When I was arrested, I decided not to call my father. I thought the physical distance between us, my Boston to his D.C., would allow my tragic mishap to go undetected. Instead, I chose to call my uncle who lived nearby and asked him to meet me at the courthouse and bail me out. I figured I would appear for court dates, the matter would resolve over time, and I would strategically omit the legal events from my periodic phone calls with my father.
But the court ordered me held without bail. My uncle did not scavenge for bail money but watched with owl-like eyes of shock as I was whisked away beyond his reach. That night, I was shuttled through the bowels of the courthouse, taken to the dank holding cell, shackled, chained, and transported to prison. He took the brave step of calling my father to inform him of the news of my arrest.
A sleepless night later, my lawyer, a handsome southerner who exudes paternal concern for me, visits. I arrive at our meeting stripped of my clothes and branded with a prison uniform and ID. In a room reserved for confidential visits, just large enough for a table and two chairs, we sit across from each other
“How ya’ doin’?” Michael asks lightly, like we had just bumped into each other at the train station.
“Well, not so good,” I say. “When am I going to get out of here?”
“We have a hearing scheduled for Friday where that will be discussed,” he answers.
“Discussed?! What do you mean discussed?!” Will it be decided I can go?” I ask.
“Well, I believe so,” he replies. He runs his fingers through his hair. “I have to argue for it but we have a good case.”
I search his face frantically. He wears his sideburns long; he’s handsome in an Elvis Presley meets Johnny Cash sort of way. I want to grab him by the sides of his face and kiss him in a way that will take his breath away, startle him to attention.
“I spoke to your father,” he says. My daydream bursts to blackness.
“You did?” I say.
“He wants me to tell you he loves you,” Michael says.
“He does?”I ask.
Michael says, “He told me you are his smartest child.”
The words render me speechless. I don’t believe they are true. My two brothers went to a college harder to get into than the Ivy Leagues and more challenging to complete. My moralistic, older brother, Paul worked so hard he suffered from cluster headaches that would incapacitate him for days. After college, Paul went on to graduate school and earned a PhD in Political Science by writing a dissertation on an obscure Roman philosopher, one of Aristotle’s contemporaries. Now he is an astute, analytical businessman and devoted father of two children.
In college, my younger brother, Charles, turned from a carefree diplomat into a somber man floundering to understand his purpose on this earth. Charles acquired a Masters in Education which he uses to teach inner-city kids the works of Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, and William Shakespeare. He aids in his students’ application to colleges. He’s the stuff movies are made of; he changes lives.
I am a drifter, an intelligent woman with a good education who managed to do above average middling on college and in terms of a career. I worked my way to mid-level management at a consulting firm, a factory of grey-suited, think-alike clones. I achieve what I think represents success even though I find numbers boring and conversations with the brightest of the business world stifflingly dull. Despite my lack of interest and skill I perform a bump above mediocre.
I consider what my father could mean by his compliment. I dredge up from the swamps of my memory a time my dad marveled at me when I recognized tension between a couple at a dinner party. I saw the husband slap meat onto his wife’s plate and nudged my father to share my observations with him. Later, the couple fought audibly in the rooms where the hosts kept everyone’s coats. As we all overheard the yelling, my dad shook his head at me and widened his eyes, a bewildered motion asking, “How did you know?” To him, I am an extraordinary interpreter of people.
“He also he hopes the second half of your life is better.” Michael says.
With stunning alacrity, my father has reduced my maelstrom of a predicament to a detached, pragmatic remark “I hope the second half of her life is better.”
A week later, I call my Dad from my housing unit in prison, an asbestos ceilinged open room with thirty-five bunk beds. I hear my father answer with a suspicious, “Hello?; he is on constant guard for bill collectors and marketers. I picture the mouthpiece of his phone resting on his trim beard.
I can’t reply until a recorded announcement plays, “You have a collect call from, Madeline, an inmate at MCI Framingham. Calls are limited to $35 a day and $200 a month. For rate information, press 4. To accept this call, press 0. To reject this call, press 9 . . .” While the recording drones on, I suspend my breath and ready myself to burst into sobs when the call is connected. But the automated voice informs me, “Your call has been rejected.”
