Chapter 41
CLINTON HILLS CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR WOMEN
CLINTON HILLS, NEW YORK
JUNE 20, 2022
AGE: 36
VISITING DAY WAS ON THURSDAY. I BORROWED SOPHIE’S CAR, A CUTE little Prius. The dilapidated Honda I had previously shared with Hal was still in the same parking spot, but no longer mine to captain.
The route was almost identical to the one I had traveled when I’d been heading to my reunion, feeling awash in shame and self-pity. Now I was surprisingly calm. For the first time in my entire life, I could accept my mistakes. They’d delivered me to this moment, after all.
Geeta’s mistakes felt similarly loaded with meaning and possibility. I was hopeful that she would see this as some kind of cleansing, a much-needed reset.
As I was merging onto Route 17, my mother called, just as she had when I was driving to the reunion. This time I wasn’t tempted to press the “decline” button.
“Mom!” I said.
“What’s that noise?” she shot back.
“I’m driving.”
“Why are you talking and driving?”
“It’s okay, mom. I’m all buckled in. You’re on speaker.”
“Where are you going? A job interview?”
“I’m going to prison.”
“That’s nice.” I could detect a trace of humor in her voice.
“I’m going to visit Geeta.”
“That poor girl flew too close to the sun,” she said, clicking her tongue, not realizing how right she was or how it also applied to her own daughter. “What happened to her? She always seemed to make all the right moves.”
“I guess I’ll find out more when I see her.”
My mom sighed loudly. “You’re a good friend, but you should really focus on yourself, Jenny. You still have a lot to work out. How’s that resumé coming along?”
Resisting the urge to react, I made myself remember how things had felt with my mom in the other realm. We’d been closer, comfortable in each other’s presence. Back there, I wasn’t a bundle of nerves around my mom. Wasn’t there a chance we could achieve something like that here, too?
“I’m finally getting things together, mom,” I said. “And I was thinking I might come visit you while I still have the free time. We can take a walk on the beach, hunt for seashells like we used to, and chat.”
“The beach, you and me? Is something wrong?” My mom was dragging her words in a way that implied that I sounded crazy.
“I’m craving a mother-daughter weekend. And they don’t have Long Island beaches in Pittsburgh.”
“I guess they don’t.” My mom chuckled. “Let me know when you’re thinking, and I’ll get your bed ready.”
When I hung up, I wiped my eyes and swerved to avoid an overly enthusiastic lane changer. My heart was thumping inside my chest as I narrowly averted a collision. My mom wasn’t wrong about everything. I shouldn’t be talking on the phone while driving.
The closest I’d ever come to paying a visit to an inmate was listening to true crime podcasts on my morning commutes. They’d prepared me for the basics: The metal detectors, the pre-meeting pat down, and the myriad rules, the clanging of cells opening and closing. No screaming, no hugging, no contraband. I knew better than to try to smuggle in a loaf of bread, but I did sneak a tiny bag of rosemary crackers—Geeta’s favorite—in the pocket of my sweatshirt dress.
I registered with the guard at the front desk, who led me into the visitors area. The space looked cleaner than what I had imagined, but also felt surreal. How was this even possible? Geeta, the most conscientious person I ever met, had defrauded her investors to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. And she got caught. She was paying the price. But she hadn’t boarded that plane with Levi. She was still alive. The rest didn’t matter.
As I waited in the visiting area, I kept my eyes on the floor and tried not to eavesdrop on the meetings taking place around me. A mother-son duo was talking about a family dog. A pregnant teenager was pleading with her boyfriend.
Then an officer announced Geeta’s name. She shuffled into the room, her handcuffs clanking. Her bangs were now down to her eyebrows and she looked even smaller than usual. Soon, though, I couldn’t see much at all, given the tears flooding my eyes. She was crying too, and it took a little while for us to collect ourselves. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” she said. “It’s all falling into place.”
“Same,” I said.
Something about the way Geeta was looking at me told me all that I needed to know. She knew about everything that had happened, and everything that hadn’t happened, in all its layered madness.
“You saved my life. In so many ways,” she said.
She didn’t get on Levi’s plane that day because she had heard what I was trying to tell her. And she’d listened. She was finally free of the Memo. I was stunned.
“I want to thank you too,” I said at last. “You believed in me. You trusted that I was... enough.”
All those negative energy shockwaves—the jealousy, the regret, the sadness—that fueled my journeys through the unstable wormhole to fix my broken life had endangered our friendship. It wasn’t just a matter of Player As or Player Bs. Our connection couldn’t exist in the world scripted by the Memo. My rise had somehow caused her fall. “Thank you for sticking your neck out for me.” She inhaled deeply and glanced around the room.
