“Cody! It’s me.” Ronnie can see that Cody recognizes him, so he starts knocking harder, shouting loud enough to be heard through the door, while still managing to come across as nonthreatening. To everyone except me. “It’s your grandpa.”
“Tell him to go away,” I shout. I’m heading toward the kitchen now, turning around every other step, to see if the danger is still there. Whatever’s happening in me is primal. I can see that Ronnie’s not going to hurt me, but something in me is so scared I can’t do anything but run. My reaction is frightening Cody—it’s obvious by the look on his face.
“Nicki, please!” Ronnie is knocking on the glass now, trying to get Cody to open the door. “Cody, can you open the door? It really is okay, son.”
“Mom, I think it’s okay,” Cody says. “Really.” He opens the door. “Let’s just talk to him.”
No way. I scurry the rest of the way to the kitchen, hiding just to the side of the door frame. Listening.
Jake comes in from the garage. “What’s going on?”
“Make him leave,” I say.
“Who?” Jake’s craning to look past me into the living room. “Is that your dad?!”
“Thank you, son, for letting me in,” Ronnie says to Cody. He holds out his hand. “I’m your grandpa, Ronnie.”
“Hi.” Cody shakes Ronnie’s hand. He likes him already. I don’t want my son to like my dad already. I want my dad to have to earn it. “I’m Cody.”
“Nice to meet you, son. I know your mom’s upset, but it’s okay. She’s just taken by surprise.” Ronnie hollers in my direction, not threatening, but to make sure I hear. “Nicki, come on out here, sweetie.”
He waits a few seconds, but I refuse to answer him. He keeps talking, sort of like a hostage negotiator. “Nicki Beans! I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to scare you. Come on out.”
Cody laughs at my nickname.
Nicki Beans. My dad’s name triggers some small sliver of my mind that I’m not in real danger. My dad’s never been a violent person—he’s never hurt anyone. I want him to go away not because he’s a bad man, but because somewhere along the way I decided he’s a Leaver not a Stayer, and I can’t stand to be left by him one more time. If he’s going to leave, I’m going to be the one to make him go. Sooner. Like, now.
“Go away, man,” Jake says. “Seriously. Leave us your number and she’ll get in touch with you when she’s ready. I don’t know what you were thinking. Surprising her like this.”
“He’s selfish,” I say, making sure he’s hearing me. There is something really satisfying about shouting at Ronnie. About telling him what I really think. I have a flash of wanting him to stay just so I can read him the riot act for a while. “That’s how he is. He only thinks of himself.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Ronnie says excitedly. He’s psyched I’ve decided to speak to him at all. “You wouldn’t take my call! You just stopped picking up the phone! I don’t even know why.”
“Because I didn’t want to hear from you, that’s why,” I say. Heartless. “Now go away.”
“I got it, I’ll go,” he says. I can tell from the sound of his voice that he’s going to leave now. Thank God. “I just thought you should know I’m out.”
Jake comes back toward me, holds his arms open. “You okay?” He wants to hug me, but now that I know Ronnie’s leaving, I feel energized enough to go out there and watch him go. I walk back toward the front door, careful to avoid the pork loin strewn everywhere.
“I don’t hate you or anything, I just want you to leave,” I say. That’s as close as I’m going to come to an apology. “You shouldn’t have shown up like this.”
“I’m sorry, Nicki. I didn’t know what else to do,” he says. “I really am sorry.”
I forgot how blue his eyes are.
He’s not a bad person.
How weird that I was just thinking of him today in the bank. I don’t really even believe in psychic stuff, but who knows? It does seem awfully coincidental.
“I’m glad you’re out,” I say. “Good for you. Really. I’m happy for you.”
“Tell you what,” he says. He’s being like a child who can’t bear to leave Chuck E. Cheese’s and is trying to buy another minute. “Let me give you my phone number. Just in case. I don’t know, maybe we could have coffee or something sometime. Call me if you ever need anything at all. Anything. Do you have a pen and paper?”
“No,” I say. “Just go.”
“I’ll take it in my phone,” Cody says. He jumps in there a little too eager. It’s as if he likes my dad—but how can that be? He doesn’t even know him. Cody pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Go ahead.”
Ronnie gives Cody the number, and the moment he’s finished, I take Ronnie’s shoulder and literally push him out the door.
“Good-bye,” I say. Then, even though I know it’s unnecessarily dramatic, I slam the door in his face.
* * *
In the bedroom later, I’m silent. I can’t cry, I can’t talk. I can only binge watch episodes of House Hunters International. I know that eventually, I’m going to run out—of episodes, I mean, not run out of this room; actually, I might never leave this room—and I can’t even think of what will happen then. As an anesthetic, nothing works like HHI. It’s the gold standard of numbing out—pure television Novocain. Or what’s that stuff that Michael Jackson used? Propofol. It’s pure that.
