Insiders

She looked over at the stained mattress and paper sheets. It was only last night – in her own home – that she’d slept in a bed made with Pratesi sheets.

Jen crouched down in the corner of the observation cell and closed her eyes. The light still beat on her eyelids but she tried to transcend to another consciousness. She could stand anything for twenty-four hours, she told herself. She thought of the nights of endless study at college and business school. She’d pulled plenty of all-nighters at Hudson, Van Schaank & Michaels, too, when she was more tired than this. So she’d pull one more now. Maybe her last. All she had to do was concentrate. But on what? Concentrating on her situation was unbearable, and without her cell phone, she couldn’t check on deals, her portfolio, or her apartment. Then she thought of it: She’d spend the night concentrating on her closet and every garment in it.

Jennifer didn’t have a lot of clothes; when the interior designer had discussed the bedroom Jennifer insisted that she didn’t want a built-in closet, just the antique armoire. ‘But it’s only twenty-seven inches of hanger space,’ he’d protested. She’d shrugged.

Now she sat in the corner like a child ordered to take a time out. She remembered what she’d said: ‘Twenty-seven inches ought to be more than enough for any woman.’ And it was. She’d always longed not for quantity but quality. Now she had it, hanging in her armoire back at home. Aside from the one she had foolishly worn today and doubted she’d ever see again, she had three other Armani suits – one black twill, one black and brown tweed and one dark brown heavy silk. Each one had been well over two thousand dollars, but she’d bought them as an investment, and every time she slipped into one she felt like a million bucks. Next she thought of the two Yamaguchi suits that made the Armanis seem cheap in comparison. She’d considered one for more than a month before she’d bought it, hoping it wouldn’t be sold. That was the black one with an asymmetrical jacket; a lapel and a hem were higher on one side than the other. Jennifer couldn’t wear it for a meeting that included middle managers or conservative CEOs, but it went over big with high-tech and advertising types. The other, even more costly Yamaguchi was in a neutral gray-beige miracle fiber that she could fold into her purse if she had to and it would unpack as if it had been pressed by Sister Mary Margaret herself.

Jennifer sighed. Thinking was difficult sitting on the cold concrete floor. She began a mental inventory of her drawers. When she was home she wore cashmere sweats that she’d bought at TSE. They’d been very expensive, but nothing was softer against the skin – except perhaps silk. She had a tall lingerie chest, and when she wanted to spend money foolishly she indulged herself in La Perla lace bras and matching underpants or silk wisps from any one of a dozen French and Italian stores on Madison Avenue. She moved her fingers against the tough fabric of her jumpsuit and almost shuddered. Her underwear made her feel special and secretly feminine, and she thought Tom, her fiancé, enjoyed wondering what she was wearing under the sophisticated suit when he saw her at work. Like any good girl, Jennifer washed her panties out by hand at night – she never threw them in the machine on the delicate cycle because they were too fine for that kind of treatment.

Jen’s knees and ankles and butt hurt, but she wouldn’t lie on that disgusting mattress, she wouldn’t use the cardboard blanket. She wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t sleep. Not until she got out of this place. If there was one thing Jennifer Spencer knew about herself it was that she had a strong will. She thought back to the Cooper Corp. deal and the prolonged negotiations at the airport Marriott. Despite the grimness around her now, she almost smiled. Back then – and it seemed like years ago although it was only five months – she remembered how she had complained to Donald about having to stay in a Marriott. ‘What a hell hole!’ she’d told him. ‘This could drag on for days, or even weeks. Couldn’t we arrange for a Hyatt at least?’

‘Hey, rough it,’ Donald had replied. ‘It’s their corporate culture. Cooper executives travel coach. Even old man Cooper travels coach.’ He laughed. ‘If it wasn’t for me, you’d probably be having this meeting in a Days Inn, so stop bitching and get your ass to sit down at the table. This is all going to be about stamina, Jennifer. I know you can outlast them, but I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.’ He had paused and laughed again. ‘Goddamnit!’ he said, ‘No one ever makes it easy for you to make five hundred million dollars.’

