The Book of Michael Page 5

  “You felt self–righteous. And you thought you could get away with anything. What about Miranda?”

  “She was on the sidelines. She didn’t get involved at all. Weird, eh?”

  “Not weird. Miranda was about Miranda. Not saving children from slavery.”

  “It was after that that Lisa paid attention to me.We became friends at first. She was into issues–global warming, animal rights, gun control.You name it and she was either for or against it in a major way. And she was a whole lot less complicated than Miranda.”

  “And she was cute?”

  “Not like Miranda. She didn’t try to make herself look sexy. But she was. I didn’t even notice it at first. And then it started to sink in.”

  “And then came the sex?”

  “Well, yeah. But not before I’d told Miranda it was over.”

  “What did Miranda say?”

  “She was high at the time. Not sure on what. I thought she’d scratch my eyes out. I was prepared to run. Really. Instead, she acted like it was no big deal. Said she was already thinking about moving on. I was too tame, she said. Not willing to push the envelope.”

  “But she didn’t let it go, did she?” Phyllis took another drink of beer.

  “I never knew,” I said.“And that’s the part that’s driving me crazy. I would have never believed it. Until the truth came out. Until she confessed.”

  “Michael, I’m so sorry. I wish I could make the hurt go away.”

  “I don’t think anyone can do that,” I said.

  Chapter 9

  Phyllis looked tired and sad now. “I have to go plug myself back in,” she said.

  I guess I must have looked puzzled.

  “The oxygen bottle.”

  I tried to help her stand up but she brushed me away. I followed her back into the living room. “I’m gonna rest awhile.You go home. Give yourself some time to adapt. And don’t take any crap from the assholes out there.”

  I knew which assholes she was talking about and her phrasing was quintessential Phyllis. My grandmother, even when I was little, would shock my friends or their parents at occasions like school graduations or birthday parties. She always spoke her mind freely.

  The first bus on my way home did not stop. I was waiting alone and it slowed but then it just kept on going. I tried not to make too much of the possibilities.

  I decided to walk the first leg of the trip back home. As I started the hike, I listened to my breathing and remembered lying on my bunk back inside Severton. I had trained myself to steady my breath, follow it with my mind, and put myself into a state of meditation. Like reading books, it was one of those things that kept me from going insane.

  Given my circumstances, I was beginning to believe that I had survived amazingly well in prison. I’m not saying it was good, I’m just saying I’m surprised. The conviction was one thing.That was when the numbness began to set in. Part of me is still not over that even now, years later. But the times, they were a–changing, as Bob Dylan would say. I was guilty, the jury had determined, of murder, and many people still believed I raped her. And I was sixteen. I was tried as an adult.That was nothing new. But I was sentenced as an adult too. That was rare. And that decision scared the crap out of my parents.

  “Young offender” is the term used to debate this issue in the papers. Not long before my case, a young offender with a long list of crimes had stolen a car and killed a woman with it.There was an inquiry into the whole thing and it was determined that the law needed to deal more harshly with violent young offenders. Circumstance and history had delivered me into that spotlight. If a sixteen–year–old commits a murder, do you send him to the youth correctional facility or do you send him to adult prison?

  It was a hypothetical question up until my trial came along. But the judge determined that I was to be deemed an adult, that I would have to take adult responsibility for what I’d done. Only problem was that I hadn’t done anything. My lawyer, Joshua Hawker, unfortunately for me, was not very popular with the press. He had, it turned out, defended real murderers before and got them off on technicalities that allowed them to go free, including one man who murdered again. My father had picked Hawker against my mother’s wishes. My father’s lawyer had said, “Hawker is the best.”

  Well, yes and no. In my case, no.

  Hawker “coached” me about how to present myself in court. I hated it. It all seemed so false. The point was I didn’t do it. Up until the first few days of the trial, I believed that my innocence would be obvious. But it wasn’t.The circumstances made it look like I killed Lisa. “The jury will take one look at you and want to believe you are guilty,” Hawker told me.“They aren’t going to care about motive.The prosecutor will show that you are a drug user and that you had sex with the girl that afternoon.That will be enough. So we need to work around that.”

  He was right. Drugs and sex equaled motive even if it didn’t add up to anything logical. I was not heavy into any drug. I smoked some. Who didn’t? I tried a few things, thanks to Miranda and her friends.

  Hawker played it wrong. He cleaned me up. He made me wear a suit and tie. He told me what to say when asked the hard questions.Worst of all, I think he believed I was guilty. Oh, he still wanted to win the case. He wanted me to go free. But he believed I was guilty. And I think that somehow came across to the jury, although I can’t prove it. Afterwards, he tried calling for a mistrial but one was not granted.

  And I had a judge who was trying to right some of the wrongs of the past. This young offender, perpetrator of such heinous crimes. I would be a test case for the new legislation on young people who commit violent crimes. I would get an adult sentence and go to an adult prison.

  The only “good news” on that front was that the Severton Correctional Institution (prison, please) had a new wing reserved for violent offenders who were under twenty–one. And I’d have my own cell.

