The Year of Needy Girls Page 23

  After three days, Deirdre didn’t know how people survived years in jail. There were so many people jammed into cells, people who, like Jackie, had lives outside the cinder-blocked walls. Maybe some of them had good lives, who were even innocent, like Deirdre, who were in jail on some technicality. One thing was for sure, though—Deirdre never wanted to be in jail again. There was no other way to say it—you ended up feeling inhuman. You ended up feeling worthless. Deirdre imagined that anyone jailed for any length of time would become another kind of person, someone capable of committing the crime they were accused of, someone who, even if they had been a good, caring person before, would end up becoming . . . hardened. Uncaring. At mealtime, she had been fascinated to watch the women around her and listen to them talk. Many of them, she learned, had been brought in for relatively minor offenses—drug possession, prostitution—and many were repeat offenders. That was the part she didn’t understand. How could anyone, in jail once, find themselves behind bars again? She had mentioned this to Jackie.

  Jackie laughed. “Three things, love. Food. Heat. Bed.”

  Deirdre blushed. She felt so stupid. She still could not imagine things being so bad that the only way to get these three basics was to go back to jail. She knew that Jackie found her ridiculously pampered. You would hate SJ, she thought, looking now at Jackie stretched out on her cot. She was the pampered one, the one who had grown up in privilege. Deirdre always found herself wanting to explain that she had been a working-class kid. But she didn’t think there was any moral superiority in being poor. SJ seemed to think that was the case, but Deirdre was sure it was because SJ didn’t really know any better. How many times had she told SJ how ridiculous her theory was that poor people somehow lived more authentically? Here is your authenticity, she wanted to say. It’s so much better being poor that people want to come back to jail.

  “Hey.”

  Deirdre was jolted back to her surroundings. SJ stood, hesitating. Deirdre wanted to reach out and grab her hands, but she knew they weren’t supposed to touch. Guards hovered. There was no privacy. She would never get used to that. She motioned for SJ to sit.

  “I’m so glad to see you.” Deirdre smiled. Everything felt stupid, inconsequential. What do you say in fifteen minutes? “I met with Mr. Heffernan yesterday.”

  SJ inched forward in the chair.

  “He . . . I don’t know . . . It didn’t sound very good to me.”

  “What did he say? But you’ll get out, right?” SJ said nervously.

  “Bond hearing is Tuesday. He’s sure I’ll be able to post bond . . . SJ, it’s so awful in here. I can’t stand it.” She felt hot tears brimming.

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t stand to see you in there.” SJ twisted her rings. “Do you need to contact the school . . . I don’t know, it seems like you might have to? Should I call them for you?”

  “Mr. Heffernan will, if he hasn’t already.” Deirdre chuckled. “Martin will love that, won’t he? Good publicity for Brandywine. Come to the school where one of our teachers was arrested! It’ll make for a great admissions tour!” She snorted. Now, Deirdre understood as she said this out loud to SJ, that there was no hope of getting her job back. Up until this very minute, she had still thought it possible. She had still thought maybe.

  “You can’t worry about Brandywine.” SJ looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

  “I miss you. It’s only been a few days but it feels like forever. I don’t know how people stand it.” Deirdre tugged at the sleeves of her orange jumpsuit. “Plus, it’s freezing in here.”

  “When did they make you put that on?” SJ gestured.

  “Soon as they knew I’d be here for a few days.” Deirdre had been horrified. She told SJ how she and Jackie had been processed. “Like you’re meat or fish or something.”

  “Jackie?”

  “My . . . cell mate.” Deirdre laughed emptily. “Well, I mean, there are a few of us now, but she was in the holding cell with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” SJ said again. “Listen, what can I do? What do you need me to do for you? I called Paul . . .”

  Deirdre flinched. “Oh God. How did that go?”

  “I called him in the morning, so we didn’t talk long, but he guessed why you were here. He told your parents—at least, he said he would. I’ve not heard back from him.” SJ paused and looked down at her hands, picked at her cuticles. “Paul will always love you no matter what, you know that.”

