Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  She was born when he was seven and just entering second grade. At the time, the thought of having a niece— or, more accurately, of being an uncle— was far and away the most important thing that ever happened to him. His short life up till that point hadn’t been a bowl of cherries. He was the sort of child adults describe as sickly, and there was a reason for that. He hadn’t yet decided whether to live. He had bronchitis when Jacqueline gave birth, and it happened they were in the same hospital, so his mother, Irene, took him down to the nursery to look at the baby. There was a window in the wall like a television screen and through it he could see a nurse wearing a mask and holding a human being smaller than a cat. He’d seen plenty of babies, of course, but he had no idea they could come this small. He started to cry.

  His mother said, “What’s wrong, honey?” and he could tell by her voice his response was what was wrong.

  “Will the baby be all right?” he asked.

  His mother looked confused for a second, and then comprehending. “Oh, yes. The baby isn’t sick. She just came here to be born.”

  But that wasn’t what he meant at all. He knew perfectly well babies were born in the hospital. He couldn’t have said what he meant but seeing the baby terrified him. He was hugely, horribly afraid that she wouldn’t be all right, that something bad would happen to her. He couldn’t have said what; he didn’t even think he knew. He just knew she wouldn’t be safe.

  At the time, he hadn’t eaten in three days, but he went back to his room and asked for a milkshake. He thought that he might as well put off dying for awhile and go on ahead and grow up. He made that decision without really knowing why, but he remembered it all his life, realizing much later that it was somehow connected to the baby.

  Exactly how, he didn’t know to this day. But he had always taken an extraordinary interest in Lovelace. Always. People had remarked on it, said how sweet it was for a boy to be so interested, how unusual. Some people had thought it too sweet and called him a faggot, though mostly behind his back (his father being the exception to that).

  Maybe she was lucky for him, maybe they were connected karmically. Whatever it was, he had a soft spot for Lovelace, and it had continued through the macho years of adolescence and the awkward, searching ones of his twenties. He always sent her birthday and Christmas cards, no matter if he had no connection at the time to another human being and no desire for one, and that was what, in the end, had brought them close.

  When you’re the son and the granddaughter, respectively, of the most famous, maybe the most dangerous killer on the planet, you’d better be close. Especially since Lovelace’s mother was hopeless, and Isaac’s was not only never around, but also pretty much a broken woman from all the years she’d spent with his father.

  Neither of them called themselves “Jacomine” any more. They had chosen “James” together, so they could still have a family name in common yet avoid embarrassing questions.

  Lovelace’s father, who was Isaac’s brother, Daniel, was about to be sentenced for crimes he’d committed with his infamous father, and that was why Lovelace was here. Exams prevented her coming for the actual sentencing, but she had wanted to come down and see him this weekend instead, as some kind of gesture Isaac didn’t understand. Motivated by guilt, maybe. From everything he read, most people felt guilty for not loving their parents enough, not doing enough for them, just not being the cookie-cutter kids their parents had ordered and, truth to tell, Isaac felt somewhat that way toward his mother. He certainly didn’t toward his father.

  The way he did feel toward his father didn’t bear thinking about, though maybe one day he’d have to sit down and go over it with a shrink, the way most people seemed to. But maybe not, because he painted. That took a lot of the edge off.

  Lovelace was going to be fine, he thought. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Thanksgiving, and she was much stronger, much happier. She was like Isaac: Her work kept her going.

  On Saturday, they’d gone to see Daniel and then to a movie, slowly getting reacquainted, and today they’d talked. He made her brunch, first one of his justly famous vegetarian omelettes with a side of home fries, and then they went for a walk along the lakefront.

  Some things they’d already caught up on at Thanksgiving. Things like life among the talking classes. (Isaac had once lived under a vow of silence.) Things like her new environment— she’d transferred from Northwestern to Cornell to attend the hotel school. Today, they’d kind of filled in the details.