  My father had to take out a second mortgage on the house. Hawker wasn’t cheap even when he lost. The bill itself would probably not be fully paid off in my parents’ lifetime. “Justice don’t come cheap,” were the words my lawyer used when discussing financial particulars with my parents.

  At Severton, I expected… well, you can paint all the pictures for yourself. I don’t need to spell them out here. But I was a “test case” and the youngest offender in the ward. So people were watching out for me. One of the guards, Eduardo, was assigned responsibility for me. “I’m going to see that you are treated fairly,” he said.“Just don’t ever, ever spit in my face.” My reputation had preceded me. I promised Eduardo I would treat him with respect. And did. And he returned the favor by doing his job–which was to ensure my safety.

  Other inmates intimidated me. They threatened me, said things that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t like a weekend in Disneyworld or anything. It wasn’t like a vacation behind bars. It was still a private hell in a locked room. I survived it. That’s what I’ll say about it. It could have been worse. But one day the door opened.

  ***

  My long walk made the calves of my legs ache. And that felt good. It made my lungs work and that felt good too, but the mere act of breathing made me worry about Phyllis.Would she need an oxygen bottle for the rest of her life? Is that what smoking did to her? And I kept looking up at the empty branches of the trees around me. I wanted to see leaves on them again.While I was in Severton, I dreamed about green leaves on trees all the time. I dreamed about summer. I daydreamed about being with Lisa. I pretended she would still be there when I got out. I did this over and over to help keep it together. I still loved her. I deluded myself into thinking that she would be there. Even as I walked that day, looking up into the light filtering through the trees, I started to slip into that fantasy world where no one had been murdered. And that’s when I realized I had taken a wrong turn. I wasn’t on the bus route to my house anymore. I was headed to the outskirts of town. I’d gone east down Vogler Street. I was about a block from Lisa’s home.

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nbsp; Chapter 10

  I stared at the house for a long time. I looked at the backyard and beyond to the woods behind her house, where she and I had set up the tent and “camped. ” Ironically, I had always believed we were safe there. Hidden and away from the world. Free to do what we wanted. Sometimes we’d just lie on our backs and look up at the trees. Sometimes there were birds singing. Sometimes we were able to make the world go away.

  ***

  Lisa was not like Miranda. Lisa had not had it all that easy. Heart problems as a child. An irregular heartbeat, lots of time sick, and missing school. And then an operation when she was thirteen. “I almost died,” she said. “My heart stopped. I went… somewhere. It wasn’t like on the TV shows. I couldn’t see any light, no sound. I wasn’t looking down on myself. I just felt like I was somewhere surrounded by people who cared for me. I don’t remember anything else. "

  Lisa was all about causes. That’s how she ended up in the demonstration that day. She wasn’t a show–off angry protestor like I was. She almost didn’t join. She was more a letter writer, a gentle persuader. That was her style. Convince one person at a time not to buy pencils from a factory that uses child labor, convince shoe buyers one at a time not to buy sweatshop running shoes–and you can change the world. That’s what she believed. “You have to live what you believe in,” was one of her favorite phrases. And she did.

  She was hard at work convincing me to be a vegetarian. And failing.

  She lectured me about AIDS orphans.

  I think I was one of her causes–for a while at least. Not that she was a goody two–shoes who wanted to reform me. She liked that I was who I was. Let’s call me rough around the edges.

  She liked ice cream. She said she cheated a couple of times on school exams. She read books by Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. She never watched television except for PBS nature shows. She liked coffee if it was “fair trade” and she’d grill whoever was selling a cup of it to find out where it came from and how the farmers were paid before she bought it.

  Like me, she liked loud, offensive alternative music. She was opposed to all wars but thought that certain world leaders near and far should be assassinated. She wanted to save rainforests and ozone layers and arctic hares and minke whales and even lobsters. She wanted to stamp out racism and sexism and capitalism and several other “isms. ” Ironically, (if that is the right word here), she was in favor of capital punishment. And so were her parents. I’ll let that settle in with you for a bit. The irony was not lost on me.

  She claimed to be both a Christian and a pagan. “Have you decided what religion you want to be?” she asked sometimes. She thought that finding a religion was like shopping for a new pair of jeans. You look around until you find one you really like and try it on. Or you make a hybrid out of a couple of religions and call it your own.

  Like her, I’d grown up going to a Protestant church. But I’d drifted away. During my trial (my many trials in the most Biblical sense), I had prayed again and always hoped for my prayers to be answered. They never were, up until the day of my release. Even then, it wasn’t the thing that was number one on my list.

  “You should read more,” she said.

  “I read too much already,” was my lame answer.

  “Not what they give you in school. You need to dig deeper. ”

  Deeper was an odd word. She loaned me some of her Anaïs Nin books, which were mostly stories concerning sex. But she also loaned me books of poetry and politics and a book by Thomas Merton and one on palmistry.

  “Let’s go live on an island,” she’d say. And she’d describe to me what it would be like there. “We’d grow our own food, build our own house, make our own clothes, and make love whenever we felt like it. ”

  Lisa was a very sexual person and we would both go a little crazy sometimes.

