I swing by the bar where Frawley works, to make sure she's there. There are enough businessmen in jackets drinking lunch so that I don't stand out and spook her. It takes almost a quarter of an hour to find her, since she has changed her hairstyle and looks younger in person than she does in the picture. She is making change for a customer when I leave for her apartment.

I could just shatter the lock and walk in, but then, even if I find nothing, she would know her apartment's been entered. Better, in all cases, to use finesse. It takes ten minutes of finesse to get the heavy tumbler to click over, during which time two neighbors have walked by. Each time I managed to slide out of their line of sight -- not that they would interfere -- but if Frawley discovers that there's been a man in a jacket and tie at her door, it might spook her as much as finding the lock smashed.

Inside the house is neat and organized, but somewhat dirty. It is the house of someone who isn't home a great deal. There are, however, clothes in the closets, half-used toiletries in the bathroom, and fresh food in the refrigerator, all indicating that this is her real address and not stage-dressing.

The current telephone bill is on her desk, opened. I don't need to look, however; I've seen it already. I look through the personal papers in her desk, then get down to searching the apartment. The key, more than cleverness or intuition, is method. In my mind, I divide the room into imaginary grids, and search each one minutely. This not only ensures that no spot is overlooked, but that each square foot is seen with a fresh eye.

I turn up nothing. I resist the temptation to re-search the odd places first, and start at the beginning of my grid again. The first search was entirely non-destructive. I left everything the way I found it, and used only my fingers to probe soft objects like pillows and cushions. This time I cut open what cannot be easily palpitated, and I pry up any loose hardware, tilework, and woodwork I find.

Still nothing. I am about to start my third, deep search when I hear the door. Much as I dislike confrontation, this one seems unavoidable.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

My mother's recovery period has stretched to two months because there are currently no sponsors. Summer is always the slowest season for surrogate wombs, and increasing competition from the private sector has lessened the demand slightly in the Special Corrections system. Whatever the reason, my mother seems to be enjoying this period of relative freedom.

"Hello, Bryan. What's it like in the real world, these days?"

This is more than she has said to me in 12 years of bimonthly visits. I wonder if this hiatus in her sentence is wholly the cause of her good spirits.

"About the same," I say. "You look well."

The truth is, she looks better -- she has put on some weight, and it makes her face look years younger. Anywhere but in here, though, she could pass for someone who has just overcome a serious illness.

She sits for a long time, studying me. It is not like our usual silent communication -- it is as if she is seeing me for the first time. The scrutiny makes me uncomfortable. I feel it is somehow a violation of our tacit understanding.

It occurs to me, forced back on myself like this, that it is possible my mother has finally gone insane. I have always assumed she was harder than any person or institution she came in contact with, but insanity is the second most common cause for termination of sentence. Of course, the insane trade one kind of prison for another, and if they are cured, they are returned to Special Corrections. There are precedents, though few of them.

Her voice pulls me out of my reverie.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I wasn't paying attention."

"I asked if you've ever seen your father."

This, of all things, I am not prepared for. In the six months from her arrest to conviction, my mother never once uttered a word about my father, or at least none that were recorded.

"No," I say. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious."

You were never curious before, I want to say, but I can't bring myself to break our unspoken agreement, even if she has.

The silence grows again, and though she doesn't seem to be uncomfortable, I am. I begin to wish for the matron to come, silent and implacable, and lead my mother away from me. Instead I stare at the wooden tabletop.

"I wish I had gotten to know you better, son."

That admission is shocking, in front of God and the cameras, as it were, but no more shocking than her calling me son. It is a word that has not passed her lips in my presence in 30 years.

"Your brother and Vivian were here to see me last week. Ed apparently pulled some strings. Do you know they have three children now?"

"No," I said, numbed by this spate of information. It is as if Reagan's face, carved into the South Dakota hills, had suddenly come to life: the oracle of Rushmore.

"Do you ever see them, or your sister?" she asks.

"No. I know I should..." I cannot believe I am saying this.

"I don't really think they want to see you, anyway." She says this seemingly without a trace of spite or malice. "You would make them almost as uncomfortable as I do."

I don't know what to say about this. I have never been so acutely uncomfortable in my life. Mercifully, the matron enters the room then and stands next to my mother.

"Well, Bryan, goodbye," she says, looking me directly in the eye.

I fumble for a response, but by the time I can force out the words, she has passed behind the gray steel door.

"Goodbye," I say for the cameras.

It occurs to me, as I collect my weapon from the prison's operations room, that none of my mother's feats of muscle control were in evidence today. I suddenly wish I had asked her what it all meant.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The last thing my mother did, before she took out the pills, was to call her National Health Clinic branch and complain about abdominal pains. The triage nurse asked the usual questions, including whether or not my mother was pregnant. She said she didn't know.

The nurse told her to call back if the pains got worse, or if there was any bleeding, and to stay off her feet. My mother hung up and went to get the pills from the toilet tank.

She was drying her hands when they knocked at the door. My mother started to hide the pills again, then she heard the ram against the door. She ripped open the foil package too quickly, sending the pills scattering across the floor. By the time she retrieved one, the police were through the front door and searching the apartment. There weren't that many rooms to search.

The bathroom door exploded in just as she put the pill in her mouth. The next second her head was crushed against the tiles and something in her face snapped. She felt the officer's blunt, bitter tasting fingers probing her mouth as she passed out.

She woke up in Broward Special Corrections' hospital wing, and has been in one part of the compound or another since. I was born seven months later, in the prison nursery.

