about my childhood and my mother—all the really wonderful things we did during the in-between time when she had recovered from her grief over my father but hadn’t yet met my stepfather and remarried. I imagine telling her what I was like in high school, and hearing her exclaim that she was the same way, enjoyed the same things, suffered the same embarrassments. My mind has been slow to acknowledge it, but when I picture her face, I realize she looks like me. Around her jaw she is all Ricky, but the narrow line of her nose, the wide set of her eyes, and her coloring—that is all me.
I want to tell her about the night Ricky drove us out to the beach at Santa Cruz, when the warmth of the air made the vinyl upholstery of his bench seat stick to the backs of my legs, and I noticed that his wrist above the stick shift bore a heavy silver watch that showed the wrong time. He was left-handed, he explained—I felt bemused that I had never noticed—and he didn’t care about the time, he just liked the watch’s weight and design. At the beach we walked out past the boardwalk, past all the tourists, to where the air was quiet and the sand was damp from the outgoing tide. He rolled up his pants to just below his knees and showed me how well he could do cartwheels. He’d walk on his hands a bit, then tuck and roll when he began to lose his balance, to make it look deliberate. I was laughing, and the cold, wet sand squeezed up between my toes, and every time he turned upside down I looked at his stomach and his navel and the down of dark hair against them, which seemed to say, Don’t forget, under here, I’m a man . There wasn’t any thought of What will he become? There wasn’t even one of Where is this going? That evening it was only the two of us on the beach, clowning and playing, secretly eager to kiss, and a little hungry.
But I won’t tell her about that. I wish I could recreate these moments as tactile drawings, leaving his face a blank. I would include everything else—the watch, the rolled-up pants, the limber strength of his agile body—so she could run her hands across it and nod and say, Oh . But not the face, on which her fingers would recognize those sleepy eyes and twice-broken nose from so many photographs and cause her to say, Oh, no .
* * *
After work on Monday I line up at the bank of telephones to make a call. The wait is long, but at last I can punch in the number I’ve kept in my pocket all day. I hold my breath at the distant buzz of the dial tone.
“Hello?”
The first voice that responds is a machine’s. “This is a collect call from California State Women’s Prison at El Centro. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes.”
I exhale at her answer.
The static of the machine voice fades, and she says, “This is Karen Shepard speaking.”
“Ms. Shepard, this is Clara Mattingly.”
“Ms. Mattingly! I’m delighted to hear from you. I was afraid you weren’t going to answer. I would love to come down to interview you, at a time convenient for you, of course.”
“Weekends are best. I’m not supposed to miss work.” I glance toward the officer watching me. “They have a lot of rules about visits, though. You have to have ID, and dress conservatively—”
“Yes, I know. I investigated all of that when I decided to interview you. I’ll come by this Saturday. I have all my questions prepared.”
“That’s fine,” I say, but I don’t like her presumptions. In almost twenty-five years I’ve never once given an interview, and I’m not sure what made this woman believe she would be the exception. I wouldn’t even grant one to Katie Rayburn, who seemed very sweet and told me she wanted to get to know my speech patterns and mannerisms so she could portray me sympathetically. Do it, Mona had advised me, and even then I wouldn’t. There was too much risk in believing I had some type of control when, in the end, I would have none.
“I’d like to do this as a trade,” I say.
“A
I want to tell her about the night Ricky drove us out to the beach at Santa Cruz, when the warmth of the air made the vinyl upholstery of his bench seat stick to the backs of my legs, and I noticed that his wrist above the stick shift bore a heavy silver watch that showed the wrong time. He was left-handed, he explained—I felt bemused that I had never noticed—and he didn’t care about the time, he just liked the watch’s weight and design. At the beach we walked out past the boardwalk, past all the tourists, to where the air was quiet and the sand was damp from the outgoing tide. He rolled up his pants to just below his knees and showed me how well he could do cartwheels. He’d walk on his hands a bit, then tuck and roll when he began to lose his balance, to make it look deliberate. I was laughing, and the cold, wet sand squeezed up between my toes, and every time he turned upside down I looked at his stomach and his navel and the down of dark hair against them, which seemed to say, Don’t forget, under here, I’m a man . There wasn’t any thought of What will he become? There wasn’t even one of Where is this going? That evening it was only the two of us on the beach, clowning and playing, secretly eager to kiss, and a little hungry.
But I won’t tell her about that. I wish I could recreate these moments as tactile drawings, leaving his face a blank. I would include everything else—the watch, the rolled-up pants, the limber strength of his agile body—so she could run her hands across it and nod and say, Oh . But not the face, on which her fingers would recognize those sleepy eyes and twice-broken nose from so many photographs and cause her to say, Oh, no .
* * *
After work on Monday I line up at the bank of telephones to make a call. The wait is long, but at last I can punch in the number I’ve kept in my pocket all day. I hold my breath at the distant buzz of the dial tone.
“Hello?”
The first voice that responds is a machine’s. “This is a collect call from California State Women’s Prison at El Centro. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes.”
I exhale at her answer.
The static of the machine voice fades, and she says, “This is Karen Shepard speaking.”
“Ms. Shepard, this is Clara Mattingly.”
“Ms. Mattingly! I’m delighted to hear from you. I was afraid you weren’t going to answer. I would love to come down to interview you, at a time convenient for you, of course.”
“Weekends are best. I’m not supposed to miss work.” I glance toward the officer watching me. “They have a lot of rules about visits, though. You have to have ID, and dress conservatively—”
“Yes, I know. I investigated all of that when I decided to interview you. I’ll come by this Saturday. I have all my questions prepared.”
“That’s fine,” I say, but I don’t like her presumptions. In almost twenty-five years I’ve never once given an interview, and I’m not sure what made this woman believe she would be the exception. I wouldn’t even grant one to Katie Rayburn, who seemed very sweet and told me she wanted to get to know my speech patterns and mannerisms so she could portray me sympathetically. Do it, Mona had advised me, and even then I wouldn’t. There was too much risk in believing I had some type of control when, in the end, I would have none.
“I’d like to do this as a trade,” I say.
“A
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