“Good morning, Miss Casket,” he said.
His toothy grin was a tad unsettling. I wasn’t sure if he had remembered me or had read my name off the screen.
“Good morning. How are you?”
“I’m good, I’m very good,” he said. “I see you’re fifteen minutes early this morning.”
“I thought I’d make your life easier, Gus.”
“Who the blazes is Gus?”
I pointed to the nameplate on his chest.
“You need to get your glasses checked,” he said. “My name is God.”
I snorted. “God? You’re joking.”
His grin melted. “No, ma’am. My parents figured that no one would ever tease me with a name like God. After all, you cannot take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Were they right?”
“Let’s put it this way, I get all the overtime I want,” he said.
“Do you have a son named Jesus?”
He didn’t smile. “I need to see your ID, Miss Casket.”
I handed him my driver’s license, my shoulder straining from the effort. “I suppose with a name like God, even the gray clouds would make you proud.”
God typed my name into the computer. “You’re here to see Phyllis Martin, correct?”
“That is correct.”
“Purpose of your visit?”
“To visit,” I said coldly.
“I need a little more than that.”
“You didn’t ask the other times.”
“You’re not kin and yet you’ve visited this inmate multiple times now. When certain patterns emerge, precaution is necessary.”
“Fine, she’s my reference,” I said. “For a potential business relationship.”
God shook his head in disbelief and passed my driver’s license down to me. This past winter, I had finally swapped my New York license for one from Maine.
“I can’t say taking advice from a felon is a wise decision, but whatever. It ain’t my call. You’ll want to pull ahead and make a left.”
“Same as before?”
“Same as before,” he confirmed. “Good luck in there. I’m looking forward to the highlight reel.”
“The what?”
“You have a good day, ma’am,” God said. He slid his window closed and went back to his powdered donuts.
I parked in the visitor’s lot, left my handbag in the car, pulled a metal barrette out of my hair and a ballpoint pen out of my pocket, and left them both in the center console.
In the lobby, I met the first of the corrections officers. He gave me a thorough pat down, his right hand stopping on the hard square of my butt. His palm stayed there way longer than I was comfortable with.
“What is this?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of squats lately,” I said. “Helping old ladies onto the dock.”
“Take it out.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The last time I was here, they hadn’t bothered taking it. “It’s just my phone.”
“There are no mobile devices allowed inside the prison, ma’am. They are the most coveted item in here.”
“More than toilet paper?”
He stared at me.
“That was a joke,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with a smile now and then, is there?”
“Only on Christmas.”
It wasn’t much different from teaching. “I brought my phone last time, but it wasn’t a problem.”
“Who did you visit?”
“The same person. Phyllis Martin.”
The CO’s lip curled and he bared a single tooth, large and sharp. He took a clipboard from the counter and made a note. “We’ll check on that. Sometimes my fellow officers can be a bit sloppy depending on the level of security.”
“You mean because I was in the women’s part of the prison?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but it’s what you meant,” I said. “It’s really important that I take the phone inside with me. I need to show her a picture I have on this phone.”
“Phones are not allowed, ma’am. The rules are the rules.”
“It’s not pornography or anything.”
“Ma’am, if you ask one more time—“
“There’s like two inches of glass between us. It’s not as if I’m going to be able to pass it to her or anything.”
“Would you like to turn around and leave, ma’am?”
“No, sir,” I said meekly.
He opened a locker on the wall and tossed my phone inside.
“Be careful with that,” I said. “I finally got a new one.”
The visitation room was darker and dirtier than I remembered, more fingerprints on the glass. I supposed this was because so many stupid women stayed loyal to their incarcerated men. Like the Bureau of Prisons and the state of Maine, they thought they could play the game of “fixer.” They thought they could take a damaged man, put him on the stove, and by applying lots of heat, transform him into a new, delicious concoction.
But they always got their fingers burned.
Not me. I knew people didn’t change. I never looked in the mirror one morning and suddenly saw a different face.
Case in point: I was still an alcoholic. I just didn’t drink anymore. And pretending I wasn’t an alcoholic would send me down a dark and dangerous path.
It was the same with Phyllis Martin. Thinking prison had changed her would be a huge mistake.
A total of ten stations cut the visitation room right down the middle. Security cameras were mounted in all four corners, the servos grinding audibly in the silence of the room as the cameras rotated to cover each booth. I chose the station farthest to the left and plopped onto the metal chair as gracelessly as dropping a bag of groceries if you didn’t care about the eggs.
I bounced my foot to burn off my anxiety. Like the stalls between the urinals in a men’s bathroom, the visitation stations had dividers between them. I reached a finger toward the window and tapped the glass, but the glass was so solid it didn’t make a sound.
“Retract your finger, ma’am,” the guard in the corner said.
“But there’s no one here.”
He pointed to a sign on the wall. Like the placards on a cage at the zoo, it read: No Tapping on the Glass.
“Yes, sir,” I grunted. I put my hand in my lap and squeezed it between my thighs. Security had definitely improved since I last came to visit. There must have been a new warden.
A few minutes later, on the other side of the
