Give Me Your Heart (26 page)

At this time, Les Orlander had been incarcerated at the men’s maximum-security prison at Ogdensburg for just six days.

4.

Ogdensburg.
Almost as far north as you could drive in New York State. And there was the St. Lawrence River, which was the widest river Miriam had ever seen. And beyond,
the province of Ontario, Canada.

Miriam asked Ethel could they drive across the bridge to the other side someday, after visiting Les, if it was a nice day and not windy and cold, and Ethel said, distracted, glancing in the
rearview mirror, where a diesel truck was bearing close upon her on Route 37, “Why?”

It added something to the prison, Miriam wanted to think, that it had once been a military fort. Built high on a hill above the river, to confound attack. From the access road the prison was too
massive to be seen except as weatherworn dark gray stone, like something in an illustrated fairy tale of desolation and punishment. Beside the front gate was a plaque informing visitors of the
history of the prison: “Fort La Presentation was built in 1749 by French missionaries. It was captured by the British in 1760 and its name changed to Fort Oswegatchie. After the Revolution,
it was the site of several bloody skirmishes in the War of 1812. In 1817 its name was changed to Ogdensburg, and in 1911 it was converted into the first state prison for men in northern New York
State. In 1956—” Ethel interrupted irritably, “As if anybody gives a damn about history who’d be coming here.” Miriam said, stung, “Not everybody is like you,
Mom. Some people actually want to learn something.” Miriam made it a point to read such plaques when she could. So much was shifting and unreliable in her life; at least history was real.

It was a way too of telling Ethel,
You aren’t so smart. You didn’t graduate from high school. As I am going to do.

Probably Ethel was right, though. Visitors to Ogdensburg had other things on their minds.

Everywhere were signs.
PRISON PERSONNEL ONLY. RESTRICTED AREA. TRESPASSERS SUBJECT TO ARREST. VISITORS’ PARKING. VISITING HOURS. PENALTIES FOR VIOLATION OF CONTRABAND
RESTRICTIONS
. A ten-foot stone wall topped with coils of razor wire surrounded the prison. Once you got through the checkpoint at the gate, you saw an inner electrified six-foot wire fence,
angled sharply inward. Whenever she saw this fence, Miriam felt a clutch of panic, picturing herself forced to climb it, like a frantic animal scrambling and clawing to twist over the top, cutting
her hands to shreds on the glinting razor wire. Of course she’d have been shocked unconscious by the electric voltage.

No one had escaped from Ogdensburg in a long time.

Ethel was saying with her bitter-bemused laugh, “Damn prisons are big business. Half the town is on the payroll here. Guards run in families.”

Once you passed through the first checkpoint, you were outdoors again, waiting in line with other visitors. It was a windy November day, blowing gritty snow like sand. The line moved slowly.
Most of the visitors were women. Many had children with them. Many were black, Hispanic. From downstate. A scattering of whites, looking straight ahead.
Like sisters,
Miriam thought. No one
wanted to be recognized here. Miriam dreaded seeing someone from the Ochs family who would know Ethel. She hadn’t told Ethel what Lana Ochs had said on the bus that everyone had heard.
Your father and my father. In the same place.

Miriam didn’t know why Lana’s father was in prison. She supposed it had to do with theft, bad checks. Though it might have been assault.

It wasn’t uncommon for men in the Star Lake area to get into trouble with the law and to serve time at Ogdensburg, but no one in the Orlander family had ever been sent to prison before.
Miriam remembered her mother screaming at her father,
How could you do this, so ashamed, ruined our lives, took our happiness from us and threw it into the dirt and for what!

Miriam had pressed her hands against her ears. Whatever her father had answered, if he’d shouted back or turned aside, sick and defeated, Miriam hadn’t known.

It was true: Les had taken their happiness from them. What they hadn’t understood was their happiness, because they’d taken it for granted, not knowing that even ordinary unhappiness
is a kind of happiness when you have both your parents and your name isn’t to be uttered in shame.

Les had been incarcerated now for nearly eighteen months. Gone from the house on Salt Isle Road as if he’d died.
Doing time.

Miriam had constructed a homemade calendar. Because you could not buy a calendar for the next year and the next and the next, at least not in Star Lake. On the wall beside her bed she marked off
the days in red.
Wishing-away time
was what it was. Miriam overheard her mother saying on the phone,
You wish away time, like wishing away your life. Goddamn if I’m going to do
that.