And, to the credit of her personality and her checkbook, Jennifer and her team had outlasted old man Cooper and his whole lot of Midwestern lawyers. She had sat at that table virtually unmoving, almost unblinking, for hours and hours. Thank God for Cooper’s inflamed prostate or she might have never closed the deal. But the fifteen or twenty trips to the men’s room he made each day while she sat there, coolly waiting for his return, had certainly contributed to his loss of faith and confidence. Then, when she called Donald in for the kill, it had gone fairly smoothly.

And was this her reward? She opened her eyes.

The shrieking in the next cell or down the hall or wherever it was reached an inhuman crescendo but finally, mercifully stopped. For a moment Jennifer wondered if they’d killed the inmate that had been making the noise. In the blessed peace she didn’t care if they had. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel sorry for the woman – this was a place where misery was not just natural but required and she knew everyone didn’t have the self-control that she did – but this wasn’t The Oprah Winfrey Show and there was no need to share your pain so loudly.

That thought and the relative silence strengthened Jennifer’s resolve. She would sit here, the lights burning into her eyes. Let them observe that! She wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t speak. And she wouldn’t sleep. It was the only way she could bring some control back to her ravaged sense of self. And then, hopefully very soon, they would take her out of here and she would call Tom and they would send a stretch limo and whatever else it took to get her the fuck out of here.

And when she returned to Hudson, Van Schaank she’d have a hero’s welcome. Jennifer closed her eyes again against the unbearable glare and tried to imagine that. Tom, so tall, would be at her side, maybe just lightly holding her elbow as she entered the double-wide glass doors to the floor. She’d buy something new to wear – maybe that suit she’d seen in the window of Walter Steiger, no matter how obscenely expensive it was. Yes, and shoes to match. And when she walked into the reception area the secretaries and support staff would be there, and they’d all stare and smile. Susan, her top secretary, would give her a big bouquet and say, ‘This is from all of us. We admire you so much.’ And then she and Tom would walk into the main office area and all the traders, attorneys, partners – all of them, even Dave Jacobs, who hated her – would stand up and they’d begin to clap, and the clapping would rise to a roar and then, the way they did it in European circuses, the clapping would become rhythmic, each pair of hands in perfect unison with the others. And Donald would open his office door and walk toward her and Tom. And Tom, because he was sensitive and wouldn’t want to detract from her moment, would give her elbow a little push. ‘Go to him,’ he’d say, and she would, in front of everybody. And Donald would lift his head and say …

She felt wet. Jennifer opened her eyes, back to the gruesome reality of the observation cell, and jumped to her feet. Water was oozing from under the wall behind her! She looked around. In fact, all along the wall where the mattress lay, the water lapped in, much of it already absorbed by the mattress but plenty spreading across her floor. Surely this wasn’t part of the punishment, some bizarre test? She ran to the door. There were roaches floating in the water! Worse, they were alive, and trying to find a perch or a nest. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Hey, someone. What’s going on? There’s a flood in here.’

The sadistic Officer Byrd was at her door in a moment. He looked in at her, shook his head and yelled, ‘Jesus H. Christ! Nine must have wadded the toilet.’

Then, instead of helping her or explaining, he ran off down the hall. Jennifer leaned against the Plexiglas of her door but couldn’t see what was going on. She could, however, hear – and in the next moment the howls began again, this time, if anything, even louder and more ferocious than before. Jennifer kept watching, her head pressed against the glass, the water running at her feet, wondering if any of the horror was real. She’d lose her mind if the hideous noise went on for another minute. Then, after one last fiendish screech, the stranger’s voice was stilled. Jennifer could still hear curses and grunts. She imagined the officers were making them and, sure enough, in another moment three burly guys were in the corridor, attempting to drag off a big black woman. She was dressed in a shameful orange jumpsuit but now it was partially obscured by the restraint jacket she had on. Though she couldn’t move her arms, she was kicking out with both legs, moving her head from side to side, and furiously screaming despite the taped gag that muffled her. Her hair was wild but her face was more so.

The woman was pushed back into a hard black plastic chair that sat as low to the ground as a beach chair. Officer Byrd obstructed Jennifer’s view for a few moments but, when he finally moved, Jennifer was horrified to see that the woman had been strapped into the chair at the legs. Then the straitjacket was slowly removed from the woman’s body, and the straps were brought over her shoulders in much the same way that an astronaut would be strapped to his seat.