“Look where it got you,” I said.
She cast her eyes down at her hands. “I kind of owed you.”
“But you could have left me alone. I wasn’t going to die in a plane crash—I was just going to drink dirt-flavored smoothies, swear off gluten, have babies with a handsome billionaire, and trample on some nuns in Tuscany.”
“You would have hated it. Even more than I did.”
“You hated it?” She deflected my question with a shrug. “But how were you so sure I would too?”
“I know you, Jenny.”
“It goes both ways,” I said, slipping a rosemary cracker under the table. Geeta took a stealthy bite.
“Now that’s what I call a banger,” she said.
“I added a bit of cinnamon to balance out the flavors,” I told her.
“See? You were always innovating. It’s in your DNA. You never needed a—” she looked around and mouthed the word, “Memo.”
“But why didn’t you ever say anything—about what you were going through?”
“I tried.” Her eyes widened. “Did you not read the postcards I have been sending you since the beginning of time? I was trying to let you know how trapped I felt, how empty it all was.”
I thought back to those messages she had written me when I was in Italy, about how she wasn’t like me, she couldn’t just quit her job and find something else. How she had to endure, push through. “I’m a slow learner,” she said. “Now I know what you have always known: freedom is priceless.”
“And because of me, you have no freedom,” I said, my eyes welling up again.
“This,” she said looking around the correctional facility’s visitors’ room, “is temporary. It’s fine. Being here is like staying at a really intense, super austere meditation retreat. I have lots of time to reflect.”
“Come on,” I said.
“The food is inedible. Some—okay, most—of the other women are quite intimidating. Being apart from my girls is just...” Her chin was starting to tremble. “But... I’m alive.”
I reached out to hold her hand.
“This is all temporary,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think things over. And I’ve made some big decisions.”
“Such as?” I asked.
Her eyes twinkled. “I’m going to move to Pittsburgh when I get out of here.”
No way. “My Pittsburgh?”
“Why not? That’s where my best friend is, isn’t it? Matt will too. Matt and I might not be together anymore, but he’s an amazing dad, and we respect each other despite everything.”
“You two were always so different.”
She squeezed my hand. “I had to marry him,” she said. “It was written.”
“Right. I figured. Tell me this though. Did you ever love him?”
Geeta raised her shoulders in a shrug. “At first, yes. We were young. Which is what made everything so confusing for me. And I was a believer. Following the program fed into everything I always wanted. But then I had doubts and... then I had more doubts...” She sighed.
“I understand,” I said. “It must have been horrible, putting on a front.”
“I had my coping mechanisms. And thanks to being with him, I have my girls. And I learned a lot about chemtrails!”
I tried not to laugh.
“It’s not going to be contentious,” she said. “We’re all grown-ups here, and the girls come first. Matt and I are dotingly detaching.”
“Dotingly detaching,” I repeated. “Is this part of the reboot? Geeta Brara rebranded as divorce-fluencer?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “There is no reboot. There’s no boot. No shoe! It’s over. We’re onto the next, all of us. Even Leigh, if you believe it.”
“What? She gave up on her Memo too?” Geeta shot me a warning look. “Sorry,” I said quietly. “But what happened to Leigh?”
Geeta shook her head and began speaking in a whisper. “She’s still on board. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. But she’s in another program: rehab!”
“Really?” I was shocked. “What happened?”
“She cut a little too loose at Alessandra’s summer solstice gala.” I remembered the party footage I’d seen inside the Consortium’s transition chamber. Leigh had been acting extra, well extra, that night, dancing like a dervish on top of a cast-iron ram.
“When did she ever not do that?”
“Yeah, but Leigh was selling Molly to a trustee’s daughter, and the girl freaked out and had to go to the ER. She was okay in the end but the parents are big-time collectors and started a smear campaign. Leigh’s gallerist dropped her. Nobody else would take her on. She hit a real low.”
“That’s... terrible,” I said.
“It’s for the best,” Geeta said. “Those celebrity vulva sculptures and influencer collabs were getting tired. I think she’ll come to value this time out. A moment to regroup. I believe in her.”
“You’re good at that,” I said. “Believing in people.”
“Leigh is not that complicated when it comes to her motivations, but she’s got talent. And she really misses you, Jenny.”
“Okay, now you’re believing in nonsense.”
“I’m serious. You’ll see soon enough. I hope you’ll give her a chance. Is it possible you let your insecurities cloud your feelings about her?”
“I don’t think that’s what it was.”
