From the Chrysalis: a novel Read online

  Irma turned around and glared. “Yeah? What can I do you for, college girl?”

  Liza gazed back out the window and resisted the urge to stick out her tongue. She pretended she hadn’t heard, but in truth she was puzzled why some people enjoyed airing their problems in public. Liza was always able to put on a face. At least Irma had recognized her as a college girl, she thought, smoothing her long, flared denim skirt across her lap. Liza had made the skirt back in Dublin on her grandmother’s sewing machine.

  A younger girl across the aisle turned up the static on her radio, trying to get a clear transmission of Hey, Jude. … Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let him under your skin …

  Liza wrapped her heavy, waist-length hair around her and daydreamed. It had been a little shorter then, but Dace had loved her hair at the farm, he’d said. This was one of those moments where she imagined him, one of those unused, in-between places of her life. Like those no-man’s moments that happened just before sleeping or waking. Or queuing up. Or spinning through a revolving door. Whenever she was waiting for something to happen, he snuck up behind her and made her feel alive.

  Even if he were just a phantom lover, he was the one she’d courted since she was nine or ten. He had been everything to her, every day except for those urgent weeks she’d spent with an Englishman named Tony Harper in Dublin, who was so much larger than life. How romantic, she thought sarcastically, scooping her hair off her shoulders and letting it fall again. Romantic and ridiculous.

  So much had happened since the last time she’d seen Dace at the farm. To both of them. In hindsight, she knew now he had ignored everybody because he was headed for jail. Like a leper with open sores under his clothes, he had feared exposure in front of his relatives, especially in front of a little girl. She might have loathed him—or worse, been afraid. The rest of the family might settle for secrets, rumours and innuendo, but not her. She’d ferret out the truth.

  Damn, Liza. You had the most beautiful, the most knowing eyes. And those monarch butterflies were so thick in the air. It looked like you were leading them somewhere. I wanted to tell you everything, but you were only fourteen.

  So tell me now, she’d written back.

  And he had, or almost, the way he remembered the whole story now, anyway.

  Although they had both sought common reference points in those introductory letters, she had always been more curious about him than he’d seemed to be about her. Maybe he thought she was too young to have a life story filled with drama. After all, she was living with her other grandmother in Dublin. How thrilling could that possibly be? Ireland was ancient history, as far as he was concerned. Even the Troubles meant little to him, although surely he would have been drawn to the I.R.A. and cared about what was happening in Londonderry if he’d been there. For all she knew, he didn’t even read the news.

  In time his correspondence with the rest of his friends and family had faltered. They had little interest in the written word and even less skill. A part of him was afraid they despised him. But the teenaged Liza was different. She knew he’d written to her to revive his own hope, but by doing that he’d given her hope, too. Hope she’d survive her exile and hope she’d come home soon. And all the time he was in real danger, even though he said,

  I’m getting out. I’m going to get my life back. And when I do, I’ll live to be a hundred and you’re going to, too.

  From her bus window, she saw an old woman trundling her whole life down the sidewalk in a shopping cart. Gran loved to poor-mouth, tell stories about how Ireland had suffered such horrible wartime shortages. How lucky her children were to be in Canada, how much they owed her. How she was a mother who had loved them enough to let them go, to let them think she was glad to see them go. How she’d known they would never come back again because they would look like dismal failures if they did.

  Oh God. Why was Liza wasting time thinking about the Magills?

  Dace and she had been exchanging letters for almost three years now. Would she recognize his voice? And what would he think of hers when they finally met face-to-face, after all these years? It was almost like she was living in a song. He was living for her letters, he told her over and over. For her, his little cousin Liza. And, of course, for his father and his sister.

