In Sickness, in Health ... and in Jail

by Mel Jacob

  I wondered how I could help the kids: one minute they seemed fine and the next they were asking about government brutality. I was wrestling with both my own grief and the heavier weight of theirs.

  I was exhausted, but with my mind so full and anxious, I couldn’t sleep. As I lay there, thinking about the faces of the other inmates, another scenario popped into my mind. Once, years back, when Paddy and I were on the train from the city, a passenger stopped abruptly in front of us and started punching a small Asian man seated next to him.

  Paddy stood up. ‘Mate, what do you think you’re doing?’ he asked, trying to reason with the man. At which point, the accoster punched Paddy hard in the nose.

  ‘Mate, if you do that one more time . . .’ Paddy said, again trying to appeal to the man’s good nature, receiving another hard blow, this time to the chin.

  Paddy made no attempt to retaliate, or even shield his body by turning to the side or blocking the incoming advances with his hands. He simply stood, open-armed and optimistic, convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that common sense would prevail.

  ‘Mister, you’re skating on very thin ice,’ Paddy warned again. No longer were they mates; the other man was now ‘Mister’ and Paddy received another punch, in the stomach.

  The empty threat scenario played out several more times, until some male commuters intervened, restraining the attacker and calling for security.

  Other men, I know, wouldn’t have thought twice about retaliating—about kicking his arse, teaching him a lesson. But Paddy just didn’t seem to have it in him to hit someone. I’d fallen head over heels in love with his gentleness. It had served him well in the regular world but I couldn’t begin to imagine how he would survive in prison.

  TWELVE

  ‘So, the P & L . . .’ Patrick’s brother James said, sitting across from me at his favourite cafe.

  ‘The P & L?’

  ‘Patrick must’ve talked about the P & L.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ I said, thinking James was referring to a product code.

  Paddy and James were entrepreneurs. I mean it in the nicest possible way when I say they both functioned as though they had giant calculators wedged in their cerebral cortexes. Not only could they do complicated calculations about cubic metres and fluctuating currencies in their heads, they had the ability to remember them.

  ‘But you know what it is, right?’ James looked over at me hopefully. ‘It’s the cornerstone . . . the foundation of any business.’

  I racked my brain trying to think of business terms starting with P. P . . . pie chart, paradigm, power nap. These were the only P words that sprung to mind. But the L?

  Normally, James functioned at a very high speed and was big on multi-tasking. He ate standing up, and returned phone calls in the car using his hands-free device. I knew he was making a concerted effort to be patient with me. ‘Profit and loss ring any bells?’

  ‘Yes, profit and loss!’ I repeated emphatically. ‘And the profit needs to be greater than the loss,’ I said, thinking James would be impressed, but he just looked at me with a genuinely pained expression.

  It was a Friday, two whole weeks since Paddy had been sentenced. During that time, James had been to our warehouse every day, working, keeping our business afloat. He had his own business and four children, but without hesitation had stepped into the gap. He coordinated staffing, managed the online accounts, and he’d organised for other family members to man the phones and wrap parcels for shipping. Patrick’s family, my family, insisted that I needed to focus on the kids.

  As we sat having our business discussion (though a discussion suggests an equal contribution), James dominated the conversation and I was ever so grateful. I didn’t know the first thing about BAS or BOL or FOBs, or any of the other acronyms he mentioned.

  ‘No problem,’ he said after I’d thanked him again. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked as he started picking at my lunch. He’d only ordered a coffee.

  ‘Can I order you something?’ I asked but James insisted he didn’t want anything. He assured me that he would keep the business going and gave me a list of things I needed to do when I felt I was ready.

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ he said, still nibbling on my lunch, ‘that he’s not, you know, an orthopaedic surgeon or an employee, and that he has a business you can do.’

