It’s raining outside as I pull into the jail’s parking lot. My mom has just bought a new car with the money from my grandmother’s will and the windshield wipers are superb, I must say. It’s as if it isn’t even raining, the way those rods spring into action, flicking the drops of water consistently, seamlessly back into the air from whence they came. Before, the wipers squeaked and left blurry streaks at the precise spots we needed to not be blurry. Then: why am I thinking about windshield wipers? I park next to a rusty truck, orange like the color of a half-rotted pumpkin. It’s fall in Pennsylvania and it’s raining and it smells like wet leaves and that omnipresent burning scent. What’s burning? Everything’s burning. Our lives are burning. The fall makes me melodramatic.
Inside the chairs are arranged so that we are all facing away from the visitation room, looking out at the street, as if we are an audience watching a play: the play of other people’s lives. Out there the cars are flying by. People are rushing to their destinations, home to eat dinner with their families and then to lie down on worn sofas, exhale deeply, flick through the channels. There’s not much action in this play though, so I’m examining the carpet. It’s a geometrical wonder of intersecting different-colored boxes, box upon box upon box next to box followed by box, boxes everywhere. We are in a giant box as well, a giant concrete box of a room with artificial leafy plants placed near the front window (the stage). There are no artificial plants behind us, just an ominous hallway leading past a coat rack (the dressing room?). Boxes upon boxes upon boxes. Someone’s kid is running loose all over the room; he’s picked up the “Caution: Wet Floor” sign and is carrying it around. The old couple next to me is laughing. I bet they are thinking, What an adorable child. I am thinking, tell your stupid kid to stop running around. Like a cat he senses my dislike and is therefore attracted to me. He places his sign by my foot and I deliberately ignore him. I know I look like a horrible person but it’s that melodrama in me: I didn’t come to the jail today to smile and be merry. I came to contemplate this disaster my brother has become, adorable children be damned.
In the visitation room I’m thinking about things I could talk about that wouldn’t be awkward. I think about telling him how I took a ride in our cousin’s new Lexus, and then wonder if it’s rude to talk about doing activities he can’t do. I decide it’s not. I think I’ll tell him how our parents are getting a dog, and then wonder if that seems like he’s being replaced. By a dog, nonetheless, not even something as jealousy-inducing or melancholy as an adopted child or a full-time babysitting gig. Just a miniature Pinscher named Chico. The dog bed will be in my brother’s room. I probably won’t tell him that part. The lady at the phone on my right offers me a Wet Wipe and I wipe down the receiver and, left with nothing else to do, the entire desk in front of me. The man on my left says, “That’s probably the cleanest that’s been in years.” This both horrifies and reassures me, so I just say, “I bet!”
Then the prisoners start coming through on the other side of the glass, a few at a time. I recognize a guy from my high school: a football player, graduated a year before me. I bet it’s DUI. Mark comes in and sits down on the other side of the glass. He is grinning. He picks up the receiver.
“Hey Megan, good to see ya.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I was in town so I figured I’d stop in. Plus I couldn’t come yesterday because they didn’t have my address.”
“Yeah.”
“So… how is it?”
He shrugs. “Eh, it’s not too bad. I just watch TV mostly, play cards with the other guys.”
“You have cable in there?”
“Yeah, we get all the channels. Even HBO.”
“Jesus. Doesn’t sound too bad.” The phone smells strongly like baby powder now. It's strange, the smell of innocence, in this place.
“Eh, it’s just kinda boring.”
"So what's Jason in for? I saw him walk by."
"Oh yeah. DUI."
"Yeah, okay. So how's the food?"
“It’s all right. It’s kinda gross. We get 3 meals a day but the last one is served at 4 o'clock, so if you don’t buy a snack at the commissary you’re pretty much starving later.” He grimaces at this, as if he feels entitled to better treatment. Dinner at 6, perhaps, and milk and cookies before bedtime.
“What kinds of snacks do they have at the commissary?”
“Oh, ya know. Combos and shit. Like gas-station type of snacks. No liquids though, but they have this powdered drink mix you can put into the water.”
I say, God maybe you should just stay there and he laughs and then I laugh and then we fall silent. He looks thinner than he did when he went in, just a few weeks ago. He has a rash on his arms, says it’s from the water. I could make a joke about not dropping the soap but it seems too real here to be funny. We talk about card games, the new house. I say, take care of yourself. He says, I’m trying. I say, I gotta go. The attendant just came in and told us we have to leave. I love you. He says, I love you too. I walk away and look back. His face is contorted, his mouth a twisted smile, his eyes glossy. He waves and shuffles out of sight. I walk out, too: this play is over. For now.
