Willa Busby is angry.
“It’s not right incinerating, I mean incarcerating, me like this is what I’m learning. Because it’s a disease I’ve got and not a conscious choice to keep fucking up. Like, get this, would you sanction locking cancer patients away just because they’ve taken ill?”
Dressed in robin’s-egg-blue inmate scrubs, Willa Busby paradiddles her fingers on the tin-topped table, tappity-tap, pulling a theatrical suck from her cigarette and waiting for this insight to work its inevitable magic upon Becca.
“I don’t think so, missus Porter,” she says from behind a white scrim of smoke. “It’d be barbaric treating an invalid that way. And you’re way too nice for putting in with the barbarians.”
They’re sitting on cheap, plastic-backed chairs inside the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center’s visiting area, a steel and concrete box with all the colorless, besieged appeal of an underground bomb shelter. Bars on the windows, deadbolts on the doors, ashtrays smoldering on every flat surface. Becca wound up waiting outside for more than an hour before the desk clerk called her name, feeling outright garish in her houndstooth pantsuit, and by the time she submitted to the prison’s brusque security protocol—first the metal detector, then the confiscation of her lipsticks, finally a humiliating pat-down (during which some eager-beaver guard just had to poke her fingers in Becca’s hair)—even Becca felt, if not quite criminal, then at least suspect.
“How are you holding up?”
A flagrant delight comes into Willa’s face.
“I’ve got a joke for you, missus Porter. Who’s the biggest thief ever?”
Becca shrugs. Willa’s been fast-talking at her like this for almost twenty minutes.
“It’s Atlas, because he held up the whole world.”
Willa slaps her knee, mashes another cigarette into the ashtray, leans back and war-whoops into the fluorescent lighting.
“Ha!”
There is a curious lack of chatter happening in the room. Not a few prisoners have retreated to the rabbit-eared television set in the corner to watch the O.J. Simpson trial.
It’s time to start the hard discussion, the one she’s been avoiding since that mannish female guard slammed the door shut behind her.
“Have you noticed, Willa, that in all the time we’ve been talking you’ve never once asked me about your son Caleb?”
Willa lights another cigarette.
“How’s Caleb?”
“Well, for now, both of his parents are in prison. So he’s a ward of the state, which has him in foster care. And he’s scared to speak. The only time I see Caleb is during his speech therapy, which thank God he’s still showing up for. So I’d say he’s having a lot of trouble dealing with things, with the things he saw in that hotel room. With things in general.”
“Things in general are hard to deal with,” Willa says, watching the television where, live from Los Angeles, Simpson’s limousine driver is saying: “. . . and O.J. told me, night after Nicole was murdered, told me he’d been having these dreams. Said he dreamed of killing her. Like he knew it was going to happen even before it did happen.”
Simpson stares bullets at the witness, shaking that big handsome head of his, furious. Attorney Robert Shapiro places a tentative hand on his client’s arm and whispers urgently into his ear.
“Have they let you see Caleb?”
“My D.O. says I’ve got to work the program first. Piss three months of clean samples. Get enrolled in a class or two. Make progress towards being a productive member of society.”
Becca caresses Willa’s fisted hand with her own.
“I did some looking into those classes. They have some really good ones. I’ve heard they can help you learn to cope. With things. With all of the stress you must be feeling. That if you do well, graduating can even reduce your sentence.”
Willa regards Becca’s fingers with something akin to pity but doesn’t pull away.
“That D.A. ain’t reducing a thing till Billy’s in the boneyard. While this trial’s going, he’s got me right where he wants.”
“What if he didn’t, though? What if you were released right now? Or next week or next month? Could you clean up, if it meant getting Caleb back?”
That same guard—Ben would call her butch—rattles the doorway grating with her nightstick.
“No touching.”
Becca releases her hold on Willa but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge the guard.
“The thing is, missus Porter, is this. Jail’s the worst place you can put a person like me. It’s almost as easy getting high inside as out. Hell, easier sometimes. Everything is. They feed me, they wash my clothes, they put me to bed on time. And the security system can’t be beat.”
“Parenting’s the hardest thing there is, Willa. The hardest thing. Especially for someone in your situation. There’s no shame in being overwhelmed by it.”
Willa’s head swivels back to the trial. “I used to think it was me caring for Caleb. Like, that’s the expected pattern, isn’t it? But truth be told, it straightened me out for a time, having him. Billy and I playing grownup for our baby. I remember we bought a crib one time, it was secondhand but still. I felt like . . . this is it. This is the purchase gets my life back on track. And for good, I’m thinking this time. And meaning it. But it never took.”
“What would you say if . . .”
“Isn’t it weird how I ended up needing more from my son than he needed from me? Doesn’t that sound like some kind of upside-down just . . . wrong, to you? You know, though . . .”
“. . . what if I were to . . .”
“. . . Caleb’s tough, missus Porter. He’ll pull through all this just fine.”
“. . . adopt your son?” Becca blurts. “My husband and I have raised two happy, successful kids of our own and we’d be the ones making the decisions about Caleb’s education and upbringing. Not the state. He’d have the best of everything, which isn’t to say he’d be spoiled because we don’t believe in spoiling a child. What I mean is that he wouldn’t want for anything. Anything at all. We’d make sure to find a good therapist and tutors, if he needs it, and if you agreed to all of this, if you signed some papers transferring your parental rights to us—Ben is my husband’s name, by the way, Benjamin Porter—Caleb could be out of foster care inside of a few months, at most. Right now he’s stuck there until you’re freed from prison. Maybe until you’ve served out parole. And who knows how long that could last? Not that you have to agree to this, Willa. Only if you thought it would help your son. But if you did think that, that I could, that we could, help Caleb or even just relieve the pressure off you, then we could talk more about it . . .”
Willa’s eyes are bright, still glued to the television. O.J. looks coiled, the muscles of his face seizing on seven separate frequencies, as if he might actually leap across the courtroom and strangle this limousine driver, who is clearly uncomfortable testifying against his former friend.
“Come on O.J.,” the witness pleads. “Why you got to be like that? I’m just telling them how it went down.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, missus Porter,” says Willa. “I love Caleb. I do. But the first place I’m going when they set me free is southside and get well.”
“So, but, Willa . . .”
“I think you’d be a real good mom. Better than me, that’s for sure. Better for Caleb. But it doesn’t matter what I think.” A pained, edgewise glimpse at Becca. “’Cause Billy would admit murder before giving Caleb away. He’d die first.”