The Volunteer

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “How can you say that? When you know how I have blamed myself.”

  “My God, Grandmother, he’s in prison.”

  Tears stand in Sophia’s eyes. “You and Russ knew he wasn’t dead, but all these years you have let me go on believing I was responsible, that Dylan died because of me, because he was with me when I had the car accident.” She is angry now, murderously angry. She takes her head in her hands. “When I think, when I think it was only a week ago that you accused me of saddling you with the blame for Dylan’s death. His death, Mother. How could you say that to me? How could you keep lying, like that?”

  “But he was dead to you. You said so yourself at the time, that he was with the Phelps and better off. Did you not say that?”

  “But you let me believe—”

  “He drove me around River Oaks.”

  “Who did?” Sophia asks.

  “Russ, when I came to Houston after he found you. He invited me, don’t you remember?”

  His lies are what Sophia remembers, the half truths.

  “He wanted me to see the sort of life he could give you and he drove me through his neighborhood. We went by his family home and the country club where they were founding members. He talked about the banks they owned. We went up and down nearly every street past all those mansions with rows and rows of monogrammed gates across the driveways, huge magnolias everywhere, terraces swimming with bougainvillea.” Esther’s eyes widen. “Why I even saw a Rolls Royce. I’d never seen one before.”

  Sophia can see Esther riding in the front seat of Russ’s big Lincoln, stiff-shouldered, pocketbook held upright on her lap, pretending indifference, but riveted to the luxurious view, overcome by it, flattened and burned up inside with longing.

  “He talked so much,” Esther says, “I hardly got a word in. He told me he wanted to marry you when you were a little more grown up, but if you had the boy, if the Phelps returned him to you, then he didn’t know. He said at the worst you could go to prison; he said there would be a scandal.”

  “Dylan was my son, Esther. Do you think I cared about a scandal?”

  “But you gave him away, Sophia, after all. Have you thought of that? How you fought me about adoption? Then you handed him over to the Phelps. And now you want to blame me for how it’s all turned out? We saved you, Sophia.”

  Frances plunks the tray laden with cups and saucers and a plate of cookies on the table. She brings the kettle.

  “No one wants that, Sister,” Esther says.

  But Carolyn, who has given up coffee, says she’ll have some and helps herself.

  And Frances, addressing Sophia, says she didn’t know. “Not until this morning when Mr. Hunter came here. He talked to Esther.”

  “And you said nothing. Neither of you said a word when I was here earlier.”

  “Sister told me not to.” Frances sets down the kettle with a bang. “That it wasn’t my place.”

  Sophia looks at her mother. “You surely couldn’t have thought I wouldn’t find out.”

  Esther opens her mouth, closes it. She looks at Carolyn and calls her Lydia. Lydia was Esther’s mother’s name.

  “I’m Carolyn,” she says.

  “Of course you are,” Esther says

  Sophia looks at Frances who shakes her head and says, “It comes and goes.”

  “What comes and goes?” Esther demands. She slaps the table. “I did what was best, Sophia. I protected you and your husband. I did what Russ asked me to do.”

  “Don’t you mean what he paid you to do, Grandmother?” Carolyn blows over the top of her cup. She nibbles a cookie. Sophia’s grateful that she has an appetite.

  “He helped the Phelps, too. They wanted to sell so they could live nearer to their son in Florida. I needed money to buy this house and have my independence.”

  Frances says, “To think you would do such a terrible thing, Sister, when you could have so easily moved in with me.”

  “You mean with you and that man you were shacked up with?”

  “Oh, come down off your moral mountain, Mother,” Sophia slips her voice between the sisters like a knife, “I know all about Teddy.”

  “Who’s Teddy?” Carolyn echoes the very question Sophia had asked so many years ago.

  “I found and read every one of his love letters.”

  “So I suppose, Miss Smarty, you knew we were to meet?” Esther demands heatedly. “On a Sunday at the bus station. We were to go with him, but he died.”

  “It was a stroke,” Frances murmurs, “and him so young, too.”

  “You would have left Dad and me?”

