From the Chrysalis (11 page)

Open up and let me in.
She was almost undone hearing him say what he had only been able to write for the past couple of years. She couldn’t open up here, though
. Liza,
people had told her for years,
don’t tell.
Stupid, stupid to tell him, or anybody else, about Tony. What would he think? She’d had a choice, hadn’t she? Well, sort of.
 

“I’m sorry. I can’t believe I’m doing this, upsetting you in prison,” she blurted. She blinked her eyes dry and lowered her gaze, unable to look at him again.

She couldn’t unload her problems on somebody incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, no matter how much she ached to feel cherished and protected and uncensored. He couldn’t help her where he was. He couldn’t even help himself. Not now, anyway. But he would. He’d take care of it all when his fate, like hers, was no longer in somebody else’s hands.

Are you the captain of your fate?
he used to ask if she so much as hinted how much her life had spiralled out of control. As if he were. As if anybody were. For the love of God, even butterflies weren’t free to do as they pleased.

A dirge had started playing in her head and no wonder. For the umpteenth time, Liza wished her feelings of dread would evaporate like Dace’s apparently had. Strange what a few years in prison could do. Surely he still felt guilty, though, about a man dying, no matter what kind of bastard the victim had been. And about his own family. The trouble he’d caused. She would have. She
did.
What had he said about his father? Oh Christ, what if she forgot something he’d said? She should have smuggled in a tape recorder. Yeah, well, fat chance. They were too big for a pocket. She couldn’t afford one anyway.

“Someone’s always crying here. It’s okay,” Dace lied.

“You’ve got your own problems,” she insisted. In one crazy moment she imagined hiring a helicopter and spiriting him away.
Way to go
, Liza, she chided herself as she snapped back to reality under his stare. It was a good thing men tended to be so focussed.

She took a deep breath, hoping she sounded more informed and confident than she felt. “Your big problem is getting out of prison,” she coached. “Any way you can. For good. Your letters, oh, you write such beautiful letters, Dace. You don’t belong here, you know. These other guys here, aren’t they all supposed to come from bad homes? Poor homes? Nothing like you. And I want to help you stay out, too. Recid … recidivism? Recidivism is supposed to be about 70%. I’ve already started reading my Sociology text so I can get ahead. I can be your outside contact, you know. Well, one of your contacts, anyway.”

He laughed, apparently relieved she had regained her self-control. Well, of course he was. He didn’t want people thinking he’d made a little girl cry. He took a drag on another cigarette. “Well, sure, darling. You’re right. After all, look at me. I’m in no position to rescue a little damsel in distress.”

“Just don’t get used to living here. Isn’t that what happens when people get institutionalized?” she asked and promptly shrivelled inside. What if he told her to mind her own business and stalked off … to what? What was behind those locked doors? What didn’t they want outsiders to see?

And Dace
was
annoyed. One short visit and she could already read his masked face. If he’d stood up and shouted,
I’ve heard all this shit before,
she wouldn’t have been surprised.
 

“I’m doing hard time,” he said. “I’m not getting used to anything. At night I wake up busting to shed my own skin.”

“Oh, I know what that feels like, too! You can’t breathe, you think you’re dying and there’s no one,” she chattered on, trying to appease him until—

“Time’s up, Devereux,” announced the fat guard who had snuck up behind him.
 

Liza blinked at Dace. He was prepared, but for her the reinforced glass divider had almost melted away. Then she noticed the black stick the officer carried, in addition to his revolver, and jumped off her stool so fast she had to steady herself by grabbing its swivelling base. The guard’s “Get movin’,” was superfluous. There was no time to say for her to say anything else to Dace.
 

“Goodbye, Cousin,” he said and smiled. He rose in a single fluid motion and walked away.
 

Caught off guard, Liza stayed put, watching his back.
How could he?
she wondered.
 

She was a frightened girl watching her lover head off to war. But Dace was no soldier. He was more like an actor exiting his private stage, an Academy winning virtuoso, or maybe just a man a little too expert at hiding his emotions. For his own protection, any regrets he had about leaving her were well concealed, his face its usual mask. She might as well go. He would never look back, no matter how much she hoped and prayed for one last glimpse.
 

She had ceased to exist. Her bit part was over. When she turned to leave she noticed the visiting room clock was not quite on the hour. The fat old guard, who Dace later told her was named Savage, had cheated them of precious time.
 

Don’t leave me!
she nearly screamed, but to what purpose? She was much too old, too experienced, too wise, to make a fool of herself over a man again. If there were a reason for everything, that was the reason for Tony Harper, the lesson he had been.
He made a fool of you!
Gran had wailed. Among other things.

So here she was, controlling herself so Dace could walk away scot-free.
Scot-free.
What did that even mean? She almost hated Dace in that instant, then it was gone. He was like nobody else she’d ever known. How could he be like any other man when he’d written her eighty-three beautiful letters? She let him under her skin.
Hey Jude
… She wasn’t going to be able to lose him. It was too late. It had always been too late. She couldn’t shed him even if she tried.

Chapter 7

Terrible Lies

My love came up from Barnegat,

The sea was in his eyes;

He trod as softly as a cat

And told me terrible lies.

