“What if I was a boy?”
“I don’t think it would matter. Anyway, you’re not.”
“You always said it didn’t matter if I was a girl or a boy.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then why should it matter if I’m a girl and I want to live with you?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Kids usually need to be with their mothers.”
“But not always,” she says. “You and I get along perfectly well, don’t we?”
“Of course we do.”
“Then why should it matter?”
Jesus. I’m supposed to be one of the best lawyers in town, a behemoth of argument, and she’s kicking my ass.
“I guess that part wouldn’t.”
She smiles up at me: see?
“But that’s not the only reason,” I say.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she tells me.
“What?”
“That I’m getting to be a young lady, and a young lady needs her mother’s guidance.” She makes her voice sound like an adult’s; like Patricia’s.
“Well … that’s true.”
“Mary Lou could help me with that stuff,” she says.
“Mary Lou?”
“Isn’t she your girl-friend?”
“Sort of.” I feel like I’m on the witness stand, being grilled.
“So she could.”
“That’s not her role. That’s your mother’s role.”
“Mom doesn’t have time for that stuff these days. She’s working her buns off,” she says.
Ah so.
“So do I,” I venture cautiously.
“You’re supposed to.”
“What does that mean?”
“Fathers are supposed to work like that. She’s a mother.”
“Mary Lou works that hard,” I say.
“She wouldn’t if she had a kid,” she retorts.
“I can’t answer that because she doesn’t have a kid, and it doesn’t matter anyway because Patricia’s your mother and Mary Lou isn’t. They’re different.”
“I hardly see mom,” she says with anger. This has obviously been building, and now it’s erupting. “Sometimes I go to bed before she gets home. I’m sick of it!” she exclaims with real vehemence.
Shit. How in the world did it ever come to this? Why should she be the one that has to bear the brunt of our ambitions? She’s a kid, she deserves a parent who’s there. I wonder if Patricia truly knows what’s going on.
“Mom has a new job,” I say, trying to be patient, to fairly present her side. “Sometimes it can’t be helped. It’ll change soon.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Look. School’s out in a month, you’ll be with me all summer, we’ll play it by ear okay?”
“I don’t have any choice, do I?”
That’s a good question.
“I don’t,” she says.
“Don’t you think your mom’s feelings would be hurt?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You’ve been her whole life practically. I think it would hurt her a lot.”
“I’m not anymore. Her whole life.” She leans on her elbow, looking at me. “What about you? Aren’t I important to you, too?”
“The most important thing in the world.”
“So then?”
“I’ve had things she hasn’t,” I say. “I’m more successful, I’ve made more money …”
“She makes a lot of money now. More than you I’ll bet.”
“Maybe.” Shit, that’s all I need. Claudia sitting there calculating which parent is making more money.
“And I was married again, which she wasn’t …”
“You hated it. It was worse than not being married. You told me so yourself,” she says. She’s got me cards and spades.
“And I’m in a great relationship now,” I say.
“With Mary Lou.”
“Yes.”
“How come she didn’t come today?”
“She didn’t want to horn in on your parade.”
“You wouldn’t have let her, would you?”
“No.”
“She should’ve come. She would’ve had fun.”
“I’ll tell her that. She’ll be glad to hear it,” I say.
“She sounds like I’d like her,” Claudia tells me.
“She’d like you, too,” I say.
“That’s important,” she says. “In case you marry her.”
Damn, but she’s fast. “We don’t even talk about that, Claudia.”
“Someday you might. I just wanted to let you know that I like her. In case you were interested.”
“Thanks.”
My mind is racing. Children are notoriously prescient; is she divining something I’m not aware of?
“That’s what mom needs,” she continues.
“To get married? I don’t think she has the time to think about it with this new job, do you?”
“She does anyway.”
“How do you know? Does she tell you?”
“She doesn’t tell me anything anymore,” she says. “She orders me.”
“Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating?”
“No. Everything she says is an order. She’s always mad at me.”
“Claudia …”
“She is. She’s always losing her temper now. No matter what I do she doesn’t like it.”
