Page 57 of Jar of Hearts
She lets her words hang in the air for moment. Kaiser doesn’t respond, but his eyes are flicking over her clothes, her face, her hair. Not in an intrusive way, in an observant way, and she begins to feel a bit self-conscious. Which is ridiculous, because it’s Kaiser. His opinion of her appearance isn’t supposed to matter. But she finds herselffeeling glad she washed her hair that morning, that she took a minute to swipe on a coat of mascara and a bit of tinted lip balm.
The Shipp lipstick he left with her, Cinnamon Heart, she stuck in a bottom drawer. She didn’t try it on. It’s now beside the Mason jar that wouldn’t break. Where it belongs.
“You look good,” he says. “Rested.”
“I’m sleeping better,” she says. “It’s amazing the things you take for granted. I can take showers longer than eight minutes, with water as hot as I like, and without having to wear shower shoes or worry that someone is going to open the curtain before I’m finished. My dad made steaks last night for dinner. And this morning I got a call from a friend in Hazelwood, who’s getting out soon. She’s coming to stay here. She has cancer. She… she doesn’t have much time.”
Kaiser nods, a small smile crossing his face. He understands. He knew about her mother.
“Was it terrible?” he asks. “Prison?”
“In some ways, it was horrible,” she says. “And in some ways, it was fine. You adapt, you know?”
She’s aware that he’s now standing too close, smelling too good, looking too clean. She takes a step back.
“I took a few pictures of your car,” he says. “I’ll file a report when I get back to the precinct. I don’t think anything’ll come of it, though. It’s not like we can get a search warrant for every house in the neighborhood to see who has a can of red spray paint in their garage. Any ideas who did it?”
“Well, it’s not the first time,” Geo says, and she explains about the two other messages left on the garage door. “I’d love to blame it on that old bat across the street, but she wouldn’t do something like this. A neighbor like me reflects poorly on her, and she wouldn’t draw attention to it.”
“Mrs. Heller? She didn’t recognize me when I talked to her last week,” Kaiser says with a smile. “She didn’t remember that I was the one who broke her window with a baseball.”
Geo laughs, delighted. “I forgot about that.”
“And remember she came out yelling with that curler in her hair—”
“Which fell out, and you stepped on it and it broke in half—”
“And she picked it up and she looks at me and says—”
“You’re a tornado of destruction, young man,” they say in unison, dissolving into laughter. They laugh deeply, and fully, and for a long time. It hurts Geo’s stomach, and it feels great.
“What was I, sixteen?” Kaiser can barely get the words out.
“Fifteen,” Geo says, wiping a tear. “It was at the end of freshman year. I remember because that was the last time my hair was short.”
“Your birthday weekend,” he says. “I forgot, you’re older than me.”
“By three months.” She punches his arm. “And it’s really rude to keep reminding me of that.”
“You could pass for twenty-five.”
“I feel forty-five.”
“Same.” He smiles down at her, and just like that, everything feels… better. “So why are you selling the Range Rover?”
”I don’t want it anymore. It’s too expensive and too pretentious, the kind of thing an affluent young executive drives when she wants everyone to know she’s an affluent young executive.” She gives him a small smile. “I’m not that person anymore. Mind you, I’m not the person I was when I was sixteen, either.”
“So who are you, then?” His tone is gentle.
“An unemployed ex-con who has no idea what the fuck to do with the rest of her life.” It’s the most honest answer Geo can give. “And I’m learning that it doesn’t matter how sorry I am—andI am so fucking sorry—or how much time I spend in prison, or how many college degrees I have, or how much money I made… I will always be judged on the one terrible, horrific thing I did when I was sixteen. I’m not complaining about that, because I know I deserve it, but I don’t know how to make up for it. Because if I could, I would.”
“So reinvent yourself,” Kaiser says, and it’s only when he touches her cheek that she realizes she’s crying.
“I thought I did that already. How many times can one person press the reset button?”
“As many times as it takes. But you have to move past it. You have to forgive yourself. Even if nobody else does.”
Why they’re even having this conversation, Geo doesn’t know, but she feels an overwhelming need to explain herself to him. And he seems to want to know.
