Part Nine: Marcus
What Daniel did not know, in the cafeteria, and would not know until later, was what the birthday song had cost Marcus.
Marcus had been, for four years, a man who did not draw attention. Not because he was weak — no one at Harwick had made the mistake of concluding that — but because he had learned, through the specific education of four years of incarceration, that attention was a currency he did not want to spend. He had his equilibrium. He had his position. He had the three years remaining on his sentence and a daughter in Cleveland who was seven years old and who sent him drawings, the way Claire sent letters, with the regularity of someone who has made a decision about showing up.
He had stood up first.
He had not planned to. He had been eating his lunch and had seen the man at the corner table and had understood what he was looking at, because Marcus had spent three years eating lunch in that cafeteria and had developed the specific, practiced reading of context that prolonged proximity creates. He had understood: it’s his birthday. He has a candle in his bread. He just made a wish he didn’t think anyone saw.
He had thought about his daughter. He had thought about her seventh birthday, which was in four months, and the fact that he would not be there for it, and the card he was already planning to make and send through the permitted process, and the phone call that they would have on the day, and how it was not the same and how she was seven and knew it was not the same and loved him anyway.
He had stood up.
Later, in the corridor after dinner, Jimmy — the small, quick man who had been the second to stand — had fallen into step beside him.
“You started it,” Jimmy said.
“Somebody had to,” Marcus said.
“Why you?”
Marcus thought about this for the length of half a corridor. “Because I knew what he was wishing for,” he said. “And because I know what it costs to hold that by yourself.” He paused. “And because the birthday is the one day when it shouldn’t cost as much.”
Jimmy nodded. He did not say anything else, which was the appropriate response, and Marcus respected him for knowing it.
