This Is Not My Life Page 6

  Originally I had used the bedroom at the back of the house as my office. But when Alex was a teenager, I moved my desk into the living room, getting as far away from the rap music, the video games, and the endless telephone conversations as I possibly could without ending up on the front lawn. My desk was now positioned in the middle of the wall of books.

  Shane stood staring at the books, and when he turned to me, there were tears in his eyes. “I will read every single one of them,” he said. “And then I’ll die a happy man.”

  Back in the kitchen, I made a pot of coffee, and he and Alex sat chatting at the table while I got ready to go to the convent. When I came back into the room, he pointed down and said, “Next time I’m here, I’ll wash this floor for you.”

  I was irritated and insulted by this, which I took to be a criticism of my housekeeping skills. He said he only intended it as an offer of help, knowing I had to do everything by myself. But it reminded me of the time thirty years earlier, when my parents drove all the way from Thunder Bay to Canmore for a visit, a trip of more than two thousand kilometres, and within half an hour, my mother was back in the car crying because she said my apartment was a filthy mess. My standards of cleanliness were not up to hers—nobody’s were. “You didn’t even wash the kitchen floor!” she wept.

  But both these moments from Shane’s first visit to my house, his emotional reaction to the wall of books and his offer to wash the kitchen floor, were soon added to our file box of happy memories, a part of the story we told each other over and over again, laughing.

  WHEN I STARTED GOING OUT WITH SHANE (I realize “going out with” is not exactly the right term to describe having a relationship with a prison inmate) and took my first steps into his world, I soon discovered that prison is both like a secret society with its own rules, written and unwritten, and a foreign country with its own culture, customs, and language. Whether you’re going into prison as an inmate, a volunteer, or a visitor, you are entering a singular alien territory, a private and perplexing enclave, a previously forbidden and perversely exotic kingdom: mysterious, unmapped, and frequently absurd.

  I made my first visit to Shane at Frontenac on the Wednesday evening between Christmas and New Year’s. Until now, all of our interactions had taken place outside of the prison. As his escort, I’d been as far as the horseshoe often enough, and I’d been to the programs building for the volunteer training session. But I had never been to the visiting room. Like most people, what I imagined was based solely on what I’d seen in movies and on TV. I was eager now to see it for myself. I had a sense of being granted access to the inner sanctum—which, of course, it was not.

  I am a curious person by nature. Some people, including Shane, would more likely call me “nosy,” and I might even agree. Being perpetually observant and a chronic eavesdropper are traits that have always served me well in my writing life. I would learn soon enough that curiosity is not a desirable trait in the prison world, where asking too many questions and paying too much attention is frowned upon, and especially not in the visiting room, where Shane was always telling me to mind my own business and quit gawking around.

  It was snowing as I made the ten-minute drive from my house to the prison, soft wet flakes dropping straight down in the early dark. The faces of the guards around the horseshoe were friendly and familiar. Shane was standing behind the locked glass doors with a cluster of other inmates impatiently awaiting their visitors. All that I could ever know about what went on behind those glass doors was what Shane told me. Separated as it was from the actual interior of the prison, the visiting room gave little indication of the realities of incarceration.

  I had locked my purse in the trunk of my car, was bringing in only my driver’s licence, some change for the pop machine, my cigarettes and lighter. Back in those days, smoking was still permitted outside. A guard led me down the hallway into a separate room, where I had my first encounter with the ion scanner, a machine used to detect the microscopic presence of drugs. As Shane had advised, I’d thoroughly washed my driver’s licence before leaving home. I have no involvement with drugs of any kind, but this machine, he warned me, was notorious for giving false positives. Besides, he said, I could never know what I might inadvertently have come into contact with.

  The guard put on a pair of blue latex gloves and wiped both sides of my licence with a small square of white cloth, then inserted the cloth into the mouth of the machine. Much later, the ion scanner would become the bane of my existence, but that night it had nothing to say, and the guard waved me on to the visiting room. Commonly called V&C, which stands for Visits and Correspondence, it is also the place where the inmates are given their mail after it has been opened and checked.

  I stepped into a bright open room with windows on three sides and concrete-block walls painted a soft grey blue, a room filled with large square wooden tables, three or four padded wooden chairs pulled up around each. In one corner were the washrooms, and in the opposite corner, the vending machines for pop and chips and chocolate bars. On a small table beside the machines sat a microwave, a toaster oven, and an electric kettle. The Christmas decorations hanging around the room looked forlorn and bedraggled in that way they always do, anywhere, once the big day has passed.

  I don’t remember if there were already other visitors in the room when I entered. I don’t remember which table I sat at as I waited for Shane to be called down. I don’t remember the moment he walked into the room and my visiting life began.

  All the details are lost now in the repetition of future visits, in the accumulation of the hundreds of hours I spent in that room over the next nine months. The remarkable strangeness of finding myself in a prison visiting room in the first place has been replaced now in my memory by all that came after, by how easily I became accustomed to the routine, by how soon I forgot about the cameras in the ceiling and the guards in their glass-walled corner office called “the bubble,” by how quickly it all became normal. By the miraculous power of adaptation, we humans are masters of the ability to get used to almost anything, for better or for worse, at once a blessing and a curse, both our salvation and our undoing.