“It’s the new job,” I say. “It must be really hard on her, much more work than she’s used to. She isn’t used to it, and she’s feeling guilty about not spending more time with you, so she acts like that. You know she loves you.”
“Yeh,” she answers with no enthusiasm.
Our hot chocolate’s gone cold. I put it back in the saucepan to heat it up. She pads into the kitchen after me. She’s in her nightgown, ready for bed. It’s after ten, past her bed-time. I thought we were going to have some cocoa and a quick, easy talk.
“She’s dating, isn’t she?” I ask. “She told me she was seeing some nice fellows.”
“Creeps.”
“Not all of them, I’m sure.”
“All of them. I’m sure. Mom hardly dates the same guy more than once.”
“She has high standards.”
“They’re all creeps. I wouldn’t let any of them near me.”
“She’ll find someone,” I say. “Now that she’s prosperous and confident it’s just a matter of time.”
“I don’t care. Sometimes I think she’s afraid to.”
Out of the mouths of babes …
The phone rings as I’m pouring the hot chocolate back into our cups. Claudia answers, listens a moment, hands it to me.
“Are you watching TV?”
“What?”
It’s Mary Lou. “Turn on your TV.” She sounds really wound up.
“What channel?”
“Any of them. All of them.”
“What’m I looking for?”
“Just turn it on! I’m coming over.” She hangs up abruptly.
I hand Claudia her chocolate, walk into the living room, flick the television set on. There’s a queasiness in my stomach that seems to be growing.
“As soon as you’ve finished your chocolate,” I tell her, “it’s teeth and bed.
Comprende?
”
“On my birthday?”
“It’s almost ten-thirty. Drink and go …” I stop short as the picture on my television screen comes into focus.
The state penitentiary is on the screen. Searchlights illuminate the sky, moving back and forth behind the wire fences where the cameras are positioned, outside the main gates. There are no lights coming from inside; the only lights to be seen are the fires, several of them, coming from different buildings. The images are all in long shot; it’s a couple hundred yards away from where the cameras are to any of the buildings behind the fences.
Dozens of policemen, state troopers, and firemen are milling around the front. Police cars and fire trucks, television camera trucks, other vehicles are jammed into the parking lot and the dirt areas around it. It’s all confusion, milling around, men can be heard yelling offscreen, voices yelling on top of each other. It’s chaos.
An announcer steps in front of the camera. Behind him, from inside the walls, there’s a sudden explosion. The announcer instinctively cowers, covering his head. Then another explosion; a fireball flares into the sky from one of the prison building roofs.
The announcer composes himself, turns to the camera. He’s jittery; this place could explode, for all he knows, eight hundred prisoners, armed to the teeth, could come rushing out any minute.
“The best information authorities out here can get,” he says in a shaky voice, “is that what apparently started as a spontaneous argument over allegedly rancid food served at dinner has erupted into a full-scale riot inside the prison. Prisoners in building four, a medium-security building that allows free movement within its walls, overwhelmed their guards, took the guards as hostages, stormed the other buildings and shut the prison down from the inside. They forced guards and prison authorities to open all the cells in all the buildings, including the maximum-security unit, where men are kept in individual cells under twenty-four-hour lockup.”
Death Row. My guys are out now: animals released from their cages, prowling the halls. Doing God knows what.
Claudia looks at me.
“Daddy …” she says, her voice shaking. She knows about the prisoners, about my involvement.
“Go to bed, honey.”
“Dad …”
“Go to bed. Now. I don’t want you watching this.”
“All right.” She’s unusually docile. She doesn’t want to see any of this, either.
I give her a hug and a quick peck on the cheek. She leaves the room. I squat on my haunches in front of the screen, watching.
The warden materializes on camera. He’s disheveled, his face black with smoke and grease, his hair and clothes awry. He’s calm, though, at least outwardly; this is what they pay him for. He wants to show the public that they’re getting their money’s worth, and he wants to hang onto his job.
“Could you give us an update on what the situation inside the prison is at the present moment, Warden Gates?” the announcer asks.
“I don’t know what it is,” the warden answers bluntly. “Nobody knows right now. We don’t have any communication with anyone in the cellblocks. They’ve cut all the lines.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Try to get some kind of communication going,” the warden snaps. “That’s the first thing. We’ve got to find out what’s going on, what the situation is, what they want.”