  The hot tears spilled over. Deirdre nodded. Did she believe it though? “I can’t imagine what my parents think,” she sniffled. “I just can’t imagine.”

  “I know. They’ll . . . well, they’ll get over it too, I suppose.”

  Deirdre wanted to say, And what about you? Will you get over it? But she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. She was too afraid of the answer.

  “So on Tuesday, should I be there? Do I go to court too?”

  “It’d be nice to have you there. And, I’m hoping . . .” Deirdre hesitated. “You’ll post bond for me, won’t you?”

  “Right.” SJ took out a piece of paper from her pocket. “Let me jot that down.”

  Deirdre bit her thumbnail. “You can do that, right? Post the bond?”

  SJ shoved the paper back in her pocket. “Of course,” she said.

  * * *

  It wasn’t like Deirdre and Paul hadn’t known folks who had been sent to jail. More than once, Manny Da Silva had been hauled in by the cops and left to spend the night “drying out.” Of course, this was long after Deirdre and Paul had left Gloucester and both settled in Bradley, after Maria Da Silva went to beauty school and started working at Stella’s on the corner of Commercial Street, and after Mrs. Da Silva’s liver started to wear out and Mr. Da Silva retired from fishing. Their mother kept them posted. In the early days, just after Deirdre had graduated from UMass and first moved into an apartment near Bradley, her mother would remind her that long distance cost money. “You only call for emergencies,” she would say. She mailed clippings from the Gloucester Times. Then, as long distance got cheaper, she called more often. Filled them in on who in the neighborhood had died, who had babies, who got laid off again, whose babies were growing up and having babies. Deirdre imagined herself now the topic of conversation for other people’s phone calls, the gossip at Stella’s. She wondered what Maria Da Silva would make of the news.

  Deirdre Murphy, in jail.

  * * *

  What Deirdre hadn’t been prepared for—what neither she nor SJ had predicted—was the article in the Bradley Register.

  SJ saw the headline first thing when she picked up the paper the following morning. “BRANDYWINE TEACHER ACCUSED OF MOLESTING STUDENT.”

  It wasn’t molesting, for God’s sake. But they had to make it sensational. They had to lure in readers. Frances Worthington would either be ecstatic or devastated. And of course it wasn’t just a teacher. It was a Brandywine teacher. Wouldn’t all the public school parents and teachers feel vindicated? See, they would say to themselves, you pay all that money and for what? For a teacher who molests her students.

  And really, SJ wanted to tell them all, teachers and students, it was so much more common than anyone thought. Even Mr. Freeman was still teaching—loved, revered, a teacher-of-the-year award. And as much as SJ felt like she had wanted what had happened between them, she couldn’t help but hold a grudge. Back then, she had worn her loneliness like a prized ribbon, an emblem of her specialness. But she knew now how silly that was, how she probably wasn’t special at all, how he probably went on every year to another student.

  SJ read: “. . . Veteran teacher Deirdre Murphy of 47 Hillside Street was arrested Friday on charges of indecent assault and battery . . .” The article didn’t mention Anna Worthington, probably because she was a minor. It didn’t seem fair that the paper could mention anyone before they were convicted, because even though the headline said “accused” and the lede mentioned she was “arrested and charged with,” all anyone would remember wa
s Deirdre Murphy “molesting a student.” For all intents and purposes, SJ realized, Deirdre’s teaching career was over. At least locally. Even if she were found innocent, she was marked. She was ruined.

  Chapter Ten

  The weather had turned sour, the sky metallic gray with a wind as sharp as knives. New England had a way of doing that. You could have clear blue one moment and then brooding darkness. Even in October, you got snow warnings—moisture that hardened into air too painful to breathe.

