Chapter 7 - The Meeting at RikersThe visitation hall at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island was cold, sterile, and suffocating.
I sat on a metal stool behind a thick glass partition, waiting quietly.
Thirty seconds later, heavy iron doors opened, and a female corrections officer escorted my mother, Eleanor, into the booth.
The transformation was shocking. The arrogant, pristine high-society woman who had worn fur coats and gold jewelry was gone. Eleanor wore a dapple-grey prison jumpsuit, her blonde hair unwashed and matted, her face lined with deep stress wrinkles, her hands trembling as she sat down on the stool opposite me.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver, her eyes red with weeping.
“David...” Eleanor sobbed through the glass, her voice cracking hysterically. “David, my baby boy... thank God you came! You have to tell the police to drop these insane charges! They’re holding me in a room with criminals! They took my clothes, my jewelry... I haven't slept in three days!”
I picked up my receiver slowly, my expression set in solid, unyielding stone.
“You’re sitting in a cold room because you locked my bleeding wife in a freezing apartment with a cup of instant ramen while you drank champagne in Miami, Mother,” I said, my voice quiet, clear, and cutting through the line like ice.
Eleanor flinched as if I had struck her. “David! I was just trying to teach her a lesson! She was weak! She wasn't fit to be the wife of a Miller executive! I did it for you! I did it to protect your fortune!”
“My fortune?” I let out a low, cold laugh that made her shudder. “Everything I built was for my wife and my child. You weren't protecting me, Eleanor. You were a parasite leeching off my hard work while treating the woman I love like a slave.”
“David... please!” Eleanor begged, pressing her hands against the glass. “I am your mother! You can’t leave me here! Chloe is crying every night in her cell! Mark lost his job this morning!”
“Chloe and Mark are adults who stole medical funds from a newborn baby,” I replied coldly. “And as for you... the Long Island house was sold two hours ago. Your clothes and personal boxes have been dropped off at a public storage locker in Queens. Once you finish your prison sentence, you will have to find your own place to live.”
Eleanor gasped, her face draining of all color as the absolute reality of her situation hit her. “You... you sold my house?!”
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“It was never your house, Eleanor,” I said, standing up from the stool. “It was mine. And today, I am taking back my life.”
I hung up the receiver, turned my back on her weeping, screaming figure behind the glass, and walked out into the cold winter air without looking back once.
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