Chapter 17: Mom’s visit
Jared’s sister Delores steers them towards an empty row with four chairs, their friend Gene’s arm quietly circling Mom’s waist. The many others in the visiting room give only brief notice—their eyes glance up then quickly down in involuntary protectionism, defensive curiosity.
“Mom, it’s okay.” Jared sways her full-body side to side. She stifles her loud sobbing. Her head rests momentarily on his shoulder. The intense scrutiny of the visiting room guard, whom the inmates call the Watcher, makes her uncomfortably self-conscious. He walks slowly around the room stopping for a word with an inmate or a family member, even seems amiable, but she feels like he’s looking at her all the time: examining her, finding fault with her. Bad mother!
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m fine. Things are okay.” Jared hugs her hard again, almost lifts her off the ground. His lips are moist and touch her forehead in soft markings. She has quieted. Slowly, she settles, composed. Then she wipes her heavy tears with the back of her hand. So it is. This phase of her mothering journey has begun. My son is in prison.
“Hi, Gene,” a handshake. “Delores, my love,” an embrace and playful kiss. Tears are held back. They find strength in being family. The foursome arranges itself in a half circle.
“You’re looking good, son,” as Mom rummages in her purse for a cigarette. “How are things going?”
Jared pauses then chuckles with a slightly audible sound. “Well,” left hand smoothing the back of his head, “I’ve lost some hair—as you can see. More than even before. And I’m cutting some of this stuff off,” as he rubs his stomach, “and all in all . . . it’s a drag.” He shrugs then self-consciously laughs at himself. “You know, if I get rapping about everything that’s been going down since I’ve been here . . . what is it, three weeks? Hmm, I’m sure that doesn’t seem like much time to you all, but wow! What a month I’ve been having. But before I dive into that, tell me what’s going on. For starters,” he leans towards Gene, “what have you two been doing? A lot of sinning, I hope!”
Delores, the sixth of the Jennings seven, just eighteen months older than Jared, flushes as she moves her hand off Gene’s knee.
Mom starts to say, “Since . . .” but is interrupted by a stern background voice.
“Sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to keep your seat in a straight line.”
Mom is startled by the Watcher. He’s directly behind her. She pivots slightly, confronts an expressionless face. “The chairs have to be straight all the time.” Mom moves, obediently, reacting instinctually to his policing authority. “It’s policy.” A slight explanation, “That way all visitors can move around easily.”
Dolores and Gene follow in lockstep. All their straightening is done before any of them can collect their thoughts. Jared glares angrily at the Watcher. Fuck! What can I do? You fucking Nazi!
Once the Watcher’s gone, Jared’s leans in, lowers his head towards the others to create some semblance of privacy.
“Why do they do that?” Mom asks.
A moment’s silence slips between them. But the room isn’t quiet. It’s buzzing with skidding sounds of children running toys over Masonite tiles in concert with skidding sounds of dry emotions raising friction as they rub against drier emotions. Jared’s answer comes quietly but laced with anger. “These fuckers have a rule for everything. And they love to come over and jerk visitors around. But don’t worry, they really can’t do anything drastic. I’m entitled to my four visits. All they can do is bug us.”
Mom responds in typical mom fashion: consoling, comforting, ignoring his profanity, not wanting to correct him, not in this place. “I guess they have their rules, son. It’s not such a big thing for me as long as I can see you like this. Remember how ugly it was in the jail? With that glass window between us. We’re lucky they don’t restrict us like that.”
“Stop!” Jared raises his hand. “Let’s not get into that way of thinking. You’re going to be coming here for quite some time—five friggin’ years—and you can’t let those fuckers get you down. Realize this, to them you’re as subhuman as I am. Since you’re my mom, you’re responsible for me. Guilty!”
Mom puffs her cigarette—not nervously but as she always does when Jared begins to lecture—puffing serially.
She deeply loves him, yet there are distances always between them. Early in the moments of their first fleshly touches she realized how much he loved her. Just cleaned, from the nursery, he comes to her, oh so beautiful, a quiet beatific baby with small hands clutching her skin and his head moving so spastically side to side as if he’s trying to imprint his face on her breasts. She loves him as she has loved them all but this time—with her seventh—she feels a strange distance as if he has come already speaking like a mature person, telling her that she is as much his child as he is hers. More than her flesh, he is part of her spirit.
