by Mel Jacob
‘Nick told that boy—Cody—that Dad’s in jail!’ Lexie reported and we laughed.
‘Lexie, we’re in a jail. You’re visiting your dad and the other boy’s visiting his.’
‘It’s his stepdad,’ she said, oblivious to our point.
I went back inside to use the bathroom near the entrance. On my way through the visitation room, I noticed many of the tables had fruit and salad on them. The inmates must have also, like Paddy, been craving fresh produce. As I neared the front of the room, I noticed that on two of the tables were savoury crackers, exactly the same brand as the ones I had packed. On the way back from the bathroom, I passed another table with crackers. I was outraged.
‘She’s messing with me,’ I said as soon as I reached Paddy.
‘Who?’
‘The guard, the female guard. She made me put my crackers back in the locker but nearly everyone else has them. What are we going to do?’ I asked.
‘Do?’ he asked, confused.
He clearly did not understand what had happened, so I repeated the story of the female CO flagrantly abusing her power. ‘What’ll we do?’ He still looked confused. ‘About the crackers?’
‘There’s a bloke in here who got eight months for shooting someone in the leg with a stolen rifle, and I got twelve months for having a slingshot. Life’s not fair and this place is certainly not fair. Some of the COs insist some inmates do one and not another. It’s how it is.’
We went back inside for lunch. I had brought one of the lasagnes I’d been given but Paddy only wanted the salad and fruit. He ate like he hadn’t eaten for weeks. After lunch we played Uno and Pictionary and Go Fish, and then we ventured back out to the yard. We sat at one of the shaded tables. Bill had been right. It was a warm day, but with the wind and the shade it was cold.
‘I’m bored,’ Lexie declared, and so Paddy started a game of hide-and-seek. Some of the other kids from the yard joined in, including Cody and his little sister, Crystal, who was besotted with Nick.
‘Crystal is so cute,’ Nick said, hiding behind a tree trunk near me, in one of the few places to hide.
‘She’s really taken a fancy to you, hasn’t she?’
‘She calls me “Ick” because she can’t say N, and she keeps finding acorns and giving them to me.’ The kids were beautiful and well-mannered and even Lexie, who normally has no tolerance for smaller children, had a soft spot for Crystal.
When everyone tired of hide-and-seek, Patrick started another game that, quite simply, involved throwing a hat up into the tree and then trying to get it down. It was interesting to watch Nick completely immersed in such a game because he was playing with his dad. I couldn’t imagine him being as entertained by something like that at home.
Patrick continued to play with the kids as every time he ventured back to me, the kids demanded his attention. So I spent most of the afternoon adrift, meditating on the perfectly proportioned oak tree. The boughs grew out symmetrically, not drooping or bulging the way some trees did. And I marvelled at the way the top branches reached up to the sky like curled fingers and the lower branches hung low, but were still high enough to walk underneath.
At 2.22pm a tall male CO walked around the yard and informed us that it was time to leave. ‘There’s forty minutes to go,’ I said to Patrick, after the CO had walked away. I’d hoped that we would get time to talk or enjoy our time together. Paddy just shrugged. He seemed to have surrendered to these minor injustices. I was upset, because it had taken me five and a half hours to finally relax into the environment and now it was time to go.
‘We’ve still got tomorrow,’ he whispered to me. And then Patrick put his arms around me and the kids.
The following morning, as I pulled the plastic tub out of the car, I vowed that I would be warm and present. But once again, as I sat across the table from Patrick in his green tracksuit, I felt rigid with shock. Sunday’s visit unfolded much the same as Saturday’s. On arrival, it was difficult to tell whether the female CO had been sucking on a lemon or a lime, and after a few curt comments about my preferred grocery brands, she instructed me to put the croissants in the locker, allowing several other visitors to bring theirs in. As on the previous day, Nick and Lexie were excited, then difficult, and then bored.
‘Come and watch the muster,’ Paddy said to the kids when the ten o’clock siren sounded. He led us to the edge of the yard, explaining that this was what they did each day. The inmates who didn’t have visitors were required to line up outside the kitchen every two hours for a roll call. I found it fascinating to watch all the men in green step forward when their names were called, like they were still in school.
Lexie didn’t find the muster as interesting as the rest of us and began playing with some plastic she’d found on the grass before promptly putting it into her mouth.
‘Spit it out, spit it out,’ Paddy said, forcefully. Lexie spat the plastic out and began to cry. ‘Don’t touch any plastic you see in the yard. It’s, it’s . . .’ Patrick said.
‘You don’t know where it’s been,’ I said softly to Lexie, who’d curled into my side.
‘We know exactly where it’s been, that’s the problem,’ Paddy said. ‘Up some guy’s butt,’ he whispered.
‘Dad, that’s gross,’ Nick said.
‘Paddy!’ I said.
‘Which is why . . . I don’t want you putting it in your mouth,’ he explained calmly and reached down to pick her up.
Mid morning a number of other kids arrived. Nick and Lexie met and mingled with them, most of them named Crystal or Destiny, Heaven or JD.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked one little girl dressed in a T-shirt that said, ‘If you think I’m hot, you should see my mum!’
