This Is Not My Life Page 15

  I did not yet understand that he was afraid. That for him, jail felt safer than being on the street. That contrary to what Janis Joplin had said, freedom was just another word for everything left to lose.

  ON MONDAY MORNING, we went to the Urgent Care Centre at Hotel Dieu. After two or three hours in the waiting room, Shane was diagnosed with bronchitis and given a prescription for antibiotics. We went to the drugstore. He was appalled at the cost of the prescription. Until now, all his medications had been covered, first by CSC, then by the halfway house. This was not something he’d taken into consideration about life in the so-called free world. The antibiotics improved his bronchitis but not his disposition.

  In the first week, we were busy every day, too busy with the practicalities to consider the full implications of our new circumstance. We moved my desk to the back room, where it had been originally, thus returning the living room to its proper function as a shared family space and giving me a separate room to work in. We made trips to the employment agency, the cell phone company, the parole office, the police station. I wondered about going to see someone at the John Howard Society, a national organization whose mission is to provide “effective, just, and humane responses to crime and its causes.” One of its important services is to assist released prisoners with integration back into society, but for reasons he never explained, Shane did not want to contact them.

  Instead we went to see the community chaplain, a person we’d learned about by accident from a business card Shane had been given by another inmate when he was still at Frontenac. At the time, he had said he wasn’t interested and stashed it in the glove compartment. Now I retrieved it. We called and made an inquiry. I hadn’t known that the community chaplain was someone who helped newly released inmates. Her name was Valerie, and yes, she could see us tomorrow afternoon.

  Our appointment was brief. She said she usually started working with a man when he was still inside, beginning the preparation for his release. She said she didn’t know why Shane hadn’t asked to see her then. He made no reply. I said I didn’t know why no one on his CMT had ever suggested that he, or we, should see her. She had no answer. She asked about housing. We explained that he was living with me, so that wasn’t an issue. She asked about employment and gave us the address of an agency where he could take his resumé. He had already done that. She said he should make an appointment with Ontario Works, which provided start-up money for newly released inmates and could help him until he found a job. She said she would set up what she called “a healing circle,” a group of people who could help us as Shane found his footing in the community. She made an appointment for our first meeting with the circle at the beginning of December.

  I left Valerie’s office feeling hopeful. We were not so alone after all. We had found someone to help us, and she would find more people to help us, and everything would be all right.

  Back in the car, Shane opened the package she’d given him—a release package, she said. It included a toothbrush, a three-pack of condoms, six city bus tickets with a map of the routes, a list of Kingston AA and NA meetings, and another list of local agencies providing food hampers and hot meal programs including Vinnie’s.

  I WAS SCHEDULED TO ATTEND BookFest Windsor on the weekend of November 1. Back in the summer, when Shane was still in Peterborough, it had been arranged that he would come with me. He thought we should get together with Brandy while we were there. I was noncommittal about that idea. The Windsor trip must now be approved by his Kingston parole officer. Jerry Anderson was temporarily working elsewhere. He’d be back in early December, and until then Shane was added to the caseload of an older woman who seemed none too pleased about it. But she approved the plan.

  The weekend before the Windsor trip, I wanted to stock up on Nelly’s favourite treats, dried pork lung pieces, something to ease her separation anxiety some. We went to the large pet store directly across the street from the prison. While I looked for the treats near the front, Shane wandered to the back. A few minutes later, I heard him calling my name. I found him with his face nearly pressed against the glass of a large cage in which there sat one tiny forlorn brown puppy. She looked much like Nelly had when I got her: irresistibly adorable, not much more than two or three pounds, with big brown eyes and large perky ears. Nelly looked like a fox kit when she was small. This one looked more like a wolf cub.

  We went home with two bags of pork lung treats and another dog.

  This was not an entirely impulsive decision on my part. I knew how much Shane loved animals, but our pets were so bonded to me that they mostly ignored him. With Nelly in particular, it was blatantly obvious that although she was tolerating his presence, she was my dog, and he could never be anything beyond at best a diversion and at worst an outright interloper, a now ever-present rival for my affections. I’d thought before that it would be good for him to have a dog of his own, a canine companion who would love him above all others, including and especially me. I also believe in the therapeutic power of animals. Or maybe this is all retrospective dissembling on my part. Maybe getting this puppy was just the canine version of having a baby in hopes of saving a faltering relationship.

  In any event, I hadn’t imagined that he would have his own dog quite this soon. But here she was, the newest member of our family, a Pomeranian and Miniature Schnauzer cross that we named Maggie. At least she wasn’t a German shepherd, a Great Dane, or a St. Bernard. It wasn’t until after we got her home and introduced her to the others that I thought about our upcoming trip to Windsor in just six days. I knew Alex would do just fine looking after the other pets, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave him in charge of a new puppy as well, especially because he worked such long hours. Shane said he’d be happy to stay home with her; it didn’t matter, he would rather have Maggie than a weekend in Windsor any day.

