Rascal Flatts and the Tyranny of Hope
Baby steps
Patrick Allard is an obese Hollywood producer with a gambling problem. The son of an alcoholic mother, he struggles to remain a good man while working and playing in corrupt businesses. His well-meaning attempt to rescue Rose, an underage prostitute in Las Vegas, led indirectly to her conviction for murder in Los Angeles. When she was sixteen, and heavily pregnant to an unidentified guard, he married her to prevent her child being given up for adoption.
Read his stories here:
I’m told the usual practice is for prison staff to take the baby from its mother, deliver it to a public area, and hand it over to its new guardian.
That didn’t suit me. I opened my wallet, flashed my fake credentials, and insisted on seeing my client, now my wife. The power of the State Bar of California, ably assisted by Benjamin Franklin, ensured Rose could hand her daughter directly to me.
“I couldn’t decide. One of the Colombian girls suggested Zita, and I thought it sounded nice. So, this is Zita. I made her. Isn’t she pretty?”
I’ve held a ‘Best Picture’ Oscar, and the little gold guy’s beauty pales in comparison to the purple, scrunch-faced, squalling shit machine cradled in Rose’s arms.
“Zita? Hablas español, Rose?”
She shakes her head. “Si, por favor, gracias, lo siento,” she turns her face away for the next two words, “Puta. Fóllame.”
“Zita is a beautiful name, in any language. And it suits her. Your daughter is a beautiful girl, just like her mother.”
“I hope not. Did you get everything she needs?”
“Yes.”
“No pacifiers?”
“No pacifiers. Everything’s ready, Rose. I’m ready.”
She isn’t, but how could she ever be? She kisses Zita’s cheek, whispers something to her, then holds her daughter out to me with shaking arms. Her face, though, is stone: we’re both determined not to cry.
She’s stronger than I am. Slow tears drop on Zita’s blanket as I take her.
For the most part, actors can’t choose their roles: they audition, they do what’s demanded of them by the people with power — producers, like me — and they accept whatever scraps they’re offered in return.
I chose to play ‘father’, to give Zita whatever she demands, and the weight of that role terrifies me. But it also fills me with gratitude: Rose trusts me to give an award-winning performance.
As I turn to leave, Rose calls out, “I nearly forgot! What color did you pick?”
I told her I’d have one of the guest rooms redecorated for her daughter, the same room she’d stayed in for those few days she was safe. She’d wanted yellow, but in the end I settled for a color called Rose Mist. And she will be.
“I went with a sort of peachy-pink.”
“That’s nice, I guess. Will you take pictures for me?”
“Always.”
My Honda Accord is parked in the lot outside. It’s not a luxury car, not a classic, but it is roomy enough for me, and one of the safest cars on the market. I got the hybrid model, because my daughter will live on this planet and maybe I should try to keep it nice for her. I had the Lincoln put into storage.
As I buckle Zita into her seat, I realise this was the first time I thought of her as my daughter. It hits me that this is real, and it’s never going to stop being real: not tomorrow, not in eighteen years, or twenty-one, not until the day I die… and even afterwards. She’ll carry on, and for her whole life, I’ll be her father.
Her feet are impossibly tiny. How can anything so small grow large enough to carry her through life?
Zita’s first visit is as Rose’s daughter, not a junior partner of Patrick Allard Esquire’s non-existent law firm. We go through stricter security — they search the baby bag, they pat me down, and I even have to open Zita’s nappy — but we aren’t led to a row of glass screens and telephones.
The California Institution for Women has ‘family trailers’ for privacy, but I wasn’t comfortable asking prison officials for a conjugal visit with a sixteen-year-old child. Rose and I would only have talked, but nobody would know that for certain, and other people would also talk.
Fortuitously, CIW also has a public visiting room specifically for inmates with infant children. Its institutional canteen walls are embellished with cheery murals, and there are soft-play toys scattered around, changing tables, a bottle warming station, and almost-comfortable chairs. There’s a radio playing quiet pop and country music in the background. It feels practically homely, apart from the stern-faced guards.
Zita, who fell asleep on my cushioned chest as soon as she was returned to her sling, appreciates none of this.
I hear Rose coming before I see her: the eager, rhythmic slip-slapping of her prison slides; her excited chatter with her escort.
The tears she held back at the handover fall freely as soon she sees Zita’s wisp of dark hair poking out from the carrier.
She sits opposite me, and mouths, “Is she asleep?”
“Yes, I think my heartbeat soothes her. But we can talk, quietly.”
“Is she happy?”
I would assure Rose that she is, but I don’t get the chance.
“Is she feeding well? Some babies are fussy, they refuse the bottle, you have to…,” she searches her memory, “Chew the nipple! You chew the nipple, and then… I don’t remember. My momma told me, but I can’t remember!”
“She’s feeding, Rose. She’s put on two pounds. She’s happy, she’s healthy; she’s perfect. She likes faces: seeing them, touching them. She has a beautiful smile. And she can hold her own head up. Just for a few seconds, but she can. Would you like to see her smile?”
I had to hand my phone over during the security check, but I anticipated that. One pocket of the baby bag is stuffed with photos I printed out. I spread them over the table. They’re all variations on a theme: Zita on her back on various rugs and carpets, smiling up at the camera; Zita in the bath, smiling; Zita asleep in her crib, one fist raised above her head and a faint smile on her peaceful face.
“Oh! Can I keep one?”
“As many as they’ll allow you, Rose.”
She sweeps them all up.
