by Joan Barfoot
She thinks it’s possible their shared, large and small, brutal and beautiful and ordinary events, put into words and stories offered up to the darkness, could grow by morning into a sturdy, protecting, safe shelter. That whatever happens then, tonight they can make something from all their eight years of bits and pieces, discarded, forgotten or cherished or only dreamed of, or still hoped for. Each word a brick. “Do you remember rain?” she begins. Because rain takes them back to the start.
Salvation, like anything else, mainly comes, she imagines, in small measures like this. She also imagines he’s holding her hand, which she expects is a fine thing to be doing, and would feel astonishing.
Belles Lettres
Not a whole lot of mail comes to people in jail, but some of what does come is juicy. Darryl gets letters from some girl in his old neighbourhood and at night in their cell, reads them out loud to Roddy. “Man,” he says, “you know, she’s only fourteen? Like, she was maybe eleven, she didn’t even have tits or anything last time I saw her, and listen to this.” He rhymes off a couple of paragraphs that have to do with different things she and Dare could do with her breasts. “Christ, they gotta be huge,” Dare says. Roddy gets hard just listening to how she imagines Dare could put himself between them and come. He also remembers, though, on his first night, Dare talking about the previous cellmate who jerked off six times a night. Except he hears Dare himself jerking off later, when they’re supposed to be sleeping.
Sex is weird in here. Some other kind of stuff goes on, he guesses it’s bound to, but otherwise it’s mainly guys blowing off steam, like Dare, or Roddy for that matter, in the middle of the night, or getting all glaze-eyed in the steam of the showers, soaping themselves up and off right in front of everybody, and then everybody whoops and makes jokes, because there’s no room for privacy anyway.
Well, Roddy too. There’s a kind of getting used to things. Also there’s no stopping it, or himself.
If everything hadn’t gone wrong, if Goldie’s had worked, if they’d taken off finally, him and Mike, and found that glassy two-bedroom place in a city high-rise, and gone prowling like they talked about, it could have been happening for real: real breasts, real thighs, real skin, real other, glorious, foreign places. He’d be unstoppable. He is unstoppable. He’s seventeen, for Christ’s sake.
At least Darryl used to know, or has at least met, that one girl who writes him. He and some other guys get letters from total strangers, too, sexy invitations, but also with questions, and often promises. The funny thing is, the ones who get letters from girls they don’t know are the ones who’ve done the worst crimes: murder, rape, ’way worse than Roddy. If it wasn’t for Dare, he probably wouldn’t even know that. Most of those guys are tough, or appear to be, and they don’t talk much except to each other, and they’re watched pretty carefully anyway, and a few of them spend a lot of time completely alone, because they’re either dangerous or plain bad, hard to say.
It’s just that Dare’s been here a while, and he’s one of them in a way, and he does tell Roddy things sometimes. If they weren’t in the same cell, he probably wouldn’t have anything to do with Roddy. Armed robbery isn’t a big deal here. Although actually shooting somebody counts for something. Roddy’s in a strange kind of position, sort of in the middle of things but cautiously, as much as he can manage, also off to one side.
He’s for sure not a rapist, and he’s not a murderer even if he came close, and he can’t figure out why anybody’d write to somebody who was, especially if they didn’t know them. Dare shrugs. “Takes all kinds. Some of them, you know, they’ll come in handy later on.”
When guys get out, he means. Roddy gathers that some of these girls are offering everything. “They sound kind of dumb,” he ventures.
“Well, yeah.” Dare speaks as if Roddy’s stupid himself.
Then there are volunteers, who aren’t stupid, most of them, but — who goes into a jail on purpose? Some of them are hard to put up with because they’re all filled up with virtue and want to pass it on, it feels like, to the wicked. Well, maybe that’s not fair, but it’s how it feels when they sit down in the rec hall without being asked and interrupt TV or whatever to talk about courses, or careers, or some self-improvement program or religion they’ve got a bug about, or to give different kinds of advice, or ask really rude questions, like about guys’ families and crimes and “How do you feel about this,” or “How did it feel when you did that?” The other kind of volunteers may say the same sorts of things, but they’ve got a different look in their eyes. Like they want something back besides virtue.
