Chapter Forty-One #4
My desire to see Corby’s work competes with my dread of returning to that awful place, but I tell her I’d like that very much. “I’ll have my daughter with me. Will I be able to bring her, too?”
“Of course!”
Corby’s mom and dad have already attended their son’s graveside memorial, and with the others unable to be there, I scrap my plan. It will just be Maisie and me at the boat launch. Then we’ll drive over there and meet Mrs. Millman.
8:00 a.m., Saturday, October 21, 2023
It’s a beautiful, breezy fall morning. The sky is blue, the air is crisp, and the foliage, late this year, is at its peak.
Maisie and I walk down the leaf-strewn path to the dock.
It’s fitting, I think, that the sound of the river flowing under our feet provides an accompaniment to what we’re about to do.
I pry the lid off the canister of ashes.
With the cup I’ve put in there, I scoop up half, hold the cup at arm’s length, and overturn it.
The breeze carries most of Corby’s remains into the flowing river, but some of the dust settles onto our jackets and the tops of our shoes.
For a few seconds, Maisie and I are wearing Corby. Then a gust sends his dust on its way.
“Hi.”
I turn around to see a lanky young man with a goatee.
Who is this? What’s he doing here? And then, oh my God, it hits me.
I’d invited him but never called his stepmother back to cancel.
I only saw him that one time in the visiting room.
He seems taller and more filled out now, more a man than a boy.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell him. He gives me a curt nod.
“Who’s he?” Maisie asks me.
It’s Solomon who answers. “Corby was my friend.”
When I hand him the canister, I notice that his hands are shaking.
Either he’s nervous or tremors are a side effect of the medications he’s on.
But the gains have been worth it , I hear Adrienne say.
He removes the cup and puts it down on the dock.
Then he pours ashes onto the palm of his hand, takes a deep breath, and blows them into the river.
I reach into my pocket, take out Corby’s stone, and hand it to my daughter.
“Maisie’s father once pulled this little stone out of this river,” I explain to Solomon.
“There’s nothing distinctive about it that I can see, but when his friend Manny gave it to me, he told me that Corby thought of it as his lucky stone.
Whenever he was feeling sad or upset, he would place it on his palm and wrap his hand around it.
And like magic, holding it would make him feel better. ”
Solomon says Corby lent it to him once. “But I gave it back.”
I tell him Maisie and I discussed whether we should keep the stone or return it to the river.
“And we decided that Corby would want us to let it go back home.” Solomon nods in agreement.
I ask Maisie whether she’s ready. With a face that’s solemn and purposeful, she says yes and walks to the end of the dock.
“Bye-bye, stone,” she says. She leans back, then throws it about six feet into the water, where it makes a soft plunk and sinks.
Walking off the dock toward the parking lot, I ask Solomon whether he needs a ride. He says no, his “Wequonnoc parents” are waiting for him in their car. “Okay,” I tell him. “Thank you so much for coming.” I hold out my hand.
“No problem,” he says, sounding like every other young person these days. But as we shake, I feel those tremors in his jumpy hand.
I wave to the couple who’ve been waiting for him. They wave back. Now it’s on to the last of the unfinished business.
During our final session before Dr. Patel’s trip abroad, she urged me to accept Mrs. Millman’s offer to come to see the mural.
Engaged now to Bryan and pregnant with his child, I still haven’t been able to let go of the guilt I feel about the way I treated Corby when he was in prison.
“Maybe standing before his mural and saying what you need to say to him will free you to move on,” she said.
So I drive along the John Mason Parkway, then take a deep breath, put on my blinker, and turn into the long driveway that leads to the visitors’ parking lot.
It’s been three years since that snowy morning when Vicki, Maisie, and I waited for hours, expecting Corby to walk out a free man.
Maisie’s in the back seat on her box, probably watching some YouTube video about dinosaurs.
She’s become obsessed with them ever since Corby’s father and his wife, Natalie, took her to Dinosaur State Park.
Since Corby’s death, his dad has made a conscientious effort to spend time with his granddaughter.
Corby’s relationship with him had been so damaged and difficult, I wasn’t sure about these visits at first. But they’ve been good for Maisie.
