Inside These Walls Page 18

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  My letters to Karen Shepard and Annemarie go out in the day’s mail, and I’m relieved to see the message to my daughter collected and dropped into the great canvas bag drawn along by a wheeled cart, heavy as Santa’s sack. It won’t be misplaced, so long as it is already mixed in with so many others, and that is good. It’s an important letter, perhaps my most important one so far. I made a copy for myself, writing it down word by word onto scratch paper like a medieval scribe, so I could read over it later and feel comforted again by the truths I have relayed to her. And to my great relief the C.O. exchanges my envelope for a fresh one from Annemarie, my inmate number written across the front in her pretty italic handwriting. I sit on my bed and tear it open with tight, careful fingers. It is typed, like a business letter, then signed in black pen.

  Dear Clara,

  I don’t know what to say. As you might imagine, I was not overjoyed to learn the things you shared with me at our last meeting. The more I think about it, the more deeply it pains me to know I owe my life to the loss of several. That’s a concept I find repugnant, quite honestly. I don’t even know that I believe it to be true. I wonder, truthfully, if that is something you have told yourself to excuse what happened. That is to say, so you can believe some good came of your evil act, or tell yourself it wasn’t your irresponsibility that led to my conception, but circumstances that were out of your control.

  I am not surprised to learn Ricky Rowan was my father, and I’m not sure why you manipulated me for so long to try to convince me otherwise. This sounds very strange, I know, but once when I was in middle school I went to a sleepover where my friends and I stayed up late watching that movie, The Cathouse Murders. An actor plays Ricky, of course, but during the closing credits they show mug shots of the real criminals (including you) alongside photos of the actors. I had an unexplainable feeling when I saw Ricky’s, like a jab to my chest, and I felt very drawn in by his face. It was almost like an instant crush, the way girls that age feel when we see a cute boy. I know now that what I sensed was the connection, maybe from the vague similarities between his face and mine. I guess my mind must have reacted to it like I was looking in a mirror and recognizing myself. What I’m saying to you is, you didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already somehow know. I guess you thought it was a big secret, and tried to keep it one, but I was a step ahead of you there.

  I would be lying to tell you I’m not angry, but my anger is mostly at myself. I don’t know what I expected to get out of meeting you, except that I truly did want the medical family history you were somewhat able to provide. It seemed like we were getting to know each other, but now I have to question whether the reward for you was in playing mind games with me. If I hoped to understand more about my “identity” I believe I made a mistake. My identity is this: I am the daughter of Philip and Mary Anne Leska. I’m from Santa Barbara. I’m an Angels fan and an artist, a dog lover and a sorority sister. You don’t actually know me at all, and nothing I am—nothing that makes me, me—is due to you. You could pretend to understand me and my life, but the fact is you have been incarcerated for my entire lifetime. So I am deluding myself if I believe there is a connection to be found there, even on the most basic level. You did not intend or want to have me, but my own parents DID intend and want to have me. So even before you gave birth to me, I was already their daughter, the same way a package you have ordered is yours even before the mailman knocks and hands it over to you.

  So I must inform you that I don’t intend to have further communication with you. The fact is that people don’t go to prison for their entire lives if they are really good but misunderstood people. That is an important thing to remember and I regret that it’s something I temporarily forgot.

  Regards,

  Annemarie Leska

  I set the letter down with shaking hands and press my fist to my mouth. Well, I think, hearing my mother’s voice hastening into my mind, rushing in through its doorway to calm a scream. No, now sit down, take a breath. Take a deep breath now. She’s angry at me, Annemarie is, and hurt. She has a right to be, and a right to see it the way she does. But she’s wrong about my intentions, and there must be a way to convince her of that.

  I breathe a shaky sigh. I fold her letter and slip it back into its envelope, then take out my handwritten copy of the one I’ve just sent to her and re-read it. I hope it will calm my nerves and give me a feeling of hope and momentum, because the stone wall that Annemarie’s letter hopes to build is a thing I can’t bear.

  Dear Annemarie,

  I have spent most of the past week returning again and again in my mind to our last conversation. I feel I did you a cruel disservice by giving you the impressions that I did about how your life began. I would like to take a big step back and share with you another story about your origins, which I dearly hope will stand in the place of those that trouble you, and give you a clearer picture of the truth. Because, as we discussed earlier, there is always more than one angle by which to view a story. Some are more true than others, but most, I am learning, are true in their own particular way.

  In May of 1984—after Ricky and I had been together for a couple of months shy of three years—he was let go from his job at the art supply store, and that drove our relationship to a crisis point. I was nearly twenty-three years old, and most of my former classmates were engaged and planning their weddings; a few already had children. My own boyfriend, meanwhile, thought weddings were worthwhile to no one except medieval peasants and religious fanatics, and now he was unemployed as well. This wasn’t what I wanted out of life, and I was moving toward breaking up with him—bringing more and more of my possessions home from his house, coming by less frequently, and the like. He knew I was unhappy, and it made him nervous.

