People are usually good when it suits them, and often some will make a special effort to be good when there’s a special need. But most people aren’t naturally inclined to goodness, particularly if it gets in the way of something they want. And what they want doesn’t have to be a palace or a person or a promotion. What they might want is the kind of power that comes from having front-row seats at a tragic drama or the immense emotional satisfaction of feeling luckier or more competent than someone else. That power was what my colleagues got from me, and I wanted it back.
“You judged me, Keith, like the kids say. You and Frank and Robin and almost everyone else. You judged me and you felt justified in doing it. You judged Stefan too, not that there was any way around that really.”
“What would you have done, Thea?”
“Maybe I would have done the same thing. I hope I wouldn’t have. I certainly would not now. Whether or not I would have done it, that’s not the issue. It’s that we can’t go back to before it happened, and I don’t mean Belinda’s murder, I mean what happened to me, here, where I should have been safe.”
“I really hope you don’t feel that way, Thea.”
“I love the work I do,” I said. “But not here.”
And so, I was changed. I would not have wanted to be changed; still, I cannot go back to before. We are annealed, but not restored. It was against my will that I learned what Jill had to teach me about love and loss, and about myself. Am I better for learning it? Probably, but only because I have no choice.
Now I know that, when you lose a child, it’s not the same as losing a contemporary, even a beloved husband or wife. When you lose a child, you grieve as a child grieves, which is to say, you grieve backward. You don’t get better as time passes, you get worse. Time does not take you closer to acceptance, only further from the one you love. Day by day, Belinda slipped away from Jill. Season by season, the clothes in Belinda’s closet were no longer the current style; the music on her player was not the music other kids listened to anymore. Year by year, other people’s daughters and sons, once the same age as Belinda, grew up; and they did the things that Belinda would have done: They graduated college and started medical school or graduate school. They joined the Peace Corps. They backpacked across Europe. They found their first jobs. They learned to sign contracts and leases and health-insurance forms. Some of them got engaged. The more of those milestones that passed, the more meaningless the world became. Jill did not get stronger, she only got older—older without Belinda. The very good memories—silly small things, the way Belinda cried when a dog died in a movie, the gleam of sunscreen on her small shoulder when she was a child at the beach, the color of the Christmas wrapping paper she stamped by hand, the way Belinda hummed as she made her oatmeal, the way she wrapped her long hair in an old tee shirt to dry...these began to lose their sharp edges. The sound of a laugh that was like Belinda’s, the sudden burst of a song Belinda loved when Jill turned on her car radio, the smell of freesia, a scrawl of words on an old grocery list in the bottom of a drawer, BUY STRAWBERRIES, all these had to be wrenched out of her mind and compacted like trash until they were no longer familiar or even recognizable. Those very good memories once scalded Jill like zinc in her eyes; but she realized that the scalding was better, much better, because at least it was feeling and feeling had washed off her like sidewalk chalk in the rain. The scalding grief was better because it was the dark twin of the stupefying love you felt for your child when you had your child with you, a passion so much bigger than anything you expected to feel, so much bigger than any other parent’s love, so magnificent you had to keep it secret, lest the bored gods notice and knock it out of your hands. Jill’s love for her only was a second sun. And as the sun disappeared, minute by hour by day by week by month by year, so did her reason. She would have been the last person to be aware of the awfulness of her crime. To the end, she would have considered Stefan responsible for Belinda’s death, as he does, and now, as I do, in a sense, as well.
I comprehend all this because I comprise it. Not everyone is constituted this way. I think that I exist for myself in part by existing in the eyes of others, especially those nearest to me. Some people have a robust sense of self independent of parenthood. I don’t. If Stefan died that way—in all honesty, if Stefan died in any way—I would lose my reason. I would want to. I would be diminished, minute by hour by day by week by month by year. I wouldn’t do what Jill did. But I would want to cast a killing frost on the world. Sometimes, I would try to seem brave or enduring—even inspirational. That would all be a show and eventually, I would stop trying.
I sometimes think of Belinda. I think of Belinda and say to myself, I will remember her forever; I will never let her depart; I will keep her locked forever in the round-tower of my heart. But every day, she is further out of reach. I can no longer hear her voice, I can only hear my own voice repeating words I know she said, and my loss is not a hundredth part of Jill’s. Stefan has put it all behind him. He doesn’t want to remember. Youth is programmed to go forward. For him to recover does not make him cruel. It makes him healthy.
One weekend a month, when I’m not with Julie or my family, I drive north, not to Black Creek, but to a place high up on a barren fan of land in Iron County. With my small overnight bag, I check in at the little roadside inn where they now know my name and my errand. I lay myself down on the stiff mattress and try to sleep. Every time I make this journey, I think this could be the last time. Nothing is promised. Nothing is expected. Just after the sun comes up, I drive a couple of miles to a park where a small waterfall froths over a chin of granite and crashes into a little creek with surprising force. One sizzling day, I walked right in and stood under it, still in my linen pants and tee shirt. Afterward I was dry within ten minutes. One brutal winter morning, the waterfall was frozen in flight. Sitting there, I drink my coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Then, I drive one more mile. I park my car outside the gates. Inside, I hand over my big leather purse and submit to the wand and wait while they flip through the books and magazines, the pretty stationery and stamped envelopes that are so important for sending letters out, in the hope that letters will come. There is a list and mine is the only name on it. I fill out a form. On the line that specifies RELATIONSHIP TO INMATE, I write, Friend.
* * *