Eileen

MONDAY

I remember the shower I took that morning because the hot water ran out while I dillydallied at the mirror inspecting my naked body through the wafting steam. I’m an old lady now. Like it does to everyone, time has blurred my face with lines and sagging jowls and bulging bags under my eyes, and my old body’s been rendered nearly sexless and soft and wrinkled and shapeless. So just for laughs, here I am again, my little virginal body at age twenty-four. My shoulders were small and sloped and knobbly. My chest was rigid, a taut drum of bones I thudded with my fist like an ape. My breasts were lemon-size and hard and my nipples were sharp, like thorns. But I was really just all ribs, and so thin that my hips jutted out awkwardly and were often bruised from bumping into things. My guts were still cramped from the ice cream and eggs from the day before. The sluggishness of my bowels was a constant preoccupation. There was a complex science to eating and evacuating, balancing the rising intensity of my constipated discomfort with the catharsis of my laxative-induced purges. I took such poor care of myself. I knew I should drink water, eat healthful foods, but I really didn’t like to drink water or eat healthful foods. I found fruits and vegetables detestable, like eating a bar of soap or a candle. I also suffered from that unfortunate maladjustment to puberty — still at twenty-four — that made me ashamed of my womanliness. There were days on end I ate very little — a handful of nuts or raisins here, a crust of bread there. And for fun, such as with the chocolates a few nights prior, I sometimes chewed but spat out candies or cookies, anything that tasted good but which I feared might put meat on my bones.

Back then, at twenty-four, people already considered me a spinster. I’d had only one kiss from a boy by then. When I was sixteen, Peter Woodman, a senior, took me to the high school prom. I won’t say too much about him — I don’t want to sound as though I’ve carried the memory around with any romantic nostalgia. If there’s anything I’ve learned to detest, it is nostalgia. And anyway, Randy is the romantic lead in my story, if there is one. Peter Woodman can’t hold a candle to him. My prom dress was very pretty, though — navy taffeta. I loved navy blue. Whatever I wore in that color reminded me of a uniform, something that I felt validated me and obscured me at once. We spent most of our time sitting at a table in the darkened gymnasium, Peter talking to his friends. His father worked in the police station and I’m sure Peter only asked me to the prom as a favor his father owed to mine. We didn’t dance, not that I minded. The evening of the prom ended in Peter’s father’s pickup truck in the high school parking lot when I bit the boy’s throat to keep him from reaching any farther up my dress. In fact, I think his hand was barely on my knee, I was so guarded. And the kiss was only superficial — a momentary touching of the lips, sort of sweet when I think of it now. I can’t remember how I got home that night after tumbling out of the truck, Peter heckling me and rubbing his neck as I watched him drive away. Did my teeth draw blood? I don’t know. And who cares anyway? By now he’s probably dead. Most people I knew are dead.

That Monday morning in X-ville, I put on my new blue stockings and dressed in my mother’s clothes. I locked my father’s shoes back in the trunk of the Dodge and drove to work, to Moorehead. I remember conjuring up a new strategy for my getaway. One day soon, when I was good and ready, I’d pile on all the clothes I decided on taking with me: my gray coat, several pairs of wool socks, snow boots, mittens, gloves, hat, scarf, pants, skirt, dress, et cetera, and I’d drive about three hours northwest across state lines to Vermont. I knew I could survive the drive for one hour with the windows up without fainting, and being bundled up would save me the rest of the way with the windows down. New York wasn’t that far from X-ville. Two hundred fifty-seven miles south, to be exact. But first I’d lead any search astray by abandoning the Dodge in Rutland, which I’d read about in a book about railroads. In Rutland I’d find some kind of abandoned lot or dead-end street, and then I’d walk to the railway station and take a train down to the city to start my new life. I thought I was so smart. I planned to bring along an empty suitcase to carry the clothes I’d take off once I got on the train. I’d have some clothes, the money I’d been hoarding in the attic, and nothing else.

But maybe I’d need something to read on my ride to my future, I thought. I could borrow a few of the finer books from the X-ville library, disappear and never return them. This seemed to me a brilliant idea. First, I would get to keep the books as mementos, a bit like when a killer snips a lock of hair from his victim or takes some small object — a pen, a comb, a rosary — as his trophy. Second, I’d give good cause for concern to my father and others who might wonder whether I ever intended to return or under what circumstances I was forced to leave. I pictured detectives poking around the house. “Nothing seems to be out of order, Mr. Dunlop. Maybe she’s visiting a friend.”

“Oh no, not Eileen. Eileen has no friends,” my father would say. “Something’s happened. She’d never leave me alone like this.”