I stare at the headset as if it is a foreign object, hang up, and return to the end of the phone line. During the wait, I evaluate the possible reason my father rejected the call; he’s in the bathroom, he is working on a deadline, or he’s on the other line.
A half an hour later, I try again, hopeful it’s a better time. Michelle, my Dad’s wife answers and the recording plays. I picture her sitting cross-legged on the beige, leather sofa on my father’s sitting room. Michelle and I are close. Twenty years younger than my father, she and I often chat on the phone late at night after my dad has drifted off to sleep. While she is in the kitchen, away from the possibility of disturbing my father, she uncorks a magnum of Concho y Torro or Yellow Tail and drunk dials my number. With slurred cheerfulness, she’ll ask, “Hey, Mad. What’s the scoop?” Her voice is a pitch higher than her sober one.
I take Michelle for what she is: a hedonistic, welcome distraction from my family who do not feel alive unless they are suffering somehow. She injects frivolity into our world of asceticism. For our conversations, I spin stressful and trying moments in life into humor; an uptight boss yelling at me or an awkward situation with my boyfriend’s parents become comedic events. Sometimes, Michelle laughs so hard her chin hits the button hanging up the phone and, always, she forgets our conversations.
Despite the blur of alcohol, I sense Michelle loves me, she cares. I feel we are friends who were destined to meet and just happened to be introduced through my father. In moments of drunken passion – me with laughter and her with alcohol – we swear to each other that no matter what transpires between my dad and her we will stay in touch; we will not leave each other’s lives. Our bond is separate from our association with my father.
Michelle declines my call. I take a quick glance back at the inmates behind me in line and see they are not looking so I dial my father’s number again. Michelle answers, more quickly this time, and declines my call again. I hang up the phone and head to my bunk culling the possible explanations: I intruded on a dinner party or interrupted an argument.
I try my father the next day. He works from home and I always have luck catching him weekdays when he welcomes my calls as a pleasant distraction from his work. He declines my call.
The following week my mother comes to visit me in prison.
“Have you talked to Dad?” I ask her.
“Yes, I have.” And I know because she does not mention his reaction right away that what she has to tell me is difficult.
“And what did he say?” I ask.
My mom’s face grows determined as if she, herself, were facing news. “Madeline, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.” Her hazel eyes dart to the side and then meet mine directly to measure the statement’s impact.
“Really?” My mouth turns dry. “What do mean? What did he say?”
My mom’s face looks pained to elaborate. “Madeline, he doesn’t want you making any phone calls to his house or any mail from you arriving at his address.”
I try to figure out why he phrased his disassociation in such a particular way. “He thinks the police will question him?”
My mom nods.
“Wow.” I gasp. I am unable to look at my mom but I am aware she is looking at me, watching for right moment to speak again.
“Madeline?” she calls to me.
“Yeah?” I hear the pull of her voice but I am not sure I am ready to follow.
“Madeline, you’ll be fine,” she says. She lowers her head to find my eyes. She leans slightly forward. “It’s temporary. When you are better, he’ll be fine.”
I am astonished by the fact that she thinks it is okay to have a fair weather father. I take in a deep breath, locate my tolerance for pain, and lift my head. “Okay,” I say. I handle my father’s choice.
“You’ll be okay,” my mom says again. She gives me a verbal yank up.
“I’ll be okay,” I repeat. We fix our gazes on one another as if we are making a silent pact.
My younger brother writes me notes daily on cards showing the works of various artists: Edward Hopper’s lonely views, Jasper john’s irreverent targets, and Mark Rothko’s somber hazes of color. He mentions our father in a way so gently I feel as if I have brushed by a feather. “Why don’t you write him a note, Sheil?”
I sit, pen poised, waiting to scribble but remain motionless.  My thoughts float to a time I sat with my father in a car. On the day of my memory, my father is driving me from his house in D.C. to my mother’s in Maryland, a trip of about five miles in distance but worlds apart in reality. I am fourteen and I like my dad for living close by; it says more than words that he wants to be near me despite my parents’ divorce. I am proud to brag my father was just a zip code digit away. I am a quiet teenager; I retract inside myself as my family life changes around me. There was no ill-will between my father and me, just the awkward footing of divorce’s unchartered path.