  What would they talk about? None of that jail stuff, if she could help it. All she wanted to know was when he was coming home. For years the Devereux, especially Uncle Norm, the chief gatekeeper, had tried to keep Dace’s location a secret. Dace was just “away”. When Liza had confided the truth to a few people, they’d asked, Why? What did he do? No matter what she’d volunteered, their eyes shifted and they changed the subject. To spare her? No, to spare themselves, she felt sure. Although, if they had no insight into their own characters, they were sometimes pushy enough to imply: Why do you do what you do? Why do you care what happens to somebody like that, anyway? And her personal favourite: Is there something wrong with you, too?

  The bus stopped a couple of times to pick up more passengers. Many of the people on this route were on their way to visit an imprisoned loved one. Dace had even written about a special little community of female pen pals who had relocated in Maitland just to be near their loved ones.

  A recent newspaper article alleged some of the women belonged to a cult; their Messiah was fathering children they bore Outside. Exactly how he accomplished such miracles without conjugal visits was both a scandal and a mystery, but somebody was either lying or on the take. The Messiah was in prison for murdering one of the sister wives, something his women condoned for reasons nobody could fathom. Some crimes were apparently more forgivable than others, but which ones, and why? The sister wives had set up housekeeping above the ceiling of a local convenience store. They shared twenty-six children with two more on the way.

  Many of the other ladies-in-waiting also had children in tow. Not that the authorities cared. Especially not guards paid minimum wage to do a dangerous job. No, guards didn’t care why people did things, and they didn’t expect anything from the men they guarded, either. Why should they? Why should anyone? People in prison were damaged goods.

  Like me, Liza sometimes thought, but only when she was feeling low. And if Dace hadn’t already told her, she would have figured it out from the non-fiction she sometimes read: library books about the theory of criminology and paperbacks of true crimes. They never explained why.

  She was different though. She expected something from him. His father did, too. Uncle Norm had always expected something from his son, if not when he was sent away, then shortly after.

  Oh, Christ, she didn’t have time for snivelling, sad songs today. Just get me to the prison on time! Thankfully she was in the back of the bus, she thought, scrubbing in controlled fury at a single tear. The bus hurtled along while the driver ogled the female passengers in his overhead mirror while also sticking to a schedule. A ride that felt like forever took about fifteen minutes.

  Everyone clammed up when they saw the fences: high stone walls with double rows of razor-barbed wire on top. Her stomach felt suddenly as if it were full of lead. Almost reluctant to get off the bus now that she was there, she forced herself to follow the rest of the passengers into a parking lot then proceeded towards the arched, double-gated entrance.

  “Visiting, visiting, visiting,” the ladies said to two armed guards.

  Liza shivered. She couldn’t help it. The penitentiary looked so dark inside. Dace!

  She hesitated, took a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the rest of her life.

  Chapter 6

  Connecting

  He looked at her as a lover can;

  She looked at him, as one who awakes:

  The past was asleep and her life began.

  *[Robert Browning, “The Statue and the Bust,”

  Scene 1, Line 28]

  Maitland Penitentiary, August 26, 1971:

  Liza studied the other women at the second checkpoint inside the Great Hall, hoping to emulate
acceptable behaviour, but she was still afraid. Having got this far she knew she would do anything to get inside. Besides, the first part had been easy. The rest might be too.

  An armed guard waved them through like it was no concern of his how such ratty-looking women chose to waste their lives. He was a small man with a crossed eye, and he carried a large revolver strapped to his right side. Mute evidence of the weaponry used to guard men in a federal jail.

  She shuffled in a queue behind everyone else. It looked like the federal penitentiary, but who knew? There were so many prisons in and around Maitland. Dace was in the worst one, though. For months there had been rumblings about discontent—more than usual—from the Pen. Dace made it sound like he was living in a volcano rather than a prison, and he ought to know.

  The line picked up speed. She followed the other women until they were intercepted by two uniformed guards standing behind a formidable wooden counter. A sign stated visiting privileges could be suspended at the penitentiary’s discretion, but they were open for business today.

  Neither penal representative asked, “How are you?” Neither guard nor prospective visitor said, “Good day”.

  Everybody opened their bags. Most of the female crowd, who she assumed were repeat visitors, were allowed behind the counter to pass through a metal detector.

