Amazing how superstitious, how literal some people could be; how fearful and angry. She later learned that the woman’s name was Angie and, after years of being beaten and burned and raped, she’d stabbed her husband seventy-three times while he was sleeping off a three-day bender. She was given life, without parole; no death sentence because of the extenuating circumstances. After that day in the food line, she kept well away from Tally, never again coming anywhere near her. No one did. Newcomers were warned off soon after arriving. No point trying to scare or hurt someone who was, according to Angie, already dead – a ghost, a zombie, or maybe just plain crazy. And in a sense Tally was all those things. Unintentionally perpetuating the myth, she never spoke, unless one of the staff addressed her directly. There was nothing to say. Her fellow inmates eyed her warily and kept their distance. The warden found it amusing. ‘You’re either a brilliant strategist,’ she said, ‘or the saddest woman I’ve ever encountered. Probably both.’
In the years that followed, the warden summoned Tally to her office a few times a year. Initially, Tally thought the conversation was a preamble to some discussion pertaining to the institution, to a rule or regulation she might unknowingly have violated. But no. The conversation was for its own sake, and that seemed eminently reasonable. So they talked, with the warden always taking the lead, setting the topic. And those were the only occasions when the disused machinery in Tally’s head got lubricated and began to function. Twenty or thirty minutes of conversation, about books, about music, about art, amounting to perhaps ninety or so minutes a year had fused her grip on reality, keeping it intact.
She wondered, suddenly, if that had been the woman’s intent. An extraordinary notion, but one that now occurred to her as true. In the unlikeliest of places, someone had cared enough about her to make an effort to keep Tally’s brain alive. Unrecognized kindness in an unlikely place.
Mental note: write to the warden with the new Mont Blanc pen – when she got it.
The motel’s free shampoo left her hair feeling greasy; the small hard square of soap dried out her skin, and she added a stop at a drugstore to her growing shopping list. Shampoo and conditioner, face and body moisturizers, a decent hairbrush.
Dressed again in the old ill-fitting Chanel suit and the pantyhose she’d washed the night before depressed her as she sat on the end of the bed to open the folder Warren had given her. There was five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, and a Visa card. The checks were on her old account at Wells Fargo. Warren had kept the account active with just a change of address, so that her statements were sent in care of his office. He’d slipped a new register into place in the check book, and she stared at the balance, thinking that compound interest, like rust, never slept. The income from her grandmother’s trust kept on growing exponentially. Love, from beyond the grave. The sole member of the family who had cared for her unequivocally, without stipulations.
Closing her eyes, she could almost smell the clean fragrance of her grandmother’s Blue Grass, could see her in one of her favorite Anne Fogarty shirtwaist dresses with the Capezio flats she’d worn to minimize her height. Tall and narrow, her black hair in a ponytail, her eyes very blue and her teeth very white in her always suntanned face. Strong hands and long legs. There wasn’t a horse born that she couldn’t ride. But there was a skittish two-year-old who’d reared one morning when a stray dog came from out of nowhere, barking and trying to nip the filly’s fetlocks. And the widowed fifty-three-year-old Annalise Paxton had died of massive head injuries sustained when she was thrown onto a rocky outcropping.
Her entire estate, including the Nevada ranch, was bequeathed to her only grandchild, who looked so much like Annalise that strangers had invariably taken them for mother and daughter. She’d left fourteen-year-old Tally with a dry, aching sorrow that failed to diminish with time, along with a place to stay (now long gone) should she ever need refuge, an income for life, and an understanding of love that Tally could never have acquired from her carping, disinterested parents.