My hope was that they’d think I was dead in a ditch somewhere, kidnapped, buried in an avalanche, eaten by a bear, what have you. It was important to me that nobody knew I planned to disappear. If my father thought I’d ran away, he would have humiliated me. I could imagine him puffing out his chest and scoffing at my foolishness with Aunt Ruth. They’d called me a spoiled brat, an idiot, an ungrateful rat’s ass. Perhaps they did say all that once I really had left X-ville. I’ll never know. I wanted my father to despair, cry his eyes out over his poor lost daughter, collapse at the foot of my cot, swathe himself in my smelly blankets just to remember the beautiful stink of my sweat. I wanted him to paw through my belongings like examining bleached bones, inert artifacts of a life he’d never appreciated. If I’d ever had a music box, I’d have liked the song it played to break my father’s heart. I’d have liked him to die of sadness at having lost me. “I loved her,” I wanted him to say. “And I was wrong to have acted like I didn’t.” Such were my thoughts on my way to work that morning.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would be gone by Christmas morning, and though my memories since then have waxed and waned, I will do my best to narrate the events of my last days in X-ville. I will try to paint a complete picture. Some of my clearest memories may seem wholly irrelevant, but I will include them when I feel they add to the mood. For example, that morning when I got to Moorehead, the boys had been given special holiday sweaters knit by a group of do-gooders at a local church. Since there was a surplus of sweaters, I presume, one landed on my desk wrapped in brown paper. Mrs. Stephens told me it was a Christmas present from the warden. I tore open the package and found a navy blue, expertly knit vest with an orange crucifix across the chest and marked with an “S” for small written in shaky cursive on a scrap of wax paper safety-pinned to the collar. That shade of blue made me wonder. Maybe the warden actually liked me? He could hardly give me a box of chocolates, after all. He wouldn’t want to attract the attention of the office ladies, arousing hostile suspicions of favoritism and clandestine love affairs. I pictured embracing the warden in his office, flinging myself at him like a rag doll. Was that what I wanted? My thoughts were like dirty films reeling inside my brain, and I remember them from that morning as well as the dull thudding sound of the drawer when I shut the sweater inside it. I cannot, however, remember the layout of the prison’s recreational facilities, or whether the Christmas pageant, as they called it, was held in the gymnasium or the chapel or a small auditorium, which I’m not sure existed at all. I may be thinking of my old high school.

This I remember very well: Around two o’clock, the warden came into our office, followed by a tall redheaded woman and a willowy bald man in a loose, mud-colored suit. My first impression of the woman was that she must be a performer at the special assembly — a singer or an actress with a soft spot for child criminals. My assumption seemed reasonable. Celebrities entertained army troops, after all. Why not young prisoners? Teenage boys were a worthy enough cause. Most of those boys, the ones serving shorter sentences, ended up in Vietnam anyway, I’m sure. In any case, this woman was beautiful and looked vaguely familiar in the way all beautiful people look familiar. So within thirty seconds I’d decided that she must be an idiot, have a brain like a powder puff, be bereft of any depth or darkness, have no interior life whatever. Like Doris Day, this woman must live in a charmed world of fluffy pillows and golden sunshine. So of course I hated her. I’d never come face-to-face with someone so beautiful before in my life.

The man was not interesting to me in the least. He sniffled, rubbed his head with one hand, carried two coats over his other arm — his and the redhead’s, I presumed. I couldn’t help but stare at the woman. I have a dreamy picture in my memory of how she was dressed that day, in peculiar shades of pink, not unfashionable per se, but not in the fashion of the times and certainly not of X-ville. She wore a long flowing skirt, a sweater set draped around her slim figure, and a stiff-rimmed hat, which I picture now somewhat like a riding helmet, only it was gray and delicate, felt maybe, and held an iridescent feather on one side. Perhaps I’ve invented the hat. She wore a long gold pendant necklace — that I know for sure. Her shoes were like men’s riding boots, only smaller, and with a delicate heel. Her legs were very long and her arms were thin and folded across her narrow rib cage. I was surprised to see a cigarette in her fingers. Many women smoked, of course, more than do now, but it seemed odd for her to smoke just standing there in the office as though she were at a cocktail party, as though she owned the place. And the way she smoked disturbed me. When others smoked, it was something needy and cheap. When this woman inhaled, her face trembled and her eyes fluttered in subtle ecstasy, as though she were tasting a delectable dessert or stepping into a warm bath. She seemed to be in a state of enchantment, perfectly happy. And so she struck me as perverse. Pretentious wasn’t a word we used back then. Obnoxious was more like it.

“Listen up,” said the warden. He had a wide, red and pitted face with a huge nose and small, inscrutable eyes, but was so well groomed, so clean and militant, I thought of him as handsome. “I present to you our new psychiatrist, Dr. Bradley Morris. He comes highly recommended by Dr. Frye, and I’m sure he’ll be an asset to us in keeping our boys in line and on the path to redemption. And this is Miss Rebecca Saint John, our first ever prison director of education, thanks to a generous donation from Uncle Sam. I’m sure she’s completely qualified. I understand she’s just finished her graduate work at Radcliffe—”

“Harvard,” said this Rebecca Saint John, leaning toward him slightly. She tipped her cigarette ash on the floor and blew the smoke at the ceiling, seemed to grin. It was truly bizarre.

“Harvard,” the warden continued, titillated, it seemed to me. “I know you will all welcome our new additions with respect and professionalism, and I hope you’ll show Miss Saint John around in her first few days as she learns our customs here.” He pointed vaguely to the office ladies, me included. It all seemed very strange, such a young, attractive woman appearing out of nowhere, and to do what? Teaching writing and arithmetic seemed like a ridiculous objective. Those Moorehead boys struggled just to walk around, sit down, eat and breathe without beating their heads against the walls. Dr. Morris was there, for all intents and purposes, to drug them into acting right. What could they possibly be taught in their condition? The warden took Miss Saint John’s coat from Dr. Morris’s arm, handed it to me, and seemed to smile. I could never tell his real feelings toward me, sweater vest or not. His death mask was thick as concrete, I suppose. In any case, it was my job to assign the new woman a locker. So she followed me back to the locker room.

