Page 109 of The River Is Waiting

“Yeah, that kid was mental. And he was a real pain in the ass, too. Excuse me. Pain in the butt. But I had to hand it to Corby. He took him under his wing because the kid was getting bullied. But then the bullies started messing with Corby, too. I used to tell him, ‘Corbs, don’t stick your neck out too far over that kid or it’s gonna get whacked. It’s not like you’re his father.’ But it went in one ear and out the other. Anyway, I don’t know how he did it, but Corby got the kid transferred to a mental hospital so he didn’t have to stay stuck at Yates.”

It’s news to me that Corby went out on a limb for Solomon, but it doesn’t surprise me. He hated bullies. I’ve always suspected his motivationin trying to stop people from being picked on was connected to his father’s treatment of him when he was a kid. And who knows why, as Manny says, he stuck out his neck to defend Solomon? Maybe he was trying to atone in some way for Niko’s death.

I thank Manny for the drawing, slip it back in the envelope, and remind him that in his letter he’d said he needed to tell me things I didn’t know.

His face turns serious. “Well, first of all, Corby talked about you all the time. He loved you very much.”

“I loved him, too, Manny. Still do. But things got very complicated.”

“You mean after your son died,” he says. “Corby never talked much about it, but I could tell the guilt he felt never let up. I’d hear him crying down there on the bottom bunk, sometimes even when he was asleep. He told me once that he was never going to forgive himself for the pain he caused you.”

I look away from him. Look back. “We were having problems before Niko’s death, too.” For whatever reason I’m sharing this with someone I’ve just met, I keep going. “When he lost his job and became a full-time dad, he assumed it would be temporary. We both did. But when he couldn’t find another job in his field, he became depressed. Anxious. He had trouble sleeping. It was my idea that he should see a doctor and get something for his anxiety, but I didn’t know the medication he was taking was addictive, or that he was overdoing it. And drinking during the day when he was watching the kids. He kept it from me so I had no idea.”

Manny gives me a skeptical look. “Huh,” he says.

“What?”

“No, nothing. It’s just that I’ve known a lot of addicts. Been in relationships with a couple of them. And even if they hide what they’re doing, they usually give themselves away in one way or another.”

What is he implying? That I wasn’t being vigilant? That I was looking the other way? “Well, Manny, I bet you have no idea how hectic a full-time teacher’s life can get—especially if she’s got two toddlers waiting forher when she gets home. Corby had had them all day, but they wanted Mommy as soon as I walked in the door. And then, after supper and bath time, when we finally got them in bed, I had school work I needed to get to. So maybe I did miss some of the signs, but…” I trail off, not bothering to finish my thought. I don’t need to defend myself to him.

“Or maybe Corby was better at covering his tracks than the guys I knew. Those were justmyexperiences. Every addict is different. Right?”

“Right.”

I make a point of checking my watch and tell him I’m a little pressed for time—that I have to get back for Maisie. It’s a lie. Bryan’s taking her to see that new Pixar movie, so there’s no rush. But I hear myself telling Manny I have to leave in about twenty minutes. “So what else did you need to tell me?”

Momentary loss of eye contact. Fidgeting. Then he looks straight at me and says, “I can see how you’d assume that flunking the piss test meant he’d started using again. And when he tried to explain why his urine was dirty, I can understand why you’d think he was bullshitting you. Addicts lie; there’s no arguing that. But he was clean and sober the whole time we were bunkies, I swear to God. He went to meetings a couple times a week and he was always reading that Big Book that’s, like, their bible.

“When he went ballistic because they wouldn’t let him out? And got carted off to seg? As soon as they let him back to the tier, he said he needed to call you and explain why he flunked that test. And when he came back to our cell, he told me how your conversation had gone south. It wiped him out, Emily. It was tough to see how much pain he was in after he made that call. But don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate why you’d had it. Why, if you thought he was using again, you told him not to bother you anymore. But he had aprescriptionfor the medication he was taking. If they had let him out when they said they were going to, he wouldn’t have lost it so bad. And if that hadn’t happened, he’d be alive today. I really believe that.”

