“Hi.”
“You know this is highly, highly unusual. I’m not at all sure we should permit this.”
“I know. But thank you for allowing it.”
She put her hands in the air. “We like to think we’re in the business of rehabilitation. I always thought the word ‘correction’ was a misnomer. We can’t correct anything. But we’d like to do something. So we learn from our mistakes and sometimes we try new things. You’re the new thing.”
I understood what she meant and, in an odd way, it made me a shade more comfortable with what I was doing. “I’m curious,” I said. “Did you read her letters to me?”
“Yes. We still do that.”
“And?”
“And that was why we gave in to her father’s request. And here you are.”
“How is Miranda?”
“She’s had a hard time. She’s no trouble to us. But she gets depressed.”
“Has she tried to hurt herself?”
“I can’t talk about that.”
“When can I see her?”
“Now. She’s in Building C. There is a secured visiting room there. A guard will be in the room with you.”
“Is that necessary?”
“It’s the policy.”
“Okay.”
***
I arrived first. The room reminded me of the waiting room of a dentist’s office, except for the single table in the middle. I was led inside by a woman in uniform who did not smile. I sat in a chair at the plain wooden table. And I waited.
The room was dead silent except for the humming of a ventilation fan. The fluorescent lighting was too bright. As I sat alone, I felt a momentary panic. My heart beat loudly in my ears and I began to irrationally fear that I would be kept here. I was inside again. I would not be free to leave.
And then the door opened and Miranda walked in with the guard behind her. I would not have recognized her had she passed me on the street. She walked past me and sat across the table from me. Her hair was short and she looked older. Much older. Her skin looked pale. I recognized the pain and hurt in her eyes. The woman guard sat down in a folding chair by the door. I decided that I would pretend this third person was not in the room. It was not necessary to keep secrets. I had already decided that whatever I had to say was no secret. I did not know for sure, but I thought that our conversation might be taped. And I didn’t care.
“Hi, Miranda.”
“Michael, thanks for coming.” Her voice was a mere whisper.
“I couldn’t have gotten in without your father’s help.”
“I know and you persuaded him. That’s a hard thing to do.”
“He was okay. Are you all right?”
“I’m here. I’m alive. This place is not so bad.”
The grounds were a sharp contrast to Severton. This place was like a summer camp compared to that. But I wasn’t here to share my thoughts on accommodations. “What made you write to me?”
“I did a lot of thinking. And I’ve had lots of counseling here. I kept thinking that somehow I would start to feel… better. But I don’t. I keep hoping something within me will change today or tomorrow. But it doesn’t. And I don’t know if it ever will.”
“I’ve changed. I’ve moved on,” I said. It was partly a lie. “So will you.”
There was the first hint of a smile, a little girl smile. And in it, I recognized the teenage girl who had attracted my attention. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.”
That caught me off–guard. “How did you know?”
She looked a little embarrassed. “I read the obituaries in the newspaper. I’m not sure why.”
“You have a lot of time on your hands,” I said, trying to lighten things up.
“Like you, I finished my high school work. I graduated. But it was different from when we were in school.”
“I’m sure it was.”And I told her about my graduation—but not how I felt at it—and I told her about my job. I didn’t mention anything about Nicole.
A hint of a smile again. “I never imagined you fixing cars.”
“Neither did I.” I held out my hands for her to see.
There was still some grease under the fingernails and I showed her the calluses on my palms. It was then she reached out and touched my hands. She held them and looked down at the table.
“How come you don’t hate me?” she said in a low voice.
I had no real answer to that except this. “I did for a while. And then I found it was crippling me. I tried to let it go for a long while. But couldn’t. And then I realized one day that I had no choice. If I didn’t let it go, it would destroy me. It almost did.”
“But I was the reason you were in prison.”
“And you were the reason I was released.”
She looked up at me. “How long can you stay?”
“They told me an hour maximum.”
“Will you come back again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then there are some things I need to say. I don’t know what you will think of them, but I need to say them while you are here. And I realize you may not come back. I realize I may never see you again.”
She was still holding onto my hands. “They—someone—is probably listening,” I said. “I don’t think this is really private.”
“It doesn’t matter. Does it matter to you?”
“No,” I said. “A lot of things don’t matter to me anymore.” But as soon as the words were out, I realized they were cruel, although I did not intend them so.
She let go of my hands and sat back, straightened her back, tried to look me in the eyes, but then looked down at the table. “In your head, you go through the sequence of events over and over. And even though you lived them, it doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem real.”
I nodded.
“Now I can see every bad decision that led up to what I did. The drugs were an important part of it but it wasn’t just the drugs. When I started getting heavier into the meth, you backed off.”
“I didn’t like what it was doing to you. Or me.”
“Where did that come from? How come you could see that and I couldn’t?”
“I’m not sure. Something in me. Something from my parents and maybe from my grandmother. It sounds funny to say that since we were both trying so hard to be… what? Bad?”
