Do Not Pass Go, page 4
While he pulled on his clothes, he could hear his mom talking on the telephone, her voice low and tight. She didn’t sound like herself. Deet never thought about going to school that day, never thought about waking the girls up. Their regular life had ended, it seemed, as thoroughly as if they’d been kidnapped by aliens and dropped on the moon.
When he heard the back door shut, Deet walked stiffly to the kitchen. It smelled like fresh coffee, the way it usually smelled. He ached all over, as if he had the flu. He heard the car start. It was very cold out still, and if Mom were going out she’d have to let it run for a while to heat up.
When she came back in, Deet asked, “Where are you going?”
“I made an appointment to talk to a lawyer.” She was very pale, and she wore no earrings or makeup; her hair was pulled back and fastened at her neck. She looked older. Deet wondered how she could move, make herself start the car, get things done. He felt drained and limp, as if everything would be too much effort.
“How’d you know what lawyer to call?”
“Yellow Pages,” she said.
She was different today. Hard to believe she’d seemed helpless with crying last night. Now she looked like someone else, someone hard and purposeful. Deet didn’t know how that had happened. She began to put on her winter gear, snow pants and heavy boots, and then she poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat on the edge of her chair to drink it, everything about her urgent.
“Dad said I can see him today. I’ll call to find out when. You watch the girls and try to keep their minds off this, will you, Deet? Play Chutes and Ladders with them or something.”
When she zipped her parka up, Deet could see that her hands were shaking. Before she went out, she turned to him.
“Maybe you should find a way to tell them, Deet. They’ll know something’s wrong when they wake up and Dad and I are both gone. You always know how to talk to them.”
He waited until Mom’s car had pulled out of the driveway, and then he went outside to get the newspaper.
Deet had been thinking about the newspaper since he woke up. He was ashamed to be worrying so much about people knowing what had happened to Dad. He was ashamed that he’d thought first of what this meant to him, Deet, not what it meant to Dad, or Mom or the girls. He was pretty sure it didn’t speak very well for his character.
That ordinary newspaper sticking out of the delivery box looked evil, horrible. He took it inside and smoothed it out on the kitchen table, his stomach in a twist. Waves of cold came off the paper as he smoothed it, and the smell of ink. This newspaper, an everyday thing, had turned into something dangerous, terrifying.
Deet turned to the page that listed arrests and scanned it fast, looking for Dad’s name. Nothing about Dad. Too soon, of course. The arrests listed had taken place a few days before.
Deet let himself breathe again. Maybe it wouldn’t ever be in the paper. Maybe no one would know. Maybe they’d just let Dad go. Maybe it wasn’t any big deal.
He began to read the listings again, more carefully. There was one guy arrested, stopped for speeding. Found illegal substances. Taken to the correctional facility. Deet felt his face go white again, and he felt weak. That was no different from Dad. If that guy was in the paper, Dad would be too.
He’d never known before that the stories in the newspaper were nothing but words, told nothing real, left out all the stuff that made you know what it had been like for the people in the stories.
What did that man arrested for drugs say when they stopped him? Was he scared? Did they handcuff him? Did they make him spread out against the car while they searched him, like in the movies? Did he call his family to tell them he was in jail? Were his family waiting at home now, like Deet and the girls, waiting for more terrible things to happen?
Deet read the arrest column over again slowly a third time, and he began to worry about the things he hadn’t thought of last night. What if Dad had to stay in jail for a long time? Could he keep his job? Would Dan let him work on cars? Deet imagined an unpleasant-looking customer saying, “I don’t want Charley Aafedt working on my car. He’s probably all doped up!” Dad wouldn’t be earning any money locked up in jail. Money was why this had happened, and now it was going to be worse. What about the medical insurance? What if P. J. had an asthma attack, how would they pay for that? Where was Dad’s truck? It wasn’t much good, but with the winter so cold they needed two vehicles in case one wouldn’t start or something. It was always happening when it was fifty below. Maybe they wouldn’t give it back to him.
He read the arrest column one more time, and words he’d never paid attention to before leaped out at him, stunned him with their power to hurt. Officer so-and-so, incarcerated, correctional center, illegal substance.
Deet went into his bedroom and sat at his desk. He pulled a pad of paper and a pencil toward him. He started to write down all the jail words he could think of, pressing hard with the pencil.
incarceration
imprisonment
captive, captured, caught
accused
convicted
criminal
crook
inmate
offender
Department of Corrections
Corrections? Like erasing a mistake and writing the right word in? Or like someone corrects your speech and then you say it right. Correctly. Somebody does something wrong and the law will correct him. You go to jail and you’re corrected. Now you have it right, they say, patting you on the head when they let you out. “Corrections” was a stupid word for jail.
rehabilitation
felon
convicted, a convict, a con
misdemeanor
Your demeanor is not right, it’s a mistake, it needs correction.
He couldn’t think of any more, so he looked up words for “jail” in the thesaurus. There were dozens of them.