We’re both in tears now. Manny excuses himself, gets up, and walks over to the Starbucks counter. He’s right. It was a horrible misunderstandingand I’d give anything to be able to take back that last conversation we had. Every time I think about it, I’m filled with regret and shame. But still, prescription or not, with his history of misusing them, why did he start taking benzodiazepines? If he loved us so much, why would he risk that? I can feel the anger rising in me, an emotion I thought I’d gotten past. So maybe my mother was right that I shouldn’t have come here today. Why upset the applecart? I use my hand to swipe away my tears, then look around to see whether anyone else is watching or listening, but no. Two teenage girls are the only ones close enough to have heard and they’re deep in conversation about whatever girls that age talk about.

Manny comes back with a fistful of napkins. Takes a couple and slides the rest across the table for me. He wipes his eyes, blows his nose, and continues.

“Me and Corby got Covid at the same time,” he says.

“What? You had it, too?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure we both caught it from a transfer from Rikers—a barber who was doing time for running a sports bookmaking operation. He was offering haircuts to the guys on our tier. He had a cough, I remember, but nobody thought much about it at the time. But less than a week after he got here, they sent him to the hospital and he never came back.

“Me and Corby both started feeling like crap: headaches, body aches, coughing fits. He had it worse than me. Lying down made his coughing worse, but he was getting so weak, he had a hard time sitting up. Sometimes after lights-out, I’d hear him gasping for air. Then he’d get quiet.Tooquiet, you know? So I’d climb down from my bunk to make sure he hadn’t… well, you know. And I could hear other guys on the tier coughing, too. Three or four of us had gotten haircuts from that guy. I guess he was one of those superspreaders.”

When he asks me whether he should stop, I shake my head. This is why I came here.

“So after some of us got sick, they put the whole place on lockdown. They closed the chow hall and staff started delivering meals through ourtray traps. If you asked them if there were any breakouts on the other blocks, they wouldn’t answer you. Everything was hush-hush, which made it harder. I didn’t have any taste or smell, but I ate a little to try and keep my strength up. Corby was too sick to eat. He was crying out a lot from the pain, but he kept trying to tell me something. I couldn’t understand much of it, but I caught something about the river out back. After a while, he got so frustrated that I couldn’t get what he was trying to say that he just closed his eyes and stopped talking.

“That night, he got worse. I had to dosomething, so I started shouting through the tray trap, ‘Ledbetter needs to go to the hospital! Get Ledbetter to the hospital!’ I guess they got the message, but it was two in the morning when the ambulance finally got there. That was the last I saw of him. I heard later that the hospital was so jammed up with Covid patients that he had to wait in the hall on a stretcher until they could get him a bed. And by the time he finally got hooked up to a ventilator, it was too late. He didn’t make it.”

In tears, I watch him pick up the envelope he’s brought. When he overturns it, something falls out: a little stone. “Corby pulled this out of the river once when he was on the grounds crew. He told me that whenever he felt like giving up, he’d hold it and it would give him hope. I thought you might want to have it.”

When he hands it to me, I examine it. It’s just a simple stone, white and gray, oval-shaped, smooth to the touch. Mostly quartz, I think. I clutch it, imagining Corby holding it. I thank Manny and drop it back in the envelope. “I’m grateful to you for being such a good friend,” I tell him. “And I’m gladyousurvived. How many Covid deaths have there been at Yates?”

“About a dozen by the time I left, maybe more now,” he says. “The department tries to keep those numbers on the QT.”

“But they must have put protocols in place. Right?”

“Oh, sure. Corrections came up with all kinds of rules and regulations about how to prevent spreading the virus. The problem was, nobody in charge did much checking to make sure they were being followed. A lot ofthe COs thought it wasn’t macho to wear masks, so you’d see them dangling off one ear or poking out of their pocket. And when the vaccines became available, some of the guards refused to get shots because they didn’t trust the government, especially once Biden got in. So yeah, there were deaths. And a lot of emotional problems from being quarantined for so long. No visits, no phone calls, no chow hall, no library. It was the same as being stuck in seg for weeks and weeks. And you know how staff helped us deal with the isolation? They passed out coloring books and puzzle books that were supposed to keep our minds occupied.” Anger creeps into his voice. “Like, if you got busy coloring some stupid picture, you’d fucking forget about guys around you getting sick and dying!”

---