  But I couldn’t help feeling that if Paddy had been an orthopaedic surgeon, or the manager of a supermarket, or anything other than an archery-equipment importer, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I appreciated James’s belief in me. I was sure that, in theory, anyone could run a business. But he may as well have been talking about highly specialised surgical procedures for all the sense his business jargon made to me.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ I asked him. ‘You’re spending so much time at the warehouse.’

  ‘Yep, next time order the avocado stack. I don’t like that chicken thing,’ he said.

  As James finished my lunch, I recalled the time a woman in the mothers’ group I’d joined after Nick was born asked me to be her business partner. This proposal had followed a doleful chat about the difficulties of finding childcare. As I’d pushed my pram up to the cafe for our first business meeting at Neutral Bay, my mind was ablaze with thoughts of business trips, long liquid lunches and a platinum credit card.

  ‘So, what’s the business?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’d like a business where I don’t have to do anything, I just go in and pick up the cash,’ she said with complete sincerity. I’d laughed because, coincidentally, that was the only kind of business I’ve ever really wanted to have too. Although, in an ideal world I’d prefer the cash to be dropped off to me. I suggested we waste no time copyrighting the idea before anyone else got wind of it.

  Over the years, I’d had loads of business ideas: making piñatas; a mobile gelato van. But I could recognise, as James began fielding calls from his own customers and employees and I looked at my very long to-do list, that my business ideas comprised only overnight success, windfalls of cash, and very little in the way of actual work. Unfortunately, Paddy’s business, as did all viable businesses, involved an enormous amount of work.

  ‘You can do this! You can do this!’ I repeated James’s words aloud as I sat in front of my computer, trying to psych myself into action. My main stumbling block, as far as I could tell, was that I didn’t see myself as a business person. Secondly, the business sold archery and camping equipment, and not clothes or books or make-up (the sorts of things I was interested in). However, I’d read in a magazine that it could be beneficial not to be in love with the product, so that you are able to focus on the business system.

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself as the subject of a magazine article about female entrepreneurs. The focus would be on my inspiration for the multi-million-dollar business I had grown from a start-up and how I juggled its demands with those of my family. It would also be a great opportunity for me to talk about female role models—Arianna Huffington, Oprah Winfrey, Anita Roddick. The accompanying photos would be shot on the sprawling green lawn of our estate. Me and the kids in luminous white designer clothes.

  That image was fresh in my mind as I opened my eyes to complete the first item on my agenda—paying bills. Patrick had always done the banking. And, to my shame, I’d never actually paid a bill before. But how hard could it be? I navigated the bank website, found the personal banking section, and attempted to log on using the folder that Paddy had left me, containing various passwords for all our different accounts. I entered the number and the password. Easy. But the log-in was unsuccessful. I tried again and again until the account was blocked.

  I called the bank, to be told that Patrick was the only authorised person on the account.

  ‘You’ll have to get him to call us,’ the customer service operator said.

  ‘He can’t. He’s away. I have power of attorney.’

  ‘Well, just pop into a branch.’

  When I looked in the
folder again, I realised that I had used the correct username and password, but for a different bank. Paddy had given me lessons, and got me to watch YouTube tutorials to assist me with most aspects of the business. However, all my lessons had had a very ‘in the unlikely event of’ feel about them, and I had applied the same level of attention as I usually do to the inflight safety procedures.

  ‘I did some drawings—for Dad,’ Lexie told me when I went to pick her up from preschool. Or, at least, that’s what I guess she must have said. I wasn’t listening. I was skimming the information sheet on the noticeboard in the foyer, worried that I had missed, or was about to miss, an important event.

  ‘They’re very good, very colourful,’ another mother said, as if making a point about my apparent lack of interest in my daughter’s creativity. ‘I’m sure he’ll love them.’

  ‘He can’t have them,’ Lexie said, matter-of-factly, ‘because people hide drugs behind the glue and sticky tape.’ If I had danced naked around the preschool playground, I don’t think I could have elicited a greater look of surprise from this woman. Her eyebrows couldn’t have lifted any higher nor her eyes stretched any wider.