I wish Corby had lived to see how his father is making amends to him through her.
“Hey, Maisie, does this place look familiar?” I ask her. No response. I raise my voice and ask again. She looks out the window at the imposing brick buildings behind the surrounding fence and shakes her head.
“Oh, wait,” she says. “This is where my first daddy used to live. It’s a prison, right?”
“That’s right.” I hold my breath, worried that she might ask me why he lived here. I’ll tell her when she’s a little older—when she wants to know, but not now. I’m relieved when, instead of asking that, she says, “I came here once with Grandma Vicki to visit him.”
“You remember that, huh?”
“Yeah. I was kind of scared at first.”
“Scared because it’s a prison?”
“No. Scared because he had a really bushy beard. But after a while, I wasn’t scared. He was nice. He read me a story.”
“And he wrote you a story, remember?”
“Uh-huh. About the giraffe family. He drew the pictures, too. And I’m in it.”
“That’s right. You’re the girl who lives next door.”
“Tell me again why we’re here,” she says.
“To see the big wall painting your daddy painted when he lived here.”
“The one in that library?”
“That’s right. Your father was friends with Mrs. Millman, the librarian. It was her idea that he should paint the mural because he was such a good artist. She’s going to meet us inside and show us where to go.”
“Oh. My now-daddy has a beard, too, but his is neat.”
“Uh-huh. He keeps his trimmed.”
“But sometimes he leaves whiskers in the sink. Yuck.”
“Well, sweetie, you can’t have everything.”
I park. We get out of the car. Walk toward the building and climb the long set of cement stairs to the prison’s main entrance. I recall the earlier times I’d do this, my nervousness increasing with each step.
Mrs. Millman has beaten us here; she’s waiting for us just inside the building.
She smiles and tells Maisie she’s pleased to meet her.
“I’m excited to share your father’s mural with you and your mother.
Would you like to see it?” Maisie says she does.
“Well, come on then. Follow me. I’ve gotten us VIP clearances, so we can avoid the usual rigmarole.
Having worked here for over three decades has gotten me that much clout at least.” She waves to the guard behind the counter and he waves back.
Apparently as VIPs, we get to sidestep the metal detector.
Thank God for that! I recall that bleak room where I waited my turn to pass through the metal detector, my panic when I couldn’t figure out what kept triggering it.
Halfway up the stairs, I ask Mrs. Millman how long she’s been retired.
“Since the start of the pandemic,” she says.
“They’ve been dragging their feet about hiring my replacement and reopening the library, but I’m going to keep bugging them until they do.
It’s a crime that these fellas don’t have access to reading materials. ”
As we reach the second-floor landing, the baby gives me a sharp kick and my “oof” gets Mrs. Millman’s attention. “Someone’s very active today,” I tell her. When she asks how far along I am, I tell her seven and a half months.
Turning to Maisie, Mrs. Millman asks whether she’s hoping for a little brother or a little sister. “I wanted a brother, but it’s going to be a girl,” Maisie tells her.
“And I bet you’re going to be a great big sister,” Mrs. Millman says. Maisie shrugs and says she doesn’t know yet.
I worry less about my daughter than I did before, when I was getting calls from school about her disturbing behavior; Bryan has had a stabilizing influence on her and they’re genuinely fond of each other.
But she’s the odd girl out with the kids in her class and the girls across the street whose parents bought the McNallys’ house.
Bryan says he thinks it bothers me more than it does Maisie—that some kids are content not to run with the herd.
She has made one friend at school this year, a boy named Rory, but he’s pretty eccentric, too.
When we enter the library, Mrs. Millman turns on the lights and points us toward Corby’s mural. “I’ll leave you alone with it,” she says. “Take your time.”
We stand before it, neither of us saying anything for a minute or more, our eyes moving up and down, back and forth. It’s almost as if it’s casting a spell.
Maisie’s the first to speak. “Hey, are those pterodactyls?”
When I see what she’s pointing to, I tell her, “No, I think those are blue herons. But I wouldn’t be surprised if pterodactyls were their ancestors.”
“Ancestors would be like their great-grandparents. Right?”
“Well, in this case more like their great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.”
“Wow,” she says. “Cool.”