Mary Clark - Let Me Call You Sweetheart

It was as though a Greek chorus were chanting the words endlessly inside his head: “Twenty more years before even the possibility of parole.” Over and over again. All week, instead of reading or watching television at night, Skip had stared at the framed pictures on the walls of his cell.

Beth and his mother were in most of them. Some of the pictures went back to seventeen years ago, when he was twenty-three years old and had just begun dating Beth. She had just started her first teaching job, and he had just launched Reardon Construction Company.

In these ten years he had been incarcerated, Skip had spent many hours looking at those pictures and wondering how everything had gone so wrong. If he hadn’t met Suzanne that night, by now he and Beth would have been married fourteen or fifteen years. They probably would have two or three kids. What would it be like to have a son or a daughter? he wondered.

He would have built Beth a home they would have planned together-not that crazy, modern, vast figment of an architect’s imagination that Suzanne had demanded and that he had come to detest.

All these years in prison he had been sustained by the knowledge of his innocence, his trust in the American justice system and the belief that someday the nightmare would go away. In his fantasies, the appeals court would agree that Dr. Smith was a liar, and Geoff would come down to the prison and say, “Let’s go, Skip. You’re a free man.”

By prison rules, Skip was allowed two collect phone calls a day. Usually he called both his mother and Beth twice a week. At least one of them came down to see him on Saturday or Sunday.

This week Skip had not phoned either one of them. He had made up his mind. He would not let Beth visit him anymore. She had to get on with her life. She’d be forty her next birthday, he reasoned. She should meet someone else, get married, have kids. She loved children. That was why she had chosen teaching and then counseling as a career.

And there was something else that Skip decided: He wasn’t going to waste any more time designing rooms and houses with the dream that someday he would get to build them. By the time he got out of prison-if he ever did get out-he would be in his sixties. It would be too late to get started again. Besides, there would be no one left to care.

That was why on Saturday morning, when Skip was told his lawyer was phoning him, he took the call with the firm intention of telling Geoff to forget about him as well. He too should get on to other things. The news that Kerry McGrath was coming down to see him as well as his mother and Beth angered him.

“What does McGrath want to do, Geoff?” he asked “Show Mom and Beth exactly why they’re wasting their time trying to get me out of here? Show them how every argument for me is an argument against me? Tell McGrath I don’t need to listen to that again. The court’s done a great job of convincing me.”

“Shut up, Skip,” Geoff’s firm voice snapped. “Kerry’s interest in you and this murder case is causing her a hell of a lot of trouble, including a threat that something could happen to her ten-year-old daughter if she doesn’t pull out.”

“A threat? Who?” Skip looked at the receiver he was holding as though it had suddenly become an alien object. It was impossible to comprehend that Kerry McGrath’s daughter had been threatened because of him.

“Not only who? but why? We’re sure Jimmy Weeks is the ‘who.’ The ‘why’ is that for some reason he’s afraid to have the investigation reopened. Now listen, Kerry wants to go over every inch of this case with you, and with your mother and Beth. She has a bunch of questions for all of you. She also has a lot to tell you about Dr. Smith. I don’t have to remind you what his testimony did to you. We’ll be there for the last visiting period, so plan to be cooperative. This is the best chance we have had of getting you out. It may also be the last.”

Skip heard the click in his ear. A guard took him back to his cell. He sat down on the bunk and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t want to let it happen, but in spite of himself, the flicker of hope that he thought he had successfully extinguished had jumped back to life and now was flaming throughout his being.

Geoff picked up Kerry and Robin at one o’clock. When they reached Essex Fells, Geoff brought Kerry and Robin into the house and introduced them around. At the end of the family dinner the night before, he had briefly explained to the adults the circumstances of his bringing Robin for a visit.

Immediately his mother’s instincts had zeroed in on the fact that this woman Geoff insisted on calling “Robin’s mother” might have special significance for her son.

“Of course, bring Robin over for the afternoon,” she had said. “Poor child, that anyone could even think of harming her. And Geoff, after you and her mother-Kerry, did you say her name was?-come back from Trenton, you must stay and have dinner with us.”

Geoff knew his vague “We’ll see” cut no ice. Chances are, unless something untoward happens, we will eat at my mother’s table tonight, he said to himself.

Instantly he detected the approval in his mother’s eyes as she took in Kerry’s appearance. Kerry was wearing a belted camel’s hair coat over matching slacks. A hunter green turtleneck sweater accentuated the green tones in her hazel eyes. Her hair was brushed loosely over her collar. Her only makeup other than lip blush seemed to be a touch of eye shadow.

Next he could see that his mother was pleased by Kerry’s sincere, but not effusive, gratitude for letting Robin visit. Mom had always stressed that voices should be well modulated, he thought.

Robin was delighted to hear that all nine grandchildren were somewhere in the house. “Don is taking you and the two oldest to Sports World,” Mrs. Dorso told her.

Kerry shook her head ‘and murmured, “I don’t know…”

“Don is the brother-in-law who’s the captain in the Massachusetts State Police,” Geoff told her quietly. “He’ll stick by the kids like glue.”

It was clear that Robin expected to have a good time. She watched as the two-year-old twins, chased by their four-year-old cousin, pell-melled past them. “Sort of like baby rush hour around here,” she observed happily. “See you later, Mom.”

In the car, Kerry leaned back against the seat and sighed deeply.

“You’re not worried, are you?” Geoff asked quickly.

“No, not at all. That was an expression of relief. And now let me fill you in on what I didn’t tell you before.”

“Like what?”

“Like Suzanne’s years growing up, and what she saw when she looked in the mirror in those days. Like what Dr. Smith is up to with one of the patients whom he has given Suzanne’s face. And like what I learned from Jason Arnott this morning.”

Deidre Reardon and Beth Taylor were already in the visitors’ reception room in the prison. After Geoff and Kerry registered with the clerk, they joined them, and Geoff introduced Kerry to Beth.

While they waited to be called, Kerry deliberately kept the conversation impersonal. She knew what she wanted to talk about when they were with Skip, but she wanted to save it until then. She did not want to lose the spontaneity of having the three of them trigger each other’s memories as she raised the different points. Understanding Mrs. Reardon’s restrained greeting, she concentrated on chatting with Beth Taylor, whom she liked immediately.

Promptly at three o’clock they were led to the area where family members and friends were allowed contact visits with the prisoners. It was more crowded today than it had been when Kerry visited last week. Dismayed, Kerry realized that it might have been better to have officially asked for one of the private conference rooms that were available when both prosecutor and defense attorney requested a joint visit. But that would have meant going on record as a Bergen County assistant prosecutor paying a visit to a convicted murderer, something she still was not quite ready to do.