They’re almost always women, not men, and what’s that about? The guards don’t like the two days a week the volunteers come in, they get all tensed up, which Roddy guesses makes sense considering what could happen if one of the volunteers, or one of the guys, made a wrong move. What the volunteers, who get some training and are screened before they’re allowed in, are supposed to do is talk about futures, and give some kind of idea of normal life in a normal world, and maybe help out with schoolwork. Mainly they don’t, as far as Roddy can see. Mostly they’re not very pretty, either, or very young.
They can’t possibly know that after they leave, the guards are angrier and more impatient than other days, and the guys laugh and make jokes. Like Dare says, if you can zero in on the right kind of volunteer, just like the right kind of letter-writer, and feed her the right kind of line, life’s suddenly easier because there’s gifts coming in like money or clothing or food, although not in some underhand way, everything’s supposed to get approved before it’s passed on. “You gotta do it,” Dare encourages, “you gotta be able to, like, trade shit and have something to offer. And anyway.”
And anyway, it’s something to do, like a game. In return for various promises, and besides real and useful things in their hands, guys pick women to write letters to, and win plenty of promises back: offers of jobs for when they get out, or of places to stay, or of protection or safe-keeping, or even of love.
“What a joke,” Dare says.
He also says, “Get in there, make a move. It’s easy. Just make like you’ve had a lot of bad times and you want to change everything from now on, and watch what happens. They all want to save somebody. You should be a good guy, give them a chance. Shit, at least then you’d get mail.” Because of course nothing comes to Roddy, not even magazines. He guesses he could subscribe to something. And he could do what Dare says, get hooked up with somebody outside. He knows Dare’s right, that it’s easy. That doesn’t mean he knows how to do it.
Then he does get mail. One slim envelope for him among three for Darryl, dropped off in their cell at the end of a day, as mail is regularly delivered, a high point for Dare, anyway, often enough a prelude to his semi-private night-time delights.
Roddy doesn’t recognize the handwriting on his, so maybe it’s starting to happen: some strange woman writing.
But “Dear son,” it begins. Well, no reason he’d recognize his dad’s handwriting, why would he? Nobody he knows of writes letters. This one’s real short, all scrawled on one page. “Dear son, I’ll be driving up to see you with your grandmother one of these days pretty soon, but thought I’d drop you a line. Guess we’ve had a few wrong turns along the way, I don’t know, but I’m sorry about everything, anyhow. When you get out, maybe we could go someplace the two of us for a few days. You could think about where. I’m sorry how things worked out, hope you’re doing okay where you are. You’re a smart kid, and not bad, just made a bad mistake. Anyhow, I’ll be seeing you soon, but think about plans. Just wanted to send a line or two along to say, Good wishes and all best to you, Dad.”
Not exactly a big outpouring of sentiment.
But also, it really is. For his dad to write a letter at all is amazing. Roddy reads it over and over, looking for clues, hunting for meaning or tenderness or some clear intention even between lines, before he t
ucks it inside the front of his math text. It’s like every sentence says something different. One doesn’t totally lead to another. Never mind. The point is, his dad meant to say something, a shock all by itself.
Would Roddy want to go someplace with his dad? Imagine the silences, and what would they do with so many hours? He doesn’t think his dad really means it anyway, or wouldn’t if the time ever came. He’s just, like, putting his hand out, kind of offering to shake.
When his dad comes to visit, maybe they’ll talk about it; although more likely not.
“Got a chick going there?” Dare asks, raising his eyes from a page of one of his own letters.
“My dad.”
“Bummer. Listen to this, it’s from Kitty. ‘I can come on a dime, so anything you want, it’ll be fine with me. I remember how you always went around looking so cool. So anything, I mean it. Use your imagination.’ Jesus Christ.” Dare looks up. “Fourteen’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t sound like she cares.”