Miriam hadn’t understood what Ethel meant. She’d understood the fury in her mother’s voice, though.

Les Orlander’s sentence was five to seven years. Which could mean seven years. Miriam would be nineteen when he was released and could not imagine herself so old.

“Move along. Coats off. Next.”

They were shuffling through the second checkpoint, which was the most thorough: metal detector; pockets and handbags emptied onto a conveyor belt; coats, hats removed, boots. Ethel was flushed
and indignant, struggling to remove her tight-fitting boots. Each visit to Ogdensburg was stressful to her. She seemed never to accept the authority of others to peer at her, examine her
belongings, query her. She was an attractive woman of whom men took notice, if only to stare at her, then dismiss her: a face no longer young, a fleshy, sloping-down body. Breasts, hips. Since her
husband’s arrest and imprisonment she’d gained weight. Her skin seemed heated. Her dark hair was streaked with gray as if carelessly. In the parking lot she’d smeared dark
lipstick onto her mouth, which was now down-turned, sullen. The black female security guard was suspicious of her. “Ma’am? I’m asking you again, all the contents of that bag
out.”
Ethel’s hands were shaking as she fumbled to comply. Miriam was quick to help. Under duress, she immediately became Ethel’s daughter. She would side with her mother
against others, by instinct.

Orlander, Ethel,
and
Orlander, Miriam,
were checked against a list. A guard directed them into another crowded waiting room. Hard not to believe you were being punished. Related to
an inmate, a criminal, you deserved punishment too.

Everywhere they looked were glaring surfaces. Rooms brightly lit by fluorescent tubing. Linoleum floors, pale green walls. Where a surface could be buffed to shine, it shone. Miriam had never
smelled such harsh odors. Disinfectant, Ethel said. “One good thing, there’s no germs in this damn place. They’d all be killed.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure, Mom. We’d be killed before that.”

“God, I hate it here. This place.”

“Think how Daddy feels.”

“Daddy.” Ethel’s voice quavered with contempt.

Don’t hate Daddy!
Miriam wanted to beg.
We are all he has.

The night before, Miriam hadn’t been able to sleep. Misery through the night. She could feel her skin itching, burning. Her sensitive skin. Rehearsing what she would tell her father that
would make him love her. That was all it was, trying to make Daddy love her. When she’d been a little girl, the baby of the family, it had been so easy; Daddy had loved her, and Mommy, and
her big brothers, who’d adored her when they had time for her. Then something happened. Miriam had gotten older; Daddy wasn’t so interested in her or in his family. Daddy was
distracted; Daddy was in one of his moods. Drinking, Miriam knew. That was it. Part of it. He’d had disagreements with the roofing contractor for whom he worked. He’d tried working on
his own, but that brought problems too. Ethel said,
Things change, people change. What’s broke can’t be made whole again,
but Miriam didn’t want to believe this.

Driving to Ogdensburg that morning, Ethel had been unusually quiet. That week she’d worked at Tupper Lake for two days, two nights and so she’d had that drive and now the drive to
Ogdensburg and she was tired. She was tired, and she was resentful. Not one of Miriam’s brothers was coming this time, which meant Ethel had to drive both ways. Miriam was only thirteen, too
young for a driver’s permit. Ethel had her own life now. In Tupper Lake. At home, the phone rang for her and she took the portable out of the room, speaking guardedly. Miriam would hear her
laugh at a distance. Behind a shut door.

She’s seeing men. Les better not know.
Miriam’s brothers were uneasy, suspicious. Gideon hadn’t yet confronted Ethel. Miriam was frightened, preferring not to know.

Her skin! Her face. Broken out in hives and pellet-hard little pimples on her forehead; her fingernails wanted to scratch and scratch.

“Miriam, don’t.”

Ethel caught Miriam’s hand and gripped it tight. What had Miriam been doing, picking at her face? She was stricken with embarrassment. “Do I look really bad, Mom? Will Daddy
notice?” Ethel said quickly, “Honey, no. You look very pretty. Let me fluff your bangs down.” Miriam pushed her mother’s hands away. She was thirteen, not three. “I
can’t help it, my face itches. I could claw my ugly face off.” Miriam spoke with such vehemence, Ethel looked at her in alarm.

“Yes. I know how you feel. But don’t.”

