Chapter 9 - Broken Dynasty
The Cuyahoga County holding facility’s non-contact visitation room was separated by thick panels of scratched, yellowing Plexiglas. Small black plastic telephone receivers hung from metal cords beside each station.
Evelyn Carter sat at station four, her hands resting on the stainless-steel counter. She looked seventy-five years older than she had on Christmas Eve. The camel-hair coat was gone, replaced by a cheap navy blue polyester windbreaker she had purchased at a discount store in Parma. Her silver hair was unstyled, cut into a blunt, uneven bob that she had clearly done herself in a small bathroom mirror.
On the other side of the glass, Mark sat down heavily, picking up the receiver.
"Mother," he said, his voice tinny and dead through the earpiece.
Evelyn picked up her receiver with a trembling hand. "Mark... your face. You look so thin. Are they feeding you?"
"It’s jail, Mother," Mark said, his tone devoid of warmth. "It’s not the Union Club. Did you bring the money for my commissary account?"
Evelyn flinched, looking down at the counter. "I... I couldn't, Mark. The check from the social services agency... it barely covers the electricity in that horrible apartment. They have radiators that hiss all night. The neighbors... they play music at all hours. I asked the building manager to intervene, and he laughed at me. He told me if I didn't like it, I could move to a shelter."
Mark let out a bitter, mocking snort. "So you have nothing. Just like me."
"Mark, how could this have happened?" Evelyn whispered, tears finally breaking through her faded mascara, running down the dry creases of her cheeks. "Your father worked so hard for our position. We were respected. We were invited to the governor’s ball every year. Now, when I walk into the grocery store, people turn their carts down another aisle. Mrs. Kensington saw me at the pharmacy yesterday and pretended she didn't know who I was!"
"Stop talking about your social life, Mother!" Mark snapped, his voice suddenly sharp with fury, slamming his free hand against the glass. "I am going to federal prison for seventeen years! Do you understand what seventeen years means? I will be sixty years old when I get out! I won't have a career! I won't have a license! I won't have a home! And you’re crying because Bitsy Kensington didn't wave to you in the aspirin aisle?"
Evelyn recoiled from the glass, her hand flying to her chest. "Mark! I am your mother! Everything I did was for you! I tried to get rid of that girl for you! I had the paperwork drawn up! I protected you!"
"You didn't protect me," Mark said, his eyes narrowing with a toxic, venomous realization. "You spent my entire life telling me that I was better than everyone else. You told me the rules were for small people, for people like Clare, for people who worked for hourly wages. You demanded a three-hundred-thousand-dollar lifestyle on an executive salary that couldn't support it! You pushed me to find more money, to keep up appearances, to keep the estate running!"
"That is a lie!" Evelyn gasped.
"You knew where the money was coming from, Mother," Mark hissed, pressing his forehead against the Plexiglas until his breath fogged the surface. "Every time I bought you a new car, every time I paid for your trips to Tuscany, you knew the company wasn't paying me that much. You didn't ask questions because you didn't care whose lives were ruined, as long as you could sit at the head of the table on Christmas Eve with your antique china."
Evelyn sat frozen, the brutal, unvarnished truth stripping away the last comforting delusions of her identity.
"And now," Mark whispered, his voice cracking with pure despair, "the china is gone. The house is gone. The name is garbage. Clare won, Mother. She took every single thing we had, and she did it by simply letting us be who we really were."
A guard tapped Mark on the shoulder, pointing to the door.
"Visiting time is over," Mark said, his face returning to the blank, emotionless mask of a federal inmate.
"Mark, wait! Don't leave me!" Evelyn cried, pressing her hand against the glass. "Who am I supposed to call? Who is going to take care of me?"
Mark did not answer. He hung up the black plastic receiver, turned his back on his mother, and walked through the heavy steel door back into the cellblock.
May you like
Evelyn sat alone at the counter, the dead dial tone buzzing in her ear, listening to the hollow echo of the institutional fluorescent lights humming above her head.
***