  Contrary to what I’d seen in movies, the guards were neither menacing nor armed, and there was no sign of scary-looking men in orange jumpsuits behind glass, talking to their visitors on metal telephones. Here, scary-looking or not, the inmates were dressed in either ordinary street clothes or ill-fitting prison-issue jeans and T-shirts, long- or short-sleeved depending on the season, of a particular colour Shane called “joint blue.” Over time, I noticed that, whether by coincidence or on principle, none of them ever wore orange.

  Although chatting with people at other tables was not encouraged, it was not forbidden either. Most of the women I met in that room didn’t fit the stereotype any more than the inmates did. There was the teacher, the secretary, the retired college professor, the nurse, the personal support worker, the yoga instructor. And me—the writer—now part of a sisterhood to which I had never imagined I would belong.

  DURING THE REGULAR Tuesday- and Friday-evening visits, there was seldom more than a handful of visitors. But on weekends, with all-day visiting on both days, the room was usually close to full. There were the mothers and fathers (but mostly the mothers) who came to see their sons. Next to Christmas, Mother’s Day is said to be the busiest prison visiting day of the year. There were the blue-haired grandmothers who came to see their grandsons, hugging them fiercely and scolding them gently, or vice versa. There were the aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters, brothers, and friends. There were the girlfriends, the wives, and the children.

  Along the back wall, adjacent to the bubble, was the children’s play area with colourful wooden benches, two Fisher-Price high chairs, dozens of toys including a pink plastic stove, a noisy ride-on car, a miniature tea set, and a Talking Elmo. A double bookcase was stocked with books, magazines, and board games. On weekends, there were always children in the room: sleepy or squalling bab
ies, unsteady toddlers just finding their legs, giggling little girls with ribbons in their hair, rambunctious boys galloping around the tables until their parents made them stop. The inmates played cards or Scrabble with their older children, sometimes spreading out books and papers on the table and helping them with their homework. A television set was mounted near the ceiling in one corner, and once the children had tired themselves out, they settled in to watch Disney movies and cartoons—unless it was hockey season, and then we all watched the game. In the evenings, we watched Jeopardy! just like I did at home.

  For all those hours in the visiting room, I was not distracted or interrupted by all the things constantly clamouring for my attention at home: no phone calls, no emails, no to-do list, no chores or errands, no pets needing to be watered, walked, or fed. I can think of no comparable circumstance in the free world in which a couple has so much time simply to be together and talk.

  Week after week, we told each other the intimate stories of our lives—our hopes and dreams, our fears and failures, our doubts and disappointments. Shane was, after all, a captive audience, and I soon felt he knew me better than anybody else in the whole world. And he loved me anyway. I had always been fearful of being my full strange self. I had always felt so unlike other people, so abnormal, such a misfit. A friend used to encourage me to “have the courage of my eccentricities,” but I had never really managed it. Now, with Shane, I finally felt I could.

  Perhaps it meant more to me than it should have that he seemed to adore everything about me, that he told me every day—several times a day—that I was beautiful and smart and sexy, and he couldn’t understand why nobody had snapped me up years ago.

  When he asked me what I wanted most in a relationship, in a man, I said, “I want someone I can count on, someone who will never let me down.”

  He said, “I will always keep you safe.”

  When I said I had no desire for adventure or excitement anymore, that all I wanted from whatever remained of my life was to be peaceful and creative, he agreed wholeheartedly. He said that was exactly what he wanted too. I had no reason then to doubt him.

  When not continuing our intense extended conversation, we did crossword puzzles and played Scrabble, cribbage, or other card games. I was allowed to bring my own Scrabble game from home, also a deck of cards and my crib board. I had never been much interested in cards, and, despite Shane’s persistent efforts to teach me, my card-playing skills did not improve. He was especially good at bridge and took the regular prison tournaments very seriously. I snickered every time he mentioned them. I had trouble imagining a bunch of convicts sitting around playing bridge, a game I thought of as the bailiwick of refined elderly women in floral dresses, sensible shoes, and pillbox hats.

  He was also extremely good at crossword puzzles, to the point of being able to do the entire New York Times puzzle in ink every week. I have to confess I was very impressed by this. I also have to confess that before we did that first crossword puzzle together, I figured I’d have to hold back some on filling in those little squares, so as not to seem like I was showing off how smart I was and possibly making him feel bad.

  For months I couldn’t beat him at Scrabble, not even once, not even close. A ruthless and relentlessly strategic player, he began to accuse me of letting him win, until finally he realized I just wasn’t very good at the game. He said he couldn’t understand how someone so in love with words could be so bad at Scrabble. It was true that I took the greatest pleasure in playing unusual or interesting words regardless of how few points they were worth. Eventually I realized that Scrabble is not a game of words but of numbers. Then I started to win more and more often. Much as Shane wasn’t a gracious winner, he was an even worse loser.

