I’m not readyis the only excuse I can give Maggie. And I become less ready every time I visit my brother in prison, every time Mom sneaks away to cry when we come home, every time Dad disappears into his shop for hours on end without touching a single tool, every time Laura goes more than a day without speaking unless I make her.
Every time I try to hold us together and tear myself apart more.
Thunder booms outside, startling us both. Maggie peers out the window and scowls at the clouds rolling across the sky. “Seriously, Texas? I was kind of using the sun to film right now.” She slumps beside me as the light in her room grows dim. “Think it’ll pass before my face starts to melt so I can finish this look?” She misinterprets my slightly nauseous expression and sighs. “It’s fine. We’ll talk about the audition later.” She reaches for a makeup remover wipe and scrutinizes her now shadowed face. “My left eye looks kind of cluttered anyway.”
Normally, I’m transfixed watching her take off her more elaborate makeup looks. But today, I’m watching the window and the bilious gray clouds sweeping across the sky. In the distance I can already see threads of rain beginning to fall.
Tomorrow, Heath will be at the tree by Hackman’s Pond.
And I won’t.
I’ll be with my brother.
CHAPTER 10
Asingle knock on my bedroom door is my wake-up call on Saturday. My eyes snap open at the soft sound, my whole body alert as though an entire marching band has encircled my bed rather than Mom’s quiet footsteps moving past Laura’s door so as not to wake her. Careful as she is, the stairs creak as she tiptoes down to the kitchen.
For a moment, I think I won’t get up. I didn’t draw my curtains fully closed the night before, so the cheery morning sunshine—bright and clear after yesterday’s rain—is dappling through the windows on either side of my bed and glinting off the shelves Dad built for me, which are full of old, slightly dusty figure skating medals and trophies. It’s going to be a beautiful day, and already I want it to be over.
It’s the same every Saturday, that mingled sense of dread weighing my limbs and longing tugging my heart. I get to see my brother today. After endless security checks, drug-sniffing dogs and invasive pat downs, I’ll get to sit with him at a table in the visitation room inside a prison for exactly two hours—two for every one hundred and sixty-eight that he spends there each week. I’ll get to pretend we aren’t surrounded by other inmates with their own visitors and prison guards who bark out warnings if we get too close. I’ll have to smile the whole time and convince us that we’re going to be okay, that the next thirty years of once-a-week visits will be over before we know it, that watching the guards take him away afterward isn’t like having a piece of heart ripped from my chest.
It’s more of a battle than usual to get out of bed that Saturday and I know it’s because of Heath. It’s hard enough seeing my brother behind bars; today’s visit is going to be harder still because I’m bringing unwanted thoughts of Calvin and his family along with me.
I slip out from under my too-warm covers and turn to make the bed the moment my feet hit the ground. The bedspread is old and faded, patched together with remnants from old clothes and blankets. My grandmother made it when Mom was a little girl, but Mom had to earn it each day by doing chores and having good behavior otherwise she shivered at night. I never met my grandmother—after some of the stories I’ve heard about her I’m not sure I could’ve stomached the sight of her—and the quilt used to be locked away in a trunk in the attic, but I started using it a few months after Jason went away, feeling like I earned something that I couldn’t get anywhere else. Every morning I fold it away and keep it under my bed in case Mom comes into my room.
Once the bed is made and the quilt hidden from sight, I move to my closet. I dress automatically, eschewing the sundresses I normally live in during the summer in favor of items that meet the prison dress code for visitors: jeans and a long-sleeve crewneck T-shirt. I remove the tiny stud earrings I always wear and slip into my sneakers instead of flip-flops. I take a little time putting on makeup and add soft waves to my hair with a curling wand. I even repaint my nails. The goal is to look nice but not overly happy. It’s a balance I’ve honed to perfection over the past year.
Mom is similarly dressed when I find her downstairs. Laura is still in her room and Dad is nowhere to be seen. They always make themselves scarce on Saturday mornings, knowing Mom will invite them to come. They always refuse, adding to the pallor of an already melancholy event. For once, I’m glad they’re not there.
Seeing me, Mom smiles. It’s more an expression of relief than anything else. One of her many fears is that I’ll start disappearing on Saturdays too, leaving her to visit Jason alone. The everything-is-fine act she puts on is for her own benefit as much as everyone else’s. If she had to make this trip on her own she’d have only this long-denied reality to keep her company.
I return her smile. “Want me to drive?”
She gathers up her purse and keys. “Maybe on the way back, okay?”
“Sure,” I say, following her to the car. She doesn’t ever let me drive. I think it’s one of a million tiny distractions that she needs, on visitation days more than ever.
As soon as the car starts, talk radio blares from the speakers. Mom turns up the volume.
My knee bounces under the round table in the visitation room. There are a dozen other people in the nondescript space, including a toddler whose mother is trying to keep the child entertained while they wait.
“Daddy’s going to come right through that door.” The mother points to the entrance flanked on either side by guards. “Can you show me how you’re going to clap when you see Daddy?”
My knee bounces faster as I look away. Beside me, Mom is watching the now clapping child, her expression strained in the same way mine feels. Anywhere else, it’d be impossible not to smile at the sweet little face, but not here, not whenDaddyis in this place.
There is nowhere else to look for distraction. The cinder block walls are white, and there aren’t any windows. Even the air feels sterile and so artificially chilled that goose bumps pebble my skin despite the long-sleeve shirt I’m wearing. I force my gaze upward to the fine cracks in the ceiling. I’ve traced the familiar pattern twice through when the door opens and the first inmate is led inside.
I’m on my feet in an instant, trying not to look at the inmates’ faces as they see their loved ones waiting for them. Most of them remain outwardly stoic, but there’s usually a flash of naked emotion—relief, despair, shame—that bleeds through. I don’t know these men or what they’ve done, who they are to my brother, friend or not. He’s never once mentioned his fellow prisoners, not even the name of his cellmate.
Jason is the fourth one in, and even though I’ve steeled myself in preparation for his appearance—one so altered from how he looked a year ago—I can’t keep from sucking in a breath I hope Mom doesn’t hear. It’s not any one thing that forms the lump in my throat; it’s everything together.
He was always lean, like Mom, but now he’s borderline gaunt in his orange jumpsuit, with high cheekbones that look ready to split through his too-pale skin. The shadows under his always-darting flat blue eyes have deepened, and his hair, once a sun-kissed brown, is a dark stubble shorn so close to his head that no hint of the natural wave shows. What I do see is the puncture mark scars from when he was ten and he fought off a stray dog that had attacked a neighbor’s cat in our yard.
That’s the brother I know, not this.
The smile Jason offers is as tight as the fist around my heart.
We’re allowed one quick hug each while a guard stands nearby in case Mom or I try to pass him drugs. His whip-lean arms barely close around me before they drop and he shuffles back a step, glancing at the guard for approval before sitting. The lump rises higher.He’s like a dog, I think,and not a loved one.
