From the Chrysalis: a novel

by Karen E. Black

  She nodded because she had memorized everything he wrote: I’m going to be a son my father can be proud of. You’ll be proud of me, too. Of course he couldn’t be expected to say a thing like that out loud. Not here in this place, where it would be met by a chorus of jeers.

  She searched her mind for the right thing to say. Every word was so precious today. “In your last letter, you said you were getting out real soon.”

  “Well, maybe.” He shifted. When he jerked his eyes in the guard’s direction, she felt such a fool. She should have known. Of course the guards could lip-read. Locking her hands between her knees, she leaned in even closer until their reflections collided in the streaky glass.

  “My parole review’s coming up in November,” he volunteered.

  “That’s good, right?”

  “If I get paroled. But that’s a big If. I can’t say I’m looking forward to my parole review.”

  “Things will go better this time. They will. It’s not like you’re a shit disturber anymore. You’re what, one of those ‘solids’?”

  “Sure, it’s just like I told you, I’m a good boy. But that’s when hard time begins. When you’re just about out.”

  A chill passed through her.

  “If you’re a quick change artist, it’s okay. Except sometimes it comes back to you, how fucking stupid you’ve been. You want everything right now, and you don’t care how you get it.”

  “Hey, are we talking about you or some other guys?”

  He shrugged. “Other guys, I guess.”

  Almost sagging in relief, Liza smiled again. “Do you miss things as much as you did when you first came in?”

  “Not as much. You can’t or you’ll go crazy.”

  “What things do you miss most?” she stammered, surreptitiously glancing at her watch. Oh God, visitation was almost over. And here she was behaving like a stranger at some stupid social tea. What’s your horoscope? Are you anything like me? She’d already asked about that stuff in her letters anyway. That was when they had all the time in the world and everything was going to be all right.

  I’m a Gemini like you, he’d written back. He was good at chitchat when he wanted to be. A quick-minded, dual personality, easily bored. Of course a girl like you craves excitement. I do, too.

  Although she was careful not to touch it, she leaned even closer to the glass divider, hoping to recapture their initial intimacy. And it worked. Extracting a loose Export `A’ from his shirt pocket, his smile widened and he let her in.

  “What do I miss most? Well, talking to a normal person like you, little darling. Although sometimes when you get a visitor, you feel like such a goddamn jerk. Because there’s no way you deserve such … kindness. There’s gotta be a reason you’re doing time with a bunch of losers, right? And you get scared when somebody comes to visit that you won’t even remember how to talk. Hey, don’t look like that. You know I don’t feel that way with you. Look, just stop me if it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself. I’m on a real roll today. Because you … But that’s why I liked writing letters to you, I had lots of time to think about what I wanted to say. In a letter you have a world of time to make things right.”

  A world of time. That’s what we need, she thought, wanting to be the smoke he sucked into his lungs. “Well, you’re talking today. But what makes you think I’m normal?” she teased.

  “You gotta be, darling. You’re on the right side of this glass.” Dace was doing nothing more than pointing at the divider, but his overseer still looked alarmed. “Okay, now. That’s enough about me. Now you. You’re a bird in flight all the way from Dublin. A clever little college girl.”

  “Oh, well. You know.” Liza sat up straighter and smiled brightly, although her unsupported lower back had already started to ache. “I was allowed back to go to university after being in exile just like you. It was actually a toss up between Dublin and you.”

  “Really?”

  “I got … I wasn’t going to, but somehow I got attached to the place. Did you know there are no monarch butterflies there? And Trinity, I wanted to go to Trinity but I wanted to come back to my home, too. Besides, I was never going to belong in Dublin unless I had goddamn children or something.” Yes, a baby. Right. She stopped, reluctant to go on. What would he think of her, if he knew?

  He mimed astonishment, his eyebrows riding right up into his hair. “Ah now, little Liza, you were always such a lady in your letters. I had no idea you ever swore! What else don’t I know about you?” he teased. “And there I was, always in such a sweat to clean my letters up for you. I can’t tell you how good you’ve just made me feel. So you got back Tuesday last? Who met you?”

