Now and Forever (29 page)

And she worked night and day. Figuring out what to do for the sentencing, and suddenly pouring her energy back into Lady J, as she hadn't in years. She worked on Saturdays again. At home she did anything, everything --cleaned the basement, straightened out the garage, redid her closets, tidied the studio--anything, trying not to think. And maybe, maybe, if she did everything perfectly, maybe at the end of the month, he'd come home. Maybe they'd give him probation, maybe ...she moved like a whirling dervish, but she had to; the pounding of her mind was deafening her. And constantly there was fear. She never escaped it. Sheer, raw, endless terror. Beyond human proportions. But she wasn't human anymore. She barely ate, she hardly slept. She wouldn't allow herself to feel. She didn't dare to be human. Humans fell apart. And that was what scared her most. Falling apart. Like Humpty-Dumpty. And all the king's horses and all the king's men ... that was what she was afraid of. Ian knew it, but he couldn't stop her now. He couldn't touch her, hold her, feel her, make her feel. He couldn't do anything except watch her through the window and talk to her on the phone at the jail as she played nervously with the cord and snappd her earring absentmindedly.

And he continued to look steadily worse--unshaven, unwashed, ill fed, and with dark circles under his eyes that seemed to get darker each time she saw him.

"Don't you sleep in here?" There was a raw edge to her voice now. It was higher, shriller, scareder. He pitied her, but he couldn't help her now. They both knew it, and he wondered how long it would take her to hate him for it. For failing her. He was terrified that a day would come when he couldn't keep the boogey man from the door for her, and then she would turn on him. Jessie expected a lot. Because she needed so much.

"I sleep now and then." He tried to smile. Tried not to think. "What about you? Looks like a lot of makeup under your eyes, my love. Am I right?"

"Are you ever wrong?" She smiled back and shrugged, snapping the earring again. She had lost twelve pounds, but she was sleeping a little better. She just didn't look it. But the new red pills helped. They were better than the yellow ones, or even the little blue ones Astrid had let her graduate to after that. They were the same kind, only stronger. The red ones where something else. She didn't discuss it with Ian. He would have been difficult about it. And she was careful. But the pills were the best part of her day. The two bright moments with Ian were the only livable parts of her week, and in between she had to get through the days. The pills did that for her. And Astrid doled them out one by one, refusing to leave the bottle with her.

Ian would have been frantic if he had known. She had promised him solemnly, after Jake had died--no more pills. He had stood at her side all night while they'd pumped her stomach, and afterward she had promised. She thought about that sometimes when she took the pills. But she had to. She really had to. Or she'd die anyway. One way or another. She worried about things like jumping out a window, without wanting to. About little demons seizing her and making her do things she didn't want to do. She couldn't talk to customers in the shop anymore. She stayed in the back office because she was afraid of what she'd say. She was no longer in control. Of anything. Jessica was not in her own driver's seat. No one was.

The four weeks between the verdict and the sentencing ground by like a permanent nightmare, but the sentencing finally came. The plea for probation was heard by the judge, and this time Jessie stood beside Ian as they waited. It was less frightening now, though, and she kept touching his hand, his face. It was the first time in a month that she had touched him. He smelled terrible and his nails were long. They had given him an electric razor at the jail and it had torn his face apart. But it was Ian. It was, at last the touch of the familiar in a world that had become totally unfamiliar to her. Now she could stand next to him. Be his. She almost forgot the seriousness of the sentencing. But the courtroom formalities brought her back. The bailiff, the court reporter, the flag. It was the same courtroom, the same judge. And it was all very real now.

Ian was not granted probation. The judge felt that the charges were too serious. And Martin explained later that with the political climate what it was, the judge could hardly have done otherwise. Ian was given a sentence of four years to life in state prison, and he would have to serve at least a fourth of his minimum sentence: one year.

The bailiff led him away, and this time Jessie did not cry.

