The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (41 page)

“I understand you have no children, Mrs. Quirk, so I don’t expect you to fully understand what this ordeal has been like for me. Mothers know things about life that women who aren’t mothers don’t know. Mothers love more deeply than any other people on earth. But I want you to try to understand as best you can what I have to say. All right?”

Maureen nodded. I took a breath because I was pretty sure things were about to get brutal.

“Morgan was the light of my life, Mrs. Quirk—the sweetest, kindest, most talented, most genuine young man you would ever hope to know. Someone who’s here in this courtroom today told a reporter some malicious lies about my son—for which I will never, ever forgive that person—and that reporter, a woman whom I trusted and
allowed into my home, saw fit to repeat those lies in a national magazine. But Mrs. Quirk, I assure you, the truth speaks louder than vengeful lies, and the beautiful truth is that people
loved
Morgan Seaberry. His teachers, his teammates, his wide circle of friends. They cheered him on the soccer field, applauded him on the stage, laughed at his jokes. We all bathed in the glow of Morgan’s presence.”

As Ms. Alderman spoke of her son’s accomplishments, his listing in
Who’s Who in American High Schools,
she raised the volume above her head, as if it was something sacred. Then she kissed the book and put it down.

“He had a wonderful life ahead of him, Mrs. Quirk,” she said. “And please, once again, I ask that you look at me while I’m speaking to you…. Thank you. As I was saying, Morgan’s future was a bright one. He would have given so, so much back to the world. But because you chose to steal drugs, inject them into your arm, and then get behind the wheel of a car, my son never got to live past October of his senior year. And so, the prom, the class trip to Six Flags, graduation day: he won’t get to go to any of those, thanks to you. You snuffed out his life, Mrs. Quirk. Those two boys in Colorado used guns, and you used your car. But the result was the same.”

Maureen stood there, wailing now, but Carole Alderman wouldn’t stop.

“I’m told you were a good nurse, Mrs. Quirk—that your elderly patients, and the children at the school where you worked, liked you very much. That they trusted you. And I’ve heard, too, that you were devastated by the shootings at Columbine. But in spite of all that, you, who were, by profession, a healer, got into your car, drove under the influence, and killed my son. So I don’t care how wondeful a nurse you were, or how much trauma you suffered because of those shootings out there. You murdered my son, Mrs. Quirk, and because of that, you rip the beating heart out of my chest every single day of my life. Several times a day, in fact. Because just as you will never
know the depth of a mother’s love, you cannot ever know the depth of a mother’s suffering when she has to bury her child.”

“I’m sorry,” Mo wailed. “I’m so, so sorry.” She was doubled over in pain. Lena, standing beside her, rubbed her back. Nick, seated next to me, grabbed onto my shoulder. “It’s almost over,” he whispered.

Carole Alderman turned to the judge. “Your honor,” she said. “I understand from Mr. Horshack that the prosecutor and Mrs. Quirk’s lawyers have come to an agreement that would allow her to leave prison after the third year of a five-year sentence. And I ask you, I
beg
you, sir, to reject that compromise, which I understand it is in your power to do. Three years? Thirty-six months for the life of my son? Please, your honor. Take into consideration that this woman has given my family and me a life sentence of suffering. If her sentence is to be five years, then please,
please
make her serve the full five years.”

LaCasse twiddled with the pencil he was holding, swiveled back and forth in his big leather chair. Under his breath, Nick whispered, “Shit.”

As we waited for the judge’s response, a commotion erupted at the back of the room. I glanced back quickly. A sheriff and a young woman were arguing with each other in hushed tones.

“Ms. Alderman,” LaCasse said. “I’m going to grant you your request.” He was in the middle of explaining why when the woman in back broke free and ran forward, calling to the judge.

“Don’t! It’s bogus what that lady said! She’s nothing like that!”

By the time I looked away from the tussle between Velvet Hoon and the two sheriffs who had wrestled her to the floor, a third sheriff was hurrying Maureen toward the door.

“No, wait!” I called. “Please just let me—”

“Don’t listen to any of that stuff she said about you, Mom! I’m going to come visit you! I love you, Mom!”

I stood there, fingering the wedding band Maureen had taken off
and handed to me before the hearing began. I hoped she might turn back to look at me, but she didn’t. She was heading out the door and on her way to Quirk Correctional Institution, the prison that my radical great-grandmother had dared imagine into existence in the early years of the previous century, and which, ninety-odd years later, had strayed unrecognizably from her vision.

