Chapter Thirty-Six #2
There’s this saying in the program—“meeting makers make it”—and it’s true.
I’ve heard people in AA and NA say they were five, ten, even twenty years sober, but then they got complacent, stopped going to meetings, and started drinking or using again.
I’ve promised myself that I’ll get to meetings four or five times a week minimum .
With my counselor’s help, I’ve just recently gotten my sponsor’s address and written to him.
Dale was who I was working with before I got sentenced.
He and I were doing the Twelve Steps, but that got cut short when I had to come here.
We were getting ready to start Step Nine, which is about making amends to the people we’ve hurt.
I’m hoping to hear back from him so I can finish the last four steps.
I know promises can sound empty, but I mean it when I say I’m going to work consistently on my sobriety, for you, for Maisie, and most of all for myself.
The second reason I’m writing is to update you on a couple of things.
I’ve found out my release date. It’s Tuesday, February fourth.
My mom says I can stay at her place for as long as I need to.
I’m hoping to get some kind of a job ASAP so that I can begin to contribute toward your expenses, plus give my mom a little something every week.
She’s not charging me rent, but I want to chip in.
I have the number of an agency that helps ex-cons find employment, so I’ll contact them.
Meanwhile, Mom says one of her regulars at the diner hires ex-prisoners at his scrap metal business and that her boss, Skip, is always looking for dishwashers.
And I can always mow lawns and shovel snow or whatever. Start small and stay humble. Right?
Take care, Em. Kiss Maisie for me and tell her Daddy will see her soon.
Love you two,
Corby
For some reason, writing that letter takes it out of me. I address the envelope and put the letter inside, but instead of sealing it, I decide I’ll read it over tomorrow before I put it in outgoing mail on the way to breakfast.
In the morning, the one part of my letter that makes me a little uncomfortable is when I wrote, Addicts get to be really good liars and I was no exception when I was drinking and drugging.
I get it that I have to win back your trust over time.
When I was drinking and drugging: past tense.
But I’m taking a benzo again. Should I rewrite the letter and leave that sentence out? …
Nah. It’s low-dose, I’m taking it medicinally under supervision, and I’ve got a plan to start tapering off it as my release date gets closer.
That’s a whole different thing than abusing it.
It’s just a crutch, that’s all. When someone breaks an ankle, no one expects them to get around without using crutches.
Same difference. She might not understand the difference between how I was using it then and now—decide it’s a deal-breaker when it’s not even a problem.
And anyway, if I told her I’m taking it in here, I might have to tell her why—because I was anally raped by one guard while another one watched.
There’s no way in hell I’m doing that. It’s just a crutch, Emily.
After they sodomized me, I was losing it.
It calms my nerves and helps me get to sleep.
Taking it is just temporary. I know what I’m doing.
So the letter is fine as is. I seal the envelope and, when they call us for morning chow, hand it to the desk sergeant. “Outgoing?” he asks.
“Yes.”
The following Saturday morning, Manny and I are cleaning up the cell when the squawk box clicks on. “Hey, DellaVecchia. You’ve got a visitor.”
Must be Manny’s sister. He said she was driving up from Jersey to visit him.
“Ledbetter, you there?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got visitors, too.”
Visitors? Plural? Emily and my mother? No, it can’t be Mom. Not at ten thirty on a Saturday morning when the diner gets its biggest crowd of the week. Could be just Emily, though. Singular not plural, a slip of the tongue? Maybe my letter apologizing to her has put us back on track.
It can’t be Em and Maisie, can it? No, don’t even go there.…
Dad and his wife? Uh-uh. I don’t remember putting Natalie’s name on my visitors’ list. The first year I was here, whenever they said I had a visitor, I’d brace myself, thinking it might be my father.
I’d walk over there feeling dread that I had to face him and, at the same time, relief that he’d cared enough to come.
But it never was him, so by the third year, I hid my disappointment with a fuck-him attitude.
Fake it ‘til you make it, as they say. But at this point, I really couldn’t care less whether he shows up.
In fact, I hope it’s not him. Too little, too late.
