From the Chrysalis (40 page)

The local press went crazy, but he ignored them. He ignored Dace, too, when he stood up and shouted, “That knife wasn’t mine. That’s a goddamn lie!”

Liza stood up, one hand clamped over her mouth, careless of the picture she presented to the press. An illegal camera snapped.
No
, she thought, as he was led away.
No
. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He wasn’t supposed to go back after all the money Uncle Norm had spent on the fancy lawyer and his pending appeals. He wasn’t supposed to go back to prison after all the love she had given him.
 

He wasn’t supposed to, but he was.

Further to Judge Silverton’s decision, the Wolfhounds folded. The menace was gone and the town was saved. The road out of Maitland emptied and went nowhere.

Chapter 28

Déjà Vu

Where are they gone, and do you know

If they come back at fall o’ dew

The little ghosts of long ago,

That long ago were you?

*[ Jones, Thomas S., “The Little Ghosts”]

Dace was nowhere too, caught in the limbo where every prisoner lives, somewhere between the living and the dead.
 

I refuse to be tied to the past. But my past molded me. It will take many years to undo
, he wrote before she got around to visiting him again. She knew he thought she was too busy for him now. She was in her second year at university, a different person, a girl Mel’s family would love.

I doubt it,
she thought, crushing his letter. Jesus—Mel’s
family
. Sure she wanted a family, but that didn’t mean she wanted Mel’s! Their censure—what was she supposed to tell them, anyway? She couldn’t live a lie. She wanted people to know all about her and love her despite it all.

Once, she’d imagined everything would work out. Now she saw trouble everywhere. She should have known better, an educated girl like her. She should have known things would work out this way instead. That he would, well, go
back
.
 

He was allowed a few mistakes, her wild gorgeous cousin, but so far he hadn’t met anybody’s expectations except maybe his own. Had old Judge Silverton been right? What if Dace
was
hell-bent on the self-destructive path of a career criminal? He was that compulsive. Why, what gene, or what event had caused him to lose his way? She didn’t care to speculate, although surely trouble such as this wasn’t entirely man-made.
 

Had his criminal acts really escalated? She thought constantly about his association with the bikers, because that’s where, at least on this occasion, everything had gone wrong. So what if he’d run with the bikers and gotten a little wild when he drank? So had his own father, like hers in their long ago youth. Dace was an extraordinary person. In his letters and in his loving, she had always seen glimmers. She saw them still. He
would make good someday. Of course he would.
 

I want you, Dace,
she thought
. I don’t want to be reasonable. I’m not giving up. I’m not going to do the “right” thing again.

At least time was on his side, she thought, smoothing out and shoving his latest missive into Dante’s
Inferno
before speed walking to class. In addition to her course load of classics, Liza had started reading everything she could find on crime in the Sociology section of the university library. According to statistics, Dace might be straight by the time he was forty. Oh God, why hadn’t she studied Biology instead? she sometimes wondered, thinking about the girl she’d once been.

If
he weren’t dead by then. It was different for her. She didn’t have as much time. She’d be thirty-six when he was forty.
Many years to undo
. What on earth was he thinking? Maybe it was just a phrase written in an inconvenient moment of despair, but—oh God. She didn’t have many years.
 

Thirty-six was awfully old to start making babies, and she was almost a woman now. And Liza wanted babies, somebody to treasure, to call her own. Maybe it wasn’t fair, because children were people in their own right, but Liza craved somebody to fill her body and bring her joy. Like he had.
 

The cold wind blowing through her was intolerable. And in Dace’s place came reams of letters with their tamped down rage, prison room visits and their smouldering sexuality
.
She’d had
him.
For weeks. For months. Letters would no longer do. She was way too old to settle for second best.

You’ve got to stop. I can’t take anymore
, she scribbled in her notebook as she sat in the lecture hall for English 201. She glanced around at the other students, feeling …
less
. She would never fit in here, because she looked like one of
them
now. A prison groupie. A haggard old crow not yet twenty-one. How could she just wait? She had waited for him ever since she was fourteen, waiting as if he were the only one
.
But what if he weren’t? What if she
could
love somebody else? Was it worth a try?

She couldn’t just abandon him, though. Not like the biker girls they said he’d slept with in the Clubhouse, who were petrified of their old men but not afraid enough to resist
him
. She couldn’t just leave him. She’d loved him for too long. So she kept visiting him at the new Maitland Pen, fuming at first but just sad in the end. He was angrier than she was, angry with the system
and
with her, close-mouthed and contemptuous, although that didn’t stop him from taking cigarettes from her. He had no choice.
 

“Darling,” he said at Thanksgiving. She’d brought him a third carton of cigarettes then quipped about bringing him poison. He looked her in the eyes for the first time in weeks. “I don’t care if this stuff kills me. I’m just trying to kill time.”

“Well,” she couldn’t resist saying, “you’re good at that.”

Dace ignored her comment. “Whatever happened to that college kid?” he asked instead. “Why don’t you bring him here sometime?”

