A Nearly Normal Family(53)

He looked at me, slowly, up and down, until I pulled my cardigan over my chest. I felt like a show cat. The attorney brought his hand to his forehead and stroked away both hair and sweat.

I stretched.

“Is that all you’ve got? Tell it like it was. That’s your strategy?”

Blomberg shrank a bit.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re supposed to be one of these big-shot lawyers,” I said. “Haven’t you won a bunch of major cases? Didn’t you have a better strategy those times either?”

Blomberg threw up his hands.

“What do you want, exactly?”

I had managed to arouse some uncertainty in him. Some philosopher once said that knowledge is power. That is definitely true. Other people’s ignorance is also a powerful factor.

“What if I did it?” I said.

Blomberg had transformed completely. He had come marching in here like an alpha male straight out of the tanning bed. Now he looked like nothing but a pale little boy.

I thought of Dad’s motto, how lying is a rare skill. Did Blomberg share that belief?

“Why would you have done something like that?” he wondered.

It was, of course, a good question.





46


The book Shirine brings me is three hundred and seventeen pages long. Single-spaced, no room to breathe.

“I thought you might need something to read,” she says. “There’s not much else to do around here.”

I page expectantly through it, my fingers eager. I read the first sentence: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

Six months ago, I would have laughed. If someone handed me a fifty-year-old book full of long sentences and references I didn’t get, I would have assumed it was a bad joke. I can’t remember the last time I read a whole book. I’ve never been able to hold still for long enough. After a few minutes, my thoughts wander off and I completely forget what I’ve read and I have to start all over. But in here it’s different. I long for something that can kidnap my mind for a while. I’m so tired of myself.

“So what kind of book is it?” I ask, as I glance through the blurb on the back.

“It’s something of a feminist classic.”

I raise one eyebrow.

“Give it a chance. I think you’ll like it.”

I bring it back to my cell anyway. Then I buy a large Coke and two chocolate bars from the commissary cart. The guard who locks me back in is new, must be one of the temps always coming and going. She stares at me in horror as I reluctantly return to my hundred square feet of smell. The new girl keeps standing there in the doorway, and I feel her eyes writhing across my body like terrified larvae.

“What the fuck is the problem?” I say at last.

Her head jerks back. Her eyes gape.

She looks like a perfectly normal girl. The kind who finishes the social-sciences program with good grades, buys clothes at Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters. In another life, I’m sure she and I could have been friends.

“Nothing,” she says, hiding her face with one hand. “It’s nothing.”

Then she rattles the keys and looks generally stressed out. As the lock clicks, I lie flat on the bed with my mouth stuffed with Daim and Coke.

I open the book and it doesn’t take long before I’m hooked. Finally, I can escape myself for a while. A whole different world opens in my mind and I throw myself headlong into it. I never want to come out again, never come back to this fucking cell.

I can’t even smell it when I’m reading.



* * *



The next morning, Shirine returns to my room.

“I finished it.”

I toss the book on the bed, but from Shirine’s face you’d think it landed on her toes.

“Already?”

I shrug.

“What happened? Did you like it?”

“It was fucking depressing.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Shirine’s face is heavy with guilt.

I don’t know why I don’t tell the truth, that I loved the book, that it made me furious and sad, but that I have nothing against feeling furious and sad. I need those emotions. I would never forgive Shirine if she brought me a book full of sunshine.

“Can you get me more books?” I ask.

Her smile travels from eye to eye.

“Of course I’ll get you more books.”

“Great.”

She is about to sit down next to me when the tears well up. I can’t explain why. Maybe a thought happened to brush against something that burns. I press my palms to my face, which aches and stings. And I think about Esther in the book, and that mental hospital.

“Are you okay?” Shirine asks, her voice gentle.

I can’t answer her question. No matter what I say, it will sound petty, probably incomprehensible. Presumably egotistical. My life is ruined. Chris is dead and I have made a mess of everything. How will I ever be able to look Mom and Dad in the eyes again? There’s no solution now, only escape.

“I want you to leave now,” I say to Shirine.

All I deserve is darkness.





47


Amina and I have always been told we’re an odd pair. She’s so levelheaded and reserved and rule abiding. And I’m constantly taking up space and being loud, always finding some ridiculous rule to break.