Rebecca Saint John’s face that day had no makeup on it that I could detect, and yet she looked impeccable, fresh faced, a natural beauty. Her hair was long and thick, the color of brass, coarse and, I noted gratefully, in need of a hardy brushing. Her skin was sort of golden colored, and her face was round and full with strong cheekbones, a small rosebud mouth, thin eyebrows and unusually blond eyelashes. Her eyes were an odd shade of blue. There was something manufactured about that color. It was a shade of blue like a swimming pool in an ad for a tropical getaway. It was the color of mouthwash, toothpaste, toilet cleaner. My own eyes, I thought, were like shallow lake water, green, murky, full of slime and sand. Needless to say, I felt completely insulted and horrible about myself in the presence of this beautiful woman. Perhaps I should have honored my resentment and kept my distance, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be close to her, to get an intimate view of her features, how she breathed, what her face did when her mind was busy thinking. I hoped to be able to spot her superficial imperfections, or at least find flaws in her character which could cancel out the good marks she got in the looks category. You see how silly I was? I wrote out the combination to her locker on a slip of paper and took a whiff of her when I handed it over. She smelled like baby powder. She wore no ring. I wondered if she had a boyfriend.

“Now let me have you stand here and watch me and let’s see if I can figure out this lock,” she said. She had a haughty, precisely articulated accent, the kind of accent you hear in old movies set in the south of France or fancy Manhattan hotels. Continental? I’d never heard anyone in real life talk like that. It seemed absurd in such a place as Moorehead. Imagine the well-mannered tone of a British noblewoman politely bossing around her maid. I stood with my back against a column of lockers as she spun the dial of the combination lock.

“Thirty-two, twenty-four, thirty-four,” she said. “Well, look at that, practically my measurements.” She laughed and pulled the locker door open with a clang. My own measurements were even smaller. We both paused, and as though we were each other’s synchronized reflections, looked down at our own breasts, then at each other’s. Then Rebecca said, “I prefer being sort of flat chested, don’t you? Women with big bosoms are always so bashful. That, or else they think their figures are all that matters. Pathetic.” I thought of Joanie, her body so conspicuous in its fleshiness, a main attraction. I must have made a face or blushed because then Rebecca asked, “Oh, have I embarrassed you?” Her sincerity seemed genuine to me. We exchanged smiles. “Busts,” she said, shrugging and looking down at her small breasts again. “Who cares?” She laughed, winked at me, then turned back to her locker and fiddled with the dial again.

Perhaps only young women of my same conniving and tragic nature will understand that there could be something in such an exchange as mine with Rebecca that day which could unite two people in conspiracy. After years of secrecy and shame, in this one moment with her, all my frustrations were condoned and my body, my very being, was justified. Such solidarity and awe I felt, you’d think I’d never had a friend before. And really, I hadn’t. All I’d had were Suzie or Alice or Maribel, figments, of course, imaginary girls I’d used in lies to my father — my own dark ghosts.

“Of course I’m not embarrassed,” I told her. To declare this took more courage than I’d needed in years, for it required the brief removal of my mask of ice. “I completely agree with you.”

What is that old saying? A friend is someone who helps you hide the body — that was the gist of this new rapport. I sensed it immediately. My life was going to change. In this strange creature, I’d met my match, my kindred spirit, my ally. Already I wanted to extend my hand, slashed and ready to be shaken in a pact of blood, that was how impressionable and lonely I was. I kept my hands in my pockets, however. This marked the beginning of the dark bond which now paves the way for the rest of my story.

“Well good,” said Rebecca. “We have better things to do than worry about our figures. Though that’s not the popular opinion, wouldn’t you say?” She raised her eyebrows at me. She was really remarkably beautiful, so beautiful I had to avert my eyes. I wanted desperately to impress her, to elicit some clear indication from her that she felt as I did — we were two peas in a pod.

“I don’t care much about what’s popular,” I lied. I hadn’t ever been so brash before. Oh, I was a rebel.

“Well, look at you,” said Rebecca. She crossed her arms. “Rare to meet a young woman with so much gumption. You’re a regular Katharine Hepburn.” The comparison would have sounded like mockery if made by anyone else. But I wasn’t offended. I laughed, blushed. Rebecca laughed too, then shook her head. “I’m kidding,” she said. “I’m like that, too. I don’t give a rat’s ass what people think. But it is good if they think well of you. That has its advantages.”

We looked at each other and smiled, nodded sarcastically with widened eyes. Were we serious? It didn’t seem to matter. It was like all my secret misery had just then been converted into a powerful currency. I’m sure Rebecca saw right through my bravado, but I didn’t know that. I thought I was so smooth.

