Alex and I sat down to dinner just the two of us. For his sake, I tried not to let on how upset I was. I simply said Shane had decided not to stay after all. He didn’t question this. After dinner he went out again, to the home of a friend who lived nearby. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d had somewhere else to go, I would have gone there too.
Late in the evening, I heard the crunch of footsteps on the snow in the driveway, then Shane’s characteristic pounding on the back door. I was afraid to answer it. I stood in the back porch listening at the door. Over the beating of my own heart, I could again hear footsteps in the driveway, receding. I pulled the curtain back an inch or two and could see him limping quickly away down the street. I could also see there was something on the back step. I opened the door a few inches and found two large garbage bags obviously filled with stuff.
I brought them into the kitchen, opened them warily. Inside the first bag were many things I’d given him over the past two years, clothing, knickknacks, books—including mine signed to him. The second bag contained all the cards and letters and photographs I’d ever sent him. Every single one of them had been ripped into little pieces.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Boxing Day, I called Stuart and told him everything that had happened, including that Shane said he’d gone to the Royal, where he had or hadn’t been drinking beer. Stuart said he was just trying to wind me up. I said it was working. I said he was crashing down a slippery slope and trying to take me with him. I wasn’t exactly sure what I meant by this, but that was how it felt. I said I couldn’t take it anymore and didn’t want Shane coming onto my property ever again, and Stuart said he would make that clear to him. And he would advise Jerry Anderson of these developments as soon as he returned to work after the holidays.
I took down the little Christmas tree and put away the presents. With Alex’s help, I moved my desk back into the living room in front of the wall of books, imagining that I would soon be able to pick up my life where I’d left off. A young man of few words, Alex didn’t say much in this instance either, other than to note that this had been the worst Christmas ever.
Stuart called back later in the day. He said Shane had promised he’d stay away from me and my house, had said he didn’t want to see me ever again either. Good. But what he did want, Stuart said, was to get his steaks back. What? It took me a minute to remember that some weeks earlier, when we were still living together, he’d bought three large sirloin steaks from a nearby butcher shop. I don’t remember, if I ever knew, where he got the money. Not from me. We decided to save them for a special occasion. They were still in the freezer wrapped in brown butcher paper.
Stuart and I made an arrangement for the return of the steaks. I would meet him at my neighbourhood Tim Hortons the next morning at ten o’clock and give them to him. He in turn would give them to Shane.
When I pulled into the parking lot right on time, I could see Stuart’s car with two people in it. Stuart got out, and when Shane opened the passenger door and made to get out too, Stuart hollered at him to stay in the car. I gave Stuart the bag of meat, got back in my car, and went home. Stranger things have no doubt happened in that Tim Hortons parking lot but not to me.
RIGHT AFTER NEW YEAR’S, I went out for lunch with Dorothy and Evelyn. They were beyond worried. They were nigh unto hysterical. Evelyn said she kept picturing me lying stabbed and bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. Perhaps she meant well, but this did not help. Dorothy said I should have the locks on my house changed. I’d already done that, because sometimes when I looked out the window at night, I thought I could see someone standing in the driveway of the house across the street. The end of a lit cigarette glowed orange in the darkness. Nobody who lived there smoked. Dorothy said I should buy some bear spray for protection.
After lunch I walked down the block to the Army Surplus Store. Having no idea where the bear spray might be located or what it might look like, I waited in line at the front counter. The young man at the cash register waited on two customers ahead of me, and then it was my turn. I made my request.
He said calmly, “You do realize bear spray will kill a person, don’t you, ma’am?”
I guess I didn’t look like someone who would be venturing into bear country at any time of the year, let alone in the dead of winter.
“No, I didn’t realize that,” I said, laughing nervously. “I don’t actually want to kill him.”
“Perhaps some dog spray would be a better choice then,” he said cheerfully, turning to the display behind him, selecting several items, then spreading them on the counter for my examination. I chose a small canister that came with a handy Velcro wristband. He demonstrated how to use it.
I said, “Perfect, I’ll take it,” and got out my wallet.
Transaction completed, bag in hand, I turned to discover, standing right behind me, the owner of my favourite bookstore and his wife. Waving the bag in the air, I said, “Nasty dog in the neighbourhood,” and fled.
Not many days later, I read in the newspaper of a woman who’d been charged and sent to jail for carrying a prohibited weapon: bear spray.
ONCE JERRY ANDERSON WAS BACK IN THE OFFICE, he called, and I confirmed the details of what Stuart had already told him. He shared my concern about Shane’s erratic behaviour and said he’d see him as often as possible, every day if necessary, to keep an eye on things.
Shane continued to stay away, but he also continued calling constantly. I had not asked Jerry to tell him to stop phoning, because I felt that was the only means by which I could continue to monitor his frame of mind.
On the phone, he admitted that he’d wanted the steaks back because Brandy had come to visit him for five days right after Christmas. He said he was going to move to Windsor and live with her. Platonically, he said. As if I were likely to believe that. He was still talking about Linda Porter too, who was still coming over and taking her clothes off.
