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Water called to Erik, pulled him, like some sort of supernatural magnetic force. Erik had to be closely monitored in the showers. One day in the cafeteria, he put his face down in his bowl of tomato soup.
In front of the guards, and in front of the other inmates, Erik was an impenetrable wall. In his sessions with Dr. Connors, Erik cried and gulped out his death wish. If I can't be with my brother, I don't want to even live anymore!
To try to distract him from his suicidal depression, Dr. Connors recommended that Erik be assigned to work in the prison library. Erik spent his time dusting the shelves, sweeping the floor, and reorganizing the prison's books alphabetically by authors’ last names.
It was menial, lowly, meticulous work. It was the kind of work that José would have denigrated and dismissed as “a loser job for a stupid spic.”
Once the thought of what José would think entered his mind, Erik started to lose all interest in the library. He went to work in the laundry room, washing and folding hundreds of prison uniforms and bedsheets.
Erik's new cellmate was a tall, taciturn man named Lee, a member of the Triad who had been sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion, and murder.
It was hard to tell if he liked Erik, or was just enduring him in stoic silence, resigned to his presence for the rest of his life.
Erik began to take yoga classes, college level classes, and art lessons, finding the last to be the most fulfilling.
Erik took to art like a parched man took to water. His favorite medium was paint, and Erik spent many hours painting. The art teacher was very impressed with his progress.
Erik painted landscapes and still lives, mailing some of his works to Leslie, to Andy, and to Aunt Marta and Aunt Terry, and to Lyle.
Twice a week, he sent Lyle a letter, sometimes rambling, talking about their last, what he had eaten for breakfast.
Sometimes, they played chess, mailing their moves back and forth, so that one game could take two months or more.
Time passed. Sometimes, it seemed to creep at a slow crawl. Other times, it seemed to whirl by, like the world seemed to do when as a child Erik had leaped onto a merry-go-round, dazed and giddy.
In his therapy sessions, Erik showed his true feelings, sobbing as he clutched a crumpled tissue in his hand.
When he slept, Erik often dreamed of his life before prison. He dreamed of José, of arguing with him, begging, making desperate deals with him.
José might still be alive, if Erik had not confided in Lyle. If he had not gone along with him to the gun store in San Diego.
In his dreams, José was still alive. His death had not yet happened, had never happened, and might not have needed to happen.
All Erik had to do, and all he had to say, was the correct thing, if he could only have figured out what that was. He could have called the police. He could have run away to Princeton.
He could have waited, because his cousin Andy, who he had confided in before he even told Lyle, had started to pressure Erik into telling someone. At the time, Andy had been 14 years old.
His eyes had bulged, and his nostrils flared. What the hell, Erik?! You have to tell someone! Tell Mami! I love you, Erik, but you are being crazy. If you don't tell anyone, I will!
In the end, nothing happened. Erik didn't tell anyone, and neither did Andy. Then, with the prospect of freedom being taken away from him, Erik told Lyle, and that was that.
Most nights, Erik dreamed that he was free, that he was with Lyle, and that José was alive.
Every morning, Erik woke up and discovered that in one way, he wasn't free, locked up to rot in prison for the rest of his life; in another way, though, Erik was free, because José was dead.
Erik mourned Kitty, who had lived her entire life ruled by fear and shame. Fear of José’s anger, that he would criticize her or beat her or cheat on her.
Shame of how he would treat her sons, first Lyle, and then Erik, locking the doors to their bedrooms, doing unconscionable, evil things to them.
José’s own shame at the abuses that he had suffered, and which he perpetrated on his wife and sons.
The shame he would have felt if he had been exposed as the lying, abusive deviant that he was.
The shame that his family and marriage had failed, that he was hated by his own wife and sons.
The Menendez family had tried to hide so many things, until they couldn't.
Erik missed Lyle, but he knew that he would have to learn to live without him, or he wasn't going to live at all.