  “Well, nobody. I didn’t tell anybody I was coming home except you. I don’t know. Um, Gran, I had sort of made a bargain with the old dear. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Trust me, she was glad to get rid of me. She’s getting old, you know. She’s like sixty-five or something. So I went ahead, making one plan at a time, like applying to Maitland University. I didn’t expect to be accepted. Boo-hoo, it looked like nothing was ever going to work for me. But then boom! I was on my way home. Gran paid my way back and I had nothing left to lose, sort of. Then there was you.”

  Dace was starting to look puzzled. Oh God, she thought, almost halting. Keep talking. Don’t stop now. She chattered some more, feeling like a complete fool.

  “You should have told everyone that you were accepted at the U!” he interrupted. “You’ve got to tell your parents, Liza. Don’t you want to see them? I know they’ve had their troubles, but, well, your Mom was in the hospital for a while, wasn’t she? And go see my Dad, too. They’ll be so happy to have you back. A grown girl. They’ll be so proud of you, little darling. The first person in our family to go to university.”

  “Oh, our family doesn’t dream so big.” She snorted. “As long as we’re all respectable. The Devereux used to be such big shots in Wexford, don’t you know.” Tapping her memory for the family history, she recapped some of their story, her mouth pulled into a grimace, although the Devereux story was common enough. Like Steinbeck’s family in East of Eden and half the Irish, they had been almost kings in Wexford, Ireland at one point, but then …

  “Ah, c’mon. You’re respectable enough for both of us.” Dace laughed, not caring how far the Devereux had fallen or even if he’d helped them in their downward spiral. “Your accent. I could listen to it all day. All you have to do is talk and you sound so educated, so respectable.”

  “But I’m not …”

  …respectable, she almost confessed. She couldn’t help it, she was definitely jet-lagged, because her eyes filled with tears for the second time that day. Except now she had an audience. Dace glanced to either side of him then back at her. She nearly laughed in spite of herself. Here he was, a prisoner, and like most of the men she’d encountered, he was attracted to a soft-hearted woman but embarrassed by emotional displays.

  “Educated or respectable. Maybe I can still be both,” she confided.

  He stared into her eyes, a quizzical smile on his face, oblivious that his cigarette had burnt down to his brown, calloused fingertips. “C’mon, Liza,” he urged. “You’ve danced around some problem in your letters for two years now. Open up and let me in. There’s nothing you can say that would upset me. Hey, look at me. Look where I am. There’s nothing so terrible you could have done. What’s wrong, darling?”

  Open up and let me in. She was almost undone hearing him say what he had only been able to write for the past couple of years. She couldn’t open up here, though. Liza, people had told her for years, don’t tell. Stupid, stupid to tell him, or anybody else, about Tony. What would he think? She’d had a choice, hadn’t she? Well, sort of.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I’m doing this, upsetting you in prison,” she blurted. She blinked her eyes dry and lowered her gaze, unable to look at him again.

  She couldn’t unload her problems on somebody incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, no matter
how much she ached to feel cherished and protected and uncensored. He couldn’t help her where he was. He couldn’t even help himself. Not now, anyway. But he would. He’d take care of it all when his fate, like hers, was no longer in somebody else’s hands.

  Are you the captain of your fate? he used to ask if she so much as hinted how much her life had spiralled out of control. As if he were. As if anybody were. For the love of God, even butterflies weren’t free to do as they pleased.

  A dirge had started playing in her head and no wonder. For the umpteenth time, Liza wished her feelings of dread would evaporate like Dace’s apparently had. Strange what a few years in prison could do. Surely he still felt guilty, though, about a man dying, no matter what kind of bastard the victim had been. And about his own family. The trouble he’d caused. She would have. She did. What had he said about his father? Oh Christ, what if she forgot something he’d said? She should have smuggled in a tape recorder. Yeah, well, fat chance. They were too big for a pocket. She couldn’t afford one anyway.

