Emancipated

by M. G. Reyes

  She didn’t know if she could put up with this much longer.

  ARIANA CALLS THE WEST COAST

  TUESDAY, MAY 19

  “Honey, I’m getting awful tired of leaving messages for you. It’s been what, a month since we last talked? Guess you’ve grown tired of ol’ Ariana. If you’re going through something, I wish you’d tell me. Maybe I could help? Anyhow, if you’re too busy to talk, at least send me a text, will you?”

  Ariana hung up. She paused for a moment, debating her next move. Reluctantly, she dialed again, another West Coast number.

  “It’s me. She’s still not picking up. Girl got some attitude right now.”

  The crisp voice on the other end of the line said only, “Ah.” Then: “Not to worry. Things are under control.”

  “Good. You gonna tell me how you’re doing that?”

  The woman drawled, “I don’t think so. Let’s stick to what we agreed. Sometimes the right hand prefers not to know what the left hand is up to.”

  “All right, but just so you know, I don’t enjoy being ignored. That girl needs a lesson in manners. Rehab buddies are supposed to check in with each other. I could be using again!”

  “You’re not, are you?” the woman asked sharply.

  “Of course not. But Lucy should give a damn.”

  “Given where you met, one can see why she’d have certain reservations about staying friends.”

  For a moment, Ariana felt resentment bubbling within. She’d always envied the interest people showed in the oh-so-adorable “Charlie.” But Lucy had turned out to be just another confused teenager, not too different from Ariana herself, only a little younger.

  Ariana grumbled, “I’m almost two years clean. Not everyone in rehab relapses.”

  “Well now, that’s true. Some people find religion. How’s that working out for you?”

  Ariana’s mood was quickly shifting into anger. She’d have to get off the phone within the next thirty seconds or risk losing her cool.

  Her cell phone piped up. “Oh, look, Lucy just sent me a text.”

  “There! That’s something positive, isn’t it? What does she say?”

  “‘Ariana, I’m okay, sorry, having some issues, but mainly okay. Let’s talk, maybe next weekend?’”

  “Lucy is distracted just now . . . I happen to know that.”

  “By what, exactly?”

  “Ah-ah. Right hand, left hand, darling! All right, Ariana, we’ll talk again. Ciao.”

  GRACE

  KITCHEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 20

  “Omigod. This is sooo much harder than it looked when John-Michael was doing it.”

  Paolo glanced over Grace’s shoulder at the printout of the recipe. “Strawberry and apple turnovers?”

  “I know. Puff pastry, right? What was I thinking?”

  “You have to make your own jam!”

  “Yeah, well, obviously I’m skipping that.”

  Paolo put a finger on the liter-sized tub of chunky applesauce. “You’re not making the applesauce, either. Why even bother making the pastry? You could have just bought it.”

  “You can buy ready-made pastry?” Grace looked awed.

  “You can buy ready-made apple turnovers.”

  “I’m running the bake sale, Paolo. The stuff’s got to come out of our own oven.”

  Paolo looked at the tray of burned turnovers, black and shiny with caramelized jam and applesauce that had spilled beyond the loosely crimped edges. He picked one up and took a bite. The carbonized sugar crunched between his teeth.

  “Tastes good.”

  “Boys will eat anything,” Grace said dismissively. “We can’t sell them like this.”

  He took another, larger bite. “Mmm. Real good!”

  Grace just frowned. “Could you try to be actually helpful?”

  “Why don’t I drive you to the store; we’ll buy some pastry dough and you can try again.”

  He picked up two more of the burned pastries in his left hand and dug the keys to his car from the pocket of his board shorts. Grace followed him out of the kitchen mumbling, “I overfilled them. That was the problem.”

  The air-conditioning in Paolo’s Chevy Malibu took several moments to get properly going. The day was cloudy and overcast, but still hot enough to make Grace begin to sweat the moment they were inside the car. She opened the window and let the breeze ripple over her.

