chapter twenty-nine

DECODING MANSON

Summer–Fall of 1998

 

It was a particularly dreary day at the prison. There was a cloud cover and the sky looked close to a downpour, so everyone crowded into the visiting room instead of going outside. The atmosphere was always close in there; on this day it was even closer and stuffier. I was always struck by how good-natured and polite everyone was, even when we were all bunched together with no privacy for conversations.

I got there late and Pat was clearly irritated. She always seemed this way when I first greeted her, but then again, I was quite often late. On the days that I flew directly from Northern California, there were many variables beyond my control—traffic to the airport during rush hour, flight delays, car rental hang-ups—all of which I explained or attempted to explain, but I’m not sure she ever bought my lack of culpability. Or maybe my tardiness wasn’t the issue at all. Maybe she was just moody.

I asked her if she wanted “the usual.” The usual was French vanilla coffee from the vending machine. She nodded. Pat had introduced me to this brew. Despite its ersatz ingredients, I liked the creamy sweetness. At the machine, we worked as a team: I put the dollars in the slot—prisoners are not allowed to handle money— and she retrieved the coffee. When she handed me my cup, it was too hot to drink. It always was and it always cooled in reverse proportion to Pat’s warming up to me. By the time the coffee was perfect drinking temperature, her attitude had softened. She smiled more readily, she even laughed. By then she would be asking me questions about my life instead of lecturing me on the bad state of the prison, the Department of Corrections, the country, the world. At the point in our visit when my coffee was decidedly cool, she was making me feel welcome rather than treating me like someone imposing on her time.

On my previous visit, Pat had just started talking about the process of freeing herself from Manson when the guard announced the end of visiting. Today, I asked her about it again. At first, she simply repeated what she’d said before: “It took a long time.” When I asked for more—What changed for you? What were the influences?—her replies consisted of shrugs, one-word answers, and short declarative sentences. But then, slowly, question by question, she started elaborating. She told me that the first tentative steps away from Manson occurred because of her relationship with Jean Oliver Carver, an inmate who shared the makeshift death row with Pat, Susan, and Leslie.

Carver, who had killed a woman evangelical minister in the course of a robbery, had seen much of the world’s dark side, generally, and a lot of the dark side of men, specifically. When Pat had first arrived she often talked dreamily about Manson, elaborating on the way he made her feel good about herself, the way he was endowed with special powers, the way he knew secret things about her and other people. Carver would say, “Honey, those are all old tricks. He sounds just like dozens of men I’ve known—hustlers, pimps, convicts.”

“That was the beginning of my deprogramming,” Pat said.

With Carver’s help, Pat started to question her passivity when she’d been with Manson. Fear of his diatribes kept her head down. But it wasn’t only fear that made her obedient. The entire time she was with Manson, in spite of his sexual relationships with other women, she harbored the fantasy that one day she would have children with him and they would be a family. “He knew how to pay just enough attention to me to keep that fantasy alive.” If he sensed that she was unhappy he’d make love to her or compliment her or make her feel special in some other way. But he also constantly assured her that no one else would ever love her or understand her the way he did. If she ever left him, he’d warn, she’d be dooming herself to a life without love.

At one point when she was talking to me, her mood shifted abruptly. Her mouth morphed from its vinegary pucker to a wider smile; her severe eyes softened, seemed bluer, more liquid, and she seemed far away. I asked what she was thinking about. “All of this talk about family makes me think about Anne Tyler. She’s my favorite writer. All of the families in her novels have problems, but reading her books fills me with longing. That’s when I most regret that I’ll never have a family.”

We were both quiet, sipping our very cold coffee.