The slammer. That must be because of the iron doors, the noise they made when they shut, the sound bouncing off the cement-block walls, like in the movies. Cell. Like bees, like monks, small and tight. Stir, stir-crazy, hoosegow, like in the old country songs. Lockup. The pen, penitentiary. Where people are penitent? Sorry for their crimes? Hard time, chain gang.
“Alice’s Restaurant.” He’d thought it was funny, the part when Arlo went to jail.
Deet sat back and stared at the list.
All over the world, since the beginning of history, there had been jails and prisons and dungeons, and people had been captured and locked up. A million billion people had had this done to them. Why had he never thought about it? Now that he had, he felt that he’d been surrounded by these words all his life, but they were invisible. Some things were invisible until they happened to you.
The radio, TV, songs. “Birmingham jail, love, Birmingham jail. Send me a letter to the Birmingham jail.” Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
He used to say jail, like everybody else. A joke, a casual word. Nothing to do with him. Now that word seemed sharp and hard and full of pain.
SIX
After he’d finished his list, he lay back on his bed. He pulled the covers over his head and curled into a tight ball. He wished he could live the rest of his life in a cave, completely hidden. He fell asleep for a little while, and though he couldn’t remember what he had been dreaming, he knew it was awful. P. J. and Jam woke him up, tugging at his shirt. He blinked at them.
“Deet, where’re Mommy and Daddy? Aren’t we going to school today?” P. J. asked. Jam must have seen something in his face, because she suddenly looked terrified.
“Did someone die? Is it Daddy?” she whispered.
Deet laughed a phony sort of laugh, but before it was finished he’d thought that maybe going to jail was a lot like dying. Maybe even worse, because there was no blame in dying. No shame.
“God, you’re silly, Jam. Of course not. I’m going to make us breakfast now, and you guys get dressed. And then we’ll play Chutes and Ladders.”
There was no response, though usually playing Chutes and Ladders was their idea of heaven.
“I’ll make pancakes,” he said. There wasn’t anything they liked better, so that ought to be worth something.
But they were still looking hard at Deet. They’d been happy little girls all their lives, not a worry in the world. They didn’t even know that there were troubles in the world. Everything had been wonderful for them, they didn’t know anything. And now here was this look on their faces, and he had to tell them something.
Deet cleared his throat and sat up.
“It’s like this. Dad did something wrong, against the law, and so he can’t come home until it’s all taken care of.”
“Is Dad a robber?” asked P. J.
“Jeez, P. J!” Deet exploded. “No! You know Dad wouldn’t do something like that!”
Deet thought that he would have said that about drugs as well, but it made him feel almost better for a second. No matter what, Dad didn’t do anything to hurt anyone else. He’d hurt himself, but he didn’t rob anyone. Or kill anyone.
They were still waiting, so he swung his feet over the side of the bed and put his elbows on his knees and looked into their faces.
“You remember when Dad was talking about his headlight, and he said it didn’t work and he had to get it fixed?”
They both nodded.
“Well, he didn’t get it fixed, and the cops stopped him last night. It’s against the law to drive with just one light.” Oh god, Deet thought. Now I’ve done it. I’ve lied to them. They’re going to find out, for sure. They’re not so dumb that they’ll buy this for long. They’ll know you can’t go to jail for something like this.
“Silly Daddy,” said P. J. with a frown. She was trying to sound grown-up, Deet knew.
Jam was watching Deet carefully. “When is he coming home? Will the police hurt Daddy? Will they take his truck away? Is Daddy sad?”
Jam could think up a lot of questions fast.
P. J. made a face. “Grandpa is going to be really mad at Dad.”
Deet shot a quick look at P. J. He hadn’t known that the girls had picked up on the problems between Dad and Grandpa.
“Yeah,” said Deet. “He’ll be mad all right. But we’re not mad. Anybody can make a mistake, right? Remember the time I broke the car window with that two-by-four, and remember the time you girls ran the bathwater so high it spilled all over the floor and Dad had to take the floorboards out to fix it? Anybody can make a mistake.”
Jam nodded. “Even Grandpa can make a mistake,” she said. They were all quiet a minute, trying to think of a mistake Grandpa had made, but they couldn’t.
They heard the car pull into the driveway, the crunch of tires on packed snow. The girls looked at Deet and he felt sick again. In a few minutes they’d hear things they didn’t want to know.
Mom slammed the back door, which was hard to shut because of the frost buildup. Deet needed to scrape the frost away with a kitchen knife again.
She hung her purse up on the hook behind the door and bent down to take her boots off. Deet couldn’t see her face.
“Did you kids eat breakfast?” she asked, and Deet could tell she was trying to talk in her normal voice. With her back to them she unzipped her parka and hung it up. She was doing these things more slowly, more deliberately, than she usually did. Trying to get control, Deet thought.
“We just got up,” he said. “I’m going to make us some hotcakes.” Deet wished he hadn’t mentioned hotcakes. He felt heavy with grief, and everything seemed like too much work.
“Go get dressed, girls,” Mom said.
“Mommy,” P. J. began.
“Get dressed,” Mom said firmly. “I want to talk to Deet for a minute.”