He said he’d been going to the house of a man we’d met at Vinnie’s. Much as this man was a pleasant fellow, he also had serious problems with both drugs and alcohol, seemed more than likely involved in some kind of criminal activity. When I warned Shane that he shouldn’t be going there, he said Stuart had warned him too, but he was so lonely, and what the fuck was he supposed to do since I kicked him out? Sit around in that horrible apartment all day and night by himself? I refrained from reminding him that I did not “kick him out”—that moving out was his idea in the first place, and I had simply agreed with him. I also refrained from suggesting that the Parole Board might not see loneliness as a good enough reason to be breaching his conditions. I said maybe he should call Lenny in Peterborough when he felt that way—maybe that would help.
Later he admitted that he didn’t want anyone to know he was struggling—not even Lenny. Especially not Lenny. He’d always said Lenny was so institutionalized that he’d never make it out on the street. But Lenny, in fact, was doing just fine.
These phone calls were becoming more rambling, more disjointed, more disturbing. Sometimes he was crying, sometimes nasty and sarcastic. Sometimes he asked me for money or cigarettes. Sometimes I could hardly understand what he was saying. He said Dr. Chapman had put him on antidepressants, but they didn’t work, so he’d stopped taking them after three days. I explained that this type of medication takes several weeks to take effect. No, no, he said, Dr. Chapman said these ones would work right away, but they didn’t.
By the end of the third week of January, he said his welfare had been cut off; he’d lost his apartment and was going to stay at the homeless shelter until he could move to Windsor. When I pressed for details, he said he’d given his apartment to Linda Porter and now had nowhere to live. None of this made any sense at all. I knew that as a federal parolee, he was not allowed to stay at a shelter. Nor could he just pick up and move to Windsor. No, no, he said, Jerry Anderson was setting it all up now. I recognized this as his particular kind of magical thinking: that thinking, wanting, saying something out loud made it true. T
hen he said it was all my friends’ fault that we broke up because they had turned me against him. He accused me of having sex with either or both of my neighbours, the two men who had taken him to the hockey game. He said he was coughing up blood and thought he was going to die.
I’d had enough with the bizarre phone calls. On Friday afternoon, I called Jerry Anderson and told him I was going to block Shane on my phone and wanted no more contact with him by that or any other means. Jerry said rather than tell Shane that day and risk having him enraged over the weekend when he, Jerry, wasn’t around, he’d tell him on Monday morning. He said he had an appointment to see Shane early that day anyway and would call me afterwards to let me know how it had gone.
The weekend passed quietly. When I returned from driving Alex to work on Sunday evening, I found the folding table I’d given Shane when he moved out jammed into the snowbank at the end of my driveway. It was the one item I had said I’d like to have back eventually. In the snowbank, it was covered with the large white towel marked with Nelly’s name.
ON MONDAY MORNING, I paced around waiting for Jerry to call. It was almost noon when I finally heard from him, and what he had to say was not at all what I’d been expecting.
Shane had been arrested. Not for committing any new crimes but for breaching his conditions and for something they called “deteriorating attitude.” I’d often thought that if this were grounds for arrest for everyone, we would all be in prison. In this case, his erratic behaviour was deemed an indication that his risk level was no longer manageable. His parole had been suspended, and he was now in a cell at the city jail, on his way back to prison. How was it that I could be so utterly shocked by this news? How was it that in the face of all evidence to the contrary, I had still believed Shane was going to pull himself together and become, as I’d described him to the Parole Board only three months ago, a success story?
Jerry laid out the scenario that had unfolded that morning. Shane had called him early, said he’d lost his apartment and now had to go to the homeless shelter. Their appointment was originally to take place at the apartment, but Jerry told Shane to walk over to his office instead.
When he arrived, he was met by several members of the ROPE Squad. I knew this acronym stood for Repeat Offender Parole Enforcement, a special police unit tasked with capturing parolees who had committed another crime or violated their conditions. I found it hard not to picture them on horses, with cowboy hats, spurs, and lassoes. When the armed officers surrounded him and asked if he had a weapon, Shane apparently said, “I’ve got a gun.” Of course he didn’t. Jerry was a bit vague about what happened next, but Shane ended up in handcuffs in a cruiser on his way to the police station. How was it that I hadn’t once allowed myself to acknowledge that this was bound to be the ending of this part of the story?
There had also been, Jerry said, members of the ROPE Squad stationed in unmarked cars at both ends of my one-block street in case Shane decided to come to my house instead. When I asked Jerry why he didn’t call and tell me they were out there, first he said it was policy, then he said he didn’t want to scare me, then he said, what if Shane had an escape plan and I was in on it?
Shane had been a free man for a hundred and one days.
FOR FEDERAL PAROLEES, ESPECIALLY FOR LIFERS, there is no leeway if they are found to have breached their conditions. Following the standard protocol, Shane was held for two nights in the city jail, then moved to the provincial jail in Kenworth. After two nights there, he was transferred to the Temporary Detention Centre at Kingston Penitentiary. He would spend almost three weeks there, during which time he underwent a number of assessments of his psychological state and his risk level to determine which prison he should be sent to. Once this process was completed, he was transported to Bath Institution, a medium-security prison located about thirty kilometres west of Kingston. Originally opened as a minimum-security institution, Bath was the same prison from which Shane had escaped back in 1981, travelling to Toronto to meet up with Victor—the trip that had ended with the murder of Philip Bailey.
