Sisters

FIVE




The Museum of Fine Arts called her in for an interview and she went in dutifully, but might as well have taken a number. The interview was perfunctory, and the young woman who spoke to her let Alex know that she was only one of legions who had come in to apply. She arrived back home feeling exhausted and discouraged. After hanging her coat up in the hall closet, she picked up the mail that had come through the mail slot and began to thumb through the flyers, catalogues and bills. Suddenly she stopped, her heart skipping a beat.

Her address on the envelope had been written in a neat, squarish hand that strangely resembled her mother’s penmanship. For a moment, the sight of it made her feel weak. She looked at the return address. Framingham Prison for Women. Alex tore open the envelope and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. The paper rattled as she gripped it.

Dear Alex,

I was surprised to get your letter. I don’t really know what to say. Yes, I always knew I was adopted, but I didn’t think too much about it. I figured if my birth mother didn’t want me, why should I want to meet her? It never occurred to me that she might be hoping I would look for her.

You said you wanted to come and see me if I wanted to meet you. I didn’t know you existed until I got your letter, but I guess if you want to come, why not? I am allowed to have visitors, so just come during visiting hours. I am always here. Ha, ha.

Sincerely,

Dory Colson

Alex sat down and reread the letter several times. She felt as if she was standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down. With each step she had taken so far, Alex had told herself that she didn’t need to go any further. There was still time to drop the whole thing. It wasn’t as if Dory could come and visit her. The next step would be different though. The next step would bring her face to face with this . . . sister. Maybe you should stop now, she thought. Maybe you should forget about this and not pursue it.

But there was no stopping at this point. Tomorrow, she thought, and wondered how long it would take to drive to MCI Framingham.

Alex parked in the visitors’ lot, got out of her car and obeyed the order, printed on signs every few feet, to lock the car. She straightened her jacket and the sweater underneath it. She had carefully adhered to the visitors’ dress code demanded on the MCI Framingham website. No denim, no sweats, no camouflage or suggestive clothing. And she had worn underwear, as the regulations required. She wondered wryly if anyone would check, and then realized, with a shudder, that it was quite possible that they would.

The prison sat at the edge of town but was clearly isolated, a world unto itself. Approaching the red-brick building with its peaked dormers and a flag on a tall flagpole, lifting and falling in the breeze, was almost like approaching a courthouse or a college classroom building. A closer look revealed tall chain-link fences and loops of barbed wire surrounding the open areas. Alex took a breath, opened the front door and went inside. At that point, any façade of normalcy vanished. She followed the signs for the visitors’ entrance and approached a small office walled off with Plexiglass. A uniformed guard sat inside, talking to another guard who was standing in an inner doorway.

‘Excuse me,’ said Alex. The man ignored her and continued to talk. A heavyset black woman sitting on an orange molded plastic chair in the hallway reading a paperback romance novel shifted in her seat.

‘Excuse me,’ Alex repeated as a few more moments went by and the guard did not acknowledge her presence. She lifted up a fist and went to tap on the Plexiglass.

The woman in the chair did not look up from her book, but murmured, ‘Don’t do that.’

Alex glanced over at her. The woman did not meet her glance but her mouth was set in a firm line. ‘You best be patient,’ she said.

Alex withdrew her fist and stood, uncertainly, looking at her. Finally the guard finished his conversation and turned his cold, silvery gaze on Alex. He did not ask what she wanted.

‘Um, I’m here to see Dory Colson,’ she said.

‘Here’s your number and a key,’ he said, sliding a piece of paper out to her. ‘Put all your things in one of those lockers.’ He gestured toward the numbered cubicles against the front wall.

‘Everything? I brought some photos. Can I bring them in . . .?’ she asked. The guard had already turned away without replying.

Alex, frustrated by the guard’s abruptness, put the key in the lock and jimmied it angrily, to no avail.

‘Turn the key upside down,’ said the other woman calmly, turning a page, her gaze still trained on her book.