  ‘It’s not that I want you to lie,’ I said to Lexie, en route to Nick’s school, ‘it’s just that it’s hard for other people to understand.’

  ‘But I didn’t tell her!’ It amazed me that Lexie could be so articulate and so insightful but when it came to context and inference she was so aggravatingly literal.

  ‘She could tell.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Never mind. Remember, we’re just telling people who are our close friends and family.’ I remembered reading in a parenting book or on a website that it’s good to give children a visual example of the point you’re making. So I said to Lexie, ‘People we spend time with inside our house.’

  And that was exactly how, less than an hour later, Lexie came to tell a virtual stranger that her father, my husband, was in prison.

  We were in the living room, having finished a tour of the house to our prospective new cleaner. She looked to be in her mid sixties, and was lean, most likely from all the cleaning. ‘It’s not a big house. I could fly through here in two hours,’ she said.

  We’d had a cleaner before, and though she had been excellent, I’d never felt entirely comfortable about the situation. She had been a single mother with three autistic children. She had seemed happy to have the work and did an excellent job, but I couldn’t cope with the guilt. Not only was her regular life more difficult than mine, but her time away from her special-needs children was spent cleaning my toilet. And so I had started doing the cleaning before she came, which defeated the purpose of having a cleaner in the first place. When she was offered a part-time job at her children’s school, I was ever so relieved.

  ‘What sort of work do you do?’ our new cleaner asked, handing me a quote.

  ‘We . . .’—the pronoun slipped out automatically—‘have an importing business.’

  ‘And does your husband work from home as well?’ It was an innocent enough question; she was making conversation and I could have simply said no. But she was the first person outside our immediate circle of family and friends I’d spoken to about Patrick and it caught me completely off guard.

  ‘My husband?’ I asked, sounding like I was either an idiot, or in the process of concocting a very bad lie. ‘Well, he’s, he’s . . .’

  ‘In jail,’ Lexie said, without hesitation. The word ricocheted around the room, cartoon style, landing at our feet with a thud. I expected that the cleaner would excuse herself or find that her schedule was suddenly full.

  She, like most other people I’d told, visibly recoiled. I felt foolish and exposed, and wished the floor would swallow me up. When other devastating things happen, like death or illness, it is, of course, difficult to find the right thing to say, but at least there’s some known vocabulary we can call on. Some phrases, albeit clichéd, that express concern or sympathy. And if we can’t find any words to express our feelings, there are cards to express it for us. I’ve yet to see a card that articulates the combination of horror, shame, fear and loss you feel when someone you love is sent to jail.

  Of all the things the cleaner could have said or done, she opened her arms and she hugged me. This complete stranger hugged me. I was so moved by her kindness. And when she did finally speak, she said, ‘Love, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that things are never as they seem, for any of us. Your life can be going along one way and, bam, everything changes.’ By this time, Lexie had left the room. ‘Happened to me,’ she continued. ‘Married almost twenty-two years when I found out my husband was having an affair. Life’s got a way of teaching you what you need to learn.’

  That night in bed, I tried to explain to Lexie that we didn’t know the cleaner well enough yet to tell her about Dad.

  ‘But she was inside the house.’

  ‘I know she was inside, but, she’s not our friend, is she? Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t you like her?’

  ‘Yes, I like her, she seems very nice, but we’ve only just met her. It takes time for a friendship to develop.’

  When it was Lexie’s turn to pray, she said: ‘Dear God, thank you for Mum and Dad and Nick. Please change Mum’s heart, so I can have a cat. And can I please have some close friends, so I can tell them Dad is in jail? Amen.’ Soon afterwards, Lexie fell asleep, and then Nick’s breathing slowed and deepened, and he was off too. I loved it when they were finally asleep and everything was quiet.

  The trouble was, they were in my bed. The sleeping patterns Paddy and I had diligently worked on had all, within a matter of weeks, completely fallen apart.