  “I think it’s so great that you’re organizing this fund-raiser for Amnesty International,” he told her with a warm smile. “First time I’m ever going to one as a member.”

  She beamed at him. “One day maybe you’ll be one of their lawyers.”

  “That would be cool,” he agreed. “It would be so great to get to fly all over the world, meeting people who’d stood up to corrupt governments and all.”

  “How’s it going with your letter writing?” Grace asked.

  “I requested a woman, but they said they really needed more people to write to guys. So I got this one, Harrison Coyle, a black dude, twenty-six years old, on death row for a year now. Double homicide, including one police officer. And I wrote him just the way you said, with some friendly questions and some generally supportive stuff. . . .”

  Now he turned to her with a quick grimace. “But.”

  “But?”

  “But bad news, is what. Turns out his appeal just got turned down. So I guess it doesn’t look good.”

  Grace sat calmly in her seat. She turned on the radio. After a moment, she realized that Paolo was staring at her with a kind of appalled expression.

  “Oh,” she said. She reached out reassuringly to touch his arm. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. This is all part of the experience.”

  “Really?” His eyes went back to the road. “The thing is, I’m kind of freaked about supporting someone through an execution.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from smiling a little. She squeezed his arm harder. He reacted with a brief, puzzled glance. Then back to the road. He was frowning now, confused and anxious. Grace couldn’t stop thinking about how cute he looked. Once in a while Paolo still had that little-boy look. It made him even more irresistible. She felt a sudden tug inside her chest.

  She realized he was scared.

  Grace remembered well what it felt like, that fear. The first time she’d written a letter, she’d felt a sickness deep within her belly. It had been hard to put pen to paper. The image of the death chamber, the gurney inside, a man strapped to it waiting to die before the watching eyes of the press, the victim’s family, his own family. And in one of those viewing galleries: herself.

  She’d seen the schematics of that part of San Quentin. She’d memorized them. If Grace didn’t do something, one day for certain everything she had imagined would come true.

  Paolo might be luckier. Although if his guy was a cop killer, probably not.

  She loved that Paolo wasn’t afraid to seem vulnerable in front of her. Some guys were just so terrified to lose any kind of face in front of a girl, they turned into complete dolts. Grace wondered if Paolo had any idea how attractive it made him—and not just to those country-club cougars he’d confessed to sleeping with. She decided that he probably did. More reason to keep her own feelings in check.

  “You have to stay positive, Paolo. He’s only been on death row a year, yes? This is probably his first appeal. If there were grounds for one appeal, there are probably more grounds. If he has a good lawyer, they can keep appealing. Maybe one day they’ll change the law.”

  “You really think?”

  “Hey, you could be one of the people to defend him.”

  “I hope he’ll be out of jail by then. I read up about him. Harrison said in his testimony that the guy he killed died by accident, he didn’t mean to kill him. And he shot the cop in self-defense.”

  Grace wasn’t sure self-defense was allowed if it was a cop shooting at you, but she didn’t mention that. “All I’m saying is that it’s a long haul. You have to steel yourself. My guy has been throug
h three appeals so far. All turned down. But his lawyer keeps starting up the process.”

  “Must be, like, majorly grim. I bet some of those guys just want it to be over.”

  Grace said doubtfully, “I’m pretty sure they prefer to live.”

  “Than be killed by the state? Of course. But they gotta get depressed.”

  “They get horribly depressed.”

  “I guess. Hard to tell—Harrison doesn’t write too well.”

  “That’s often the problem,” she agreed. “Smarter guys, guys with good educations, they have a way with words, contacts; they usually get reduced sentences, or if they can really make the case for self-defense, they might even walk.”

  “What’s your guy like? What’s his name?”

  Grace hesitated. “I didn’t tell you the day we went to San Quentin?”

  Paolo seemed to consider. “Nope, don’t think so.”