During her hospital stay, as this strange sense subsides and she watches him melt into sleep, she determines that this her seventh is different simply because he is her seventh. After all there are six others at home. Six others who have such claim on her time and energy. This time, she concludes, I must be feeling more of being a mother than simply a woman bearing a child. Even so, this explanation never satisfies her.
Now, sitting here in this strange place, watching him as he talks with his sister and her former fiancé, these memories serve to heighten her awareness of how much she loves him, her last one. Loves him almost as she did Chester, the good man of her conceptions.
Chester who had a special fondness for Jared, too, but never felt that he quite understood the child. How often it moved her that Chester singled out Jared for special attention. Paid him more mind in ways that didn’t take away from the other kids but took some time away from her. As if Chester also realized that Jared was a full presence, even in toddler’s clothes. And it had continued like that until his death. Chester spent incessant hours pouring his mind and soul into Jared. From the time the child’s body was carrying a speaking mind his father drew him into deep conversations about God and the meaning of life. All through the years of education and bodily growth Chester sat for hours debating and discussing, baffled by his son’s sensitivity and his arrogance. So many days had they started by praying at Mass together. And it was only with Jared that Chester had shared the anguish of Joey’s death. Only with him that he uttered the question to which his life denied an answer, “Why would God allow a small child to suffer so?”
At his dad’s funeral, Jared stepped into the pulpit and gave tribute to Chester, her good man.
My fellow Christians. Those of you who have known my father have said that he was a “dedicated and unselfish man in his love” and an “exceptional man in his integrity.” But allow me to say that as I remember Father, and as I know Father, the description which he lived is that he is a good man.
With roses in their hands and cold white snow on their feet, all had placed their hearts upon the open grave. Truly, gratefully, through Jared had her own words been spoken to him whom she so passionately loved. He who had been her true love. Oh, how often has this son brought all this forth?
“ . . . and so they stand us up and make us take our clothes off. Everything—everything, totally naked. And then we go through this insane ritual of tilting our heads, opening our mouths, running our fingers through our hair, bending over and pulling our butts apart, picking up our feet,” Jared is talking feverishly, “and then they check all of our clothes.” He stops the hurried flow of words, suddenly getting a sense of the avalanche of emotion that’s coming through them. “Okay,” with his right hand running through his hair, “let’s break and get some coffee.”
After Gene and Jared go for coffee, Delores turns to her mother. “He always gets so wrapped up in what he’s doing. I certainly hope he won’t hurt himself.”
Mom catches that constant concern for hurt that this child carries so shamelessly in her eyes. Gathering her words, ones that she uses so reg
ularly to soothe Delores’s fears for Jared, she says, “Now Delor, you know he has to do what he has to do. He’s come through a lot and always manages to balance himself out. That’s why I don’t think we should worry too much.”
Delores resettles herself in the body-molded chair. “I hope—I guess you’re right, Mom. But I can’t help but worry that someday he’ll push himself just a little too far.”
“Who gets the cream?” Gene asks.
“That’s mine,” Jared’s voice catches up with him. “I thought I’d better start using cream since I’ve been drinking coffee like a fish for the last couple of days.”
Gene and Jared sit down and hand the others their Styrofoam cups.
“Jared, I want you to know that I really admire all you’ve been doing,” Gene pauses and looks at the three. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back in the family fold and I haven’t had any time to sit down and tell you how I feel. I want you to know I followed your activities in the papers and always respected the stand you took.” Delores lays her arm on the back of Gene’s chair as he speaks. “And I know you’ll get through this wretched place in one piece. I hope that I can keep coming up with Delor.” He glances towards Delores whose eyes close in a modest blush.
“Hmm, you two are really getting it back together, eh?” teases Jared.
“Now cut that out,” Delores titters while leaning her head as far back as the chair will allow. She’s embarrassed, as she so characteristically gets in front of the family when they talk about her love life.
“Mom, what do you think? Think we should let this scalawag back into our lives?” Before Mom answers, Jared says, “Hey, brother Gene what are you bringing to us? Did you get your master’s? Are you prepared to support my sister in the style she’s accustomed to? Let’s see, the last dude she played around with was a millionaire or something like that.”
“Jared! Stop that! You’re hurting your sister.”