“Yeah, but I might. No, I wouldn’t. Fourteen sounds prime.”
But if she’s so prime, how come she writes hot letters to a guy in jail for knifing somebody to death? Even if, before, she was a little kid with a crush, now wouldn’t she look at Dare’s hands on her and wonder at what they’ve done? Even Roddy can look at them and picture them thrusting, blood-splashed, and he’s sure not planning to have them anywhere on his body.
Of course he can look at his own hands and wonder at them, too.
What people, parts of people, can do: be loyal to a friend, for instance, and kind to a dog, and wide open to the beauties of bugs and wildlife and air, and deadly, near-deadly, with a knife or a gun. Cut off the small bad parts, like a bruised apple, and what’s left is just ordinary, not remarkable, mainly good.
Darryl is here for a bad hand, Roddy for one faulty finger. Not fair. Not the whole story.
Another day, same hour and way, after breakfast, after classes, after lunch, after kitchen duty, after shower, after woodworking, after dinner (meat patties, peas, potatoes peeled and cut by his very own hands), after an hour in rec hall watching a game show, the kind that tests the desire to get the answer first and sometimes works out that way, after getting herded with the others back to the cells for, supposed to be, an hour or two of homework and studying or whatever — then the mail comes, with another letter for Roddy.
Something more from his dad? No, it’s a different handwriting on the plain white envelope, which has no return address. Not his grandmother’s, either, he knows hers from shopping lists, notes for school, notes left on the kitchen table telling him where she is, reminding him about this and that. Maybe Mike. That’d be amazing. What would he have to say? He’s sorry? He’s got plans to bust Roddy out? He’s grateful, and hopes Roddy will still be his friend?
Roddy’s nervous about opening it, excited as well.
“Dear Rod,” he finds inside, on a sheet of plain white paper like the envelope, but typed, not like the envelope. It doesn’t look personal. And it isn’t from Mike.
“I hope you remember me. I was in court with my stepfather when you pleaded guilty, and then by myself when you were sentenced. You may remember I spoke. I don’t know what’s a fair sentence, but I hope you are doing well with what you were given.
“Anyway, I thought both times when I saw you in court that I would like to meet you. Don’t worry that I want to yell at you or be angry or anything. I don’t. I just thought we might find some good things to talk about. So I would like to visit you. Are you surprised? I thought I could come Sunday the 18th, what do you think? I hope you will think it’s all right, but I’ll understand if you don’t. It might seem like a strange idea, but I’ve thought about it and I don’t think it’s so strange, and I hope if you think about it, you’ll decide it’s all right. If I don’t hear from you, I will come during visitors’ hours on that day. If you don’t want me to, please let me know, you can call collect, here’s my number.”
It’s signed, “All my best, Alix,” then in brackets afterwards, “Starglow.”
He stares and stares at the thing. Is it real? Is she?
Her words look to him, like her eyes, calm, cool, and deep. He doesn’t know what good things they could talk about. What did she see in him? What does she want?
Is it anything like what he could want?
Probably not.
He reads and reads this letter, sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched, scrutinizing, oblivious to Darryl a few feet away on his own bed, with his own mail. Roddy tries to see into each word, tries to put her gentle, absorbing tones from the courtroom to the tune of the few paragraphs in his hands.
He likes that she calls him Rod. He wonders what the Starglow is about.
He wonders what he could possibly say to her; besides I’m sorry, which he has already said, and doesn’t change anything, and couldn’t possibly be her purpose for coming here anyway. She says she isn’t angry and does not want to yell. Perhaps she’ll do all the talking and he can just listen, just look, just fall back into her eyes.
What is she expecting to see? What if she takes all that trouble and time to come all the way up here, and go through the hassles of visiting, the search, the metal detectors, the guards’ eyes that are somehow both wary and bored, and finally sits down across from him and looks at him and thinks, “Oh no, this was a mistake. This was a waste of my time. This isn’t what I thought I remembered.”