  “Not you, Sophia. I was taking you with me. I would never have left you.” Esther’s mouth quivers. Her eyes lock with Sophia’s. They are back where it began, at the place where Sophia had left her child. There is no way around it.

  “But did you really have to go so far? Did you have to make me believe I killed him? Couldn’t you have told the truth, that he was adopted?”

  Esther stands slowly, laboriously. She pushes her chair under the table and leans on it. “Can you honestly say you would have wanted to know that when you couldn’t claim him yourself? Because that is how it would have been. Russ made it clear. He would have you but not the child.” Esther’s glance shifts to Carolyn. “I knew there would be others.”

  Sophia covers her face with her hands.

  Esther raps the chair rail. “He was giving you a second chance, Sophia. Free and clear of all your mistakes. What would you have had me do? Argue? Demand he retrieve the child and hand him over? He would have left you flat. Then what? There would have been other men, drugs, more children.”

  “You don’t know that, Grandmother.”

  “Instead you’re college educated, you have a profession. You have spent the best years of your life living in comfort as the wife of a man who worshipped you and the mother of a loving daughter. You have had a better life than mine.”

  “And it’s all based on lies, on manipulation and connivance.” Sophia stands, too. “And in any case, obsession isn’t love.”

  “He’s going to die, Grandmother, on Monday at six o’clock.” Both Sophia and Esther stare at Carolyn. “My brother, your grandson, our own flesh and blood. How can you still think what you did was right?”

  “Oh, Sister....” Frances twines her hands in her apron skirt.

  “You know,” Esther slides her chair carefully underneath the table, “as much as you want to blame me? I’m not the one who at age fifteen chose to go chasing after some young man like a bitch in heat and let him—”

  “Grandmother, shut up,” Carolyn says.

  There is a combined intake of breath from the sisters. Esther's lips tremble, but she neither speaks nor cries.

  Chapter 28

  Friday, October 15, 1999 - 2 days remain

  The warden tells Jarrett he’s never had a situation like it. He passes a couple of local newspapers across his desk to Jarrett and indicating the headlines says he wants to make it clear, that regardless of how the press is milking it—Will there be a last minute reprieve? asks one headline. Will time be allowed for a mother and son reunion? asks the other—nothing’s changed. Barring last minute legal delays, Jarrett’s execution will go off as scheduled. The warden keeps giving Jarrett these narrow-eyed looks while he’s talking as if he suspects this latest twist is just another stunt Jarrett’s arranged to garner media attention like the brouhaha over the whereabouts of the 2037 codex. Jarrett wants to point out that, for his money, anyway, both are better tricks than the last-minute, garden-variety jailhouse conversions that are so prevalent in here. But if this is a stunt, Jarrett tells the warden, it’s not his doing.

  Back in his cell, he sits on his bunk under the indifferent eye of the death watch camera wondering why he was never told that Cort was working for this woman, Sophia Beckman. Why hadn’t a member of his family mentioned Grace was seeing her in her professional capacity as a psychologist? It pisses Jarrett off. It’s like he’s dead already whe
n he’s got what? Forty-eight hours, give or take. He’s here. Here and alive for two more days.

  Then he won’t be.

  The thought stands up in his brain as black and cold as ice at night. Unfathomable. Terrifying. Panic swims through his blood. He feels the shape of a scream come loose from his core. It rattles his bones, hammers up the walls of his ribs. He bends over his knees, choking it off. He remembers reading somewhere that survival is mankind’s strongest instinct, that even when he knows he’s better off dead, which Jarrett surely is, a man will fight to live, to survive one more day, one more hour.

  He remembers Terry Ray, his muttering and his tears. His long-suffering sighs. His going. Jarrett wonders where Terry is now. In hell waiting for Jarrett to join him?

  Guards come to Jarrett’s cell door. Trent Hunter’s outside asking to do an interview. Jarrett thinks no and says yes. He hates what Hunter represents; he needs the diversion. He hates how every hour, every second has an edge, a kind of brutal clarity; he needs to talk. He walks with the guards. They give him looks; they want to know the same as Hunter will, the same as everyone does, how he feels.