I was placed in the same home as my brother and sister -- though they were moved out within a year of my birth. I stayed until I was 11, then I was sent to a military boarding school because I had become a disciplinary problem. The state paid my scholarship to the private school, with the understanding that I would enter government service as soon as I was eligible. That was pretty much what happened.

I really don't regret it.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Frawley has just set her purse on a table in the foyer when I turn the corner. She looks at me for a split second, then snatches the purse up again and dives out the door. We burst out of the building's lobby, she several yards ahead of me. She is wearing black tights and running shoes -- her off-duty clothes, I gather -- and is opening up the distance between us rapidly. I have to make a split-second decision: do I continue to chase her, or do I draw my weapon now, while I am still close enough to steady myself for a shot?

Had I known I was going to arrest her today, I would have brought backup. I draw my weapon and pound to a stop in front of a parked car. She opens the distance even further while I get my sights steady. I hold my breath, using the car's roof as a rest, and squeeze off three shots.

The last one drops her. I'm completely winded by the time I am standing over her.

She is shot through the backside and lower stomach. Blood is everywhere, and she is vomiting weakly. A woman is screaming as I go through Frawley's purse -- sure enough, the pills are there. Two packets of them, in fact.

The ambulance arrives after the local police, but before my colleagues: if they are going to save the fetus, they will have to get Frawley's body to the operating room very quickly.

Far from being over, this incident is just starting for me. I will be held over the next two shifts writing reports, having the pills tested by the lab, being counseled by the service psychiatrist, and making my obligatory appearance before a grand jury.

At least I will get the next five working days off.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"I heard you got one," my mother says before she's even seated at the wooden table. "You must be proud."

I realize that it is going to be as difficult a visit as the last one. I did only what was necessary. I don't relish the grislier aspects of my job, as do some of my colleagues -- I prefer to avoid conflict, where possible. I decide the best tack to take with my mother is silence, at least until I can puzzle out her mood.

"I heard she bled to death right there on the street."

Where, suddenly, is all this antipathy coming from? Who knows how these rumors get started? The paramedic said Frawley died almost immediately -- from shock.

"Are you embarrassed?" she asks. "That would be something, at least."

I see that this line of questioning is not going to wither away in silence.

"I'd rather not talk about my work."

"Not to me, at least," she answers. "So, what would you like to talk about, son?"

That word again. Inexplicably, I feel my eyes prickle.

"How come you're not smoking?" I ask. My voice sounds perfectly level.

"I'm back on the production line again," she says, laughing. "You know, I was beginning to think you'd actually thrown your weight around a little to keep me off the breeding line."

"I can't do..."

"No, no. Don't apologize," she cuts me off. "I'm not blaming you. It was a crazy notion to begin with." There really is no rancor in her voice.

For the first time ever, I am uncomfortable that the cameras are recording all this. I cast around for a safe topic, then something occurs to me.

"I noticed that you had a facial tic, last -- no -- the time before last. Is it some kind of medical condition?"

"Your concern is a bit belated, I think. But no, you know it wasn't a medical condition, I think."

"Then what?"

"I was doing it on purpose..."

"Nobody can control their muscles like that."

"You can, if you practice. I have nothing to do here but practice. Did you know Indian holy men could stop their heartbeats?"

I look at her blankly.

"No, I don't imagine that's the kind of thing you know much about. Well, it's true. If you practice enough, you can control all the muscles in your body."

"Why?"

"So I can control my body."

We have, it seems, skated back onto thin ice again. The radical feminists have always referred to women's reproductive offenses as taking control of their bodies.

"It's all right," she says, "you don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to be here."

"You know I come whenever..."

"No, I mean for this."

"For what?"

She smiles at me, then she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they are unfocused and her face assumes an expression of unconscious concentration, if there is such a thing.

I see, suddenly, that the muscles of her abdomen are tensing mightily under her prison smock. It takes another few seconds for me to realize what she's doing.

I knock the table over trying to get around it, but it is already too late; blood gushes from underneath the smock, making a crimson blotch from waist to hemline.

Guards rush into the room, and less than a minute later, the medical team.

"Christ, she's bleeding out," the doctor in charge says.

"What's going on?" the guard supervisor, a man, wants to know.

"She's got a massive hemorrhage -- looks like a bad miscarriage."

My mother's eyes focus again, and she looks into mine. I am unable to look back without flinching.

She coughs, spraying flecks of blood across my face.

"Oh, man," the doctor groans, "She's bleeding from everywhere..." He's young, and sounds afraid.

She is loaded onto an aluminum stretcher. I think about taking her hand, but the moment passes in a blur, and she is being bustled out the steel door, presumably to the prison hospital.

There are, I notice, bloody footprints left everywhere by the medical team and the guards. I right the visitor's table before I leave.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

According to the trial transcript, the triage nurse at the National Health branch -- a 50-year-old widow with the improbable name of Meredith Sanction -- called NRA to report a possible reproduction violation. NRA, of course, already had a folder on my mother. Since they could not get an agent there in time, however, they authorized the state police to make the arrest.

Meredith Sanction testified that my mother's call fit the classic self-abortion pattern. Meredith Sanction's own marriage had been barren. It is on the record that the magistrate admonished the defense lawyer for pursuing irrelevant testimony during Mrs. Sanction's cross-examination.

The magistrate took less than 15 minutes to reach his decision. Sentencing was delayed until my birth -- presumably so that my mother would not self-abort in the face of a life sentence.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The minister concludes his ceremony over my mother's grave, then hurries in out of the rain. My brother and sister stand as close to the grave as they can without having to look at me. My brother cries openly, and my sister stares, dry-eyed, at the brown rectangle in the turf. Only I can see the casket.

I still have two days off before I go back to work.

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