“The do you know what I do, Annie? Then I take care of myself, and it works, every single time. Just thinking about how miserable you are because you forced me to kill Connie Baker gets me off. Do you know how good that feels?’’ She helplessly shook her head. “Oh no, that’s right, you’d never take care of yourself. Not our pure little Annie. But if you did, you’d know—there is no way I’m going to give that up.” He finally let go, and she almost fell backwards, she had been pulling against him so hard. She trembled, still speechless. This only broadened his smile, and made him laugh harder, he was so happy to see her suffer.
Annie was devastated. This was not why she had come. She hadn’t expected him to be kind, or even that nice, but this behavior was even more out of character. She had truly believed that, after she had made her confession, and asked for forgiveness, he would forgive her. Now, she believed, sitting there in front of him, hearing him, seeing him, Parker Levitt had changed, but into something Annie could never have conceived.
She finally gathered her wits enough to say, “You’ve changed, Parker.” He leered at her.
“Of course I have! C’mon, Annie, you know what always happens in prison. We all find ‘a higher power’ and ‘give ourselves over’ to it. I have, for sure. Your tax dollars at work, right in front of you, perfectly ‘rehabilitating’ me.” He chuckled derisively.
“No,” she spoke sharply, finding her tongue. “I mean you have changed from a decent, smart, driven young man with a very bright future and a good heart to this. This vengeful, cruel, thoughtless, mean...animal.” She punctuated her words with clenched teeth. She felt sure that she had struck a blow because Parker’s smile slowly faded. She gained a little confidence, seeing her words did indeed have an effect. But then he spreads his hands and shrugged.
“That’s what love will do to you. The love of a good woman turns a decent, smart, driven man into a murderous animal. That’s what happened when you told me you loved me.” His sneer crept back, and she felt her confidence drain away. She broke out in a cold sweat.
“You can never win this one, Annie,” he said, going back to the nickname taunting. “You’re miserable, and you’ll stay that way, and that’s what keeps me going. Knowing this has turned your life to pure shit keeps me sane in here, so thanks for that. Thanks for finally admitting you loved me. I almost lost hope on that one.” He smacked the table, let out a whoop. She sank further into herself.
Suddenly the bell clanged. Visiting time was over. Parker stood and spread his arms wide.
“What do you think, Annie old girl? Give your old love a hug?” She tried to stand to get away from the table. But her legs, weak and shaking, tangled and she fell to the floor. Parker lunged forward to help her. Instead, she screamed, then shouted.
“No!” Her voice was louder than she thought she was capable of making it. Parker froze. Two guards rushed over, one helping her up, the other holding Parker by the elbows. “No,” she said again, this time through gritted teeth.
“You all right, miss?” asked the guard helping her. She nodded. Parker stood a few feet away, the other guard holding his arms behind his back. He still grinned, his head bobbing up and down, gleeful. He looks insane, she thought. How could that ever happen? She took a deep breath and straightened herself.
“I’m fine, thank you officer,” she said to the guard. “Thank you for your kindness. I appreciate it very much.” She faced away from Parker, making it clear she was speaking only to the guard. Parker glared at her.
“It’s easy for him to be kind to you,” Parker sneered, “because he doesn’t know you.” Parker’s guard tugged him backwards.
“All right, that’s enough,” the guard said and began to angle Parker away from Annie. “Your time’s up…convict.” For a moment, Parked looked like he was going to spit in the guard’s face, but instead he shot one more insult over his shoulder.
“Thanks for the visit, sweet little Annie.” Then the guard shoved him through the door, and it clanged shut. Annie stood shaking, trying not to weep.
“Let’s get you out of here,” the guard said as he guided her out of the room.
Outside the prison, the sun was bright, the air was clean, and Annie fumbled with her cell phone. She struggled to find the number in her contact list, and then held the phone to her ear with a shaking hand.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered. “Please pick up, please—”
The phone on the other end rang four times, and then she heard the click, but this time the electronic voice said, “I’m sorry, but this mailbox is full.”
“This mailbox is full,” she repeated to no one.
Annie Stewart’s heart had never felt so empty.
22
“Come on, Anne, what did you expect?” His voice was soft. He actually sounded sorry.
“I expected you to kiss me, that day in school when I said I wanted a hug, I really wanted a kiss. Not like my uncle. A real kiss and then...you know.” He smiled.
“I most certainly do,” he quipped in a bad Groucho Marx imitation, wiggling his eyebrows and holding an invisible cigar. She laughed then shook a schoolmistress finger at him.