  Lovelace wasn’t having her nightmares anymore, but she was still on Prozac. Isaac was on it too, and it was working (though his complaint was much different). He was living close to a normal life these days, having gotten tired of being an outsider artist and gone back to UNO for a fine arts degree. That way, he figured, he’d get respect and he could teach. And he had this girlfriend, Terri.

  “What’s your favorite thing about her?” Lovelace had asked, which made him think about it. What was his favorite thing about her?

  At first it was just that she was nice to him. She had been the one to make the advances: to strike up a conversation, to ask him to coffee, finally to ask to see him again. “I figure she must like me,” he said.

  Lovelace laughed. “I’d say that’s a fair assumption. But why not Uncle dear? You’re a pretty handsome dude.”

  “I’m not exactly the type you’d pick out of a crowd.”

  She pretended to assess him. “Little short maybe.” And that was good for another laugh, as she was about five-ten.

  He never thought of himself as handsome, and anyway the whole subject of sexual attraction embarrassed him, especially talking to his niece. Hastily, he soldiered on. “Well, we got to know each other, and, really, what I like about her is, I admire her.”

  “Well, of course, silly.” Lovelace was wriggling around on the sofa like some twelve-year-old sex kitten. She was visibly enjoying his discomfort.

  “I mean I like her values.” When you’ve been raised in hell, values get important.

  “How so?”

  “She’s a hard, hard worker. Nothing’s easy for her, and she works her butt off to keep her life together.”

  “A cute butt, I bet. What does she do that’s so hard?”

  “She’s also an art student— an undergraduate.”

  “Aha. A younger woman.”

  He was about to say, “I like younger women,” meaning it as a compliment to Lovelace, but he was afraid it would come off as flirtatious. He let the comment go. “She goes to school and does clerical work for somebody two days a week, and in addition to that she has her own business, Aunt Terri’s Rent-a-Wife.”

  Lovelace laughed out loud. “She’s not full service, I hope!”

  “Hell, no. She comes from a good Christian family— and believe me, they never let her forget it.”

  “So what does a rent-a-wife do?”

  “Errands, mostly. She picks up your dry cleaning, does your weekly shopping, takes your elderly mom to the doctor. Her clients are mostly married women who work.”

  “Wow. What a great idea. I’ll bet I could do that. I could combine it with cooking.”

  “The only trouble is, the work’s a little sporadic, so she never really knows where her next nickel’s coming from.”

  “Poor baby, I know that one. Well, I can see what you mean about her values. She sounds like a very plucky person.”

  “She’s a good person. She really is.”

  “An admirable quality in a girlfriend.”

  They’d had the talk right after dinner. Then, while Lovelace packed, they talked about their own crazy family, and then Terri arrived and came to the obvious but erroneous conclusion. He’d had a great time with Lovelace, but Isaac missed Terri. He’d thought about her last night in bed, realizing they hadn’t been apart on a Saturday night for a while, and for the first time he began to wonder if this was what people called a “serious” relationship. Whatever that meant. Maybe it just meant missing so
meone when you weren’t with her.

  Lovelace said, “I’d better clean this mess up,” and left to get paper towels and sponges.

  Isaac watched her, not offering to help and not even thinking about it, just feeling a little dazed. What had happened here? He couldn’t let Terri run out of his life, just like that, on a misunderstanding.

  “Maybe,” said Lovelace, “we should go find her.”

  “What?” He wasn’t moving ahead; instead of trying to think what to do next, he was still trying to comprehend what had gone on.

  “Look. If we both turn up, it’ll be abundantly obvious I’m no threat to her. Nobody would go over to their boyfriend’s girlfriend’s house and claim to be his niece. Think about it.”

  Isaac smiled, as he saw the truth of it. “Let’s do it.”

  “Let me put on some lipstick and change my T-shirt.”

  Isaac waited impatiently, wondering why it took any woman on Earth at least ten minutes to perform any act of grooming, no matter how small.

  He drove so fast and was so obviously preoccupied that Lovelace remarked upon it, in that all too straightforward way she’d developed lately. “Hey, Uncle. You seem like a man in love.”

