Ms. Chandler smiles. “Have you ever been skiing?” she asks. Janny says “No” at the same moment I say, “Six winters in a row.”
“You never told me that,” Janny says, scolding, and something in her expression looks wounded. It’s such a small fact, but when you’re living with someone, especially someone who is a criminal, you want to know her well enough that nothing is a surprise. She’ll feel so betrayed if she finds out about Annemarie, I think, and I wish that idea wouldn’t twist in my gut quite so hard.
During Saturday visiting hours I’m collected from my cell quite unexpectedly and shackled for the walk downstairs. I expect to turn toward the booths, but Officer Kerns nudges me forward toward the contact visiting room—the larger one filled with tables, like a cafeteria.
“Wait, where am I going?” I ask her. “I went to the booths last time.”
“That’s because they hadn’t cleared you for contact visits again after your fight. You’re good now.” She walks me through the metal gate and unlocks my wrists. “There ya go. Have a nice visit.”
And I’m here. The room contains about twenty other inmates scattered around at different tables with their family and friends, or taking pictures in a corner painted with a mural of a waterfall. I cast a baleful gaze across the wide space, and then a woman stands and raises her hand in a small wave. It’s Annemarie.
I don’t move. I can’t. Am I supposed to shake her hand? Hug her? She doesn’t look very certain, either. She waves me over, and I slide in on the other side of the table, sitting at the attached bench. Stacked in front of her is a small pile of papers. She throws a nervous look in my direction. “I wasn’t sure what to do when they sent me to this room. They seem to change the rules constantly.” I nod, and she adds, “That must be hard to live with.”
“You get used to it,” I say.
She slides the papers across the table to me, and I realize they’re large photos, upside down. “I brought some pictures of me growing up,” she explains. “I figured we have to start somewhere, and you were probably wondering. So, here.”
Oh, the guilt. I feel the stab of it in the soft place below my rib cage, and it keeps going, like a knife is digging around in there. In twenty-four years I hardly gave a moment’s thought to the subject. I’d surrendered her for adoption, and knew that people who adopted babies did so because they wanted one desperately. I took for granted that the infant was well off, but her fate was beyond my control in any case. With fumbling hands I flip over the photographic paper and see a picture of a toddler in front of a Christmas tree, a large green gift bow in her hands, smiling beside a Big Wheel tricycle.
“I have really good parents,” she says. “My mom wanted a baby for years and could never have one. She always said I was her special blessing from God. So life’s been good to me, pretty much. My parents gave me everything they could, and that was a lot.”
The other photographs are in the same vein—a school photo of a little girl with blond pigtails, a long-legged nine-year-old in a fancy black and white dress at a piano, and then a baby again, nearly bald and dressed in a cowgirl costume for Halloween. I feel the clutching inside my chest again, the way I felt when they told me about my mother. I try to relax, to soothe the tension, but in the end I shove the pictures back across the table and press my palms against my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice thin as porcelain. “I just wanted you to see I was fine.”
“I’m glad. I’m truly glad.”
“I figured you probably worried a lot. So you can put that to rest now.” She pats my elbow in a tentative way, and I fold my arms on the table before me. “I wanted to tell you that I appreciate what you did, and I think it was very brave. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to choose to give up your child so she can have a better chance in life. Thank you.”
Don’t you see? I think, and inside I’m screaming in frustration. What choice did I ever have? What was I supposed to do, hand her over to Clinton and his wife? To the parents who raised Ricky Rowan? She would have been better off left on a stranger’s doorstep. And back in 1985, nobody asked a prisoner in her second trimester of pregnancy whether she’d prefer a trip to the women’s clinic downtown. She just endured, and signed her paperwork at the end of it, and got on with her life in a smaller jumpsuit. That was all.
A silence nestles between us, awkward and ungainly. After a few moments Annemarie speaks. “I read that you went to art school in Wisconsin.”
“I did. I’m not sure what I expected to do with that degree. I had visions of being a portrait artist, like the ones you see at Knott’s Berry Farm. Lucrative work, that.”
She smiles. “So is that why you came back to California? To get work there?”
“No, I just didn’t like Wisconsin.”
She laughs, and I smile at her—a natural reaction, but one that feels unfamiliar to me now. “I missed California,” I say. “I really loved the beach. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it now, but I know it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“Did you work as an artist when you came back?”
“No, I had a student loan to pay, so I decided to be practical. I took an office job instead.” I push my bangs back from my eyes. “I worked for a licentious dentist.”
She laughs again. “A licentious dentist?”
“Yes, he was always making off-color jokes and patting his office staff on the rear. The turnover rate in the office was incredible. Patients were always getting double-billed because employees would quit and walk out without properly recording what they had done that day. I spent most of my days on the phone straightening things out. And getting my rear end squeezed.”
Her eyes have squinted up in an incredulous way. “And you put up with that?”
“Oh, it was 1982, 1983. And I was used to it. I know it sounds terrible now, but—” I shrug. “At the time it just seemed like something you tolerated for a steady paycheck.”
She nods, but I can tell it doesn’t make sense to her. “So, you said you’re getting married,” I try. “How are the wedding plans going?”
She bobs her head with deliberate enthusiasm—compensating for her earlier confusion, I suppose. “Really well. It’s only three months away. My mom is taking care of most of it. I mean…you know, my adoptive—”
“It’s fine. She’s your mom.”
Her smile is broad and relieved. “Yeah, she’s figuring out what style of monogram to put on the almond boxes and what flowers go where and all that stuff. She wants to do it, and that’s fine with me. Things have been crazy at work, so I don’t really have the time.”
“What do you do? As a job, I mean?”
“I’m a graphic designer for a kids’ stationery company. Like, for stickers and pencil cases and folders and things like that. I didn’t go to art school, though.” Her smile is tight, almost apologetic. “We just sent the fall designs to Production. If I see one more cartoon cupcake I’m going to puke.”
I try to repress a laugh, but it comes out anyway. I worry, between her eye-roll and my laugh, the inmates at the mural are going to think they’re being mocked. That wouldn’t end well for me, but I don’t want to break the flow of conversation by pointing that out to Annemarie.
“Well, I’m trying to gather up some more information for you before your wedding,” I say. “I’ve been in touch with a few people who are helping me pull it together.”