The Confessions of Frances Godwin

by Robert Hellenga

  “Thirty-seven light years?” she said. “That’s pathetic. You told us that that quasar we tried to see was two and a half billion light years away. Two and a half billion.”

  We contemplated these enormous distances.

  “Ma,” Stella said, “I want you to do this for me. We could pretend to be a family, even if it’s only for two weeks. You can see the stars, but you can’t see what’s right in front of your face.”

  “Enough, Stella. I’ve got to go to sleep.”

  “Good night, Ma. Do you want to listen to an opera? We’ve got Norma and Le nozze di Figaro. I know you saw both of these with Tommy.”

  “No,” I said. “We saw Turandot, not Figaro.”

  “And I know you went to bed with Tommy after Norma.”

  “You don’t know any such thing,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “he was singing Figaro’s aria from ‘The Barber of Seville’ all week after that. It was like a musical comedy where the characters burst into song all the time. Or like an opera.”

  “I’m tired, Stella.”

  “If you don’t want to hear an opera I’m going to put on the CB radio for a little while.”

  I listened to the chatter on CB radio: road work on 80 west of Joliet, which was behind us; big hats out in force in plain wrappers because of the weekend; a missing swindle sheet; a reefer hitting an underpass near the Dominick’s warehouse in Chicago; a madam who’d lost track of one of her girls in the big parking lot at the truck stop. I imagined I was in a berth on a train or on a ship, and that I didn’t know where I was going.

  And then I was asleep.

  I woke up at five o’clock. I had to pee, but there was no place to go. We weren’t on the interstate. We were on a county highway, near a lake. Probably near the Wisconsin border, maybe Delevan. I thought of Goethe arriving on the outskirts of Verona and unable to find a bathroom. Anywhere, the porter tells him. Wherever you want. It wasn’t the first time I’d peed behind a truck. Stella and Ruthy were skinny-dipping in a farmer’s pond, separated from the highway by a fence topped with barbed wire. I could hear them before I could see them. Just their heads. Then nothing. Then coming out of the water. Popping up like balloons, or like two nymphs. No makeup, their faces their own. They put their towels over the barbed wire to protect their legs as they climbed over the fence.

  I was tempted to join them, but it was too late. What I realized, suddenly, was that Stella and Ruthy were no longer girls, no longer young women, no longer nymphs. Stella was forty-two years old. Ruthy a year older. These were two middle-aged women. I could see it in their faces, in their bodies, could see the young nymphs they had once been, and the substantial goddesses they had become, the old women they would turn into. And it broke my heart.

  Natalia Ginsburg, my favorite Italian author, says that old age is essentially the end of wonder. We lose the capacity to amaze ourselves and to amaze others. Having passed our lives marveling at everything, we no longer marvel at anything. But I couldn’t agree. Love makes these moments indelible.

  We drove past the cemetery where Jimmy was buried and twenty minutes later we were at the market. It was six thirty in the morning. The market was bursting with life. Tommy came out to greet us. He was older too. His red hair had faded, like the paint on the Cobra. He touched his cheek with his index finger. (A warning? Danger?) His sleeves were rolled up; his light skin was translucent; the freckles on his arms were starting to look like liver spots, or stars, constellations.

  Stella and Ruthy had disappeared. Duh.

  He held out a hand for me to shake.

  “So,” he said. “You want to start a corporation?”

  “Not particularly,” I said.

  We were standing on the sloping sidewalk next to big crates of cantaloupe. You could see the cantaloupe through the slats of the crates. And you could smell them.

  “You want to protect the girls. Protect yourself, too. You can’t just sit on all that money.”

  “Protect against what?”

  “Creditors, mostly. So they can’t come after you personally, can’t take your car, your house. If you’re incorporated they can’t touch you. Personally.”

