There is no substitute, not inside nor outside these walls, for a lover who wants you.
I roll onto my stomach and keep it as quiet as I can.
In the morning the regular wakeup call sounds, and we all rise and head back to work. I return to the drawing of Guernica with intense focus, and Shirley even bestows a compliment for the speed and quality of my work. The hours seem to vanish behind me, and before I know it I’m back in the yard, squinting in the sunlight for the first time in days.
I walk the edge of the fence, clicking my tongue, looking for Clementine. The other inmates, gang members sitting at the picnic tables, watch me the way patrons of a café watch a homeless person mumbling down the sidewalk. The other inmates here have never been fond of my indifference to making friends. Even on the outside it was always difficult for me, and in here it’s all the more perilous. People snitch about petty violations, they get transferred to other prisons, they get released. An alliance that was very valuable can become a liability if the other person is unceremoniously taken away. There’s a rule that we can’t receive mail or visits from anyone who was released in the past year, so friendships, even the most carefully cultivated ones, die. But it’s just as well. If I were spontaneously pardoned for my crimes, I’d walk away from all this and never look back. Except for Janny, whom I would never abandon, I wouldn’t maintain my loyalty to friends on the inside or cling to my identity as a former inmate. I’d shed it like a dirty snakeskin and try never to think of it again.
Clementine is nowhere to be found. Dejected, I walk back to the other side of the yard, then pace back and forth near the C.O.s for a while to work the days of laziness out of my muscles. It’s a very hot day, and I suppose the cat must have been smart enough to find shelter. Sweat trickles down my temples and catches in the wispy bits of my hair flying out from my ponytail.
Several days’ worth of mail awaits me when I return to my cell. There is a letter from Emory Pugh, my copy of the Magnificat and a package. I set the other items aside and pull apart the cardboard tabs with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. I can’t remember the last time I got a package, and this one bears Annemarie’s name in the upper left corner. Inside, a folded note sticks up alongside a pink notepad printed with cupcakes, a set of drawing pencils, a jar of coffee and a little bag of cat treats. There is also a bar of German chocolate and a postcard of a beach scene. With shaking hands I unfold the note, and read.
Hello,
It was lovely to see you the other day. I found out I can send a package but the rules are just—wow. No stickers, no stamps, books have to come straight from the vendor, etc. I hope this stuff gets through. You might not like chocolate or coffee, but personally I can’t imagine being stuck anywhere without them. I sent the beach postcard because you said you hadn’t seen the beach in a long time. A postcard is kind of a lame substitute, but it beats that mural on the visiting room wall, at any rate. Hope to have a chance to visit again soon.
I unpack each of the items and line them up on my little desk. She remembered everything I told her. About Clementine and my drawing and how I love the sea. It’s the sort of package I would have put together for my own mother, had my mother lived a terrible life.
The pink notepad has a message scribbled on the back. I bring it toward my face and look above my glasses to read it. This is one of the items I designed. Couldn’t send stickers or a poster, but wanted to show you. -A. Rounded little cupcakes dance along the border, festooned with sprinkles in between. It’s hard to tell how much creativity she was allowed in the design, but her handwriting is angular and stylized, consistent among the letters as if it’s a font she’s created. Her father’s was like that, too— not the same in its lines and loops, but holding a similar confident swagger, as if he knew it was beautiful and that it reflected on him. I wondered if she already knew Ricky had been an artist, and if it made her all the more suspicious that she was his.
But I have an answer for that. Maybe, if I phrase what I say just right, she will come to the conclusion on her own and not need for me to lie at all. If we’re both lucky she will hear what she hopes to hear, because I am certain she hopes not to hear Ricky’s name. I saw it in the wince in her expression when she first asked me. And I don’t want to see it again.
Chapter Six
An entire day passes before I even remember the letter from Emory Pugh. A photo falls out of the envelope when I turn it sideways— an image of him standing in a white-paneled kitchen with his arm around the shoulders of a petite teenage girl, his mustache and goatee neatly trimmed, hair slicked back. He looks very serious, although the girl offers a tentative smile.
Dear Clara,
I’m hurt that I sent you the pictures you asked for and you still haven’t wrote back to me. I thought it was funny you asked for pictures of Ricky but I sent them anyway. Now I wonder if you’re still hung up on him.
I’m sending a photo of me and my daughter so you will have one of me as well as him to remind you who loves you now. Not saying anything bad against Ricky though he was convicted of murder but the fact is that he is no longer with us and I am right here and save all my love for you. You are very special in my life and I hope you don’t forget about me just because of distance separates us. In AA they say EXPECT MIRACLES and it’s true you never know.
I sit down right away and scribble off a letter in return. Emory Pugh, for all his guileless assurance that we belong together, is a good human being, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
Once the letter is written I turn my thoughts back to Annemarie. From the shelf above my books I take down a long rectangle of pink crochet, doubled over and sewn together on two sides. This is my completed project. Long thin braids of yarn trail from two corners. I make a fist and fit my creation around it, as if my hand is a newborn’s round little head. The strings of the bonnet fall evenly on each side of my wrist. It’s just about right.
I run a cupful of water into my coffee machine, put in a filter, and sprinkle on a little of the coffee Annemarie sent. Once it’s prepared, I press the crocheted hat down into the mug and leave it there for a few minutes. Then I take it out and rinse it a bit with some cold water, squeeze it over the sink, and lay it out on the shelf to dry.
The next morning, after they count us, I check my project and find it’s dried nicely. The coffee has muted the bright bubblegum color with a sepia tinge. I wrap it in a triple layer of Kleenex and tie it with an extra piece of yarn I’ve salvaged, set it on my shelf until she calls for me again, and then begin another letter.
Dear Ms. Shepard,
I apologize for the delay in answering your questions. Obviously I have the time to respond, but I have gone nearly twenty-five years thinking about all of this as little as possible, and I find it overwhelming to remember too much at once. It can easily take over my mind, and it becomes deeply depressing when I consider that my entire lifetime—the only one I will ever have—is defined so entirely by those few days when I was twenty-three years old. This leads to unproductive thinking, such as considering that I would be better off had I never met Ricky— but then I believe if I had never met Ricky I would probably be even more miserable free and out in the world than I am confined. I’m not sure how to reconcile that.