*[Wylie, Elinor
, The Puritan’s Ballad
]

Maitland University, August 26, 1971:

Exalted and elated, she floated in a bubble back to her new home on campus. Her fellow bus passengers looked beat up, washed out, down, as if they had just returned from a long trip.They stared at her, envious of the glow in her eyes. Maybe they were numbed by the intense emotions they’d experienced in the prison visiting room. For Liza, it had been her first visit, her first opportunity to talk to Dace in five years, and she throbbed with joy.
 

Everything was going to be all right.
My darling, my life
, a little voice inside her sang. Any fool could see he was in a bad place: the Big House, the can, the clink, the cooler, the coop, the hoosegow, the joint, the jug, the pokey, the slammer, the stir. But when he got out, their lives
would unfold again, like a clandestine script she’d written. She was author cum protagonist cum minor character in her own story, a person determined to chart her own life. Maybe she could yank him back from his private hell too
.
 

What does anybody know about either one of us? He’s gone to jail and I’ve gone to university, both anomalous events in our working-class families,
she wrote in her journal, the one nobody ever found.

For that matter, what did she know? Maybe the family had been right to insist he was just “away.” Maybe it didn’t matter what had happened or why it happened as long as he got back on track. They both had to get back on track while they were still young, while they still had a chance. While time was on their side. Because in a perfect world nobody should be limited by stupid choices they made when they were less than eighteen.
 

* * *

Her euphoria was as short-lived as her bus ride. For Liza it was always like this: a dazzling high, a precipitous low. She deflated at the entrance to the university as the sun began to set over the gates.
I’ve been home three days and I’m not even sure how I got here,
she thought as she squeezed through the rear accordion doors of the bus. She was relieved to feel her feet touching solid ground. She followed the long winding road, past the closed limestone buildings, to the newer residences at the back where the campus was dark and green. The air was pungent with freshly cut grass and carried just the slightest whiff of decaying leaves. Almost too tired to walk, she fought an overwhelming urge to throw herself facedown onto the lawn and inhale the cool grass. Somewhere in the back of her mind came the thought of dying, of oblivion, of the big sleep.

 
A solitary monarch butterfly drifted by her, caught on a southern breeze.
 

When she reached the ninth floor of her student residence, she looked back out the panoramic windows in the elevator lobby, seeing the green ravine below. In the dusk, the ravine was spread out like an invitation, like a pair of girl’s legs. A gully begging,
Come to me!
 

Dusk. Dregs. She always did this when she got tired. Fell into one into one of those in-between places.
Trouble, getting in trouble.
Words evoked pictures in her mind and the word “trouble”
bothered her. She and Dace had both been in trouble. What did that say about them? At least she could escape, as long as she stuffed the cracks where memory seeped in. She had all the imagination she needed, plus she was in a good place. It would be even easier when the residence was full, crammed with other lives. With her life.
If her courses were compelling, if her professors were charismatic, if her social life were distracting, and if she made just one good friend.

If, if, if.
Right now she would have settled for a female confidante, but she had about as much chance of meeting somebody as she did of eating a home-cooked meal. By special permission, she was marooned in an almost empty residence with the capacity for six hundred students. Frosh Week didn’t start for three days, if it started at all. Somebody had plastered the campus with posters, warning young women not to walk alone or they’d get what they were asking for, what they deserved. The posters hinted about a rapist or rapists stalking the green ravine, driven to desperate deeds by co-eds anxious to throw their lives away.
 

Damn, she thought, entering the bedroom wing to her right. Somebody had been there. A single letter with a New York postage stamp was propped on a side table, so she couldn’t miss her name:
Miss Elizabeth Lavinia Devereux
. The envelope hadn’t been there that morning. She took a step closer, puzzled by an atavistic wave of fear. Then she recognized the cultivated Gothic script, the self-important loops and swirls and broke out in a cold sweat.
 

Goddamn it! she exploded, almost dropping her bag. Tony Harper. Dear God. How had he gotten her address? From Granny Magill? Oh, surely not. She’d begged Liza not to correspond with him.
For God’s sake, have some self-respect!
Granny had told the young girl who had squandered her favours.
 

Ah Gran, she thought, close to tears yet again. Sometimes she felt even more upset by the grief she’d caused the older woman than what had happened. Even if in the end she’d done what she was told, the only thing she could do. Now she must never tell anybody what had happened. Especially not Dace. The fact that she had conceived a child with an irresponsible man.
Tell me you love me,
he used to say. What was wrong with her? Why had it taken her so long to walk away?

Empty as the residence was, she looked over both her shoulders before picking up the legal sized envelope and trying to guess its disturbing and perhaps salacious contents. She felt an unexpected flurry of hope in her chest.
Baby, I’ll stay with you,
she remembered wishing he would say. Could she have made another choice? No. She’d had nothing to offer an infant. A faint but impossible whiff of scent issued from the thin, airmail paper. That Brut stuff he used to wear, unless she’d imagined it. Suddenly it was too late to retreat to a safe place in her mind. Too late.
She had been
late
. Another word she hated.