  Why? Why does his emotional state matter to them? He’s an animal, beyond rehabilitation, and unworthy of forgiveness. Not fit for polite society. He’s surprised anyone gives him credit for having been born and not hatched, not cast out or down or up from the fire.

  Jarrett’s let into the booth. The guard removes his cuffs and Jarrett sits down, taking the receiver from its hook.

  Hunter’s beaming like a fool. “So, I guess you heard I found your mother.”

  “I’m overjoyed. I bet she is too.” It’s the first Jarrett’s thought of what her reaction might be and he wonders: Does it sicken her? Does she wish as much as he does that none of this business, if it’s true, had come to light? He leans on his elbow. “So you mentioned L the other day. What about her claim? Is this like multiple choice or what?”

  Hunter waves a dismissive hand. “L’s a kook. She writes a lot of death row inmates in prisons all over the country. The motherless ones, you know, the ones that have got no family that can debunk her claim. She’s loony.”

  “Figures,” Jarrett says. So L was loony. So what? She’d reached out to him; she’d given him something. Not hope, exactly, or peace, not the promise of redemption. But whatever it is, it may be the one thing that will give him what he needs to walk into the death chamber under his own power.

  “Sophia Beckman is the real deal, Capshaw, trust me, I’m not going to go off half cocked Geraldo style and make an ass of myself. I made damn sure of my facts before I went public.”

  Jarrett doesn’t say anything.

  “I brought pictures.” Hunter pulls a couple of photographs out of a leather folio and flattens them to the Plexiglas. One, a faded black and white, shows a girl leaning her backside against an old model Lincoln, maybe a 1956 or 1957 Mark II. Her chin is dipped toward her shoulder and her smile is shy. The hem of her skirt flutters as if there’s a wind. Jarrett can see her knees. The other is a yellowing color photo and shows a more grown up version of the girl. She’s holding a baby.

  Not him. Not unless Sophia Beckman dressed him in pink ribbons. It has to be the daughter he’s heard about. What strikes him is the mother’s expression; the way she’s looking at her baby with such tenderness and adoration as if she can’t believe in the miracle she’s been given. It’s how Jarrett was effected when he looked at Thomas in the first hours after his birth, and the memory, this reminder of what love is, of how it feels, staggers Jarrett. He jerks his gaze away.

  “She was a looker, wasn’t she?” Hunter says.

  Jarrett shifts the phone to his other ear.

  Hunter takes the photos away. “Do you remember anything about the accident?”

  The act of tracing his broken eyebrow is almost unconscious. Jarrett doesn’t remember. Shit happens and life goes on; you grow up. More shit happens. You get over it. Worse shit happens. You get over that too. Then something hits you and you don’t get over it. You go down.

  Hunter asks if Jarrett’s pissed and when Jarrett frowns, the reporter says, “You realize Beckman was rich, like ozone rich? And not only that, he had influence. He paid a bundle to make sure your connection to him and his wife disappeared.”

  Jarrett keeps Hunter’s gaze.

  “She thought you died as the result of the head wound you received in the crash. It’s what Beckman wanted her to believe.” Hunter waits. “It’s cruel, don’t you think? Not just for how it screwed up her life but yours too. Think where you’d be now if Beckman had adopted you. Not in here, that’s for damn sure. You’d be set, man. You’d have everything.”

  Jarrett shakes his head. He thinks of calling the guard.

  “Will you see her?”

  “I’ll be transported to The Walls tomorrow or the next day, executed the day after.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Jarrett cocks his head.

  “You’ve heard of Jasper Slade, the senator? Seems as if your mother, Dr. Beckman, I mean, came to the rescue when his kid nearly died a few years ago of a drug overdose. There’s some indication that debt could get called and strings will get pulled. Senator Slade is in tight with Governor Bush.”

  “I don’t want strings pulled.”

  “What if she could get your kids to come? You want that, don’t you? You’d see her then, right?”