In the scene I recall, I am silent, staring forwards, adjusting from the departure from one of my homes and preparing for the other, when my father breaks the outer stillness by pounding his fist at the center of the steering wheel and yelling, “Well, for God’s sake, speak!”
Instinctively, I know my father demands I speak to distract him, to chatter away his uneasiness. I comply and burst forth with words like a tap-dancer launches into a finale; my voice is his entertainment. Tap, tippity-tap, tap. I see his tension ease; his grip of the steering wheel loosens, and a slight smile forms.
My thoughts return to my cell. “No,” I think. “I will not write my father.
The holidays, a joyless occasion in prison, pass and my legal case does not progress one millimeter further. In January, I receive a card from my father. The on-duty officer hands me my letter as is it were a treat reserved for a behaving dog. My father's handwriting is unmistakable. Each letter is a graphical tour-de-force, a reflection of his superior drafting skills as an architect. I open the card and read what my father has written.
Dear Madeline,
Michelle and I think of you often. I hope you are using this time wisely to prepare for your future.
Love,
Dad & Michelle

Both their names are signed in my father’s hand. I think letters may be the way for my dad and me to reconnect and I write him a letter right away. This time my hand moves quickly over the page.
Dear Dad,
So good to hear from you. I need you more than ever. I’m so lonely here and I thought maybe we could keep each other company by writing each other notes about our days or whatever comes to mind.
 
Love,
Madeline
 
My dad does not respond. Again, I write thinking I may need to lead by example. I send him a cartoon I rip out of a New Yorker that jokes about card catalogs from the pre-internet libraries of yesteryear. In the note, I jot a few lines about the book I am reading. I don’t hear from my dad again.
My father ignoring is potentially devastating. I endure it and my ability to do so, emboldens me. It causes me to look out for myself and I teach myself how to navigate the intimidating atmosphere of prison. I determine inmates fall in one of two categories: the violent criminals, burly and loud, and the addicts, physically damaged and manipulative. Both seek to dominate, one by force and the other with mental games. I apply the same logic I use to placate snarling dogs: don’t let them sense you are afraid and speak in soothing tones. I sit next to a 300 pound woman with tattoos etched around her neck and say, "You have the nicest hair." She smiles and guards my chair when I get up to use the phone.
In March, my mom comes to see me again. Prison is almost bearable except when you are reminded of the world you are not longer a part of. My case has still not moved forward and my spirits are low. For most of the visit, my mother and I sit in two chairs, mine plastic and hers, padded, facing each other and I cry. Guards circle us periodically making sure we do not touch. My mother tries to distract me with stories of the oddball passengers on her plane ride to Boston. Eventually, her manner turns serious.
“Madeline, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Your father took some money from you,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“I got a check from IBM and I deposited into your bank account but they called a few days later and told me it didn’t clear,” my mom tells me.
I nod and remember the stocks I received as a present from my grandfather as a little girl. The stocks were put in my father’s name as guardian because I was underage.
“Well, I called the stock holding company and they told me the check had cleared. The check I received had been voided and a new one was issued and sent to your father’s address,” my mom continues.
I blink, my head whirls, and I say, ”You’re kidding.”
“No, Sheila, and I called him and he said he was owed the money, that he helped pay for your house, that he plans to leave no money to his children.”
“What kind of thing is that to say? It’s not true. If it was, why didn’t he write me and tell me? He just goes and cashes out stock my grandfather, your father, gave me?” I ask.
My mother shakes her head from side to side and flips open her hands, unable to explain further.
“Wow,” I say. My back hits the back of my plastic chair and we both wobble from the impact. My father, I tally, has been to his apartment in Paris three times in the five months I have been in jail. I can’t imagine he needs money. In the churning silence, the rift between my father and me grows wider, unbreachable. I feel like I have been the cause of an accident and in my dazed state of processing what I have done and dealing with the consequences, my father reached into my pocketbook, removed money, and walked away.
In my cell later that night, I remember my father wrote a memoir titled, Naked on Charrette. A charrette, my father explained to me, is the cart on which a small scale architectural model is displayed for the public or client to see. The title refers to his belief that life is a presentation of your structure, a display, and those who observe you react in a way they see fit. Applause. Reserved praise. Condemnation. Or simply silence.