Jennifer, terrified but unable to move, watched as they struggled to wheel the woman past her window. For a moment the startling blue eyes of the African American woman gave Jennifer an intimate look, certainly not one of apology. She winked at Jennifer. Then she was gone.

Jennifer, shocked, didn’t know how long she had stood there. There was a drain in the cement floor that gurgled.

She waited for a little while, hoping that the guard would return so she could demand some better conditions. But no one came. Finally she balanced on one leg and peeled off first one drenched sock, then the other. She squeezed them out over the drain. At least half a cup of water ran into the sewage hole, but Jennifer’s problem wasn’t solved. Now, without socks, her feet were frozen. She couldn’t sit on the mattress because it was also disgustingly wet. She didn’t know what the correction officer had done with the troublesome woman. Did they have a firing squad here at Jennings? Could she scream for help or attention? She found she couldn’t do it. The woman’s blue, blue eye winking at her, as if they were … together or … bonded somehow had really shaken her. Then she saw, with relief, that Officer Byrd was at the end of the hall about to pass by. Finally she knocked on the glass and he turned to her.

‘I’m wet,’ she said. ‘This whole room has been ruined. You have to help me.’ The fear in her voice only made her more frightened.

But Byrd didn’t have a clue. He turned his mouth to his squawk box and said something. He stepped into the room and turned around.

‘Tsk, tsk,’ he said. ‘You got more than you bargained for.’ Jennifer decided not to even respond. Then he looked her over. It was a sexual leer, and she could tell that he wanted her to be uncomfortable. ‘I’m alone up here now,’ he explained. ‘They had to take that one down to the hold. It was her first day in.’

Jennifer actually shivered. ‘They’ll be back soon,’ she said in a flat voice. What kind of man took a job in a women’s prison and then tried to …

‘Well,’ said Byrd, ‘I could take you down to a cell below six. That’s where the nigger was. She used her towel to stop up the toilet and caused a major flood.’ Jennifer recoiled both at the word he’d used and because he’d moved toward her. His voice insinuated that … Just then his walkie-talkie spoke.

Roughly Byrd took her under her right arm and moved her out of her little glass box. He was rubbing up against her as they walked past the place where the mad woman had been imprisoned, then moved her to number four, a cell exactly like her previous one.

‘Chow will be in a minute,’ he said as he slowly released his grip and ran his hand down her arm.

‘Food?’ Jennifer cried. ‘I can’t even breathe.’ Then she remembered her outfit. ‘And I need a new jumpsuit. This one is wet.’

‘We’ll have supper for you right away,’ Byrd said. ‘But we can’t issue another uniform. Laundry’s closed.’ Then he moved a little closer. ‘Of course,’ he almost whispered, ‘you could take it off and hang it up. There’s nobody here to see you.’

Jennifer looked around at the observation windows, the open ceiling, and the catwalk above. Now she was grateful for them. She wanted someone to keep their eyes on Byrd – or Vulture. But she had a creepy feeling that most of those eyes would get a big kick out of her standing around naked. And would they intervene if Vulture touched her?

‘Maybe I could get you something else to wear,’ he said now, ‘if you wanted to be friendly,’ he added.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was a sexual innuendo, wasn’t it? ‘Forget about that,’ she told Byrd.

He shrugged. Had he just offered her something in return for sex? She kept her face calm but swore to herself that she’d have him reported to the governor by tomorrow afternoon. ‘Too bad. You’ll have to wear the damp one until morning,’ he said. He locked the door on the new cubicle and left.

Jennifer was deeply grateful for that. She would have spent some time examining the cell if it hadn’t been quite so obviously identical to the previous one. She’d even be willing to swear in a court of law that the stains in this mattress were shaped identically to the one on the other. Hadn’t there been that blot that looked like the state of Florida on the upper left corner of the previous mattress? The wetness against her ankles was terribly cold and the rough polyester chafed, but otherwise all was the same. Except that this time, when she sat down in her corner, her stomach rumbled loudly enough for her to hear, and maybe loudly enough for the woman in the next room – if there was a woman in the next room – to hear as well.