“Don’t avoid my question. Do you deny wanting me to come to the beach that day?”
“I’m not denying that at all,” he assured her. “I most certainly wanted you to come here because I needed to talk. I wanted to talk. To you, outside of the school.”
“So why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because you were…you are…”
“I was what?”
“You were smart and interesting.” She nudged him with her elbow.
“Were?” She raised her eyebrows. He tweaked her nose.
“You are smart and interesting, and sweet and pretty. Talking to someone like you… Being in the company of a girl like you can make a guy feel a little less…horrible.”
“So why didn’t you ask me? You still haven’t told me.” He took her hand and led her to sit on the log at the edge of the sand.
“Time, and place, and circumstances.” She looked at him, still not quite understanding. “Ethics, Anne. I couldn’t compromise my position.” That made sense.
“Thank you, Dean. I appreciate that so much. All of it. Your honesty and your integrity…” He gave her shoulders a squeeze and kissed her hair. “You know, I think I understand, too, if you had kissed me then, I would have lost a lot of respect for you. I didn’t understand until just now.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry.” He brushed her hair off her forehead.
“Nothing to be sorry about. You don’t know how we were beaten up in grad school over ethics.” Then he grinned coyly. “Do you know what else I wanted to do that day?” She feigned astonishment.
“Why, no, Mr. Moore,” she said in her fake Southern bell voice, “what else was it that you wanted to do?”
“I wanted to say…” He put his face close to hers.
“What?” She held very still.
“I am so turned on by you,” he said and kissed her forehead. “But time and place and circumstances...” He stood and offered his hand. “Let me take you for a ride in my spiffy rental car.” She didn’t move.
“Why didn’t you call me? Your mailbox was full. How did you know? I didn’t think you’d ever call me.”
“Most of my missed calls were from your number.” He tugged on her hand. “Let me take you for a ride in my spiffy rental car.” He made a show out of opening the door for her. She took his offered hand and got in.
“Where are we going?” He made a show of closing the door. “Dean?”
“Fasten your seatbelt.” He got in and started the car. He turned down a road she knew, but didn’t know.
“Dean?” She began to panic. “Where are we going?”
He pulled up in front of a gate, got out and opened the door for her. She took his offered hand and got out. He shut the door and they stood for a moment.
“Here we are, Annie.” Annie? Dean never called her Annie.
“I’ll be back in an hour…Annie.”
“Why are we here? Dean?”
“Why are you here, Annie?” She turned to see Parker. They were sitting in the visiting room. The one with the thick glass dividers.
She didn’t remember walking in, but things had been weird lately, and Dean would be back in an hour.
“I don’t know, but I have an hour. So you can talk to me or ignore me.” He cocked his head and chuckled. He leaned on the table and smiled at her.
“Ass,” he said.
“What?”
“Pain in the ass. Say it.” She didn’t know what he meant. “Say I’m a pain in the ass.”
“I’m a pain in the—?”
“No, say ‘Parker, you’re a pain in my ass,’” he repeated. “Say it, say ass or are you still incapable of—”
Now she knew why she was here. “Parker, you’re a pain in my sweet fucking ass,” she spat. His eyes grew, then suddenly he burst out laughing.
“What?” He was making fun of her.
“If you could see your face…” He dissolved into more laughter. She glared at him. Finally he settled down.
“All right, Parker, are you satisfied now?”
“Absolutely,” he said and settled back, got comfortable and made ready for whatever she had to say. “I’m listening.”
She looked at him, feeling a strength she didn’t know she had. She watched his broad smile grow smaller, fade and then fall from his face like an over-ripe orange. It dropped to the table and rolled off the edge, vanishing out of sight. He suddenly looked gray, thin, weak and sadder than any sadness she had ever seen to that point in her life. He became self-conscious of her staring, and dropped his eyes to the table again.
“Why?” she asked. Just one word. She had no idea if he would answer—if he even had an answer—but she needed to ask the question. He shook his head very slowly and then, after some time, he looked at her again. “Was it the pressure? Was it because you believed you loved me? Was it because...”
“Connie said she was pregnant.” Annie stopped cold. “She told me she was three months pregnant and that we were going to get married. Also, I did tell her I love you and she couldn’t handle that. She was going to get in the way.”
“In the way of what, Parker?” She leaned closer to the glass. “There was nothing to get in the way of. I didn’t—and don’t—love you. I told you that but, you chose not to listen, or not believe me, or something.” He tilted his head like a confused dog.
“You really don’t love me?” His tone almost broke her heart.
