Her face, he noticed, was a strange yellow colour, darker around her mouth and under her eyes. She looks sick he thought, picturing her weariness clinging to her stick limbs like moss to an ancient stone. But then he was older too, his once coal-black hair was threaded with silver, and lately he’d found white streaks in his pubic thatch. Deep lines etched from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and the crisscross tracery of fine lines around his eyes had nothing to do with laughter. He wished it had.
It was Jay who broke the silence. ‘Thanks for coming, Mom.’ The words came out flat like meat forced through a mincer.
A mist of breath rose, like smoke, out of her open mouth. ‘It was the least I could do, son, you ain’t got nobody else.’
He wanted to say that he had a few friends, decent men he’d met inside, who were either innocent, misguided, or just plain desperate when they’d offended. But he said nothing.
‘It sure is cold,’ she said, shuffling from side to side and pushing her hands even deeper into her pockets. She was wearing rubber-soled brown boots, the mass-produced type sold cheaply in supermarkets and discount stores across the country. They were down at heel. Jay knew she could afford new boots, but she was frugal, mean with herself, deriving immense pleasure from penny pinching. A sudden and unexpected image jumped into his mind: his mother was bent over the kitchen table, her lips muttering figures as she calculated the weekly household accounts. A lifetime of hardship, of scrimping and saving, of making do. Old habits die hard, he thought, if at all.
Her eyes had now darted to the building behind Jay. She stared long and hard, as if looking at something or someone in particular. ‘You want a last look?’
A last look? What a fucking stupid question. The pile of bricks and mortar he’d just left would remain with him for the rest of his life. As would the noise, the smell, the loneliness and the fear. Every square inch of Cedar State Penitentiary was indelibly printed on his subconscious as surely as if it had been branded there with white-hot iron. Jay felt like crying. He’d dreamt of this day, this special day, planned every moment in minute detail all those countless times when loneliness had visited, and revisited, inviting him to despair. He’d longed to taste the air on the outside, certain it would smell and feel different from the stuff he gulped every morning in the exercise yard. What would he have become by now without his dreams? Whenever he’d doubted his sanity, his carefully maintained diet of hope had sustained, comforted and enriched his miserable existence. And always in his imaginings this day had been in springtime; a blossom-bursting, sun-filled morning, with deafening birdsong and an intoxicating sense of euphoria. So why did he feel like shit? Why had a black cloud slipped silently like a shroud around his shoulders? Where was the joy of freedom he’d anticipated for so long, the sense of wellbeing he’d so craved? Had he been too optimistic; but then why not? He’d been incarcerated for twenty-five years: twenty-five birthdays, twenty-five Christmasses denied. Stolen. Tears nagged at his eyes; yet something held them back. Come on, Jay; don’t feel sorry for yourself, you got over that years ago. This is the day you’ve been waiting for. So it’s an anticlimax, what the hell … It’s still the first day of the rest of your life.
Rebecca repeated her question. ‘You want a parting look?’
Jay was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. ‘What do you think?’
No longer able to look at her son, Rebecca lowered her eyes. She couldn’t begin to articulate how she felt. She’d never been good with words, she’d left that to her fast-talking, no good husband. And now when she desperately needed to tell her son how sorry she was, she couldn’t find a way. She took a step closer to Jay, her face was impassive. ‘I think we should get the hell outta here.’
The drive to New York was a nightmare, the amount of traffic scary, and even more terrifying was Rebecca’s habit of looking directly at him when he spoke. Jay was convinced they were destined for a head-on collision. Having survived twenty-five years of imprisonment, he mused, how ironic if he were killed on his first day of freedom by his mother.
There wasn’t much to say to each other: no common bond; no shared interests; no memories. Well, none that Jay wanted to recall, and eventually mother and son settled into an uncomfortable silence that lasted for most of the journey. Both were relieved when she finally stopped the car in front of the Lowell Hotel. Jay glanced at the uniformed doorman, then at the discreet lobby, recalling his agent’s voice: Made a reservation for you at the Lowell, 28 East 63rd Street. Smart hotel on the Eastside. You can stay there until you sort out an apartment. Your suite’s on the seventh, it’s even got a baby grand in the living room, so if you can play the keys … He got out of the car first, handed his bag to the hovering doorman, then helped his mother out of the driving seat. They stood side by side, her hand resting on the open car door. Jay was smiling, it felt awkward but he kept right on doing it, hoping it looked sincere.
Then Rebecca smiled, too, for the first time. ‘You remind me of your pa, except the way you speak. You don’t talk the same as you did, Jay; you’ve got a fancy accent.’
Jay made no comment, he couldn’t be bothered to explain that he’d been nicknamed ‘the Gent’ in prison, having acquired the new intonation from Hal, the ex-butler from England who’d poisoned his employer – some rich old dame who’d left him a couple of million bucks in her will.
As Rebecca’s smile faded, her mouth slackened and in that moment she looked profoundly sad. Jay thought about his father, then cursed himself and hated his mother for mentioning that he looked like Ellis Kaminsky. It was the first time he’d thought about his father since ten years ago when he’d come across an inmate who had met an Ellis Kaminsky while doing a prison stretch in Illinois. Jay had denied any connection. Ellis Kaminsky had sired him, but that was his only claim to fatherhood. For the first twelve years of Jay’s life, his father had been conspicuous by his absence. A long-suffering Rebecca had always quietly defended her husband. Your father works hard to get nice things for you and your sister. He has to spend time away from home to earn more money so we can have a better house. The move to a bigger house never came, nor did the much promised gifts, like the fishing pole Jay had asked for. After frequent similar disappointments, Jay had begged, then prayed, and eventually given up. Until the day when Kaminsky had left home to work on a construction site in Kansas, promising to bring the pole back for Jay and a bicycle for his sister Fran. They never received the presents, because Ellis Kaminsky never returned. Jay had been fourteen; Fran, twelve. After that their mother had slowly deteriorated, losing sense of who or what she was, given to fits of prolonged depression and introspection. The ‘head of the house’ role had automatically fallen on Jay’s shoulders. He’d tried to console his needy mother and be a father to young Fran. But although he’d tried to make everyone happy, he’d tried too hard and failed miserably. The effort had fuelled both his hatred for his father and his own will to succeed. Perhaps now I can finally make amends, Jay thought. But even as the thought was born, he doubted it was possible. Ellis Kaminsky had taken a large piece of Rebecca’s heart when he’d left, and Jay knew his mother had never completely recovered. And Fran was lost to him; lost to herself, if the stories his mother told were true. Sometimes he doubted this, because on each occasion when he’d enquired about his sister, his mother had been evasive to the point of downright secrecy. Fran was living in Florida, so Rebecca said. Alone, and working as a waitress. Five years after his imprisonment, Fran had moved away from Sand Springs in Montana to California. She’d only visited Jay three times after that and her weekly letters had become monthly – quickly scribbled paragraphs – gradually dwindling to annual events before stopping completely. Where was she now, he wondered, as he was gripped by a vivid recollection of his freckle-faced, plump-cheeked sister – her single pigtail, the same colour as the corn, flying out behind her. It was an age-old image, yet the only one he had. He felt a sharp pang of sadness at the realization that he doubted whether he would be able to pick her out in a crowded
