The parking lot at that hour was filled with people doing their daily exurban tasks: a woman lifted several huge plastic Lowe’s bags with shelving poking from them out of the back of her SUV, and another screamed at her child that she was in charge of him and not the other way around. As Barbara and Dale walked toward the car, they looked like dolls of a different scale, her mother plumping out as her father caved in.
In the car, Evelyn put on a Hank Williams CD, one of her father’s favorites. To her surprise, as she backed out of the Marina Air lot, she heard her mother’s deep voice from the back, singing along to “Jambalaya.”
“Mom? You’re a secret Hank Williams fan?” she said.
“I’ve always hated my singing voice. It’s flat,” Barbara said.
Hank had moved on to “Half As Much,” and the washed-out winter colors on the side of the road whizzed by.
“I’ll get everything back,” Dale said suddenly. “I have a plan. Once I’m out. I know I can’t practice law anymore, but there’s a whole list of things I’m planning on. I can’t technically be a lawyer, but I can still be one heck of a consultant. I’m going to put both of you right back in Sag Neck.”
“Dad.” Evelyn looked at her father, who was staring out the side window. “You don’t need to get it all back. It might not even be possible.”
“It’s always possible.”
Evelyn looked at the road. She knew that wasn’t true. A person can’t re-create an old life with everything and everyone he once had. People react and interact, develop, and the puzzle pieces change shape and no longer fit together with a satisfying snap.
“Barbara,” Dale said. “Will you be all right?”
She heard a click of a soda can opening from the backseat, and saw that her mother was now enjoying a Tab. “Vending machine,” Barbara said by way of an answer. “I never supposed I would live somewhere with a vending machine, but it’s rather useful, having a cold soda available at all hours. I’ve stopped making my own ice, in fact.”
“Is that right?” Dale said.
“There’s an ice machine right at the end of the hallway. It’s all the ice you could ever want and I don’t have to do a thing.”
Evelyn glanced at her father, who had a little smile starting, then caught her mother’s eye in the rearview mirror and gave her a respectful nod.
“And you, Evie? Are you going to be all right? You’re not missing New York too badly?” Dale asked.
Evelyn watched the lane paint markers at the side of the car, thinking about how to answer that question. She owed so much on all of her credit cards. The Caffeiteria was a good step, and at least she was earning something, but her debt was so massive, always hovering gray around the edges of whatever else she was doing, that it wouldn’t be enough. She could work there for years and still have bills looming.
She had been waiting, she thought. Always waiting. In New York, waiting for her life to be replaced by some other, more interesting life on offer. Waiting for money that she felt ought to be hers to flood in and elevate her position, from some male source, her father, Scot, Jaime. Waiting to be recognized and accepted in the social scene, starring on Appointment Book. When she thought about it, she had always imagined her future self in pictures with her face on others’ bodies, in others’ dresses, at others’ parties, in others’ poses. Now, back home, she had been biding time, waiting for some sign about what her life’s goal ought to be. Maybe it didn’t work like that. Maybe you had to change things step-by-step.
The fact that New York still existed was puzzling. It was disconnected from her present, this car and the prison drop-off. It was far from her feet, which tingled after standing all day, and her hair, which smelled like coffee even after multiple shampoos, and the tug of the espresso-machine filter handle, the turn of the frother dial, the cool splash of white milk against the metal cup. In Bibville, she looked different enough from how she had as a kid that old classmates didn’t seem to recognize her, and her mother’s former friends would order skim lattes and scuttle away, embarrassed for Barbara or her or themselves, she couldn’t tell. Her twenty-eighth birthday was not too many months away, and she was living at home, working at a coffee shop, with a father who would be an inmate in a matter of hours and a mother who was not highly equipped for real life, and she was deep in debt. This was not the best set of facts, but as she put her foot on the gas, they just seemed like facts. No more, no less.
“Yeah,” Evelyn said. “Yeah, I’m going to be all right.”
When they pulled into the prison parking lot three hours later, Evelyn looked for reasons that it wouldn’t be so bad. There was grass, and there were different brick buildings like at Sheffield, and the group of men in olive-green jumpsuits waiting to get on a truck were at least chatting with one another. Evelyn turned off the car’s engine, and after they got out of the car she and Barbara gathered next to Dale. Evelyn looked around, wondering if a guard would come retrieve him.
“Do we go in with you?” Evelyn said.