That aside, we decided that there was no point in saying anything to the kids. At the ages of six and four, they would be easy to fool—foolbeing synonymous with protect.Besides, what was the point in worrying them when I would be home so soon? Hopefully, I prayed, I would.
The Duchess promised to accept all my collect calls and not to trash-talk me to the kids. I believed her on both counts, not because I thought she felt a grain of compassion toward me but because I knew she felt it for the children. And that was fine; when you're in a position like mine, you accept your victories without questioning motives. Then you say thank you.
When I spoke to the kids, I kept it short and sweet. I told them I was traveling on business, which they both found very exciting. Neither of them asked when I would be coming home, simply because they assumed it would be soon. At Carter's age, the concept of time didn't mean much. He measured things in half hours, which was the average length of a cartoon; anything beyond that was considered “long.”
Chandler, however, was another story. She was in first grade and knew how to read (not too well, thank God!), so she couldn't be fooledfor long. Eventually—within a month, perhaps—she would begin to smell a rat; then her well-deserved nickname of CIA would complicate things. She would start to investigate— eavesdropping, asking pointed questions, checking for lies, omissions, and contradictions. In essence, she would become the quintessential nosy six-year-old girl, a concerned daughter who missed her Daddy and wouldn't stop digging until she got to the bottom of things.
With that in mind, before I hung up I told her that my travels might take me to some very faraway places—fantasticplaces, I said-just like those two silly Frenchmen, Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, from the movie Around the World in 80 Days.We had watched it together many times, and she had always found it fascinating, especially the different ways they'd traveled.
“It'll be great!” I said to her. “You can watch the video with Gwynnie and see all the great places while Daddy's visiting them. In fact, it'll be just like we're visiting them together!”
“You're going to all the same places as Passepartout?” she asked wondrously.
“Absolutely, thumbkin! And I think it might take me the same amount of time it took them.”
“Eighty days?” she sputtered. “Why would it take you eighty days? They rode on an elephant, Daddy! Can't you take an airplane?”
That little devil! She was too clever! I had to cut this conversation short. “Well, I guess I could, but that might take the fun out of it. Anyway, just watch the video with Gwynnie, and we'll talk about it then, okay?”
“Okay,” she said happily. “I love you, Daddy.” Then she blew me a big kiss into the phone.
“I love you too,” I said warmly, and I blew her a kiss back. Then I hung up the phone, fought back the tears, and went to the end of the line and waited my turn again. Ten minutes later I was dialing Southampton.
First I heard KGB's voice: “Alloa?” Then the recorded voice of the operator: “This is a collect call from a federal prison. If you wish to accept, please press five now; if you do not wish to accept, press nine or hang up the phone; if you wish to block calls from this number permanently, please press seven-seven now.” And then there was silence.
Oh, Jesus Christ! I thought. KGB couldn't understand the instructions! I screamed into the phone: “Yulia! Don't press seven-seven! I won't be able to call you back! Don't press seven-seven!” I turned around and looked for a friendly face. A towering black man was next in line. He was staring at me, amused. I shook my head and said, “My girlfriend's a foreigner. She doesn't understand the message.”
He smiled warmly, exposing a conspicuous absence of central incisors. “Happens all the time, big-man. You better hang up before she presses seven-seven. If she does you're”—beep, beep,went the phone—”fucked.”
Just then I heard a loud click.With a sinking heart, I held up the phone and stared at it quizzically. Then I turned to the towering black man and said, “I think she pressed seven-seven.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Then you're fucked.”
I was about to hang up when he said, “You got another number at the house?”
I nodded. “Yeah, why?”
He motioned to the touch pad. “Call back, then; it don't block the whole house, just that line.”
“Is it okay?” I asked nervously. “I thought it's one call at a time.”
He shrugged. “Go call your girl. I got nothin’ buttime.”
“Thanks,” I said. What a terrific guy! First Ming the Merciless and now the Towering Black Man! These people weren't so bad, were they? Especially this guy! He was a true gentleman. I later found out he was facing twenty years for extortion.
I turned around and dialed the phone again, and this time she got it right. Her first words were: “OhmyGods! Maya lubimaya! Ya lublu tibea!”
“I love you too,” I said softly. “Are you hanging in there, honey?”
“Hanging where?” she asked, with a confused snuffle.
Jesus! I thought. In spite of everything, it was enough to make you crazy. “I mean, are you doing okay?”
“Da…”she said sadly, “I, I okay.” Then: “Oh, oh… ohmyGods…I… ohmyGods…” and she started sobbing uncontrollably. Try as I might, I couldn't help but find comfort in her sobbing. It was as if with each sob, with each tear, and with each gooselike snort she was reaffirming her love for me. I made a mental note to count her “I love yous” each day. When they started to diminish, I would know the end was near.
Today, however, the end was definitely nowhere in sight. The moment she stopped sobbing, she said, “I don't care how long it take, I wait for you forever. I will not go out of house until you are home.”
And, true to her word, that was exactly what she did.
As my first week behind bars came to a close, she was there every time I called Southampton. According to pod rules, you could speak as long as you wanted on each call, and sometimes we would speak for hours at a time. It was rather ironic, I thought, considering we never spoke that much when I was on the outside. Our relationship had been mostly about sex; when we weren't having sex, we were eating or sleeping or arguing over whose history books were more accurate.
Now, however, we didn't have such arguments. We seemed to agree on everything—mostly because we avoided all subjects even vaguely related to history, politics, economics, religion, grammar, and, of course, the moon. Instead, we spoke of simple things, like all the wonderful dinners we'd shared together… all those fires on the beach… and how we had made love to each other all day long. But, most of all, we spoke about the future—meaning, ourfuture— and how once all this was over we would get married and live happily ever after.
And when I wasn't speaking to KGB, I was reading book after book, playing catch-up after years of entertaining myself with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. For as long as I could remember, I had despised reading, associating it with boredom and tediousness rather than wonder and pleasure. I viewed myself as the product of a misguided education system that stressed reading “the classics,” which, for the most part, were boring and outdated. Perhaps if I had been forced to read Jawsand The Godfatherinstead of Moby-Dickand Ulysses,things would have turned out differently. (Always looking to place blame somewhere else.)
So I was making up for lost time now, averaging nearly a book a day, and writing three letters as well—one to KGB and one to each of the kids. Of course, I would call the kids each day to tell them that I loved them and that I would be home soon. And while I hated lying to them, I knew it was the right thing to do.