“Get your fucking hands off of me! I LOVE YOU, MOM!”

I held Mo’s wedding ring tight in my fist and watched her go.

DRIVING THROUGH THREE RIVERS’ DESERTED
downtown, I passed the Savings and Loan sign at the exact second when the time changed from 11:59 to midnight.

Thursday, September 1, 2005.

Bodies were floating facedown in New Orleans. The death count in Iraq was ratcheting up. The shadow of 9/11 was over us all. “Yes, yes, Mr. Quirk. So much to grieve and worry about these days,” Dr. Patel had acknowledged the day before, interrupting my CNN-fueled rant about the state of the world. “But tell me. What is the
good
news?”

“The good news?” She’d looked so anticipatory, I’d felt like a game show contestant. “I don’t know, Doc. Can’t be that we’re stuck with Dubya and Darth Vader for another three-plus years. Or that I owe my wife’s lawyers more money than I made in income last year. Or that, if the Seaberrys go ahead with the civil suit, they could end up owning the home I live in and the land it sits on.
Good
news, huh? Gee, you stumped me on that one.”

But now I had an answer for her. If it was September 1, then the good news was that Maureen Quirk, State of Connecticut Inmate #383–642, had survived the first two months of her sentence.

Why was I behind the wheel at midnight? Because Alphonse had had to rush down to Florida. Mr. Buzzi had gotten tangled up in his garden hose, fallen, and broken his hip, and Mrs. Buzzi had gotten
herself so worked up about it that her shingles had come back. And while Al was down there, running back and forth from the hospital to his parents’ trailer park, his night baker had quit on him. “No notice,” Al had said when he called in the favor. “Leaves me a fuckin’ text-message that his keys are on the shelf above the prep table and him and his girlfriend are on their way to New Mexico. And you should see
her,
Quirky. Looks like she walked off the set of
Planet of the Apes.
If I had to drive cross-country with that, I’d shoot myself. Dipshit missing-front-tooth motherfucker. Good riddance. I’m
glad
he’s gone.”

I’d tried to get out of it. If I worked third shift, then I had to sleep days, and visiting hours at the prison were from two to three thirty. On top of that, the semester at Oceanside was starting in less than a week, and my department chair had saddled me, last minute, with another teacher’s class. The good news, Dr. Patel, was that teaching three sections instead of two made me eligible for health care. The bad news was: How was I supposed to write a syllabus until I got the reading done, and how was I going to get the reading done if I was up all night cutting, proofing, frying, and filling doughnuts?

But mentioning semesters and syllabi was like speaking Sanskrit to Alphonse Buzzi. “Last couple months, I ain’t even been making my expenses,” he’d confided. “It’s this fuckin’ heat, man. Who wants coffee and doughnuts when it’s ninety-eight degrees and you’re walking around in your own pig sweat?” I’d almost mentioned global warming—Alphonse had voted for Bush in 2000 and, unforgivably, again in 2004—but instead I’d let him ramble. “I’m a month behind on my rent. I’m buying on credit from my coffee guy and U.S. Foods. And now Numb Nuts bails on me. If my morning regulars see the lights off and a sign on the door, they’re gonna drive down the road to Dunkin’ Donuts and never come back. Coolatas, smoothies, iced fuckin’ Dunkaccinos. What are they gonna offer next—handjobs while you’re waiting in the drive-thru line? Honest to God, Quirky, I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t desperate. Trust me. I’m
desperate.”
And
because he’d sounded close to tears, I’d agreed and gotten off the phone ASAP. Alphonse had cried in my presence once before, the night his brother died—had blubbered and choked and said it should have been him, not Rocco, who got leukemia. That it would have been easier on his folks if it
had
been him. Two months earlier, at the sentencing hearing, I’d heard the same thing from another surviving sibling: Jesse Seaberry. I wondered how he was doing now, sobriety-wise. Wouldn’t want to bet the farm on
that
kid’s staying on the straight and narrow….

“Very stressful, Mr. Quirk,” Dr. Patel had concurred. “A large debt, a worrisome lawsuit, a spouse in prison. I acknowledge that your burdens are heavy ones.” She was nodding so sympathetically, I hadn’t noticed the brass knuckles. “And we can continue this pity party if you’d like. But since we have just this one session together, might I suggest we take a different approach?”

