Cave Scribbles

The examiner’s office was small and square like a pillbox, one of dozens in the squat, egg-crate shaped building on the edge of the agency’s campus. She sat in the chair opposite him, facing the wall, seeing him only with her peripheral vision. He looked to be in his fifties, old enough to be her father. His reddish brown hair touched his collar in the back and was combed haphazardly, leaving patches of scalp visible. Three inches of papers rested on his gray metal desk, every one of them all about her. He rifled a thumb against the edge of the stack, making it crackle like a deck of cards. She saw him move her security questionnaire to the top. He turned to the last page where her signature appeared, attesting to the truthfulness of her answers and promising that her hiring presented no risks to the security of the United States.

An inflated blood pressure cuff squeezed her right arm. Two rubber tubes, filled with air and thick as snakes, were wrapped around her – one encircled her chest, pushing her breasts down, and the other looped around her abdomen. The examiner’s assistant, a woman about his age named Becky, had set everything up, including the tiny cloth velcro-lined strips fitted around the index, middle, and ring fingers of her left hand. Thin black cords extended from a box next to the examiner’s computer screen, connecting to the cuff and the tubes and the strips. None of it hurt but she was more uncomfortable than she’d expected. The worst part, so far, was facing the wall, not being able to look the examiner in the eye. She sat still and tried to breathe normally, as he had told her to.

“All right, Jennifer,” he said. He pushed his glasses up from the tip of his nose. “Is it all right if I call you Jennifer?”

“Sure,” she said.

“You mentioned earlier that this is your first polygraph examination.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No.” She swallowed.

The examiner chuckled. “We won’t count that one,” he said. “Don’t worry,” he added. “It’s perfectly normal for you to be a little uneasy right now.” He explained that he would start with easy questions – her name, address, birthday. This would be a kind of warmup, he explained. “Keep in mind,” he said, “that the questions can be answered only yes or no.”

He asked if her name was Jennifer Reed, if she lived on Pennsboro Drive in Chantilly, Virginia, and if her birthday was March 10, 1982. He asked if she had a five-year-old son named Colin. She answered yes to each of these, and the air moved into and out of her lungs in time with the compression and decompression of the blood pressure cuff. She breathed normally. Let’s go, she thought. I’m warmed up.

He began with the counterintelligence questions. These were as easy as the warmup. No, she was not applying for the position of intelligence analyst to collect information for a foreign government or a terrorist organization. She had no close and continuing relationships with foreign nationals. And she had never belonged to a group that advocated the overthrow of the United States government. She had already answered most of these on her security form. The examiner’s voice droned on, steady and patient, as calm and impassive as the humming of the polygraph machine. She felt in sync with the machine, with the examiner, with the angle of her chair, even with the blank wall. She was going to get this job.

The next set of questions was harder. Yes, she had declared bankruptcy. And yes, it had been within the last five years. She’d married too young and to the wrong guy. It had all been a mistake. She’d explained it on the questionnaire, on an attached sheet. She started to explain it again. But the examiner reminded her: yes or no answers only. She answered truthfully, and the rhythms of her body remained smooth and consistent. She needed this job, she repeated in her head. She needed it for herself and for Colin.

Then the examiner began to ask her about drugs. “On your security questionnaire,” he said, “you stated you’ve used marijuana and cocaine.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about the marijuana use first. Would you say you’ve used it less than thirty times?”

On the form, her response to this had been a guess, and she couldn’t remember what it was. How many times had she used marijuana? What kind of question was that? And what counted as a use? If she smoked three joints in one sitting, was that one use or three?

“Yes,” she answered. Less than thirty times. Her heart fluttered and she wished for a glass of water.

The examiner looked at his screen and scribbled something on his pad. “Jennifer,” he said, looking at his screen again, “I’ve had people admit to using marijuana dozens of times. One applicant said he’d used it more than a hundred times. They all got security clearances.” He paused and she felt his eyes scrutinizing her over his glasses. “Let’s try this one again.”

She took a deep breath.

“Would you say you’ve used marijuana less than thirty times?”

“No.”

“Less than sixty times?”

“No.”

“Less than ninety times?”

“Yes.” Her breathing slowed back down to where it had been before the marijuana questions were asked.

The examiner smiled as he observed his screen again. He pulled a dictaphone from a pocket inside his blazer and said into it: “Subject revises answer to question 22 on Form SF-398. Subject indicates she has used marijuana on sixty to ninety occasions. Ms. Reed, is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said again. She began to wonder about the word “occasions” but quickly banished the thought.

