That day coming home from the reservoir, Jay made a note of the landscape, the closed business now that was a general store, the gas station the old man with the goiter on his neck owned, the acres and acres of ruined industry, parking lots as open as ball fields. He took in as much as he could as he and Ava passed by in his car. Pinewood was a town he would always think of as home, but he memorized the landscape like he was seeing it for the last time. In the retelling, whenever that might be, he would want to know what he saw. He would want to remember how things were to tell the story true. In minutes, he and Ava were in sight of his house, a miracle in a muddy field. What he would give if his mother could get a glimpse of it, even for a moment. He’d opened his car door to get out and go inside, thought better of it and sat with the car turned off. He and Ava waited together. The feeling washed over him again that if they could just stay inside the car’s cocoon everything would turn out okay. They waited there for a sign or revelation that might change everything or at least point to everything. Jay’s mother had not appeared with Hale-Bopp. He had known that she wouldn’t, but the act of looking for her made him feel hopeful. The message his mother had for him had taken more than twenty years, but there it was. Survive, Jaybird. Get on with it.
“Listen to me. The kids will start screaming any minute, so let me say this quick. Don’t just disappear, JJ. Not again. I know you think you can’t stay here. But every person you see around here is walking around with a busted life story. Stay, honey.”
“I won’t leave for good. How about this, we’ll go to Vegas together. How about that?” Jay laughed in a nervous false way that fooled neither of them. He couldn’t stand it if Sylvia saw all over his face the fear that he felt.
“You teasing like that tells me you’re not coming back. Is that right?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s the kind of joke you make when you never plan to see somebody again. Don’t do that to me or Ava either,” Sylvia said.
“I’m not joking.” Jay laughed. “I was joking a little bit, but I’m coming back.”
“I’ll help you see your sister. I know you need her. You must know that it is the rare family that doesn’t suffer. You understand?”
“Sylvia, nothing will keep me away from here for too long. It won’t be as long as it’s been.”
Sylvia got the dishcloth from the sink and wiped down the table for the second time. She poured herself coffee and sat down across from JJ.
“I was thinking about all this food we had here, JJ. When we was kids one night we had a blackberry pie for dinner. That’s all there was. I was a child, a couple of years older than May, but I knew a blackberry pie wasn’t dinner. But I could tell from how my mother was looking at us that I better not ask for more. I knew the pie was all there was. But more than that I knew asking would make Mama angry because she was poor and all in the world she could offer us was that small piece of blackberry pie and she knew it would never be enough. She was ashamed of that and worse of all ashamed in front of her children.” Sylvia sipped her coffee. She glanced up at JJ and caught his gaze. “I’m ashamed.” Sylvia felt her face and neck go hot.
JJ reached out for her hand. “Don’t say that.”
Sylvia squeezed JJ’s hand back and stared intently at his face. “You don’t either. You did everything you knew how. What else can you do?”
“I will see you next summer. I promise. I’m going to travel, but I’ll be back.”
Sylvia nodded. She’d never begged a man, even when her needs threatened to swallow her whole. She wasn’t begging now just asking for what she needed. Of course that would feel strange. “You can make a life. I’m here. I know I don’t know about what’s out there in the rest of the world. I know there’s a lot to find. Important things. Things I won’t ever get to see.”
“I need you to hear me, Mrs. Sylvia. I don’t kill that easy. See.” JJ pretended to open his shirt like Superman. “Stronger than a locomotive. I’m coming back.”
“But you need to come back. Don’t wait too long. Listen to me, if you wait too long, I won’t be here or anywhere else.”
“Sylvia, I’m not running,” JJ started but he wasn’t sure what else to say.
Sylvia held up his hand to stop him, though he’d said nothing else. “If you need your sister, go find her, baby. That’s worth it, but come back. None of us have long.”
43
The long corridor at the prison was cinder block like you might expect, but bright and open, more hospital than jail. Sylvia had announced herself to the woman behind the bulletproof glass. She was a Perkins, no doubt but Sylvia wasn’t sure if she’d known the woman once upon a time or if she knew some of her people. No flicker of true recognition had registered on the woman’s face. Sylvia waited for the woman to check her computer screen, and shuffle some papers. Lana had sent a cake. Don’t eat it all before you get there, heifer, Lana told her. The Perkins woman glanced up from her typing at Sylvia’s silly cake wrapped in foil. “Honey, you have to leave that in your car,” she said. Sylvia had seen so many shows about a file hidden for a prisoner she was surprised that this detail had turned out to be false.
The door to the visiting area buzzed open. The room was like the movies, small, windowless with metal chairs on either side of a transparent partition clear as glass.
A small, pretty man in a baggy orange jumpsuit appeared. A lovely face. He held his long fingers interlaced in front of him. He sat across from her without looking in her eyes. Sylvia’s hands sweated. She fumbled in her pocketbook, looked for a mint, a tissue, anything to hold on to. He looked at her face with no emotion on his. He had the patchy start of a beard on his smooth cheeks.
“Hello, Mr. Marcus,” Sylvia said and searched his face for his disapproval. “It’s me, Sylvia. Don’t fuss at me now, I can’t take it. I’m not going to hear it.” Sylvia arranged her purse on her lap. “I needed to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t come before now. I’m sorry about a lot of things. Tell me how you are. It won’t be long until you get to come home. Almost no time” Sylvia nervous laughed. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have come.
Marcus hesitated for what felt like an intolerable amount of time, twice Sylvia had to shush herself to keep from bridging the silence with some kind of sound in the room. Sylvia thought he might get up from the chair, motion to the guard, or turn completely away and refuse to talk to her. Marcus hid his face with his hands, the glint of the cuffs on his wrists slid down on his forearms. Sylvia caught her breath at the metallic sound.
“I hope you’re getting along all right, Marcus. I have thought about you again and again.” Marcus looked at her face, pursed his lips. His face shadowed like he was in pain.
“I meant to tell you the truth about my son. I didn’t mean to deceive you. That was never my intention. I don’t know if you will ever be able to understand this. I don’t know if I do.” Sylvia hesitated, shuffled the thoughts around in her mind, not sure what to say next. “Talking to you made me think of him. I got to think about who he might have been or even little things he might have done. I’m ashamed of what I did.”
Marcus threw his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Sylvia couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or in pain. “You don’t have to talk about it,” Marcus said.
“I brought you a cake, but they wouldn’t let me bring it. My sister made it. She’s the cake maker.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Marcus said.