With a sigh, Tally put several of the hundred-dollar bills in her absurdly dated black leather clutch bag, along with the credit card and check book. After a quick look around the room to make sure she’d left nothing behind – she didn’t have anything to leave behind, she chided herself – she went out to put the folder in the trunk of the Benz. Annalise would have sent Warren to meet Tally with a station wagon or a pickup truck. But Annalise’s son had married a woman who dictated the terms and conditions of her family’s life, and Tyler Scott Paxton had never once gone against his wife’s wishes, had never voiced disagreement with any of her opinions, no matter how ill-conceived, or foolish, or mean. Ivory Rowe Paxton controlled everyone and everything within reach. She said a Benz. Warren would merely ask, ‘What model?’ No wonder he was retiring. For twenty-odd years of dealing with Ivory, he deserved a Purple Heart.
It was only eight a.m. and the remnants of the cold night air still lingered as Tally walked, shivering, to the restaurant, pausing outside to buy a newspaper from the box – a useful prop to ease her nervousness at being on view in a public place.
The same hefty middle-aged waitress was on duty and came over smiling with a menu tucked under her arm, a thick white mug in one hand and a coffee pot in the other.
‘Have a good night, hon?’ she asked. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
The woman poured the coffee, then put down the menu.
‘I need to buy a few things,’ Tally said. ‘Are there stores nearby?’
‘Just hang a left when you pull out of here, and go straight into town. You’ll find everything you need.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Sure thing. Back in a minute to take your order.’
Eggs still hot from the griddle seemed a great luxury. She managed to eat half the food on her plate, and drank a second cup of coffee while she absorbed information from the newspaper. It all seemed alien, not quite real. The prices in the ads struck her as exceptionally high. But then, fifteen years later, London broil wasn’t still going to be fifty-nine cents a pound. She knew, though, that the 1968 prices were always going to be her yardstick. That was the year her life had ended. No matter what happened now, she believed that her brain would remain snagged on that point in time.
She was halfway to her car when the waitress called out to her. Tally turned back.
‘I think you made a mistake, hon,’ the woman said, holding out the hundred-dollar bill Tally had left tucked under her empty coffee mug.
‘No. No mistake. That’s your tip.’
‘On a three-dollar tab?’ the woman said, her expression both amused and disbelieving.
‘You’ve been very kind,’ Tally said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘You sure? It’s a hell of a lot of money.’
‘Positive.’
The woman shook her head, her grin reappearing. ‘Well, I thank you. You take good care. Okay?’
‘I will do my best.’
Tally turned away and again started toward the car.
‘Just outta curiosity,’ the woman called. ‘Where’re you headed? After you finish up shopping, I mean.’
‘No idea. Just going east.’
‘Wish I was. Good luck to you, hon, and thanks again.’
‘You’re most welcome.’
In jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a Shetland crew-neck sweater tied around her neck by its sleeves, with short socks and soft leather loafers, Tally felt more comfortable behind the wheel. Her purchases were in the trunk, along with a new Hartmann suitcase and a small backpack. When she stopped for the night she’d organize the bags, and have her choice of a dozen books to read.
She popped one of the new cassettes into the player and felt a surge of genuine pleasure as the first notes of the Haydn Cello Concerto in C emerged from the speakers. The music lifted her mood, just as the clothes had done. Her foot no longer shook on the accelerator. In less than twenty-four hours, driving had become automatic, na
tural. With luck, she’d make it into mid-Wyoming by nightfall. Hundreds of miles now lay behind her. She wanted it to be thousands. Distance couldn’t alter the past, but at the very least she could be physically removed from it. And perhaps at a great distance, she might be able to consider everything that had happened fifteen years before – something she did only involuntarily, in dreams. During all the waking hours of her five thousand three hundred and seventy-two days of being encaged, she’d focused only on the moment. Get through one hour, then the next. Somehow, the hours accumulated into days, weeks, months, years. And she’d withstood the tedium, kept her mind engaged by reading anything available, by doing crossword puzzles, and by conversations with Warden Hughes, a woman with a surprisingly diverse range of interests.