  He ignored her, which was probably the worst thing he could have done.

  “Methinks,” she said, “thou doth protest too much.”

  “I didn’t protest at all. I didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s like the curious incident of the dog in the night, in the Sherlock Holmes story. ‘The dog did nothing in the night; that was the curious incident.’”

  “Maybe,” he said. “You should give up this cooking thing. You could be a great lawyer.”

  “Well, I notice you’re not saying you’re not in love with her.”

  He couldn’t have said if he was or he wasn’t; he hadn’t even thought about it. But the sight of Terri’s house ablaze with light cheered him immensely.

  Each got out of the car, and they fell into formation, one beside the other, Lovelace a little taller, dressed in jeans and white T-shirt, still a little awkward from adolescence. Lovelace was a beautiful girl, but surely Tori would see that she was a child, young enough to be someone’s niece, though technically only a year or two behind Terri herself.

  He pushed the bell and they waited. Terri usually came springing down the hall, but this time he didn’t hear her. Anxiously, he looked around for her car and didn’t see it, either. “Her car’s not here.”

  Lovelace peered up and down the street. “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Maybe she went out for a minute. For cigarettes or something.”

  “She doesn’t smoke.”

  “Why don’t we wait around a few minutes, just in case?”

  They sat down on the steps, but Isaac couldn’t handle it. He was getting more and more depressed with each passing minute. Finally, he said, “I don’t think she’s coming,” and Lovelace nodded. He hated looking at her, knowing her sad face reflected his.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was freezing cold in the lockup. Terri couldn’t help thinking what an incredible waste it was of the taxpayers’ money— and then thinking, What a weird thing to think in jail.

  Jail. How could this be? But she’d be out soon, at least there was that, and at least they’d taken off the handcuffs. There were two banks of phones, but you could only call collect, because of course they’d taken your money. The phones were in use right now (and most of the time), and from time to time, it appeared, the guards turned them off just to be ornery. Anyway, sometimes they just wouldn’t work, and then all of a sudden they did.

  For the moment, that was okay. She was thinking, weighing consequences. Her parents would certainly bail her out, but there’d be a big fat price. Two prices: the problems she’d have dealing with their judgment about it and the problems they’d have with worry and shame. And there was an additionally complicating factor: It was a precarious feeling, not knowing why she was here. She felt unaccountably guilty. Could she have forged checks in her sleep or something?

  There was only one person she wanted to see, one person who could make her feel as if she weren’t scum after all, one person who wasn’t going to judge her, and that was Isaac. She was pretty sure she loved him, or could love him if he’d be kind enough to return the sentiment, but the simple fact was, she’d just caught him with another woman.

  Everyone else in the place was a career criminal and didn’t care who knew it. Some of the women dozed, but they poked up when someone new came in. When it was Terri, a prisoner hollered at her, a skinny woman who looked drugged-out and tired and used up. “Hey. What you in for? You look like a good girl.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “What’d you do?”

  She couldn’t say she’d done nothing. Everybody knew there were no innocent people in jail. She didn’t want to listen to a dozen hags laughing at her. She fudged her answer a little bit: “I’m in for forgery.” The word felt so odd on her tongue. Forgery was something that happened in movies; she wasn’t even sure how you did it. With great care, surely. You must have to practice the other person’s signature and maybe steal their driver’s license. Even in her sleep she couldn’t have done that. Maybe she was a multiple personality. Maybe today’s multiples went in for money instead of sex.

  “Oh, forgery. That’s nothin’. My sister-in-law did that once.”

  “What happened to her?” Terri was avid.

  “I don’t remember.” The light went out of the woman’s face, replaced by what looked like a twinge of pain. She was probably coming down from whatever she was on.

  Terri had a semi-comforting thought. Once when her bank statement had come, she saw that some other Terri Whittaker’s check was in the package, a check that had been paid from her account.