In the two weeks following Shane’s arrest, I spoke to Jerry Anderson half a dozen times. Either he called me or I called him, most often the latter. He was gathering information for his report to the Parole Board, a report for the post-suspension hearing at which it would be decided whether Shane was to remain incarcerated or have his full parole reinstated and be released. I was completely honest with Jerry, telling him in great detail and sometimes with tears about the upsetting incidents of the past three months. As an example of Shane’s escalating and unfounded jealousy, I told him about the bath incident, when he’d accused me of having been with another man. I told Jerry how he would push me until I lost my temper and yelled at him—or worse, in the case of the cutting board incident—and then he’d accuse me of being the mean one, the scary one, the crazy one. Jerry was kind and understanding, assuring me that none of it was my fault, that Shane could provoke Mother Teresa to lose her temper if he tried. He was a master of manipulation, Jerry said, and everything with him was all about power and control. I immediately recognized this as the truth.
Exactly two weeks after the arrest, I opened my mailbox to discover an envelope addressed to me in Shane’s familiar handwriting, stamped front and back as having come from Kingston Penitentiary. My hands and legs were shaking as I sat down at the kitchen table and opened it.
Whatever I was afraid this letter might say, it was entirely innocuous. He began by asking me to please send his T4 slips to Roy. He said he wasn’t going to Windsor after all, nor back to Peterborough, maybe to Ottawa or Toronto. He asked how the pets were doing. He wondered briefly about what went wrong between us: was it one thing or a multitude; was it his need to stay in his world versus my need to stay in mine? This surprised me. I hadn’t understood that he wanted to stay in his world. I had thought he truly wanted to come into mine. He ended with a P.S. in which he asked if he could write to me again.
There was nothing in the contents of this letter to be upset about. What upset me was the fact that he had been allowed to send it to me at all. What about the no-contact order? Would this never end?
I called Jerry to complain. He said I didn’t expect the KP staff to check every single outgoing letter, did I? Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. He told me to bring him the letter, and he would make sure it didn’t happen again. I made copies for myself and took the original, still in its KP-stamped envelope, to his office. As it turned out, the ramifications of that simple one-page letter would go on for years.
When I called Jerry the next day, he said his report was already ten pages long, and he didn’t want to write any more. It didn’t occur to me to ask for a copy. I don’t know if I had the right to do that or if he would have shown it to me if I had.
He told me to call the city police so I could then be registered with CSC Victim Services, who would keep me apprised of the situation. I didn’t think of myself as a “victim,” but I did want to be kept informed. The woman I spoke to at the police station was not much interested. Why was I calling them now, she wanted to know, if he was already back in prison? When I explained that his parole officer had told me to, she gave an exaggerated long-suffering sigh. But she took the information.
IT WAS ONLY AFTER I QUIT DRINKING back in 1992 that I began to understand some of the reasons why I’d been drinking in the first place. For one thing, when I was drinking, I was no longer anxious, afraid, shy, or self-conscious. When I was drinking, I no longer compared myself to others and found myself wanting. When I quit drinking, I thought all my problems would be solved, all my demons banished, if not overnight, then soon, very soon. This of course was not the case. All my demons were still there, but now they were sober too. In hindsight, I realize I was thinking much the same way when my relationship with Shane ended, and he was sent back to prison. I thought all my problems would be solved.
I had never wanted him to end up back in prison. I had just wanted him to go away and leave me alo
ne, but not like this. In December and January, I’d been worried that he was having a mental breakdown. Now I was the one who was falling apart—broken perhaps by the stress of all that had come before, by trying to let go of the anxiety and adrenalin that had propelled me through the previous months. Whatever it was, I was incapacitated most of the time.
Each evening I sat on the couch staring at the TV until it was time to go to bed and stare at the ceiling. If I managed to sleep at all, even for an hour or two, I considered it a major accomplishment. When I did sleep, waking up in the morning gave me a few blessed empty-headed seconds, mere moments of peace and clarity, before everything came crashing down upon me, and I was stricken all over again.
I considered it a monumental triumph when I could get up, make coffee, have a bath, get dressed, tend to the pets. It felt like an exceptional achievement when I could eat something, even a chocolate bar, a bag of chips, a plate of cheese and crackers. It felt like a miraculous act of concentration when I could read the newspaper or a few pages of an actual book. It felt like a significant victory when I could drive Alex to work and get home again without wrecking the car. He was doing what he could to help me, but he was out of his depth. After all, I was his mother, and I was doing everything I could to hide how terrible I felt. I was scaring myself and didn’t want to scare him too.
In pursuit of some semblance of normalcy, I continued making my daily trip to Tim Hortons, until the morning I ran into another inmate from Frontenac, now out on parole, who said he’d heard that Shane and I had split up and he was back inside. “Would you consider going out with another convict?” he asked—nudge nudge, wink wink.
This Is Not My Life Page 17