a CO. One called me out. Don’t know which. You didn’t tell them about what I did to that Dorcas, you didn’t say something, you didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not,” said Miranda, a little put out that Lu would even suggest such a thing.

  “I know you didn’t, baby. I’m crazy because why does some CO want to see me? Oh, Mimi, this about April, I am so sad and I am so sorry.” Lu shook her head and seemed to be having a hard time catching her breath.

  Miranda lowered her eyes and shook her head. “Can’t talk about it, Lu. Please, let’s not.”

  “I understand, sweet little one. I do.” Lu squeezed her arm. “We will talk later. Now why are you out of lock?”

  “I was called to visiting.”

  “And for this they let you out of lock? Must be some big deal.”

  Miranda shrugged, looking over Lu’s shoulder as Jerrold Liverwell came out of the men’s room on the far side of the gate and ambled toward them, clutching his keys. “I don’t have a clue,” she said. “And here comes your CO.”

  HOW COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT HE WAS. PERCHED ON A STOOL far too small for him at a long table, in the empty visiting room ablaze with too much light, in a gray suit that fit so perfectly he looked vacuum packed. If she hadn’t seen him there next to Edward Greene, if she hadn’t seen him in the company of her father, she likely would not have recognized him. When was the last time she’d seen him? The funeral.

  Of course, she easily recalled the first time. Nineteen seventy-six, a room in the Pittsburgh Hilton, Edward Greene’s very first election night. The returns were coming in. Greene up by thirty-five points in Homestead, Greene sweeping West Mifflin. Miranda and Amy bounced from bed to bed, rebounding high enough for fingertips to graze the ceiling, while the grown-ups milled around hugging and splashing their fizzy cocktails on the rug. Barb sat at the desk near the TV, peering into a compact mirror, touching up her makeup for the victory rally. Blusher, mascara, powder, lipstick. Miranda loved to watch her. And then she had to go pee, and she rounded the corner to the bathroom.

  And there she saw her father open the door to the hotel hallway, and out of that glittering, gold-carpeted realm glided this man, a chubby man in a tight brown suit, the skin on his face shiny and smooth in spots, slightly nicked in others, a face like an unfrosted cake. In his arms, he held a big box. Her father thumped him on the shoulder—“Hey, great to see you”—and helped him set the box on the floor.

  “Asti Spumante. Short notice, best I could get, in this shithole city of ours,” said the brown suit. He glanced up and saw Miranda then. He winked at her. “Excuse my French, cupcake.”

  Her father turned. “What do you want, honey? You need to go?” He nudged her toward the bathroom. “Come in and have a drink, Neil,” he said, turning back to the brown man. “I know we’ve got talking to do.”

  “Time for that later,” the man said. “Lots to come.” Just before she shut the bathroom door, she saw the man reach out and straighten her dad’s tie. “Told you you’d be pulling down some numbers, right?” he said. When she came out, the man had gone, her dad parading around with an open bottle in each hand, Asti for everyone. Amy and Miranda got to share a glass, filled with little frightened bubbles that tasted like pinpricks, and they finished the whole thing.

  Months later, on the TV in the house on Holloway Drive, they glimpsed the man with the Asti Spumante and the ice-blue car. He had bid on the Steelers, said the woman reading the news. She called him a “mogul.”

  “What’s a mogul?” asked Miranda.

  “It means a businessman,” said Amy. “He owns most of Pennsylvania.”

  “Including a few of its most prominent representatives,” said her mother.

  Nineteen seventy-eight. The campaigning in the cold again. Miranda didn’t mind it so much, but for Amy it was agony. The humiliation of standing up there, midpuberty, in front of gawking crowds, wearing clothes she hated, they were either too little-girly, she said, or else too grown-up. Wave and smile and flash her braces. It had been awful for Amy, but Miranda had been even more worried about her father. She could see sweat on him, and she noticed that sometimes the crowds were smaller than the last go-around and so she understood that things weren’t going so well this time. Between these speeches, they’d camp out in the chilly, half-empty Pittsburgh house—“three years on the market and not a nibble,” her mom said every time they pulled up into the driveway. In the musty paneled rec room, over plodding games of Sorry, Miranda and Amy could hear everything. Terrible sentences leaked down the stairs and through the vents. Her mother and father in the kitchen with Mr. Bloomfield who was always around. “What’s happening to him, Alan? Look at those numbers.”