Three days later, Ian was moved from county jail to state prison. He went, like all male prisoners in Northern California, to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville for "evaluation."

Jessica drove there two days later with Astrid, in the black Jaguar, and with two yellow pills under her belt. Astrid said these were the last she would give her, but she always said that. Jessica knew she felt sorry for her.

Except for the gun tower peering over the main gate and the metal detector that searched them for weapons, the prison at Vacaville looked innocuous. Inside, a gift shop sold ugly items made in the prison, and the front desk might have been the entrance to a hospital. Everything was chrome and glass and linoleum. But outside, it looked like a modern garage. For people.

They asked to see Ian, filled out various forms, and were invited to sit in the waiting room or wander in the lobby. Ten minutes later a guard appeared to unlock a door to an inner courtyard. He instructed them to pass through the courtyard and go through yet another door, which they would find unlocked.

The inmates in the courtyard wore blue jeans, T-shirts, and an assortment of shoes, everything from boots to sneakers, and Astrid raised an eyebrow at Jessie. It didn't look like a prison. Everyone was casually playing with the soda machines or talking to girlfriends. It looked like a high school at recess, with here and there the exception of a sober face or a watery-eyed mother.

What she saw gave Jessie some hope. She could visit Ian somewhere in the courtyard, could touch him again, laugh, hold hands. It was madness to be regressing to that after seven years of marriage, but it would be an improvement over the doggie-in-the-window visits at the county jail.

As it turned out, there was no improvement. Ian was months away from visits in the courtyard, if he stayed in that institution at all. There was always Folsom or San Quentin to worry about now. Anything was possible. And for the time being they were faced once again with more visits through a glass window, talking over a phone. Jessica felt a surging desire to smash the receiver through the window as she tried to smile into his face. She longed for the touch of his face, the feel of his arms, the smell of his hair. And instead all she had in her hands was a blue plastic phone. Next to her there was a pink one, and further down a yellow. Some one with a sense of humor had installed pastel-colored princess-style phones all the way down the line. Like a nursery, with a glass window. And you could talk to the darling babies on the phone. What she needed was her husband, not a phone pal.

But he looked better--thinner, but at least clean. He had even shaved in the hope of a visit. They fell into some of their old jokes, and Astrid shared the phone with Jessica now and then. It was all so strange, sitting there, making conversation with a wall of glass between the two women and Ian. The strain told in his eyes, and the humor they inflicted on each other always had a bitter edge.

"This is quite a harem. For a rapist." He grinned nervously at his own bad joke.

"Maybe they'll think you're a pimp." Their laughter sounded like tinsel rustling.

The reality was that he was there. For at least a year. Jessie wondered how long she could take it. But maybe she didn't have to. Maybe neither of them did. She wanted to talk to him about an appeal.

"Did you talk to Martin about it?"

"Yes. And there won't be an appeal." He answered her solemnly, but with certainty in his voice.

"What?" Jessie's voice was suddenly shrill.

"You heard me. I know what I'm doing, Jess. Nothing would change next time around. Martin feels the same way. For another five or ten thousand bucks, we'd sink ourselves further into debt, and when the second trial rolled around, we'd have nothing different to say. The suspicions we have about her husband are inadmissible on the flimsy evidence we have. All we've got is an old photograph and a lot of fancy ideas. No one will testify. There's nothing to hang our hats on except blind hope. We did that once, but we didn't have any choice. We're not going through that again. A new trial would come out the same goddam way, and it'll just make these people mad. Martin thinks I'm better off living through this, just being a nice guy, and they'll probably give me an early parole. Anyway, I've made my decision, and I'm right."

"Who says you're right, dammit, and why didn't anyone ask me?"

"Because we're talking about my time in here, not yours. It's my decision."

"But it affects my life too." Her eyes filled with tears. She wanted an appeal, another chance, something, anything. She couldn't accept just waiting around until he got paroled. There was talk of changing the California laws to bring in a determinate sentence, but who had time to wait for that? And even then, Martin had once said that Ian might have to do a couple of years. Two years? Jesus. How would she survive? She could barely speak as she held the phone in her hand.

