TWENTY-FIVE
I once read that the recipe for a good life had but three ingredients: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.
I had my children, Gita, and Rose to love. And now that I was volunteering at Second Chance, I had something to do. Felicia had asked me to put in five hours a week, but there was enough work to fill forty, and I had already told her I would gladly double my shifts.
It seemed again, however, that I had nothing to look forward to. For a long time after Adam left, the only good thing I could anticipate was a glass of wine at the end of the day. That had begun to turn around for me in Ann Arbor, even though my future remained a murky cloud on the horizon. I had Charlie to thank for some of that; life was brighter when I was with him, and when I wasn’t, I was always looking forward to the next time we would be together.
Beyond Charlie, though perhaps partially because of him, I had begun to recover from the divorce. Finally, I was able to get excited about what was around the corner—whether my morning coffee run or the kids’ upcoming visit to Ann Arbor. It was like I had slowly begun to remember what it was like to be the old me, even if I had not reinhabited her.
But now I was starting to slide backward, away from myself and toward the unknown.
This time, however, I knew how to do this. I knew how to claw my way out of the dark.
The first thing I did was throw myself into work.
Felicia set me up in a brightly lit office in the small bungalow that was Second Chance’s headquarters. “You’re my only career counselor right now, so make yourself comfy,” she told me, and though I wasn’t sure why I was bothering sprucing up a space that I wouldn’t spend more than a few months in, I brought in a few houseplants and a couple pictures of the kids.
The work itself was all-consuming, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it. As I had learned as a social worker decades earlier and was again reminded at Second Chance, it was impossible to focus on your own worries when those of the person in front of you were so much greater.
There was Elizabeth, who had shot her abusive husband in an attempt to save her own life and was rewarded with a prison sentence for firing an unregistered gun. Elizabeth did not trust anyone, but especially not men, she told me. If I could not help her find a job where she wouldn’t have to be around them, then she wouldn’t keep coming to see me. This sounded like an impossibly tall order, but I promised her I would do my best.
Another client, Tonya, had robbed a 7-Eleven, netting ninety-six dollars and a twelve-year prison sentence. She was lucky to get out two years early, she said, but now she felt hopeless. “My kids were practically babies when I went away. Now they’re in high school, and I don’t know what to say to them,” she said, her voice void of affect.
I suspected Tonya was grappling with depression, but when I suggested she talk to Felicia, who was a certified counselor, or see a psychiatrist affiliated with Second Chance, Tonya told me she didn’t believe in voodoo or witch doctors. And when I started talking about potential jobs that might be a good fit, she stood up and walked out on me. “I’ll be back when I’m ready,” she said.
Then there was Crystal. A wisp of a woman, she stomped into my office one afternoon and stared me down from across my desk. Her hair was bleached blond, and she was wearing a t-shirt so large it threatened to swallow her whole; her bra, which was the color of dishwater, was visible through the armholes. “Don’t you have my record?” she retorted after I asked her why she had been in prison.
“Sure, but I want to hear your story from you,” I said.
“Drugs,” she said.
“And?”
“That’s it.” She was staring at me like I’d been the one to put her away in the first place. “What makes you think you can help me?”
I searched my mind for a reason that would not offend her and failed to find a single one.
“Exactly,” she said, looking me up and down. “As far as I can tell, you can’t.”
My defenses were on their way up, so I took what Gita called a cleansing breath, which neither cleansed nor calmed me. I wanted to remind Crystal that I was not her parole officer; she was at Second Chance by choice, not obligation, and at no cost to her. But even more than I wanted to clarify, I wanted to help her. I pasted a smile on my face. “I don’t know what you’ve been through. What I do know is that you need a job, and I have a list of leads for you.” I pushed the paper in front of me across the desk toward her.
She peered down at the list I had printed out. “I don’t know shit about baking. And I sure as shit am not cleaning toilets.”
“It’s up to you to decide what you want to pursue. Just keep in mind that the baking position provides on-the-job training; you don’t have to know anything. The pay is decent, and you could work early mornings so you’d be home for your daughter in the afternoon. In your paperwork, you mentioned that was a top priority. Is that still true?”
“I guess,” she said, and looked out the window.
I followed her gaze. It was a beautiful June day, clear and crisp and bright. The weather was perfect for a bike ride, or a picnic for two, I thought with a pang as I turned back to Crystal.
“I’ll think about it,” she said after a minute. “They’re not going to want me, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“’Cause I didn’t get the last four gigs I applied for. Didn’t the woman who worked here before you tell you that?”