When the girls left, she pulled off her snow pants and then sat heavily in a kitchen chair and began to talk fast.
“There are a lot of steps to go through. It’s very complicated, and I don’t understand any of it. First of all is the arraignment, when they decide what to do with Dad, and then there are hearings and all sorts of things.” Her voice took on a higher pitch. “Then a trial. A trial. It’s not real, it’s like a TV show.” Deet was afraid she was going to lose control again. “What did you say to the girls?” she asked.
“That Dad got busted for a broken headlight.”
She gave him an unsatisfied look, and he could tell she was as unhappy as he was to let them think a lie.
“I called Dan to tell him what happened. It was Gary who answered the phone. That creep.”
Deet threw an anxious look at her. He’d never heard her say a mean word about anyone before. She got up to hang up her snow pants, then looked down at her stocking feet and started searching for her shoes among the heap of shoes and slippers by the door. She turned to him suddenly. “I called Grandpa this morning. It was horrible. He started to yell and said they’d have nothing to do with Dad. He said terrible things about him.” Mom began unwrapping the scarf from around her neck, but she stopped as her face suddenly crumpled. “My poor Charley,” she said.
Deet found her shoes and handed them to her.
“When can you see Dad?”
“At two. I’m going at two.”
“Can I come with you?”
Mom gave him a horrified look. “Of course not. What are you thinking? The jail is a terrible place, full of terrible people. I can hardly stand to go myself.”
Deet felt immediate relief. “You shouldn’t go alone,” he said. What a phony, he thought. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to ever leave the house, much less go to a jail, a prison.
She gave him a sad smile, just a sort of tuck in the corners of her mouth, and bent to put her shoes on.
They were at the table eating pancakes, or pretending to eat pancakes, when there was a knock on the back door. Deet and his mother jumped as if they’d never heard a knock at the door before. They looked at each other, wide-eyed with dread. The police? The newspapers? Grandpa? God, don’t let it be Grandpa.
Mom wrenched the door open and Sally Chambers from down the street came in with a swirl of icy fog. She took the empty chair and pulled her coat off. P. J. leaned toward her and said in a whisper, “Dad’s in jail.”
“I heard about Charley,” Sally told Mom.
Mom blinked back tears and looked down at the table. “How?”
“You know, Bingo’s a friend of Sam’s.”
Deet scraped his chair back and got up to leave. Sally frowned at him. “Look at me, Deet. You think this is the end of the world, but it isn’t. I spent some time in that jail when I was eighteen. Same reason, too.”
“You didn’t get your headlight fixed either, Sally?” asked Jam.
Deet’s mom looked at Sally, puzzled. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, I guess it just never came up.” Sally said. “I’m not proud of being so stupid, but I’m not really ashamed of it either. People make mistakes. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s just what Deet said,” Jam said thoughtfully.
Deet sat back down and stared at Sally for a minute. How could someone spend time in a nightmare place like jail and it didn’t show?
After Sally left, Deet went to his room to try to do some homework. He had some biology drawings to do, but he couldn’t even make himself pick up the pencil.
Then he looked up “prison” in the quotation book. There was nothing there, or under “jail,” so he looked under “crime.” There were only two quotations.
Poverty is the mother of crime.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Deet sadly read the last one again. That one certainly had it right. He looked under “trouble.”
I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Well, he could sure see that. He wrote that quotation in his notebook, and he chewed on his pencil for a while before he wrote why he liked the quote.
It’s really hard to earn a living and try to keep everybody happy. Spend enough time with everyone, buy all those Barbie clothes. Maybe if you’re the breadwinner you feel guilty all the time when you think of the things you can’t buy for your family. Maybe you feel really jealous when you see those fancy houses, or those big Dodge trucks pulling a trailer with two snowmobiles on it.
SEVEN
After Sally left, Mom got ready to go to the jail. Everything depended on Dad. Only after she’d seen him would they know how he was, how they would be able to stand this thing.
But Deet couldn’t imagine what Dad would be like. He tried to imagine Dad in some other totally extraordinary place: He tried Dad backstage, putting on makeup for a Broadway musical. Or standing up in front of a crowd of people, asking them to vote for him. But Dad in jail just couldn’t be imagined.
The lawyer had explained that Mom mustn’t be late. The jail was very strict about visiting hours, and you would not be allowed in if you were so much as a minute late. Being on time was not one of Mom’s best skills, and it was her experience that no matter how much you wanted to be on time, something would happen to make you late. The car wouldn’t start, or Jam would throw up, or the toilet would overflow, or the clock would stop. So Deet fretted, watching the clock, and Mom dressed carefully, an hour before she had to leave, warmed up the car long before it was necessary, and left with time to spare.
Before she left, Deet finally got the girls involved in a game of Chutes and Ladders, though it was all he could do to sit through it, he was so jumpy. The girls had relaxed, and maybe he had too. A bit.
Deet thought what Sally said had made a difference, had made it all seem more normal. If you take some horrible thing and divide it among a lot of people, it wasn’t as horrible anymore. He wondered if there was a quotation about that.