  DEPENDING ON WHO WAS ON DUTY, there were varying degrees of intimacy allowed—or at least overlooked—in V&C. Holding hands, sitting close, resting my head on his shoulder, sometimes even kissing. Shane loved kissing more than any other man I’d known. He said this was because although he’d had a lot of sex in his life, not much of it was of the sort that included kissing. I also liked it very much. But when I began frequently breaking out in cold sores, I wondered if maybe we were overdoing it. I’ve been prone to cold sores since I was a child, but never like this. Shane wondered sheepishly if it might be the bleach. The what? The bleach he used to clean his false teeth, he said, the bleach in which he soaked them every night because the Polident they sold at the canteen was too expensive. Most food items there were discounted, he said, but personal products like vitamins, toothpaste, Gillette razor blades, and Polident were sold at the full street price. Horrified, I shrieked. If the bleach was giving me cold sores, imagine what it was doing to his insides. He promised he would stop.

  Residual bleach was arguably the most dangerous thing I ever encountered in the visiting room. Although I was surrounded by men who had committed an array of serious crimes, some violent and horrific, I never once felt uneasy there. It was a very controlled environment, and the atmosphere was generally comfortable and convivial. This was perhaps an illusion, but it was real enough for all the hours I spent in that room. Visits were a privilege, and all the men were on their best behaviour. If anyone caused trouble, Shane said, V&C would be cleared, and all the visitors would be sent home. Then the troublemaker would have to face not only whatever punishment might be meted out by the guards, but also the wrath of the inmates who had lost their visits because of him.

  We were all living out important parts of our lives in that room, and like all relationships everywhere, ours were not without drama and melodrama, tension and tears, the main difference being that there, privacy was at a premium.

  One evening a young woman cried through the entire visit, while her inmate boyfriend tried to comfort her. Her mother had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. A few weeks later on a Saturday afternoon, two officers stood at the table of this same young couple, spoke quietly to the pair, then led them out of the room. By the end of the day, we all knew that the young man’s older brother had been killed in a car accident that morning on the highway east of town.

  Sometimes one couple or another would be arguing at their table, him speaking through gritted teeth, her crying and blowing her nose, him reaching for her hand, her pulling away and refusing to look at him. The agitation emanating from any one table rippled around the entire room, while the rest of us tried not to look. One afternoon we happened to be seated right beside a couple in distress and could hear their conversation. She was breaking up with him. She said she’d met someone else, someone not in prison, someone she could have a real life with. This time he was the one crying. It was a short visit. Later that night he walked away from the prison and made the news. He was arrested in Toronto a few days later and sent to a higher-security institution.

  I did not imagine then that I would ever be the one crying in the visiting room. But yes, my turn would come.

  ONCE VINNIE’S REOPENED IN THE NEW YEAR, we began to settle into our new configuration as a couple. Shane’s status as a volunteer had changed, and he was now coming every day on a “work release” rather than on a series of weekly ETAs. This meant he no longer required an approved escort. I drove him back and forth on the days I was volunteering too; otherwise he was transported by someone else from Vinnie’s, usually Laura, or Russell, the man who hadn’t been allowed to become an escort because of his old criminal record.

  The regular lunch patrons were the least surprised by and the most supportive of our romance, teasing us mercilessly, wanting to know if they’d be invited to the wedding. The reaction of the other volunteers was mixed. Laura and Fred from the convent were pleased. But one woman warned me that though he was handsome and charming, he was bound to be a handful, and I’d have to keep him on a short leash. Another said it was all well and good to be nice to him, but what kind of crazy bleeding heart liberal was I to go ahead and fall in love with him? The one who was most bothered by our relationship, Sylvia, said it wasn’t approp
riate for two volunteers to be romantically involved, as if we were employees of a high-powered corporation breaking a no-fraternization policy. She frequently chastised us for acting like a pair of lovesick teenagers and being too “friendly” in the kitchen, which, she said, was disturbing for everyone. She was especially bothered the day Shane walked to a nearby convenience store and returned with a single red rose for me.

  Thanks to Sylvia and the wonders of modern technology, the news of our romance made it all the way to Patagonia. My friend Dorothy and her husband were there visiting their son and his girlfriend, who were teaching English in Chile for a year. Dorothy was not pleased. I knew she wouldn’t be. She said maybe her left-wing broad-mindedness didn’t go as far as she had thought it did—maybe didn’t go all the way to being able to accept that one of her dearest friends had fallen in love with a murderer. She was also hurt that I hadn’t told her myself, that she’d had to hear it by email from Sylvia. I said I didn’t tell her myself because I knew she’d be upset, and I didn’t want to disrupt her time with her family in South America. Also, because I didn’t want to listen to her try to talk me out of it. I have never been one to appreciate unsolicited advice, not even from my closest friends.

  Once Dorothy had adjusted to the idea some, she seemed as disturbed by the fact that I was going to church every Sunday as by the fact that I was involved with a convict. She had a deep and abiding aversion to organized religion. I had been given permission to meet Shane for mass at the convent. Arriving there each Sunday with the other inmates, once inside, he stayed away from them. We always sat on the other side of the chapel with Laura from Vinnie’s, where, he said, he could feel like a normal person. If one of the other inmates dared to get too close to me, Shane would promptly skewer him with his best mean-convict glare.