They moved through the cocaine questions without incident. Blake, her ex-husband, had introduced her to cocaine, but she’d tried it just twice. It had numbed her nostril, nothing more. But it had been fine with her if Blake wanted to use a little cocaine on a Sunday night. After working all weekend selling cars, he was entitled.

“Now,” said the examiner. “I’m going to ask you about whether you’ve broken certain laws. Not drug laws. We’re done with those.”

“All right,” she said.

“I see from your security form that as a teenager, you did a little shoplifting.”

She was so in tune with the inner rhythms of her body by now that she felt her pulse quicken – but with impatience, not nerves. Fine, she thought. She supposed he had to ask her about anything she had ever done wrong, no matter how petty and no matter how long ago. The undergarments she’d taken at the mall when she was sixteen should exhaust the topic.

“I’m not worried about the shoplifting,” the examiner said with a kindly smile. “But tell me. Have you ever stolen anything else, anything other than what you mention in your security questionnaire?”

“No,” she answered. She glared fiercely but couldn’t tell if he noticed.

He scribbled something on his pad. “I’m going to ask you about more serious kinds of crimes now,” he said. “You should know that, for some of these, if your answer is yes, we’re required to report it to law enforcement.”

“That’s fine,” she said.

The examiner nodded, pushed his eyeglasses back off the tip of his nose, squinted at the fine print of her questionnaire, and asked: “Have you ever committed homicide, armed robbery, assault and battery, arson, child abuse, rape, larceny, fraud, or perjury?” He rattled off the list of crimes with a tongue as nimble as an auctioneer’s.

She paused. She didn’t understand why, but she paused.

“Jennifer?” The examiner looked at her, his eyebrows tensed.

“No,” she said. “No.” The examiner studied his screen and shook his head.

“Look,” he said. He put down his pad and dropped his pen on it. “Just relax. We’re almost done. I’m going to read you the question again.”

He reread it. She listened attentively. What about it was bothering her? She recited the list of crimes in her mind.

“Ms. Reed,” the examiner said, a slight edge in his voice.

“I need a minute,” she said. Her own voice sounded far away, and something about her surroundings seemed different. The blankness of the wall looked the same, but the examiner’s face began to blur. She didn’t realize immediately that this was because tears were filling her eyes.

“Are you all right, Ms. Reed?” he asked.

“Ask me again,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He picked up his pen and began marking his pad with a series of straight lines. “Let’s take a break instead.”

“Ask me,” she insisted. “Ask me the question again.” She clenched her jaw as if to contain her anger. She didn’t know whom or what she was angry at. The question? The polygraph machine? The examiner?

They were both silent for a minute. The humming of the machine and the hissing of the blood pressure cuff were all she heard. Finally, the blurriness diminished and the examiner came back into focus. An obstacle, she thought. Just another obstacle to overcome.

“I’ll ask you about each crime, one by one,” he said.

“All right,” she said. An idea occurred to her.

He held the questionnaire just beneath the screen. “Have you ever committed homicide?”

Of course, she hadn’t. Still, she restated the question in her mind, in plainer words: Have I ever killed someone? “No,” she said.

“Armed robbery.”

Have I ever robbed a bank? Or knocked over a liquor store? “No.” She almost laughed.

“Assault and battery”

Me? she thought. Beat anyone up? “No.”

“Arson.”

What questions. She almost shook her head, but remembered she needed to remain still. Have I ever burned something down?

“No.” A smile played on her lips.

“Child abuse.”

This one was the silliest of all. Have I ever hurt Colin? The urge to laugh grew stronger. The crimes, or versions of them, echoed in her head. Murder. Bank robbery. Arson. Child abuse. One more absurd than the next. “No,” she said, loudly, in an effort to fight off the incipient laugh. But it forced itself out, noisy and shrill, stronger for having battled its way into being.

“Excuse me, Ms. Reed,” the examiner said. He put down her questionnaire. She stopped laughing. She feared she might start again at any moment.

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

“No,” she said. She kept staring at the wall. There was nothing she wanted to tell him. If that was a new question, fine: she had answered it truthfully.

But the examiner was still silent. “I’m ready,” she said. “I’m ready for the next question.”

“No,” the examiner said. “You’re not.”

“You said you’d ask me about each crime.”

“I also said it wasn’t a good idea to continue.”

“But you agreed,” Jennifer said. She turned her head right, to look at him as directly as she could. “I think you should keep your word.”

The examiner picked up her questionnaire and looked at the screen again.

“Child abuse,” he said. His impassive tone struck her as belligerent this time, as if he were exaggerating it for effect.

“You asked me that already.”