  The wind blew through Deirdre’s jumpsuit. She held her sweater tighter across her chest but she couldn’t keep out the cold. She shuffled behind the others and climbed into the van. A field trip to the courthouse, she told herself, and almost giggled, except it wasn’t funny and there they were, handcuffed, sitting two to a seat. In the back of the van, behind the cage, a guard, young-faced, like he might be kind but you couldn’t be sure. Deirdre was learning here that you couldn’t count on much. A kind face meant nothing. A kind face could lash out, spit hard words, and make your life miserable. She had already seen it happen, in just two days.

  The skinny guard, for example. The one the other girls called El Magro, who stood there quietly, looking like he felt bad for them all. That was a misread. Darnella, one of the women brought in on a drug bust, had pushed him a little too far at lunch. Deirdre hadn’t heard it all—something about mashed potatoes left on her tray, or maybe she moved from her seat without permission, but El Magro said something to her about following the rules, about how Darnella must not think the rules applied to her, isn’t that how she landed in here in the first place, and Darnella had smiled sweetly at his young baby face and said something about having vegetables in her fridge older than he was, and he exploded. His sweet doe eyes turned icy black. He marched up to Darnella, the vein in his neck throbbing, one hand gripping the club attached to his belt. “If you ever threaten my authority again,” he had said, and the rage in his voice made certain that you wouldn’t.

  They rode in silence. The city passed by outside, people huddled in their coats, tight and pointed, their faces hidden. Gray buildings against the gray sky. No color, just an old black-and-white movie, reel to reel, in slow motion. Deirdre had been stolen from her real life and forced to take a starring role in someone else’s story. She could not predict the ending.

  The court building was old and imposing, white stone that looked drab and gray, fortress-like. Deirdre spotted Paul’s car in the parking lot, and the Honda. Her knees shook and she took deep breaths. Mr. Heffernan had told her that she would be released on bond, no doubt about it, but she had doubts. She hoped she didn’t have to look Paul in the eye. She hoped her lawyer would be in the court already.

  “Okay, let’s go,” the guard from the cage ordered them out. How humiliating to walk in handcuffs. Deirdre wanted to say to the guards: Do you know what this feels like? She thought guards should have to know what they were asking of their charges. She thought of the workshop she had taken at a teacher’s conference, the leader instructing them on how to make origami paper cranes, a task that for Deirdre was overwhelmingly difficult. She couldn’t follow the directions. Frustrated, she’d given up, laying the folded piece of paper on the table.

  “That,” the workshop leader had said, hustling to Deirdre’s side of the table, heels clicking on the floor, “is what your students feel like on a daily basis.” She lifted the unfinished paper crane. “We look at their work and we think they’re lazy. We think they don’t care.”

  Deirdre had felt herself blush.

  “Were you a plant?” the teacher next to Deirdre had whispered.

  The workshop leader continued, “Sometimes our students are just feeling confused. They don’t get it. The instructions are hard to follow . . .”

  Deirdre had stopped following. The point had been made. She had never forgotten that lesson. And now, she wondered if the guards knew what they were asking of the prisoners. She didn’t consider that maybe it was best for them not to know, that in some cases you couldn’t do your job if you put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Somehow, it didn’t seem right. None of this felt right.

  They were led inside the court building and then the courtroom. Deirdre spotted SJ and Paul sitting together, Paul, hands folded, staring straight ahead, face without expression, and SJ, fingers tapping, knee bouncing, glancing around. Deirdre’s eyes locked with SJ’s and SJ gave a little smile. A thumbs-up. She nudged Paul who nodded. Deirdre hoped that their being here would be a bonus for her. She couldn’t let herself think about how much she was counting on going home after this. Even letting one small thought of jail slip into her brain made her feel heavy and leaden. So she stopped thinking about it and instead focused on the fact that both SJ and Paul were here and that was good.

  The bond hearing itself was short, and for that Deirdre was grateful. Five thousand dollars bond, the judge ruled. Deirdre felt SJ’s and Paul’s presence behind her as she stood before the judge, her lawyer beside her. Ten minutes was all it took for the judge to issue her decision about bond. Still, it felt like an eternity up there to Deirdre, the judge and court employees looking at her dispassionately, trained, Deirdre imagined, to register no feelings when they spoke, to show no emotion. She had that urge again to scream, I didn’t do anything! Didn’t anyone ever want to hear her side of things? Didn’t anyone ever want to know what had really happened on that field trip? Not now, apparently. Just: State your name, you’re charged with this felony, attorneys have agreed on X dollars bond, and that’s it, back you go, we’ll process your paperwork, we’re done with you.

