Chapter 8 - The Price of Pride
The federal correctional facility in upstate Massachusetts was a bleak, grey concrete structure surrounded by high chain-link fences. Inside the visitor room, the air smelled of floor wax and stale coffee.
Thomas Whitmore sat at a small steel table, wearing a coarse, oversized orange jumpsuit. His head was shaved short, his hands rested flat on the metal surface.
Sitting across from him behind a thick glass partition was Margaret.
She looked unrecognizable. Her once perfectly styled hair was now streaked with untended grey roots, pulled back into a messy bun. She wore a faded fleece jacket bought from a thrift store, and her face was lined with deep, permanent wrinkles of stress and bitterness.
"I took two buses to get here, Thomas," Margaret whined, her voice thin and raspy as she spoke into the small plastic intercom phone. "Two buses in the rain! The public housing board lost my paperwork twice this week, and the noise in that building is unlivable! People play loud music until midnight!"
Thomas slowly picked up his receiver, looking at his mother through the glass. His eyes were dead, devoid of any warmth or sympathy.
"Why are you here, Mother?" Thomas asked flatly.
"What do you mean why am I here?!" Margaret cried out, pressing her hand against the glass. "I am your mother! We are in this nightmare together! You need to talk to your public lawyer! You need to file an appeal! When you get out in two years, we can move south, start over, rebuild our place in society—"
"There is no 'our place in society,' Margaret," Thomas interrupted, his voice terrifyingly calm. "There is no rebuilding."
Margaret flinched at his cold tone. "Thomas... how can you speak to me like that?"
"I have sixteen hours a day in a concrete cell to think," Thomas said softly, staring straight into her eyes. "And every single hour, I replay Christmas night in my head."
"Oh, stop dwelling on that girl!" Margaret spat bitterly. "She destroyed us! She set a trap for us! If she had just told us who her father was from the beginning, none of this would have happened! She enjoyed watching us fall!"
Thomas let out a cold, dry chuckle, shaking his head.
"Do you hear yourself?" Thomas asked, a look of profound disgust washing over his face. "Do you hear the sickness in your own mind?"
"Thomas!"
"She didn't set a trap, Mother," Thomas said, his voice rising slightly, pressing against the glass. "She was a good, loving woman who cooked for you while she was in physical pain. She hid her family's money because she wanted to see if we were capable of loving a human being for who they were, without a price tag attached."
Margaret opened her mouth, but Thomas pressed on, unyielding.
"And we failed," Thomas continued, a tear finally sliding down his cheek. "We failed the simplest test of basic human decency. You looked at a pregnant woman shaking in agony and called her a servant. And I looked at my wife and chose your disgusting, fake pride over my own baby."
"I did it for your career!" Margaret yelled into the receiver, drawing glares from the prison guards standing nearby.
"You did it for your ego!" Thomas shouted back.
He slowly stood up from the steel chair, holding the telephone receiver tightly.
"Don't come back here, Margaret," Thomas said quietly. "Don't write to me. Don't visit me. When I finish my sentence, I am moving far away, changing my name, and working whatever honest labor job I can find to pay off my debts."
"Thomas! No! You're my son! You're all I have left!" Margaret sobbed hysterically, slamming her hands against the glass partition.
"I am nobody's husband, nobody's partner, and no longer your son," Thomas said.
May you like
He hung up the plastic receiver, turned his back on his mother's frantic screaming, and walked steadily back through the heavy iron doors toward his cell block.
Behind him, Margaret Whitmore collapsed against the cold glass, completely and utterly alone in the dark world she had created.