  FOLLOWING VALERIE’S SUGGESTION, we made an appointment at the Ontario Works office on Tuesday morning. This proved to be a long, humiliating day at the end of which we were told that because Shane was living with me rather than on his own, he was not eligible for start-up money, and the total monthly amount he could receive from Ontario Works was fifty dollars.

  Back home in the late afternoon, we were both so exhausted and angry that we could do nothing but sit at the kitchen table smoking and raving. Shane was determined to interpret my anger as being directed at him. I could not convince him that I was not angry at him. I was angry at “them”—CSC, the Parole Board, and Ontario Works, all three of them. I was angry at the “system,” this trifecta of bureaucracies that seemed to be setting us up to fail. I was angry that CSC expected so little of an inmate returning to society that all they offered him by way of support was a list of free-food agencies and a visit to the welfare office. I was angry at Ontario Works, where we were told that if I had declared myself as his landlord, he would have been eligible for both the start-up money and the full monthly welfare amount for a single person of $535. I was angry that the Parole Board had given him to me with the tacit understanding that I would look after him, and now he was being penalized for that. I was angry that I was expected to support him financially, when I had hardly enough money to support myself and my son. I was angry that fifty dollars a month wouldn’t even cover the pet food. I was angry at myself for getting into this mess in the first place.

  WE MANAGED TO PULL OURSELVES TOGETHER and get through the next day, Wednesday, reasonably well. I was busy preparing for my trip to Windsor on Friday; Shane was puttering around the house, playing with the puppy, doing a few chores, including a load of laundry. Alex had to be at work at five o’clock. I’d give him a ride as I usually did.

  Shortly before it was time to leave, Alex discovered his jacket was still damp from his walk home in the rain the night before. I asked Shane if he could please take the clothes out of the dryer so Alex could dry his jacket. He did, then sat back down at the computer where he’d been playing games. I asked him if he could please let Alex use the com
puter for a few minutes, so he could check his Facebook page before he went to work the way he always did.

  It took me less than half an hour to drive downtown and back. As soon as I walked back into the house, it was clear that Shane had suffered a major mood swing in my absence. He had assumed his big bad mood position, sitting on the end of the couch scowling at the TV. Even when I cheerily called, “Hello,” he said nothing and didn’t even turn his head. I went into the kitchen and finished preparing the meal: ham, fried potatoes, lima beans, salad. When I called that dinner was ready, he came to the table, ate like a pig, then dropped his empty plate in the sink, all without speaking to or looking at me. On his way back to the couch, he said, “I hate lima beans.” He had, however, eaten them all.

  Okay, fine. I had no idea what was wrong this time and didn’t much care. I would not ask him what was wrong, I would ignore him as he was ignoring me. Two could play this game, I thought. We ignored each other for the rest of the evening. He said he’d sleep on the couch. I said, “Whatever.”

  He kept this up all day Thursday. I did too. I again took Alex to work for five o’clock. Shane and I again sat down to eat dinner without speaking. I had such a knot in my stomach that I couldn’t eat anyway. He had no problem, again wolfing it down, again dropping his empty plate in the sink.

  And then I lost it. Two could not play this game. Only he could. I was done. I set my own untouched plate of food in the sink. As he stalked past me on his way back to the couch, without premeditation I picked up the wooden cutting board on which I’d sliced the leftover ham and smashed it as hard as I could on the edge of the counter. Almost an inch thick, it broke in half, and the pieces flew across the room.

  We spent the rest of the evening yelling at each other in the kitchen. No, that’s not true. I yelled. He spoke quietly in his syrupy sarcastic voice. I yelled some more. His voice got quieter and even more syrupy. Eventually he explained with great satisfaction that he was upset because I’d asked him to take the clothes out of the dryer so Alex could use it and then to get off the computer so Alex could use it too. He said I had disrespected him. I said he was crazy.

  How long did it take me to understand that he actually thought it was reasonable for a grown man to behave the way he had for a full twenty-four hours simply because he’d been asked to accommodate someone else’s needs? How long did it take me to understand that he thought it was perfectly okay to come into my formerly peaceful home and turn it into a battleground? How much longer did it take me to understand that he was proud of himself for having won the contest, torn away my dignity and self-respect, reduced me to the lowest common denominator, and driven me into a violent rage?

  I got ready for bed, assuming that he’d once again sleep on the couch. But no, he was happy now and crawled in beside me. I turned my back and moved as close to the far edge as I could.

  He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t touch you.”

  I said, “Good.”

  He said, “I’m afraid of you.”

  I said, “Good.”

  I SELDOM LOOK FORWARD TO LEAVING HOME, but in this instance, I could hardly wait to get on the train in the morning and be gone. We had now been living together for exactly two weeks. It was Halloween. As the train rolled west, I tried to make this into some kind of metaphor: me in disguise as a violent raving lunatic harridan now being let out of the asylum for a couple of days, during which I could return to my former self, my writer self, my real self in my real world. But I couldn’t make the metaphor work, because I couldn’t be sure anymore which was the disguise and which was the real me. In Windsor everyone treated me just as they always had. They had no reason to think I was anyone other than I’d ever been, no reason to wonder about disguises or denominators. As far as they could tell, the person inhabiting my body, standing on the stage, reading from my book, chatting with them at dinner, was still me.