The only time I even come close to thinking about my dad is when I’m blazing through the commercials—five quick pops of the forward button on the remote—and the advertisements roll by. If you ask me, prison was a good place for him. He’d always seemed fine with it. Really. On all my childhood prison visits and phone calls he’d always seemed upbeat and settled. He had friends, a job, a communal TV, dental care, food, clothes, and books. He didn’t talk about the bad parts except the food, so I could only assume there weren’t any. Or there weren’t any bad parts that were so bad he made sure never to return.
I think back to the last time we spoke. When he called me from prison that very first night, without giving me the chance to have so much as one last visit with him on the outside, I wasn’t worried about him. I was worried about me. I was furious, but not at him. I was furious for me. Pregnant and alone, I needed a father—and now I wasn’t going to have one. I already didn’t have a mother. Which was bad enough.
Not only that, from the moment he called me, I knew this is the direction the energy was going to travel from now on:
ME → HIM
Being in a relationship with a prisoner is very one-sided. You can’t call a prisoner if you had a bad day at work, or need a friend. They call you, when they feel like it. They can’t help you move, fix your screen door, come over and hang out. This is what people—the prisoner, especially—don’t understand.
Where was Ronnie when Beth was parading her stupid boyfriends through the house and went to Puerto Rico on vacation, leaving me to walk through the high school graduation ceremony with no one in the audience? He was in prison, that’s where. How embarrassing was it to wander around aimlessly pretending my parents were there? I would have skipped the whole thing, but I was goddamn not going to miss the all-night senior class party.
And what about the night Cody was born? Where was Ronnie then?
In prison.
How about when we lived in that house where the roof caved in and we couldn’t afford to fix it? Where was Ronnie then?
In prison.
The day I got my first period?
The Daddy-Daughter dance?
In prison, in prison, in prison.
Without a dad, I was forced to depend on my mother, and she was a terrible person to have to depend on—the word terrible having its origins in the Proto-Indo-European verb “to shiver.” I bet the first time she scared the hell out of me, I was still lying in a bassinet at the hospital.
So now he wants to stand at my front door seventeen years later feeling bad I stopped talking to him? Is he serious, he can’t figure out why?
What was he thinking—that he would just knock on my front door and I would open it and say hi, oh shit, long time no see?
I was fine without him.
* * *
Around ten o’clock Jake’s phone vibrates with a text. He’s been sitting beside me for the last hour, his arm behind my back, helping me watch TV. I’m sure his arm must be hurting at this point. But his body next to me is the only thing comforting me right now, and it feels so good I don’t give a fuck about his arm.
Whatever’s on his phone, though, it’s making his whole body shift.
“Uh, Nick?” He says it tentatively. “Nicki?”
Shhhh. I put a finger to my lips. “Honey.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t talk,” I say. “I’m watching this.”
I’m still in a trance. I’ve been forced to move on to domestic House Hunters, which is basically a whole lot of tray ceilings, granite countertops, and statement two-story foyers, but I’m fine with it. That’s how desperate I am for relief.
“Nick,” he says, easing his arm out from under my body. “I have to run out for a minute.”
“What?” I jerk forward, springing back to life like a toddler you think is asleep until you try to sneak out of the room. “You can’t go! Where are you going?”
“I have to. It’ll be quick.”
“Jake, no! I can’t be alone!”
“I’ll send Cody in here,” he says. As if Cody can sit still next to me with his arm behind my back without needing years of therapy afterward.
“I can’t let Cody see me like this. I need you!” My voice is whiny and trembly like a little girl’s. I’m actually panicking at the thought that he’s going to walk out the door—even if he’s going to be back soon. “I need you, Jake.”
“What about Peaches?”
It’s Thursday. Peaches is getting laid right now. Duh. Besides, Peaches would make this all about my dad—what he said, what he did, what he looked like, if he was still hot—and I’m concerned about me right now.
“Jake, I need you!” My blood pressure is going up. My throat is scratchy and my mouth is very dry. In the beginning of our relationship, he never would have left if I’d asked him to stay. “What is so important that you have to leave the house right now? It’s nine thirty at night.”
“It’s just an errand. It’ll take twenty minutes. I’ll be right back.”
“You can’t leave me, Jake. Please don’t leave me. Please—” I say. I sound pathetic, but I don’t care. He can’t leave now. Not now.
Jake gets up. “I’ll be right back.” He grabs his jacket and his keys. “Please! I’ll be back in a half hour.”
“You said twenty minutes!”
“At the most. A half hour at the most. I wouldn’t go unless it was really important.”
Jake’s looping his other arm into his navy blue hunter’s jacket, the one I got mail order from J. Crew. I was worried it wouldn’t fit because it was final sale, but when it arrived it was so perfect he didn’t take it off for a month. That jacket became proof of how well I knew him, how much I loved him—better than anyone ever had. I knew it was because I was a mother, where most of the other girls he’d gone out with were just that, girls. They worried about their careers and their thighs and had wine nights with their besties and never really cared about anyone but themselves. Not me. I could love him like a woman.
“What could possibly be so important?”
“It’s about the restaurant,” he says. “I have to meet with one of my investors.”