But she was still determined that she wouldn’t eat anything. And she wouldn’t lie down. Even though the day seemed a hundred hours long, she wouldn’t allow her hunger or fatigue to get the better of her.

She leaned her back against the wall, pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her cold ankles and tried, once again, to close her eyes and imagine what treats would come her way when she went back to her real life. Donald had better be especially generous with her bonus. In fact, she might not have to wait until the end of the fiscal year. Of course, after December there would be the full partnership and the big office. She took a deeper breath of the fatal air. Concentrate on it, she told herself. Think how beautiful that place will be compared with this one. She knew each partner got a generous budget to furnish and decorate his or her office, but now she thought that she might move her reproduction Beidermeyer desk from home into the office. She’d bill Hudson, Van Schaank and use the money for the dressing table she’d admired in the antique shop on upper Lexington Avenue. She’d … she tried once again to get into the reverie but it wasn’t working.

She opened her eyes. She couldn’t really imagine anything but this room, her freezing feet, the unbearable light and the hunger gnawing at her belly. She tried to remind herself that she was the hero of the Vareen takeover and the heavy lifter in the Cooper Corp. scenario, but she hadn’t been cold and wet and humiliated then. Jennifer may have managed not to drink and not to use the ladies’ room, but if she had had to pee then, she wouldn’t have had to do it in front of a dozen pairs of eyes.

She felt her eyes begin to get wet and forced herself to stand up. Just then a noise outside the cell brought her to the front. Another guard was wheeling a trolley down the corridor. When he reached her, he didn’t even look up. He merely bent toward her, his face forward, and slipped a plastic tray through the slot. It almost looked like an airplane meal.

‘No,’ she told herself firmly one more time. But her cold feet walked, without her permission, over to the tray. She bent and picked it up. Something green. Something brown. And something that looked like it had tomato sauce on it. Whatever it was, she took it to the bed, sat down crosslegged on the filthy mattress, and ravenously wolfed it down.

7 Maggie Rafferty

I was a prisoner long before I was an inmate.

Bonnie Foreshaw, inmate. Andi Rierden, The Farm

I know that it will seem a truism, but I must say that shooting your husband, accidentally or otherwise – and even more – having him die from the bullet wound, totally changes your life. The chief benefit is, of course, that he is gone, but there are other benefits, which I’ll get to later. The main drawback, however, is that in most cases you’re deprived of your liberty and might have to live in a place with a library that has only one hundred and sixteen books. That is the exact number of books in the library here at Jennings.

But back to my husband. He could have lived; he died just to spite me. The bullet only grazed his aorta. Serious? Yes – but with his will power, he might have lingered long enough for the paramedics to stabilize him. But no. He always had to get his way in the end. He could turn any situation to his advantage. This was, of course, only one of the many reasons why I hated him so fully and completely, and why the gun I was holding went off while it was pointed in his direction. At the time, I had meant to kill myself. How foolish of me.

My husband was the famous Richard Rafferty, Riff to his friends. At the very minute the bullet was nicking his deceitful heart, his latest book, The Life of the Heart, was being talked about on the six o’clock news. A book? On the evening news? How can that be? Easy. Richard was sleeping with the woman who produced the show.

And speaking of the evening news, I understand that the new arrival, this Miss Jennifer Spencer, is up in observation hell. She’s certainly been news. I’ve been following her story with some interest, since one needs such pastimes in prison, and because both of my sons are in the same type of business as she is … or was. From the beginning I could see that she was taking the fall for someone else, probably a man. The only question that remained in my mind was, did she know what was going on? Was she complicitous? I was actually looking forward to seeing her in person, because then I would know.

How would I know? Well, let me explain another result of happening to murder your husband: It turns your brain inside out. Although this is terribly painful at the time and for a long while afterward, in the end it is a good thing. I know this sounds totally insane, but I am a better person for having killed my husband. For instance, I’ve become nearly as good as a dog at reading people.