“How many hostages have they taken?” the announcer asks.
“Don’t know that either.” A couple straight-forward questions and the warden’s turning testy; he’s lost control of his prison, the worst thing that could happen to him. “At least half a dozen guards, probably more. And several prisoners, trusties.”
“Have there been any killings?”
The warden looks back at the buildings. Flames are shooting out of some of the windows, especially in one area, the number one maximum-security unit.
“Yes.”
The warden is abruptly pulled away by some of his people. The announcer continues.
“At this moment,” he says, “there is utter confusion here. No one outside, including the prison officials, knows what is going on inside.” He turns around to look at someone behind him. It’s the warden again, coming to the microphone with a piece of paper in his hand.
“I have a statement to make,” the warden says. “We have some more information; although it isn’t completely substantiated, it comes from a reliable source who was inside when the rioting started, and seems to make sense.” His face is set in a grim mask; he’s angrier than he was earlier. He’s getting more frightened by the minute as well; I can almost smell the fear coming off the screen.
“It is now believed that the riot was not a spontaneous action,” he reads, “but was something that had been planned for months. This past week half-a-dozen men, hard-core prisoners who had previously been living in one of our maximum-security units, were transferred to the medium-security building where the riot started, to alleviate over-crowding in the maximum-security unit, a move mandated by court order.” He shakes his head in disgust. “I didn’t like that order and I told the court so, that it could be dangerous, but they said they didn’t have a choice, we don’t have enough facilities to house our prisoners and these men had to be moved. So I moved them. It is now my understanding,” he says, his voice practically choking with angry emotion, “that these men had planned this incident while in the maximum-security facility, knowing they were to be transferred out.”
That makes sense; that makes a whole lot of sense. Prisoners don’t take over an entire prison spontaneously. They’ve probably been thinking and planning this for months, maybe years.
Mary Lou lets herself in. She’s in a T-shirt and jeans, no makeup. She comes over, gives my hand a quick, reassuring squeeze, flops down next to me.
“Did you hear?” I ask.
“What the warden just said? Yes, I was listening in the car.”
“This could be bad,” I say.
“Our boys?”
“They could be dead,” I say.
“Do you think so?” She shivers involuntarily; she hadn’t thought of that.
“No, but they could be.” I’ve gone into the kitchen, grabbed a couple beers from the fridge, popped the tops. I hand her one.
“More likely,” I say, “if there was any killing done, they were part of it.”
“God. I hope not. Oh God I hope not.”
So do I; but why shouldn’t they? They were all geared up for a new trial, a new chance, and the system kicked them in the balls. They’ve got nothing to lose now; might as well go out in a blaze of glory.
We watch for a couple more hours. It’s close to midnight. The coverage is fragmented; lots happening but no real news. I pick up the phone, start dialing. “Who are you calling?” she asks.
“Robertson. Maybe he knows something.”
“That’s a good idea,” she says.
“If he’ll talk to me,” I add.
“He’ll talk to you. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because I crossed some bullshit line he drew and he doesn’t forget. He’s got the memory of an elephant. And the finesse of a pit-bull.”
The line is busy. I fidget around for a few minutes, try again. It’s still busy. He’s in the hot-box; I’ll have to wait to find out what’s really going on.
We make love. It feels strange, disjointed, in weird juxtaposition with what’s going on outside my bedroom walls, but we hunger for each other. It should exhaust me, help me sleep (a good rationale, as if I need one, I still can’t stop guilt-tripping myself), but it doesn’t. Neither of us can sleep.
So we stay up, almost until dawn, talking. About where we’ve come from, the disappearance of Rita Gomez, the feeling, felt by both of us, that there’s a conspiracy going on inside Robertson’s office, a cancer he’s unaware of perhaps, but a cancer nonetheless. I feel like John Dean trying to explain Haldeman and Erlichman to Nixon, before Tricky Dick got personally involved; he won’t hear, he can’t hear, it’s too gut-level personal, it would cut at the heart of everything he stands for, everything he is.