I reply with a low laugh at the absurdity of that idea. “No, it was certainly not him.”
“Well, I don’t want to play a guessing game.”
I don’t want you to, either, I think, but I don’t say it aloud. I sit placidly before her, and after a moment I speak. “You know, I tried not to think about any of this for over twenty years. And since the day you walked in here, I haven’t had a moment’s peace in which to think about anything else.”
She tips her head. “Do you want me to apologize for that?”
“No, not at all. I’m thankful beyond words that you were brave enough to find me. I don’t even pretend I can imagine how difficult this must be for you. But this isn’t a trip to the beach for me, either, to revisit all these memories.” I let my gaze drift toward the people posing at the tacky little mural—a preteen girl and an older woman who might be her sister or mother. “You know, when I was a young girl, my stepbrother drowned some stray kittens that were born under our porch. And up until I was just a few months younger than you, my greatest regret in life was that I had coaxed that mama cat into nesting there. Anytime I thought about that it sent this sharp punch of guilt into my gut. Maybe that’s silly, but it’s how I felt. I spent years taking stray cats in to be neutered to try to soften that sense of guilt, and it was good work I did, but it didn’t change how I felt about those kittens.”
She stares at me without blinking. Those clear brown eyes— what else could she have had? It was the one certainty Ricky and I had to offer her.
“Now imagine how I feel about what I did later,” I say. “There’s no nice little neighborhood program I can start up that can compensate for the crimes I committed. Tommy Choi is still out there somewhere, the only one left of his family. I know what it feels like to lose your father. Your mother. To be robbed of your safety and comfort. I know it eats a hole in your soul that you try and try to fill but you never can. And if I hadn’t driven the group to the Circle K that night, that family might still be alive.”
Her brow furrows. “I thought you also shot one of them,” she says, hesitantly.
“No. I was convicted of one count of felony murder in that case. That only means I was part of a felony that resulted in a death, which made me legally liable. I did not kill Mimi Choi.” At the doubt in her expression, I add, “You can’t put stock in what Forrest Hayes claimed he saw. He was self-interested. No matter what you’ve read, no matter what you saw in that damned movie— on my mother’s name, I didn’t kill Mimi Choi.”
She nods tentatively. I can tell she wants to believe me and isn’t sure she can. “But on the first-degree murder count— the priest—you were guilty, too.”
“Yes, I was. I am. I made a terrible decision, and it cost me everything. Including you.” Her expression shifts, and I fold my hands on the table in front of me, matching her posture. “I can tell you this. Your father was an artist. I’m sad to say he’s part of this whole story, and that I never should have been involved with him. But he was a good person, Annemarie. I sure do wish things had worked out differently for both of us.”
She nods again, and I can see the gears in her head churning. I feel a pang at the misleading little trail I’ve cast through the woods, but anything is better than the assumption she brought in with her.
“I think I know who it is,” she says. “I really wish you would just come out with it,” she adds with a barely-restrained scowl.
“Give me time,” I implore her, but even as I say this I can feel the selfish undercurrent in my request. Keep coming back to see me, I think greedily. Let me treasure my hold on this thing you want so badly. Because once she knows the truth, and her story becomes not a mystery but a tragedy, this will all be over. And if I squander this second chance I know I won’t be able to bear it. I would want you to love me, Janny said. The universal yearning of every child for its mother. And that moment of truth is upon me now, because she can no longer be stolen away from me. She is mine to lose.
After lights-out, I work on Intérieur by the tiny reading light in my cell. I can’t sleep. I’m too torn up inside over the things I said to Annemarie and the obsessive thought creeps into my mind that I must finish this project. On Friday, in the Braille workshop, I completed my drawing of Spiral Jetty. In the end it was simply done, and when I ran my fingers over the finished proof I felt a tightness in my throat that was almost painful. All through the workday I had mulled over what I would say to Annemarie if she came to visiting hours the next day—exactly how I would phrase my answers to her questions, using just the right words that would describe who Ricky had been while leading her to conclude I meant Jeff Owen. The exercise felt almost like a word puzzle, and the challenge of it engaged me all the way up until I took that quiet moment to sit and touch my finished work. Then, as my fingers swept over the spiral, I thought: this is how Annemarie must feel. As if she is being drawn along on a path that is anything but straight and clear, not a road through this particular way station on the journey to understand herself, but a curious and rocky trail that might very well lead nowhere.
It didn’t stop me from trying it anyway. At least the diversion will buy me time, I thought—precious, irreplaceable days of Scrabble games and sharing memories and simply gazing at her face before I have to come clean. But now that I’ve looked her in the eye and enticed her in that direction, shame and regret are gnawing at me like a pair of rats. It’s a good thing I can’t call her, because the urge to confess the truth is downright visceral. This is the feeling I remember from the police station the day I was arrested, when they sat me down in a small dim room and read me my rights again and even though I knew, even though I understood beyond question that my words could and would be used against me, my conscience could not help but stick its finger down its throat and force out the truth. Yes, I killed him. It felt so good to unburden myself from it that I sobbed with relief, but the sense of lightness it brought me was a false one. The handing off of heavy truths is a relay race, and you can’t expect that the baton will never come back to you.
All of my drawings for the art book are with Shirley now. On Friday she received the finished portfolio with a look that was, if I dare to say it, admiring. “I’ll put in a good word for you, Clara,” she said to me, and I told her I appreciated that. Early on, I had planned to include the Degas drawing with the others, just in case they thought well of its quality and wanted to include it, but ever since Annemarie began coming around I’ve changed my mind. I know it’s for her, but I’m not sure how to explain the gift in a way she will understand. For now I sit in my darkened cell and coax the paper into ridges and corrugations, tap in patterns and the hints of shadows, and postpone thinking about what I will do with the finished product.
In the painting there’s a large mirror on the wall, right in the center, which reflects nothing comprehensible. I especially like that about it. It gives the feeling that these two figures—the tall man blocking the door and the slumped woman with her back to him—are absolutely alone and isolated. The world bears no record of what is happening here. It’s a dreadful scene, but the story it tells is a true one. So much of art tells the truth about what is going on in the artist’s mind, but in some cases its wisdom ends there. Ricky liked to work with clay—we had a kiln out back at the Cathouse that he and Chris had built of scavenged bricks and scrap metal—and he had a set of colored ink pens with which he drew on everything. His designs were lush and hungry and exaggerated: octopi, corpse flowers, multi-colored tree frogs with alarming wide eyes, voluptuous women in Bettie Page poses. With all of his thoughts traveling through a jungle like that one, it’s no wonder he made the decisions he did. But this Degas painting has none of that unnerving aesthetic or sense of personal reference. It’s almost like a photograph.