  “I don’t have a house. Stella and Ruthy don’t own a house.”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  “Maybe I should give it all to the church, to Saint Clement’s,” I said. I was teasing him, but actually it didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  “Then you better do it this year,” he said, “or you’re going to pay taxes on the whole thing as income. Give it all to the church if that will make you feel better. Then nobody pays any taxes and everybody’s happy. Except the IRS, I suppose. If you don’t you can still take the seven hundred thousand as capital gains, save some money that way.”

  “What about Stella?”

  “If you want to give the money to Stella, give the money to Stella. If you want to put a chunk of money in this new corporation, fine. You don’t want to, that’s fine too. It’s up to you. If you don’t, we’ll make a corporation without you, but Stella wants you to be a part of it. You’re lucky you got a daughter like that. You should hear her on the phone. She’s buying oranges in Florida and California, she’s buying grapefruit in Texas, she’s buying avocados in Texas and California. She taught me to stop screaming. ‘In this business,’ I told her, ‘you got to scream to get people’s attention.’ ‘Try it my way,’ she says. ‘Keep your voice down. Then people have to shut up to hear you.’”

  “Everybody knows that trick now.”

  “And I’ve even got a mantra that I say when I feel like screaming.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I reveal it, it will lose its power.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Maybe I should get one.”

  “Do you scream a lot?”

  “No, but I feel like screaming. At least I used to.”

  “And now?”

  “I think I’ve turned a corner.”

  “And you should hear her trying to talk Italian to my sisters and my aunts and uncles and my cousins at home. She doesn’t talk Italian too good, but she talks soft so everybody listens and she makes herself understood.”

  “You mean in Reggio Calabria?”

  “That’s what I mean. No air-conditioning, but from the balcony you can see Mount Etna across the strait.”

  “I’m sure it’s very beautiful.”

  “Okay, Frances. I can see you don’t want to talk to me like an old friend, that you haven’t talked to me in a long time. What can I say? I had to ask. You want to invest in this corporation, fine. You don’t want to, that’s fine too. I already told you. As far as I’m concerned, between you and me it’s strictly business, because I don’t know how else it can be.”

  “Strictly business,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I think that’s best.”

  The conversation was over. Tommy had said his piece, and I’d listened. Dumbly. How could I have explained? What could I have said except “I’m sorry.” I was sorry, and I was even sorrier later in the evening at Tommy’s apartment when I thought I detected a woman’s touch and was immediately overwhelmed with jealousy. Jealousy opened my eyes. I could see clearly. Everything was in order. There was a new picture on the wall over the sofa—two oil drums, not my idea of great art, but in fact the colors were astonishing—a deep, resonant, vibrant red that made my heart start beating faster and an orange so intense it might have been used to paint the sun. The furniture had been rearranged. A couple of new chairs faced each other in front of the window, where Jimmy’s coffin had sat, or stood, whatever coffins do.

  The woman, Simona, was not young but she was beautiful. Her hair was gathered at the back of her neck. She didn’t speak English. She wore diamond studs. I didn’t hate her; I didn’t want to scratch her eyes out. I was happy for Tommy. Sort of. But I was glad to learn that she was his sister.

  “So exciting, about the società,” she said in Italian—the cor
poration, though in fact I hadn’t agreed to anything yet. “The girls are thrilled. Tommy told me about the car. What made you wait so long before you sold it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was short of breath. “It was just there. It was almost as if I couldn’t see it. Maybe I didn’t want to see it.”

  She wanted to know about the time Paul and I spent in Verona, and I told her more than I usually tell people. Maybe because we were speaking in Italian. I didn’t tell her everything, but I told her about waiting for Paul in the courtyard of the Casa di Giulietta, watching young lovers having their pictures taken on Juliet’s balcony.