I’m glad Rose got to see Zita’s smile before she woke up grumpy. Maybe I disturbed her when I spread the photos, or maybe hunger woke her, but she is awake, and she isn’t happy.
“I’m feeding on demand. I’ll need to warm a bottle.”
“Can I feed her?”
“Of course, Rose. She’s your daughter.”
“Look away, then!”
My face betrays my confusion.
She mimes pulling her t-shirt up. “I have to… you know.”
I cannot pretend to understand all the complexities of motherhood, but she hasn’t nursed for a month, and I’m almost certain she won’t have milk. But I’m one hundred percent certain I have to let her try.
When I’ve eased Zita out of her sling and into Rose’s outstretched arms, I turn my face to the wall, where a poorly-drawn anthropomorphic mouse is waving at me from between sunflowers.
Zita’s cries stop abruptly, and Rose tells me, “Okay.”
When I look back, she has her left arm out of her t-shirt, which is now bundled around her neck, one side of her grey-white sports bra has been pulled up, and our contented daughter is latched to her breast.
Rose is less contented: a wince flickers across her pursed lips, and her eyes brim with tears again.
“Would you like the bottle?”
Her jaw sets, and she nods sharply. She takes the bottle from me, waves it questioningly at one of the guards for his grudging gesture of permission, then rises.
She’s still trying to nurse Zita as she walks to the bottle warmer, and she keeps trying while she waits for the perfect temperature. When the machine finally pings, she swaps Zita effortlessly to her other arm, retrieves the bottle, and eases the baby’s hungry mouth from nipple to unchewed nipple.
As she returns, all I can think is how confident and capable and caring Rose is as a mother, and how happy she looks in that unasked-for role.
She sits opposite me again, and there’s a shared moment where both of us just gaze at Zita, satisfied.
Then Rose squeals. “Shit! My boob’s still out! Cover me up!”
“I… I’m not sure…”
“Mr Allard, you’re my husband! You can either put my boob away, or leave it out for the COs to ogle.”
I can’t pull her t-shirt down because she’s feeding our baby with that hand, and wife or not, I won’t touch her breast, even to put it back in her bra. I settle for taking a towel from the baby bag to drape over her shoulder, tucking it under her arm.
Getting that close earns me a meaningful cough from the nearest guard, so I sit back down hurriedly, open hands raised.
Rose smiles, wryly. “Thanks. I half-assed it, sorry. I just wanted to be close to her again, but I guess that’s over. I’m not much of a mother now, am I?”
“Rose, I don’t know many mothers, but you are the best, in my limited experience. You are enough. Look how happy Zita is.”
We return to gazing at her in contented silence, until the background music changes to a Rascal Flatts song, “Yours If You Want It,” and Rose begins silently weeping.
“Rose? What can I do?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. I heard this song a lot when I was a kid, that’s all.”
Competent motherhood notwithstanding, she still is a kid. But her childhood is behind her, and that may be for the best.
“Bad memory, or good?”
“Both. It’s one of my mom’s favourites, but she never listened to the words, or she never understood them. Fuck, she might as well have put the title on a t-shirt for me and left me out on the Strip.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I love the lyrics, though. I always have.” She shakes her head again, shedding tears, and the determined set of her jaw returns. “I’m going to take it from her. It’s our song now, mine and Zita’s.”
“Then I’ll play it to her, Mrs Allard. Often.”
“Thank you. But make sure she knows what it means, yeah? All the love left in my scarred heart was waiting on a girl like her, and it’s hers if she wants it.”
I can’t speak, but Rose fills the silence. “And whatever she doesn’t need is yours. I love you, Mr Allard.”
“I love you too, Rose.”
She laughs. “You’re only saying that because you want me to show you my boob again.”
“I’m honestly not.”
“I was fucking with you,” she says, then continues in a poor attempt at a mid-Atlantic accent, “I did not mean to sincerely impute prurient motives at you.”
There’s a beat, and a grin, and she asks, “Are you impressed?”
“By your vocabulary? Yes. What’s going on?”
Her grin widens to a beaming smile. “I’m taking a class is what’s going on! English. It’s part of a GED course. I’m the only high school student at my high school.”
She wants my praise, I think, and she’s more than earned it. What she’s taking isn’t so much a class as a small step toward enriching her limited future. Any pride she has is well-deserved, and I intend to nurture it: pride can be a valuable tool for building resilience.
I would stay, if I could. I would spend the rest of my life imprisoned alongside Rose if it meant she could be with Zita. But that would be unfair on our child.
There are no tears when we part, only the same stoic sadness I saw at the handover.
“Will you come again?”
“Of course! Every month, Rose, like we agreed.”
“Yeah. That’s best for her. Not too disruptive.”
Her tone suggests she would disrupt Zita daily if it was possible, but monthly visits were her own idea.
She strokes Zita’s head where it rests against my chest. “She won’t want to come when she’s older.”
“She will, because there won’t be a day when I don’t tell her how much her mother loves and misses her. If she turns into a moody, contrarian teenager, I’ll bribe her to come. And when she’s an adult, she’ll bring her own children to see their nana. Or maybe her wife to see her mom? Or both? It doesn’t matter: whoever she grows up to be, Rose, I will devote my life to her happiness, and she will know you would be with her if you could.”
Re-joining the Chino Valley freeway on the way home, I see a Jack in the Box sign by the southbound off ramp. Every ounce of my being wants to turn back for their mini pancakes drenched in syrup, but I have fewer ounces than I used to, and they’ve become easier to ignore. I drive on.
Zita gurgles her approval.
“It’s alright for you, young lady! You’ll never get a taste for them.”