  “No ads, no numbers,” said Mr. Bloomfield, calmer.

  “Why in Christ’s name won’t he cough up something?” said Edward Greene. “What did I do wrong? I thought he was happy.”

  “I’ve tried to explain it to you. It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong. It’s just that Denny Hilyard has done more things right.”

  “What did he do?” Her father was yelling now. “Blow him? Christ,” he said, his voice climbing. “I’ll get on my knees and blow him, if that’s what it takes.”

  “Edward. Even if Potocki rolled out fifty grand tonight, I don’t see a road map. You need to start getting your head straight about other scenarios.”

  “Get him on the phone.”

  “Won’t take your calls, Ed. I’ve tried, believe me.”

  What was that noise then? Was it her father sobbing?

  “I’m not moving back to Pittsburgh, Eddie.” How furious her mom sounded.

  “He’ll find ample opportunities in D.C.,” said Mr. Bloomfield. “Ample.”

  AT SOME POINT AFTER HIS LOSS, HER FATHER APPARENTLY PATCHED things up with Neil Potocki. Two years and two months later, in January 1981, they were all eating little cups of beef stew at his Super Bowl party in the Virginia hunt country. And nearly nineteen years after that, Miranda sat down across from the two men in the Milford Basin visiting room.

  “You’re looking well,” Potocki offered with a faint smile.

  “Mr. Potocki’s in a hurry,” said Edward Greene. “We have some wonderful news for you.”

  “Really?”

  Potocki folded his arms across his chest, exposing a dull gold timepiece strapped to one wrist. “I have close ties with your governor here in New York, dear. Your father came to me, and as an old friend, I feel it’s only right to do what I can.”

  Miranda stared at him.

  “Isn’t that terrific? What Mr. Potocki here’s proposing.”

  “I’m not promising anything, you understand.” The deepness under his eyes, the many folds laden with dark information. “It may take some time, even years. But he does owe me a favor or two, the governor.”

  Miranda shifted uneasily in her chair. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No thanks necessary.” Potocki rose. With a casual air, he laid a hand high on her father’s shoulder, almost on his neck. “I know your dad would do the same for me. We’re dropping you at the airport, Edward?” He removed his hand then, straightened his suit, and gently checked his airy puff of gray-brown hair. “I’ll let you two have some time alone.”

  They both watched him stride through the visiting room, past the curious glances of two COs who, in their admiration, neglected to sign him out. Her father turned to her.

  “Well?”

  “No.”

  He shifted back in his chair and frowned at the floor for a long moment. “Listen, Miranda,” he said finally. “Your sister died a long time ago. This is about now. Don’t you see what this is about?�
� He leaned forward. “You’re wasting away.”

  At this, burning drops careened down the slopes of her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand. “You thought I’d agree to this.”

  “You’re hardly in a position to stand on principle, it would seem.” Edward Greene’s gaze took in the grim room, the grim point on Earth that they’d ended up occupying together. “Listen to reason, Miranda. Be practical.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes.” He sat back, away from her, face hazy with weariness. “Like me.”

  Just then a CO called out to him. “Sir, the driver’s out there, says your ride’s leaving.”

  “Go,” she said, wiping at her tears, so sticky and thick they clung to her hands like sap.

  MIRANDA STOOD ONCE AGAIN AT THE WINDOW IN THE TV ROOM, April’s squirrels once again flinging themselves around the slender young oak. She didn’t see the squirrels.

  Instead, her father in 1978. Before the concession speech, pacing by the hotel-room window, spewing curses out over the disorderly vista of Pittsburgh, his shirt untucked in back, while her mother struggled to get the wrinkles out of his jacket, phoning for room service to bring up an iron.