  “Someone’s always crying here. It’s okay,” Dace lied.

  “You’ve got your own problems,” she insisted. In one crazy moment she imagined hiring a helicopter and spiriting him away. Way to go, Liza, she chided herself as she snapped back to reality under his stare. It was a good thing men tended to be so focussed.

  She took a deep breath, hoping she sounded more informed and confident than she felt. “Your big problem is getting out of prison,” she coached. “Any way you can. For good. Your letters, oh, you write such beautiful letters, Dace. You don’t belong here, you know. These other guys here, aren’t they all supposed to come from bad homes? Poor homes? Nothing like you. And I want to help you stay out, too. Recid … recidivism? Recidivism is supposed to be about 70%. I’ve already started reading my Sociology text so I can get ahead. I can be your outside contact, you know. Well, one of your contacts, anyway.”

  He laughed, apparently relieved she had regained her self-control. Well, of course he was. He didn’t want people thinking he’d made a little girl cry. He took a drag on another cigarette. “Well, sure, darling. You’re right. After all, look at me. I’m in no position to rescue a little damsel in distress.”

  “Just don’t get used to living here. Isn’t that what happens when people get institutionalized?” she asked and promptly shrivelled inside. What if he told her to mind her own business and stalked off … to what? What was behind those locked doors? What didn’t they want outsiders to see?

  And Dace was annoyed. One short visit and she could already read his masked face. If he’d stood up and shouted, I’ve heard all this shit before, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “I’m doing hard time,” he said. “I’m not getting used to anything. At night I wake up busting to shed my own skin.”

  “Oh, I know what that feels like, too! You can’t breathe, you think you’re dying and there’s no one,” she chattered on, trying to appease him until—

  “Time’s up, Devereux,” announced the fat guard who had snuck up behind him.

  Liza blinked at Dace. He was prepared, but for her the reinforced glass divider had almost melted away. Then she noticed the black stick the officer carried, in addition to his revolver, and jumped off her stool so fast she had to steady herself by grabbing its swivelling base. The guard’s “Get movin’,” was superfluous. There was no time to say for her to say anything else to Dace.

  “Goodbye, Cousin,” he said and smiled. He rose in a single fluid motion and walked away.

  Caught off guard, Liza stayed put, watching his back. How could he? she wondered.

  She was a frightened girl watching her lover head off to war. But Dace was no soldier. He was more like an actor exiting his private stage, an Academy winning virtuoso, or maybe just a man a little too expert at hiding his emotions. For his own protection, any regrets he had about leaving her were well concealed, his face its usual mask. She might as well go. He would never look back, no matter how much she hoped and prayed for one last glimpse.

  She had ceased to exist. Her bit part was over. When she turned to leave she noticed the visiting room clock was not quite on the hour. The fat old guard, who Dace later told her was named Savage, had cheated them of precious time.

  Don’t leave me! she nearly screamed, but to what purpose? She was much too old, too experienced, too wise, to make a fool of herself over a man again. If there were a reason for everything, that was the reason for Tony Harper, the lesson he had been. He made a fool of you! Gran had wailed. Among other things.

  So here she was, controlling herself so Dace could walk away scot-free. Scot-free. What did that even mean? She almost hated Dace in that instant, then it was gone. He was like nobody else she’d ever known. How could he be like any other man when he’d written her eighty-three beautiful letters? She let him under her skin. Hey Jude … She wasn’t going to be able to lose him. It was too late. It had always been too late. She couldn’t shed him even if she tried.

  Chapter 7

  Terrible Lies

  My love came up from Barnegat,

  The sea was in his eyes;

  He trod as softly as a cat

  And told me terrible lies.