Geeta cocked her head. “Not even a little?”
“Maybe a little,” I allowed. I thought about how happy Leigh was when I attended her art opening in my alternate existence, and how good it felt to correct my selfish mistake and show up for my old friend.
Geeta gave a satisfied nod. “What about you, Jenny? Now what?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said tenuously. Geeta made the go-on gesture with her hand. “This may sound ridiculous, but I can’t stop thinking about it. There’s a storefront in Pittsburgh, by the bus station. It used to be a bodega, and it has the most beautiful details—these ceiling tiles and moldings. It’s just sitting there, empty.”
Geeta’s smile was a ray of light. “Empty for now.”
“I know Pittsburgh doesn’t exactly need another bakery,” I said.
“It definitely doesn’t,” she replied. “So you’ll show them what you’ve got and put the losers out of business.” She winced. “Sorry, the destroy-the-competition mindset is a hard thing to shake off. Bear with me.”
I looked at Geeta in her orange jumpsuit. She had on just one friendship bracelet, a thin red strand with a gold bead that I had given her a long time ago.
“What about funding?” Geeta said.
“None to speak of... yet. But I learned a thing or two working at Alice’s foundation. I’m going to put my fundraising chops to work. I know who to ask.”
“You already have my buy-in. My emotional buy-in,” Geeta clarified. “I am dead-ass broke.”
I bit down a smile. “Emotional buy-in is the best kind of buy-in. I don’t need, like, major money. I just need to sign a lease and get some decent flour and yeast. I guess an oven would be good too. But it shouldn’t be too outrageous.”
“No, you’re wrong. It absolutely should.”
“Ever the hype beast.”
“You know it.”
We looked at each other, searching for the words. Everything was simultaneously wonderful and terrible. And here we were, riding it out together.
When it was time for the guard to escort my friend out of the visiting area, I vowed to come back the following week. But Geeta said no. She would be out soon enough, and she wanted me to focus on my project in the interim.
“One of us needs to make a living,” she said. “And I want warm baguettes with salted butter the second I get out of this place.”
I wasn’t ready to turn around and head straight back to Pittsburgh. Sequoia Falls was only another thirty minutes away, just a slight detour. There was one last item to cross off my to-do list.
I stopped for lunch at Just a Peck, a local tapas joint, and ordered a mezze platter with warm pita bread. My friends and I used to come here to celebrate birthdays. It was where I’d ordered my first legal glass of wine as a twenty-one-year-old. So I couldn’t help but get a glass of local Riesling, which I raised in the air, and make a quiet toast to Geeta. “To freedom,” I whispered. I took a gulp, then dragged a triangle of pita through a pool of olive hummus. I needed some sustenance for my next plan.
The restaurant was only a few blocks from campus, so I left Sophie’s Prius in the small parking lot and I wandered through the arts quad, winding my way through the paths I had traversed at our reunion. Then I found myself standing in front of the Simcott Center for the Study of the Soul. Staring up at the modern slab jutting out from its neoclassical foundation, I couldn’t help wondering if the team was inside, performing experiments on some new subject who was a little less of a stubborn failure than I was.
I thought about all the young women who had gotten their Memos and had run with them. The army of supposedly lucky ones, the women who’d surrendered their lives and a sizable portion of their net worth to the Consortium and its ethos of optimization. To what end? Keisha, my roommate who just wanted to be a local veterinarian, but who was now chief scientist of a pharmaceutical behemoth. Leigh, in rehab after running too fast with an even faster crowd. Geeta, who’d revolted too late and was in prison.
We were all complicit in a broken system, even those of us who’d had the courage to walk away from it. We let it get to us, which meant we were all, to some degree, participants in a society that valued perfection at all costs. Everything always had to be an improvement on something else. You weren’t making the grade unless you went in for an upgrade. Or you could hate the system, which so often meant hating yourself for failing to navigate it. And to think the Consortium called themselves feminists.
Suddenly, somebody on a motorcycle swept around the front of the building. “Please keep moving,” the man said.
I hesitated, taking in one last glance at the mother ship, then walked away. That’s when I heard a familiar voice that stopped me in my tracks. Desiree had come out of the center’s side door. Her face looked sallow, her hair was unkempt, and her pantsuit was wrinkled. Evidently the Consortium had taken her back into its fold in some capacity, but she was a mess. She appeared to be about to say something to me, then thought better of it. “Don’t pay her any mind,” she said to the guard. “She’s an utter nobody.”
“It’s true,” I said, my tone probably too joyous for her liking. I was a nobody. And perhaps that was my greatest achievement of all.