It was usually a time for meditation, for escape. Whenever she sat typing in court, Clara would systematically shut down all those busy parts of her brain until all that remained was the tiny mechanism which turned words into twitches of hand muscles. Voices into phonetic code marks on a long roll of paper. She had roboticized herself for the whole process, shutting down emotions and opinions, quieting everything down so that some part of her working brain would hear the word and break it down into simple sounds. She would type out these sounds in short forms on a condensed keyboard. It was more like a musical keyboard than a computer’s, with the keys being pressed simultaneously to combine sound chunks. She felt that way, too, like a pianist, sitting rigidly still and upright and completely composed while the classical music flowed through her fingertips.

But today’s music was harsh and dissonant. It made meditation impossible. Escape, too.

 . . . please the court to go over evidence A2, medical records, release records from Orleans Medical . . .

She tried not to let herself hear the words. That was the job of Stenographer Clara, the worker bee. The robot. She tried not to let them seep beyond the borders of her psyche, travel nowhere past that small, confined space in her brain that let the work happen.

 . . . blunt-force trauma, deep tissue damage, puncture wounds from what could be discerned as . . .

No. She didn’t hear the rest. She only typed it out. She was only working.

 . . . a truly savage attack . . .

She kept typing.

 . . . were old bruises, old damage which points to a deeper, more systemic problem. A habitual problem.

It used to be habitual with Clara, too.

Fuck.

Keep typing.

Clara gritted her teeth as her fingers became more forceful, pounding down the levers, her fingers stabbing at each sound. Slamming. Stabbing. Hating. She worked this way until there was a brief pause in the action of the court room. Then she could finally stop, take a breath, and look around. No one had seemed to notice her little tantrum. Instead, all eyes seemed fixed at the front of the court, where the two attorneys approached and huddled around the judge’s bench. They were talking in tones way too quiet for Clara to pick up. That was not her job, anyway. That type of discussion was private. Clara had just wished that other things could stay private as well, things like the sickening details of her own abuse.

One year ago, someone, perhaps just like her, had to sit and type it all out. Clara’s own gory details going from their ear, to fingers, and to page, the necessity of all her damn secrets slipping into the public record. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done it—she’d found out later there had been other convictions before her—but it was the first time he’d been sent to jail.

God damn him.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the judge said, slowly rising to her feet. “This court is now in recess until 2 p.m.”

There were some groans in the court, but she was feeling quite the opposite. A recess was the break she had desperately needed. A break from the bad memories. Maybe a smoke break? No. Hell no. She had to stay strong.

Outside, in the cool breeze of the open rooftop, Clara’s hand slid through her purse and along the top lid of the cardboard cigarette pack. It felt smooth and sure and delicious. The craving came on hard, her hand almost shaking for it.

She removed her hand and then looked down at the object she’d pulled out. Her phone. One new voice message. She walked to a covered corner, out of the wind, and pressed the phone up against her ear.

“Hey, Clara . . .”

Her first reaction was to pull the phone away from her face, holding it out, as far away as possible. What she really wanted to do was to throw the fucking thing off the roof.

Was it really fucking him?

She put the phone back to her ear, keeping it hovering slightly so there was no direct contact. And there she listened to an old, familiar, raspy voice.

“ . . . uh, I didn’t know if you’d want to answer this call, so I just figured I’d leave a message and leave it up to you.”

It was him.

“But I just thought I should let you know . . . that, uh . . . that I’m getting out in three days.”

Getting out?! How the fuck could he get out that early? She wanted to scream back at him, at the message, at that horrible voice and the news it carried. And why the fuck was he even calling her? The audacity of it . . .

“And I was wondering if we could, whenever you’re ready, like, just sit down somewhere, like for coffee or whatever, and just, uh, like, talk about Molly and what we’re gonna do and all that.”