For a moment, without knowing she was going to do it, she tried to remember Anna’s face, but all that appeared on her mental screen was an amorphous outline. She had only a handful of photographs of her. She had some of Clayton too, but she hadn’t looked at any of them since the day of her allocution and sentencing. His face, too, refused to come into focus. Someday she might look at the pictures – but not in the foreseeable future. Just this brief, unanticipated bit of recall created a pain similar to that first slash from Angie’s teaspoon-knife: a searing electric message. She pushed it away, returning her attention to the music, Jacqueline du Pré dragging passion from her cello.
The place names struck her as odd, even funny. ‘Deeth’ she read as Death. The exit for Danger Cave was intriguing, and she was tempted to stop, but didn’t. She crossed into Utah, taken with Wendover, an ambling, pleasant name. Let me know when it’s over, she thought, glancing at the gas gauge.
She stopped outside Salt Lake City to fill the gas tank and use the restroom, deciding she’d eat once she was on the far side of the city, approaching the Wyoming border. She was now in a part of the country she’d only ever read about in history and geography textbooks. Studying the map she’d bought before leaving Elko, she thought she’d try to make it to either Green River or Rock Springs. And tomorrow she’d aim for Nebraska. There was no rush. She had no destination, except away. All she knew with certainty was that she would never go back to Nevada, or to her birthplace, San Francisco. The place once called home had been no more than an illusion, no more real than a child’s fervid imagining.
Who was it who said that home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in? Frost, that was it. Robert Frost. Must have had an actual family, she thought. The same fellow who wrote about the lovely dark woods and promises to keep.
‘Ah, Mr Frost,’ she said aloud, ‘I have no promises to keep. But I do have some miles to go.’
Mental note: buy a collection of Frost’s poems.
The Wyoming license plates stated: Like No Place on Earth. It was true. Vast beneath a wide-open sky, the land stretched into the distance on all sides with scarcely a sign of habitation. She felt dwarfed by the great expanses, and genuinely free. Beyond the leathery-smelling confines of the car, there was nothing on the landscape to restrain her. She went rocketing along the highway, jittery with the knowledge that no one was monitoring her actions, that there was no one to whom she was obliged to answer for her decisions. Free in The Equality State, headed east toward Ever Upward, and Live Free or Die.
That evening, unwilling to face another diner where people would look her over and the waitress might not be as good-humored and accommodating as the woman in Elko, she opted for the drive-thru at McDonald’s. It was her first experience of drive-thru service. Although she wasn’t given sufficient time to decipher the menu, she very much liked the concept of being able to purchase a meal without having to leave the car. A bit rattled by the impatience of the young woman at the window, Tally said, ‘Why don’t you order for me?’
‘O-kaaaaay!’ the teenager said, mildly exasperated, eyes narrowed for a moment before she turned away. Seconds later, she held out a bag, stated a price, and Tally paid. She then returned to her motel with what she determined from the wrapper was a Big Mac, an enormous order of fries, and a large Coke. Actually, she decided, removing the plastic lid to look inside, it was a large cup of ice with Coke flavoring.
She watched television, switching channels every few minutes, as she worked on the food, preferring the fries to the immense burger, which she abandoned after only a few bites.
The offerings on TV fascinated her. Some of the prime-time shows had been popular inside – That’s Incredible was a great favorite of the inmates. Tally had found it incredible that anyone would watch such crap. Years ago, she’d loved The Avengers, and Carol Burnett’s show: Jonathan Winters made her howl with his edgy, half-mad humor. Best of all was Dick Cavett’s morning interviews. There were things worth watching then. Now, as she ran through the channels, the offerings seemed shoddy. Mental popcorn: pleasant to eat, never filling.
Finished with the food, she sorted through her purchases, setting out fresh underwear and clean socks for the morning, and her new pajamas and slippers. Everything else went into the suitcase, except the Kurt Vonnegut novel she’d decided to read first, and her toiletries. Car doors slamming outside her door made her jump. Then came the voices of a couple, talking as they opened the door of the room next to hers.