  The first guard ran his stubby finger down his clipboard and mumbled, “Roberto Belissimo? He’s in the Hole today.” Irma went as limp as a greasy french fry. Turning, and nearly flattening the woman behind her, she stumbled away.

  When it was Liza’s turn, she squeaked, “I’m here to see my cousin, D’Arcy Devereux. He’s arranged to put me on his visitors list.” Shut up, she told herself. Less was usually best. It was that way with the Guardai in Dublin, anyway.

  The younger guard stuck his face in hers. “Who?”

  “D’Arcy Devereux,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

  He had been listening, though. He was only playing with her. Cat and mouse. “So how do we know you’re that one’s cousin?” he said with a smirk. That one’s? Fumbling in the bag he had just pawed through, she slid her newly minted student I.D. across the counter and waited. The guard’s eyes travelled from the scalloped edge of her embroidered peasant blouse to her flared denim skirt and up to her chest again. A razor cut on his chin caught her eye. He couldn’t have been shaving long. What was he going to say?

  “You look like one of them hippies to me.”

  Them hippies all bought the farm, she nearly snapped, her cheeks reddening. This was 1971, for Chrissakes. A whole new decade. A fact apparently lost on this backwater jerk.

  “I’m on his visitor’s list,” she repeated, hoping her almost Irish accent would sound superior to her regular Canadian pronunciation. She wanted him to feel resentful, but suitably impressed.

  The young guard might have been impressed, but he was stubborn, too. “Well now, I don’t know.” He peered at his clipboard an eternity longer, fishing around in his snout-like nose with a rubber-tipped pencil. When he lifted his eyes, she stared him down. She had to, or he would play with her all day. He was so transparent she knew when he had made up his mind, she just didn’t know which way. As the walls of her stomach cleaved together, a thought surfaced out of nowhere, like a gas bubble. How I despise being under your dirty thumb, you …

  “Let her go,” the other guard said. “The little cock-teaser.” He turned back to his work. “Betcha five bucks it’s a complete lockdown by next Wednesday,” he added in a stage whisper.

  … filthy pigs, Liza almost blurted, but she forced herself to remember they were under educated, poorly paid and barely smart enough to be afraid.

  Dace, she thought, drifting through metal detectors into another world. Where are you?

  The smell reminded her of damp locker rooms at public swimming pools. Sweating, fear, chlorine came to mind as she tried to keep her footing, although all she had to do was walk a straight line. There was no turning back. She had stumbled headfirst into one of those in-between places in her mind and she had to stay. She’d stopped breathing, and her heart almost stopped pumping, but she was kept in motion by other women nudging up against her. If she stretched out her left hand, she’d touch a wall of slimey green concrete blocks. If she stretched out her right, she’d brush the first in a line of doorless stalls, each equipped with glass wire mesh dividers, stools and black telephone receivers.

  She stopped, adrenalin surging through her. It had to be him in the first carrel. She hadn’t seen him in years, but the rest of the men in the room looked too much like convicts to be him. They ranged from one unfashionable extreme to another. Either their gleaming pates were shaved bald or they wore their long hair slicked back from lean, hungry, wolfish faces.

  But he … he was sitting on a stool with his hands folded in front of him and his neck craned to watch the entry door, every shining wave of his chin-length hair combed in place. In the past, they had sheared off everybody’s hair, but it was the seventies now. Wearing a pressed khaki shirt, matching pants and an expression of eager expectation, he looked like he’d been waiting for her all his life. Well, maybe he had.

  You’re the only one, he’d written her. And when he stood to greet her, she felt like she’d been awarded a prize.

  May’s kids always had such good manners, she heard her mother say as she took her place onstage. Every eye in the visiting room drew their way—or rather, his way. Just the sight of him was enough to draw her onto the stool facing him. She forced a nervous smile and when she did, she remembered to breathe.

