The Weight of Air

Billy shook his head behind the plastic barrier that separated him from his wife in the visitor section of the city jail. He couldn’t believe a word she had just told him, and he let her know as much. “Baby I believe it when you say that Mr. Farley’ll let me come back to work, but I don’t know about the $20,000.”

“What, you think I stole it or something?” Melinda asked. She gave her husband a long, uncompromising stare. Her husband’s orange jumpsuit hurt her eyes, and she could see the beard starting to overgrow on his face.

“No, Mel, that’s not what I’m saying, it’s just - what if the bail officer starts asking questions about where we got this much cash this quickly? What’re you gonna tell them?”

Mel shook her head and bounced her leg under the counter that held about a half-dozen of these talking booths. “Same thing I told you: I sold some of my mom’s antiques and they gave me $20,000 for it.”

“And what’d you sell?”

“I sold some old crystal glasses and some old jewelry.”

“Why’d you never sell it before if it was worth so much?”

“I never knew how much it was all worth. Thought I was gonna get a couple hundred, instead they gave me twenty grand. I’m just as surprised as everyone else.”

Billy held back his next sentence and let the story sink in again. “I don’t know, Mel, I don’t know. Even if we can post the bail, there’ll only be $5,000 left, and sure I can go back to work, but what if I lose the case and I go to prison? We’re gonna wish we hadn’t used so much of the twenty.”

“You’re not going to lose the case, Billy. Everybody knows that you were trying to break up the fight.”

“Yeah sure we all know that, but we also know that anything can happen in there. There’s no guarantee one way or another of how this thing works out. Listen, let’s just use the twenty until this thing is over and the kids are back in school and you can go back to work. You can focus on them for now.”

“Why don’t you want to be out with the kids, Billy? Why? You’d rather be in here than with them?” The two broke eye contact and let their gaze wander to opposite sides of the rooms. Billy’s breathing became labored with frustration and tears began to stroll down Mel’s cheeks. Before either one could mend the situation, a guard came up behind Billy and tapped him on the shoulder. Billy nodded, still looking to the side and not at his wife.

“I love you, Billy,” Mel said.

“ I love you too. Don’t bail me out yet.”

Melinda dragged herself to the bus stop outside the jail. She felt as if the sky itself rested on her shoulders, with each step or breeze chipping away at her strength. She sat on the bench at the bus stop and pulled a pen and her small, black leather notebook out of her purse. She began writing down ways she could stretch the $5,000 that would be left after posting Billy’s bail. It would buy their food for a few months if they just used the income from Billy’s job as a plumber to pay for rent and utilities. But then Mark and Mary were starting school again in three months and they’ll need to start saving for new shoes and school supplies. Maybe $4,000 could go to food, she thought to herself, and they can use the rest to make sure the kids have new school supplies. But the car needed new tires, that’s why she was taking the bus everywhere anyways. I’ll sell the car and we can use that extra money to help with the food, Mel decided. Mel continued to scribble and scratch until she saw her bus turn the corner.

Once on the bus, Mel took a seat by the window, smoothed out her blue jeans, and rested her head on the glass. She opened her notebook again and looked at all the solutions she had written out. Billy was right: $5,000 wasn’t going to last long. He could go back to work, but he still has a point: what if they lose the case? Mel put the notebook away and began to knit at the bottom of her t-shirt. The reasonable side of her brain knew that the case was a sure thing, that everyone would come out to testify that Billy didn’t start the fight and he didn’t have the gun, he just tackled the guy who did. However that same reasonable part of her brain couldn't drown out the thundering fear in her heart that they could still lose. Mel continued to stare at the pages, and she felt the burden that was on her shoulders shift to her chest, and her lungs began to labor under the pressure.

Mel’s chaotic thoughts were interrupted by the presence of someone sitting next to her. Mel slowly turned her head to see the face of a young girl, no older than 20 or 21, wearing a yellow crop top and her black hair tied back in a ponytail. “Listen, I know this is super weird, but I saw you get picked up at the jail stop. I know what it’s like to have someone on the inside, and I just wanted to let you know that I know how lonely it can feel. I’m part of a support group for people who have loved ones in prison, and I wanted to invite you to our meetings if you’d like.”

