The Intern(3)
“Is he what? Making it up? You don’t believe your brother?”
“Don’t make this about me and him, okay? I’m just trying to understand the facts.”
“The facts are, this lawyer shows up in court. We didn’t hire him. And then he starts telling Danny what to do.”
“You not hiring him is not unusual. The court appoints lawyers for defendants who can’t afford them.”
“That’s not what happened. Something’s off, I’m telling you. He’s this old guy with dandruff who looks like he hits the bottle.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not qualified.”
“Why are you taking the lawyer’s side? If you’d been in court, you’d understand what I’m talking about.”
“I already apologized for not being there. I told you, by the time I got your call that Danny had been arrested—”
“Right. I know how busy you are.”
The edge in her tone got Madison’s back up.
“I wasn’t too busy to come to my brother’s arraignment. My phone was off. If I knew, I would have dropped everything and—”
“Maddy, I don’t want to fight.”
“Then say you understand that I had my phone off. I can’t keep it on all the time on the off chance Danny gets arrested for drugs.”
Most people get to assume that won’t happen to their brother, she thought, but held her tongue. Danny had a long and checkered history for someone who was only twenty-one years old. Her mother didn’t understand how detrimental this was to Madison’s own plans, her future. How draining it was worrying about him all the time. But you couldn’t choose your family, and she loved him no matter what. He was her brother, after all.
“I don’t blame you, Maddy. Really.”
“I hope not. But thank you for saying that.”
“It’s a question of what we do now. We’re a family. Families stick together in tough times.”
Too bad that had not always been the case in her family. Their past was fraught, and never far enough from their present. Madison sighed, wishing things could be different. But they weren’t. She needed to suck it up and deal with reality.
“Tell me how I can help, Mom. You want me to call the lawyer and find out what happened?”
“No, I told you. That lawyer’s trouble. We need to go see your brother.”
“You mean visit him in prison?”
“Yes. Something’s wrong. I need to look him in the eye and get the truth.”
Would visiting get her name on a list? Her relationship to an indicted drug dealer could come out just as she applied for an internship with a federal judge. But what choice did she have? Danny was her brother, and he needed her right now, inconvenient as that was.
“Fine, I’ll go with you. I can do it Saturday.”
“No. Tomorrow morning, first thing.”
The prison was far away. It would be a long drive there, a long wait to get in, a long drive back. She’d miss her morning class, with finals coming up. Argh, what else was new? Danny’s problems had been screwing up her life since she was a kid.
“Please,” Mom said. “He’s in serious trouble this time, and I don’t know how to help him. I work in a nursing home. You’re a student at Harvard Law. I need your help.”
“Of course, Mom. Just tell me what time. I’ll be waiting outside my dorm.”
3
It was still dark out with freezing rain when the old Toyota pulled up in front of the dorm the next morning. Madison got in and pecked Mom on the cheek. She’d been up late reading for class, working on a moot court brief, and—most exciting—applying to the judicial internship in Conroy’s chambers. Her eyes were tired and scratchy, but her mother looked more exhausted than she felt. And older than she had just weeks ago, with new threads of silver in her hair and deep purple shadows under her eyes.
Danny’s fault, as usual.
“I got you a coffee,” Mom said.
There was a Dunkin’ sitting in the cup holder.
“Thanks.”
Madison took a sip and put it back down. Light and cloyingly sweet, the way she liked it when she was a kid. Her dad died when she was thirteen and Danny ten. Mom was frozen in that moment and still treated them like she did back then. Which meant indulging and enabling Danny. And expecting Madison to drop everything to take care of her little brother.
“Can you find this place in Google? The goddamn thing won’t talk.”
The facility where Danny was being held was all the way in Rhode Island, in some crappy little town just over the Mass. border. Madison took her mother’s phone and typed the name into Google Maps.
“Take Mem Drive, get on 90, and then I’ll tell you from there. It’s saying an hour and twenty-six minutes with the traffic.”
“Jeez, we’ll be the last ones in line,” Mom said.
The drive was harrowing on the slick roads in her mother’s little car, with its broken heater and smell of gasoline. The parking lot near the prison was full by the time they arrived. Her mother circled, looking for a spot, face tight with anxiety. They left their handbags in the trunk and locked it. You weren’t allowed to bring anything into the facility except your ID and a single car key—not your phone, not an extra Tampax, not even a stick of chewing gum. The hulking concrete prison loomed over the street, surrounded by a tall metal fence topped with coils of deadly looking barbed wire. As her gaze traveled up the grim facade, Madison felt sick. No matter how mad she was at Danny, he was still her goofball kid brother, a string bean with big ears and an infectious laugh. Young and foolish, but never mean; certainly not evil. And not beyond redemption. No matter what he’d done—and if she was honest with herself, there was some chance the charges were true—she couldn’t stand to think of him locked up in this god-awful place.