‘Teneesha Heaven Haley Butler-Reid,’ she said, chewing on her bubble gum.
‘That’s a very long name,’ I said.
‘Not as long as my step-brother’s,’ she said, adjusting her sparkled tights. ‘He’s got four first names and three last names!’
I was anxious about the kids playing with some of the kids at the prison. They were only children, but some of them seemed rough and streetwise and I worried about their influence on Nick and Lexie. We stood close to the play equipment to keep an eye on them. The kids all played well together though; throwing acorns or hats, and chasing each other around on the grass, eager to do something other than sit down at a table.
At lunchtime Cody and Crystal arrived. They played with Nick and Lexie while Patrick and I sat on a bench at the back of the yard. It occurred to me that I should be trying to start a conversation or say something uplifting to Patrick but my mind was empty. I didn’t know what to say. We were in a beautiful park-like setting, but we were being watched. No matter how hard I tried, I could not move past that. The time passed quickly and at 2.31pm a male CO walked out to the yard. ‘That’s it folks.’ This time I didn’t say anything.
During the long drive home darkness settled in and the kids drifted off to sleep in the back of the car. Watching the white line in the middle of the road had a hypnotising effect on me and I grew tired. So much so, that I had to pull over and close my eyes. I woke roughly twenty minutes later, bought some coffee from a drive-through and continued the journey. It was on the last stretch of the trip that I thought about Paddy. Mannus, it seemed, was safe and calm, surrounded by beauty. But there was no doubt in my mind that the new location was harder for me. He and I weren’t just emotionally distant, we were physically distant, and he was relying on me to go the distance. All 513 kilometres of it.
It was just after nine when I finally pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition and carried Lexie inside. As I laid her down on her bed, she said sleepily, ‘It’s okay, Mum, I don’t want a cat anymore—I want a baby sister.’
NINETEEN
‘It’s called displacement,’ Steph said.
‘Sorry?’
‘The name for what’s happening here.’
‘What’s happening?’
I�
��d just finished telling her about Nicola, my neighbour, who continued to descend on me every week to ‘encourage me’. During one visit, she seemed to think it might lighten my spirits to hear how inmates on World’s Worst Prisons could transform any household object into a weapon. And on another, she told me to embrace Patrick’s absence; meanwhile, her husband was in Hong Kong for ten days, making it ‘just impossible to deal with the kids’.
When I finally took a breath, Steph said, ‘So, Nicola has been coming over several times a week?’
‘Yes. And we’re not even close. I mean, before this all happened, I barely even saw her. It’s not like we caught up for long chats before Patrick went to prison, so I don’t know what gives her the idea we should suddenly be living in each other’s pockets.’
‘Who is she doing it for?’
‘For me. She usually drops off a meal or a gift . . . which is nice.’
‘But there’s more to it than that, because she could just drop them off. Are you wanting her to stay?’
‘No! She is driving me crazy.’ And I felt bad about focusing on my frustration with Nicola, considering that everyone else had been so kind and generous. People had sent cards and flowers; my friends Frieda and Pamela had made small portions of Nick and Lexie’s favourite meals that could be frozen; Paddy’s sister Clare had written me a very large cheque; Cathy and Fiona often babysat; and Patrick’s father had caught the early morning train from the south coast to visit him. Most of his family had been writing letters to Paddy, and made a visiting roster so Paddy would see someone every week. And all I could think about was Nicola. Talk about glass half empty.
‘So, who’s she really doing it for?’
‘Patrick?’
‘Does she know him?’
‘Not really.’
‘Who benefits from the visits?’
I shrugged, astounded at just how dim I could be.
‘She does it for herself. She does it because it makes her feel good. Sometimes, following a trauma, people—I call them “rescuers”—like to swoop in to help, but they’re not always helping in the way that other people want or need.’
Steph stood precariously on her stilettos and made her way over to the small whiteboard. I always found it amusing that she used a whiteboard just for me, when it would have been far easier to use a notepad. She’d told me she felt it made more of an impact.
Steph began with one small circle in the centre of the board. And inside it, she wrote my name. Around the first circle, she drew another and another, until she had drawn approximately ten concentric circles. It looked like a target. She explained that each circle was representative of the different circles, or layers, of people in my life, stemming from my immediate family to the outer circles of acquaintances.
‘Each circle is representative of the different levels of intimacy you share with the people in your life,’ Steph said. ‘In grief, as in life, it’s best for people to respond in a way that is in keeping with the circle they are in. For instance, if you hear that a distant friend’s partner died, you might send a card, but popping over to the house would not be appropriate. Of course, things can overlap and change, and sometimes people can have a strong connection with someone they barely know, but typically this is how it works.’
Steph walked back to her chair and sat down. ‘Where does Nicola fit into your circle?’ she asked.
I explained that I thought she belonged in the sixth or seventh layer. We knew each other by name and lived on the same street, but we hadn’t shared life’s challenges or bonded over broken hearts.
‘So, Nicola is not responding in a way that corresponds with the way you see her in your circle.’ I nodded.