  D’Arcy Devereux smiled too, the left side of his mouth pulling higher than the right. When he sat back down, the other prisoners and visitors pulled their eyes away to give him more space.

  A small, careful smile blotted out the darkness in his eyes, but he had aged ten years in the last five. Little wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes like spokes in a wheel, although he wasn’t yet twenty-five. Almost as if he were shy, he kept smiling. Suddenly she was fourteen again. All she wanted him to do was, well, speak to her. She thought briefly of the pond and a veil dropped. It always did. What else could a pubescent girl have wanted in 1966? With her own cousin, yet?

  She opened her mouth then closed it. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hear what she said. The glass divider was in the way. But for the first time since she’d gotten off the plane at Toronto International, her arrival unheralded, she felt a powerful sense of homecoming. Here she was in this strange place, this prison, and she never wanted to leave. Forget her dual citizenship, forget school. She belonged here. She belonged with him. And she’d die to keep this feeling. No matter what happened, no matter what people said.

  When Dace motioned her to pick up the telephone receiver and said into his, “You’re so beautiful. I can’t believe my eyes,” joy flooded her veins, but the words didn’t matter. All she cared about was his voice.

  She shook her head, blushing. “I am not beautiful,” she said, shifting under his intense stare. Of course he was staring at her, she thought, stiffening on the stool like a butterfly impaled on a pin. Where else was he supposed to look? She was backed by a green wall with a round-faced clock ticking the seconds off, and already she was praying their hour would never end. Her own view was more compelling. A scowling, fat-faced guard was scrutinizing her and Dace more closely than he was watching anybody else.

  “You really don’t know?” he asked, a puzzled expression on his face.

  She shook her head again, her throat almost swelling shut with unshed tears. There was a steady hum of chatter in the visiting room, then the bus blond in the next stall erupted, yelling at the shrunken little Dustin Hoffman creature she was visiting. “I can’t take anymore! You’ve got to stop!”

  Stop what? Stop stealing? Stop drinking? Stop killing? Stop hurting me? Anxious to write her own script, Liza shut the woman out. “But,” she demurred, “at least I’m not getting acne anymore.”

  “You?”
He shook his head, trying to look serious. “Acne? You’re imagining things. You never had acne. Although I do remember a certain yellow polka dot dress.” He grinned when she flushed again at this distressing evidence of his memory. “And the way you drank tea. The old aunties wanted to get rid of us, but you wouldn’t leave.”

  “Old? I’m not sure. Everybody had their children so young in those days.”

  “That was the last farm-do I ever went to.” He paused, staring off into space. “I think that’s why I remember it so well. That … and you,” he added. “And the butterflies. It was my final outing before I came here. All those rednecks, well, most of the cousins turned out okay. Except for Randy.”

  “What do you mean? I thought he was a police detective in Hamilton.”

  “Yeah, he’s a copper all right,” Dace agreed, his hand tightening on his telephone receiver. “Remind me. What was happening at the farm that day, an anniversary?”

  “Aunt Sadie’s and Uncle Tom’s thirtieth or fortieth or something. Who knows? We have so many aunts and uncles I don’t know how anybody keeps track.”

  “Jeez, forty years is a long time. My father was so mad that summer he used to slam me into a wall every time he looked at me. And my mother—“

  He suddenly stopped talking and stared down at his hands.

  Wait! Liza almost shouted. Come back to me! “Oh, she’d understand,” she said. Planting her hand against their glass partition, she appealed to him with her eyes. “She would! She’d come to see you every visitors’ day.”

  Their fat overseer materialized so fast she almost fell off her stool. He gestured at the reinforced glass divider and Liza dropped her hand without taking her eyes off Dace’s taut expression. There was no time to spare.

  “What’s his problem? Is he worried about me smudging the glass?”

  Dace’s face relaxed. “Maybe,” he said. “You know, I’ve been away so long, Liza. I’ve done my best to pay, well, as much as anyone can. When I get Out, it’s going to be for good. I meant what I wrote you last time.”