Carry the One by Carol Anshaw Read Free Book Online

day.
    She shared a cell with a huge woman named Freddi, told Nick, “You definitely want her in the bottom bunk.” Freddi was nearing the end of a stiff sentence for armed robbery; she had been inside prison walls more than half her life. The two of them were enrolled in the prison’s cosmetology program. When she got out, though, Freddi said she would probably bypass the beauty service industry and just go back into armed robbery, which was more rewarding financially and didn’t involve toxic substances, unless you counted guns. Olivia, on the other hand, had surprised herself by taking to the business of hair, and hoped to have her license by the time she got out. The cosmetology instructor said Olivia had real talent technically, but a terrible chair-side manner. She told her nobody wants her hair done by some broody, glowering vulture.
    “We’ll see about that,” Olivia said to Nick.
    Her own hair, which used to spill down her back, she now wore in a crew cut. Nick understood this was a statement, but he wasn’t sure what the statement was. It was weird; this revised version of Olivia wasn’t anyone he would stop to talk to on the street and yet she was theperson he most wanted to be with. This had to do with confinement. She would circumscribe him. She would be his soft, gray prison. In return he would take care of her. He owed her that.
    He could not bring himself to tell her he saw the girl before she did. He could have shouted, or pulled the steering wheel around to get the car out of her way. But the thing was he thought the girl was magical, a talisman of something, maybe. One of the small surprises that come your way when you’re high.
    He could have changed everything. How could he tell her that? So he just sat with this sickening piece of information, replayed it on an endless loop. Then he imagined another version where he reached for the wheel just in time and took the car over the shoulder, into the ditch. Everyone in the car was banged up a little, Maude had a sprained ankle, Tom got a good-sized gash on his head. But the girl kept running into the long rest of her life.
    Olivia did not share his vision of the two of them together. Not yet anyway. She accepted these visits, but that was about as far as it went. He didn’t take this personally; she didn’t show much interest in her family either. She had made a retreat from the world outside, and prison was her monastery. She had, of course, found religion, a jailhouse brand that was all about scripture quotes and photocopied screeds and a God generous with forgiveness and second chances.
    She had given Nick a few of these tracts, also a picture of herself, taken by Freddi. He kept this in his wallet. The inmates here wore denim shirts, so there was no uniform to give away her location. She might be relaxing at home, if her home had cement block walls. In the photo she is not smiling. Nick would say her expression in this picture was “reflective.” Like she was thinking about something important and still needed to think about it a little more.
    “You have such dark circles under your eyes, it worries me,” Olivia’s mother told her. She was a worn-down woman. Her shoulders were like a wire hanger off which her dress hung. Her face was the faceof someone a few hundred miles west of here, and fifty years back. Her daughter’s imprisonment, you got the feeling, was only her latest bridge to cross.
    The goofy brothers were silent. They almost never came up with anything to say to their sister on these visits. At first Nick thought they were ashamed of her, but over time he had come to see it was exactly the reverse. Her father was long gone, wherever. No one even mentioned him; her brothers underachieved in a reliable way. By doing something dramatic enough to land herself in prison, Olivia had earned the top spot. She was the most important person in the family.
    They sat on old wooden office chairs across a scarred metal table from her. It was