  The following weekend, Patrick’s mate Simon joined us for the visit to MRRC. It was the first time we were able to secure a table in the paved courtyard outside. Paddy hugged the kids so enthusiastically and so tenderly, it looked like he would never let go.

  As I watched them, I became aware of my body solidifying, like water to ice, as I processed the shock of the surroundings. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ I said to Paddy, as Simon talked to the kids.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. The food’s the worst. Brown slop, looks the same every day, it’s just called different names. What I wouldn’t give for some of your soup.’ In fact, Paddy hated soup. He would eat it and then want to know what else we were having.

  Then he played with the kids while I chatted to Simon. As Paddy threw back his head at one point, I watched him catch a glimpse of the sky. It was remarkable to see. He did a double take and then craned his head back up to look. He held his gaze for such a long time that the kids also looked up. And then Simon and I joined them.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Lexie asked.

  ‘The sky,’ Paddy said.

  ‘Is there a plane?’ Nick asked.

  ‘No, just the sky.’

  We all stood there, transfixed by the sheer wonder of it. It was breathtaking; cornflower blue, with long, wispy white strokes of cursive letters. A love letter penned in the sky.

  And the funny thing was, I wasn’t in prison and had every opportunity, day or night, to look up at the sky and I couldn’t remember the last time I had. As the visit drew to a close, Paddy said his goodbyes and said to me, ‘It’s funny what you miss. I miss you guys, of course, but I miss nature. I miss trees.’

  As I drove through the prison gates, I noticed the trees that flanked the entrance on Holker Street, outside the prison. Gorgeous eucalyptus trees, skinny silver-hued trunks, with branches stretching up to the sky like open arms, towering above everything else as if mocking the laws of engineering.

  THIRTEEN

  Steph was wearing the most incredible strappy stilettos, with alternating pieces of black and snakeskin leather. In the years I’d been seeing her, I’d only twice seen her in the same shoes. Sometimes, as I sat across from her, I wondered if she had a walk-in closet, à la Imelda Marcos, or if she used clear shoebox organisers.

  ‘So?’ Steph said, b
reaking the ice. ‘The sentencing?’ Her pen was poised but her tone was light, so I knew that she, like everyone else we knew, had not expected a custodial sentence.

  I’d been looking forward to my appointment all week. It would be an opportunity to let off some steam, and try to make some sense of what had happened. And then, sitting on the blue coach across from her, I realised just how many times I had already told the story and how tired I was of telling it.

  I recounted the whole courtroom/prison shebang. He was taken into custody on the Tuesday, and brought back for sentencing on the Friday, receiving combined sentences of four and a half years, two and a half non-parole.

  ‘Four and a half years!’ Steph said, aghast. Like everyone, she winced.

  ‘Uh-huh. Everyone’s been so supportive—the fridge is filled with lasagne. People have offered to babysit and work, and do whatever it is we need.’

  ‘And what does that mean to you?’ Steph asked, once she had collected herself. I cradled my peppermint tea that was still too hot to drink. Recounting wasn’t difficult. The what. The when. The where. What brought me unstuck, what made me tongue-tied and monosyllabic, were the questions about how I felt.

  ‘And what does that mean to you?’ was Steph’s personal favourite. And even though Steph had asked me this question countless times during our sessions, I always found it difficult.

  What does it mean to me?

  It means I can’t call him.

  It means I now have to run a business.

  It means I am essentially a single mother.

  I shifted in the chair. ‘Can you repeat the question?’

  ‘What does that mean to you?’ she repeated, crossing her long legs and, perhaps because I still looked dazed and confused, she reframed it. ‘How does it make you feel?’

  I stared at one of the two drawings displayed on the wall behind her. During one of our previous sessions, she revealed that she had two sons and the eldest had done the drawings. I would have given anything to spend the remainder of the session talking about them instead.