Page 6 of Jar of Hearts
Geo already has hers unwrapped. She takes a giant bite, the grease from the ground beef dribbling onto the front of her designer dress. She doesn’t care. “Is this allowed?”
“What? The burger?” Kaiser removes the top of his burger bun and places fries on top of the patty. He replaces the bun and takes a large bite of his own. “You signed your plea agreement, nobody cares if I talk to you.”
“I can’t believe you still do that.” She looks at his burger in mock distaste. “Fries inside your burger. That’s so high school.”
“In some ways, I’ve changed,” he says. “In some ways, I haven’t. Bet you can say the same.”
“So what are you doing here?” she asks a few minutes later, when she’s eaten half her burger and her stomach has stopped hurting.
“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted you to know that I don’t hate you.”
“You’d have every reason to.”
“Not anymore,” Kaiser says, then sighs. “I finally have closure. I can now let it go. I’d advise you to do to the same. You kept that secret a long time. Fourteen years… I can’t imagine what that did to you. It’s a punishment all its own.”
“I don’t think Angela’s parents would agree with you.” But she’s glad he said it. It makes her feel like less of a monster. But only a little.
“But that’s why you’re going to prison. So you can do your time and then get out and start over, fresh. You’ll survive this. You always were strong.” Kaiser puts his burger down. “You know, it’s funny. When I found out what you’d done, I wanted to kill you. For what you did to Angela. For what you put everyone through. For what you putmethrough. But when I saw you again…”
“What?”
“I remembered how it used to be. We were all best friends, for fuck’s sake. That shit doesn’t go away.”
“I know.” Geo looks at him. Underneath the tough cop exterior, she sees kindness. There’s always been kindness at Kaiser’s core. “I wanted to tell you back then what happened, what I did, so many times. You would have known what to do. You were always my…”
“What?”
“Moral compass,” she says. “I’ve done a lot of shitty things, Kai. Pushing you away was one of them.”
“You were sixteen.” Kaiser heaves another long sigh. “Just a kid. Like I was. Like Angela was.”
“But old enough to know better.”
“Looking back, a lot of things make sense now. The way you were after that night. The way you pulled back from me. Dropping out of school for the rest of the year. Calvin really did a number on you. I didn’t realize how bad it was.” Kaiser touches her face. “But today you told the truth. It’s done now. Finally.”
“Finally,” she repeats, taking a big bite of her burger even though she’s no longer hungry.
It’s easier to lie when your mouth is full.
2
There are three types of currency in prison: drugs, sex, and information. While the last of the three tends to be the most valuable, crank and blow jobs are always the most reliable. And since Geo doesn’t do drugs, cash will have to do. There are things she needs to survive prison, which she’ll procure as soon as she’s able, once she’s assigned a unit and a job.
Every new or returning inmate at Hazelwood Correctional Institute—or Hellwood, as it’s sometimes called—spends their first two weeks in receiving while their assessment is being completed. A battery of psychological tests, along with a couple of interviews and a thorough background check, are performed in order to determine where the inmate will sleep and work. Geo’s hoping for medium security and a job in the hair salon. But what she can realistically expect, according to her first meeting with the prison counselor, is maximum security for the first three years and a job in janitorial services.
“It’s not a bad thing,” the counselor says, in an attempt to reassure her. The name plate on the desk says P. MARTIN. “There are more guards in maximum. Minimum comes with privileges, but maximum comes with protection.”
It sounds like bullshit to Geo, but as she’s never been to prison before, she’s in no position to argue. It’s been three hours since she arrived at Hazelwood, and the counselor is the first person she’s spoken to who isn’t wearing a uniform. P. Martin—Pamela? Patricia? there’s no indication of the woman’s first name anywhere in the room—seems to genuinely care about the inmates’ well-being. Geo wonders what brought her here. It can’t be the money. The counselor’s pantsuit is cheap; the fabric of her jacket pulls around the armpits and there are loose threads along the seams.
“Who’s your support system?” the counselor asks. When Geo doesn’t answer, she rephrases. “Who’ll be visiting you in here? Who are you looking forward to seeing when you get out? Because that day will come, and you should be thinking about those people every day that you’re in here. It’ll keep you focused.”
“My dad,” Geo says. She never had many friends, and after the trial, it was safe to say she had none. “I was supposed to get married, but… that’s not happening now.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died. When I was five.”
“One last question,” Martin says. “Which race do you identify with? You look white, but your intake form says ‘other.’”
