Rebecca Coleman - Inside These Walls

“I found a bit of that information you were looking for,” I say, and she looks up. “Your father had a sister with Turner Syndrome. I’m not sure what that is, but a…a person familiar with him mentioned that to me, when I asked. Other than that, there’s nothing very remarkable in the medical history. I’ll write it all down and mail it to you.”

She replies with a slow blink and unreadable expression. “Thank you. Will the names be on the information you send?”

I turn on my flat face. “I was just planning to list the relationships and the relevant information. I haven’t asked his family if they’re okay with me disclosing names and all that personal stuff, and it seems like it’s only right for me to ask first, you know, in case some of them are still living.”

Annemarie nods, but I can see she’s thinking hard about this, and that I’ve made her unhappy. “Do they know about me at all? That I even exist?”

“No.”

“Is my father still alive?”

I take a deep breath. “No.”

Her face falls a bit, but then she pushes her chin forward almost imperceptibly. “So it is Ricky, then.”

“I didn’t say that. You’re twenty-four years old, Annemarie. A lot of people have died in that time.”

“Clara,” she says, and hearing my first name spoken in her lovely voice makes me feel like a dog being swiped at with a rolled newspaper. “Couldn’t you offer me a hint, at least? Come on, let’s be real here. I researched everything I could find about you before I came here the first time. I know I asked you questions, but the truth is I already knew a lot. About your family, about your dad who died, the places where you lived, and the crime. I read all about the crime.”

“What you read isn’t necessarily what is true.”

“Maybe not, but it can’t be too far off. After all, here—”

“It can be farther off than you think.” My voice is sharper than I want it to be. I struggle to soften it, but a tightness still pulls beneath the quiet. “You’re an artist, Annemarie. You know how different something appears if you stare at it straight on instead of from the side. And everything you’ve seen or read about this is from a side angle, often an extreme one. Please don’t assume you have the true story.”

“Then why don’t you tell it?”

“I’m working on that. Why don’t you ask me what you want to know about him? Maybe I can at least provide you with some background.”

She folds her hands on the table in front of her, those brown eyes taking on a determined gleam that is new to me. Her nails are shiny, French-manicured. “You said my father wasn’t Ricky Rowan, but everyone testified that you were dating him at the time. If it wasn’t him, then who? The licentious dentist?”

I reply with a low laugh at the absurdity of that idea. “No, it was certainly not him.”

“Well, I don’t want to play a guessing game.”

I don’t want you to, either, I think, but I don’t say it aloud. I sit placidly before her, and after a moment I speak. “You know, I tried not to think about any of this for over twenty years. And since the day you walked in here, I haven’t had a moment’s peace in which to think about anything else.”

She tips her head. “Do you want me to apologize for that?”

“No, not at all. I’m thankful beyond words that you were brave enough to find me. I don’t even pretend I can imagine how difficult this must be for you. But this isn’t a trip to the beach for me, either, to revisit all these memories.” I let my gaze drift toward the people posing at the tacky little mural—a preteen girl and an older woman who might be her sister or mother. “You know, when I was a young girl, my stepbrother drowned some stray kittens that were born under our porch. And up until I was just a few months younger than you, my greatest regret in life was that I had coaxed that mama cat into nesting there. Anytime I thought about that it sent this sharp punch of guilt into my gut. Maybe that’s silly, but it’s how I felt. I spent years taking stray cats in to be neutered to try to soften that sense of guilt, and it was good work I did, but it didn’t change how I felt about those kittens.”

She stares at me without blinking. Those clear brown eyes— what else could she have had? It was the one certainty Ricky and I had to offer her.

“Now imagine how I feel about what I did later,” I say. “There’s no nice little neighborhood program I can start up that can compensate for the crimes I committed. Tommy Choi is still out there somewhere, the only one left of his family. I know what it feels like to lose your father. Your mother. To be robbed of your safety and comfort. I know it eats a hole in your soul that you try and try to fill but you never can. And if I hadn’t driven the group to the Circle K that night, that family might still be alive.”

Her brow furrows. “I thought you also shot one of them,” she says, hesitantly.

“No. I was convicted of one count of felony murder in that case. That only means I was part of a felony that resulted in a death, which made me legally liable. I did not kill Mimi Choi.” At the doubt in her expression, I add, “You can’t put stock in what Forrest Hayes claimed he saw. He was self-interested. No matter what you’ve read, no matter what you saw in that damned movie— on my mother’s name, I didn’t kill Mimi Choi.”

She nods tentatively. I can tell she wants to believe me and isn’t sure she can. “But on the first-degree murder count— the priest—you were guilty, too.”

“Yes, I was. I am. I made a terrible decision, and it cost me everything. Including you.” Her expression shifts, and I fold my hands on the table in front of me, matching her posture. “I can tell you this. Your father was an artist. I’m sad to say he’s part of this whole story, and that I never should have been involved with him. But he was a good person, Annemarie. I sure do wish things had worked out differently for both of us.”

She nods again, and I can see the gears in her head churning. I feel a pang at the misleading little trail I’ve cast through the woods, but anything is better than the assumption she brought in with her.

“I think I know who it is,” she says. “I really wish you would just come out with it,” she adds with a barely-restrained scowl.

“Give me time,” I implore her, but even as I say this I can feel the selfish undercurrent in my request. Keep coming back to see me, I think greedily. Let me treasure my hold on this thing you want so badly . Because once she knows the truth, and her story becomes not a mystery but a tragedy, this will all be over. And if I squander this second chance I know I won’t be able to bear it. I would want you to love me, Janny said. The universal yearning of every child for its mother. And that moment of truth is upon me now, because she can no longer be stolen away from me. She is mine to lose.

After lights-out, I work on Intérieur by the tiny reading light in my cell . I can’t sleep. I’m too torn up inside over the things I said to Annemarie and the obsessive thought creeps into my mind that I must finish this project. On Friday, in the Braille workshop, I completed my drawing of Spiral Jetty . In the end it was simply done, and when I ran my fingers over the finished proof I felt a tightness in my throat that was almost painful. All through the workday I had mulled over what I would say to Annemarie if she came to visiting hours the next day—exactly how I would phrase my answers to her questions, using just the right words that would describe who Ricky had been while leading her to conclude I meant Jeff Owen. The exercise felt almost like a word puzzle, and the challenge of it engaged me all the way up until I took that quiet moment to sit and touch my finished work. Then, as my fingers swept over the spiral, I thought: this is how Annemarie must feel . As if she is being drawn along on a path that is anything but straight and clear, not a road through this particular way station on the journey to understand herself, but a curious and rocky trail that might very well lead nowhere.