  And so one weekend he declared that we were going on a surprise trip. Contrary to my stepbrother’s testimony, I did stay overnight at the Cathouse sometimes, and Ricky and I went on trips occasionally, as well. I merely lied to my parents and told them we were visiting Ricky’s grandmother, or that I was spending the night at the house of an understanding friend from the dentist’s office who had agreed to cover for me.

  I left the cats in the care of Chris and Liz, and we got in Ricky’s little car and drove straight across California and Nevada, camping one night at Angel Lake. The mountains were spectacular, and the glacial lake cold but gloriously fun. He waded into the water in his shorts, deeper and deeper, until he was soaked to the waist. His shoulders got sunburned, but it was clear he was enjoying being a wildman out there in nature, eating what we could warm over a campfire and opting not to wear shoes or a shirt for as long as we stayed. But the next morning we were on the road to Utah, and I was only a little worried about what would happen if my mother needed to get in touch with me but couldn’t. I was having too good of a time to be really anxious.

  Once we were in Utah, the road grew more and more remote. I couldn’t imagine where we were headed until I started seeing signs for the Spiral Jetty. I had been there once before with my mother, but that was not long after it was built, before the snowmelts came and covered it. Once I realized this I pointed out to Ricky that this was going to be a long drive to end up seeing nothing, and he simply said, “The drive is part of the art.”

  Well, we got there, and sure enough it was just a shoreline on the Great Salt Lake. The lake itself was a gorgeous, stony blue, hazy as though covered by a white cataract, and the sky was the awe-inspiring, vivid dome I remembered—but the Jetty was gone. I turned to Ricky and gestured to the water. “See,” I said, “you already told me it was buried. You didn’t have to drive us out here to prove it.”

  “But it being buried is part of the art,” he insisted. He was pulling our tent out of the trunk. “Besides, don’t you want to go home and say you went camping on the shore of Atlantis?”

  I laughed. I looked out at the lake. He and I were both well-trained in art, but his understanding of modern and postmodern art was certainly sup
erior to mine. I liked classical and pretty things, the Degas ballerinas and Greek Revival paintings. I could appreciate edgy if it went no farther than the symbolism in a Kahlo or an O’Keeffe. Ricky liked the avant-garde or perplexing or grotesque. I wouldn’t have looked out at a featureless lake and thought, ah, how clever of the artist to put his work in a place where it will be devoured by nature. But once Ricky explained it, I could appreciate it in a certain way.

  After the sun went down we built a fire, and he took out a packet of henna he had picked up at the art supply store just before he was cut from the staff. “It’s something Indian women use to decorate their hands before a wedding,” he explained. “It’s really cool. We just got it in.” He set up the boom box and put in the tape he had made for me for Valentine’s Day. He asked me to show him my palms. The idea of getting my palms decorated was very strange and foreign, but I sat still by the fire, leaning in toward him, as he illuminated my palms and then the backs of my hands with the most intricate, elaborate patterns, winding around each finger and covering every revealing line. Then he put lemon juice on it as a fixative, and once my hands were dry I asked to do the insides of his arms, where the hair wouldn’t get in the way. He smiled as I worked the designs onto his skin, acting as if I were a tattoo artist—and you must remember, respectable people did not get tattoos back then—covering his arms with mermaids and playing cards and hearts pierced by arrows. In the end we both looked very festive, quite prepared for an Indian wedding, except for the fact that we were at a lakeside in Utah.

  By now the tape had played on both sides, and Ricky flipped it over again before he stood and offered me his hand. I grasped it with my henna-covered one and let him pull me up. He set his palm against the small of my back and brought my hips to his; he rested his forehead against mine, so our noses were touching. Ricky was a good slow dancer. His parents had made him attend cotillion classes as a young teenager, so he wasn’t shy about it. The song—I remember this part well—was called Time After Time, by a woman named Cyndi Lauper. Slowly, there on the shore of the Great Salt Lake—or perhaps, you might say, the shore of Atlantis—we danced to that song, alone. If by all of this sweetness he meant to stop me from breaking up with him, it worked. I had to admit to myself, as we got in the car the next morning and began the long drive back to San Jose, that although he could be infuriating and childish and indifferent to rules, I loved him too much to give up on him. Some men simply need more time.

  So it’s important for you to understand, Annemarie, that this is also part of the story of your origin, your conception. I was ready to part ways with him then, and a different kind of man would have feigned apathy or bravado about that, shrugged off the breakup and moved on. — Yes, it’s true that the many things he and I did wrong were a part of what ensured that you would be born. But you also could not have been born without the careful cultivation of all this love, the effort and commitment that went into maintaining it.

  I wish I could share with you every one of the moments that ushered your soul a little closer to the Earth. I wish he could share them with you as well. While I would like to believe that everything ultimately works out the way it’s meant to, I am not above calling a loss a loss.