The circle metaphor was a revelation to me. It crystallised not only where I saw the people in my life, from the inner sanctum to the furthest ring, but also how sometimes, in my eagerness to befriend others, I had misinterpreted my place in their circle, heading straight for the nucleus.
‘The tricky thing,’ Steph continued, ‘is that people can see their own circle differently to the way others do, and vice versa. With that in mind, any thoughts on how you can change the situation with Nicola?’
My first thought was hiring an assassin. My second was moving house. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
‘There is a simple solution,’ Steph said, holding my gaze in a way that unnerved me.
‘Really?’
‘You say no.’
I felt uneasy. The word ‘no’ has always terrified me. More than public speaking, or the dark, or snakes or spiders. I was afraid that by saying it, I might offend or disappoint someone and they then wouldn’t like me. And, because I’m not naturally assertive, when I do say ‘no’ it comes out sounding sharp and caustic.
‘I want to revisit something I mentioned earlier—displacement. We’ve established that Nicola has been getting on your nerves,’ Steph said, firmly, as though another diatribe about Nicola would send her into spasm. ‘And you’re feeling frustrated and angry.’
‘Yes.’
‘In psychology, displacement is when someone replaces a person, or a goal, or a feeling, for someone or something else. For instance, and this is a very simple example, it is common for someone having issues at work to come home and take it out on their spouse.’
‘Okay,’ I said, not seeing the relevance.
‘Now, I’m not suggesting that your feelings for Nicola are unwarranted. From what you’ve said, she doesn’t seem to have much insight or empathy into who you are or what you’re going through.’ I nodded, and Steph quickly continued, presumably to stop me beginning another anecdote. ‘But on a scale of one to ten, how angry are you with Nicola?’
‘About a hundred thousand,’ I said, trying to find a comfortable position on the couch.
Steph smiled. ‘But, in this whole situation, who is it you are really angry with?’
‘Nicola’s parents.’
Steph managed a smile but I could see that, once again, she wanted me to dig deeper. And, once again, I was resisting.
‘Is it Nicola who caused you to be a single parent? Is it Nicola who caused you to forfeit your own dreams of finishing your novel to run a business?’ Steph lifted and smoothed the end of her skirt, and as she did, I saw a glimpse of her black slip. I bet all Steph’s male clients are in love with her, I thought. I bet the man who was here before me is head over heels.
‘When you think about the depth of anger you have felt for Nicola, is it possible that your feelings are disproportionate to what she has done?’
‘No.’ I’d studied English literature, and I could deconstruct texts and identify characters’ flaws and motivations with my eyes closed. Well, maybe not with my eyes closed, as it would have to be an audiobook, but those things were glaringly obvious to me. But when it came to the deep waters of self-analysis, I hadn’t a clue. I was flailing around like someone who’d never learned to swim.
‘Who put you in this position?’
Nicola had been tactless and thoughtless but she hadn’t dismembered any family members, or put me in this situation. My anger with her was misdirected, I could see that. But I was paying Steph so I was going to make her work for the big bucks.
‘It can be easier for people to direct their anger and blame onto someone else, rather than face the truth of the situation. Who broke the law?’ Steph prompted again.
I was silent and once again fascinated by the splodgy paintings.
‘Who broke the law?’ she repeated.
It felt as though every part of me were bending in resistance away from this question. Of course I knew the answer but despite all the bravado and the glib comments I didn’t want to face it.
‘Who put you in this situation?’
‘Paddy,’ I whispered.
‘Who?’
‘Patrick,’ I repeated at greater volume.
After which, Steph didn’t say anything at all. She just let me sit there, feeling the sharp edges of the truth. And I hated her for it.
I knew that when Steph did speak again, she was probably going to ask me what it meant to me. And I didn’t want to think about what it meant to me. I didn’t want to think about anything.
So I told Steph how Lexie’s teacher had called to say that my daughter had taken the Country Life shampoo and conditioner in for show-and-tell, and told the class she got them when she went to see her dad in jail. After that, I told Steph about the kids’ disastrous session with a child psychologist. Lexie was so insulted by the woman’s condescending manner that she refused to answer any questions, claiming, ‘My mum said not to talk to strangers.’
‘I can recommend someone else,’ Steph offered.
‘That’d be good.’
We remained in shallower waters for the rest of the session. At last I could stand up and paddle around.
‘Are you doing anything for yourself?’ Steph asked.
‘Myself?’
‘Yes. Things just for you.’
I ate. I took care of my personal hygiene. I had the occasional coffee or lunch out but it was always for a purpose: a business meeting, or a meeting with someone from the school to work out how best to support Nick and Lexie. Aside from that, my time was absorbed by the kids, work and visiting Patrick.
‘I read.’
‘For work or pleasure?’
‘Both. It’s pleasure but, yes, I s’pose they’re linked, in a way.’
‘Is there anything you would like to do?’
‘A solo trip around the world . . . for a year.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, but I can’t . . . because of the kids.’
‘But there are things you can do. Within your situation, you still have choices. You can choose who to see, and what to think, and how to respond. In the small windows of time you have, you can choose to do things for yourself, like having a massage or a coffee, or seeing a movie.’