Lifers

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  She smiled. “You’re more like me than you want to admit.”

  “What?”

  “You like giving people the benefit of the doubt, too.”

  A reluctant smile crept across my face. “Yeah, you got me there.”

  It was the first real moment that we’d had between us since I arrived at the Rectory. It passed quickly.

  “You’d better go take that shower,” she said, her eyes amused for once. “I believe you have a job to look for today.”

  “Yeah, hopefully one where the people aren’t so frickin’ spiteful.”

  “Don’t judge them too harshly, Torrey.”

  “I think they’re the ones you need to say that to, Mom.”

  I left the room and headed for the shower. She’d laid a whole shit load of information on me, and I needed some time to process it.

  I felt really bad for Jordan. Ending up in juvie when you were 16—that sucked balls. He’d been painted as this villain, but it sounded to me like he was a kid who’d made some bad mistakes. Working in the law firm, I’d come across a lot of cases where one dumb decision ruined lives. It happened more often than you might think: infidelity, fraud, theft, drinking, drugs. You think you’re on one path and suddenly you’re bumping down some dirt road wondering what the hell happened to your life. Believe me, I’d been there.

  I wondered again what Jordan had done. Maybe one day he’d trust me enough to tell me.

  I also suspected that if I hung out around town long enough, I’d probably hear the full story anyway. It was only Mom who had any reservations about spreading gossip. It was irritating as hell, but I thought it was cool of her, too.

  It had been good talking to her, having a real conversation instead of tiptoeing around each other. I didn’t talk to Dad that much. He’d lost interest in me after Mom left. He spent his time chasing women and living it up. I pretty much raised myself from the age of 13, and I’d always thought I was more like him, so Mom’s comment had thrown me for a loop.

  To my surprise, I found that I didn’t mind being a little bit like her. At least she’d stuck up for Jordan and tried to show people he was more than just the ex-felon they all thought he was.

  But then again, my tolerance level for her had been reached when she’d accused me of flirting with him. He was good enough to mow her lawn, but not good enough to talk to her daughter? There were some serious double-standards at work here.

  I showered quickly, but it took forever to wash my hair. It was so damn thick and curly; there was so much of it. Guys liked that about me, and I liked it about myself, but it was a real bitch to take care of. Most of the time I let it do its own thing. Hairdryers were a waste of time. I’d tried to blow dry it when I was younger, but when I’d burned out my second hairdryer in a month, I’d given up. Now it just air-dried and hung mop-like from my head. The only alternative was shaving it off, and believe me, there were days when I considered it. The Texas heat and humidity didn’t help, because regardless of how I styled my hair—or tried to style it—as soon as I walked into the sweltering summer heat, it just frizzed out.

  I dug through my meager pile of clothing to find a reasonable pair of jeans and conservative shirt. If I was going job-hunting, I wanted to look like a responsible and sober citizen. And I had no qualms about playing the preacher-daughter card if it was going to help me find work.

  I glanced out of the window as I buttoned up my blouse.

  Fuck me! Hot guy alert!

  Jordan had taken off his t-shirt and was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans that looked about two sizes too big, making them hang dangerously low from his hips, showcasing the curve of a very nice ass.

  The sun danced on his back muscles as he pushed Mom’s beast of a mower, and I could see a tattoo on his left shoulder blade. It was a Celtic cross and had a bleeding heart motif in the center. Something was written across it, but he was too far away for me to see what it said.

  Then he turned around and started mowing in my direction. His chest and stomach looked rock hard. Whatever else he did in prison, he must have worked out a lot. I guessed there wasn’t much else to do.

  I thought I was having a hot flash because his body was making me think all kinds of things that nice girls shouldn’t have dirtying their minds. It was a good thing I’d never professed to be a nice girl.

  I hoped he’d look up and see me watching him, but his eyes remained fixed on the grass he was cutting.

