“Three, four years?” I could barely count. My past seemed to flatten down into nothing in Rebecca’s presence. “It was only going to be temporary, while I moved back here for a bit when my mother was sick,” I explained. “And then she died and I just stayed on at the prison. And time’s just flown by,” I said, escalating my voice to sound chipper, funny.
“Oh no. Oh dear,” Rebecca shook her head. “That sounds absolutely awful. Prison is no place for time to fly. Jeez Louise. And your mother dying. You must be eager to get out of here. Are you?”
“I’m happy here,” I lied, sipping my beer.
“You know, I’m an orphan, too,” said Rebecca. I didn’t bother to correct her, tell her my father was still alive. “My parents both died when I was young. Drowned,” she said. “My uncle raised me out west, where the sun shines. I’ll never understand how you all do it up here winter after winter. Positively creepy, all the darkness, and so cold. It just about drives me mad.” She talked about the ocean, how she loved the beach. Growing up she’d play for hours in the sun and sand, and so on. And then she spoke about her move to Cambridge, how she and her girlfriends rowed boats on the Charles. She praised the foliage, the history, mocked the intellectuals—“the stiffs”—said she was in a “strange love affair with New England.” She never mentioned her studies at Harvard. She said nothing about her professional life at all. “Things feel very real out here, don’t they? There’s simply no fantasy. And no sentimentality. That’s what fascinates me. There is history and pride, but very little imagination here.”
I just listened. I had my whiskey and beer and Rebecca, and I hardly cared to disagree with her assessment of the place, my homeland. I just nodded. But of course she was dead wrong. We New Englanders are uptight for sure, but we have strong minds. We use our imaginations effectively. We don’t waste our brains on magical notions or useless frills, but we do have the ability to fantasize. I could name countless thinkers and writers and artists as examples. And there was me, after all. I was there. But I didn’t say much. I just sat there dumb, twisting my foot to the music. After a while she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve had too much to drink. I tend to talk too much when I drink.”
“That’s all right,” I said, shrugging.
“Better than talking too little,” she said, winking at me. “Only teasing.” She swiveled on her bar stool, jostling my legs before I had a chance to feel offended. “The real silent one is that Leonard Polk. You saw him today?”
I nodded. The coincidence of Rebecca’s new interest in Lee Polk with his mother’s sudden appearance at Moorehead still struck me as odd, but I didn’t feel it was my place to ask questions. I was just a secretary, after all.
“What did you make of that scene with his mother?” Rebecca asked. “Strange,” she squinted at me, “didn’t you think so?”
I shrugged. I suppose I still felt ashamed that I’d spied on the boy in the cave. Even just remembering the look of him through that little window made my heart beat faster — the hands moving under his uniform, his eyes hooded and sleepy. It excited me even then. The shame of arousal, the arousal of shame. “I don’t know,” I began. “Maybe he stopped talking because he had nothing nice to say. You know what they say to children — if you can’t think of anything nice to say, say nothing.”
“They say that to children?” Rebecca’s face grimaced in disgust. “Well, I wondered whether Lee might have something to hide, or whether he’d taken his vow of silence to protest his incarceration. Or was it just to torture his mother, be the thorn in her side since he hadn’t had the chance to slit her throat, too? I read his whole file, you know.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “There’s nothing worse than when someone won’t talk to you. Drives me crazy, at least.” I didn’t tell her how my father would go silent for days, ignoring me, eyes glazed over as though I were invisible, saying nothing no matter how much I begged him to answer me. “What have I done wrong? Please tell me.” Rebecca didn’t press me for details.
“But did she seem angry to you, Mrs. Polk?” she asked.
“She seemed upset. They’re always upset, those mothers,” I told her. I wasn’t sure what Rebecca was getting at.
“Perhaps his silence is for her benefit. His silence could be charitable, know what I mean?” She cocked her head thoughtfully, searched my face for a response. I hadn’t followed her reasoning, but I nodded, tried to smile. “Secrets and lies?” she said, dipping her finger into her drink and sucking it. “I tell you, doll,” she said. I blushed. “Some families are so sick, so twisted, the only way out is for someone to die.”
“Boys will be boys,” is all I could think to say. Rebecca just laughed.
“The warden said the same thing this afternoon when I asked him about Leonard.” This surprised me. She finished her martini, then swung around on her bar stool, again facing the table of men. Lighting a cigarette, her posture now became angular and seductive. She blew the smoke in a tall plume up at the low ceiling. “I asked him,” she began, voice modulated into a higher register, eyes squinting at the men who seemed to stiffen, wipe their mouths and look alive, “what Leonard had done to get so many days in the cave, as you all call it. And he said what you said, Eileen.” She put her hand on my knee and then just left it there, as though it had found its rightful place on my leg. “Boys will be boys. I bet it was for something of a sexual nature. Something deviant. They don’t like to tell us gals such things. Leonard has the look. You know what I mean?” she asked.
I was shocked, of course. But I knew exactly what she meant. I had seen “the look” through that little window the day before. “I know,” I told her.
“I thought you might,” she said, winked, and squeezed my thigh.
“What’d you say your name was?” one of the men hollered, interrupting our private moment. Rebecca lifted her hand, placed it against her chest, looked wide-eyed.
“My name?” she asked, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. The men stirred in their seats, expectant as young dogs. “I’m Eileen,” she said. “And this is my friend.” Her hand found mine, still ice-cold and limp in my lap. “Do you all know my friend here?”
“And what’s your name, sweetheart?” one of them asked me. I can’t tell you how fun it was sitting there with Rebecca, a table full of men at our disposal. At least that’s how it seemed.
“Tell these boys your name, doll,” prompted Rebecca. When I looked at her, she winked. “My friend is feeling shy tonight,” she said. “Don’t be shy, Rebecca. These boys won’t bite.”
“Unless you ask us to,” the first man replied. “Jerry here’s got some missing teeth, though. Show ’em, Jerry.” Jerry, the man nearest to me, smiled, peeling up his top lip to show a comical gap. “Go easy, Jerry,” his friend said, patting him on the shoulder.
“How’d that come about, Jerry?” Rebecca asked. Sandy set more drinks for us on the bar. I drank mine fast. I had a moderate tolerance for alcohol, but an extreme thirst for it once I got started. I was probably already drunk by that point. “Did you get in a fight with your wife?” Rebecca teased.
The men laughed. “That’s it. You guessed right. His old lady has an arm like Joe Frazier.”
“Oh dear,” Rebecca shook her head, turned to pick up her martini, winked at me surreptitiously. “To Jerry,” she said, raising her glass. The rest toasted and cheered and for the silent moment while everyone gulped from their drinks, I looked around, astonished at my new place in the world. There I was, a lady, celebrated and adored.