“Now you go and get ready Sis. You go and get ready, all right?”
“I don’t know who she thinks she is,” Ma says when I go downstairs. “Too good to go and see her own father.”
As she talks Ma is packing a big brown grocery sack. Into it go a cornucopia of goodies — three cartons of Lucky Strike filters, three packages of Hershey bars, two bottles of Ban roll-on deodorant, three Louis L’Amour paperbacks as well as all the stuff that’s there already.
Ma looks up at me. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was a young woman. She was a beauty. But that was before she started putting on weight and her hair started thinning and she stopped caring about how she dressed and all. “She going to go with us?”
“She says not.”
“Just who does she think she is?”
“Calm down Ma. If she doesn’t want to go, we’ll just go ahead without her.”
“What do we tell your dad?”
“Tell him she’s got the flu?”
“The way she had the flu the last six times?”
“She’s gone a few times.”
“Yeah twice out of the whole year he’s been there.”
“Well.”
“How do you think he feels? He gets all excited thinking he’s going to see her and then she doesn’t show up. How do you think he feels? She’s his own flesh and blood.”
I sigh. Ma’s none too healthy and getting worked up this way doesn’t do her any good. “I better go and call Riley.”
“That’s it. Go call Riley. Leave me here alone to worry about what we’re going to tell your dad.”
“You know how Riley is. He appreciates a call.”
“You don’t care about me no more than your selfish sister does.”
I go out to the living room where the phone sits on the end table I picked up at Goodwill last Christmastime. A lot of people don’t like to shop at Goodwill, embarrassed about going in there and all. The only thing I don’t like is the smell. All those old clothes hanging. Sometimes I wonder if you opened up a grave if it wouldn’t smell like Goodwill.
I call Kmart, which is where I work as a manager trainee while I’m finishing off my retail degree at the junior college. My girlfriend Karen works at Kmart too. “Riley?”
“Hey, Tom.”
“How’re things going in my department?” A couple months ago, Riley, who is the assistant manager over the whole store, put me in charge of the automotive department.
“Good great.”
“Good. I was worried.” Karen always says she’s proud ‘cause I worry so much about my job. Karen says it proves I’m responsible. Karen says one of the reasons she loves me so much is ‘cause I’m responsible. I guess I’d rather have her love me for my blue eyes or something but of course I don’t say anything because Karen can get crabby about strange things sometimes.
“You go and see your old man today, huh?” Riley says.
“Yeah.”
“Hell of a way to spend your day off.”
“It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”
“Any word on when he gets out?”
“Be a year or so yet. Being his second time in and all.”
“You’re a hell of a kid Tom, I ever tell you that before?”
“Yeah you did Riley and I appreciate it.” Riley is a year older than me but sometimes he likes to pretend he’s my uncle or something. But he means well and, like I told him, I appreciate it. Like when Dad’s name was in the paper for the burglary and everything. The people at Kmart all saw it and started treating me funny. But not Riley. He’d walk up and down the aisles with me and even put his arm on my shoulder like we were the best buddies in the whole world or something. In the coffee room this fat woman made a crack about it and Riley got mad and said, “Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth, Shirley?” Nobody said anything more about my dad after that. Of course poor Sis had it a lot worse than me at Catholic school. She had it real bad. Some of those kids really got vicious. A lot of nights I’d lay awake thinking of all the things I wanted to do to those kids. I’d do it with my hands, too, wouldn’t even use weapons.
“Well say hi to your mom.”
“Thanks Riley. I’ll be sure to.”
“She’s a hell of a nice lady.” Riley and his girl came over one night when Ma’d had about three beers and was in a really good mood. They got along really well. He had her laughing at his jokes all night. Riley knows a lot of jokes. A lot of them.
“I sure hope we make our goal today.”
“You just relax Tom and forget about the store. OK?”
“I’ll try.”
“Don’t try Tom. Do it.” He laughs, being my uncle again. “That’s an order.”
In the kitchen, done with packing her paper bag, Ma says, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Said what?” I say.
“About you being like your sister.”
“Aw Ma. I didn’t take that seriously.”
“We couldn’t have afforded to stay in this house if you hadn’t been promoted to assistant manager. Not many boys would turn over their whole paychecks to their mas.” She doesn’t mention her sister who is married to a banker who is what bankers aren’t supposed to be, generous. I help but he helps a lot.
She starts crying.
I take her to me, hold her. Ma needs to cry a lot. Like she fills up with tears and will drown if she can’t get rid of them. When I hold her I always think of the pictures of her as a young woman, of all the terrible things that have cost her her beauty.
When she’s settled down some I say, “I’ll go talk to Sis.”
But just as I say that I hear the old boards of the house creak and there in the doorway, dressed in a white blouse and a blue skirt and blue hose and the blue flats I bought her for her last birthday, is Sis.
Ma sees her, too, and starts crying all over again. “Oh God hon thanks so much for changing your mind.”
Then Ma puts her arms out wide and she goes over to Sis and throws her arms around her and gets her locked inside this big hug.
I can see Sis’s blue eyes staring at me over Ma’s shoulder.
In the soft fog of the April morning I see watercolor brown cows on the curve of the green hills and red barns faint in the rain. I used to want to be a farmer till I took a two-week job summer of junior year where I cleaned out dairy barns and it took me weeks to get the odor of wet hay and cowshit and hot pissy milk from my nostrils and then I didn’t want to be a farmer ever again.
“You all right hon?” Ma asks Sis.
But Sis doesn’t answer. Just stares out the window at the watercolor brown cows.
“Ungrateful little brat,” Ma says under her breath.
If Sis hears this she doesn’t let on. She just stares out the window.
“Hon slow down,” Ma says to me. “This road’s got a lot of curves in it.”
And so it does.
Twenty-three curves — I’ve counted them many times — and you’re on top of a hill looking down into a valley where the prison lies.
Curious, I once went to the library and read up on the prison. According to the historical society it’s the oldest prison still standing in the Midwest, built of limestone dragged by prisoners from a nearby quarry. In 1948 the west wing had a fire that killed eighteen blacks (they were segregated in those days) and in 1957 there was a riot that got a guard castrated with a busted pop bottle and two inmates shot dead in the back by other guards who were never brought to trial.
From the two-lane asphalt road that winds into the prison you see the steep limestone walls and the towers where uniformed guards toting riot guns look down at you as you sweep west to park in the visitors’ parking lot.
As we walk through the rain to the prison, hurrying as the fat drops splatter on our heads, Ma says, “I forgot. Don’t say anything about your cousin Bessie.”