“See you around,” I said. I figured it was best not to come on too strong. We waved to each other and Rebecca flew off back through the office and up the hall like some exotic bird or flower, utterly misplaced in the dim fluorescent light. I walked mechanically, heel-toe, back to my desk, hands clasped behind my back, whistling nothing in particular, my world now transformed.

• • •

That afternoon I prepared certain phrases and responses to use on Rebecca. I was terribly concerned that she think well of me, that she understand I was not the provincial dolt I feared I appeared to be. Of course she knew I was a provincial dolt — I was that — but I thought at the time that I’d fooled her with some kind of radical point of view, what with our mutual distaste for large breasts, the cold wisdom of my gaze, my general attitude. I wasn’t radical at all. I was simply unhappy. So I sat at my desk and practiced my death mask — face in perfect indifference, no muscles twitching, eyes blank, still, brow furrowed ever so slightly. I had this childish idea that it is best when dealing with a new friend to withhold all opinions until the other puts forth her opinions first. Nowadays perhaps we’d call the attitude blasé. It is a peculiar posture of insecure people. They feel most comfortable denying any perspective whatsoever rather than proclaiming any allegiance or philosophy and risk rejection and judgment. I thought I had to bite my tongue and seem as aloof as possible until Rebecca set the rules of the game, so to speak. So if she were to ask me how I liked my job, I’d have shrugged and said, “It’s a paycheck.” If she asked me about my past I’d say, “Nothing really worth mentioning.” But I would allude to my mother’s death as though it were an event cloaked in mystery, as though she’d been slaughtered by the mob in some moonlit scene under a pier. Or maybe I’d killed her — snuffed the life out of her with a pillow and never told a soul until now. I had all kinds of made-up hooks I’d have used to snag her. If Rebecca wanted to know what my interests were, my hobbies, I’d say I read books, and if she wanted to know which, I’d say it was personal. I’d say that to me, reading was like making love, and I didn’t kiss and tell. I thought I was very cute. I figured, Rebecca being a teacher or whatever she was, she’d appreciate me as highly literary. Of course I couldn’t really discuss literature. It was easier for me to discuss the things that mattered in my own life. “Do you drink gin?” for example. If she wanted to know why I was curious, I’d shrug and say, “There’s something about people who like gin, and people who don’t.” And depending on her answer, I’d categorize gin drinkers either as idiots, or harbingers of great grief, or heroes. I pondered all this, but I knew I’d never have the guts to be so obnoxious. Rebecca was very intimidating to me.

“Yoo-hoo, Eileen. Time to sort the mail,” said Mrs. Murray, twiddling her fingers and snapping her gum. My stomach fluttered as I got to work. The clock snored on.

On my way down to the Christmas pageant in the afternoon, which I now seem to recall was in the chapel, I stopped in the ladies’ room to check my face in the mirror and apply more lipstick. I had a habit of wiping my face with the sleeve of my sweater to smear off the grease which got absorbed in the powder I used. I always had a fine row of pimples along my hairline, even after the more violent attacks of acne had subsided in my teenage years. My skin has always been problematic. Even now my rosacea flares up, and I’ve had gin blossoms since my late twenties, although I hardly ever drank gin, as I told you. Perhaps gin blossoms are my cross to bear, some kind of marker, penance. I like how I look now. But back then, I hated my face, oh, I was truly tortured by it. I smoothed my hair back and put on a heavy coat of Irreparable Red, blotted my lips with a paper towel, checked my teeth. They are small, childlike teeth, still, and they looked yellow in contrast to the lipstick I wore. I rarely smiled genuinely enough to forget to hold my lip down over my teeth. I think I’ve mentioned how my upper lip had a tendency to pull up my gums. Nothing came easily to me. Nothing.

When I used the toilet, I discovered that my monthly visitor had arrived, much to my disgust. In hindsight it’s a miracle that I menstruated at all, considering my wrought nerves and terrible nutrition. Not that I ever put my rugged fertility to good use. There was something once, but it went away before it turned into anything to write home about. And then another time, but I got rid of it. I can’t say I’m not sorry I never had any children, but there’s no use in regrets. That day at Moorehead, instead of going back to my locker for the proper supplies, I unspooled a length of paper towel to the floor, folded it up and stuck it in my underwear. It was dry and rough paper the color of shopping bags from the grocery store. This I remember since it contributed heavily to my self-consciousness as I walked down the halls, remembering suddenly — how had I forgotten? — that the boys, Randy, James even, might see me and stare directly at my rear end as I passed by. I might add that I didn’t wash my hands after using the toilet.

Despite the brutal misery of Moorehead, the way I picture the prison that day is less like a prison and more like a children’s nursery. The halls were decked thanks to the volunteers from the church who had come in over the weekend to stick up frightening hand-drawn portraits of Jesus and Santa Claus. Christmas has always been a charade and I refuse to acknowledge it now. It’s too painful. I remember a man I met in my thirties who bent my ear one night babbling about his happy childhood — presents under the tree, cocoa, puppies, chestnuts roasting on an open fire. There’s nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods. Perhaps Dr. Frye thought Christmas was good for the psyche. He had always encouraged the boys to take part in holiday activities, like singing carols and making one another Christmas cards. That backfired every time, as the boys in the prison were humiliated by singing and would get into fights, calling each other names and laughing and pointing at whoever dared open his mouth. And whatever cards they received from one another were always loaded with threats and insults and pornographic drawings. I knew because the corrections officers would confiscate them, then show them around to the guards and other staff, then tell me — simply to humiliate me, I’m sure — to file them. “Marry fucking XXX-mas.” The rest of the year the boys were generally docile and dull. They were all on pills under Dr. Frye. Perhaps he’d let up on their prescriptions for the holidays. Otherwise they were heavily sedated and on strict diets.