Mel could feel the tears welling up behind her eyes again, but she bit her lip and nodded at the young woman, unable to say anything. The stranger took Mel’s hand in both of hers and offered a full-toothed smile. “There’s a coffee shop in two stops, would you mind if I bought you some coffee? You look like you could need it.” Mel silently nodded again, her breath still stifled under the tonnage of the world, and the two sat quietly as the bus made two more stops.

“I’m Val, by the way” the stranger said as the two disembarked the bus.

Val’s voice and presence acted like a lever, allowing Mel to lift up her voice again. “I’m Mel. Thank you for the kind words back there.” Val smiled again and gestured Mel towards a small coffee shop. After they had bought their drinks, the two women sat outside under the green awning of the shop and watched the cars go by.

A minute or two went by before Val spoke up. “My father went to prison when I was nine. He got caught in a stolen car. He didn’t steal it, and he didn’t even know it was stolen when he bought it. Still, he went down for possession of stolen property and a couple of other things the prosecutors threw on. Sent him away for two years.”

Mel leaned her head against her hand and let out a long exhale. “How does a kid get through something like that? That was my husband that I was visiting. I have two kids and I don't want them to have to go without their father.”

Val shrugged. “For a while we didn’t visit him because my mom was embarrassed by what he’d done and she didn’t want us to feel embarrassed too. Until at church one day, the pastor said we should visit our father; he said it would show us the importance of learning from our mistakes.”

“Did your mother ever try to bail him out before he got sentenced?”

Val shook her head and stared deeply at her latte. “We had the money, but Dad wanted to stay inside. He said that if he does get sentenced, he might get time-served for having stayed in jail until the trial, which would be better in the long run. And yeah he was right, the judge sentenced him to two and a half years but gave him six-months time served, so he only had to do two.”

“It works out to the same amount of time behind bars, though.”

Val nodded in agreement. “Made sense to him though. Guess if it helped him sleep at night.”

“Don’t you ever wish that your mother bailed him out so you could’ve at least had some time with him?”

Val placed her arms on the table and thought for a moment. “I don’t think I understood enough back then to really know what I would have wanted. If you got the money to bail him out, it’s worth thinking about. I don’t know how old your kids are, but for me, kids don’t always understand these kinds of things: either their dad’s home or he’s not; and if he’s not home, either he’s coming back or he’s not. That’s really what it boils down to for kids. There’s no easy decision when it comes to this stuff; like my Dad, you can only make the decision that you can sleep with at night. You’re the one in charge, you gotta be firm with what you do.”

“I don’t want him to hate me for spending money on his bail. He just wants to stay in so we can use the money.”

“Well, do you hate him for wanting to do that?”

Mel paused before responding. “No, of course not.”

“Right, because you know that he’s still just thinking about the family, and he knows you are too. So whatever you decide, he’s not going to hate you either.” Mel reached out and grasped Val’s hand. They held that position for a moment before Mel brought out her pen and notebook again, tore out a page, and wrote her phone number down.

“Thank you for the coffee. Let me know when your meetings are, please.” Mel handed Val the piece of paper and walked back to the bus stop, a new speed energizing her steps.

There was a long silence between Mel and Billy from the moment they left the prison to the moment they got off the bus near their apartment. The kids were with one of Mel’s old work friends for the afternoon, so it was just the two of them. Billy sat on the couch and Mel at the dining table. Neither looked at the other.

With an ease she hadn’t felt in days, Mel spoke. “We can make it work, Billy. If you go back to work, maybe sell the car and get a little extra money that way. We can make the five thousand stretch a little bit. It’s only a couple of months, but I want you with the kids, and the kids are gonna want to have some time with you if things don’t work out.”

Billy turned and looked his wife in the eye for the first time since leaving the prison. “If you think we can make it work, then we’ll make it work. I ain’t got a lot of time before the trial, I don’t really want to waste any of it being mad.” Mel got up from the table and took a seat next to her husband. She lay her head on his shoulder and suddenly she could breathe again.