Alex removed the key and tried again. The locker door opened. ‘Thank you,’ she said, jamming her purse inside.

‘Can’t bring nothing in. Put it all away,’ said the older woman. ‘Empty your pockets too. Just keep enough cash to buy a card for the vending machines,’ she said, inclining her head toward a machine beside the lockers.

Alex looked at her, puzzled.

‘They gonna want you to buy ’em something to eat. The machines got hot food. Hamburgers and the like. But you can’t take cash inside.’

‘Oh. OK,’ said Alex. She walked over to the machine and read the instructions, depositing a ten-dollar bill. The machine clanked and spat out a card.

‘You just hang onto that,’ said the woman.

Alex did as she was told. She sat down across from her. The woman looked over her half-glasses at Alex.

‘First time?’ she said.

Alex nodded.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ the woman said grimly.

‘I guess you’ve done this before.’

‘My daughter’s here. Six years. Selling drugs.’

Alex grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Who you here for?’

Alex somehow found the words possible to say. ‘My sister.’ Then she hesitated, trying to think how much to explain about the nature of Dory’s crime.

‘Number four hundred and twelve,’ the guard barked.

The woman put her book down on her chair seat and got to her feet. ‘That’s me,’ she said with a sigh.

‘Thanks again,’ said Alex.

The woman nodded and walked over to the door beside the guard’s window. Alex watched her wait for a buzzer to sound and then the woman sighed, pushed the door open and went in. Alex shifted in her seat, sitting on top of her clammy hands, and waited for her number to be called.

The time dragged, and no one offered any explanations. Although she was not used to being treated rudely, Alex realized that she would accomplish nothing here by causing a fuss. Patience, she reminded herself. You don’t want these people looking askance at you. Finally her number was called. She waited for the buzzer, opened the door and entered. The guard told her to stand in front of a scanner and empty her pockets. Luckily, she had been forewarned.

‘I just have this card for the vending machines,’ she said.

The guard nodded disinterestedly. He ordered her to pass through and, when she got to the other side, directed her to a room across the hall. ‘In there,’ he grunted. ‘Sit down at a table. Doesn’t matter which.’

‘Thank you,’ said Alex politely. She wanted to ask if Dory was already in there, but she didn’t dare. She walked across the hall and entered the room, which was mainly empty. Her companion with the romance novel was seated at the far end across from a young woman with a rag tied over her hair and deep circles under her eyes. A tray of food rested, untouched, on the tabletop between them. Neither woman looked up at Alex.

Alex glanced around the room. She picked a table away from the others and sat down. It was Saturday and she had expected the place to be teeming with visitors but, in fact, it was almost eerily empty and silent, except for the constant barrage of announcements over the PA system.

She sat down, her heart pounding, and watched the door. She did not have long to wait. A guard came in with a prisoner in a dark blue jumpsuit. The minute Alex set eyes on her sister, she realized, with a start, that there was no doubt.

Dory Colson was tall and slim with frizzy, reddish-blonde hair in a ponytail and pale eyelashes. Her face was covered with a thin veil of freckles. She could have been a younger, slimmer and more beautiful version of Alex’s mother, Catherine Woods.

Dory looked around the room and her vacant, gray-eyed gaze settled on Alex. She stared at her, unsmiling.

Alex stood halfway up in her seat and raised her hand. Dory spoke to the guard who had accompanied her and came gliding toward Alex. Alex stepped out from behind the table. She felt a sudden panic that she didn’t know what to do. She felt as if she should embrace this person who was her sister, but she didn’t want to. Then again, it seemed too weird to shake her hand. Dory settled the problem for her. She nodded abruptly and sat down in the chair across from Alex. Relieved, Alex resumed her seat.

‘So,’ said Dory in a low murmur, ‘you found me.’

Alex was startled by those words and felt compelled to protest. ‘Well, not me. Not really. My attorney has an investigator who . . .’

‘I meant the prison,’ said Dory.