Lest anyone think that I am advocating murder as a method of self-improvement, let me correct that impression at once. Yes, I am a better person, but I was a good enough person before. Riff wasn’t; he wasn’t worth dirtying my hands for. What he deserved from me was the indifference that I only now feel toward him. Trading life and liberty for well-deserved revenge and an enlightened mind is a very hard deal to accept. Jennings, have I said it before, is a kind of hell.

When I arrived here, I fell into despair at once. The trial, Grand Guignol though it had been, was a reason to get up, get dressed, and perform. Here there was nothing. I wanted to die. Imagine. I had been headmistress of one of the most prestigious private girls’ schools on the East Coast, and had lived among the very rich and instructed their daughters. On my first day at Jennings, I was told to ‘get my fuckin’ ass movin’.’ I had been in Who’s Who In American Education. Here I was referred to as ‘the old bitch’.

Somehow I got used to the vulgarity. It was the deprivation of every sensory pleasure that was the hardest thing for me to bear. My marriage had not been happy, but I had lived in a beautiful home, traveled to Paris and London nearly every year, spent summers in Tuscany, was a connoisseur of wines and fine foods, collected rare books and Herend, drove an immaculate ‘62 Mercedes Gullwing, subscribed to the ballet, shopped at Neiman Marcus.

And suddenly I was confined to one of the ugliest places on the face of the earth, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I assure you, no bleaker, duller, more visually offensive place can exist. I’d rather be in Craigmore Prison, dank dark dungeon that it is. It at least has some architecture to boast of. Jennings is the kind of dull, featureless maze they put rats into when they’re trying to see if they can stunt their brain development. Even crumbling ceilings or walls would add interest, but here there is no crumbling, just ugly, 1960s efficiency. Jennings was built when there was a soul-sickness plaguing the earth, probably an aftereffect of the war. Buildings were built to last, but beauty in architecture was eschewed. The style could be called ‘Plainness with a Vengeance’, ‘Ugly is Fine’, or ‘Death in Life’. And I have to stay here for the rest of mine. There are no aesthetic pardons.

So I wondered how Jennifer Spencer was faring in Observation. She had a lower-middle-class youth, upper-middle-class adulthood. A transition to Jennings wasn’t going to be easy for her, to say the least. But my interest in the fate and character of Jennifer Spencer was going to be limited compared to the keen interest I have in women like Movita Watson and her ‘sidekick’, Cher. I had never met women like them before my incarceration and I am fascinated by their unschooled intelligence.

Movita, for example, is someone I pegged as decent the minute I saw her despite her hellfire exterior. She plays tough, and sometimes dumb, but she’s generous and clever, too, and has her own eye for ‘attitude’ in others. She will tell you that when she entered Jennings, I had no ‘attitude’ at all. This was why we became friends fairly quickly. She was, in her words, ‘curious ‘bout that weird ol’ bitch’. Well, attitude is one of the petty attributes that I lost as a result of my husband dying at my hands, or more literally, at my feet. When I came in, I’ve been told by Movita, I had the look of a ‘schoolteacher who’d been wiped out by a nuclear bomb’. Change ‘schoolteacher’ to ‘schoolmistress’ and her assessment was pretty much accurate.

But those credentials as a schoolteacher secured my position as the prison librarian. And since that time I have been preoccupied with thinking of ways to acquire more books. Books were always important to me. Well, they are my life’s blood really. Before and after my crime.

The Life of the Heart (of which, ironically, we had two copies in the library) was Richard’s sixth book. It was supposed to be about the stunning and liberated life that can be ours if we give in to our feelings of love. He’d put me and my two sons through hell while he was trying to write it, just as he had, come to think of it, when he wrote his fourth and fifth. The children were ‘distractions’. Somehow I was always doing something ‘stupid’. He once accused me of turning pages too loudly. Bryce and Tyler, despite their initial business success, were ‘disappointments’ to him. But that I could understand. How disappointing it must be for a false, humorless, and arrogant man to have two sons who could see through him and laugh. I, on the other hand – raised to be a right-minded woman – supported the bastard throughout. I fed him, excused him, pampered him, read his drafts, corrected his grammar, gave him ideas, typed his corrections, and hated his editor with him. I did it for thirty-four years. Why stop now, when he needed me more than ever?