Page 46 of For The Weekend
It was multiple cops. There to arrest her.
Mazie didn’t understand what was going on, but she knew enough that seeing her mother in handcuffs was bad. She was hysterical, which only mademehysterical. Especially when they separated us, interrogating me about who I was and what I was doing there.
It was traumatizing, to say the least. Seeing my baby carried away as she screamed and cried, her hands reaching out for me. It wasn’t long before I was reunited with her—in the back of a police car—but the damage had been done.
Mazie didn’t want to leave my side for weeks, had outbursts in school and crying fits in the middle of the night. She already had trouble understanding why we lived separately from her mom, so attempting to explain that she was in prison…it was a nightmare.
Arraigned on multiple charges of theft and fraud, Amy was entangled in a web of her own making. She had been stealing prescription pads from the medical office where she worked, forging scripts to feed her escalating addiction. She had also siphoned off money from the practice, masquerading her theft as legitimate expenses while pocketing the funds for her own use. Instead of seeking sobriety, she had merely learned to hide her addiction behind a facade of lavish purchases. Her case was open-and-shut.
I didn’t attend the trial. Didn’t bring Mazie to see her like she asked. She was fucking lucky I didn’t revoke her parental rights. After thinking about it, I came to the realization that it was my job to keep Mazie safe, but that I should leave it up to her to decide if she wanted a relationship with her mother once she’s released from prison.
So, Amy would continue to receive updates every few weeks in the form of a phone call or an occasional picture for the next four years. The only positive out of all this was that she had to dry out while behind bars.
“Do you need anything? More money in your account?” For as much as movies and television shows are fiction, they’re still pretty accurate at portraying what it’s like to be in a cellblock.
I visited Amy once after sentencing, and she was in a rough way. She told me how the inmates barter and trade their commissary goods, and I didn’t know what else to do besides promise that I’d keep money in her account. I didn’t feel bad that she’d been caught breaking the law, that she was paying for what she’d done, but I had loved her at one point. It broke my heart to see her like that, physically a mess. Worse off than when she came home from a bender.
“No, I’m okay. I’m just…” Amy sniffles on the phone with me now. “I’m trying, Roman. I’m really trying to take this day by day, but it’s hard.”
“You’re still doing counseling in there, right? How’s that going?”
“A fucking joke.”
“What about your job?” Last we talked, she’d started working in the kitchen.
Amy’s sad tone flips to ire. “This skinny little bitch got me kicked out. Thinks she runs this place. She doesn’t run shit. I?—”
“You have one minute remaining on this call,” the automated voice tells us.
“I’ll talk to you next time, Amy.”
“No, wait, Roman. Wait.” When I don’t hang up, she rushes out her request. “I was thinking you could bring Mazie to visit me.”
“No.” I stand up. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not bringing our six-year-old to a prison. She doesn’t need to see you in there, and I don’t even know why you’d want her to see you like that.”
“Because I love her.”
I pace the office. “Yeah, you really have a great way of showing it.”
“Fuck you. You have no idea what I’m going through in here.”
“And you have no idea what I’m going through out here. I’m not putting Mazie through that. End of fucking story.”
“Well, when I get out?—”
“When you get out, we can talk about your relationship with her,” I interrupt. “But not now. Not like this.”
“What relationship?” Amy’s voice rises, a hint of desperation creeping in. “You won’t let me have one with her. You won’t let me be her mom.”
I barely keep my voice restrained, not wanting my coworkers to overhear me. “How can you? You’re in prison. You can’t be her mother. At least not right now.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that? You?—”
Her sentence is cut off abruptly, and then the automated voice tells me, “This call has ended.”
