Free From the Chrysalis by Karen E. Black Page B

next stall erupted, yelling at the shrunken little Dustin Hoffman creature she was visiting. “I can’t take anymore! You’ve got to stop!”
Stop what? Stop stealing? Stop drinking? Stop killing? Stop hurting me? Anxious to write her own script, Liza shut the woman out. “But,” she demurred, “at least I’m not getting acne anymore.”  
“You?” He shook his head, trying to look serious. “Acne? You’re imagining things. You never had acne. Although I do remember a certain yellow polka dot dress.” He grinned when she flushed again at this distressing evidence of his memory. “And the way you drank tea. The old aunties wanted to get rid of us, but you wouldn’t leave.”
“Old? I’m not sure. Everybody had their children so young in those days.”  
“That was the last farm-do I ever went to.” He paused, staring off into space. “I think that’s why I remember it so well. That … and you,” he added. “And the butterflies. It was my final outing before I came here. All those rednecks, well, most of the cousins turned out okay. Except for Randy.”
“What do you mean? I thought he was a police detective in Hamilton.”
“Yeah, he’s a copper all right,” Dace agreed, his hand tightening on his telephone receiver. “Remind me. What was happening at the farm that day, an anniversary?”
“Aunt Sadie’s and Uncle Tom’s thirtieth or fortieth or something. Who knows? We have so many aunts and uncles I don’t know how anybody keeps track.”
“Jeez, forty years is a long time. My father was so mad that summer he used to slam me into a wall every time he looked at me. And my mother—“
  He suddenly stopped talking and stared down at his hands.  
  Wait! Liza almost shouted. Come back to me! “Oh, she’d understand,” she said. Planting her hand against their glass partition, she appealed to him with her eyes. “She would! She’d come to see you every visitors’ day.”
Their fat overseer materialized so fast she almost fell off her stool. He gestured at the reinforced glass divider and Liza dropped her hand without taking her eyes off Dace’s taut expression. There was no time to spare.
“What’s his problem? Is he worried about me smudging the glass?”
Dace’s face relaxed. “Maybe,” he said. “You know, I’ve been away so long, Liza. I’ve done my best to pay, well, as much as anyone can. When I get Out, it’s going to be for good. I meant what I wrote you last time.”
She nodded because she had memorized everything he wrote: I’m going to be a son my father can be proud of. You’ll be proud of me, too. Of course he couldn’t be expected to say a thing like that out loud. Not here in this place, where it would be met by a chorus of jeers.
  She searched her mind for the right thing to say. Every word was so precious today. “In your last letter, you said you were getting out real soon.”
“Well, maybe.” He shifted. When he jerked his eyes in the guard’s direction, she felt such a fool. She should have known. Of course the guards could lip-read. Locking her hands between her knees, she leaned in even closer until their reflections collided in the streaky glass.
“My parole review’s coming up in November,” he volunteered.
“That’s good, right?”
“ If I get paroled. But that’s a big If. I can’t say I’m looking forward to my parole review.”
“Things will go better this time. They will. It’s not like you’re a shit disturber anymore. You’re what, one of those ‘solids’?”
“Sure, it’s just like I told you, I’m a good boy.But that’s when hard time begins. When you’re just about out.”
A chill passed through her.
“If you’re a quick change artist, it’s okay. Except sometimes it comes back to you, how fucking stupid you’ve been. You want everything right now , and you don’t care how you get it.”
“Hey, are we talking about you or some other guys?”
He shrugged. “Other guys, I guess.”
Almost sagging in relief,