“Now? Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“No, it can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Jake, please!” I know I sound lame, but then why wouldn’t I? My dad just showed up at my door after seventeen years and now my boyfriend has some urgent errand he has to run. At ten o’clock at night. Do I not have the right to ask him to stay with me? “Are you making me beg?”
“Not unless you want to,” he says. When I get really emotional, Jake becomes like a contestant on week one of The Biggest Loser—no stamina whatsoever—who can only run a block before Jillian Michaels has to step in and start barking orders.
Cody wanders by. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” we say in unison.
Cody goes into the bathroom. I hiss at Jake. “You really suck sometimes.”
“No. You’re just really controlling.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how you’re getting the restaurant you want, isn’t it? You like how controlling I am when it means I can cough up thousands of dollars for your dream.”
That was low. I know it the minute I say it, but I’m human. The way I see it, he’s leaving me in my time of need. And I came through for him in his. Why shouldn’t I mention it? Okay, maybe I should’ve used a nicer tone of voice, but the truth is the truth.
“Jake, wait.” I feel bad. “I’m sorry.”
“Too late, Nicki.”
I hear Jake say good-bye to Cody on his way out, which makes me feel like he’s definitely the better person between the two of us. But still, in the bottom of my stomach there’s a thick glob of indignation and victimhood. How can he leave me like this? Right when I need him the most?
I turn over and pull the blanket up over my head.
He’ll be back.
8
* * *
RONNIE
Melissa calls me into her office and shuts the door. She looks serious. There’s a large paper shopping bag on her desk, which I’m guessing are the rest of my things. It shouldn’t surprise me that this is happening. Freud said (I think it was Freud) that people have two urges: the life urge and the death urge—and for me, the death urge is prison.
She’s sending me back.
“I want to talk about last night,” she says. There’s a tension in her body that tells me something’s definitely going on. Is she trying not to cry? Did someone find out and she lost her job? Or did she—oh, hell no—did she confess to someone?
“Are you sending me back to Sheridan?” I search every inch of her face for information. I’m trying to sound calm, but my voice is a little off-key.
“That was your daughter, wasn’t it?”
“Please, Melissa. Please.” I say it a lot louder than I mean to. “Just tell me if you’re sending me back.”
If she is going to send me back, I need to know now. I need time to prepare my mind and body for The Hole, which is where I will almost certainly go once I am officially transferred back to Sheridan. When you’re in The Hole, you have to live in an unheated, windowless concrete cell not much bigger than a large bathroom stall, where the lights are kept on twenty-four hours a day. To call it “living” is generous. It’s more like existing, and barely that. It’s twenty-three hours a day—all day on holidays and weekends—with one hour for “recreation” in a ten-by-ten-foot fenced-in piece of dirt that looks just like a dog run. But the physical part isn’t even the worst of it. It’s what happens to your mind. Your emotions. The loneliness, the emptiness, the desperation. It’s like an insane asylum. You can’t see anyone, but you can hear the screams. My first bid, I did three tours of duty in The Hole—I was young and wild and I couldn’t say no to trouble. At one point, I was dealing drugs in the joint, allowing myself to get caught up in the bullshit. This time, I only did one. I kept my nose clean, stayed away from the drama, was loyal to other guys, helped them when they needed it. That’s why Reeves called me a model prisoner. Seventeen years and only one trip to The Hole and it wasn’t even my fault? Unheard of. But breaking parole would doom me to thirty or sixty days at least, possibly one hundred and twenty or more.
That is, assuming I get transferred b
ack to Sheridan. They could decide to punish me even more by sending me far away from Oregon, far away from Nicki and Cody. I can’t even think about that.
Melissa doesn’t even flinch. “I think we should talk about it, Ronnie.”
My Adam’s apple is throbbing. I can’t even swallow. Much less talk.
“When I came in this morning, I checked your paperwork,” she says. As she flips through my file, it’s hard to believe this is the same face I watched come last night while Earth, Wind & Fire played. “You said here you’re going to do your home detention with your daughter. But then I saw that look on her face at the front door. She didn’t know you got out, did she?”
The familiar shame of being caught in a lie rushes through me. But I’m also relieved. Because if this is her second question, she’s not planning to send me back. If she wanted to do that, she’d have said it already.
“You’re right,” I say. The best defense is no defense—it’s the truth. Always. “I thought I’d have it figured out by now.”
“What are you going to do, Ronnie.” She doesn’t even put a question mark on the end of it. She’s got me. I’m trapped.
“If you’re going to send me back to Sheridan, just do it,” I say. “Don’t humiliate me.”
“I’m not trying to humiliate you,” Melissa says. Her voice is quiet. “I’m trying to help you.” She hands me the bag. “Here. Open it.”
I set the bag down at my feet and pull out the first thing in it: a brand-new cell phone. Still in the plastic packaging. “Are you kidding?”
Melissa takes it from me and begins cutting off the top of the package. “It’s prepaid,” she says. “It means you pay by the month. I covered the first month. When you get a job, you take it from there.”
I reach in again. There are some clothes. Then a wallet, which I open. There are a bunch of twenties in there, maybe three hundred dollars’ worth.
“Where did this come from?” I ask.
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