  “Alan Vernon.”

  “And he’s in for murder?”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “But he didn’t do it.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Really? Because when I joined the program it said that you had to allow yourself some reasonable doubt. Doubt with sympathy, that’s the idea.”

  Grace said nothing for a moment. Maybe it wasn’t safe to keep talking about this. She didn’t enjoy having to deceive Paolo. Better to keep the lies to an absolute minimum.

  “You know what, I feel like we talked a whole lot about me and Alan when we were up in San Francisco. Your experience is valid also. We should talk more about that.”

  Paolo laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about me. Look, it’s good to know that Harrison might get another appeal. That makes me feel better. I’m really not ready to go into the viewing gallery.”

  “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

  He shook his head, eyes firmly on the road. “If you’re there for them, you’re there for them. Least, that’s what I’d want. If I was on the other side of the bars, I mean.”

  He didn’t speak for a while, turned up the volume on the radio station that Grace had selected. Eventually, he turned to her with a gold-plated smile. “Let’s get a lot of pastry dough.”

  JOHN-MICHAEL

  VAN BUREN HIGH SCHOOL, THURSDAY, MAY 21

  John-Michael leaned against the side of the Benz, one hip knocked against the window. The match flared in his fingers, he lit the cigarette, put it to his lips. That’s when he caught first sight of her.

  She was marching along the sidewalk toward him, pushing past the huddle of students who’d paused to smoke on the boundary of the school grounds. Some of them, John-Michael could tell, didn’t take too kindly to having a bony, middle-aged woman shoving them aside. In some parts of the city she’d be risking a knifing. But these kids were too occupied with looking cool to make a big deal of it, however they felt. They parted like a human Red Sea, with nothing more than a middle finger waved at her departing back.

  John-Michael took another drag on his cigarette and waited. He was glad of the nicotine spiking in his blood right now. He’d never been good at handling Judy. It had been a happy day when she’d skipped out on his father’s life.

  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see her. In fact, he wondered what had taken her this long.

  “There y’are, you little piece of shit.” She was a little out of breath, her thin lips quivering. He could just see a sheen of moisture on her upper lip. Since they’d last seen each other, John-Michael had grown another two inches; tall enough to look down and notice the graying roots of her chestnut-colored hair.

  “Hi, Judy.”

  “Didn’t think you’d ever see my ass again, didja?”

  “Jeez, Judy, could you not mention your ass? I’m a delicate homosexual, didn’t you hear?”

  “Shut up, you lousy father killer.”

  “The correct term is ‘patricide.’ And I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not.”

  Judy laid one hand on the edge of the Benz, her fingers caressing the bodywork. She smiled at him, then watched his eyes follow her hand.

  “So you took his car.”

  “His pride and joy,” he agreed. Her fingernails were long and painted the color of a flamingo.

  “Bet you enjoy riding along in this, sonny. Thinking about what a clever boy you were to get rid of him. Got him off your back and all his cash, too. Nice going, kid.”

  “Watch your mouth,” John-Michael warned.

  “You know, you might not enjoy the Benz so much if you knew what me and Chuck used to do in it.” Judy paused, enjoying the look of revulsion that flashed across his face. Then she smirked. He could see the row of sparkling veneers that his father had paid for. John-Michael had asked for a car that year, but, of course, Chuck had just laughed and told him to get a friggin’ job.

  It was time to drop the pretense of amiability.

  “Judy, what do you want?”

  “I want what’s coming to me. Fifty percent of Chuck’s estate. That’s what he left me.”

  John-Michael snorted in derision. But Judy just continued to stare at him with all the righteous verve of a protestor on a march.

  “Not according to his will.”

  “That’s because you used an old will,” she said, baring her teeth. “You thieving bastard.”

  “The will was legal. Don’t blame me if my dad hadn’t updated it in ten years.”

  “He made a new will when he was with me. I know, I saw it.”