"Jessie, trust me. It has to be this way. There's no point."

"We could sell something. The house. Anything."

"And we might lose again. Then what? Let's just grit our teeth and get through this. Please, Jessie--please, please try. I can't do anything for you right now except love you. You've got to be strong. And it won't be for long. It probably won't be more than a year." He tried to sound cheerful about it, for her sake.

"What if it's more than a year?"

"We'll worry about it then." The tears spilled down her face in answer. How could they have decided this without talking to her? And why weren't they willing to try again? Maybe they could win ... maybe ... she looked up to see Ian exchanging a look with Astrid and shaking his head. "Baby, you have to pull yourself together."

"What for?"

"For me."

"I'm okay."

He shook his head and looked at her. "I wish to hell you were." Thank God she had Astrid.

They talked on for a while, about the other men there, about some tests they'd put him through, about his hopes of being kept there rather than sent on to another prison. Vacaville at least seemed civilized, and he expected that he could work on his book after he'd been there for a while and had calmed down. Jessie told herself that it made her feel better to know that he was still interested in the book. At least he was still alive mentally, spiritually. But she found that she didn't really care. What about her? After the outburst over the appeal, she felt even lonelier. She tried to pump life into her smile, but it hurt so much not to be able to reach out to him or be held in his arms.

He watched her face for a long moment and wished only that he could touch her. Even he didn't have enough words anymore, and too often they fell silent.

"How's the shop?"

"Okay. Great, really. Business is booming." But it was a lie. Business was far from booming. It was the worst it had been in all the years since she'd opened Lady J. But what could she tell him, what was there to say without voicing agonizing recriminations, and accusations, and cries of outrage and despair? What was left? There was always the truth that business was lousy and he should have been home working to help pay the bills ... the truth that he shouldn't be in prison ... the truth that he looked terrible and his haircut made him look old and tired ... the truth that she even worried now that he'd become a homosexual in jail--or worse, that someone would kill him ... the truth that she didn't know how to pay the bills anymore and was afraid that she couldn't survive the nights alone ... the truth that she wanted to die ...the truth that he never should have balled Margaret Burton ... the truth that he was a sonofabitch and she was beginning to hate him because he wasn't there anymore ... he was gone. But she couldn't tell him the truth. There was too much of it now, and she knew it would kill him.

He was talking again; she had to look up and focus her attention.

"Jess, I want you to do something for me when you get home today. Get the book Xeroxed, put the copy in the bank, and send me the original. I'm getting special permission to work on it, and by the time the manuscript gets here, I'll have the paperwork squared away at this end. Don't forget, though. Try and get it out to me today." There was summer in his eyes again as he spoke, but Astrid wondered at the look on Jessica's face. Jessie was stunned. He had just been sentenced to prison and he was worried about his book?

The visit was called to a close after little more than an hour. There was a frantic flurry of good-byes on the phone, cheery farewells from Astrid, a few last verbal hugs from Ian, and a moment of panic that Jessie thought would close her throat. She couldn't even kiss him good-bye. But what if she needed to hold him? Didn't they understand that all she had in the world was Ian? What if ...

She watched him walk away slowly, reluctant to leave, but a big boyish smile hung on his face, while she tried to smile too. But she was running on an empty tank now, and secretly she was glad the visit was over. It cost her more each time she saw him now. It was even harder here than it had been in county jail. She wanted to throw a fist through the glass, to scream, to ... anything, but she gave him a last smile, and numbly followed Astrid back to the car.

"Do you have any more of those magical little pills, fairy godmother?"

"No, I don't. I didn't bring them." Astrid said nothing more, but touched her arm gently and gave her a hug before unlocking the car. There was nothing more she could say. And she left Jessie the dignity of not seeing her tears as they drove home in silence, the radio purring softly between them.