  I enjoyed the free show a little longer before unpeeling my eyeballs from the window, and finished getting dressed.

  I had a job to hunt down before my gas money ran out.

  Jordan

  I didn’t get to see her after the Reverend took her back inside. I knew it was likely that I’d never see her again, certainly not to talk to. She’d have been warned off me by now.

  I didn’t blame the Rev—I wouldn’t want a guy like me spending time with my daughter either.

  I heard her car start. I’d have recognized that engine sound anywhere—Pontiac Firebird—one of the last of that model. It was a damn fine car. I’d spent several minutes checking it out when I arrived this morning. It seemed like an usual car for a woman to drive. Most around here went for compact Japanese cars that were easy on fuel.

  But not this woman. She was different.

  I figured she was going to her job at the diner. Now that I knew she truly hadn’t known who I was, I questioned even more why she’d followed me with that coffee. She’d said I was cute. Maybe she’d been hitting on me, and I’d been too dumb to see it? Well, it wouldn’t happen again, not after her nice little talk with her momma.

  I tried to put all thoughts of the preacher’s daughter out of my head and concentrate on bringing the yard back from the wilderness.

  I finished the lawns then contemplated what needed doing next. It was a long list.

  I started working on the rear section of the Reverend’s yard, hacking back the brambles and rambling roses that had taken over the corner by the property line. I really needed work-gloves for a job like this, since both my hands and my arms were getting cut to pieces. But I didn’t really mind; the pain felt good.

  In prison, a lot of guys had cut. No one talked about it much, but we all knew it went on. I guess it relieved some of the pent up feelings. I thought about trying it once, but the anger and guilt were all I had left of myself, so if I lost those, there’d be nothing. That was a scary thought.

  As I’d gotten toward the end of my sentence—my second sentence—I’d been assigned more of the sought after jobs, like working in the prison garden. It felt good to be outside, working with the sun on my back. I mean, yeah, we were allowed to exercise outside, but really working, growing something, it felt more meaningful.

  I guessed the Rev wasn’t much for tending God’s garden because the place had gone wild. I wondered how long she’d lived here. There sure hadn’t been any lady-preacher when I was growing up. So I figured maybe three or four years: long enough that people paid mind to her, and recent enough that she was still an outsider. Although that might have been because she was a woman preacher and a Yankee. It didn’t take much to make you an outsider around here.

  I worked until the sun was getting lower and a breeze was cooling the sweat on my skin. There was no one around for me to tell I was leaving, and this was no nine to fiver where I needed to punch a clock, so I just packed up and drove home. Dad and Momma had gone out, so I showered, ate my meal in a silent kitchen, and slept in a silent bed. I couldn’t even hear my parents talking to each other when they came in later.

  You know the phrase ‘the silence was deafening’? It sounds like horse shit, right? But in prison it was never silent; there’d be people yelling and doors banging, and a thousand and one different noises echoing from the walls. Even at night, you’d hear people moaning and crying—all those nightmares from the combined crimes of two thousand inmates.

  But here at night—no sounds. No one talked; no one cried out. Unless it was m
e, and I wasn’t aware. I’d asked Momma if I could sleep in the family room and have the TV on the first night. Dad replied that it was a waste of electricity. It was three nights before I managed to sleep more than a couple of hours, and that was from sheer exhaustion. I’d lie awake, straining to hear the small sounds of the house settling at night, occasionally the hoarse bark of a dog fox, or the whine of a skeeter buzzing around. We were too far from the road to even hear another car—just a whole lot of silence. It was unnerving.

  I dreamed about Mikey again. He was laughing at me this time, and pointing to something in the road, just seconds before we crashed. I saw it all happen in slow motion—the way his neck snapped, the way the glass fanned out in a shower of shards as his body flew through the windshield, the look of surprise fixed in his dead eyes.

  I jerked awake, shaking and sweating. Three AM again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, so I headed to the garage to work out—again.

  Four hours later, I stumbled out of the house and made my way to the Rectory.