  Instead, April. Looking up every time the mail cart came, weeping through old hymns during Sunday morning worship. When Miranda had returned from visiting, someone on the unit told her that they’d heard April’s family had refused to accept her body. The ladies whispered that she was being cremated and stored in a government locker.

  Instead, Frank Lundquist. And Neil Potocki.

  A sparrow perched on the sill outside sensed her presence through the glass, startled off the ledge, and shot out of sight.

  And then she saw the Oshandaga River. A bridge, a little rickety old two-lane bridge three miles outside of Candora. Lit by a single weak moth-bothered streetlight. Slowly, the car rolled to a stop there. She couldn’t grasp what she’d just witnessed, what she’d just done. Then she looked down at the seat next to her. Gun. She picked it up, so heavy against her hand, metal just slightly raw, rough. A low-end, bargain-priced gun, she presumed. She slid out of the car. There wasn’t a sound but the whine of crickets. She crossed to the railing of the bridge and leaned over. She didn’t see the thing after it left her hand, but then in a heartbeat she heard it—plunk—and she glimpsed a small white break, like a tiny flower blooming briefly in the darkness below her feet.

  She walked to her car and leaned back against the hood, cool and hard in the night air. She could feel the day’s heat, stored in the pavement, seep up through the soles of her shoes. She rested there, both cooled and warmed, and waited for the next thing to happen.

  17

  Do Not Engage in Sexual Intimacies with Current Clients

  (Standard 10.05)

  Turns out Dad was bruised and abraded, but the EMTs fixed him up right there on the sidelines and then gave us a lift home. None of his bones were broken. In the ambulance, he was silent, brooding, embarrassed by his undignified trip down the bleacher stairs in front of the crowd. And we never did get to see that whiz kid quarterback complete a pass.

  Irma fussed over him when we returned to the house, the house that was heady with cooking smells. She laid out a spread that would have fed a dozen. The three of us sat around the kitchen table, its yellow plaid Formica faded but still cheery, overhead the familiar pendant of white glass bells, half its bulbs always burned out. There must have been eight or nine dishes to go with the big steaming bird, and two pies besides.

  “God, thank you for not letting me kill myself while grabbing for a donut,” said my dad, bowing his head over his full plate of food. “It would have just spoiled my appetite, anyhow.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  “I made you that cheesy rice ring,” said Irma to me. “Whipped it up last minute.”

  “And I love you for it.” I mounded my plate with all the trimmings.

  “You don’t.” She blushed.

  After dinner Dad and I washed up while Irma packed leftovers into a cooler that she insisted I take back to New York. “I don’t care if you eat it, give it to the bums. I just can’t take seeing it go fuzzy in this fridge here.” Then she waddled down to the basement where she liked to needlepoint and listen to Peggy Lee.

  My father and I retired to his study. Dad rummaged around for his pipe and tobacco. “Never smoke anymore but on national holidays,” he said as he sat at his desk opening drawers and riffling through them. I lowered myself into a recliner, groaning. When did I get so old that I groaned when I sat down, groaned like middle-aged men all over America do as they succumb to gravitational forces over soft seating after Thanksgiving dinner? Above my head, the shelves were crammed with the testing toys that had confounded and entranced me as a child, the wooden stacks of rings and cubes to be assembled according to size and color, the plastic spatial-relations doodads with their nontoxic colored knobs, piles of flashcards with pictures of bland-faced humans engaged in ambiguous pastimes. They were all relics now; testing was done on computers these days.

  His old Pentax camera, complete with its big boxy flash, sat on a lower shelf. He’d used it to document my successful completion of the puzzles. He captured me for posterity, thought I was a genius. Thought the photos might have some value someday, scientifically. I picked it up—there was film in it. As my father fished his walnut pipe from a bottom drawer, along with a pouch of Black Watch tobacco, I positioned the camera on a shelf across from the desk, set the timer. Pressed the self-timer button and hurried around the desk, crouching beside him.

  “What the heck are you doing, Frank?”

  “To remember me by. Smile.”

  Click. The flash went off. Dad turned to me. Our faces were inches away. “You going to tell me where you’re going, Son?”