That afternoon I watched as the boys filed into the chapel and sat in the first few rows of seats, slumped and irritable. Randy stood at the foot of the stage, facing them. To fulfill my duties, I sat on the high stool in back and plugged in the old spotlight that swiveled around in a cast-iron frame attached to the rear wall. I steered it so it illuminated the stage, shining a bright circle onto the wrinkled orange curtains. It reminds me now of the opening credits of Bugs Bunny cartoons. That tune plays in my head from time to time as a way of making light of deranged situations. I remember the scenes of that Christmas performance in vivid Technicolor. It was just absurd.

A moment before the lights went down, Rebecca appeared in the doorway carrying a small notebook with a pen stuck through the wire spiral spine. The guards’ eyes and mine followed her small, childlike bottom down the aisle. She took a seat off to the side near the front, next to Dr. Morris, where Randy was standing guard. This made me edgy. I would have preferred that the two of them, Rebecca and Randy, never cross paths. Rebecca was too pretty for Randy not to notice her, and despite our new bond, I was still full of envy. It didn’t matter at all that I’d been fantasizing my great escape, never again to return to X-ville and certainly not to Moorehead, Randy soon to become what he is now, an expired dream, a ghost, a shadow. “Good-bye, Randy, good-bye,” I imagined sobbing on my train to New York.

I remember that a row of boys, each wearing a blue or gray knit vest, erupted in a flurry of curse words and tossed fists as the lights went down. Randy broke from his statuelike posture to dissolve the fight. It was wonderful to watch him at work. He moved so efficiently, so coolly, without judgment, but with swift force. I could barely breathe watching how his muscles strained against the stiff give of his uniform. I suppose I really was in love with him in the worst sense: I cared only for his looks, his body — I barely knew him at all.

When the boys were all back in their seats, the warden walked out onstage. I steered the spotlight up to his face, but let it rest first — accidentally or not — for a moment at his crotch. A few boys laughed. The warden took the microphone and said something like this:

“Merry Christmas, prisoners, staff, and visitors. Every year we hold a special assembly to commemorate this most important of holidays, and every year we remark on just how much of the story of Christmas can be gleaned to uphold our principles, which is a great deal, and we pray to see if and where we are failing and just how the story of a child, not so unlike many of you boys born also to young parents without much money, little hope, could show us the errors of our ways and inspire us to change, be good, and live a life clear of outbursts, dereliction and destruction. So I hope you will all sit back and watch with open minds, questioning in your hearts where you can be improved, and what the teachings of our holy scripture say for us to be. Our dear friends at Mount Olive have helped to direct this year’s performance of the Nativity and I want every single boy to now sit on his hands and zip his lips. If I hear one laugh or moan or any wayward comment, it’s straight to the cave. And don’t test me on that. We also welcome two additions to our prison staff, Dr. Morris, our new sanity professional, as I like to think of you — welcome, welcome. And Miss Saint John, our education expert. She may be easy on the eyes, fellows, but I assure you, she’s very clever and will have more to make of your sick minds than I could ever hope to. You will all meet with her in due time. If that is not incentive enough to keep you quiet this afternoon, I don’t know what is. And now, without further ado.”

It disgusts me now to think how I had an odd sort of crush on the warden. Perhaps I envied his self-possession, I don’t know. He did always seem very pleased with himself. Although it barely masked his stupidity, there was a sureness about him I guess I found attractive. I was so easily swayed by the vestiges of power. I remember the warden untangling himself from the microphone cord, then extending his hand to an elderly priest in a wheelchair. In hindsight, the warden was probably a homosexual. He made a point of spanking the younger boys alone in his office, I heard. But that is a whole other story and not mine to tell.

When the orange curtains parted, a spartan set was revealed, made up to look like the interior of a prison cell. A bunk bed, a Bible on a small table. One of the boys, bloated and pale and dressed in the standard inmate uniform, a blue cotton jumpsuit, walked out onto the stage, hands in his pockets. He mumbled under his breath, but I can guess what he was meant to say since it was the same every year: “Oh, what am I to do? Sentenced for three years to sit indoors among boys of my same creed — plain bad. So much time to plot what evildoings I’ll undertake as soon as I get out. But in the meantime I suppose I could read a book.”

“You can’t read!” a voice cracked from the first row as the blushing actor picked up the Bible. The boys all laughed and throttled each other in their seats. Randy approached, gestured casually with one hand raised in a fist and the other holding a finger to his lips. The play went on.