  For good or for bad, sex had a lot to do with us getting together. Adults are very confused about teenagers and sexuality. They know it is an emotional minefield but they offer advice that is near impossible to take. They would like you to curb your hormones but it’s not just hormones. You feel the need to experience powerful emotions and that’s part of the sex.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I was never a find ’em and grind ’em kind of guy. I needed to feel an emotional connection. I was, or I believed I had been, in love with Miranda before Lisa came along. I had felt a very strong bond with her–and it was much more than the sex and the exotic danger of the drugs. I just wasn’t ready to follow her in the direction she was going. I got out of that relationship to save me. Miranda seemed hell–bent on getting deeper into the drugs. I tried to get her to see how dangerous it could be. But she wouldn’t listen. I should have stayed on her case. But after a while I gave up. And that was probably the biggest mistake of my life.

  ***

  When Lisa first started showing an interest in me–and it was she who initiated our relationship–I was cool at first. She seemed too tame, too good. That was until our first date (if you could call it that) when she put her tongue down my throat and her hand on the crotch of my pants.

  The tent in the woods behind her house was her idea. And I was the most willing of participants. I’ll even admit that if it wasn’t for the sex, I don’t think I would have got to know the amazing and complex, wonderful and sometimes exasperating, but beautiful person that she was. Sex can take you far away from the mundane daily stuff of growing up and deliver you to that ultimate tropical island where two souls can mingle.

  I used the word “souls” there. Lisa’s word. Not mine. But I’d read enough of her books to believe that there must be something that is left after we die. And one of those books had said that sexual energy and spiritual energy were both part of the same thing.

  “What same thing?” I had asked her–after making love, lying in that tent with the light filtered by the green nylon fabric.

  “God,” she said. “Everything that exists is God. It’s all one thing. ”

  ***

  I asked my lawyer, the not–so–clever Mr. Hawker, if there was any point during the trial when I could just speak freely about Lisa, about us. I’d told him some of the above in hopes that the story would reveal ultimately how much I loved Lisa.

  Hawker stared at me and then said, “Let me get this straight. You want to go on the stand and talk about pagans and saving the freaking furry creatures, sex and God, and what else was it? Lobsters? You want to explain all that to a middle–aged jury made up of housewives and handymen?”

  Needless to say I was told to say only the minimum. Hawker had a plan and his plan was to prove that the sex had been consensual and that the blood tests on me revealed that I only had traces of THC from the marijuana in my blood. And so did Lisa. (It was organic, supposedly. She had bought it from a friend. Farmers of the weed had been paid a fair trade price. )

  But it still pretty much came down to drugs and sex by the time the prosecutor finished with me. And he had buried the idea of motive. We got high. I got carried away and killed her. That was what they wanted to believe.

  ***

  I didn’t just stand there all afternoon staring at Lisa’s house. I knew it was a bad place for me to be. One part of me wanted to confront her mother, her father, and her sister and say to them how sorry I was about what happened. I’d never been given the opportunity. Despite Miranda’s confession, I doubted that they were ready to be anything but hostile towards me.

  It looked like such a normal suburban house. And hers, if ever there was one, was such a normal family. Her parents would try to figure out where Lisa had gone wrong. What had led her down this dangerous path? Was it something they did? Was it the weird books she read? Was it her hormones? Or would they just blame it all on me?

  I walked back towards the main road and onward to where I’d catch the bus that would take me to my neighborhood.

  “I’m sorry, Lisa,” I said out loud. “I’m so sorry. ”

  And my legs stopped working then. I crumpled and allow
ed myself to fall to my knees and put my hands over my face. I think I felt her presence then, or imagined it, because her face came back into my mind. I’d tried conjuring it so many times before in prison–but it would never come into focus and I’d have to take out her picture and look at it. Even then it seemed unreal, not like her.

  Now I could see her if I kept my eyes closed. But it hurt so bad that I felt a pain in my chest. When I opened my eyes, there was a boy on a tricycle. He had ridden to the end of his driveway and now he was headed my way. I heard a door to the house open and a woman shout out to him. Then I realized she was running this way.

  I started to get up, but felt unsure on my feet. I began to walk on slowly and I guess I was walking towards this woman’s son. I’ll never be sure if she recognized who I was but I won’t forget the look in her eyes as she grabbed her little boy and then stared at me. She said nothing. She didn’t have to.

  Chapter 11

  TV and newspaper reporters phoned the house and my mother told them I wasn’t going to speak to them. “He’s trying to return to a normal life,” she said, but I didn’t think that could ever happen. I spent a lot of time in my room. Prison had allowed me to adjust to being by myself. I could read for hours. It gave me that. I had trained myself to read any book I could get my hands on.

  Lisa had been the one to teach me about leaping. “Pick a book that seems like the least likely book you’d want to read and give it a try. Just make the leap. ” She had loaned me several of her “leapers. ” Before I lost her, I had been reading Dostoevsky. Imagine. Me reading old dead Russian writers. She started me with Notes from Underground. And it was Crime and Punishment I was reading after that.