High Crime Area (6 page)

Bitterly her sister spoke. Though relenting then, realizing it was Agnes, the widowed older sister, to whom she was speaking, and asking why Agnes wanted to speak with Kelsey?

“No reason,” Agnes said. “I'm sorry to bother you.”

It was terrifying to her, she would probably never see her niece again.

Yet, I still love her
.

What was exhausting, when she wasn't “high”—she had to plead for her husband's life.

Hours of each day. And through the night pleading
No! Not ever.

Not ever give up, I beg you.

As soon as the diagnosis had been made, the doctors had given up on him. So it seemed to the stricken wife.

Repeating their calm rote words
Do you want extraordinary measures taken to sustain your life, in case complications arise during or after surgery
and her husband who was the kindest of men, the most accommodating and least assertive of men, a gentle man, a thoughtful man, a reasonable man, one who would hide his own anxiety and terror in the hope of shielding his wife, had said quietly what the doctor had seemed to be urging him to say
No of course not, doctor. Use your own judgment please.
For this was the brave response. This was the noble response. This was the manly commonsense response. In mounting disbelief and horror Agnes had listened to this exchange and dared to interrupt
No
—we're not going to give up. We do want “extraordinary measures”—I want “extraordinary measures” for my husband! Please! Anything you can do, doctor.

She would beg. She would plead. Unlike her beloved husband she could not be stoic in the face of (his) death.

Yet, in the end, fairly quickly there'd been not much the doctors could do. Her husband's life from that hour onward had gone—had departed—swiftly like thread on a bobbin that goes ever more swiftly as it is depleted.

I love you
—so many times she told him. Clutching at him with cold frightened fingers.

Love love love you please don't leave me.

She missed him, so much. She could not believe that he would not return to their house. It was that simple.

In the marijuana haze, she'd half-believed—she'd been virtually certain—that her husband was still in the hospital, and wondering why she hadn't come to visit. Or maybe it was in the dream—the dreams—that followed.
High I was so high. The earth was a luminous globe below me and above me
—there was nothing
...

After he'd died, within hours when she returned to the suddenly cavernous house she'd gone immediately to a medicine cabinet and on the spotless white-marble rim above the sink she had set out pills, capsules—these were sleeping pills, painkillers, antibiotics—that had accumulated over a period of years; prescriptions in both her husband's and her name, long forgotten.
Self-medicating
—yet how much more tempting, to
self-erase
?

There were dozens of pills here. Just a handful, swallowed down with wine or whiskey, and she'd never wake again—perhaps.

“Should I? Should I join you?”—it was ridiculous for the widow to speak aloud in the empty house yet it seemed to her the most natural thing in the world; and what was unnatural was her husband's failure to respond.

She would reason
It's too soon. He doesn't understand what has happened to him yet.

Weeks now and she hadn't put the pills away. They remained on the marble ledge. Involuntarily her eye counted them—five, eight, twelve, fifteen—twenty-five, thirty-five...

She wondered how many sleeping pills, for instance, would be “fatal.” She wondered if taking too many pills would produce nausea and vomiting; taking too few, she might remain semi-conscious, or lapse into a vegetative state.

Men were far more successful in suicide attempts than women. This was generally known. For men were not so reluctant to do violence to their bodies: gunshots, hanging, leaping from heights.

I want to die but not to experience it. I want my death to be ambiguous so people will say
—It was an accidental overdose!

So people will say
—She would not live without him, this is for the best.

What a relief, that Kelsey and her friends hadn't come upstairs to steal from her! They'd respected her privacy, she wanted to think.

How stricken with embarrassment she'd have been if Kelsey had looked into the bathroom and seen the pills so openly displayed. Immediately her niece would have known what this meant, and would have called her mother.

Mom! Aunt Agnes is depressed and suicidal
—I thought you should know.

At least, Agnes thought that Kelsey might have made this call.

“Zeke! Thank you.”

And, “Zeke—how much do I owe you?”

From a young musician friend, a former student, now years since he'd been an undergraduate student, she'd acquired what she believed to be a higher, purer quality of “pot”—she'd been embarrassed to call him, to make the transaction, pure terror at the possibility—(of course, it was not a likely possibility)—that Zeke was an undercover agent for the local police; she'd encountered him by chance in an organic foods store near the university, he'd been kind to her, asking after her, of course he'd heard that Professor Krauss had died, so very sorry to hear such sad and unexpected news... Later she'd called him, set up a meeting at the local mall, in the vast parking lot, she'd been awkward and ashamed and yet determined, laughing so that her face reddened. To Zeke she was Professor Krauss also. To all her admiring students.

A Ziploc bag Zeke sold her. Frankly he'd seemed surprised—then concerned. He'd been polite as she remembered him, from years ago. She told the ponytailed young man she was having friends over for the evening, friends from graduate-student days, Ann Arbor. He'd seemed to believe her. No normal person would much want to
get high
by herself, after all.

As soon as she was safely home she lit a joint and drew in her breath as Kelsey had taught her—cautiously, but deeply. The heat was distracting. She didn't remember such heat. And the dryness, the acridity. Again she began to cough—tears spilled from her eyes. Her husband had said
What are you doing, Agnes? Why are you doing such things? Just come to me, that's all. You know that.

Mattia.

Running her forefinger down the
Mattia
listings. There were a surprising number—at least a dozen. Most young people had cell phones now. The Mercer County, New Jersey, phone directory had visibly shrunken. Yet, there was a little column of
Mattia
s headed by
Mattia, Angelo.

His first name hadn't been
Angelo
—
she didn't think so.

Maybe—had it been
Eduardo
?