Pity party? The hell with her. I hadn’t gone there to be ridiculed. I’d gone so that she could call some colleague who’d call in a prescription—something to help me sleep. I’d been overdoing it on the Katrina coverage, then dropping across the bed, exhausted but too agitated to sleep. Eyes closed, I’d keep seeing people stranded on their rooftops, wading neck-deep through that bacterial stew. Blacks, mostly—just like over there at the prison. You sit in the visiting room, and it’s maybe eight or nine to one, black to white. All that phony outrage about New Orleans from the politicians and pundits: it was a bullshit show. All Katrina did was shine a spotlight on what this country’s been tolerating since the days of the slave ships….

“What do you mean, a different approach?” I’d asked Patel.

“Tell me again, Mr. Quirk, the name of the new course you’re to teach.” So I’d told her: The Quest in Literature.

“The Quest in Literature. Ah, yes. Lovely. It’s a shame my schedule won’t allow it, because that is a course
I
would like to take myself. But I’m wondering if, as you teach this material, you might also launch
yourself
on a quest. A personal one, I mean.” A quest for what? A
yellow Mustang? “And, Mr. Quirk, I see from your countenance that you are immediately skeptical.”

“I’m not skeptical. I’m … What kind of a quest?”

She smiled, sipped her tea. Didn’t answer the question….

MULTIPLY
365
DAYS BY FIVE,
add one day for leap year, and you get a 1,826-day prison sentence. Subtract the 62 days she’d already served—July and August—and it equaled 1,764 more to go. I’d computed it the day before—had done the math on the inside of a paperback while I was cooling my jets in the waiting area where they corral the lawyers and loved ones. There’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait at Quirk CI. Two months has taught me that. Weekday visits are supposed to be ninety minutes long, but by the time their afternoon count clears and they search the women who have visitors, you’re lucky if there’s three-quarters of an hour left. Complaining is useless. I swear they must train corrections officers how to make that look-right-through-you face if you object to something. I’ve gotten that same look from three or four different COs. Now I just bring something to read and keep my mouth shut.
Ancient Myth and Modern Man
: that was the paperback I was reading. It was one of the books I’d be teaching.

The Quest in Literature. The guy who’d been teaching it was one of those hipster professors with the ponytail and the piercings. “But Caelum, you’ve been
asking
me to assign you something other than the composition course,” my department chair reminded me.

“Yeah, but under different circumstances.”

“Such as?” She was starting to climb up on that high horse of hers.

“Such as, how about more than five days’ notice?”

“Well, Caelum, had Seth Wick let me know ahead of time that he had an amphetamine problem and was planning to have a meltdown and be rushed into rehab, then I certainly would have given you more
notice.” Dr. Barnes, she wanted everyone to call her now. For the first few years I taught at Oceanside, she was Patricia, but then she’d gotten the doctorate from Columbia, the Volvo, and a wardrobe of expensive suits and become
Doctor
Barnes. How had she put it in that e-mail she sent to everyone? Something about “Dr. Barnes” being her “preferred appellation.”

But anyway, Seth the Speed Freak hadn’t bothered to leave behind a syllabus, and the books he’d ordered were already sitting in the bookstore. I was told I had to use them. And it wasn’t exactly a
light
list:
Ancient Myth and Modern Man,
Campbell’s
Hero with a Thousand Faces,
Homer’s
Odyssey, The Hero’s Journey.
I could already hear the students whining about how hard the readings were, not to mention the feminists crabbing about the sexist titles. Those back-to-school feminists? The ones who’d postponed college until their kids were older? They’re both the most conscientious students and the biggest pains in the ass. Which I appreciated, oddly enough. They’re good consumers, those women—want their money’s worth, which you can’t fault them for. The majority of the nineteen-and twenty-year-olds are so goddamned passive. Don’t want to come up with any of their
own
opinions about what they read; they just want to copy down
your
opinions and give them back to you on the test. Not those older students, though. They can be fierce.

Mo says they do pat-downs before the inmates enter the visiting room and full strip searches after the visit’s over. The women officers do it, not the men, but it’s still pretty degrading. What they’re looking for is contraband: drugs, jewelry, stuff to barter or bribe someone with. They peer inside their ears and their mouths, have them lift their breasts and spread their toes, part their vaginal lips, spread their butt cheeks. Mo says there’s this one CO who always says, when they have to spread for her, “And I better see pink!”