It’s big brother buffoonery hurt and it kicks in their mother’s protective defense. She takes out a new cigarette pack, taps it on the table. She’s building a space, a barrier in time, to shift connections, alter the levels of intensity. Methodically, she tears the cellophane band, pins back the aluminum inner sheath into winged triangles, then perfectly shears them with a fingernail, lastly tapping out a cigarette. Sometimes, five to ten taps, at others with just one. Here, she has it in her mouth by the third tap. Before lighting it she leans over and with her free hand pats Delor’s left knee. “Delor’s a fine woman and Gene’s a lucky man. Right?”
“Right, Mom,” Gene says in a faithfully obedient son tone.
“And you, Jared . . . talk about love lives, what’s happening with you and Char?” Mom lights up.
What should I tell them? Jared slowly sips his coffee once, twice, a third time.
“C’mon, tell us, Jared. How is Char?” Delores asks with her usual sincere concern.
“Char’s just fine. She plans to start coming up about every week. She’s writing me now and then.” Pause. “Things between us are good but they’re changing.” Another pause. “I mean, you know when you’re away from someone for a long time—well, you can’t expect everything to remain as it was.”
“I know,” Mom comforts and assures; her eyes see his heartbreak.
“She’s going through some heavy changes. Her travels in Europe are strengthening her feminist politics. She misses us all. She regrets that my first month here is when she’s there. The women she’s meeting are giving her a lot of inspiration.” Jared stops to drain the last trace of fluid from his cup. “I guess I’ll know more when she comes up next month.”
“Jared,” Mom asks, “do you feel that she . . .”
“Now hold on, Mom,” Jared breaks in, “don’t ask me to judge anything about my relationship with Char. She’s dealt with the things I’ve been going through in the last several years and I’ve gained a lot of strength from her. I know the family doesn’t understand what she’s doing with her life but she’s a good woman, and we’ll just have to let things stand with that.”
“That’s not what I was going to ask,” Mom says, a bit irritated. “I was simply going to ask whether you felt that she was going to continue nursing. You shouldn’t be so defensive about her!” Two puffs and a mist of smoke envelopes the group. “I’ll agree, we’re all still confused over the form of your relationship, but we like her—very much. She sent me a card from Dublin. And I think she has, from one spot or another, mailed a card to everyone in the family.”
Mom pauses to crush her half-smoked cigarette then, “What she’ll be like towards us is something we’ll have to see when she returns. We have no great expectations. But we all like her—very much.”
Jared regrets his gush of defensive emotions. He doesn’t want to bring Mom or Delores or Gene down. They’re here for just a few hours and he wants the visit to be an upper.
“Yeah, okay, I guess I kind of feel ambiguous about Char and everything. Being here really messes up my feelings. Char’s my only contact with the female world and I am protective about her. Yesterday Sean and I got into a snit over her while playing basketball.”
Jared leans forward, elbows on knees, hands holding his chin. “Guess it’s best that we don’t go too heavily into my emotions about women.” With that said he senses that they need a break from him. “I have to go to the john. Why don’t you get some more coffee and, say, pick up a nut-roll. I’ll be back soon.”
As Jared rises he once again becomes aware of the room. He observes the movements between folks around him—hands on knees, women holding babies in their arms, men lunging into embraces, hard squeezes and kisses… the density of erotic substance scurrying over the walls and into the seats and out the windows…the darting probes of the Watchers. All swirls about him as he walks towards the inmates’ john. Simultaneously, the other three look for change for the vending machines, open purses for more cigarettes, and stand to smooth their clothes, now damp from sitting so long in one position.
That night, Jared writes to his Mom.
“Dear Mom: This may be hard for you to understand. But please trust me. Having you walk in here, into this Cage, well, I hate to see you have to come here. This is a cathedral. But to an alien god. Or gods. What I’m trying to say is that just as the Mass is a repetitious banality—one being said every minute of the day around the world with the same predictable gestures and holy grunts and groans—so is Prison.
No, I’m not being clear. Maybe that IS what I AM trying to say. It is not clear in here, and it is not clear when you are here. Trust me on this. I want you to come and visit but only for one-half hour. No more, no less. I feel that this is a dangerous place for you. Trust me on this. Just trust me even if it is unclear. I am unclear, I know.
Your loving son, Jared.”