The Office of Historical Corrections(24)

Looking at them on the boat I’d summoned them to, I realized I never would have known them by sight; they looked like any other strangers. After my mother’s revelation, the gulf between our families seemed even bigger than it had been when we’d met at the pier. The Mortons didn’t talk much the whole rest of the boat ride, not even to each other. I sat by my mother and kept rubbing her shoulder.

“This could still work out,” I said, even though I didn’t know anymore what was supposed to be working.



* * *



? ? ?

Alcatraz loomed over us all, stony and angular with patches of green. My mother made halting conversation with Nancy. A woman in front of us pointed enthusiastically at the military barracks ahead. I looked up—rows and rows of matching windows, peeling paint that might have been white once. An old U.S. penitentiary sign had been affixed to the building over the welcome indians graffiti that no one had painted over. All that history, bleeding into itself in the wrong order. Sarah was standing beside me, focused on the same sign. She fished through her shoulder bag and emerged with a tin of mints; I took one when she offered it and chewed, feeling the little bits of blue crystal grind against my teeth.

“Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on here?” she asked.

“At this point your guess is as good as mine,” I said.

“I thought this was going to be a joke or something,” Sarah continued. “I mean, who has long-lost relatives anymore?”

“Didn’t you know about us?” I asked. I had known about them for as long as I could remember.

“Not really. My mom was never that close to her parents. We saw them like every other Thanksgiving. Less than that once my uncle died. And then they died too. We don’t really even talk about them that much. Mom’s been weird lately. I think she was happy to get the call. Dad thinks this whole thing is a bad idea. FYI, he thinks you’re going to ask for money or something.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well we’re not.”

“Didn’t think so.” She stopped to examine a purple flower on a bush, then snapped it off and twisted it between her fingers, staining them lavender. “My mom said something about a lawsuit.”

“It’s over. And anyway, it was never about the money. It was about the fact that he never should have been here.”

I told her the story my mother had told me, the faulty gun, the death of his friends, the rats, his suicide.

“Fuck,” she said, and we were quiet the rest of the way up.



* * *



? ? ?

When we caught up with our parents, I found my mother still listing slightly exaggerated versions of my accomplishments. It was the kind of subtle inflation of the truth you’d find in a family’s annual holiday newsletter, but it made me angry. It wasn’t that I doubted she was proud of me—her faith in me, I knew, was boundless. It was their faith in me she didn’t trust, and I didn’t like it, the way a group of strangers had the power to shake my mother’s confidence. I had orchestrated the visit confident that my mother’s cousin would be grateful for the chance to make amends, that she and her family would be eager to prove themselves better than the people who raised her. It had honestly not occurred to me that my mother and I would have to make a case for ourselves, that conditions could possibly be such that we were the ones who were supposed to impress them.

“You don’t have to treat them like they’re visiting royalty,” I muttered to my mother as we approached the entrance of the main prison building. “They’re just people.”

“I’m treating them like they’re people. They aren’t props, Cecilia. You can’t just order them to show up and expect the rest to take care of itself. But don’t worry, keep up the attitude and no amount of convincing will make them like you. Be exactly what they were expecting, if that makes you happy.”

I sulked behind my mother as we collected our headphones and prepared for the tour. The main prison building was dim, dingy, with anachronistically fresh green and gray paint. We walked into a room of mock visiting windows, glass with holes cut out for human contact. A small girl in pink overalls sat at one of the windows, tapping the glass and frowning at the dead black telephone she held against her ear, seeming genuinely confused by the absence of a voice on the other end. My mother took a breath and walked through the entryway. Rows and rows of prison bars greeted us. A family in front of us stretched out their souvenir map and tried to locate Al Capone’s cell. I put one side of my headset over my ear and let the other headphone rest just behind the other ear, in case I needed to hear something more interesting. What I heard was Kelli.

“Eewwwwww,” she said to the exposed cell toilet, littered with tourist trash: cigarette butts and crumpled pieces of paper.

“Shut up and stop being an idiot, Kelli,” said Sarah, which I appreciated until it was silent because no one could think of anything to say that wasn’t idiotic. I put both headphones over my ears. You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Everything else is a privilege. I examined a scuff mark on the floor, noted how many people must have walked over this same ground, paid for the luxury of being reminded what privileges were. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live underneath it. Turn left to see the gun gallery, my audio guide informed me, then provided me with the sound of a smattering of rifle fire rat-a-tat-tat, in case, I suppose, I didn’t know what a gun was.