  I was just working up a good sweat from hacking the brambles and heaping them into a pile when I heard her voice.

  “Hey, cowboy!”

  I turned around and saw the preacher’s pretty daughter, Torrey, sitting on the porch, just like yesterday, holding up a mug of coffee for me.

  Her smile disappeared as I got nearer, and I guessed her momma’s talk had had an effect.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, angrily.

  I froze in my tracks. What was she talking about? I looked behind me at the wilderness that I’d been hacking into and turned back to her. Her jaws were clamped together, turning her plump lips into a thin, white line. What sort of game was she playing? Was she going to make out like I’d attacked her or something? The thought caused bile to rise in my throat, and I had trouble swallowing it down.

  “Ma’am, I…”

  “What have you done to your arms?” she snapped, pointing at the numerous cuts and scratches that were decorating my skin where the tattoos ended.

  “Are you freakin’ crazy?” she went on, her voice getting louder by the second. “Why aren’t you wearing gloves?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  She stared at me like I wasn’t speaking English.

  “Come here, you idiot!”

  She grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the house.

  I’d never been in the Reverend’s kitchen before. It was pretty basic, not all fancy like I’d seen on TV. I guess she didn’t make much money in a one-horse Texas town. Or maybe she just didn’t care about cooking. I somehow thought a Boston lady would have something fancier. I knew the Rectory belonged to the church, but I guess I thought she’d have it fixed up a little more.

  Torrey pushed me in front of the kitchen sink and filled it with warm water. She was mumbling and cursing to herself the whole time. Even while I was wondering what she was doing, I couldn’t help thinking she was so damn cute.

  Then she started washing my arms, using her hands to cup water and pour it down over the cuts. It stung plenty, but that was nothing compared to the spark I felt every time she touched me. I realized with horror that I’d gotten an instant boner.

  “I can manage,” I said roughly, taking over cleaning my cuts.

  “Sure, big guy,” she said, snidely. “You managed just fine in the yard, didn’t you, cutting those brambles down to size with your bare hands. Oh yeah, you showed them who’s boss. What’s a little blood as long as you can look like a big strong man? God! Men can be such assholes!”

  Boy, this woman was a firecracker. Just the kind I would have gone for once. Not now, of course. She was still standing behind me, and I could feel her eyes burning twin holes into the back of my neck.

  “I’m going to get some bandages and Bactine. Don’t move!” she ordered.

  She was gone for a few minutes and I started panicking, wondering how it would look if the Rev came back to find me standing in her kitchen, looking all kinds of creepy.

  I ignored what Torrey had told me and had one foot out of the door when she came back.

  “I told you not to move!” she said, crossly. “Jeez, have you got attention deficit disorder?”

  I shook my head slowly like a dumb dog.

  “Sit!” she ordered, pointing at a wooden chair.

  I sat.

  She smoothed dollops of hospital-smelling cream all over my arms and put Band-Aids over the worst of the cuts.

  “Don’t you have a long shirt, or something you can wear to cover up your arms? And you really need some work-gloves. I’ll tell Mom to buy you some. For now, you’d better use these.”

  She threw me a pair of pink rubber dish gloves. I stared at them in disbelief.

  “I cain’t wear those!”

  “Is this some macho bullshit thing about not wearing pink? You’d rather get your arms ripped all to pieces? Do you actually have two brain cells to rub together to keep your head warm?”

  “Do you ever make any tips when you’re waitressin’, ‘cause you’re so damn charmin’?” I snapped back.

  I could have bit off my tongue when I realized I’d said that out loud.

  She sat back in her chair, and I wasn’t sure if she was fixing to bawl me out or if she was fighting down a smile.

  “Hey! I can be charming—when I want to be!”

  And then she laughed. God it was a wonderful sound. People didn’t laugh much around me, and I certainly hadn’t heard my folks laugh lately. It stirred something deep inside me. I didn’t know what it was, but I liked it.

