The women she followed were Mrs.25Years, Nick’sOne, and JimmysGirl, all experienced guides to prison protocol. From them, she discovered that underwire bras set off alarms and precipitated a guard’s too-familiar hands feeling you up. Phoebe dreaded seeing someone mention Jake. “Guess who my man saw in the yard!” PrisonMessages.com shackled you to your her husband by name and deed.
She clicked “Loving a Lifer,” despite knowing that her love for Jake died more each day. After his confession, Jake had morphed into that awful relative attached to your flesh like a parasite; one you were forced to care for because he lived on your family tree.
She scrolled down the forum, reading titles.
Thread: “What bonds you to your lifer?”
If her daughter could see her, she’d fold her arms and ask, “Exactly, Mom. How can you continue choosing him over us?” Phoebe would again beg Kate to understand why leaving Jake alone, pummeled by a world’s anger, seemed like kicking him as he lay on the ground.
At the time, Phoebe hadn’t thought that she’d chosen Jake or rejected her children, not while the mash of shame, confusion, and loyalty roiled. She hadn’t known how to abandon him. Her son and daughter had their spouses, their children, and each other. Jake could lean only on her. She became his security blanket. He became her prison.
Thread: “I am exhausted.”
Yes. They were all tired, facing their angry men on visiting days. Tired of their men’s locked-up desperation boiled with resentment, these overly sensitive men offended by their need for women living on the outside. They exhausted their women, these men.
Thread: “Need topics for talking with my man on the phone.”
Conversation with Jake required only audible nodding from her.
Thread: “What are the best traits of your lifer?”
Inexhaustible stores of love dust sprinkled the screen. Despite having committed crimes so awful they had received life sentences, these men still inspired their women to enumerate their good qualities. Had they forgiven them their murders, their rapes, their thieving?
Jake swore that no singular moment had marked the beginning of his thievery, but he was lying. Everything began somewhere. He hadn’t slipped into his Byzantine plot. His had been no banana peel of a crime.
And now he talked about the guys. People imagined prisons as all fear and knives, but the truth didn’t unfold so tough. They cooked. They shared books. They were his goddamned buddies.
Phoebe longed for her children. Deep, visceral want threatened to topple her each morning. Antidepressants, antacids, and shame sustained her.
? ? ?
The cab driver didn’t acknowledge Phoebe, except for nodding when she asked for Ray Brook Federal Correctional. Maybe he was being polite, accustomed to allowing psychic space to sad women visiting locked up men, but more likely, she disgusted him. She recognized the expression: the shock of detection and the scowl.
You.
Her.
The face of Jake’s crime. Wife of the demon. Even if she dyed her hair, wore sunglasses, dressed plainer than an Amish woman, someone shook his or her head as she passed.
The prison loomed. The cab stopped.
Tipping the driver worried her. Too little, and he’d despise her. Too much, and he’d hate her for giving him tainted money.
She paid the thirty-five-dollar fare, adding six dollars. Wind hit as she stepped out and faced the cold colorless brick of Ray Brook. Already she’d curled her hands into fists so tight that they ached.
Her entire marriage had been a battle against being known only as Jake’s wife—now she feared the battle could be over for good.
Phoebe had become two almost-spectral things: a widow to a living man, and a childless mother.
Part 1
* * *
The Early Years
CHAPTER 2
Phoebe
August 1960
“You’re not going to that party, young lady. You’re too young, and he’s too old. Case closed.”
Phoebe ignored the shrill threat penetrating her bedroom door and concentrated on building layers of rosy pink lipstick. She disappeared inside her reflection, coloring each millimeter of her lips, and then pressed her mouth against a tissue. Finally, she dipped her finger in a blue container of Pond’s loose face powder.
Her mother banged on her door. “Your father’s on his way up.”
Tap powder on upper lip.
Tap powder on lower lip.
“He’s removing the lock from this door and it’s going to stay off until you prove yourself to be trustworthy. Mark my words.”
Tissue.
Powder.
Lipstick.
Phoebe repeated Seventeen magazine’s advice three times. She smiled at her image, tilting her head, trying to capture her more attractive side. Seventeen swore that the angle a girl presented determined her degree of desirability. When she first read the article, she’d run to the mirror, magazine in hand. Now the words were etched so deep that she could recite them:
For most girls (whether it be for taking terrific photos or making a great first impression) one side of the face looks better than the other. Angle that side toward the camera—or the boy whose eye you want to catch.
Not sure of your best? Use a sheet of paper to cover one side of your face and then the other and choose the half with more upturned features (such as the corners of your eyes or lips). If you can’t decide, pick your left side, the more visually pleasing for most faces.
Phoebe’s sister, Deb, laughed when Phoebe asked her which side was Deb’s best. Despite being two years older, Deb, an actual seventeen-year-old, read National Geographic. Deb didn’t require the safety of makeup. Family and friends all called Phoebe the pretty one, but instead of giving her confidence, their praise necessitated that she maintain it daily. How could she not, when almost everyone but her mother so valued her appearance?
Phoebe peered into the mirror again. Left. Definitely prettier. The moment Jake entered, she’d turn that side toward him.
“Do you hear me? Are you alive in there?” Her mother’s Brooklyn accent assaulted Phoebe’s ears. Lately, Phoebe enunciated her words with such care that her parents asked if she had a sore throat and did she need a lozenge, for God’s sake? “Are you planning to spend the rest of summer vacation in that room?”
Phoebe wondered if her shirt were the right shade of blue.
“If you’re not out in three minutes, your father’s taking the door down.
“Red!” her mother yelled. “Get the toolbox!”
Like so many Brooklyn men, her father kept his neighborhood name, Red, despite that his hair had faded to more of an autumn-leaves color than the strawberry blond it had once been. When Phoebe wished aloud that she’d inherited his hair, her mother snorted, “You want to look even less Jewish than you already do?”
Phoebe dialed up the radio volume. Deb always tried to teach her to just do what her mother said, but her sister didn’t understand. Nothing Phoebe did resembled anything their mother wanted, a fact made evident by her relentless harangues:
“Stop teasing your hair into a rat’s nest! Are you a streetwalker?”
“Maybelline should name that lipstick Evening Blood! You look like a vampire!”