He raised his hand and held it up, like a salute. I waved back, my arm feeling as heavy as my heart, and he smiled at me. It was a small moment of kindness — a soft tug at the lips, nothing more.
Then he was gone. And I was left bound up in the realization that if I really wanted answers, I would have to seek them from somewhere I had been avoiding.
The following day I called in sick to work and took a bus to visit my father at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill. I didn’t tell my mother — she had been stressed out ever since the incident at Millie’s party, and I figured my father’s incarceration was the last thing I should bring up. Besides, I was going there for answers to a problem she seemed to have no knowledge of and, if it was as bad as I was anticipating, I wanted to keep it that way.
The correctional center encompassed several concrete cell blocks and one roundhouse building fenced in by a perimeter with ten walled watchtowers. Beyond the walls, over two thousand acres of barren landscape surrounded the prison, keeping it far removed from anything that might have once resembled normal life for its nearly four thousand inmates, one of whom was my father.
It was the sixth time I had seen him since he had gone to prison almost eighteen months ago, and each time was harder than the one before. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I still had four more years of these visits ahead of me.
After presenting my identification and passing through the security check, I met my father in the visiting room. Around us, other prisoners sat on metal stools at white tables with their families; kids as young as one and two mingled with heavyset grannies and Gothic teenagers. Prison guards lingered by the walls, eyes narrowed in pursuit of a forbidden embrace or any other illicit exchange, above or below the tables.
My father was paler than I expected and there were new dark creases under his eyes. I knew it could have been a lot worse. Since my father wasn’t gang-affiliated, he was technically, in prison parlance, a “neutron,” which meant the violent inmates mostly left him alone. He could not, however, avoid the effects of meager food and limited physical exercise. He was losing weight and losing sleep.
“How are you?” I began to chew on my pinkie nail — a nervous habit that usually returned in his company.
My father shook out his scruffy gray hair so it fell across his forehead and hid the faint bruises above his eye — they only mostly left him alone. “Getting by, Soph.” He tried to smile, but it was crooked and yellowed. “It’s so good to see you.”
It took everything in me not to crumple in my cold metal seat. How did my father end up in this place? He was a shadow of the man who had raised me on sweeping fairy tales, swashbuckling adventure movies, and faraway hiking trips. The worst things he ever did were yell at me when he lost his temper, forget to wash the dishes, or stay out too late with Uncle Jack every once in a while. He didn’t belong in here with murderers. Even if he had killed a man.
“Dad, you don’t look so good.”
“We don’t get lots of fruits and vegetables in here,” he teased, but the joviality didn’t reach his eyes. He leaned forward and took my hand in his; I could feel his rough, calloused skin against mine. “Happy belated birthday, Soph.”
“No contact across the tables!” shouted a nearby prison guard. I resisted the urge to slam my head against the table as we pulled our hands apart. I kept my gaze on my fingernails instead. “Thanks, Dad.”
“So how is everything at home?” His eyes lit up with interest, brightening his face and pulling my attention away from the new lines that had formed around his mouth.
“Boring, as usual,” I lied, purposefully omitting the part about me being drugged at Millie’s house party. I knew he would hear it from Jack or my mother soon, but it wasn’t going to be from me.
“I started a new book yesterday …” he began.
I listened as he told me all about the books he had been reading. When he finished, I traded some of my own safe topics, including how my mother had gained some new clients in Lincoln Park and Millie’s recently formed harebrained intention to go Greek-island-hopping after high school. We spoke about Mrs. Bailey’s weekly visits and touched briefly on my fast-approaching senior year. My father smiled and contributed at all the right times until the conversation drew to a natural close. As much as I wanted to pursue less threatening topics, I knew I had to prioritize my true intentions, because the visit would soon come to an end. As it was, I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the real reason I had come to see him.
“Dad,” I interjected before he could launch into another ambling conversation. “I have a question.”