My complicated feelings about Dear Old Dad have gone to sleep and I’d just as soon not poke the bear.
“Who’s your company?” Manny asks me.
“I’m not sure. Maybe Melania and the Donald?” He pretends he’s gagging.
Entering the visiting room, I recognize the pair of guards up there on the platform—the same two who were on duty the day Solomon had that meltdown and they pulled him out kicking and screaming and made the rest of us leave.
Goatee Guard looks like he’s put on a little weight; Butch has grown her crew cut out into a modified Afro.
Per the usual protocol, we have to be seated before they let the visitors in.
Goatee goes over the rules: a brief embrace and a quick kiss, no tongues; everyone’s hands up on the table where the guards can see them; no exchanges of any kind or we’ll get a ticket and our visitor will be banned from coming here.
Here come the troops, passing by the sally port window.
Then the steel door grinds open and they’re in.
I recognize Cornell’s wife and grandson from earlier visits.
That’s got to be Manny’s sister behind them; she’s a Manny look-alike in a Hawaiian shirt, crop pants, and a thick gray braid.
Watching them hug each other makes me wish I had a sister.
Hey, I was wrong; it is Mom. What’s she doing here on a…
Oh my God, it’s Maisie! She’s brought Maisie!
As they walk toward me, hand in hand, I’m hungry to take her in.
Dark eyes, dark hair; she’s got her mother’s coloring.
As I watch her scan the room, taking in the noisy reunions of families, friends, and cons, I have an unwelcome flashback to that morning, me turning and looking in the back seat, seeing her strapped in safely next to Niko’s empty car seat.
I refocus on who she is now, a kindergartener in a pretty plaid dress with a white collar, white anklets, and those little-girl shoes with the straps.
Is she tall for her age? She looks tall.
When Mom directs Maisie’s attention to me, I wave. She stares at me without waving back.
As they reach my table, I swipe the tears from my cheeks and get down on one knee, my arms outstretched.
Instead of stepping forward for a hug, she hides behind her grandmother.
“Easy does it,” Mom tells me. “She’s feeling a little shy.
Why don’t we all sit down?” Given the choice of a chair of her own or her grandmother’s lap, she opts for Grandma Vicki.
“Well, hi, Maisie,” I say. “I haven’t seen you in a long, long time and I’m so happy you came to see me. Do you know who I am?” She shakes her head.
“Sure you do,” Mom tells her. “Who did I say we were coming to see?”
She reaches up and whispers in Mom’s ear. “That’s right. And here he is.” Maisie shakes her head and tells her grandma that her daddy doesn’t have a beard. “Not in the pictures you have of him at home, but he’s grown one since he’s been here. Right, Daddy?”
“Yes, that’s right. Do you like it, Maisie, or do you think I should shave it off?”
“Shave it off.” She says it to Mom, not me.
Manny calls to me from one table over. “Hey, Corby! Is that your kid?”
I nod. “And my mother.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Manny says. “This is my sister, Gloria.” We all say hello and Gloria tells me my daughter’s adorable and asks me how old she is.
Before I can answer, Butch yells to us from the guards’ platform that we need to limit our conversations to our own visitors. Everyone nods. Okay, we get it.
“Maisie, pretty soon, you and I are going to see a lot more of each other,” I tell her. “And we can do fun things—maybe go to Wequonnoc Park so you can swing on the swings and climb on the monkey bars.”
“Can Grandma Vicki come?” she asks.
“If she wants to. Would you like to come with us, Grandma?” She says she would.
“What about my mommy?”
“Oh, sure, she can come, too. And maybe after the park, we can get ice cream or go to McDonald’s. Do you like Happy Meals?”
Ignoring my question, she says, “That man is a pirate.” Confused, I follow her pointing finger to the end of the table.
She means Mick, a guy on the tier below ours who, for the sake of his visitors, is wearing a patch over his dead, milky eye.
When Mom reminds her it’s not polite to point, Maisie takes ahold of one of her braids and starts twisting it around her finger—a nervous habit, I suspect.
Am I making her nervous? “Grammy, are we going soon?” she asks. Mom tells her they just got here.