It just kept going from bad to worse. He was interested in his daughter, now, suddenly. The next thing Clara expected was to hear that he’d found God or something. But no, the message just ended with, “so I hope to see you guys soon,” like nothing at all had ever happened. Like he hadn’t beaten the fuck out of her and lost custody of Molly and then spent the last year rotting away like a caged animal. Her stomach lurched as she forced the message to the back of her mind and hurried back into court.

* * *

It had been an incredibly long day, but even though she’d been home for several hours, Clara hadn’t eaten. Not since she listened to the message. She felt she like she hadn’t even taken a full breath. It was just short nervous puffs in and out, all the way through the rest of work, white-knuckling over the keyboard, trying not to smoke, trying not to break down in tears in front of the whole court. Finally, on her way home, Clara had the chance to break out into an immense deluge of profanities until her face and throat felt sore. It felt good for the first several seconds, until she realized she would have to bottle it all up for home, for Molly. She’d made a quick meal, a chicken tender salad, and then let Molly go scamper off with her tablet, her screen. “Screen time” was usually tightly regulated, but on days like these . . .

“Can I watch another show?” Molly called from her room.

Fuck it.

“Yes, Sweetie.”

Clara couldn’t blame her. Mommy probably wasn’t much fun to be around. Mommy was certainly more mentally damaging to Molly than excessive screen time would be today.

Clara huffed and puffed around the house for awhile, surges of anger subsiding to misery and dread, going through spurts of housecleaning when it got bad enough. It had to be really bad for her to be scrubbing the grime off the white porcelain of an antique sink. What else was there to do? Send out a bunch of texts and calls for moral support? It wasn’t her style. She was the bottle-it-up-and-let-it-explode type. For that reason, when the phone rang, she had to quickly decide how much she was going to tell anyone in her life about what Kurt had done now. But did she even need to talk about it at all? There was really nothing to say. Kurt was getting out and he’d probably start making her life, especially her life with Sam, a living hell. There had been nothing she could do about it then, and there was nothing she could do about it now.

Unless he’d “found God.”

Please, please, please let him have found God.

“Hello?”

“Clara?” It was Bren. Thank God it was Bren. “What the heck? You said you’d call me and let me know when I should come over.”

“Oh, shit . . .”

“What’s wrong?”

“I totally forgot.”

She completely forgot about that night’s obligation, the reason for Bren to come and babysit again.

“Got that boy on your mind, huh?”

It wasn’t another date. That could have been something helpful. No, it was a poetry fucking reading. She’d somehow agreed to her friend Chrissy that she’d attend and read some of her poetry. Just some little thing at a coffee shop. Amateur poetry, if that was even a thing. She definitely knew her poetry was amateur. But it was a favor she owed to Chrissy, a promise made to come and read and populate this woman’s circle thing that Clara normally preferred to avoid.

“Is he coming?” Bren asked.

“No. I haven’t talked to him.”

“What? Why? You should call him.”

Clara flopped down on her sofa. “I dunno.” She rolled to her side and lay there, knees tucked up against her chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m just nervous about tonight.” There was some truth to that. Perhaps if it weren’t for Kurt’s surprise, she would have had more time and energy to focus on being properly nervous. She wasn’t a big fan of public speaking, and even less a fan of divulging her shitty poetry to a room full of strangers.

But maybe it would help to have Sam there. Maybe she should finally tell him about Kurt, about what really happened. Was it too early for such reality? Sam seemed like such a logical, level-headed guy. He’d probably appreciate knowing what was really going on in Clara’s world.

On the car ride over to the cafe, Clara finally worked up the courage to call him, holding the phone in her lap while it rang over speakerphone, while it continued to ring, and ring, and then finally end up at his voice mail message. She ended the call before the beep and then chucked the phone into her bag. It probably landed right next to her cigarettes.

God, she really had to do something about that. She had to get rid of them.

Though she should really just focus on getting to the cafe on time. She was already running late. And dear God she was so not in the mood for poetry, neither hers nor anyone else’s attempt at it.

