special night program at UDC, funded by the District and local charities, set up to educate ex-offenders. Ali got Ben enrolled.
There he met his teacher, a kind and patient young woman named Cecelia Lewis. In the schools of his youth, and his high school classes at Pine Ridge, he had worked with instructors who tried to get him to read, and corrected him, always corrected him, when he could not make out words, and he became ashamed and got to where he hated to look at books. Miss Lewis read to him, which no one had ever done. She read from newspapers, comic books, books written for teenagers, and then from adult novels, not fancy ones, but clearly written books with good characters that anyone could appreciate and understand. She would read from a book, and he would hold a copy of that same book and follow along, and after months of this, twice a week at night, the words and sentences connected and became pictures in his head. He was reading, and a door opened, and when he went through it he felt as if things were possible now that had not been possible before. It was like putting on a pair of prescription eyeglasses for the first time. The world looked new.
Of course, he fell in love with Cecelia Lewis. He picked flowers from people’s gardens and window boxes on his walk to the Red Line train, handing them to her when he arrived at her classroom, and he wrote poems, sensing they were awful but giving them to her anyway to let her know that she had reached him deep.
They never did make it to bed. They never even kissed. When he finally expressed his feelings to her, she told him that it would be inappropriate for a teacher to have that kind of relationship with her student, that it was certainly not him, that she did care about him as a person, whatever that meant, and that they should remain friends. Her eyes told him something different, they said she was into him, but he understood her reticence and didn’t press it further. When the semester was over, he never saw her again. No matter. Cecelia Lewis had changed his life, and there would always be a place for her in his heart.
Ben had a girl now, nice woman named Renee, built low to the ground, lived over in Hyattsville and worked at a nail salon. She was easy to get along with. They stayed in mostly, had pizza delivered, sat together, and laughed. She didn’t complain about Ben watching his basketball on the TV, didn’t ask why he seldom took her to restaurants or clubs. Maybe she knew that he was uncomfortable in such places and, in general, out in the world. Renee was just cool with it. She was all right.
Ben’s cell sounded. Its ring tone was that old Rare Essence “Overnight Scenario” joint that Ben loved. He checked the ID and answered.
“Wha’sup, Chris?”
“Checkin up on you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not cryin over that bag of money, are you?”
“I wished I had it. But I’m not blown by it.”
“So what’re you doin?”
“ ’Bout to take a walk. You seein your redhead tonight?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Should I call you in the morning and wake your ass up?”
“No need. I’ll swing by and get you, same time as usual.”
Ben ended the call. He slipped Of Mice and Men, a worn Penguin edition he had bought used, into the rear pocket of his jeans and headed out the door in the direction of the cemetery. There was still an hour or so of summer light, enough for him to sit and read in peace.
Chris lived in a house that had been converted into three apartments on a street of single-family homes in downtown Silver Spring, just over the District line in Maryland. He had chosen it when he’d seen the built-in bookshelves in its living-room area, a place to house the many biography and US history titles that he read and collected. Ali had gotten him hooked with the Taylor Branch books on Dr. King and the civil rights movement, which were two volumes when Chris was incarcerated and had grown to a trilogy after his release. He liked anything by Halberstam, the unconventional takes on the world wars by Paul Fussell, David McCullough’s entire body of work, and war memoirs like E. B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed, which he felt was the finest book of its kind ever written. He was inspired by these extraordinary writers and their subjects, even as he was aware of and resigned to his own very ordinary life.
His place was small but entirely adequate for his needs. He did not have many possessions other than his books, and he kept a neat and uncluttered apartment. He lined his shoes up in pairs under his bed, heels out, as he had done beneath his cot at Pine Ridge. He had a small television set and bought the most basic cable package so that he could watch sports. Every morning, before he went to work, he made his bed.
The other tenants of the house were the Gibsons, a young punkish couple, the husband a rock musician, the wife a private music teacher, and Andy Ladas, a middle-aged man who kept to himself and smoked cigarettes on the porch at night as he slowly drank bottled beer. The four of them took turns mowing the lawn with regularity, and the couple went beyond the call and landscaped the yard, keeping the property in better shape than many of the homeowners on the block did. Despite this, there were rumblings on the neighborhood Listserve about keeping future renters off the street. If they wanted him gone, fine, he’d go. He’d had the sense that he’d be moving around frequently, anyway. That his would be that kind of nomadic life.
But he was feeling different lately, since he’d been going out with Katherine. Yeah, she meant more to him than the other young women he’d been with since coming out. If pressed, because he was not one to talk about such things, he’d even admit that he was in love with her. But also, he felt that this change in outlook had to do with his age. Just as it felt normal to rebel as a teenager, settling into something more permanent felt natural as he moved into the tail end of his twenties.
After a long shower, Chris dressed in Levi’s and an Ecko Unlimited button-down shirt, which he had purchased from the Macy’s up in Wheaton. Most of his peers from the neighborhood he’d grown up in shopped at Bloomingdale’s and Saks in Friendship Heights, or the Rodeo Drive-like stores that lined a block of Wisconsin Avenue across the Maryland line. Chris did not have the money to shop in those places, nor was he particularly cognizant of trendy fashion. The Macy’s where he shopped seemed to market to their black and Hispanic base in the Wheaton location, and he was cool with that. More accurately, he made do with what they offered. He could afford to shop there.
Chris drove the van over to PG County. It still held the old roll and padding, fitted between the buckets so that the rear doors would close, from the Bethesda job. He was headed to pick up Katherine at her parents’ home in University Park, a township of colonials and restored bungalows south of College Park.
Katherine’s father, James Murphy, was a tenured professor in arts and humanities at the University of Maryland. Her mother, Colleen, worked at a downtown think tank specializing in energy policy. Both were brilliant and perhaps overeducated to the point of social retardation. Their son had earned a bachelor’s degree but had no desire to go to graduate school and was working in New York as a boom operator on feature films. He was respected in his field, but his parents felt he had underachieved.
Their daughter, Katherine, had disappointed them completely. After graduating in low standing from Elizabeth Seaton, the Catholic girls’ high school in their area, she had floundered in PG Community College, dropped out, and had been working in the office of a warehouse for the past year. And now she was dating a man who installed carpet for a living and apparently had been incarcerated in his youth.
Chris understood their negativity. They were basically good people and in other circumstances they might have welcomed him into their home, but they wanted the best for their daughter. Admittedly he was not an exemplary prospect, but he cared for Katherine, respected her, and would protect her. He worked with his hands, but he worked hard and honestly. None of this was reassuring to her parents, but he was who he was, and for now it was the best he could do.
He stood on the stoop of their house and rang the doorbell.
Colleen Murphy answered. She was a tall brunette whose perpetually serious nature had taken a toll on her looks and spirit. Katherine had gotten her fair complexion and reddish hair from her father.
“Hey, Mrs. Murphy. How you doin?”
“I’m fine, Chris.”
“Is my friend ready?”
“Yes, just about. Would you like to come in?”
“Nah, this is fine.”
Chris had called Katherine from his cell when he was a few minutes away from the house, hoping she’d be
