Phoebe nodded at an older woman waiting at the next table: a sister member of the sorority of sad wives, one she’d seen before. The tired-looking woman, her roots an inch long, returned the nod with her lips pressed tight. Maybe she had dental problems; maybe she wanted Phoebe to mind her own damned business.
The prisoners lined up and, five at a time, entered the visiting room. Some searched the tables with desperation; others emanated a lack of concern so seemingly forced they belied their casualness. She saw Jake before he found her. Thinner than last time, his green prison uniform somehow pressed and impeccable. His thick hair, cut short, almost buzzed, gave him a rough appearance.
He spotted her and gave her a tough-guy smile, as though they were on the playground, and he couldn’t appear weak in front of his buddies.
She remained seated.
“Where’s my permitted contact?” He held his hands in askance, waiting for her to rise and hug him.
Phoebe debated refusing his touch until she saw the guard, the pockmarked one, staring as though wondering if a situation was developing, what with Jake standing over her. Getting up without a smile, she allowed an embrace, while averting her head to keep his lips away.
“Something wrong?” he asked as they sat. “Kids okay?”
“It’s been a long time since the kids were okay.”
“You know what I mean.” He glanced around as though checking to see if anyone listened in. As though his life was so interesting that someone might sell their conversation to People.
Which could happen.
Fine. Let some drug dealer make money off them.
“Are they healthy?” he asked finally.
“Noah’s drinking. Kate looks like she hasn’t eaten in months.”
Jake poked his head forward in question, unused to this attitude. She usually kept things light, wanting only to skate along the surface until she could escape from him and prison.
“Deb and Ben drive people back and forth from the airport, schlepping their bags, so they can pay for groceries, and Ben became a ‘rental husband.’ They’re trying to sell the condo.”
“Rental husband?” Jake leaned in just enough not to get called out over the loudspeaker. “Did you bring quarters?”
Vending machines, the highlights of the visiting room, lined one wall. Chips, candy bars, even yogurt.
“Rental husband, meaning he rewires retired women’s lamps for ten bucks. On weekends he bags groceries. And no, I forgot the quarters.”
“Christ, Pheebs. I have little enough as it is. You know how much I look forward to this.”
“Really?” she asked. “As much as you look forward to, um, eggplant parmigiana?”
“What are you talking about?”
“As much as you wanted asparagus tips with pepper? Softened ice cream with cake? Big breasts?”
Jake glanced around as though expecting rescue from those surrounding them. Maybe the pink-swaddled baby held by her daddy. Perhaps the woman so heavy her arms draped over themselves. Or maybe the woman to Jake’s right, Ms. Tight Lips—perhaps she’d give him a way out.
“Keep your eyes on me, Jake. Me.” Nothing would stand between her and this low-pitched confrontation, this end to her marriage.
When he fully concentrated on her, she asked, “As much as you looked forward to Bianca?” She lowered her voice more. “Playing games?”
He flinched. Never underestimate the surprise factor. Phoebe couldn’t say any more; she wouldn’t repeat the bedroom practices described by that woman or be the one to give him the book. Let him wonder. Let him worry. Let him find someone else to fetch and bring quarters for him.
Jake remained silent, holding out for a loophole. A coward here, like every place else. He’d make her do the heavy lifting, wait her out. Rage gnawed and grabbed her head.
“Say something. Tell me. Give me back my life. All of it was a sham. Give. It. Back.”
“What do you want?” Desperation to calm her poured like sweat from Jake.
“What do I want? I just told you. Truth.” She shook her head. “No. I want nothing from you. How could I believe a word out of your mouth?”
“You know I love you.”
“I don’t know anything about you.” Pain sliced through her head and neck, clusters of nauseating spasms, sharp and then thudding. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“What’s wrong?”
“An advance copy of your Bianca’s memoir came in the mail,” she said. “She wrote an entire book about you.”
“She wrote a book about me?”
That he didn’t deny it, that he immediately went to “she” and “me” shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did.
Calm down. She needed to calm down right fucking now. Jake, in his pressed prison pants, worried because one of his whores wrote a book about him, and the pain in her chest and the flickering, long fluorescent lights and stale air and the woman’s fat hanging off her chair and the smell of pent-up men and the vibrations of violence and the shaking hands and knife in her head and the pains in her arm and the feeling her heart would explode out of her body and—
? ? ?
She lay on the cold concrete floor. A concerned guard knelt beside her. “Stay still. Medics are coming.”
She moved her eyes from side to side. Everyone had been pushed back, visitors on one side, prisoners on the other. A line of guards separated them.
Jake stood to the side with Pockmark.
“Do you want your husband?” the guard asked.
She closed her eyes, but the room spun, forcing her to open her heavy lids. “No.”
? ? ?
“Mrs. Pierce, you have too many signs of severe stress for me to enumerate.” The doctor perched on a padded blue stool with a stethoscope hitched around his neck. Bearded, burly—they’d given her some sort of Paul Bunyan mountain man doctor. “It’s atypical for panic attacks to cause fainting, but it can happen.”
“Just lucky, huh?” She plastered on a smile while trying to figure out how fast she’d be able to leave this community hospital and drive home. Adrenalized anxiety had compelled her to race straight to the Adirondacks without stopping, leaving early in the morning to be on time for the last hours of visiting, planning to drive back home that night. Now someone had sewn rocks into her body and soul.
“My guess is that you hyperventilated, constricting the blood vessels to your brain. Then this, combined with adrenaline, and anxiety and panic, overpowered you. Some parts of your brain actually shut down during a panic attack, while others rush into coping mechanism mode. In other words, your body said it couldn’t go on and shut down by fainting.”
Hearing this, Phoebe never wanted to leave this sterile emergency room cubicle. She wanted to remain here with Dr. Paul Bunyan and the angel-nurses who’d brought her apple juice and crackers, safe in this disinfected room.
“Do you have someone to call? Someone who could help you?”
? ? ?