“Oh, my God, you’re here!” It was the excited shriek of legal clerk Chrissy, rushing toward Clara from the back of the cafe. She had a half-eaten cupcake in her hand. “Want a cupcake? There’s like, literally like fifty cupcakes over there, all bought and paid for.”

Clara smiled, but she knew it came out crooked. “No, thanks, I’m not really in the mood.”

“How about poetry?”

Clara mustered up a little chuckle and lied. “I’m always in the mood for poetry.”

“You ready to read?”

Clara thought for moment. Could she say no? How bad would it be? “Um . . .” The whole night wasn’t hinging on her poetry performance, was it? Clara studied the face of her friend, how it marred slightly with tight concern.

“Clara, no, I need you.” She held Clara’s arm with her free hand. “We don’t have many readers. Three already dropped out. It’ll be embarrassing—”

“Exactly,” Clara chucked. “Embarrassing. Look, I just don’t want to make an ass of myself.”

“Oh, come on, look around. You’re in good company here.”

Clara wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but she looked around the cafe anyway. It was empty except for a few small groups of ladies wearing berets. Maybe Chrissy meant good company for being embarrassed.

“It’s a safe environment.” She said. “No one’s gonna . . . it’ll be fine.”

Clara sighed.

“Can you?”

Clara reached into her bag and pulled out a messy bundle of papers.

“Yes!” Chrissy cried.

“Alright. When am I on?”

“Second?” Chrissy said, with hope ringing in her voice.

Clara was glad she had turned down the cupcakes. The nausea got worse than before. Not only a sick feeling, but a pain, a cramping. Send a cupcake down there and who knows how horrible she’d feel. Who knows how long it would even stay down.

* * *

“I’d like to welcome to the stage another first-time reader, Clara Miles.”

Clara had spent the previous twenty minutes hiding at the back of the room, half listening to the poetry of an over-refined seventy-year-old French woman, half thinking about the cafe’s quickest escape route. But somewhere between the lyrical verses of the seventy-year-old, Clara had a miraculous change of heart. Whether or not it was the old woman’s wonderful descriptions of seducing her pool boy, or the size and waning concentration of the audience, somehow Clara’s conviction in her poetry had been reinvigorated. Reading her work in public might not have been her ideal activity tonight, but deep down inside, she believed in her poetry—as shitty as it might be. She was a poet. And just last month she had been wanting to take things to “the next level.” Maybe even send out some work for consideration in the various locally published anthologies. Aside from Molly, it was the only thing of substance on her mind. It was a burning passion. She remembered now.

All of this, of course, came before Sam. And of course before the news of Kurt.

Clara fumbled clumsily with the mic, tilting it up and then foolishly clearing her throat into it so that the whole cafe could hear in exact detail the type and amount of phlegm she had rattling around in there.

“Hi,” she said shakily. And even more shakily, she unfolded her pages of poetry. She’d printed out a few of her favorites, and thank God she had because she couldn’t remember a word of them now. Had she even written these things? Her eyes took forever to focus on the words, and when they did, the language still looked foreign.

“Okay,” she said, “here we go.”

The room was dead silent.

“Your words, the breath of it, you, the space between, you . . .”

At first it was nervy and shaky, and her voice couldn’t come down low enough and the words wouldn’t come out right. Saying the title was the hardest, but every word that came after felt easier and lighter, until she’d almost forgotten that she was reading her innermost thoughts to a room of strangers.

“Truth, the touch of candlelight like how it went away and left us cold, left us . . .”

She felt almost like Stenographer Clara, except in reverse. Words from paper coming through her voice. With that, she felt herself finally settling. Familiarity. That same old shutting-down mechanism that had kept her sane through so many hours of monotonous transcribing of trials. But as time and poetry wore on, that energy became more and more depleted, as if it was all an illusion, a fading adrenaline rush.

Clara read on, but she could feel the nerves coming closer to the surface, the little strands of tension mounting up her spine, her facial muscles feeling heavier and more foreign. But why? She’d felt fine just moments before.