  She took my arm and we crossed the room to the window, where the others were watching a car ferry and talking about the truck. Tommy opened a bottle of prosecco and poured it into a special pitcher. I experienced the sensation of calm and peace that I sometimes have when I enter someone’s house and find everything in order, no clutter, everything beautiful. There was nothing fussy about the caffettièra and the bowl of fruit on the table, the flowers, the bottle of red wine, the light sparkling on the glasses. Like a series of still lifes by Chardin. I thought (not for the first time) that I was seeing things as they really are. Understanding, for a moment, that there’s enough beauty to go around. Or at least pockets of it. Pockets of beauty, pockets of happiness. I had wandered into a little pocket of beauty. It was enough. At least for the moment, and I resolved, as I had often resolved before, to incorporate some of this beauty into my own life.

  Tommy filled our glasses with prosecco and proposed some music. “What would be appropriate for this occasion?” he asked his sister. “Maybe something for Francesca. You know. Hard to find the right role for her. A mezzo, don’t you think? She could do Lady Macbeth, of course, or maybe Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri. Or Carmen, what do you think?”

  “We don’t want to listen to opera while we eat,” Simona said. “Why don’t we just sit quietly for a moment and concentrate on the prosecco.” And that’s what we did.

  “You could stay here, Ma, you know,” Stella said at the end of the evening. “You’d be more comfortable.”

  “Your apartment will be just fine, I said. “Let’s stick with the plan.”

  “Ma,” she said. “I don’t understand you.”

  “Maybe it’s time to stop trying,” I said.

  14

  Verona (September–October 2006)

  School started again in September, started without me. I was planning to substitute teach, because I missed the students and wanted to stay in the classroom, where I’d spent my working life, but I had too much on my mind and didn’t get around to filling out the necessary forms. On the first day of school, a Monday, I went over the last of the paperwork for the corporation—the “articles of incorporation”—with my attorney, who was still David after all these years. The Bascomb check had cleared—seven hundred twenty thousand less commission—and I now had more than six hundred sixty thousand untaxed dollars in my checking account at the Farmers and Mechanics Bank on Main Street. People sat up and took notice when I walked in. I owed the IRS about two hundred thousand, less if I could take the profit on the car as a capital gain. David said yes but that I should check with my accountant.

  “I don’t have an accountant,” I said.

  “Get one. Let me just finish this last article.”

  I waited a few minutes. “Hypothetically,” I said, “what would happen if I confessed to a murder?”

  David didn’t look up. I had to say it again.

  He looked at me. “Frances?” Rubbed his forehead. “Is this about your son-in-law?”

  I nodded.

  He took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you just confess to a priest and leave it at that?”

  “Because the priest would be obligated to tell me to go to the police.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to go, would you?”

  “No, but then the confession wouldn’t take. You’ve got to offer satisfaction, penance.”

  “Like Hail Marys and Our Fathers?”

  “Right.”

  “So? Say a dozen Hail Marys. A hundred. A thousand. A hundred thousand. How long would it take to say a hundred thousand Hail Marys?”

  I had to laugh. “I could run off six Hail Marys a minute,” I said, “but that’s when I was in shape.”

  “That would be three hundred sixty an hour,” he said. “What’s three hundred sixty times twelve?” He got out a calculator from a desk drawer. “Four thousand three hundred twenty. One hundred thousand divided by four thousand three hundred twenty would be twenty-three point one five. So if you worked at it twelve hours a day, you’d be done in a little over three weeks.”

  “Do-able,” I said.

  “Better than twenty years.”

  “You think that’s what I’d get?”

  “Twenty to life.”

  “How long is that in light years?”

  “Not long at all.

  “Seriously, Frances, do you have a clear idea about what life in prison would be like? Passing messages in library books? Making weapons out of broken CDs?”

  “I have some idea.”

  “Based on what? Crime and Punishment?”

  “My aunt was a nun. I used to visit her at the Dominican convent in Sinsinawa, up near Dubuque.”

  “A convent. That sounds about right. You won’t have to do hard time, you know, unless that’s what you want. And there’s room to negotiate. No one’s going to be too eager to put you behind bars. You’ll have some options.”