The boy onstage sat on the bottom bunk bed and opened the Bible. Two more children crossed the stage toward him, both dressed in robes, one wearing a wig and, it seemed, a pillow over his abdomen under the robe. From where I was sitting, I could see Rebecca shifting in her seat. Of course it bothered me to watch what was happening on stage, that kind of humiliation. But I put up with it. I did not have the courage to care enough to get upset. Nobody did. The boy dressed as Mary spoke in a high voice: “Well, I’m pretty tired, can we rest in that barn over there?” and pointed offstage, fey as a rabbit. The audience laughed. The boy dressed as Joseph set down a sack and wiped his forehead. “Better than paying for a hotel.” Rebecca looked around, craning her neck as though searching for a particular face in the crowd. I hoped the face she was looking for was mine. I could just barely make out her expression in the darkened chapel. I nearly swung the spotlight at her to illuminate her delicately furrowed brow, her mouth pinched adorably with displeasure. She was so pretty, a miraculous sight in such an ugly place, it surprised me that others weren’t pointing and staring. How was it that Dr. Morris, Randy, all those boys carried blithely on, as though she were invisible to them? Was my assessment of her beauty wrong? Had I lost all perspective? Was I seeing things? Was she not the most radiant, most elegant, most charming woman in the world? I wondered. She continued to scan the audience row by row.

The play went on, Joseph and Mary reciting lines sometimes stiffly, sometimes with tongue-in-cheek bravado. More children in multicolored robes appeared, heads bowed in embarrassment or boredom. Their voices were barely audible through the taunts and laughter from the boys in the crowd. One of the players, a younger child, began to cry, chin wobbling, jaw gritted. That was when Rebecca stood up, scowling, and trudged back up the aisle, her pendant bouncing between her small bosoms as she strode. I watched her. Her body was very beautiful, slender as a ballerina and just as tense. She noticed me when she reached the back of the chapel, then waved and shook her head in disbelief, mouthed something I couldn’t decipher, and walked out. I remember thinking, “We are united now, us against them.” I would adopt her rage, or pretend to at least, if it meant I could be on her side. That’s what it felt like.

• • •

It wasn’t that I didn’t care at all about the boys. It was just that I was young and miserable and had no way of helping them. I felt, in fact, that I was one of them. I was no worse or better. I was only six years older than the oldest of the boys in there. Some of them looked like men already — tall, lanky with beards and mustaches coming in and big, thick hands, low voices. They were mostly white from blue-collar families, but there were quite a few black boys, too. I liked those boys the best. I sensed they understood something the others didn’t. They seemed to be more relaxed, to breathe slightly more deeply, to wear perfect death masks while the other boys winced and frowned and spat and chided one another like little children, brats in a schoolyard. I often wondered what they all thought of me when they saw me standing outside the door during visitations, if they even noticed me at all. They rarely looked my way, never once lifted their grainy, warm slow eyes to mine in recognition. I thought perhaps they couldn’t identify me from one day to the next, as though my role were played by innumerable similar-looking young women. Or maybe they sat with their mothers during visitation and called me “that bitch,” and motioned with their chins when my head was turned and I was thinking of Randy and not listening. Or maybe they said, “She’s the only one I don’t hate.” Or maybe they thought I was crazy. I certainly could have passed for crazy on days when I’d not slept and showed up unkempt and hungover, rolling my eyes at every noise and gnashing my teeth at every flicker of light. In my childish self-centeredness, I fantasized that this was what the black boys talked about with their mothers: how much pain Eileen is in, how Eileen seems to need a friend, how Eileen deserves better. I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all.

I wouldn’t be the first to admit that working as a young woman in an all-male institution had its perks. This is not to say that my position at Moorehead gave me any sense of my power as a female, nor did it bring me closer to realizing any imagined romantic encounters — none of that nonsense. But working at Moorehead did give me a sneak peek into the male disposition. I could, at times, stand quietly and observe the boys like animals in a zoo — how they moved, breathed, all the nuanced gestures and attitudes that made each of them seem special. It was through studying the comportment of imprisoned youngsters that I developed my understanding of the strange spectrum of male emotions. Shrugging meant “I’ll punch you later.” Smiling was a promise of undying love and affection or severe hatred, cutthroat fury. Did I derive erotic pleasure from looking at these boys? Only a little, honestly, since I didn’t get to observe them on a regular basis, and never in their natural state. I only watched them filing in and out of assembly meetings or the cafeteria, and during their visits with their mothers. I wasn’t in a position to observe them at rest in their bunks, at work in the rec room, or playing in the yard, where I imagine they were more at ease, more animated, and expressed more subtlety, more vulnerability, humor, spontaneity. In any case, I liked their fluctuating, miserable faces. The best was when I could see the hard face of a cold-hearted killer breaking through the chubby cheeks and callow softness of youth. That thrilled me.

It may not have been at that particular Christmas assembly performance, but I remember a boy who played Mary ripping out the pillow from under his costume and throwing it on the ground and sitting on it. A wise man mimed a strip tease once. So the boys were charming in a way. Would I miss them once I was gone? Of course I wouldn’t, and I didn’t miss them, though I wondered, staring at the backs of their heads in the chapel that day, if I’d remember any of their faces, if I’d be sorry if any of them died. Would I have helped them if I could have? Would I have sacrificed anything for their benefit? The answer was a shame-faced but honest no. I was selfish, solely concerned with my own wants and needs. I remember watching Randy standing there in the dark of the auditorium. I wondered if his nether regions were squashed inside his pants. I imagined he must have kept them to one side to accommodate the way the pants were made. They were tight. I can’t bring back the precise image right now, but I regularly studied the arrangement of folds in the groin area that would have suggested which side he preferred. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the male parts. I don’t actually remember seeing any male parts in my father’s dirty magazines, now that I think of it, though they were inferred, I guess. My knowledge was limited to anatomical drawings. I’d sat through health class sophomore year of high school, after all. Sweating behind that hot spotlight, I worried that my inexperience with men would make Rebecca think I was childish and pathetic. If she found out I’d never had a boyfriend, she would dismiss me, I feared.