“I never said I wouldn’t repeat a question.” He didn’t turn away from the screen. His face was stone. “Child abuse.”

“No,” she answered. The urge to laugh was gone and her pulse quickened. She breathed in deeply to calm herself, but shook as her lungs expanded, as if the air she inhaled carried turbulence within it. The blood pressure cuff seemed to be squeezing her harder, and her fingertips tingled. She couldn’t feel them.

The examiner shook his head and took his glasses off. He stared down at his pad meditatively.

“I’ve never abused my son,” Jennifer said. The words rattled in her throat as she spoke them, and the tears came back. This time they overflowed her eyes.

The examiner opened a drawer in his desk and took out a box of tissues. “Hold on a second, Ms. Reed,” he said. She took a tissue, but he kept his arm extended, the box in his hand. She pulled several more out of the top of the box, which the examiner put down at the edge of his desk, near her chair. She wiped her eyes and the examiner picked up his phone and called Becky.

She arrived immediately. Before Jennifer realized what was happening, she had been disconnected from the machine’s attachments. Becky asked her to stand for a moment. She turned Jennifer’s chair clockwise so that it faced the examiner, and pushed it closer to his desk. The examiner nodded and Jennifer sat back down. She silently dabbed her eyes while Becky left the room.

“My husband hit him,” she said, finally. “My ex-husband.”

“Blake Wagner,” the examiner said, not glancing down at her form.

“That’s right,” she said. “Blake hit him.”

“But you didn’t.”

Jennifer shook her head.

“How bad was it?”

“He hit Colin three times,” she answered. “He hit him on three separate occasions.” He had hit him more than once on the last two occasions, and he had hit him hard, across the face with the back of his hand. It had happened after he had lost his job at the dealership, and after he’d given up on his efforts to buy and sell used cars on his own. After he’d begun emptying their bank account to buy cocaine. She had tried to leave sooner, but he’d convinced her to stay. Until the third time.

“I’m sorry,” said the examiner. He took a breath. “I hope your boy is all right.”

“He is,” said Jennifer, her voice trembling. And physically, he was. But he didn’t talk or laugh very often any more. Every day she wondered how damaged he was and how long it would last. She wiped her eyes again.

The examiner removed his glasses, took a tissue from the box and started rubbing one of his lenses. Jennifer noticed two six-drawer filing cabinets behind him and three framed photographs on the wall above them. There was a picture of a woman – his wife, Jennifer concluded. A young man and young woman, each wearing a graduation cap and gown, appeared in the other two photographs.

“I’m sure you want the best for your son,” the examiner said. He stopped cleaning his eyeglasses and looked at her. A reddish, raw area stood out on the ridge of his nose where his glasses had worn a path. “And from what I can gather,” he said, “what you’ve told me about isn’t your fault.”

“How would you know that?” The question escaped her without her intending it to, but she didn’t regret asking it. She wanted to know how he would know.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” the examiner said. “Not just the polygraphs. The field investigations. Talking to people who’ve been through all kinds of things. Looking them in the eye.” He put his glasses back on. “Lots of times, the people who feel terrible about what they’ve done are the ones who haven’t done anything terrible.”

“So,” she said. “You can just tell these things.” She folded her arms and raised her chin. “You just know. By some kind of instinct.”

“You might put it that way,” the examiner said with a smile. “A combination of instinct and experience, with a little help from science. That and some very thorough investigators. All dedicated to finding people who can be trusted.”

The examiner’s words hung in the air. He had not broken eye contact with her once while they spoke. She considered him, his tidy desk and shabby file cabinets, his family photos and steady gaze. He seemed credible, she decided.

With her left hand, she squeezed her right arm in the place where the blood pressure cuff had been. “What happens next?” she asked. “Have I failed my polygraph?”

“Not at all,” he answered. “For the time being, your polygraph just isn’t quite finished yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’ve reached a stopping point for today. But I want you to make an appointment to come back next week. Talk to Becky and schedule it. You’ll sit right back down in this chair and we’ll pick up where we left off. If you still want the job, that is.”

Jennifer stood up and the examiner stood with her. “Next week, then,” she said. They shook hands. She looked at the polygraph machine, tucked away now in an alcove in the wall to the left of the examiner, unplugged. Its extensions, the cords and the cuff, the tubes and the strips, were all put away, resting on wooden shelves or hanging from plastic hooks built into the wall. As she looked at the machine, a loop from one of the cords slipped off its hook, like a section of a wound-up garden hose falling over the edge of its spindle. She reached into the alcove, draped the cord back into place, and walked out the door to find Becky.

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