“They would if the court told them to.”
“But I have life without parole.”
“Now you do, Clara. But how do you think Forrest Hayes got his sentence reduced from ten years to one? ‘Substantial assistance,’ that’s how. You can call it snitching if you like, but outside these bars, they call it freedom.”
I’m very quiet. I look down at the tile.
“I advise you to try this,” Mona tells me softly. “And get the information quickly, before someone else does. Don’t say a word about it to anyone. Not to your daughter, not to a friend, not to a single soul. Just to me, the day you find it out, and I’ll have you moved immediately.”
“Moved where?”
“Administrative Segregation, pending a court order for your release.”
I nod. That means the Hole—that desolate hell of never ending angry noise, stifling heat, and medieval restriction. No job. Showers twice a week. Food pushed through a slot in the door. And the boredom—the crushing, mind-scrambling boredom—that is the worst part of all. I can do prison day in and day out, but too much time in the Hole and I begin to lose my mind. Yet for a known snitch, there’s no other way. If the sentence reduction didn’t come through, I’d never be safe to return to General Population, not here. A transfer to a facility in a faraway state would probably be my single option.
But the image of Annemarie’s face flashes to the forefront of my mind, the way she looked when she slapped her birth certificate against the glass. “I’ll do it,” I tell her.
Chapter Twelve
It takes me almost a week to work up the nerve to tack up the photo Forrest and I had taken together at his most recent visit. In it we’re standing in front of that mural of the waterfall, our arms behind each other’s backs in the way of friends, or perhaps a couple that have been married for a very long time. His smile is shy, a little abashed, which contrasts with the aging-rock-guitarist look he otherwise projects. My own smile is bigger, hopeful, boosted by the excitement of Scrabble wins and his company. My hair looks nice—loose and wavy. Standing beside Forrest, with my slight shoulders and slender neck, I look feminine. It’s not a word I normally think about in relation to myself. It exists only in contrast to men, and I never see myself beside a man who isn’t a guard or a priest. There are lots of women I see as masculine, but here that means aggressive or menacing. And Forrest isn’t menacing. He’s very comfortable to be around, with his quiet, protective air.
I stick the picture to the wall beside my pastel drawing of the ballerina, and Penelope comes over to see. “Hey, that’s the guy from the visiting room. Your not-boyfriend.”
I laugh. “Yes, that’s Forrest.”
“He’s kind of cute. For an old guy.”
“He is, isn’t he? His wife left him for someone on the internet.”
Penelope nods knowingly. “Happens all the time.”
“Does it? You see, when I got here, there was no internet. Your spouse would leave you for good old-fashioned reasons, like the cute lifeguard or your best friend.”
She snorts a laugh. “Don’t go there. Kevin hasn’t come to see me once since I got here. Every time I talk to him I say, listen, if you want to break up, just be straight with me about it. Tell me to my face—or at least, to my ear. And he keeps saying ‘no, we’re cool, we’re cool,’ but something tells me we’re not cool.”
I grimace and take out a tube of toothpaste, squirting a quantity of it into my coffee mug. I’ve told Penelope I’ll teach her a classic prison craft—making a kind of clay out of toilet paper mixed with white toothpaste, and using it to build tiny dioramas or sculptures. Because it dries quickly it can only be made in small quantities, but it’s a good way to pass the time during the hour when others are at their AA meetings and anger management classes.
“I read that your father was not a fan of Kevin,” I say.
“Not really, no. My dad is the quiet type of racist—you know what I mean? If you’re a black guy he’ll shake your hand, act superficially respectful, pay lip service to all the civil rights stuff, but he does not want to see your face at the yacht club. Not unless you’re serving him his bourbon.” She shakes her head and eases down to sit on the floor. “But the media played that up too much. I bitched about it to everyone, so when they talked to reporters, of course that was the detail that made it into the stories. But it wasn’t like we’d been throwing vases at each other because he wanted me to break up with Kevin. What we fought about was Sherry.”
I sprinkle torn pieces of toilet paper into the mug. “Sherry? Your father’s girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah. She would take my clothes, Clara. If I was staying at Kevin’s she would raid my closet and leave my stuff around, all smelling like her trashy perfume. And I had a bottle of peach vodka on my dresser, and she took it. When I confronted her about it, she said I’m too young to drink anyway. Can you believe that?”
“She sounds like a real piece of work.”
“Here, sit down. What are we doing, just ripping up toilet paper?”
I sit beside her and stir the mixture with a plastic spoon as she sprinkles more paper into the mug. Then I set out two torn pieces of last week’s canteen boxes, and we both set to work building our sculptures. I lay the foundation for a tiny nativity scene.
“I used to do this with Janny sometimes,” I tell her, “though it was complicated because Janny was blind. But she made an entire rosary by rolling beads and stringing them onto a thread from her sheets. And we used mint toothpaste, so it smelled very nice.”
Penelope laughs. She’s rolling her clay into a long circle, like a child’s idea of a snake. “I should make one of those and send it to the nuns at my old school. Dear Sister Agatha, I made you a present. Love, Penelope.”
“What did your brother think of her? Sherry, I mean.”
She makes a noise from the back of her throat—a rude, choking laugh. “Steven likes her about as much as I do. If he pulls the plug on our dad, I’m sure he won’t waste any time telling her to pack up and leave. Have you seen her? Total trophy wife material. Nothing like our mom.”
“How long have they been divorced?”
“Since I was ten, so, almost ten years.” She has arranged the clay circle on her square of cardboard and is molding a tiny bird to sit inside it. “Do you think this clay will support itself well enough that I can build a birdcage? That would be kind of touching, wouldn’t it? Anyway, our mom lives in Massachusetts now. She’s remarried. I see her three or four times a year. Does yours ever come to visit you?”
“My mother? She died a long time ago, while I was in here.”
Penelope pushes her bottom lip out in a frown. “Aw, that’s sad. Were you close?”
“Very.”
“Did they let you go to her funeral, at least?”
“No.”
“Can I ask you a real question?” she says. She’s looking at me uncertainly, and I realize my last answers were abrupt. I pinch the clay into the shape of a Wise Man and try to ease my features into an expression less bitter.
“Of course.”
“If you’re so religious, why did you kill a priest?”
I keep my eyes and mouth impassive as I finish the crown of the Wise Man. “I’ll answer that if you answer a question, too.”
“Sure. But you go first.”
“All right. I killed him because I was angry and upset at the way he had treated me, and I was too weak to show him mercy. I did the easiest thing, which was to lash out at him, instead of the difficult thing, which would have been to show him forgiveness. Resentment is like blood poisoning, you know. You let the wound fester because you think it will heal on its own with time, but by the time you see the red streaks coming from it, it’s too late. You’ve lost something.”