The two-month mark would be a milestone, the jailhouse shrink had assured Maureen during those rough first days. Woody, he has them call him—short for Dr. Woodruff. He urged Mo to set
September as a goal and, as she worked toward it, to stay focused on the recovery mantra: one day at a time. At two months, he said, she’d be better able to cope with those sudden loud noises that kept doing her in—the shouting and slamming cell doors, the out-of-nowhere shrieks of laughter and wounded animal wailing in the middle of the night. Woody told Mo there were probably more inmates at Quirk CI who suffered from posttraumatic stress than inmates who didn’t—including some of the toughest cookies. She’d be surprised. At two months, he promised, she’d have a much better grasp of the rules and routines, the jailhouse culture. Meanwhile, she should listen to her gut and proceed with caution. Like any prison, Quirk was full of manipulators. He prescribed an antianxiety drug to help her cope with the noises, an antidepressant to quiet her crying jags.

When they let you into the visiting room, the inmates are already there, seated on one side of these big gray tables. Visitors sit on the opposite side. You’re allowed a quick hug and kiss at the beginning and end of a visit. No long lip-locks or lingering embraces. They’re awkward, those hugs. For one thing, you have to reach across a table that’s four feet wide. For another, you’re being watched. There’s a camera room where they can look out at you but you can’t look in at them. They’ve got four or five video cameras suspended from the ceiling, another one on a tripod next to the CO’s raised desk. He’s got a microphone and calls you by your seat number if you’re doing something he doesn’t like. It’s weird: if you’re a visitor, you’re a seat number, and if you’re an inmate, you’re Miss So-and-So. “Table F, seat seven, please put your hands on the table where I can see them…. Miss Rodriguez, lower your voice or I’ll send you back to your tier.”
Miss
Rodriguez: sounds so mannerly, doesn’t it? Like they’re treating them with the utmost respect. Mo said a woman in her unit was walking to the chow hall and thought she saw a CO pointing to her. Goes over to him and asks, Does he want something? “No,” he says. “I’m just pretending I’m at the shooting range.”

Mo says the women officers are, in general, more decent than the
guys, but that they can be chameleons. Depends on who they’re partnered up with. If it’s someone who’s fair, then they’re fair. If they’re working a shift with a hard-ass, then they turn hard-ass. My aunt, when she was a CO, sure as hell wasn’t like that. With Lolly, what you saw was what you got. Which was probably why the good ole boys went after her with a vengeance.

Those first weeks? God, they were hideous. For one thing, Maureen had arrived with a target on her back because her last name was also the name of the prison. Inmates and staff alike drew all kinds of ridiculous conclusions about that surname. Mo was a rich bitch getting special treatment. She was a plant—a DOC spy. It’s a culture of fear and distrust, that place. Everyone’s looking over their shoulder at everyone else, doesn’t matter if you’re doing time or drawing a paycheck. Everyone’s suspect. So the name “Quirk” gave Mo one more burden to bear at a time when her life seemed unbearable.

During those visits, she’d sit across from me, sobbing and hugging herself while I racked my brain for things to say. “You know that Korean family lives down the road? They painted their house purple. Looks weird…. I pulled two ticks off of Nancy Tucker yesterday. This morning, she left me a present: a headless mouse. Pain-in-the-ass cat. By the way, she said to say hello.” No smiles, no eye contact. She’d hardly say anything, and when she did, I couldn’t hear her. There’s a din in there—everyone jabbering in English and Spanish, and the acoustics are horrible, all these different conversations bouncing off the cinder block. “What’d you say?” I’d ask, then wish I hadn’t when she repeated it. “I don’t think I can survive in here,” she’d say. Or “I should’ve died that day.” Which day, I wondered. The day they opened fire at Columbine? The day she killed the Sea-berry kid? I didn’t have the heart to ask.

Half the time during those visits, she acted like she was someplace else—like I was boring her or something. But if I said I might not be able to come next time, her tears would spill onto the tabletop. And her fingers: she’d chewed her nails and the skin around them so
raw, it looked like she’d fed them one by one into an electric pencil sharpener. I had to force myself to go over there, frankly. I’d look up at the CO at the desk sometimes, and he’d be looking back at me like I was guilty of something. Then I’d look back at Mo without a clue about how I could help her. I had to recover after those visits, to be honest—recovery being a couple of stiff scotches when I got back home.