(There was a listing for
Eduardo,
in Trenton.)

Also listed were
Giovanne, Christopher, Anthony,Thomas, E. L. Mattia
...

None of these names seemed quite right to her. Yet, she had to suppose that her former student, an inmate-student at Rahway State Prison, was related to one or more of these individuals.

Impulsively she called the listing for
Mattia, Eduardo
.

If there is no answer, then it isn't meant to happen.

The phone rang at the other end. But no one picked up. A recording clicked on—a man's heavily accented voice—quickly Agnes hung up.

Later, she returned to discover the phone directory which she'd left on a kitchen counter, open to the
Mattia
listings. She stared at the column of names. She thought—
Was the name “Joseph”?

It had been a traditional name, with religious associations. A formal name. When Agnes had addressed the young man it was formally, respectfully—
Mr. Mattia.

Other instructors in the prison literacy program called students by their first names. But not Agnes, who'd taken seriously the program organizer's warning not to suggest or establish any sort of “inappropriate intimacy” with the inmate-students.

Never touch an inmate. Not even a light tap on the arm.

Never reveal your last name to them. Or where you live, or if you are married.

Agnes remembered with what eagerness she'd read Mattia's prose pieces in her remedial English composition class at Rahway several years before. The teaching experience, for her, in the maximum-security state prison, had been exhausting, but thrilling.

A civic-minded colleague at the university had recruited Agnes who'd been doubtful at first. And Agnes's husband, who thought that prison education was a very good thing, was yet doubtful that Agnes should volunteer. Her training was in Renaissance literature—she'd never taught disadvantaged students of any kind.

She'd told her husband that she would quit the program, if she felt uncomfortable. If it seemed in any way risky, dangerous. But she was determined not to be discouraged and not to drop out. In her vanity, she did not wish to think of herself as
weak, coddled.

Her university students were almost uniformly excellent, and motivated. For she and her historian-husband taught at a prestigious private university. She'd never taught difficult students, public school students, remedial students or students in any way disabled, or “challenged.” At this time she was fifty-three years old and looking much younger, slender, with wavy mahogany-dark hair to her shoulders, and a quick friendly smile to put strangers at ease. She'd done volunteer work mostly for Planned Parenthood and for political campaigns, to help liberal Democrats get elected. She had never visited a prison, even a women's detention facility. She'd learned belatedly that her prison teaching at Rahway was limited to male inmates.

Of her eleven students, eight were African-American; two were “white”; and one was
Mattia, Joseph
—(she was certain now, the name had had an old-world religious association)—who had an olive-dark skin with dark eyes, wiry black hair, an aquiline nose, a small neatly trimmed mustache. Like his larger and more burly fellow inmates Mattia was physically impressive: his shoulders and chest hard-muscled, his neck unusually thick, for one with a relatively slender build. (Clearly, Mattia worked with weights.) Unlike the others he moved gracefully, like an athlete-dancer. He was about five feet eight—inches shorter than the majority of the others.

In the prison classroom Agnes had found herself watching Mattia, in his bright-blue prisoner's coverall, before she'd known his name, struck by his youthful enthusiasm and energy, the
radiance
of his face.

Strange, in a way Mattia was ugly. His features seemed wrong-size for his angular face. His eyes could be stark, staring. Yet, Agnes would come to see him as attractive, even rather beautiful—as others in the classroom sat with dutiful expressions, polite-fixed smiles or faces slack with boredom, Mattia's face seemed to glow with an intense inner warmth.

Agnes had supposed that Mattia was—twenty-five? Twenty-six? The ages of her students ranged from about twenty to forty, so far as she could determine. It would be slightly shocking to Agnes to learn, after the ten-week course ended, that Mattia was thirty-four; that he'd been in Rahway for seven years of a fifteen-year sentence for “involuntary manslaughter”; that he'd enrolled in several courses before hers, but had dropped out before completing them.

The dark-eyed young man had been unfailingly polite to Agnes, whose first name the class had been told, but not her last name.
Ms. Agnes
in Mattia's voice was uttered with an air of reverence as if—so Agnes supposed—the inmate-student saw in her qualities that had belonged to his mother, or to another older woman relative; he was courteous, even deferential, as her university students, who took their professors so much more for granted, were not.

Mattia was the most literate writer in the class, as he was the sharpest-witted, and the most alert. His compositions were childlike, earnest. Yet, his thoughts seemed overlarge for his brain, and writing with a stubby pencil was a means of relieving pressure in the brain; writing in class, as Agnes sat at the front of the room observing, Mattia hunched over his desk frowning and grimacing in a kind of exquisite pain, as if he were talking to himself.

Sometimes, during class discussion, Agnes saw Mattia looking at her—particularly, at
her
—with a brooding expression, in which there was no recognition; at such times, his face was masklike and unsmiling, and seemed rather chilling to her. She hadn't known at the time what his prison sentence was for but she'd thought
He has killed someone. That is the face of a killer.

But, as if waking from a trance, in the next moment Mattia smiled, and waved his hand for Agnes to call upon him—
Ms. Agnes!

She loved to hear her name in his velvety voice. She loved to see his eyes light up, and the masklike killer-face vanish in an instant, as if it had never been.

Instructors in the composition course used an expository writing text that was geared for “remedial” readers yet contained essays, in primer English, on such provocative topics as racial integration, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, freedom of speech and of the press, “patriotism” and “terrorism.” There was a section on the history of the American civil rights movement, and there was a section on the history of Native Americans and “European” conquest. Agnes assigned the least difficult of the essays to which her students were to respond in compositions of five hundred words or so.
Just write as if you were speaking to the author. You agree, or disagree
—just write down your thought.