  She took it in and was shocked to be asked to sign an affidavit of forgery. “But I don’t think there’s forgery,” she had said. “I think this check is from someone else’s account— another Terri Whittaker.” She didn’t say, “This is some dim-witted bank error,” but she certainly thought it.

  In the end she signed the affidavit because they told her it was the only alternative to paying the check herself, but she’d always felt guilty about it. Had the chickens now come home to roost? Had someone signed an affidavit against her, as the result of a clerical error? At least it was an explanation.

  She felt frozen in more ways than one. She thought later that she must have been in shock. She sat immobile and shivering, trying to take in her surroundings, comprehend her situation. She really didn’t want to put her mind to what to do next.

  They called her for pre-booking, and she felt a shock of betrayal. How could they hold her without booking her? Forgetting the question prohibition, she blurted it out. The deputy laughed. “We can hold you seventy-two hours without booking you.”

  Seventy-two hours!

  “You’ve got to be kidding! You can’t do that.”

  The woman smiled, not a worry in the world. “Sure can.”

  She was so damn smug and superior, like she enjoyed making Terri miserable.

  Every cell in Terri’s body protested. But I’m a good citizen. I pay taxes. I vote. I’m a good girl. She knew better than to say it.

  When she came back to the lockup, one of the phones was free, so she grabbed it. But she didn’t do anything, just stood there and dithered some more. Finally, someone said, “You gonna use it or not?”

  Timidly, Terri moved away.

  There was a toilet of sorts in the holding tank, a toilet partly shielded by a waist-high concrete wall, but from certain angles everyone could see you sitting there doing your business. Someone was sitting there now and hollering for toilet paper.

  “Goddammit!” one of the deputies hollered. “You bitches are out of control. Get off the phones. Up against the wall.”

  And then he locked them all in the holding tank, where they stayed for the next twenty or thirty m
inutes.

  Terri was terrified. “What’s going on?” she asked no one in particular. Most of the women ignored her, but one of them shrugged. “Never did figure it out. Think they go on break.”

  A woman deputy was standing outside the holding tank, in plain view of everyone, eating a small pack of chips. Eating it slowly. Very slowly. One chip at a time.

  She was either talking to herself or to someone just out of Terri’s sight. “Ain’t had a minute to myself all day. I’m going to enjoy my snack.” She spoke almost as slowly as she ate.

  Terri was becoming increasingly panicked. All bets were off in jail. She might be furious with Isaac, might never be his girlfriend again, but she could worry about that later. Right now, she needed him to bail her out.

  Eventually, another guard came along and unlocked the cell. With access to the phones once again (and with the fear of God in her), Terri dialed Isaac’s number, fingers flying, before she talked herself out of it. He came on the line.

  A recorded voice said, “This is Orleans Parish Prison…”

  Isaac hung up.

  That was the last thing Terri expected. He wouldn’t even talk to her. She sat back down, humbled, and shivered some more. Gradually, she realized the hang-up wasn’t personal, Isaac just wasn’t used to getting calls from prisoners, which, when you thought about it, spoke well for him. Finally, she got up the nerve to try again, and this time he heard the recording out “This is Orleans Parish Prison. Will you accept a collect call from…”

  “Terri,” she said, almost shouting. “Terri!” She’d nearly missed her cue.

  “Terri?” He spoke as if he’d never heard of her, and the phone disconnected itself.

  A guard came in again. “Okay, everybody off the phones. Up against the wall.”

  It was a long time before Terri got a chance at a phone again, and in the interim she debated once again the wisdom of calling this man who’d betrayed her. But every time, in spite of what she’d seen, Isaac won the argument simply because the thought of him was so comforting. She knew she’d be putting him out in a way that wasn’t right. With great embarrassment she even remembered that her last message to him was a cake thrown against his door. And in a way, that was the thing that tipped the scales. Because deep in her heart she knew that Isaac would leave the other woman— if she hadn’t already caught her plane— to come bail Terri out no matter if he was planning to run away and get married first thing in the morning.