Doing Chemistry
A Story for Women
by
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The Accreditation Visitors left early--about 9:30 p.m. The security guard and Jake took the Visitors back to the hotel. The warden, his wife, and the commissioner departed a few minutes later. Paxton stayed to help me finish washing and drying the coffee cups, and then later he would just walk across the lawn back to his prison hospital quarters. This was not an irregular procedure. The warden and his wife, who lived two doors down the road from me entertained a lot, and inmates (trustees) would come and go as needed. A phone call was always made to alert the facility of a prisoner's return and likewise the prison would call the house when the inmates would depart from the prison to walk to one of the houses on the compound. He was on trustee status now as he had done 14 months of his 18 month sentence. The night we had talked he had told me he had a three-five year sentence, and that it would take him eighteen months before parole if he worked hard and was on good behavior.
The next few minutes of the evening have been lived and relived hundreds of times over the last 15 years. At times I have even found myself wondering if any of it happened at all. The guards brought a prison car and Paxton drove while I sat in the back seat with the inmate, who was stretched out with his head in my lap. Paxton related the details of the altercation over an agreement that had gone bad and the resulting knifing. We were at the hospital within minutes. Paxton and I stayed with the inmate in the emergency room and when they finally decided that surgery was in order, we adjourned our vigilance in a designated waiting area. I called the warden and gave the media a statement. As we waited, Paxton and I didn't talk much, but after about an hour or two, we decided to walk and stretch and ended up on an outside terrace. As we sat down on a bench in the bright light of the moon, and after discussing the night air and weather, he startled me, "I'm being released in a few weeks." I was surprised, "I didn't know it." He went on, "There is not a definite date, but it will be soon." There was a silence, I didn't know what to say. He continued, "I wanted to tell you myself, and talk to you about me--not you and me, but me." I was getting very nervous. I didn't do well with this kind of talk. Well, I had had no experience with these kinds of things. I didn't try to stop him, however, and after he said my name, he continued. . . . "I've spent a lot of time thinking about you."
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About the Book
For years now "doing chemistry" has been an expression among women to describe an experience of the heart, when a man of interest is involved. This is the story that nearly any woman can relate to. Thus, the main character, who tells the story in first person, is never called by name . . . she is any woman who reads the story. Her feelings, processing, analyzing, and, yes, chemistry are all experienced sometime in the lives of many women. The setting is a state prison, and the storyteller is a nurse. The story is meant to be told to a friend--a very good friend--over a cup of tea in the den or at the breakfast nook that looks out a bay window. The story can be told in two to three hours--depending on interruptions. It is a little book that can be picked up for a small gift, a quick read at an airport, or an escape under an umbrella on a beach. Join in on the story.
About the Author
Lydia Luttrell Grubb was reared in Bells, Tennessee, graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a degree in Zoology, and from the University of Tennessee at Memphis with a degree in nursing. Her Master’s in nursing was taken at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. She has been surrounded for years by the penal system. Her father was a warden and a Commissioner of Corrections for the State of Tennessee. Her brother has been a prison warden with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Her husband was a prison chaplain, and she, herself, has lived on prison grounds for several years. She and her husband, Gerald, have three sons: Graham who resides in New York City, Pennington in college at Tennessee State University in Nashville, and Shaffer in college at the University of Missouri in Columbia.