Once the drama onstage had unraveled, the warden reappeared and started a long soliloquy on the nature of sin. I abandoned my post behind the spotlight and left the chapel to stroll down the prison halls, hoping to run into Rebecca. The rec room and offices were empty. The library, which held mostly religious tracts and encyclopedias, the dining hall with its long steel tables strewn with dirty plastic cutlery — all was quiet. The boys’ sleeping quarters were in the far back. The small windows there looked out on the rolling, snow-filled dunes. The ocean beyond like a canyon of woe, tumbling and icy all day and night, was so thunderous, I pictured God himself emerging from the water, laughing at us all in spite. It was easy to imagine the depressive thoughts that view must have inspired in those little boys. The windows were at such a height from the floor that one had to either stoop down or kneel to get a good look out there. I listened to the waves rumbling in the empty room for a moment. Bunk beds lined the circumference of the room, which was bell-shaped and had lines painted on the floor in guiding paths that showed where to stand during morning announcements, where to kneel at night to pray, which way to walk to the showers, which way to the cafeteria. The baby-blue laminate squeaked under my feet so loudly on my way out, I thought I’d stepped on a mouse.

I remember scurrying back up to the kitchen and stealing a carton of milk from the vacant cafeteria line. It was a very impressive kitchen, all gray steel, heavy machinery. When the boys were being punished for bad behavior, they were made to do double duty washing pots and pans and forced to sleep in a room that had been the old meat locker behind the kitchen — solitary confinement. They called that room “the cave.” A boy sent to the cave would not be allowed out except to use the shower and wash more dishes. He’d eat his meals in there, use a bucket as a toilet. I remember that bucket was of great interest to me. As one might guess, I was easily roused by the grosser habits of the human body — toilet business not least of all. The very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe. Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships — not a heavy love affair, just a light one — was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy. Before that, still young and neurotic, just allowing a man to listen to me urinate was utter humiliation, torture, and therefore, I thought, proof of profound love and trust.

There was a boy who’d been in the cave for several weeks. I went around back and found the old meat locker whose original stainless steel door had been replaced by a heavy iron one with a small window, and padlocked. The Polk boy was inside, sitting on his cot, staring at the wall. I recognized him as the Polk boy from the day he’d arrived at Moorehead a few weeks earlier. My father had been following stories about him in the Post. During the intake procedure, the boy had been silent and withdrawn. He hadn’t struck me at first as particularly attractive or special. He had a stiff posture, I remember, and was thin but had broad shoulders — the awkward confluence of a young boy’s ease and a man’s imposing heft and brutishness. There were newly tattooed letters on the knuckles of his right hand but I couldn’t make them out clearly. I watched as he lifted his gaze as though reading something written on the ceiling. His eyes were light, skin olive, and his hair shorn and brown. He seemed contemplative, wistful, sad. The saddest boys at Moorehead were the runaways locked up for vagrancy or prostitution. How much, I wondered as I watched through the window, would it cost to defile a young boy like this one? He had intelligent eyes, I thought, long elegant limbs, a pensive tilt to his head. I hoped he’d charged a lot, whatever he’d done. Back then I still pictured male prostitutes working in service to wealthy housewives, entertaining them while their husbands were away on business — I was that naive. I watched as the boy bent his neck this way and that, sensually, as though to relax himself. He yawned. I don’t think he saw me through the window. To this day, I don’t know that he ever even knew my name. I watched as he lay down on the cot, turned on his side, closed his eyes and stretched. For a minute he seemed to be falling asleep. Then his fingers, mindlessly it seemed, fell to his groin area. I held my breath as I watched him cup his genitals under his uniform. His body curled up like a small animal. In my effort to understand the movements of his hand, I pressed my face to the window. My tongue, cold from the milk, met the surface of the glass. I watched for a minute or two, rapt, stunned, mystified until noise from the hall made me jump and scurry back up to the office. I really don’t think the boy saw me. I learned later on he was only fourteen. He could have passed for nineteen, twenty. I wasn’t immune to him either.

• • •

That afternoon, as Mrs. Stephens was putting on her coat to leave for the day, I deigned to ask her what the boy had done to get put into solitary.