  Shane called many times over the weekend. Sometimes I answered, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes he was pleasant, sometimes he wasn’t.

  When I arrived back home on Sunday around six o’clock, Alex had already gone to work, and Shane was in position on the couch scowling at the TV.

  By way of greeting, he said, “Is this it then? Are we breaking up now?”

  I should have said yes.

  PERHAPS NOVEMBER IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH, not April after all. Every day that Shane and I lived together was cold and grim, and after daylight saving time ended, by five o’clock it was dark. Every evening on the six o’clock news, the weatherman noted how many minutes of daylight we’d lost as we crept towards the shortest day. By the end of the month, the sun was setting at four-thirty. I have always found the onset of the early darkness depressing. Certainly being cooped up together in my little house in November didn’t help. I felt invaded, and the house felt so small. Later Shane said it felt so big to him, cavernous after all those years inside. It was too cold to go and sit outside. I could not get away from him. I could hear him breathing even when he was in the next room. Every time I turned around, there he was: looking at me. Every morning when I got up, there he was: sitting at the kitchen table scowling and not looking at me. It unnerved me that he didn’t even say good morning.

  He had spread his resumé all over town with no results. With the help of the halfway house, he’d never had a problem finding a job in Peterborough. But now, trying to do it on his own in Kingston, he was just an almost-sixty-year-old man with an extensive and serious criminal record, no consistent education or employment history, no marketable skills, a bad leg, and a myriad of other health problems. He seemed to have given up on the job search and was now spending a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, drinking coffee or Coke, doing crossword puzzles, reading the newspaper. I tried not to dwell on how this reminded me of my father, who, after my mother died, used to come and stay with us for a whole month at Christmas. He too was disinclined to leave the house without me. He too spent hours sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window, waiting for the next meal. But Shane wasn’t sitting there waiting for the next meal. He was waiting for the next thing to be mad about.

  I tried not to dwell on how much it annoyed me that he kept his pills on the table, five or six prescription bottles in a cluster. This reminded me not only of my father but also of Shane’s mother, and that was even worse. When I dared to comment on the pills, he waved his hand around to indicate all the other things that tended to take up residence on the table. My things—my Day-Timer, books, papers, mail, pads of Post-its, a jar of pens and pencils, a square wicker basket containing all manner of odds and ends including Scotch tape, dental floss, a calculator, and a pencil sharpener in the shape of a shoe. But not pills. I keep mine in the kitchen cupboard where they belong.

  I tried not to dwell on how he reminded me of my mother too—cold, critical, chronically disappointed in me. Of course I knew about women who ended up marrying their fathers. But I hadn’t considered that you could end up with a man just like your mother too.

  Just as prison was a foreign country for me when I first became involved with Shane, ordinary family life at home was an alien territory for him. From what he’d told me of his early life and what I’d seen of his mother, even when he was young, he’d had little or no experience of it. Maybe I was being unreasonable to imagine that he would at least try to fit into our family. When we drove through the neighbourhood or took a walk down the street, what did he imagine all the people inside the other houses were doing? It seemed that for him the three pillars of life at home were fighting, fucking, and food. Everything else was just filler.

  MY MEMORIES OF THE REST OF NOVEMBER are ragged, disordered fragments, stretches of blankness punctuated by unpleasant incidents. Looking back now at my Day-Timer to jog my memory, I see the pages from the middle of October to the end of November are blank. Except for one day when I wrote in large letters: Organize my mind!

  This was when I was a basket case. I had only recently learned the origin of this t
erm. It was First World War slang for a soldier who’d lost all four limbs and had to be carried off the battlefield in a basket.

  This was when I had to go into the bathroom several times a day and look at myself in the mirror, checking to see if I was still me, if the extent to which I felt diminished and demoralized showed in my face. It did.

  One afternoon, flinging open the door and barging into the bathroom, Shane caught me. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said when he saw me leaning over the sink peering into my own face in the mirror.

  When I explained, he shook his head and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Later that evening, I asked him, “Do I look the same as I did when we first met?”

  He’d settled down by then and said, “Yes. You are even more beautiful.”

  “No, no, I’m not,” I protested.

  Can you see me? Can you see me? No, he could not see me. Perhaps he never had been able to.

  “Can’t you see what this is doing to me?” I cried.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  He said this every time I got upset, every time I disagreed with him, every time I had the audacity to challenge him.

  “Here we go.”

  It was like shooting a starter pistol, and then we both jumped off the cliff.

  I WENT DOWNTOWN FOR LUNCH with Dorothy and Lily on yet another cold damp gloomy day. When I got home, I was so chilled that I decided to have a bath even though I’d already had one that morning. Shane accused me of having gone out not to have lunch with my friends but to have sex with another man, of wanting to have a bath not because I was chilled but because I wanted to wash away the evidence. We argued in the kitchen. After he finally calmed down, I went and had my bath.