Page 68 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“No. Just old school projects, birthday cards, so on. I guess it was nice she cared enough to keep it. I always thought she threw it away.” She pauses and stares at me, an actress waiting for her scene partner to remember their lines. “I had a feeling she was cleaning things out. She had a box for Grace too.”

So she knew our mother was making a break for it. No one told her, but she put two and two together. “Was there a box for me?”

“I don’t think so, but honestly, what did you expect? You tried to kill her. If she had nothing to give you, nothing to say to you, that’s her right.”

I push a knuckle into my mouth, my teeth grazing a healing scab. A crust of flesh falls beneath my tongue. “She called me five times the day she died. She had something to say.”

“It doesn’t matter now. She’s dead.”

I return to my mind’s eye. When I answer the phone this time, my mother says,I’m going to die, Providence. Are you happy? You always wanted a dead mother.Then the dial tone.

“Easy for you to say. You got closure.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree for sympathy.” Harmony releases the loose bun atop her head. Her hair is so greasy it looks damp. “I have my own shit to worry about. My arraignment is tomorrow.”

“Are you pleading guilty?”

“Depends what my lawyer says. Depends if the DA offers me a good deal.”

“Don’t plead guilty until they’ve given you a deal. They’ll work with you if you tell them where the car is.”

She curls her fingers without quite making a fist, like a witch preparing to cast a spell. “Oh, my God, stop asking me about the car!”

“You either don’t know where it is, which means you confessed for kicks, or you really don’t remember, which means you weren’t in your right mind and that’s your defense.”

“Where’d you go to law school, again?”

“Harmony—”

“You want to talk about doing things for kicks? How about meddling in my life? Pretending like you give one single fuck about what happens to me?”

The door swings open, and the affable deputy who escorted me to the visitation room peers in. We straighten up immediately, like we used to when our father caught us digging into dinner without saying grace first. “Yelling usually means trouble. We good in here?”

“Peachy keen,” Harmony retorts, oblivious to the deputy’s concern being for my safety, not hers. He only leaves the room once I nod.

Alone again, I try a new approach. “I don’t think you grasp what is going to happen to you.”

“I did a stint in the county jail. I’m not Mary Poppins.”

“The county jail is not in the same dimension as the prison in York.”

“How naïve do you think I am?”

“Did you know there are no mirrors in prison? There’s polished metal you can just about see yourself in if you squint. I forgot what I looked like by the time I got out. And as much as you change, the world changes without you. It took me months to figure out how to work the new cell phones. There was a new president. All my favorite TV shows were over. And you forget you have choices in your life. The first time I had a real cheeseburger when I got out, I cried. I literally sat there in a crappy diner in Grand Island, and I cried into this overcooked hockey puck of a burger. I could put whatever I wanted on it. I had such little control over anything for five years that putting mustard on a cheeseburger brought me to tears. And I’m telling you the little things, Harmony. That’s not being sucker-punched in the yard, or being groped in the shower, or having pages torn out of a book you’re reading during a search just because a guard thought it would be funny to torment you, or spending a week in solitary and having people slide food through a slot on the floor like you’re an animal.”

I can’t tell if my soliloquy is cruel or merciful, if I am giving it for her benefit or mine. It’s the most I’ve ever talked about prison outside of therapy. Harmony chews on her fingernails until the skin around her nailbeds turns red. Eventually, she peels her eyes away from me to stare vacantly at the floor, perhaps immersing herself in the nightmare I have thrust upon her.

“If you have any sense at all, tell them where the car is.”

“What if I really don’t remember, Providence? Have you considered that possibility?”

Her face is inscrutable. I cannot distinguish sincerity from vitriol. Every word she says is laced with venom. She could make the classifieds drip with sourness. “Then tell them what theyneed to hear. Tell them about the meds. Tell them you lied about your fiancé. Tell—”

“Did you call Cal?”

“Jesus Christ, Harmony, you are so far from the point.”

“No, this is exactly the point: you meddling again, galloping in with your stupid, misguided savior complex.” She rips the engagement ring from her finger and stows it in her bra. “And if Cal fed you some sob story about the ring being his mother’s, it’s a lie. He bought it at a Kay Jewelers in Omaha. I was there.”

---