“No, I don’t.” She watched him crumble. His eyes darted around the room, his mouth opened and closed like a fish. He started to tremble and then to weep. She wanted to calm him, but sobs shook his body so hard, he couldn’t hear her. Finally they subsided, and he calmed somewhat, but when he raised his face…
“For you, Annie,” he hissed into the phone. “I did this for you because you loved me and you’d go with me if… she was out of the way.”
“Parker, no I—”
“Oh, yes you would. You just don’t know it. So now you tell me it was all for nothing? You’re a fucking bitch, Anne.” He slammed the phone back onto its cradle, but didn’t leave. He sat back in his chair and he pointed at her. She called his name into the phone, but he refused to pick it up.
“Take that back, Parker!” She was shouting. “You can’t blame me for this! Take it back! Parker! Pick up the phone and take it back!”
He stood and called to the guard, looked back at her and lunged at the glass, slamming his body into it. He shouted back, “It’s all your fault!” and then he turned and walked out the door.
“Take it back, Parker!” Annie was frantic. “Take it back! I beg of you. Parker, no! No! Take it back!” A guard walked up to her.
“Parker, take it back!” The guard put his hand on her shoulder.
“Take it back!” The guard gently shook her shoulder.
“Take it—” The guard said her name. Annie.
“Take it—” Shook her shoulder. Annie.
“Take—” Shook...
“Annie!” Her mother gently shook her shoulder. “Annie, honey, wake up!” Annie slowly opened her eyes.
“Annie?” Her mother’s eyes were both worried and serious.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Honey, this has gone on too long. It’s time for you to get some serious help.”
23
“So, I stepped off the train in my hometown. My sanctuary.” He nodded his head slightly. “Soon as my feet hit the concrete of the train station, I no longer wanted to be there. Frankly, I no longer wanted to be.” The doctor no longer had to mask a reaction.
Annie had been seeing the Ph.D. psychologist—the one Dean Moore had recommended for anyone who wanted to continue work on their feelings about Connie Baker’s murder—twice a week since graduation, and sometime in early July, she had decided to postpone entering college until the following January. She had, as the doctor said, a lot to process. It was now Thanksgiving week, and they’d gone over this material before. But the psychologist asked Annie to repeat some of her feelings, because a week or so earlier, Parker Levitt’s lawyer had filed an appeal to save him from the death penalty.
“You were in a really tough place, weren’t you, Anne?”
“Yes, but it’s important that I didn’t want to be dead. I was not suicidal. I was not thinking of ending it all. Ending some, but not all.”
“You’ve said much of this before, but remind me what it was that you wanted to end.”
“I didn’t want to be a hometown girl, a daughter, a college student, somebody’s best friend, somebody everyone expected to be reliable, stable, predictable, or…” She trailed off. The doctor waited a moment. When a full minute had passed, he prompted her.
“Is there something new?”
“Actually, yes.”
“And what is that?” Annie hesitated then took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to be…virginal.” She felt as though the weight of the world had just dropped from her shoulders. The psychologist cocked his head.
“You’d like to lose your virginity?” She thought about it for a moment.
“Not exactly, I don’t think. More like, I don’t want to have to keep up this front of innocence.”
“It can be tiring to keep up a façade.”
“Especially in that town. I didn’t want to be who I had been—who I’d had to be—for eighteen years.”
“Let’s talk about Parker some more.” Annie laughed.
“I knew you were going to say that.” The doctor laughed.
“You’re on to me, Anne.” Annie smiled, then took another deep breath.
“Parker had done some damage to me. Well, a lot of damage. He hurt me in ways that could have lasted a long time. Longer than the train ride home. Longer than the following day. Longer than the month after.”
“That was a major undertaking, to visit a prison. To visit a friend in prison.”
“I still think about that. Often, actually.” The doctor nodded but didn’t comment. Annie had teased him about what she called Dean’s therapeutic use of silence. She smiled to herself, then continued unprompted. “It’s the thing that, when we sit around the table at Thanksgiving, and we make the rounds, everyone in the spotlight for a moment, speaking aloud what they’re thankful for. It’s hard, that moment.”
“What’s hard about it?”
“I used to, despite loving my family and the life I was living, I used to worry about failing.”
“How would you fail?”
“By not saying something...worthy of thanks. You know, something that everyone at the table would nod about.”
“Approve of.” A statement. Annie nodded.
“Yes, even just silent approval. I was always looking to get a high-five for my thankful.” At that they both laughed. “But that was then, ste
pping off the train. Being back home. That was then.”
A Small Town Dream Page 14