The last house was the kind that even solicitors would pass by. The cinder-block wall running along the street was disintegrating a brick at a time, especially since the kids in the area started helping them. All covered with ivy up and over the roof. Big security-alarm posting by the front door. Never a sign of life; someone could be dead in there for all anybody knew.
It was like the four houses were in a worst-yard contest, like the opposite of those shows that told you how to make your place look good. Fred decided he’d push back. He picked up some business cards at a home-improvement store and went around the corners late one night — tree trimming, painting, driveway repair, landscape, masonry — even an autoshop card under the truck’s windshield wiper and a therapist’s card for the religion nut jammed behind one of his window screens.
Whenever he left that place, Fred felt glad he lived in West Garden Grove, which was totally safe. He liked coming up his street, with its parkway trees controlled by regular severe pruning. Of four models in the tract, his was the Alpine, which he kept nice with maintenance and inventory schedules for everything from A/C filters to Ziploc bags.
His neighbor Manny Delgado, who had just made sergeant at the GGPD, liked to joke about all the old farts working the west end just before they retired — because nothing ever happened there.
Kind of true. It was a strange city, like somebody said about Oakland, no there there. Only a mile or so north to south but stretched out west to east, Garden Grove was sandwiched between other cities like a slice of cheese. He wouldn’t want to live in midtown, which might as well be Westminster and its Little Saigon, where teenage Asian gangs roamed. The east end, same thing, but with Latino gangs. He’d been meaning to ask Manny what it took to qualify for the police, be part of the solution to crime. He felt ready for a change, and he was getting in shape. Of course, Angel might not like it, but he’d talk to her.
Fred hurried home, unlocked the front door, and looked for a letter, finding instead the visit application Angel had sent. Man, he could feel it now. It was really happening. No phone messages except for a gym manager returning his call. Parking the cordless phone on the toilet tank, he took a quick shower and changed into loose-knit pants and a comfy old Angels baseball shirt. He switched on the TV, grabbed a diet cherry soda from the fridge, and opened a cabinet to get some microwave popcorn — but then he heard the weird twangy intro music for Cold Case Files and hurried in to see if he could outguess the detectives.
Somewhere, his cordless phone was ringing.
Fred stared for a split second at the remote in the palm of his hand. He shook it and put it to his ear before he grasped the problem. Running down the hall to get it before it went to message, he snatched up the phone atop the toilet tank and, trying not to sound breathless, gasped, “Angel?”
There was a pause, then a click. A mechanical voice said, This is the California State Department of Corrections with a collect call from — pause, and another voice saying, Angela May Winkler, then the machine again, Please choose from the following options...
The first option was to take the call and accept charges, so he waited no longer and pressed that number.
Another pause. Then a real voice silky as butter dripping and slithering down between kernels of fresh popcorn: “Hey, Fred, this is Angel. Are you there?”
He took a breath. “Oh, yeah, I’m really here. How’s Daddy’s little Angel girl?”
Some weeks later, Angel sent Fred his approved visitor’s permit. Even though the phone calls had given him a sense of what Angel would be like, he wanted to be face-to-face, touch her, feel her touching him.
Mother’s Day Sunday, Fred got up at dawn because he couldn’t sleep. The prison had a whole load of restrictions on visitors, and he’d skimmed the booklet — but they were guidelines, not ironclad laws, right? Most sounded like they made sense — no medicine, even over-the-counter. No hats. No tobacco or alcohol. No food; you had to buy it from their vending machines. No chewing gum? That one made him wonder. You couldn’t go in there dressed like an inmate, like in a movie he saw where two guys switched places. He laughed out loud at the rule that said women who set off the metal detectors with an underwire bra had to go in without it.
Fred showered and weighed himself, proud to be ten pounds and one belt-notch smaller than before, and put on his new khakis, loose Hawaiian shirt, and Brand X huaraches — the finest sandals made in Mexico, according to Manny.
Glad he started early, he joined the slow-moving line of cars leading into the prison, showed his pass at the gate, parked in the visitor area, and followed the obvious path — they weren’t taking any chances on somebody wandering away. Everything was drab, institutional, painted government green, but the lawn and flower borders were surprisingly well tended, the windows spotless.
The path ended in a slow-mo line of people and a sign that read:
Fred got in behind a granny with two little girls maybe four and six, who ran around on the cracked, dusty asphalt and ignored her yelling their names every few minutes. She finally gave up, peering down at what looked like birth certificates. Maybe she was embarrassed how they disobeyed her. He’d have suggested she pop them good once in a while instead of calling them, but he didn’t know any Spanish. Amazing how often people could miss the obvious solution to their problem.
Right behind him, someone did that ahem kind of throat-clearing, so he turned around to see a grim-looking, scrawny, straight-lipped redneck nodding at the candy-shop bag Fred was carrying.
“You must be a first-timer,” the man announced. “They don’t let anybody take in gifts like candy. Afraid of contraband.”
“I know,” said Fred, trying not to sound defensive. “I read the guidelines, and it isn’t candy. Thought maybe I’d take in a few women’s magazines — Mother’s Day and all.”
The man smiled, and his lined face — more sandblasted than chiseled — seemed surprisingly kind. “Mama’s contraband is still contraband. If I was you, I’d go back to your car and send ’em through channels, because those guards will just toss ’em.” Know-it-all was still sort of smiling.
“Well, maybe they will and maybe they won’t,” Fred muttered and turned away. Guy was probably right, but Fred wasn’t about to lose his place in line.
He was closer to the front now, everybody getting out their IDs, women carrying see-through plastic pouches instead of purses, watching what they said but trying to act friendly. Visitors with kids produced birth certificates. A few teen girls buttoned up their blouses, smoothed down their skirts, and covered their stomachs. Not because they respected good old Mom; it was the rules. He remembered Angel saying that whenever a guard didn’t like what girls had on, they got to cover up in old baggy thrift store clothes, or leave. “This place, all they want to do is control everything you do. Everything. Even when it makes no sense — hell, ’specially then — just to show you how they can. Shit.” He wished she wouldn’t swear, but those words came straight from the heart.
She’d added that having so few choices was why it was important to keep money in her canteen account since they couldn’t have cash. “Thanks, sweetie,” she’d said after he sent a couple-hundred transfer to her with the usual bureaucratic hurdles. “With a little canteen account, now I can get myself shampoo, deodorant, makeup — girly things. I’m so lucky to have you.”