At last they were led into the visitors’ room, where Inmate Orlander was waiting. Ethel poked Miriam in the side. “Smile, now. Give it a try. Look at Momma—I’m
smiling.”

Miriam laughed, startled. Ethel laughed. Clutching at each other, suddenly excited and frightened.

“Go on, honey, Your daddy wants to see you.”

Ethel urged Miriam in front of her, like a human shield. The gesture was meant to be playful, but Miriam knew better. Ethel would hold back while Miriam talked with Les; she wasn’t so
enthusiastic about seeing him as Miriam was. They had private matters to discuss. Their transactions were likely to be terse, tinged with irony and regret.

Miriam smiled and waved at her father, who was standing stiffly behind the Plexiglas partition waiting for his visitors. Les Orlander in olive-drab prison clothes, one inmate among many.

Here was the shock: the visitors’ room was so large, and so noisy. You wanted the visit to be personal, but it was like TV, with everyone looking on.

And the plastic partition between. You had to speak through a grill, as to a bank teller.

Les was frowning. Seeing Miriam, he smiled and waved. Miriam didn’t want to see how he glanced behind her, looking for Miriam’s brothers and not seeing them.

Third visit in a row, not one of Les’s sons.

“Sweetie, hi. Lookin’ good.”

He would look at her, smile at her. He wouldn’t ask about the boys in Miriam’s hearing.

“. . . got something for me there?”

They brought Les things he couldn’t get for himself: magazines, a large paperback book of maps,
Civil War Sites.
These Miriam was allowed to give to her father, with a guard looking
on. Harmless items, printed material. Les seemed genuinely interested in the Civil War book, leafing through it. “We’ll go to Gettysburg. When I get out.”

It was unusual for Les to allude to getting out to Miriam. There was a kind of fiction between them, in this place, of timelessness; so much energy was concentrated on the present, cramming as
much as you could into a brief visit, there wasn’t time to think of a future.

“So—what’s new, honey? Tell me about school.”

School! Miriam couldn’t think of a thing.

For visiting Daddy she’d cultivated a childish personality not her own. Like auditioning for a play, reading lines with a phony forced enthusiasm and smiling with just your mouth. Bad
acting and everyone knew, but it had to be done, for you could not read in your own flat, raw voice. To sound sincere you had to be insincere. Miriam told her father about school. Not the truth but
other things. Not that this past year her teachers seemed to feel sorry for her, or that she hadn’t many friends now, in eighth grade; she’d lost her closest girlfriends, like Iris
Petko, whom she’d known since first grade, guessed their mothers didn’t want them to be friendly with Miriam Orlander, whose father was incarcerated in a maximum-security prison. Miriam
supposed that Les didn’t know what grade she was in or how old she was exactly, for he had other things on his mind of more importance. Still, he seemed to want to hear her news, leaning
forward cupping his hand to his ear. In prison he’d become partially deaf in his right ear; the eardrum had burst when someone (guard? inmate?) had struck him on the side of the head shortly
after he’d arrived at the prison. Les had not reported the injury, as he hadn’t reported other injuries and threats, saying that if he did, next time it would be his head that was
busted, like a melon.

Miriam’s father was a stocky, compact man in his late forties. He’d had a hard-boned good-looking face, now battered, uncertain. Scars in both his eyebrows like slivers of glass. His
dark hair had been razor-cut military style, leaving his head exposed and vulnerable, the tendons in his neck prominent. He was prone to moods, unpredictable. His eyes were often suspicious,
guarded and watchful. Miriam loved him but also feared him, as her brothers did. So much of her life had been waiting for Daddy to smile at her, to single her out from the others in his sudden,
tender way; as if Daddy’s feeling for Miriam overcame him, caught him by surprise.

Hey, sweetie
—
love ya!

He’d been wounded by life, Miriam knew. The hurt he’d done another man had rebounded to him, like shrapnel. Les had the look of a trapped creature. You never wanted to antagonize
him; he had a way of striking out blindly.

At Ogdensburg, Les was assigned to the metal shop. Making license plates, dog tags. His pay was $1.75 an hour.

Again he was thanking Miriam for the Civil War book. The Civil War was one of Miriam’s father’s interests, or had been. Les had never been in the army, but his father, Miriam’s
grandfather she’d never known, had been an army corporal who’d died in his second tour of Vietnam, long ago in 1969. Les’s feeling for his father was a confusion of pride and
anger.