Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

“He got his degree in jail,” Andy said, thinking of Exton Reed, its shabby quad, its lumbering architecture. He found that he was chewing the inside of his cheek. “What kind of accomplishment is it to get a degree in jail?”

“Well, you could argue—maybe you could argue it’s an even bigger accomplishment, because there are all sorts of obstacles. Things happen—things happen there you don’t even want to know about, and there are fights, and people fight him all the time. He’s had to get really hard in jail, he was never such a hard kid, but he’s had to get very hard and learn to protect himself and at the same time he got an arts degree from the University of Florida, there was even a graduation ceremony at the jail.” She fumbled through her purse for a cigarette.

“Could you not?” Andy asked, as she lit it. “Could you not smoke?”

She inhaled, then stubbed the thing out with her orthopedic shoe. Andy thought he had never had a more pathetic conversation in his life.

“I guess what I’m asking is—”

“I know what you’re asking, Joyce—”

“Is for a little mercy.”

He felt the parking lot start to spin, held onto the car roof to steady himself. A little mercy. Sure, there were probably evolved people out in the world who were more than capable of being merciful, those nuns who campaigned for killers on death row, the 9/11 families who opposed the war in Afghanistan, the mothers of murdered sons who paid for their killers’ defense. He had read these stories, he knew they happened—and one time, in the office, Linda Schoenmeyer said to him, casually, “So do you have a correspondence with the person who did it?” meaning did he and Oliver McGee correspond, and although Andy was not a particularly icy person he heard the ice in his voice: “What kind of correspondence do you mean, Linda?”

“I just wondered—you know, if he’s written to you. Apologized, that sort of thing.”

“Why would he do that?”

Fat-faced Linda blanched by the coffeemaker.

“My life isn’t a movie,” he’d said to her, and left her there in the faculty lounge, and she’d avoided him for weeks after that rather than apologize.

But maybe, maybe if a drunken Oliver McGee had mowed down Linda’s lumpy husband in front of a Steak ’n Shake, maybe if she’d had to raise her children alone, maybe evolved Linda would have struck up a correspondence with the killer in his cell, maybe they would have exchanged Christmas cards, maybe she would have visited him in prison and advocated for his rehabilitation and testified on his behalf the first time he was up for parole. Maybe Linda Schoenmeyer was that kind of excellent person. Maybe that’s what divided the good people of the earth from the bad, their capacity for mercy.

You are here for a reason .

His reason, at this moment, was to keep Oliver McGee in jail for as long as he possibly could. He had no capacity for mercy nor did he want any.

“I cannot be merciful about this, Joyce.”

She lit another cigarette because, fuck him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “But he’s paid for this crime, you know that, Andy? He’s paid and paid and paid.”

“He hasn’t even served his full term.”

“The things that have happened to him in there,” and now, yes, she was shaking, “the things that happen to a nineteen-year-old boy, and he wasn’t hard when he went in there. And I thought you, a college professor—you might understand—”

“My children don’t have a mother, Joyce.”

“ I’m losing my son! ” She brought the cigarette to her mouth and inhaled on it like it was saving her life.

Andy opened the car door, got in the car. There was nothing to be gained by this conversation because the next thing he wanted to say to her was fuck you, Joyce, you lost your son when you didn’t get him into fucking treatment seven years ago. That would have been a fucking accomplishment, Joyce.

He peeled out of the parking lot without looking where he was going and drove blindly until he found 95, took it to 708, got to his room at the Travelodge, took a Valium, fell asleep. He was up at 6:00 before the alarm and was waiting at the prison gates by 7:15. The corrections officer who accompanied him to the waiting room asked him how he was doing. “Just fine,” Andy said, and meant it.

The same windowless room. A three-member panel, but different members this time. Joyce McGee in her orthopedic shoes. Oliver McGee in his orange jumpsuit. Andy read his statement clearly: “Members of the parole board, it is with great sadness that I discuss with you the myriad reasons that Oliver McGee, prisoner N24633, should probably never be released from prison, and certainly not released before his time is served. Let me begin with my scientific research into alcoholism and behavior—”

He finished his statement. He signaled to the corrections officer that he wanted to leave before any statements were made in support of Oliver McGee’s quest for parole.

He was back home in Mount Deborah by seven o’clock that night. As he walked up the path to his house, his mother opened the front door. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re home.”

The parole board would take several weeks to make its decision, and Andy knew better than to wait by the phone. He busied himself preparing elaborate tests, attending to his daughters’ homework, and seeing Melissa Potter. He was, in fact, seeing too much of Melissa. She babysat for him all the time, occasionally just showing up at his house to see if he needed a hand. When she arrived, she urged him to get research done, to go to campus, even. “Don’t you want me to stay?” he’d ask her, when his daughters were in another room.

“Go on,” she’d say. “Do what you need to do. I’m here to help.”

“But you don’t have to,” and then he stopped protesting. Why should he protest? She cleaned the house while he was gone, she ferried his girls to dance, she helped Rachel bake fat-free angel food cakes with strawberry sauce. She knitted Belle a blue and white striped scarf. She admired the trophy Rachel brought home at the end of soccer season, and polished it for her with Sparkle Wax.

“Did you hire, like, a nanny?” Sheila asked him, Sheila who noticed Melissa’s dented Civic parked in his driveway at all hours.

“I guess I did,” Andy said, embarrassed to be caught out. “She’s a student. She needs a job.”

“Ah,” Sheila said. “I was starting to think you were dating her.” She let the silence fester for a minute, then broke it with uproarious laughter.

Andy felt his jaw tighten, but forced himself to laugh along.

“Like I would ever date a student. C’mon.”

Yet how his heart flooded when he heard her pull into the drive.

“You know, I mean it, you don’t have to pay me, Doc,” she said. “I like doing this. I like being here.”

“Take the money, Melissa.”

“What are you even paying me for? Playing with your daughters?”

“I’m paying you for your time,” he said, thinking, please don’t ask me why I’m paying you. Thinking, I need to keep up this pretense.

In truth he and Melissa were rarely alone. When they were, they usually coexisted in a froth of stanched erotic feeling. (Didn’t they? Didn’t she tingle the way he did when he accidentally-on-purpose brushed her arm?) “I just like being near you,” she said, “and your family.” The girls were in their bedroom, he was looking for his wallet, and he couldn’t help it, he kissed her on the mouth and neck, the girls only a door and a hallway away. Then he gave her a twenty and practically pushed her out the door. She honked her horn twice on the way out.