‘Oh,’ said Alex, feeling flustered. ‘Yes. It wasn’t hard to find.’

She couldn’t stop staring at Dory’s face, at once so alien and so familiar. Unlike her mother, Dory’s eyes were flat and lusterless. That wasn’t the only difference. Where Catherine was warm, Dory was cool. There was a distant quality to her voice and her fleeting smile. But the ineffable resemblance in the arrangement of their features was uncanny. Alex felt almost angry at this prisoner for resembling her mother so closely. It seemed wrong, somehow. As if she had a claim to their mother that Alex never would.

Now that they were face-to-face, Alex suddenly struggled to think of what to say. Her brain felt utterly empty of any thoughts, except for an urgent desire to get out of this place which smelled of stale fried food and disinfectant. Then she remembered the card which she was squeezing in her hand. The corners of it were cutting into her palm. ‘I got this card,’ she said. ‘Would you like to get something . . . from one of the machines?’

Dory gazed at the array of vending machines with a flicker of interest that faded immediately. ‘No. No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m watching my figure.’

‘Really?’ Alex asked, nonplussed.

Dory looked at Alex almost pityingly. ‘No. I don’t need anything.’

She may as well have added, ‘from you.’ The implication was there.

‘I imagine the food’s not too great here,’ said Alex, feeling stupid that the only thing she could think of to say to this new-found sister was a comment about prison food.

‘No. It’s not good,’ said Dory. ‘Rice and potatoes. That’s basically it.’

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like a hamburger or something?’ Alex asked, gesturing vaguely toward the machines.

‘I think they make those hamburgers out of potatoes,’ said Dory.

It took Alex a moment to realize that Dory was joking, and then she laughed.

Dory smiled briefly. ‘So. According to you, we are sisters.’

‘Oh, we are sisters. Now that I’ve seen you, any doubts I might have had . . . If you knew how much you look like my mother . . . I brought along some pictures I wanted to show you. Of my mother and her family. I thought you’d be interested to see your relatives. But the guards made me leave them outside.’

Dory shrugged. ‘There’s a million rules around here.’

‘You look just like her,’ Alex said.

Dory frowned.

‘Looking at you . . . It’s like looking at a younger version of my mother. It’s really . . . bizarre.’

A look of annoyance flitted across Dory’s features. Alex abruptly stopped talking. She could see that Dory was irritated by this comparison.

‘I mean, obviously, you look like yourself . . .’ she stammered.

‘What happened to her?’ said Dory. ‘You said she was dead.’

‘My mother? She and my father were killed in a car accident in the spring. A drunken driver ran a red light.’

‘Too bad,’ Dory said evenly.

‘Yes. Thanks.’

Alex knew it would be polite to ask about Dory’s family. She was trying to mentally frame the question when Dory asked, ‘Did your detective find out who my father was, too?’

Alex immediately thought of what she had heard about Neal Parafin, the troubled young man who shot himself as his car sat in the driveway of her mother’s childhood home. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, maybe . . .’

‘What is it? Yes or no?’

‘There’s some possibility that it was this guy named Neal . . .’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Dory said, flicking her long, freckled fingers as if to dismiss the question.

There was something about Dory that made Alex feel anxious and hapless. ‘I can do some more digging if you’d like,’ she said. ‘Try to find out for sure.’

‘Don’t bother. I don’t really care. They didn’t have any use for me.’

‘It wasn’t that my mother didn’t want you,’ Alex protested. ‘She was just a young girl at the time. She couldn’t take care of you. And Neal . . . Well, he wasn’t even alive when you were born.’

Dory raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not? What happened to him?’

‘Like I said, I’m not certain that he was your father.’

Dory peered at her. ‘What happened to him?’

Alex swallowed hard, wishing she had not even mentioned Neal. ‘He . . . He committed suicide.’

Dory nodded and pursed her lips, staring at the tabletop.

‘I’m sorry to tell you that,’ said Alex. ‘It must come as a bit of a shock.’