“He was in Europe this summer. That’s what his family does after school. And he studies a lot,” she said, playing along, relieved he was no longer acting like he was mad at her. She knew he only behaved that way because he was ashamed.
 

“Liza, listen to me. You can’t keep coming here. It’s no life for a girl like you. Books, babies, butterflies, that’s all you want.”

“And bikes. I love riding that bike.”
And making love with
you.
 

“So keep the Honda. Dad will give it to you. You know he wants to do something for you. And sex isn’t everything, is it?” he said, raising an eyebrow. He knew what she had left unsaid.

“No,” she lied, forcing a reluctant smile.

“Besides, from what you’ve said, it sounds like what’s his face,
Mel,
loves you.”

She stared at him, stunned, saying nothing for what felt like forever. She felt sick, then angry. “Jesus, Dace, what are you saying? I’m not a … whatever, a doll, a trophy. You can’t just give me away!”

“Liza, look at me. It’s like I keep telling you. I’m in no position to rescue damsels in distress, and I’m pulling you down.”

She shook her head. “It’s you. You’re destroying yourself. And you know what? I can’t take anymore,” she blurted into the prison phone.
 

“I know, Liza,” he said, so irritatingly soothing. If there hadn’t been glass between them, she would have jumped through and pummelled him to the ground. “But you can still have a life.” He shrugged, giving her a wry smile. “A boring life, granted, a life lived in your head, but you can have it. And you know what? I think it’ll be good for you.”

“Thanks a lot! Jesus. What kind of life are you having here?”

“I’m not a lifer. Someday I’ll get out for good.”

Yes
, she thought. “Of course you will,” she said loyally.
When I’m old.

“But you don’t want what I want.”

 
Trouble and excitement. Life on a limb. And vindication, yes, some of that, too. No Dace. The only trouble I ever wanted was you.

“I’m not in love with him,” she protested. Forbidden tears burned behind her eyes. He hated when she cried. He needed her to be strong.

Dace looked down the counter rather than at her, but he was implacable. For a moment, she almost saw him as his criminal associates might see him: a strong, silent, violent man. And she was afraid.

“You’re not trying hard enough,” he insisted. “You can love anybody if you try. It’s not that I don’t love you, darling girl, you know I do. But you need somebody to take care of you and there’s no way I can. Aw, c’mon, I’m walking out of here if you’re going to start that. Liza baby, have a heart.”

“I can’t.” Tears and mucous streamed down her face, but she didn’t move.

“Hey, guard, get over here and make yourself useful.”

* * *

Mel had never seen him in prison, so perhaps it didn’t matter. It was all new to him. God, she hated hearing Dace chatter about his friends to Mel, his fucking criminal associates, although he never once violated the inmate code by volunteering any names. Oh no, not him.

A criminologist would explain his relapse like this, she thought coldly, leaning back on a stool beside Mel and studying Dace’s too handsome face. He
was
conditioned, no matter what he said. She knew this now because she had read so much, though she wasn’t sure how much good that had done. Dace had spent his youth in prison. Here he had friends to visit, games to play, work to pursue, authorities to aggravate.
 

Except his identification with the inmate subculture, which was so important if he were going to survive the jungle Inside, had stopped him from becoming an individual, from ever growing up. And without individuality and independence, rehabilitation was an almost impossible goal.

 
Sure, he had a cruel, restricted life, where order and security were jeopardized and insurrection and revolt threatened. But it was a life just the same.
 

What if he didn’t need anything else but this? What if he didn’t need her?

Mel liked Dace, but Liza suspected he was also glad to see him back in prison. So glad, in fact, that he didn’t even mind when she seethed after every visit.
 

“Did you see the way that guard Savage looked at him?” she said. “He’s got to get out of there.”

“Liza, it’s out of your hands. You’re grieving, aren’t you?” he replied, trying to hug her again, but she was a mannequin, her arms hanging by her sides.

“You’re such a good person. I don’t want to hurt you.”
 

“You’re not hurting me, you’re hurting yourself,” he swore, his hands moving lower and stroking her body until she finally gave in, just after Hallowe’en, although she would have been just as happy to sleep in his arms. “I’m not a teddy bear,” he’d insisted.
 

And it was all right, even good, after she showed him what to do. Jesus, she told herself.
Maybe Dace was right.
All she had to do was try.

“It’s tragic, what’s happened to your cousin, the choices he’s made,” Mel coaxed. “But you’re young. You’ll move on and you’ll get over it.” He was a born optimist, but he was lying when he said Dace would be okay. Optimistic or not, she knew Mel expected Dace to fetch up dead.

Dace was one of those handsome, charismatic men who drew women to him just by looking at them. He was the same with his male friends. He had almost drawn Mel, the first time he’d visited Maitland Penitentiary and had seen Liza in his eyes. Dace and Liza looked even more alike these days, now that she had shorn her hair to her skull. She was both a younger and an older version of herself, her dark eyes huge in a white, bony face.