“Yes. Bad. And we liked it, didn’t we?”
“We loved it,” I said. And just then I felt embarrassed because I was thinking of the sex we had. The bad/good sex. The reckless sex that was so good. “But I loved you too. I’m sure of that now.”
“So why did you give up on me?” she said suddenly, turning the tables. “Why didn’t you help me?”
It was like a hammer to my head. “I tried,” I said with defiance. “I tried to get you to ease up but you wanted to go further. So I moved on.”
“There’s that phrase again. Moved on.”
“I did try to get you to see what was happening. I really did.”
Her eyes were tearful. She took a breath, looked at me. With an air of defeat she said, “I know you did. In retrospect, I could see you tried to get me to slow down once I started in with the crystal meth every day. It was just that it was so cheap, so available, and so, so good. At first.”
“It was addictive.”
“Then how come you didn’t stay with it?”
I threw up my hands. “Something within me saw the danger.”
“When I saw you with Lisa… what?… two weeks after we broke up…”
“I didn’t even think of it as breaking up. We just drifted apart.”
“No. It was much more than that.”
“And that was the part I missed. Back then.”
“I hated you at first,” she said.
“But you were always with—what was his name?—Glenn and his friends. So I assumed…”
“You assumed that I had moved on.”
“Yes.”
“They were pa
rt of the problem. Totally into the coke and the amphetamines, and they really liked the meth when I introduced them to it. But for Glenn, it was mostly about the sex.”
I took a breath. “I don’t think it was just sex between us, was it?”
“I think it was a big part of it. We were both really into it. But you treated me with respect.”
“There’s a funny word.”
“Well, I don’t know what else to call it. But then I hurt so badly when you stopped seeing me. And then started going out with Lisa.”
I decided I would not talk about Lisa. Whatever I could say would be hurtful. I let Miranda continue.
“Here’s the part I need to tell you. I’m not trying to say it was your fault in any way and I’m not trying to say it was just the drugs. But I want you to hear this. The sequence of events.”
Something about the way her voice shifted. She was almost clinical and I knew she was about to tell me something about the actual murder. I wasn’t sure I was prepared for that. “Sequence of events? You make it sound like someone else did it.”
“No. I didn’t mean that. Please. Will you listen to this part?”
I felt a chill and my heart began to pound again. Would I have come here had I known she was going to drag me through this? Night after night in prison and after, I had tried to erase the image of Lisa’s death from my thoughts. Only now was it somewhat buried and rarely surfaced to surprise me awake or asleep. Miranda was breathing faster now. “Okay,” I said, thinking that now I could handle it. And once she had said whatever she was about to say, I would walk out the door. Go to my parents’ car in the parking lot and never return here again. “Go ahead.”
“I hadn’t slept for possibly four straight days. Once you’re really into the meth, you just keep going. It got me through the day at school. I was planning on sleeping through the entire weekend. How’s that for a plan? Now you know what the buzz from the meth feels like. Very high, very wired. Makes you sometimes feel strong and invulnerable. Then, other times, you get weird. Stressed. Paranoid. I thought people were following me. Glenn was no help. He and his buddies were also already moving on. I could sense that.
“Then I became obsessed with you. I believed—and maybe this part is true—that I still loved you. That I really loved you. And you had burned me off. Just walked away. And that Lisa girl. Too pretty. Too nice. I didn’t really know her but I thought I knew her type. Smart. Wants to save the world. One of the gifted ones. I hated her. I was jealous. It seemed like the only thing I could depend on was the meth. The high.
“I tried to shut off the anger and hate that was growing, but I couldn’t. I started carrying a knife—one I’d taken from my father’s collection. And I followed you two one day. To that tent in the woods. And I watched.”
I think my breath stopped just then. This was the very part that haunted me the most. Lisa and I in the tent with the flap open and only the screen between us and the outside world. And someone—Miranda—outside, watching us make love. “And then I left her there alone,” I said. “I went home.”
“She fell asleep,” Miranda said.
I closed my eyes. I was almost afraid she was going to say: and it was easy—but she did not.
“At the time, and I know this sounds insane, at the time, I felt justified. That is what meth can do to you. I thought only about not getting caught. I got rid of the knife. I believed I could get away with it. When I realized they had arrested you, I believed you too were getting what you deserved.”
“So while I was being accused of murder, you were doing what? Still getting high and feeling okay about what you did?”
“Not exactly. I did crash on the weekend. My body just couldn’t take it. My father finally caught on and put me in detox. It was horrible getting off the stuff. But I kept my mouth shut about Lisa.”
“All the way up to the time you finally confessed.”
“I should have done it much sooner.”
“But you didn’t.”
Miranda sat silently for at least a full minute. “Lately I’ve thought about ending my life.”
“I know. That’s part of why I’m here.”