  Jarrett doesn’t answer. He wonders if it’s possible, if Sophia Beckman could somehow— But no, nobody’s going to get his kids in here. And it’s okay. It has to be because that’s how it is. He doesn’t want company anyway; he doesn’t want a bunch of people forced to sit around in his final hours making labored conversation. Last words, last meal, it’s bullshit.

  “So I’m thinking there’s a couple of things that could happen now.”

  Jarrett looks at Hunter.

  “You know, because of these developments. There’s the fact that your mother has got the senator’s ear.”

  “You keep calling her my mother.”

  “Yeah?”

  Jarrett shakes his head not saying aloud that it’s weird.

  “So Slade’s campaigning for Bush,” Hunter says. “Word is he’s got a good shot at a cabinet post once Bush gets elected, and he will be, that’s a given. You see where I’m headed with this, right? Influence like that can get this whole process, this whole killing machine shut down.”

  Jarrett gives a derisive snort.

  Hunter lifts an index finger. “Wait, I’m not finished. There’s that possibility on the one hand and there’s the 2037 codex on the other.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Here we go.”

  “You know where it is, Capshaw, don’t lie. You tell me, tell me right now, and I’ll be out of here like a shot. I know people, too, the right people to go to with the story. I can guarantee that between that and the support of Senator Slade, you’ll get your commutation. There’s no way you’ll see the inside of The Walls, much less the death chamber.”

  Jarrett gets to his feet. “Guard!”

  Hunter sags against the back of his chair. “C’mon, man.”

  “Sorry,” Jarrett says.

  “Suppose I can get your kids to come? Suppose I could arrange that? In exchange, would you?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Watch me.” Hunter stands eye to eye with Jarrett. “I told you, I know people. So, do we have a deal? A visit from your kids gets me an exclusive on the whereabouts of the 2037 codex.”

  “Guard!” Jarrett shouts again.

  Chapter 29

  Friday, October 15, 1999 - 2 days remain

  “We missed lunch,” Sophia says as Carolyn pulls out of the sisters’ driveway. “You should eat something.”

  “I had cookies and tea.”

  “I meant something nutritious.”

  Carolyn meets Sophia’s admonishing glance. “All right, something nutritious,” she says. “Do you want to stop somewhere?”

  “That little F
rench bakery?”

  “Where Dad used to take us when we visited him at his office. I loved their onion soup.”

  “You loved their homemade croutons as I recall.” Sophia smiles; she rests her head against the seatback.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom.”

  “Me too, that you should have ever thought I didn’t trust you. I regret that I listened to Grandmother and your dad especially when I knew deep down not telling you was a mistake.”

  “But it’s hard going against your parents’ advice.”

  “Oh?”

  “Honestly? I’m not sure I could have walked away from the job at Vanderburg if Dad was still alive even though I knew I’d be no good at it, that I’d be miserable.”

  Sophia looks unseeing out the window. She thinks of how little she has ever known or understood about her life. She thinks it is a mistake to assume you know the workings of someone else’s mind, or to think you are ever in control and the realization is disconcerting to her. She feels flattened by it.

  “I always knew you loved me, that you were proud of me, no matter what.”

  Sophia meets Carolyn’s glance. “Truly?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m just not driven the way that Dad was. Is that your cell phone?”

  Sophia reaches for her purse. She says she isn’t in the mood for whoever it is, a reporter, probably. She studies the ID. “It’s Sharon Slade.”

  Carolyn nods. She thinks Sophia should answer.

  Sophia makes a face and in the moment it takes to say, “Hello,” it occurs to her that Sharon is the only one besides Esther who knew the truth. Sharon could easily have confirmed the facts of Sophia’s story for Trent Hunter. Sophia straightens, trying to focus on what Sharon is saying, something about her secretary and a member of Jasper’s staff having been contacted by Trent.

  Sophia interrupts her, “I asked you to keep our talk at the hospital in confidence. You promised you would.”

  “What? You don’t think I—? But I would never talk to a reporter about that night. Even if I were the sort of person to break a confidence, which I’m not, it wouldn’t make sense, not if I value my husband’s political career and my son’s privacy.”