“Polk,” she said in a huff, double-chinned. She pulled linty woolen mittens over her fat, chapped hands. “Troublemaker,” she said. “Nasty boy.” It strikes me now that I was relentlessly unforgiving of Mrs. Stephens. Everything she did I interpreted as a personal affront, as a direct attack of some kind. Though I never retaliated, I considered her my enemy. It’s true she wasn’t warm or even pleasant, but she never really harmed me. She was just endlessly crabby. Once she was gone, and the other office ladies had left for the day, I found the Polk file, the papers slightly yellowed inside the folder. “Crime: patricide.” The file was thick with Dr. Frye’s notes, mostly dates and times and incomprehensible Latinate scribbles. In a newspaper clipping affixed to the short rap sheet, I read that Leonard “Lee” Polk had slit his father’s throat while he was asleep in bed. The boy had no history of violent behavior, the report said, and neighbors had called him a “quiet child, well mannered, nothing special.” Something like that. His face in his mug shot was surly, with tight, down-turning lips and unfocused, exhausted eyes. In his file, under “comments,” it read “mute since day of crime” in my own messy schoolgirl cursive.

Just then, like birdsong at midnight, a magic, melodic voice rang out from down the dim hallway. It was Rebecca saying good night to James. I tried to collect myself, listening as the ticktock of her heels got louder. After a moment, she stood before me in a long black coat, briefcase in hand. Hours had now passed since the ridiculous Christmas pageant. I tried to smile, fumbling to put Leonard Polk’s file back in order, but I lost my grasp on the folder and its contents spilled out, pages flapping onto the dirty linoleum.

“Uh-oh,” I said like a fool. Rebecca came behind the office counter to help me pick up the papers. I watched her from behind as she squatted down to reach under Mrs. Stephens’s desk. She gathered the fabric of her skirt up so that it wouldn’t drag on the floor, revealing her calves — refined, gentle curves, nothing like mine, which were spindly and childish. “My goodness,” she said, reading the document in her hands. “Can you imagine killing your own father?” She handed the paper back to me, eying me knowingly, I thought.

“Thank you,” I said, blushing.

“It’s a story for the ages, of course. Kill your father, sleep with your mother,” Rebecca went on. “The male instinct can be terribly predictable.” She leaned over my shoulder, squinting at the photograph of the boy. Her hair fell like a curtain between us. She swept it back and strands fluttered against my cheek like feathers. She bit her lip. “Leonard Polk,” she read aloud. I could smell cigarettes on her breath, and violet candies.

“He’s been in solitary,” I told her. “I’ve never seen him out here at all. No visitors.”

“Now that’s a shame,” said Rebecca. “May I?” She spread her palms open before me. I handed her the folder.

“I was just doing some filing,” I told her stupidly, hoping she wouldn’t suspect me of snooping.

Rebecca flipped through the papers in the folder. I pretended to look busy, rearranging things on my desk, scanning an old questionnaire. “Name your favorite celebrity. What time do you go to bed at night?”

“I’ll just borrow this,” Rebecca said, slipping the Polk file into her briefcase. “Fun bedtime reading,” she quipped. I sat back down at my desk, anxious and awkward, while she buttoned her coat. “Some show today.”

“They do it every year.”

“I’d call that cruel and unusual punishment,” she replied. She flung a fuzzy mohair shawl over her shoulders, untucked her hair. I felt I had utterly failed to impress her. I resolved to say more, be cooler, more charming, smarter, funnier, more alive the next time we talked. “Well, see you in the morning,” she said, and ticktocked down the hall to the blustery evening outside.

On the way home that night, I stocked up on alcohol for my father at Lardner’s, then stopped in a drugstore for violet mints and a pack of cigarettes for myself. I rarely smoked, but when something had me riled up I did enjoy a cigarette or two. I tried to put Leonard Polk out of my mind, though the image of him touching himself in the cave had excited me. It was what I’d always hoped to see in all my spying on Randy, just a little glimpse of him being obscene. I shook my head gruffly, as though the image of the boy would get dislodged from my brain, scuttle out my ears, and leave me alone. I wasn’t a pedophile — a word I remembered from Latin class years earlier. Browsing the cosmetics aisle, I found a new shade of lipstick — a glossy, blood red: Passionate Lover. I slipped it into my pocket. The sleeves of my coat — it had been my mother’s — were long and wide at the cuffs, so I could easily lift almost anything. I’ve been good at stealing all my life. I still pinch things from the grocery store from time to time — dental floss, a head of garlic, a pack of gum. I don’t see the great harm in it. I figure I’ve given away or lost enough over my lifetime to even out my debts.

That night I did pay for, along with a humiliating package of sanitary napkins, a small compact of pressed powder, the lightest shade they had: Snow Queen. A fashion magazine on the rack at the checkout counter caught my eye, too. The cover showed a bony, melancholy woman pouting in a gray fur hat, looking upward as though at some disapproving statesman. “Isn’t it romantic…” it said on the cover. The fur, I thought, looked like a house cat. I plunked down the money. The salesgirl handled my package of sanitary napkins as though they were already soiled, pushing it with her fingertips into the paper bag she propped open, cavelike on the counter. She slipped the magazine into its own flat paper bag, which I liked. Back inside the Dodge, I arranged all the brown paper packages on the passenger seat. The bottles of booze, the napkins, the magazine. I took the lipstick from my pocket and applied it liberally over my mouth, blind. When I got home my father said, “Whose rosy ass have you been kissing?” Then he plucked the bottles from under my arm. “Not your color,” he sneered, padding back to the kitchen. Like Leonard Polk, I didn’t say a word.