  Her amusement finally ended in an unladylike snort, and I could feel my lips turning up in an awkward smile.

  “I can be charming,” she said, again.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Prove it!” I taunted her.

  She blinked in surprise, and then her smile turned devilish. I wondered what wicked thoughts were hiding behind that pretty face.

  “Oh, baby,” she said, her voice all soft and sweet. “I can be charming! Now let me look at those cuts on your poor lil’ arms. Poor you; poor baby.”

  And she leaned forward, giving me an eyeful straight down her tank top. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I could see soft, golden mounds of flesh. I closed my eyes and bit back a moan.

  I don’t know what she saw in my eyes when I opened them, but her flirty words came to a sudden stop.

  “Sorry,” she said, quietly. “I didn’t mean to tease. I was just playing.”

  I nodded, uncomfortably aware that if I stood up now it would be obvious just how much her words—and lack of clothing—affected me.

  “Okay, you’re good to go,” she said, slapping my knee and standing up. “I’ll just put some more coffee on first.”

  She stood at the coffee maker with her back to me, allowing me to slide out of my chair. Perhaps she knew exactly what my problem was. It was humiliating, but I’d had worse things happen.

  The only sound in the room was the soft burble of the coffee maker. In the end I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I’ll wait outside, ma… Torrey,” I mumbled.

  “You don’t have to, Jordan. I’m the prick here.”

  “I … um … I think it would be better. If your momma … if the Reverend saw me…”

  She sighed.

  “Sure, okay, if you feel more comfortable. I’ll bring it out to you.”

  I nodded my thanks and walked out carrying the pink dish gloves. I studied them, appreciating the gesture more than she could imagine, but there was no way I’d be able to get my hands in those teeny tiny things.

  I heard the screen door close softly and when I turned around, a mug of coffee was sitting on the porch step.

  But Torrey was gone.

  I picked up the mug, inhaling the delicious aroma and felt my eyes sting. The loneliness hit me hard. In prison I’d kept to myself; out here, I didn’t know what the boundaries were anymore. It was a game of l
ife where I didn’t know the rules and couldn’t work them out—and I was losing. Big time.

  Torrey

  I felt like the worst kind of cock-tease after I left Jordan. I’d been messing with his head and hadn’t even realized it. When I saw the look on his face, his desire black in those expressive eyes, I knew I’d crossed a line.

  I hadn’t meant to. I swear I hadn’t meant to. But he was so easy to talk to, and I hadn’t made any other friends since I’d moved here.

  Was Jordan my friend? I know I’d said we could be friends and I would try. Because I’d never met a person who needed a friend more. It was almost a shame he was so goddamn hot. It made the friendship boundary hard for me to respect objectively. Especially when all I wanted to do was jump his bones.

  I shook my head. Mom had been right about one thing—Jordan was vulnerable, and he didn’t need me making his life harder.

  But after that scorching look of lust, his expression had turned icy—a cold, hard prison stare. For the first time, I could almost believe what Mom said about him.

  Returning to my room, I decided that there still wasn’t any harm in making him a coffee in the mornings and having a short conversation. That was safe territory. I kicked off my shorts and tank top, leaving them in a heap on the floor before walking down the hallway to the shower.

  My priority was still to find a job, and yesterday had been a washout. Apart from anything else, I hadn’t heard back from Dad, so there’d been no happy stork delivering a couple of grand to my account. Looked like I was on my own after all.

  I dried myself on a random towel that was hanging in the bathroom and hurried back to my room. I ignored my tangle of hair—I definitely didn’t have time to spend 20 minutes trying to drag a brush through it. So I just pulled on my best jeans and one of the dressy shirts I used to wear to the office, and applied a small amount of mascara and lipstick. It was so darn hot, that just walking to my car melted makeup.

  I remembered Mom had left the local paper on the coffee table so I swiped that on my way out the door.