God! She remained in place, eyes on the curtained windows, until her frenzied heart-rate began to ease. Then there was the sound of another car pulling to a stop, another car door slamming, and her common sense – it’s a motel, people are stopping for the night, pull yourself together – did battle with old fear. The pounding on the door will start any moment now. No, it’s just people ready for a rest after a long day of driving But what if it’s . . . NoNoNo it’s over, over!
Long minutes passed before she was able to move. But as she washed her face and cleaned her teeth before brushing her hair, she kept looking over at the windows, then at the door. She could tell herself over and over that history didn’t repeat itself, but she couldn’t quite buy into that – not with a history like hers.
Even settled in bed with the Vonnegut novel propped on her upraised knees, her eyes went repeatedly to the windows, then the door. And each time a car door slammed, her heart did, too.
NINE
For a second night she kept waking every half hour or so. She thought it might be because she no longer had the security of a set of locked bars across the entrance to the cell she shared with sixty-something Bertie, who was as silent as Tally. Bertie was lean in a constricted fashion, as if (like Tally) her primary goal was to keep everything within her closely contained. Clean and tidy, her hair surprisingly thick and lustrous, her features a time-dulled portrait of the pretty girl she’d once been, she spent her days working in the prison laundry and her nights reading. A small transistor radio, the volume low, was always tuned to an easy-listening station. She and Tally shared books without comment beyond a ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome.’ Despite the proximity that stirred so many of the other cell mates to acts ranging from petty spitefulness or sexual partnership to all-out violence, Tally and Bertie were virtual paragons of politeness. In a place that didn’t allow for privacy, they managed to give it to each other. Despite their mutual silence, they respected and even liked each other. Tally always thought that had she been given a life sentence she would, eventually, have become very like Bertie. It was sheer good fortune to have been paired with one of the few other women in the institution with no inclination to bemoan her fate or to volunteer tidbits of her past.
Gazing at the spill of light from the partway closed bathroom door, Tally decided that the notion that she missed the cell bars was crazy. Still, she had to admit that anything that kept caged angry women away from her while she slept had to be construed as a good thing. Now, that particular safety was gone and she wondered how long, if ever, it would take to become accustomed to her newly recovered freedom. It seemed to be fraught with hazards she couldn’t have imagined. Certainly, she could never again take for granted the things that had onc
e been an elementary part of her life: the right to go where she wanted, when she wanted, and to do as she wished when she got there. It wasn’t surprising that so many of the women wound up back inside again. The system robbed you of the skills needed to live an ordinary life. And the halfway houses she’d overheard the recidivist women speak of sounded worse than the prison, with thefts and fights and endless bitter criticism of everyone and everything.
Tally’s refusal to go before a parole board and declare herself sorry for the crime of second-degree murder had kept her contained, like an artifact in the cornerstone of a new building, for the full term of her fifteen-year sentence. She was sorry for many things. But that? No. She preferred to endure the entire fifteen years of lockup rather than make a false declaration. She’d made up her mind at the outset that if she managed to live through the whole sentence, she wanted to leave completely free, answerable to no one. The fact that she didn’t care whether or not she lived had made her prison existence tolerable. Interestingly, although they’d never come even close to discussing it, she knew that Bertie shared her attitude, even though Bertie was going to live out her life inside the barbedwire-topped walls.
So here was Tally, supposedly free, startled by slamming car doors and unable to sleep and unable, too, to cry. She remembered clearly the last time she’d shed tears. It wasn’t likely she’d ever forget. But if there was one lesson she’d learned in prison it was that tears were viewed as a sign of weakness. Weep, and the predators would be all over you.
There were broomstick rapes in the shower room, beatings and knifings and killings, too. Depending on your crime – and somehow the details were common knowledge the moment you set foot inside – you were marked. It was a strange and primal code, established so long ago that no one knew who’d first decided that certain crimes deserved additional punishment. After the justice system’s penalty, came the penalty of your so-called peers. In many ways it was far worse than the loss of autonomy because it meant that there was almost nowhere inside the institution you’d be safe – unless you became someone’s sweetheart or their slave.
Where is the Baby? Page 9
