the prisoner story

In less than a month, I'll be the same age my mom was when she died. I've been thinking about that. Some events have haunted me through the years and haunt me still. But there is power in the telling. Just as a light shined into the darkness can banish the ghosts, words can heal. May your words bring you strength and may all of your stories eventually get told.


The winter of my junior year in college, Mom called one day to say she was getting married. She'd been single my whole life, though she'd seriously dated a priest, a dying man, and a gangster over the years, having divorced my dad, an alcoholic, when I was a baby. The new guy was a prisoner which, apparently, was not a problem as he could get a weekend furlough for the wedding in six weeks. 

I found this news troubling for many reasons. She barely knew him. He was eighteen years her junior, an uneducated armed robber, and in prison. Those things I could have possibly overlooked if not for that horrible feeling he gave me. Some things you just know. The instant I'd met him over the previous Thanksgiving break, when he'd gotten a release to visit us, all of the little hairs on the back of my arms and neck had stood on end. A solid rock of fear had instantly formed in my stomach. He was furtive, brooding, oddly mechanical. No way was I ever going to be caught alone with this guy. Before his arrival, Mom had warned me not to wear gym shorts, my usual around-the-house garb, during his stay, but only long pants. How did she not realize how creepy that was? How evil he was? 

I tried to tell her. At my first word, seeing the look on my face, she cut me off sharply demanding that I share in her joy, welcome and accept Dick. Yes, that was his name, aptly enough. She called me critical and selfish: the worst of the worst in our family circle. These comments hobbled me, like a swift blow to my Achilles heel. 

The morning of the wedding, which was held at my college town because it was closer to the prison than where Mom lived, I was with her in her hotel room. She asked me to get her a cup of coffee from the lobby, which I did, though not as cheerfully as she'd wanted me to. She wanted me to be giddy, goofy, and punchy as I often was just for grins. But I couldn't, though I'd not said another word against the elephant in the room since Thanksgiving. She asked me to paint her nails. I took her thumb and started, remembering the time I was seven and had, in fascination, peeled off every speck of her freshly applied red nail polish as she napped on the couch. How times had changed. To tell everything that happened before and after the wedding would take a book, but her next words hurt me the most. 

"Stop trying to steal my joy. This is my special day and I deserve to enjoy every minute of it. You need to smile and be happy, to love and accept Dick. You have no choice."

"I want to, but how can I trust him when I don't know him? It's for your sake that I'm worried." 

As expected, she played the God card. No one in our family would dare argue with that one. "God ordained this wedding, and everything is going to be wonderful. You'll see." I never did. It never was.

After that conversation, I only saw Mom a handful of times, because I soon graduated college and moved out of state. She died within two years of a heart problem. If he is still alive, Dick is in prison now, but this time for murder. He shot an elderly corner-grocery-store owner in a robbery after mom was gone.