The Life of the Heart (of which, ironically, we had two copies in the library) was Richard’s sixth book. It was supposed to be about the stunning and liberated life that can be ours if we give in to our feelings of love. He’d put me and my two sons through hell while he was trying to write it, just as he had, come to think of it, when he wrote his fourth and fifth. The children were ‘distractions’. Somehow I was always doing something ‘stupid’. He once accused me of turning pages too loudly. Bryce and Tyler, despite their initial business success, were ‘disappointments’ to him. But that I could understand. How disappointing it must be for a false, humorless, and arrogant man to have two sons who could see through him and laugh. I, on the other hand – raised to be a right-minded woman – supported the bastard throughout. I fed him, excused him, pampered him, read his drafts, corrected his grammar, gave him ideas, typed his corrections, and hated his editor with him. I did it for thirty-four years. Why stop now, when he needed me more than ever?
It is only now, seven years later, that I can look back at the situation without anger. As I said above, I am a better person now.
I knew that Jennifer Spencer would be given the orientation that included a tour of the facility, a bed assignment, and a work detail. I know what’s what here on my own, though I do appreciate the heads up I get when Frances delivers the ice with kites. I had to chuckle at the ‘kites on ice’. There is no work here in the library. The prison population consists of very few readers and what they would read doesn’t exist in the library. Needless to say, I would welcome Miss Spencer to Jennings when she came by later in the day. Lest you think otherwise, this would not be some warmhearted Shawshank Redemption nonsense where I take the girl under my wing. If I had wings, I assure you I’d fly the fuck out of here. Besides, I already have two sons – I don’t need a daughter. After a quarter century of girls’ schools, I know how much trouble they are.
Jennifer finally came to the library, with that Officer Camry, at about three-thirty, the time I usually fade out, having worked in schools all my life. She had the air of a young woman who was in trouble, there was no mistaking that. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyelids were swollen, and the eyes peering out from between them looked as if they’d glimpsed something horrific, but at the same time she still looked like someone whose car and driver were waiting for her. She had heavy attitude, Movita would say. But I could see right through that. The press, as usual, had gotten it wrong: Thanks to my twenty-seven years of working with schoolgirls, I could see that Jennifer had been a scholarship student. Determination to overcome obstacles was written all over her, so there had to have been obstacles. I could see that she had real strength to her, and that when the realization that she was going to be in here for some real time hit her, she would survive the shock.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Maggie.’ I sounded ridiculous to myself, as if we were in some kind of meeting.
‘Hi,’ she answered. She was so not present that I was driven to speak to her again. ‘This is our library, such as it is.’
She blinked at me, as if she didn’t understand why I was talking to her. ‘We have the space,’ I went on, ‘but we have very few books.’
‘It doesn’t matter to me. Don’t worry about it,’ she said, a little sharply. Then her expression changed. She was looking at me, wondering who I was, I expect. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said then. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’m not going to be living here. But this guard has been very nice.’ I saw Officer Camry stiffen. It’s funny about how prison guards refuse to be called prison guards.
‘He’s an officer, dear,’ I said in a voice drier than the paper of my books. ‘Not a guard. You call them officers or COs.’
‘Correction officer,’ Camry the fool added. He was harmless enough and I nodded at him.
‘Oh. Thank you,’ the girl said.
Jennifer Spencer surprised me in one way. I, who have met such a wide cross section of women when you consider both my students, my social circle, and my present comrades, could not tell if the girl was essentially good or bad. It’s the kind of thing I almost always know at a glance yet I didn’t know it then, although I do now. I could see that she was honest.
With keen, discriminating sight, Black’s not so black, – nor white so very white.
George Canning, New Morality
After the night in Observation, Jennifer was ready for assignment to a cell. Though it was the relatively benign Officer Camry, rather than the brutal Byrd, who came to take her away, the relentless gloom of the institution put Jennifer into a state bordering on catatonia. If Observation had been hell for her, it was clear that the rest of the place was purgatory. It was all so grim that it was appalling to imagine that women actually lived in this hopeless drabness day after day.
‘I need to make a phone call,’ she managed to say to Officer Camry. Her head was pounding and she desperately needed some Tylenol – and maybe a Valium – but calling Tom was the most important thing to do right now. ‘I have to make a call,’ she said again. ‘Is there a phone near here?’
Camry stepped back and looked at her intently. ‘If there was, you couldn’t use it,’ he told her. ‘I’m scheduled to give you your house assignment. You can only make calls on your own time.’
Jennifer clenched her jaw and the headache intensified. She wasn’t prepared for any of this. She admitted that now. How could Donald and Tom abandon her to this experience? She couldn’t imagine the elegant Mr Michaels in a jumpsuit, or Ivy League Tom in the filthy hole. But that didn’t matter. She squared her shoulders behind Camry’s rounded ones and followed as she was instructed. She would not cry nor would she fuss. This whole ordeal was a punishment; not for the nonsense with the SEC, but for the terrible error in judgment that she had made.
‘Right this way,’ Camry said, leading her down a long narrow corridor. Then he stopped abruptly and opened a door. ‘While we’re here, this is the athletic facility,’ he said.
Jennifer looked in to see a small room with a couple of flabby volleyballs and a few exercise mats that were so soiled that she had to avert her eyes. So this was the gym. She almost laughed. It was nothing at all like the Vertical Club where she and Tom worked out. Well, she’d be out of there before she needed to go to the gym. But what about the women who had to use the place? God almighty.
‘You can use the athletic facility in your free time, but not during lockdown or after eight p.m.,’ Camry told her.
Jennifer sighed. As if. Once again she turned to Camry and said with great urgency, ‘Are you certain I can’t use a phone? It is imperative that I get in touch with my lawyer.’
Camry lifted his eyebrows and looked up at the ceiling. He shook his head as if to say, No, you crazy bitch, no!
Jennifer knew then that she had made a terrible error. For the first time in her life she had been so confident that she knew everything that she needed to know that she had gone into a test completely unprepared. Prison wasn’t like life on the Outside. In here, there was no multiple choice to guess at, and there was no essay that she could bluff her way through. This was all true or false – black and white. This was the test of her life, and she’d willingly come into it unprepared and ignorant.
Tom and Donald had told her that it would be easy. She didn’t know why she had believed them – except that they’d never lied to her before. Christ, there was no way this could’ve been easy. She should’ve known that. Life had taught her that nothing came easy – it all took work, it all took discipline, and above everything else, it all took a willful determination not to fail. She knew that. She had always been prepared, always one step ahead of the rest.
Jennifer hung her head and looked at the orange