  “Negotiate? Options?”

  “Right now you’re holding all the high cards. All the cards, in fact. But once you sign off on the confession, it will get sticky.”

  “The way I think of it, David . . . It’s like stepping out of the shadows into the light.” (I was very attached to this phrase.) Right now I’m invisible. No one can see me. You’re the only one. I’ve never told anybody. I thought Ruthy, my daughter’s partner, might have suspected something. Maybe she did. But she was glad to have Jimmy out of the picture, so I can’t really tell. She’s never said anything.”

  “You could just tell everyone you want to know about it. Don’t put it in writing. Just sit down with each person . . . and say, this is what I did, this is why I did it.”

  “What about Stella? And what about Tommy, Jimmy’s uncle? Stella’s working for him now, buying strawberries and blueberries.”

  David shrugged. “They’re going to find out anyway if you go to prison. You’re still in touch with them, right? They’ll notice if you’re not around?”

  I nodded.

  “The food won’t be very good.”

  “That’ll probably be the worst part. But I’ve heard you can cook in your cell with a stinger or a hot plate.”

  “Maybe in Italy, Frances. Not in Henrietta Hill.”

  Henrietta Hill Correctional Institution for Women was located on the edge of town. “I might be able to stay in Galesburg?”

  “It’s one of the things we can negotiate. But you might be better off in the women’s prison in Decatur. Minimum security, and I think they’ve got a garden program. I’ll have to do a little research.”

  “What will happen?

  “We’ll go to the police station on a Monday so you don’t have to spend the weekend in jail. The police will contact the prosecutor for intent-to-file charges. After a charge is filed you’ll be booked into the local jail and await your arraignment. Depending on your priors, your flight risk, the fact that you’ve been a model citizen for many years and were acting under extreme provocation—at least I assume you were—a bond will be set until your preliminary show of cause hearing where a plea is again entered. Nolo contendere will be the safest in this case. Then we’ll have a pretrial conference and a trial. After which you will be sentenced. And yes, self-surrender does look better for you”

  “Can I go to the police station here or do I have to go to Ottawa?”

  “We’ll h
ave to drive up to Ottawa. We’ll go in my car.”

  “Because I won’t be coming back?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Well, no. Before we do anything I’ll have to talk to the prosecutor and tell him I have evidence of a crime. That’s when we do our negotiating, try to get the charge down to murder in the second degree. Maybe as low as seven years with time off for good behavior. They don’t have any evidence, so they don’t have any leverage. Until you make your confession. And then they may not believe you. You’ll probably have to submit to some psychological testing. And they’ll want corroborating evidence.”

  “Like the woman with the dog I called you about when the police wanted to put me in a lineup? Or the gun? I dropped the gun in the Mississippi, off the Centennial Bridge.”

  “You better tell me the whole story, Frances.”

  I told him. Everything, from Jimmy’s stealing the car to destroying the chandelier to Stella’s bathroom phone calls to the telephone threats to shooting him at the truck stop.

  “You say the lead detective has retired?”

  “I didn’t say that, but it’s true. I called about three years ago to see if they were making any progress. He wasn’t there anymore. I could probably teach Latin. In prison, I mean.”

  “Why not? People in prison will sign up for anything. They’re desperate, but the courses are usually taught by professors from a community college. Maybe that’s something we could negotiate.”

  “And we could play The Roman Republic.”

  “Slow down, Frances. What exactly do you want to happen? Have you thought this through? Before we do anything—”

  “Contrition, confession, satisfaction.”

  “You need to think this through, Frances. You need to know your own mind before you sign a confession. You’ll still have to plead. You’ll have to stand before a judge and he’ll ask how you plead, guilty or not guilty, and you’ll have to say ‘guilty.’ Some people who confess change their minds at the last minute. Look at Zacarias Moussaoui. Said he was guilty, then at the arraignment he changed his plea, pleaded ‘not guilty.’”