  “He did? Then where is this mysterious new will?”

  “How the hell do I know? All I know is what I saw.”

  “Who knows what he showed you? Did it ever cross your mind that he showed you something nice to keep you sweet? To keep you . . .”

  But John-Michael couldn’t bring himself to complete the vulgarity. Even the thought of his father and this woman together was disturbing. She’d looked better then, but even so she’d been a daily drain on his father’s temper. The woman in front of him now looked about ten pounds lighter, which was okay for the way the clothes hung on her frame. But it had taken something from her face—the slight chubbiness, the surprisingly cherubic look that she’d sustained well into her late thirties. Now she looked angular and dilapidated, permanently sour.

  “I saw a will, goddamnit. Fifty percent to you. More’n you deserve, lazy faggot. And fifty percent to me. To thank me for all the years I looked after him.”

  His laughter was short and hollow. Even her insistence on using homophobic insults barely touched him now. “You didn’t look after nothing. You made him miserable. Apart from that first year when you were sinking your claws in him, all he wanted to do was to get rid of you.”

  “Is that what Chuck told you, mama’s boy?”

  He went quiet. A cold rage began to chill his bones. She caught the scent of his distress but mistook it for fear. Her sneering tone intensified. “Things looked pretty different from where I was looking up at your dad.”

  John-Michael began to experience something he’d rarely felt: an itch at the base of his wrist, the impulse to ball his hand into a fist, to swing for the woman. The cigarette fell, forgotten, as he fumbled for his car keys. He had to get out of there before she said much more to enrage him.

  Judy leaned against the driver’s-side door. She put her face close to his and whispered.

  “I know you’ve got the original will. But I’ve got a draft. My lawyer says it’ll be enough to give you a motive. They’ve already placed you at the scene. You’ve got no alibi. He died with his veins turned white with heroin, and we all know what good buddies you are with the junkies. Face it, John-Michael. I take that draft of the will to the cops and you’re looking at juvie until you turn eighteen and then—well.” She pretended to wipe away a tear. “Gee, I just don’t know if you’re gonna get along with those prison types. Maybe you can find yourself a big ol’ sugar daddy to protect you?”

  John-Michael put the keys in his jeans pocket. His
back firmly against the door, he pressed both hands against her shoulders and lightly pushed. She sprung backward, obviously shocked. He followed through, gave her a second push.

  “You believe I killed my own father?”

  “Put your hands on me again,” she spat, “and I’ll lay a lawsuit all over your goddamn face.”

  He crossed his arms, stifling a glorious urge to punch her. “You think you got a hope of persuading anyone that my dad left a skank like you a single dime? Good luck with that.”

  “Goddamn evil little . . .”

  He turned, opened the door, dropped into the driver seat, and inserted the key. She was at his side, leaning over the door, two seconds later.

  “Give me my fifty percent, John-Michael. And I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear you call me a skank.”

  Very deliberately, he said, “I met some lousy people when I was living rough. But you, you’re a real class act when it comes to lowlife. Never understood why Dad got mixed up with you. It’s no wonder he killed himself, probably to get away from you.”

  He revved the engine, watching Judy struggle to contain her fury. Her eyes became as narrow as a snake’s before the kill. “Fifty percent. That’s my offer. In a week, it’s going up to sixty.” She stared pointedly at the car. “Enjoy yourself, twerp. It’s later than you think.”

  CANDACE

  THIRD FLOOR, THURSDAY, MAY 21

  Candace stood outside her room barefoot, her feet absorbing the sun’s heat from the warm cedar decking. She was transfixed by the music within. Lucy’s acoustic guitar had stood in the same place since she’d moved in, untouched, as far as Candace was aware, until today. Now this: the sound of an astonishing, virtuoso performance resonated throughout the house.

  She noticed Maya and Paolo gathering at the base of the staircase to listen. One by one, they caught her eye and mouthed a silent, wide-eyed wow.