Justice Notes: Back Home
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
This week in Justice Notes, I’m sharing something personal. Last week, “Minutes Before Six”—a literary journal that has generously published my work over the years—ran a new essay of mine about the helplessness of trying to manage a collapsing life from a federal prison camp.
Below is the first half of the piece, BACK HOME, which chronicles the ten-minute calls with my wife during those first months and the slow recognition that the life we had built was coming apart faster than we could respond to it.
You can read the full essay on “Minutes Before Six” at the link following the excerpt.
BACK HOME
There were four phones in the camp. They hung like souvenirs of another era on a short corridor off the Counselor’s office. Black and broken on shattered sheetrock, there were calls out only and every call required a code to invisible recorders that recorded every conversation. There were four plastic chairs in front with numbers scrawled on the back with a sharpie. With no privacy, you could hear everyone’s conversation. After a while you got used to it and could care less who was listening. Everyone’s call started with the same pretentious reassurance. Mine were the same, but always trepidation when calling my wife. I had left such a mess: a bankruptcy filing, foreclosure of our residence and lawsuit documents arriving every day. A prison consultant was hired to advise her. But he turned out to be a drunk and my kids resided elsewhere and couldn’t help. We had decided she should remain in Florida rather than relocate near them or me in New England. We had relocated there before my sentence and she had a life there: friends, supporters and a community she was comfortable with. I didn’t want her burdened by the pressure to visit me.
Few of our calls were uneventful. Things were not going well. My wife had been a house wife, a mother, an artist, a cabaret singer. She had no experience in business. Our fall had been abrupt. In December we were living the high-life, in January we were bankrupt and in April we fled to Florida and I was headed to prison. She had filed for bankruptcy just before I departed. A legal firm in Palm Beach represented her. A divorced woman about fifty who kept changing her advice every hour, followed by a notice that the cost of her services was exceeding our deposit.
Our home was being foreclosed. A court filing required a response.
“She said she won’t file an answer until we pay her another $5,000. What do we do. I just don’t understand these things and John (our advisor) wasn’t helpful.”
Her fear, confusion was palpable. My go-to was to smooth over, reassure.
“All we need is a delay. I don’t get it.” I said. I was trying to be calm. But I wasn’t calm. I knew that I couldn’t do anything, other than rage silently. I realized that the lawyer I had hired was incompetent and dishonest. The worst kind of dishonest. Believing it themselves. Saying such things as “I told you that” when she said the opposite, and there was no previous indication that there would be more fees, and now we’re in the middle of the bankruptcy and the foreclosure and we have no options, other than to pay her when there is no money, and keep working with her because you can’t change now, can’t afford another attorney, can’t even afford her, and even if you pay her and she does what she says, it probably won’t change the outcome and the bottom line is that we’re fucked and the house is going to be foreclosed, the bankruptcy will fail and my wife has to try and sell the house before she’s evicted by a court order, and find a new place that we have no money to pay for, and despite all of that, she was not angry with me nor blaming me. She was more concerned with how I was doing.
“I hate telling you this. I feel badly making it harder for you there,” she said.
“No. I’m fine. I’m just worried about you. Leaving all this mess with you. So disappointed with our prison consultant. We already paid him.”
“I met him for lunch. A place he picked. He was an obvious regular there. The bartender kept sending over beer after beer for him. He didn’t get drunk. But the signs were there.”
There was a Spanish guy behind me shouting in Spanish. I had worked with him in the kitchen. I never knew his name. He bunked near me for a while. He was about fifty, white hair and a perfectly cut mustache as white as his hair. He was a fastidious guy. His bed made like a marine. His clothes were always pressed and hung in orderly spacing next to his locker. He had an upright posture, almost bending backwards as he walked. And there was something aloof about him. Walking through the halls, he was in his own world. I never connected with him. Even when I worked with him in the kitchen. I was invisible to him. He was losing it on his call right in front of me. He even stood up a couple of times. It was so distracting that I lost my train of thought.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “There’s a guy in front of me losing it and I…”
“I hear him. What’s his problem?”
“I don’t know. Look. I feel terrible about everything. I don’t know what to do. Let me think about it and I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t do anything now.”
“I spoke to Meredith yesterday (our daughter) and she makes me feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. This is a mess. Forget that. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“The lawyer said I have to let her know right away. The foreclosure hearing is scheduled for Friday. It’s already Wednesday.”
There was a beep on the call which signals that my call will be disconnected. All calls are terminated after ten minutes. I didn’t want to have that happen before I said goodbye.
“I’ll call you tomorrow. We’re about to get disconnected.”
“Okay. I wish I had better news.”
“It’s fine. Sorry for you.”
After I hung up, I sat in the chair for a moment. There were others behind me waiting. Someone shouted to me and I got up. It was a lost feeling. I said I’d call tomorrow, like I’d figure it out by then. There was nothing to figure out. We had no control. All the momentum to complete the dismantling of our lives was unstoppable, the hurdles overwhelming and my efforts inadequate. Everyone I brought in to help was a disaster. The prison consultant, the bankruptcy lawyer, my appeal lawyer, my original lawyer, our real estate broker, our new accountant. Whoever, whatever. I couldn’t afford any of them and most of them weren’t paid. I was a disaster. The prison consultant said that I didn’t understand that I was no longer a wealthy man.
I hated him for that. Probably because he was right. I was making decisions as if I would recover financially. But all the indicators were the opposite. Making matters worse, I employed my usual strategy in the face of all that: denial. My former business partner, Bill, after my outing said I was delusional. Maybe he was right.
If you’d like to read the complete essay, here is the link: BACK HOME.
If you’re drawn to the idea of storytelling as self-reckoning, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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This is so compelling John!