There is a buzzing sound, and then Curly opens the door. Many prisons have updated visiting areas. Lower-risk inmates can sit at a table with their visitor or visitors with no partitions or barriers. I cannot. Here at Briggs we still have the bulletproof plexiglass. I sit on a metal stool bolted into the floor. My belly chain is loosened so that I can grab hold of the telephone. That is how visitors in the supermax communicate—via telephone and plexiglass.
The visitor isn’t my ex-wife Cheryl, though she looks like Cheryl.
It’s her sister, Rachel.
Rachel sits on the other side of the plexiglass, but I see her eyes widen when she takes me in. I almost smile at her reaction. I, her once beloved brother-in-law, the man with the offbeat sense of humor and the devil-may-care smile, have certainly changed in the past five years. I wonder what she notices first. The weight loss perhaps. Or more likely, the shattered facial bones that had not healed properly. It could be my ashen complexion, the slump from the once-athletic shoulders, the thinning and graying of my hair.
I sit down and peer at her through the plexiglass. I take hold of the phone and gesture that she should do the same. When Rachel lifts the phone to her ear, I speak.
“Why are you here?”
Rachel almost manages a smile. We were always close, Rachel and I. I liked spending time with her. She liked spending time with me. “Not much on pleasantries, I see.”
“Are you here to exchange pleasantries, Rachel?”
Whatever hint of a smile there was fades away. She shakes her head. “No.”
I wait. Rachel looks worn yet still beautiful. Her hair was still the same ash blonde as Cheryl’s, her eyes the same dark green. I shift on my stool and face her at an angle because it hurts to look directly at her.
Rachel blinks back tears and shakes her head. “This is too crazy.”
She lowers her gaze and for a moment I see the eighteen-year-old girl I’d met when Cheryl first brought me to her New Jersey home from Amherst College during our junior year. Cheryl and Rachel’s parents hadn’t really approved of me. I was a little too blue-collar for them, what with the beat-cop father and row-house upbringing. Rachel, on the other hand, had taken to me right away, and I grew to love her as the closest thing I would have to a little sister. I cared about her. I felt protective of her. A year later, I drove her up and helped her move in at Lemhall University as an undergrad and later to Columbia University, where she studied journalism.
“It’s been a long time,” Rachel says.
I nod. I want her to go away. It hurts to look at her. I wait. She doesn’t speak. I finally say something because Rachel looks like she needs a lifeline and so I can’t help myself.
“How’s Sam?” I ask.
“Fine,” Rachel says. “He works for Merton Pharmaceuticals now. In sales. He made manager, travels a lot.” Then she shrugs and adds, “We’re divorced.”
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes that off. I’m not really sorry to hear it. I never thought Sam was good enough for her, but I felt that way about most of her boyfriends.
“Are you still writing for the Globe?” I ask.
“No,” she says in a voice that slams the door on that subject.
We sit in silence for a few more seconds. Then I try again.
“Is this about Cheryl?”
“No. Not really.”
I swallow. “How is she?”
Rachel starts wringing her hands. She looks everywhere but at me. “She’s remarried.”
The words hit me like a gut punch, but I take it without so much as flinching. This, I think to myself. This is why I don’t want visitors.
“She never blamed you, you know. None of us did.”
“Rachel?”
“What?”
“Why the hell are you here?”
We fall back into silence. Behind her, I see another guard, one I don’t know, staring at us. There are three other inmates in here right now. I don’t know any of them. Briggs is a big place, and I try to keep to myself. I am tempted to stand up and leave, when Rachel finally speaks.
“Sam has a friend,” she says.
I wait.
“Not really a friend. A co-worker. He’s on the marketing side. In management too. At Merton Pharmaceuticals. His name is Tom Longley. He has a wife and two boys. Nice family. We used to get together sometimes. For company barbecues, stuff like that. His wife’s name is Irene. I like her. Irene is pretty funny.”
Rachel stops and shakes her head.
“I’m not telling this right.”
“No, no,” I say. “It’s a great story so far.”
Rachel smiles, actually smiles, at my sarcasm. “A hint of the old David,” she says.
We go quiet again. When Rachel starts speaking, her words come out slower, more measured.
“The Longleys went on a company trip two months ago to an amusement park in Springfield. Six Flags, I think it’s called. Took their two boys. Irene and I have stayed friends, so she invited me over to lunch the other day. She talked about the trip—a little gossipy because I guess Sam brought his new girlfriend. Like I’d care. But that’s not important.”
I bite back the sarcastic rejoinder and look at her. She holds my gaze.
“And then Irene showed me a bunch of photos.”
Rachel stops here. I don’t have the slightest idea where she is going with this, but I can almost hear some kind of foreboding soundtrack in my head. Rachel takes out a manila envelope. Eight-by-ten size, I guess. She puts it down on the ledge in front of her. She stares at it a beat too long, as though debating her next step. Then in one fell swoop she reaches into the envelope, plucks something out, and presses it against the glass.
It is, as advertised, a photo.
I don’t know what to make of it. The photograph does indeed appear to have been taken at an amusement park. A woman—I wonder whether this is pretty-funny Irene—smiles shyly at the camera. Two boys, probably the Longleys, are on either hip, neither looking at the camera. Someone in a Bugs Bunny costume is on the right; someone dressed like Batman is on the left. Irene looks a little put out—but in a fun way. I can almost imagine the scene. Good ol’ Pharmaceutical Marketing Tom cheerily goading Pretty-Funny Irene to pose, Pretty-Funny Irene not really in the mood but being a good sport, the two boys having none of it, we’ve all been there. There is a giant red roller coaster in the background. The sun is shining in the faces of the Longley family, which explains why they are squinting and slightly turning away.
Rachel has her eyes on me.
I lift my eyes toward hers. She keeps pressing the photograph up to the glass.
“Look closer, David.”
I stare at her another second or two and then I let my gaze wander back to the photograph. This time I see it immediately. A steel claw reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart. I can’t breathe.
There is a boy.
He is in the background, on the right edge of the frame, almost out of the picture. His face is in perfect profile, like he’s posing to be on a coin. The boy appears to be about eight years old. Someone, an adult male perhaps, holds the boy’s hand. The boy looks up at what I assume is the back of the man, but the man is out of frame.
I feel the tears push into my eyes and reach out with tentative fingers. I caress the boy’s image through the glass. It is impossible, of course. A desperate man sees what he wants to see, and let’s face it—no thirsty, heat-crazed, starved desert-dweller who ever conjured up a mirage has ever been this desperate. Matthew had not yet reached the age of three when he was murdered. No one, not even a loving parent, could guess what he would look like some five years later. Not for certain. There is a resemblance, that’s all. The boy looks like Matthew. Looks like. It’s a resemblance. Nothing more. A resemblance.