Pay the Piper by Joan Williams

years ago. There is conjugal visiting, though most men in prison no longer have wives, or have them in name only. On visiting days we can be outside with our families. I usually arrange a picnic under a mimosa I like. But I’m always too excited to eat. Thank you again for caring enough to write me. I will write again when I’ve had time to read your book.
    Hal MacDonald
    Exquisite misery , Laurel thought. How could she not be moved by a man sensitive enough to write those words. Of course he didn’t remember her as a child—she was living on the wrong side of the tracks from the people and places he had known. Hurriedly, Laurel put away the letter. The punctual yellow school bus had lumbered up the hill down the road and passed apple trees next door to stop at the nearby corner, where Rick stepped off in his penny loafers.

3
    She might well be going to Timbuktu, Siberia, or Mars as far as her Soundport friends were concerned: Mississippi? They went on questioning year after year: Why? What’s there? “Nothing,” Laurel would answer, knowing they would not understand if she told them. She would smile, realizing they did not see the smile’s mysterious quality, either. In their ignorance, they did not question the trip’s real oddity: Going to Mississippi in July! they ought to be shouting. You are crazy!
    Highways were less traveled on Sundays, and she always started the trip early that day. Rick was beside her as she pulled from the driveway, with its abutments of stone walls. Buff stood innocently on the back seat, having no idea how long her ride was about to be. Jubal had been shipped off to “camp,” as William called it, and, no matter how good the kennel, would return hangdog and medicinal-smelling. After so many years, their departures were heavy with ritual.
    If only the stage setting with Mr. Woodsum had not taken place. While she could stop at a phone booth on the way, it seemed too late to call things off, and there was the deposit, spent. She must not calculate what she was doing in terms of money, Laurel said to herself, at the steering wheel. She backed slowly, fixing things in her mind’s eye. William stood on the porch in his paisley bathrobe, which was old. Something happening at the school bus corner caught her eye. A car came around it, an old gray derelict car with rusty spots. “There’s Gran,” said Rick, his young voice husky with its early morning usage. His eyes were not fully open. “Doesn’t she know we’re leaving?”
    â€œOf course.” How many times had they talked about the exact hour? And she told her mother she was not the only wife who left her husband to his own devices in the summer. Other wives settled in the Hamptons or on the Vineyard or the Cape and husbands came on weekends; they had many nights alone in the city. Once they went to Fire Island and William laughed that on Friday evenings wives and children went to meet what was called “the daddy boat.”
    On the porch, William had not shaved; there was his faint darkened stubble, his familiarity as Dad and husband. She had smelled coffee on his breath when she stood on tiptoe reaching beyond his chin, where the top of her head came, and their mouths brushed in goodbye. He had grabbed Rick in a crunch that made the boy cry out and look sheepish. Somewhere in the distance an inconsiderate lawn mower began; the smell of grass would reach them if they stayed long enough. When would they get off with her mother here? Mrs. Wynn parked and came along the roadside, her eyes downcast, embarrassed by her arrival. Bile rose to Laurel’s throat. She wanted to drive away, saying, If I wait another minute, I won’t make it with just one night on the road. “I’m not going to keep you,” her mother called, stepping along carefully through damp grass. “I couldn’t sleep.” Her long nails grasping the rolled-down window seemed those