Between us the conversation goes quiet. The chatter of the other inmates, friendly and muted, drifts from the picnic tables. When Forrest speaks up again he says, “Well, I guess I can just disregard that phone call, then. I’m sorry I helped put you in jail for longer, though. There, I said it.”
Indeed he has. My mother’s long training of me springs first to my mind—now, Clara, accept his apology—but, no. I can’t. “You didn’t just snitch,” I remind him. “You snitched and lied.”
His voice is infused with a note of offense. “I didn’t lie.”
“Yes, you did. You lied that you saw me shoot Mimi Choi. That’s impossible, because I didn’t do it.”
He looks weary, and his head drops back a bit. “Listen, once all the testimony was in and accounted for, it did put things in a different light. It all happened so fast, and—”
“It wasn’t just that. You lied about what my relationship with Ricky was like, and how much of the initiative I took that evening, and especially how close you were with all of us. We hardly knew you before that night.”
“That’s not true. I hung out with you guys all the time.”
“We hung out without you a lot more.”
He utters a sharp laugh. “Then I was guilty of believing you folks liked me more than you did. I didn’t lie, Clara. I called it the way I saw it, and when I heard the other testimony, it did make me wonder if I saw it right. Not a day went by for the next two decades that I didn’t call into question something about what I saw and what I said about it. But I didn’t set out to lie. They wanted me to talk, my lawyer told me I had to, and all I could do was describe the way it looked through my eyes. What would you have done in my shoes, huh? Wouldn’t you have told them what you thought was true, whether or not you stood to gain from it?”
I sigh through my nose and let my gaze wander back to the yard. The razor wire spirals across the top of the fence, gleaming silver beneath the hot sun.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks, and there’s a tenderness to his voice that’s unexpected. We’ve been through a war together, he and I. On opposite sides, yes, but having seen the same carnage, dragged ourselves through the same trenches. In a lonely world that counts for something.
I think for a moment. “Sure,” I say. “Kiss me on the mouth.”
He laughs. He looks at me to see if I’m serious.
“I just want to remember what it feels like,” I explain. “It’s not really allowed, but if they ban you from visiting me again, so what. You weren’t coming back anyway.”
He squints out at the barren yard with a tense smile. “Gee, Ricky’s girlfriend,” he says in a voice that’s only half-joking. “I feel like I should definitely say no to that.”
“You owe me,” I tell him.
I glance around for officers, and so does he. He takes two steps closer and slips a hand into my hair, and he touches his mouth, half-open, to mine. Oh, yes, I remember this thrill—the warmth and unhindered desire of a man’s kiss, the plea it makes, the naked sensuality. His hand tightens on the back of my head; his kiss grows deeper, and the gentle brush of his tongue sends a shock down through my belly. A moment later an officer barks at us, and we separate at once.
“Don’t you dare start with that foolishness,” the corrections officer says. “Miss Mattingly. Don’t even try that.”
I turn to Forrest, who has moved a courteous distance away. He offers me a respectful nod. “Well, see ya. Good luck, Clara.”
“Thank you. Thanks for visiting.”
He’s gone, and I’m left feeling drained of my anger and a little dizzy from arousal. I’m exhausted, and it’s not just from the sun, or even the emotional rush of the morning. It’s the pure effort of feeling new things, day after day, without a break. It’s so easy to sustain oneself as a machine, but as a human it takes energy far beyond my reserves.
That night I find myself lying wide awake in bed, listening to the distant echoes of guards’ footsteps in the hallway and the clanking of chains, and I think about Forrest’s kiss. Even though it happened only hours ago, in my memory it is the much younger Forrest pulling me against him, bringing his mouth to mine. I think about the quick darting of his tongue before the guard separated us, and the thrill that zigzagged through me. It warms me more than I could ever have imagined to learn that youthful passion lives on, even in someone my very same age, who once was young with me. It’s still out there for the taking.
My thoughts wander to the first attempts Ricky and I made at that kind of love, long ago in the first months we were together. He had kissed me the first night, there on the boardwalk, and every day after—but kissing was easy. Clinton didn’t kiss, so it was the one realm free of trauma, and I was very glad for it. But the rest posed a challenge, and even after we had decided we would sleep together—it was a serious conversation, though not a decision he needed time to mull over—we made four earnest attempts before we found success. The first few times, cuddled up in the sweet privacy of his attic room at his parents’ house, he did everything he could. At the dentist’s office I always overheard the lunchtime talk of the other girls—their complaints and giggly personal stories of pushy, selfish men—and knew that, in this way, Ricky was a rare gem. Yet no matter how patient his hands, or how relaxed the mood he set, as soon as he lowered his weight onto me and began to press his body into mine—I panicked.
Then it was a rainy afternoon, and his parents were away for the whole weekend, and we were trying again. His bed was a twin pressed against the wall. On the opposite wall, the roof sloped to leave a low ceiling; in between, his two big bedroom windows looked out over his family’s wooded backyard. The lamp was off, but he had opened the shades to let in the late-afternoon light, and when he rose up on his knees to run his hands down my body the shifting clouds threw a palette of shadows across his chest, all different shades of gray. His hair had grown a bit too long and was falling into his eyes. He looked thoughtful. “You should get on top this time,” he said, and I laughed nervously. “I mean it,” he went on. “That way you can control everything. You won’t have to worry that I’ll force myself on you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I said, a reply so quick it almost overlapped his. “But I can’t do that. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll show you.” His hands were soft and so relaxing, their steady sweep and pressure lulling my mind into a trancelike state. He was so patient. I knew he was already sick and tired of having Clinton as the ghostly third party in his bed, and we had only barely begun to wrestle with that demon. For him to accommodate me I’d needed to give him an encyclopedic understanding of the abuse, and as humiliating as I found that, he was a tender custodian of my secrets. What he was suggesting now, at least, was something I had never done before. “I love it,” he said, for once conjuring his own past instead of mine. “I’d do it like that every time if I could.”
He nudged me over and lay on his back, then held my hips as I moved my legs astride his body. Very gradually, I lowered myself onto him. The way the rain struck the windows reminded me of the ballet studio when I was a girl, and the sound and sight of it calmed me. When he was fully inside me he closed his eyes and let out a slow sigh through his teeth; his hands, always gentle, swirled on my thighs. The bliss I saw in his face wasn’t scary or threatening; it was a beautiful sight, and he was a beautiful man. Now he is my lover, I thought, and Clinton is the past. I’ve moved on. Of course that was simplistic, and I knew it even at that moment, but the meaning rang true. Clinton’s stranglehold over me had at last been broken by this. He was no longer the only man who had claimed me; not the only man who would find pleasure in my body; he hadn’t savaged my mind, or my body, or my reputation so thoroughly that I would never recover. Ricky opened his eyes and met my gaze. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Does it hurt?”