There was something, though. He believed it, and if she saw it too, it has to be true.
Imagine not saying anything about her mother, imagine seeing past that! Maybe she can see past anything, then.
Sunday the eighteenth. From nothing, from just getting by, to one plain white sheet of paper, to a real girl, woman, coming to see him — this is no one to make fun of and nothing to laugh about. Or to use. He won’t be talking about her with Darryl, for sure, or anyone else. This is like magic. Nobody’d believe it. They’d look for the joke, or the trick.
Is there one? No, couldn’t be. She isn’t like that, and neither is he. She saw him in court the same way he saw her: as if they should know each other. Like there was something between them that could make all the difference.
For the longest time, nothing good happens to him and then, suddenly, something good does.
Various Monstrosities
Lyle is mowing the lawn, back and forth, back and forth. He’s wearing blue jeans but some time ago took off his shirt, so that the golden summery tinge of his chest and back has begun shading to red. He keeps his eyes focused downwards as if mowing the lawn were the most demanding of tasks, requiring his entire attentiveness.
Still, now and then in the process of turning and heading back in the direction he’s come from, he looks up to smile, or to make a small friendly gesture.
In advance of today’s gathering, Lyle gets to spruce up the grounds and Isla gets to soak up the day’s warmth and its many manifestations and shadings of green. The sweet scent of newly cut grass combined with gasoline fumes has to be one of the world’s finer smells. Too, the fumes create a hovery, hazy effect in the heat as Lyle and the mower make their patient, slow, thorough way back and forth, back and forth.
The smell of gasoline means movement to her, going someplace.
Well, here she is. That’s going someplace. To be sitting again on this porch off which, more than a year ago she light-heartedly, mistakenly stepped, that’s a very long journey.
If a circular one.
She has been waiting for this very scene. Her picture of this sunshine, this greenery, this prospect and perspective, as it now finally appears on this August afternoon, has been her private reward, her lure, her temptation, her desire, for months. And now, here she is. She hadn’t pictured some of the details exactly, like the old shades-of-blue woolly afghan tucked around her knees, ke
eping her legs from the sunburn they wouldn’t be able to feel any more than they can feel the warmth of the wool. She hadn’t taken that sort of thing into account. But looking out and away from herself, the view is precisely what she held in her mind’s eye.
Finally she has one thing she wanted and, moreover, deserves.
She is settled in here again. She has learned that the mind often likes to have its thoughts reflected by the body; so when it says settle in, it intends the body to show, with a certain shifting of hips, how that’s done.
When, long ago, she rose up out of warm dreaming drugs and into, again, a vision of anxious, kind faces, it was, as she muzzily saw it, another moment out of a very old movie: melodrama or horror, it wasn’t clear which. In this movie a new face — it’s always a face — is being unwrapped, a new person in some way emerging. There has been surgery, performed out of vanity (in which case it goes badly) or to repair some mutilation (in which case it most likely goes well), but the main thing is the moment when everyone gathers to see the results.
The head is wrapped in layers and layers of white gauze. Slowly, slowly the long winding bandage is unfolded, unwound. The camera moves from the watched to the watchers, recording their stunned, wordless response, giving nothing away. Finally, in a mirror, the camera seeing now through the eyes of the patient, the new face is revealed. Lips widen in rapturous smile. Eyes widen in shock. Whichever. It’s a big moment.
Those old movies didn’t generally venture too far into the aftermath. Isla quite sees their point.
Dr. Grant appeared overhead, but by then she already knew.
She could feel her shoulders on the sheet, her spine rippling down the mattress, her arms, her curled fingers. Some of those fingers were curled into a hand. Long fingers, strong grip, slightly roughened skin, therefore Lyle’s. Madeleine, on the other side, was stroking her forearm. This was altogether a miracle. To feel!