“I can’t get rid of my past. I can’t seem to think about much else and it wouldn’t matter if I was in here or out in the world. It seems like a way out.”
I truly understood what she was feeling. I’d felt it myself. Believed it was the only way to get past all the pain. The only true way to move on. “Why haven’t you?” I asked, perhaps a bit too clinically.
“Because I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk with you.”
“And I’m supposed to talk you out of it, right?”
“I don’t know what you are supposed to do. Like I said, I’m responsible for what I did.”
I looked at her. “It’s funny. Lisa and I once debated capital punishment. Strangely enough, she was the one who believed it was better than long–term imprisonment and isolation from the world. I believed that life was sacred. A life for a life was too primitive. Then, when I was in prison, I came to the conclusion she was right. It was the humane way to end a cycle of pain and suffering.”
“Then you understand why I wrote to you about wanting to end it.”
“Yeah. I understand.”
I nodded towards the guard and up at the ceiling. “So if they’re listening, they’ll know. They’ll stop you.”
“They already know.” She lifted the long sleeve of the blouse and showed me the scars on her arm. Both arms.
“Jesus,” I said out loud. And that’s when it began to sink in. My own feelings of anger and frustration with the entire world. Not at Miranda. It wasn’t her. It was an irrational, gut–wrenching rage at everything else. You feel fragments of this when you are a kid and especially a teenager. You get flashes of it later in life but if you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you sometimes feel a confirmation that it is truly a horrible screwed–up mess, this world we live in. And I realized at that very instant that I could not handle the final loss of Miranda. Defiance is what I felt. I felt a powerful defiance of the way things are.
“I’ll be back for another visit,” I said. “Will you be here?”
“Do you want me to be here?”
“Yes. I need you to be here.”
She rolled both sleeves of her blouse back down and she looked directly at me and whispered, “Then I’ll be here. I promise.”
Chapter 27
Turning twenty–one in our culture is often considered a truly significant event in life. Last week we had a quiet party—just my parents and me at their house. Miranda was not invited. My parents have never adjusted to our decision to live together upon her release from Woodvale.
No matter how many times I’ve tried to explain it or make sense of it to just about anyone, but my parents in particular, I fail to get it right. Why this had to be. Even I don’t really understand it. Let’s call it a further sequence of events. Even as I write this in the most truthful manner I possibly can, I cannot quite make that sequence of events make sense to the world around me. Louis understands. I think. But no one else.
Our life together has, in many ways, cut us off from much of our past. Her parents do not accept me. Mine do not accept her. Lisa’s mother and father think I have betrayed them. Her father went so far as to ask the police to look into the death of their daughter again. Presumably to see if there was some bizarre conspiracy. The events surrounding Lisa’s death were reviewed by a committee that determined not to reopen the case.
But it means that even more people out there believe I was responsible for the death of a wonderful young woman who would have contributed so much to the world. I have to live with the fact of knowing what others believe, even if it is false. Miranda has to live with the fact that others know the truth. Both of us share a burden.
***
Let me take you back to then. And I will bring you up to now. I returned to visit Miranda a second time. She was afraid I would not come back but now she
began to trust me. When I e–mailed Nicole about my visits, she said she could never speak to me again. And she has been unwavering on that point.
I began to look forward to my visits with Miranda. We no longer spoke at all of the past. She was starting to feel better about herself. I was allowed one monthly visit and my parents protested each and every time. I understood that I was sacrificing them along the way. I knew how much they disapproved of what I was doing and I had to accept that. I moved on.
And what was it exactly that I was doing? I was trying to figure out a way to live my life. From there on. And I believed that Miranda held the key. I could not go back anywhere and pick up the thread of where my old life had left off. I remembered that thing people said to me when I had been released:“Now you have your life back. ” It rang false even then.
Now I have a life.
Not an easy one. Or a happy one. But a life, nonetheless.
I still don’t know why I walked away from the drugs when I did. And why Miranda could not. Something in me was different. Stronger. I still got high. But not on meth. In talking with Miranda in Woodvale, I began to understand what the old saying meant. There but for the grace of God. Or Fate. Or Luck. Or Circumstance. I grew to understand that a few more steps in the wrong direction and I too could have been a murderer.
And here’s the point you don’t want to hear: So could you. So could anyone.
So you are lucky that the sequence of events in your life have led you to where you are now. Quietly sitting somewhere, reading a book. A story that is very real but presented as fiction.
And maybe you still can’t comprehend how I ended up in a relationship with Miranda. With someone who murdered the girl I loved. Maybe words can’t do the job I want them to do. Maybe you just have to accept it. Accept it as a possibility in the realm of infinite possibilities.
What is it you require to get on with your life every day? Draw up a list. It may or may not make sense to others when you show it to them.
But top on my list is this. I need Miranda to be in my life. I need to help her. And I need to do this for me.
The Book of Michael Page 14