Reading Lips by Claudia Sternbach

Author:Claudia Sternbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609530389
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Double Fault

For as long as I can remember I thought convicts, men behind bars, were simply misunderstood. When I was a teenager and my father, an attorney, would mention that he’d had to go to a prison to see a client, I used to imagine going with him. My dad would pull up to the curb in front of our house driving his yellow convertible with the top down for his Saturday-morning visit, actually every other Saturday morning, and offer to take my sisters and me bowling or for a drive in the hills to look at the view of the San Francisco Bay Bridge through his binoculars, and I would think, No! Let’s go visit some of those misunderstood murderers and bank robbers. (As I got older and began to read the paper every day and learn about the darkness that resides in some men, I did draw the line at rapists and men who had in any way hurt children. The rest I was ready and willing to rehabilitate.) I absolutely believed down to my very bones that all these men in denim needed was to be listened to. To have a kind woman sit there at their cell, reaching between the bars and taking hold of their hands. They just needed someone, me, to look deep into their eyes and see them for who they really were. And even if they had done something unspeakable, they would see the light as soon as we made our beautiful, glorious, spiritual connection. I was what was missing from their lives.

But no matter how many times I offered to go along with Dad when he had to go interview his clients, he always said no. So you can only try to imagine how excited I was when after all those years of wishing and hoping and thinking and praying, I got an actual letter from a man who was living in San Quentin Prison. A letter sent right to me. My name on it and “San Quentin Prison” right there in the left-hand corner. I was thrilled. They were calling out to me. Thin, sun-starved white hands reaching through the metal bars. Blue denim shirt cuffs buttoned at the wrists. Oh, I could hardly wait to look into their eyes in a deep and soulful way.

I was twenty-seven years old and working at a country club as a tennis director, and while there were some lovely members who enjoyed batting the ball around, there were also, as there always are, a handful of folks more challenging to deal with.

“Please take court number four today, as court number five is being washed. Yes, I know you always play on court number five but it is, as I pointed out, wet.”

“I’m sorry, but you are a B player, not an A player, even though you do have a lovely serve and a whopping two-handed backhand. I know you play with the A players on occasion”—when they are desperate and would have to

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