It must have been adrenaline. And now it was wearing off, leaving her exposed to the elements. Exposed to her own mania.

Clara had to stop reading. There was a thick lump in her throat.

“Excuse me,” she gruffed while unscrewing the cap of her water bottle. She took a shaky sip and tried to resume reading, but the lump had only diminished. It was still there in some smaller, yet still extremely annoying and anti-poetic form. Damn it, she’d never felt her throat so tight. She swallowed hard, trying to swallow it down and away, whatever it was. But just like how she’d tried bottling up her emotions and her personal drama, there was no real relief.

“And fallen, too, through the half-drunk dark.” Her voice had a nervous vibrato that horrified her instantly. Where did this come from? She’d been reading just fine a minute ago, and now it was spiraling out of control. She was bombing!

Clara ended her set short at just two poems, and doing so as a sweaty mess. It was hard to believe how horrible of a spectacle it must have been. She heard it, and felt it herself, but the way she must have looked from the audience’s perspective. Probably bright red and shiny from stress, her death grip crumpling the pages, and the shaking. Damn. She’d had a panic attack.

But the crowd was nice. They were merciful. No one came up to her and bothered her after it was over with. They just seemed to let Clara walk off to the bathroom undisturbed. They were probably afraid of talking to such a weirdo. A ticking time bomb. The kind of person who might show up next week with a gun and a whole different kind of poem.

No. Relax.

She was fine. Totally fine. She got through two poems, two very personal poems. She was shaky, yes, but . . .

Clara wiped the sweat off her brow with a scratchy brown paper towel. She looked into the bathroom mirror, the nausea still clinging to her insides. It felt worse when she saw how disheveled she looked. Like she ran three miles to get to that bathroom, to look in the mirror only to wish that she’d stayed the fuck home.

But there was misery at home, too. It seemed to follow her like a bad odor, just like Kurt’s news had left a bad taste in her mouth. Like a stale, half-smoked cigarette.

Fuck, even the thought of a disgusting old smoke made her want one.

“Hey, Chrissy,” she said walking up to her near the door. “I’m so sorry, really, but I’ve got to go.”

“Oh, no. Really? I thought you did so well up there.”

“Oh, yeah?” Clara said, eying the door, the outside. A place where she could be free of poetry, free to leave, free to smoke.

“It was . . .” Chrissy rolled her head around, perhaps trying to knock the word loose. “It was compelling.”

“Yeah,” Clara laughed. “I’m sure it was.”

“Are you coming next week?”

Clara laughed again, still eying the door.

* * *

Bren was sleeping when she got home. And despite a hundred dollars cash, Clara felt badly about making her do this two nights in a row. The girl needed the money, and she claimed it was no big deal. “Better than an extra shift at Walgreen’s,” she’d said. So maybe Clara was more concerned about Molly. What was she getting out of this? An absent, detached Mommy?

“Hey, Sweetie.”

She’d found her awake again, already sitting up and waiting. She always had a good ear. A troublesome super-hearing. Sometimes she’d heard way more than she should.

“I can’t sleep,” Molly whimpered.

“Did you have your tea?”

“No.”

Bren must have forgotten. It was a legal, kid-safe sedative, and a crucial step in getting Molly in bed and sleeping at a reasonable hour. Thank God for chamomile.

“Did you read your poems?” Molly asked.

“Yes,” Clara said, brushing the hair off her face. “I did. Did you play your games with Bren?”

Molly nodded.

“Which ones?”

“Old Maid,” Molly said, her voice still slow and tired.

Clara smiled and said, “Wanna give this old maid a hug?”

They reached forward for each other as the nightlight went from red to orange. Clara squeezed her daughter and gave her a little peck on the cheek. But Molly was quick to pull away.

“Aww, come on,” Clara said. “Getting too old for that already?”

Her faced had soured. “Mommy, you stink.”

That damned cigarette . . . It wasn’t worth it.

“I know.” Clara pulled back, her head drooping. “I totally stink.”