Dory shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said, a studied indifference in her voice and gaze.

Silence descended. Alex felt almost panicky. Somehow she had thought that the biological bond between them would make it easy to talk, but the opposite was true. The fact that they had not even known about one another their whole lives made it seem almost futile to try and ‘catch up’. Alex didn’t want to bring up the crime which had precipitated Dory’s long sentence in prison, and there didn’t seem to be any way to ask about her older sister’s past without mentioning it.

For her part, Dory seemed to have lost all interest in their conversation. She glanced up at the clock on the wall.

Alex felt a sudden flash of anger. She had come all this way, torturing herself with worry and doubt. And now, a woman in prison was too busy to spend any more time with her. ‘Am I boring?’ she asked coldly.

Dory seemed unfazed by her sister’s chilly tone. ‘I’m expecting a visitor.’

You have a visitor, Alex wanted to say, but she stopped herself. ‘I thought there would be more visitors here,’ she said instead, ‘since it’s the weekend.’

‘Weekends are no better than the week,’ said Dory. ‘Except for Sunday.’ Ever since Alex arrived Dory had seemed uninterested, but now, suddenly, her eyes lit up and her pallid skin gained a faint but discernible glow. ‘On Sundays they bring in dogs from the animal shelter and they let you work with them out in the yard. I love animals, especially dogs. That’s what I used to do. I used to be a pet sitter and a dog walker. That’s how I made my living.’

‘Really? I love animals too,’ said Alex. ‘I always had a dog and cats when I was a kid. I can’t wait for my life to get a little more settled so I can get some pets.’

Dory’s enthusiasm seemed to fade. ‘I never had pets.’

‘Not at all?’ asked Alex, feeling privileged and guilty.

‘My sister was a singer and she was allergic to pet dander. So we couldn’t have animals around. Even after she left home and moved to Missouri, my mother said no. We couldn’t risk it. Had to keep the place dander-free in case she came home unexpectedly.’

‘Oh. That’s too bad,’ said Alex, startled by the offhand reference to the murdered Lauren.

A prison guard came up to the table where they were sitting, leaned over and spoke into Dory’s ear.

Dory nodded and looked at Alex. ‘My visitor is here. You’ll have to go ’cause I can only have one visitor at a time.’

‘Oh. OK,’ said Alex.

Dory looked over Alex’s shoulder anxiously. ‘Marisol!’ she called out. ‘Over here.’

Alex, who was already standing, turned and saw a stout, brown-skinned woman in sensible shoes, a brightly-printed overblouse and a skirt, walking toward them. She wore glasses and carried a briefcase. Dory stood up, her frame graceful even in her prison jumpsuit, and briefly hugged her new visitor, who patted her on the back.

Dory then pointed to Alex, but spoke to Marisol. ‘This is my sister. If you can believe it.’

‘No kidding?’ said Marisol. She turned her pleasant gaze on Alex. She was about Alex’s age, with keen, dark eyes, straight white teeth and dimples. She extended her hand. ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Marisol Torres.’

‘Alex Woods.’

‘Marisol is trying to get me out of this hellhole,’ said Dory.

‘Working on it,’ said Marisol.

‘Are you an attorney?’ asked Alex.

‘I’m in my last year of law school at New England University,’ Marisol said. ‘I volunteer for the Justice Initiative.’

‘One visitor at a time,’ bellowed the guard. ‘You’ll have to leave, miss.’

‘OK,’ said Alex, nodding. As had been the case when she arrived, she was uncertain how to take her leave. She wondered if she should embrace Dory, or at least take her hand. Once again, Dory eliminated the question.

‘Sit, Marisol,’ Dory insisted, taking her own seat. Then she looked up at Alex. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘It was . . . interesting to meet you.’

‘For me too,’ said Alex.

‘Will you come back?’ Dory asked.

‘This is not a coffee klatch, ladies,’ the guard barked. ‘Let’s go.’

Luckily for Alex, there was no time to answer.