I had expected someone hard, ground down. But she was a tiny blonde in her 20s with the kind of bouncy energy I associate with cheerleading. As I set the plastic cup under the machine, she told me she had been so surprised when they informed her that she was being released. She called her boyfriend to tell him. He didn’t have a car, so he wouldn’t be able to pick her up, but she wanted him to know she was getting out.
And then there he had been! Waiting outside when they opened the door. She couldn’t believe it. She was so happy telling me about it, a huge smile on her face, and her blonde hair in a ponytail, dyed blue at the ends.
On the days I didn’t work, I read entire books uninterrupted and took long walks in the hills above town, letting my mind wander. I remembered my mother’s quiet, “Are you sure?” when I told her we were getting married. I recalled a good friend, only weeks before the wedding, saying, “Maybe you could just live together?”
I thought of my father during those first years of my marriage, and then again toward the end, calling every few months to say, “Jessie, is he good to you? Make sure he’s good to you.” I would reassure him because I wanted it to be true and because sometimes, even as our marriage unraveled, it was true: “Yeah, Dad, he’s good. We’re OK.”
The day after the tiny blonde got out of jail, the angry man was back, transformed. I saw him arrive as I walked through the lobby. He was scrubbed clean, his hair was washed and falling in gorgeous brown waves to his shoulders, and he was smiling. He looked like Jesus at his peak. Beautiful and glowing.
The tiny blonde was in the lobby, too. When it was her turn, I called her number, and as I filled her cup with red liquid, the no-longer-angry man was called to the adjacent window. Against the rules, he popped over to her side and dropped a lollipop on the ledge in front of her. Then he popped back to the other window to get his dose.
