“She didn’t call back?”
“No.”
“Who is it? Cleo Thane?”
I nodded.
During weekly meetings, all ten therapists at the institute discussed their respective patients, so they all knew about Cleo.
“When is she scheduled to come in next?”
“Monday. I’m assuming she got a job that took her out of town.”
“Is that all that’s bothering you?”
Simon had been a friend for a long time. “My divorce came through last week.”
“And you waited a whole week to tell me.” For a moment I was embarrassed.
“Morgan?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not yet. I just want to be in denial that anything in my life has to change any more than it already has.”
“Change is not always bad.”
“I know that professionally. But on a personal level, let’s just say I am not yet convinced.”
We were out of Manhattan and on the highway heading toward the George Washington Bridge. In the sunlight the metal girders and trusses gleamed and the Hudson River glinted.
“It looks like a postcard, doesn’t it? All that blue sky and green trees and that gigantic bridge,” he said.
“From a distance it’s easy to see things in symmetry.”
He reached out and took my hand and held it on the seat between us. I relied upon all of my training and insight and intuition to figure out if this touch was the same as the million touches he had given me over the past five years. He was a physical person, and hugs and brotherly kisses and things like holding my hand to make me feel as if we were connected were just how we were.
But now I was divorced. And he was a flirt. And what would have been innocent before could be interpreted differently now. His skin was warm and his fingers were long and strong. What would happen if I moved my fingers against his? If, instead of letting my hand lie limp in his, I pressed my fingertips into his? What would it feel like to channel energy into the touch? To use the proximity of our hands to give him a message? To say to him with my flesh that I wanted more?
I would ruin a wonderful friendship. Of that I had no doubt. If I was going to experiment with a side of myself that had been dormant for too long, it was not going to be with someone I sat across a conference-room table from several times a week.
The sun was coming through the window and making me warm. I shifted in my seat and extracted my hand.
As if nothing had happened, because it hadn’t, Simon put his hand back on the wheel. We drove another few minutes before he asked me something I was surprised we’d never covered in all our hundreds of hours of conversation.
“Why do you do this prison work?”
“Because of ‘grace.’”
He knew my shorthand for “There but for the grace of God go I.”
There were too many things I’d seen that made me stop, catch my breath and be grateful that I was not there and that was not my life. Dulcie had picked up on it and sometimes came home from school with a “grace” story.
“That is a wonderfully Morgan thing to say.” Simon smiled.
In my lap, I put my right hand over my left and let my fingers play with one another.
But you can’t make a connection with your own skin.
14
The walk from the parking lot to the prison itself was bizarrely lovely. It was about a quarter of a mile down a path that bordered on a state park with trees spilling into the grounds of the institution. Towering old oaks, maples, cedars and pine trees bathe the path in shade, and you could easily forget where you were. Until you reached the summit and saw the guardhouse, the barbed-wire fence, the huge spotlights and a fleet of police, prison and state cars in the smaller parking area beside the building.
The prison sat on the estate of a wealthy industrialist whose three-year-old son was brutally murdered in the house while everyone slept. The murderer was his mother: a woman who had been troubled and in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals for years.
Regardless of her mental history, she was sentenced to life in prison and hung herself the first week she was there. The noose was made of her bedsheet, ripped with her teeth.
Her husband, Al Serwin, moved away, leaving the property, the house and an endowment to the state with the express desire that it be turned into a women’s prison. But a special house of incarceration, one where the most hopeful cases would go, with a generous fund to ensure that every prisoner got psychiatric help. The best, brought in and paid in full. Not the sad social workers who took whatever work they could get and sat through appointments, only slightly more capable than the people they were counseling.
It was warmer than I’d anticipated and I took off my jacket as we approached the doors. Just as well, as I had to be patted down and all my pockets emptied before I could go in.
Once inside we were greeted by Mary Kathryn Evans, the guard we had seen every Thursday for the past few years.
“We had a little scene here last night,” she told us with a rueful smile. She was heavyset and always chewed cinnamonflavored gum.
Her hands were on my hips.
“What happened?”
“One of the ladies had a visitor. Turns out he was the ex of another one of our ladies.”
Her hand moved down my legs, pat, pat, pat, feeling for something that wasn’t there.
“There was quite a fight. Scratching, biting. Turned into a party.”
“Anyone hurt?”
Her hands were on my arms now.
“Stitches, concussions. Some of the bites broke skin-and, you know, with AIDS, that can be serious business.”
Mary Kathryn was finished and moved on to Simon. “I don’t know where Joe is. You want to wait? Or do you mind if I do this today?”
“I’d rather if you did it, darling,” he joked.
She started her hands down his hips and I watched the way her fingers so impersonally felt for the nonexistent contraband.
“One of your patients was involved,” she said to me as her hands moved around Simon’s ankles.
Now she had my full attention.
“Who?”
“Coffey Gerard.”
I was hoping she wasn’t going to say her name. “Did she get attacked or was she the instigator?”
“She’s the one who got attacked. Caty Laine attacked her.”
Coffey was a gorgeous African-American prostitute whom many of the other girls were jealous of.
“But I can see her?”
“Guess so-you are on the sheet with her at eleven.” Mary Kathryn nodded to a printed sheet of doctor appointments for the day. And with that she buzzed Simon and me through.
We walked down the hallway to the waiting room reserved for doctors and therapists and correctional officials. We usually didn’t have to wait long.
The smell wasn’t too bad in that room, other than the use of too much disinfectant. But I knew that once the next guard came to escort me to the room where I conducted my sessions, the stench would be overwhelming.
The prison was crowded, even though this was one of the better places to be holed up in. But there were no good prisons. There were no easy ways to do time.
“Dr. Snow?” A male guard stood at the door. I didn’t recognize him. Standing, I turned back to Simon and said goodbye.
“See you later, alligator,” he said.
I smiled and followed the guard out.
As soon as I left that room and started down the hallway, I bit into the mint I’d put in my mouth so that the peppermint would overwhelm every other odor. If I focused on breathing through my mouth it was always better. But the stale body odor, the whiff of urine, the cigarette smoke and the cheap perfumes and shampoos that some of the women used to try to pretty themselves up were still stifling. It was like inhaling desperation.
Dante wrote about the three circles of helclass="underline" every Thursday I walked through purgatory.
I took a seat in the windowless room. There was a couch and a chair next to a desk. An approximation of a therapist’s office. At least the room was not filthy. The women here had to do cleanup, and they worked harder in some rooms than others. The therapy room was one of those they took pride in keeping pristine. Many of them wanted to come to therapy. They said they felt better after it. We treated our patients the same way here we treated the patients we saw in our own offices, and that dignity was precious to them.