  Earnestly, and with more fondness than you know,

  Clara

  Chapter Eleven

  When Forrest comes to visit again, I feel better prepared. I half-expected it, after seeing his donation to my canteen account, and in anticipation of visiting hours I allowed Penelope to style my hair in front of our small mirror, just in case. She cracked open a safety razor to extract the blade—a choice she’s going to regret when she realizes she needs to trade it in to get a new one—and trimmed her bangs, then mine, before shaping the hair that frames my face. I’m surprised by the way I look in the mirror; my hair has gotten long enough to sweep my shoulders, and after Penelope’s careful attention it actually looks pretty. “You’re lucky you’re blonde,” she told me, “it hides the gray really well,” and I decide a graceless compliment is better than none at all.

  Forrest looks like he’s cleaned up a bit as well. His hair is less shaggy, his face is freshly shaved, and he’s wearing clean jeans and brown loafers instead of the work boots of last time. He holds out his arms, and I glance at the guard before hugging him rather stiffly. The scent of his body, even the quick trace of it, brings back the memory of his kiss in sudden, enveloping full color.

  “How’s it going?” he asks. He looks nervous.

  “Same as ever,” I say, then reconsider that. “Well, a little excitement. I got a new roommate.”

  “That could be good or bad, I suppose.”

  “Well, it’s both. I really miss my old one.” Talking to him, I feel more awkward than I anticipated. Roommate, for goodness’ sake—as if this is my college dormitory and I just welcomed a freshman English major from Pasadena. It’s as though I’m anxious for him to see me as the girl he knew from Ricky’s place, the dentist’s assistant who liked cats and pop music and eye makeup, current circumstances be damned. “Thank you for the canteen money,” I offer.

  He nods and looks away. “I don’t miss jail.”

  “I imagine you don’t.”

  “Did you know Chris was killed by his cellie?”

  I nod slowly. “A bad debt, is what I heard. That coke habit followed him inside.” I hesitate, then say, “I’d rather not talk about those people. Why don’t you tell me how you’ve been doing, instead.”

  Bewilderment moves across his face. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, do you have a family? What do you do for a living?”

  “I, uh...I have two daughters. I work for the phone company, putting in fiberoptic systems for commercial clients.” He pauses. “That’s about it.”

  “Are you married?” He wears no ring, but that’s not necessarily an indicator.

  He winces a bit. “That’s a complicated question.”

  I reply with a low, knowing laugh, but I feel bitten by the answer. Why are you visiting me, then, I think. I’m not so desperate for companionship that I’ll welcome a man who kisses me while his wife waits at home. I like my own company just fine.

  He leans forward on the bench, resting his forearms on his knees and rubbing his hands together. There’s a glower to his brow that wasn’t there when he was younger. “My wife left me about eight years ago. She ran off with this guy she met playing EverQuest. To Nova Scotia.”

  I frown. “What’s EverQuest?”

  “It’s an online video game—like Dungeons & Dragons as a computer game. She was some kind of fairy or elf or something, and she played constantly. Middle of the night. Christmas Day. You name it. You remember War Games? The movie?”

  I sit up straighter and smile. “Yes! Where the boy hacks into the computer and starts a nuclear war, right? Ricky and I saw that—oh, the year before, I guess. I’d forgotten all about it. We loved that movie.”

  “Yeah, well.” His gaze flicks over my face, then drops again. “The kid thinks it’s a game at first, but then finds out it’s real. That’s how it was with Shelly. I thought she was obsessed with the game, and it was dragging down my life really bad. Eating macaroni and cheese all the time, taking the girls to school every morning because she’d been up playing all night, just feeling alone. We hadn’t slept together in months. And then I come to find out she’s been communicating with this...troll. I mean, in the game, he was a troll. And we had unlimited long distance because I worked for the phone company, so I never noticed she was talking to Nova Scotia every goddamn day.” He glances at me. “Sorry.”

  “Sounds like you’re still angry about it.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t care about her anymore. That was a long time ago. It’s my girls I feel bad for. They were ten and twelve. Girls that age need their mother. But she never looked back. I had to figure out a lot of things real fast.” He holds up both hands, drawing an imaginary doorway between us. “We have this linen closet. Well, I went to
the drugstore and I bought every kind of pad, tampon, you name it, just about every type in the aisle, and I crammed it all into that closet. I told them, leave the empty boxes so I know what to buy. Made me a better father than I would have been otherwise, that much is true. The younger one’s going off to college, so I guess we made it through. The older one’s a junior at ASU.”

  I smile. “What are their names?”

  “Kelly and Lindsay. They’re sweet, tough girls. She doesn’t know how much she’s missing.” He attempts a reassuring smile, but its tension pulls at my heart. “Anyway, I never bothered to get an official divorce. I had better things to do with that money than pay lawyers. And not like I had any need to get remarried. With Kelly leaving, and me not running Dad’s Taxi to and from school play rehearsals anymore, I’m just now getting time to have hobbies again.”

  “I do ballet.”

  He catches my eye and grins. “I didn’t realize they offered that in prison.”

  “They don’t. I do it on my own, in my cell. I have a radio. I don’t have slippers, so I stick moleskin to the bottom of a pair of socks. It works, sort of.”