  You had absolutely no power. That was the hardest thing to swallow. For someone who was used to being in charge, losing your voice and any kind of autonomy was really tough.

  * * *

  Deirdre and the other women left the court building still in handcuffs, even those, like herself, who had been freed on bail. There was paperwork to be completed, which Deirdre knew by now took way longer than anyone could possibly imagine. Why in God’s name did everything have to be written in triplicate? Especially now that there were computers. But jail, if nothing else, was bureaucracy. In some ways—and the irony was not lost on her—jail felt a bit too familiar, like school. Not terribly different from Gloucester High. Especially when they were eating in the cafeteria, Deirdre felt as if she were fifteen or sixteen years old again, the guards her sour-faced teachers looking in on them, unhappy to be there another day. Once again, she felt grateful to teach at Brandywine.

  Brandywine. Her heart lurched. Deirdre knew deep down and with a certainty she could no longer suppress that she wouldn’t ever teach at Brandywine again. She had loved it there, the front lobby with its old-fashioned tattered feel like you might get from someone’s well-to-do grandmother, a bit worn but still lovely. Being at Brandywine had given her the illusion that she could live a lovely life, be part of something, belong. For a while maybe that had been so. But no longer. She had to let it go.

  A camera flash caught Deirdre’s eye. She hesitated from climbing into the van, looked to her left, and there, being led by another guard, hands cuffed together and ankles shackled, was Mickey Gilberto. Deirdre felt her breath quicken, her heart beat faster. She climbed into her seat and sat pressed up against the door and window. She hoped Mickey wouldn’t notice her, wouldn’t say anything. She had to force herself to stay glued to the window, to not turn around when she felt sure he was in the van. She heard him say something to one of the guards and saw him again standing in their dining room, piling moving boxes one on top of the other. She saw his lazy stance, his smile, the way his muscles flexed beneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt. She heard him behind her, felt his presence like that of an ex-lover, or a rival, and she hated the way their lives were intertwined. Somehow, irrevocably, her fate seemed tied to his.

  But she hated more than anything that here she was, in the same van, headed to the same destination. Here they were, both in jumpsuits, both headed back to jail, only the color of the
ir jumpsuits and Mickey’s shackles distinguishing the severity of their crimes. She felt tainted and dirty. She didn’t want to have a single thing in common with that man.

  Chapter Eleven

  The letters to the editor didn’t stop. There were more that agreed with Frances Worthington than opposed her, a sad commentary on Bradley, SJ thought. Where was people’s common sense? Decency even? It was hard to believe. Worse, though, when she and Deirdre got home from the bond hearing, after waiting for several hours for Deirdre to be released, they found ugly graffiti on the sidewalk outside their house and Susan’s husband Murray trying, unsuccessfully, to wash it off with a bucket of water.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

  Deirdre burst into tears and ran inside.

  SJ hesitated. She could make out some of the words, what looked like lezzie rapist scrawled in black. “Jesus,” she said, then glanced around as if she might find whoever had done this hovering there, behind one of the maples or oaks. “Thanks,” she said to Murray. “We’ll . . . I’ll . . . Someone will take care of it.”

  “What are you two going to do?” Murray put down the bucket and stuck his hands in the pouch pockets of his gray hooded sweatshirt.

  “She has a court date in three weeks. Guess we’ll wait and see what happens there. It’s crazy.”

  Murray nodded. “I hope Arthur has been of some help to you?”

  “Mr. Heffernan? Thanks for that, by the way. He’s been fine, yes.” SJ glanced to the front door. She couldn’t see much past the hallway, couldn’t see Deirdre. “So I guess you’ve been reading the paper?”