  *[Wylie, Elinor, The Puritan’s Ballad]

  Maitland University, August 26, 1971:

  Exalted and elated, she floated in a bubble back to her new home on campus. Her fellow bus passengers looked beat up, washed out, down, as if they had just returned from a long trip.They stared at her, envious of the glow in her eyes. Maybe they were numbed by the intense emotions they’d experienced in the prison visiting room. For Liza, it had been her first visit, her first opportunity to talk to Dace in five years, and she throbbed with joy.

  Everything was going to be all right. My darling, my life, a little voice inside her sang. Any fool could see he was in a bad place: the Big House, the can, the clink, the cooler, the coop, the hoosegow, the joint, the jug, the pokey, the slammer, the stir. But when he got out, their lives would unfold again, like a clandestine script she’d written. She was author cum protagonist cum minor character in her own story, a person determined to chart her own life. Maybe she could yank him back from his private hell too.

  What does anybody know about either one of us? He’s gone to jail and I’ve gone to university, both anomalous events in our working-class families, she wrote in her journal, the one nobody ever found.

  For that matter, what did she know? Maybe the family had been right to insist he was just “away.” Maybe it didn’t matter what had happened or why it happened as long as he got back on track. They both had to get back on track while they were still young, while they still had a chance. While time was on their side. Because in a perfect world nobody should be limited by stupid choices they made when they were less than eighteen.

  * * *

  Her euphoria was as short-lived as her bus ride. For Liza it was always like this: a dazzling high, a precipitous low. She deflated at the entrance to the university as the sun began to set over the gates. I’ve been home three days and I’m not even sure how I got here, she thought as she squeezed through the rear accordion doors of the bus. She was relieved to feel her feet touching solid ground. She followed the long winding road, past the closed limestone buildings, to the newer residences at the back where the campus was dark and green. The air was pungent with freshly cut grass and carried just the slightest whiff of decaying leaves. Almost too tired to walk, she fought an overwhelming urge to throw herself facedown onto the lawn and inhale the cool grass. Somewhere in the back of her mind came the thought of dying, of oblivion, of the big sleep.

  A solitary monarch butterfly drifted by her, caught on a southern breeze.

  When she reached the ninth floor of her student residence, she looked back out the panoramic windows in the elevator lobby, seeing the green ravine below. In the dusk, the ravine was spread out like an invitation, like a pair of girl’s legs. A gully begging, Come to me!

  Dusk. Dregs. She alw
ays did this when she got tired. Fell into one into one of those in-between places. Trouble, getting in trouble. Words evoked pictures in her mind and the word “trouble” bothered her. She and Dace had both been in trouble. What did that say about them? At least she could escape, as long as she stuffed the cracks where memory seeped in. She had all the imagination she needed, plus she was in a good place. It would be even easier when the residence was full, crammed with other lives. With her life. If her courses were compelling, if her professors were charismatic, if her social life were distracting, and if she made just one good friend.

  If, if, if. Right now she would have settled for a female confidante, but she had about as much chance of meeting somebody as she did of eating a home-cooked meal. By special permission, she was marooned in an almost empty residence with the capacity for six hundred students. Frosh Week didn’t start for three days, if it started at all. Somebody had plastered the campus with posters, warning young women not to walk alone or they’d get what they were asking for, what they deserved. The posters hinted about a rapist or rapists stalking the green ravine, driven to desperate deeds by co-eds anxious to throw their lives away.

  Damn, she thought, entering the bedroom wing to her right. Somebody had been there. A single letter with a New York postage stamp was propped on a side table, so she couldn’t miss her name: Miss Elizabeth Lavinia Devereux. The envelope hadn’t been there that morning. She took a step closer, puzzled by an atavistic wave of fear. Then she recognized the cultivated Gothic script, the self-important loops and swirls and broke out in a cold sweat.

  Goddamn it! she exploded, almost dropping her bag. Tony Harper. Dear God. How had he gotten her address? From Granny Magill? Oh, surely not. She’d begged Liza not to correspond with him. For God’s sake, have some self-respect! Granny had told the young girl who had squandered her favours.