  Whether to tell him. What to tell him. I could smell the pumpkin pie on his breath, the coffee. His blue eyes a bit milky, the eyelids slack. Across his forehead, tissue-paper skin molded itself around several prominent veins. Why did I feel so certain that I would never see him alive again after this day. The thought jarred me. I straightened up, away from him.

  “Dad. I wish I could have been . . . better.”

  “So do we all, goddamn it.” He shook his head at me, mystified. “You worry me, Frank. Someone listening to you might think you were going to do away with yourself.”

  “Kill myself?”

  “Yes, you’re talking like a nutcase, in my professional opinion.”

  I smiled, rested my hand on his head. The sparse hair, soft and white as a dandelion puff. “Don’t worry, Dad. In some ways I’ve never felt better about my future.”

  He scowled up at me. “Now what the hell is that supposed to mean.”

  “I’m going back to New York tonight. I have to get back.”

  “You came all this way.”

  “I just needed to see you. Because I love you, Dad.”

  “Just needed to see me,” he grumbled. He lit his pipe, sucking on its stem, his cheeks hollowing, his face veiled momentarily in haze. “Good-bye, then, Frank. I don’t like mysteries. Good-bye.”

  I INCHED THROUGH TRAFFIC UP THE GREAT FRONT SLOPE OF THE VERRAZANO and hit its high point just in time to see the smoke over Brooklyn glitter silver in the waning wintry light. I was bound for Sunset Park to finally meet Jimmy.

  The evening cold bullied the neighborhood where my brother bunked in the junkie house, the little brick and aluminum-sided buildings crouching together in the shadow of the roadway overhead. Vagabond trash cans tumbled along the curbs, torn from their homes by the wind off the bay. At the corner by Clyde’s place, a pay phone spilled its guts down to the sidewalk, its receiver dangling like a hanged criminal.

  The door opened immediately after my ring this time, an attenuated toast-colored man smiling at me with a mouth lacking teeth. “Good night, friend,” he said.

  “I have to see Clyde Lundquist, please. I’m his brother.”

  “Clyde’s brother! Come in, Clyde’s
brother.” He ushered me through a dark hallway smelling of burnt soup, and into a spacious room that had once been the parlor of the row house. The last bits of elaborate molding clung to the pitted ceiling, scraps of lace trim on a tattered nightie.

  Big boxes belched their contents all over the room, and a crew of peddlers stood picking through the mess, loading up for the next day: impassive men and women pawed through piles of blue and pink stuffed dinosaurs, filled trash bags with velvet headbands. In one corner, I saw Jackson sorting through stacks of uninflated balloons in the unlicensed shapes of characters from the latest Disney hit. Looking up from his work, he spotted me. “God bless the fucking Lion King, know what I’m saying, Doc?” He laughed. So did I. I hadn’t slept in two days. The world was starting to go a bit wobbly around the edges.

  My toothless escort piped up from behind me. “Where’s that Clyde?”

  “He’s upstairs, I expect,” said Jackson. “See you around, brother of Clyde. Keep trouble far from your mind.”

  I took deep comfort in his words. “Best of luck with the balloons,” I said, then followed the skeletal man up a flight of stairs, stepping high over a few missing planks. Paper printed with purple roses curled off the wall in scrolls. We entered a back room where a circular bed served as a sorting table for plastic-wrapped socks and T-shirts. Bent over the bed were about a half-dozen people, among them Clyde and Francie.

  She saw me first. “Hey, look, it’s Frank,” she cried.

  Clyde straightened and grinned at me, a bundle of socks in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. He was six feet of sharp angles, ribs, collarbones, assembled under a threadbare T-shirt. “Your Turkey Day good? How’s Erskine?”

  “Great, great,” I said. I looked over their shoulders to see the pluglike Jimmy pop out from an adjoining room, scowling.

  “Who is this joker?” he demanded. In an obliging tone, Clyde reminded him that they’d talked about this brother, this brother with a situation. The man was a foot and a half shorter than me, I think. Still, intimidating enough. The shape of his head, like a cudgel.