I tugged at my ponytail, which suddenly felt far too tight. “No, she didn’t. I just started volunteering here, and whoever was here before was already long gone. Would you like me to help you fill out the application?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Like I said, let me think about it.”
I told her the job could be filled by next week, but if she wanted time, we could revisit it when she came in again. What I did not tell Crystal was that I was beginning to think waiting was often the worst idea. Sometimes the longer you thought about something, the harder it became to make a decision.
I had not spoken with Adam since he showed up at my door in May; the ring he had pressed into my hand was in a sealed envelope in my sock drawer. But he had been emailing what he must have thought of as the proof I had requested since the week after he left. His messages were brief missives that were addressed to me, but never signed:
Saved a client from a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit.
Sold the firm to Michael; half the profits from the sale go to you. My lawyer will reach out.
Was offered a full-time position at the Innocence Collaboration. Think I’m going to take it.
Clean bill of health from my surgeon.
Took the offer.
Have started meditating.
Each time one of these messages arrived, I thought, Is this enough?
And each time, I didn’t know.
It seemed to me that Adam was, as he had sworn, a changed man—and that he was still changing. Yet there was something about the situation with Jillian that didn’t sit right with me. Sometimes I wondered if she existed at all; other times, I felt she had a key to my husband’s secret heart.
She made me feel like I had options. Like I could make a change anytime I wanted to, he had said. But why? Was it her youth? Her adoration for him? If I figured out what it was about Jillian that had made Adam feel like he could change, could I take that knowledge and apply it to my new relationship with him in order to keep him from flip-flopping again?
One morning in mid-June, I stopped at Maizie’s before heading into Second Chance. Leah, a barista I was friendly with, was making my coffee, and I stood to the side, waiting for her to finish. As I waited, a tall, thin man wearing a suit strolled up to the counter. I immediately recognized him as Adrian Fromm.
“Large latte, two extra shots, please,” said Adrian, typing furiously on his phone. My mother, who had worked as a waitress off and on for years, had always said that you could tell who a person really was by watching the way he treated someone serving him. That Adrian had said “please” without actually looking at Walter seemed to sum him up perfectly.
“That’ll be three fifty,” said Walter agreeably.
Adrian reached into his back pocket and handed Walter a gold credit card without looking up. He signed the receipt Walter handed him, then shuffled to the side while typing—walking right into me in the process.
His fingers froze and he glanced up. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Then he immediately began typing again, perhaps updating his vast social network on the middle-aged woman he had just looked through.
“You don’t recognize me,” I said.
His head rose. Still, for a moment there was nary a light behind his eyes. Finally he said, “Maggie! Hello. Funny seeing you here.”
“Hi, Adrian. How are things at CenterPoint?”
He made the same duck face he had made during our interview. Then he said, “Good, good. Everything’s right on track.” Then he surprised me and said, “What about you, Maggie? Where did you land?”
“I’m working as a volunteer at Second Chance. It’s an organization that helps women transition back to everyday life after leaving prison. Ever heard of it?”
“Can’t say that I have, though it sounds like a great place. Volunteering, though? Wouldn’t coming to work for CenterPoint have made more sense for your career?”
He was wearing tortoiseshell glasses, and even inches from my face, the lenses did not distort his eyes in the slightest, making me wonder if they were non-Rx frames intended to lend him the gravitas he thought was required in order to convince people to hand over their cash.
“In theory?” I said. “Definitely. But I’m in a somewhat transitory period in my life, and I wanted to do the thing that interested me most, rather than the one that offered the safest path.” I smiled; I had not quite thought of it that way until I said it out loud.
“Maggie?” called Leah from over the bar. “Your cappuccino is up.”
I thanked her and retrieved my coffee from the counter. Felicia had recently told me that Second Chance could offer far more programs if only they had additional funding. Adrian had said the ability to raise capital was arguably the most charitable endeavor a person could undertake. Well, I was about to undertake it.
I turned back to Adrian. “If I recall, one of CenterPoint’s main missions is to secure financing for charitable organizations, yes?”
He nodded and took his coffee, which had just been called, from the counter.
“Would you mind if I gave you a call later this week about Second Chance? We have a literacy program and a housing initiative that we desperately need funding for, and I have a feeling our director would love to have a conversation with you about a possible partnership.”
Adrian stared at me for a moment. Then he smiled. “Call me anytime, Maggie. We’ll get a meeting on the books.”
I told him I would. Then I went outside and sat on a bench, thinking that I might have just seen the faintest glimmer of the light Gita had spoken of.