about her family members almost as if they are there with her in the room. Dominique was fascinated and amazed: here was a mother who had an easy and natural relationship with her grown children, a mutually respectful relationship that knew no rigidity, no strictures, but was full of humor, elasticity, love,and… pleasure. To Dominique, the casual chat of this woman on the other side of the glass hit him with all the impact of a revelation.
Tentatively, Dominique began to ask Sheila questions— about how she talked to Brigid and Patrick and how they talked to her. Though only dimly realizing what she was doing at first, Sheila was holding up to Dominique a dream beyond all his imaginings: she was giving him a practical education in the nuts and bolts of healthy family life, a realm that lay outside anything in his experience. Finally, Sheila succeeded in closing the circle that was slowly uniting her and Dominique: she asked Dominique about his family. He told her briefly of the many horrors and of his concern for his brothers, but then he found himself concentrating on the paternal grandmother he had loved and lost—the one person who had always believed in him—and the immense loneliness that had overwhelmed his nine-year-old world when she died. That day, Sheila realized, Dominique was trying to keep her there, prolonging her visit with whatever conversational gambit he could come up with. His decision earlier in that visit to cross the line into his private suffering—to tell her about his grandmother—had sealed their new relationship.
Sheila found herself giving Dominique as much attention as she gave her own children, sending him postcards and phoning when she couldn't visit. Eventually, she asked her son to visit Dominique. Sheila would always think of that visit as miraculous: the on-duty staff unaccountably allowed Patrick to remain far beyond the customary hour, and in that time anirrevocable transformation occurred. By the end of the visit, Dominique and Patrick were calling each other “brother”— and they both meant it. Dominique now knew himself to be a member of a family a family that wanted him.
There was another person whom Sheila was able to introduce to Dominique: her law clerk, Andrew Lofthouse, three years younger and three inches taller than Dominique, a middle-class, midwestern white boy with the rangy body of a tennis player (as opposed to Dominique's slightly squatter, more earthbound appearance), with whom Dominique could have expected to have little in common. Livingston was the first prison Andy ever found himself in—though he lacks the least hint of straight-laced rectitude and will refer obliquely to “my youthful indiscretions.” It was precisely Andy's zany playfulness, the dance of lights in his eyes that says, “I'm not always a good boy,” that appealed to Dominique, who possessed an obvious and irrepressible naughtiness of his own. Much of their bonding revolved around the usual male talk of sports and girls.
But if the predictable interests of men in their twenties helped the two to reach some common ground, Andy was perhaps the first person to get a fix on how intelligent Dominique was—and how manipulative he could be. “He figured this guy flew all the way down here, drove all the way up here, waited in line, this guy obviously wants to see me. It's just what people do to go on visits there. It's not easy to get to Livingston, Texas. And Dominique knew it and he had been having visits for eight or nine years by the time I got there; and so when Igot there, I was one of a long line. And he knew how to manipulate every interview that he had. And he'd say in his letters, ‘Well, I'm going to have a visit’ or ‘I need a visit,’ and it was almost like his visits were his business meetings and he was the CEO. And I didn't recognize that until the second or third time I went down there. Because at first I thought he was desperate to meet me but the second or third
Tentatively, Dominique began to ask Sheila questions— about how she talked to Brigid and Patrick and how they talked to her. Though only dimly realizing what she was doing at first, Sheila was holding up to Dominique a dream beyond all his imaginings: she was giving him a practical education in the nuts and bolts of healthy family life, a realm that lay outside anything in his experience. Finally, Sheila succeeded in closing the circle that was slowly uniting her and Dominique: she asked Dominique about his family. He told her briefly of the many horrors and of his concern for his brothers, but then he found himself concentrating on the paternal grandmother he had loved and lost—the one person who had always believed in him—and the immense loneliness that had overwhelmed his nine-year-old world when she died. That day, Sheila realized, Dominique was trying to keep her there, prolonging her visit with whatever conversational gambit he could come up with. His decision earlier in that visit to cross the line into his private suffering—to tell her about his grandmother—had sealed their new relationship.
Sheila found herself giving Dominique as much attention as she gave her own children, sending him postcards and phoning when she couldn't visit. Eventually, she asked her son to visit Dominique. Sheila would always think of that visit as miraculous: the on-duty staff unaccountably allowed Patrick to remain far beyond the customary hour, and in that time anirrevocable transformation occurred. By the end of the visit, Dominique and Patrick were calling each other “brother”— and they both meant it. Dominique now knew himself to be a member of a family a family that wanted him.
There was another person whom Sheila was able to introduce to Dominique: her law clerk, Andrew Lofthouse, three years younger and three inches taller than Dominique, a middle-class, midwestern white boy with the rangy body of a tennis player (as opposed to Dominique's slightly squatter, more earthbound appearance), with whom Dominique could have expected to have little in common. Livingston was the first prison Andy ever found himself in—though he lacks the least hint of straight-laced rectitude and will refer obliquely to “my youthful indiscretions.” It was precisely Andy's zany playfulness, the dance of lights in his eyes that says, “I'm not always a good boy,” that appealed to Dominique, who possessed an obvious and irrepressible naughtiness of his own. Much of their bonding revolved around the usual male talk of sports and girls.
But if the predictable interests of men in their twenties helped the two to reach some common ground, Andy was perhaps the first person to get a fix on how intelligent Dominique was—and how manipulative he could be. “He figured this guy flew all the way down here, drove all the way up here, waited in line, this guy obviously wants to see me. It's just what people do to go on visits there. It's not easy to get to Livingston, Texas. And Dominique knew it and he had been having visits for eight or nine years by the time I got there; and so when Igot there, I was one of a long line. And he knew how to manipulate every interview that he had. And he'd say in his letters, ‘Well, I'm going to have a visit’ or ‘I need a visit,’ and it was almost like his visits were his business meetings and he was the CEO. And I didn't recognize that until the second or third time I went down there. Because at first I thought he was desperate to meet me but the second or third
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