If he hadn’t been speaking about himself, and he had not been flesh of my flesh, I would still have been fascinated by what Stefan had to say next. While we stood in the kitchen, he talked to us about what he thought was the real reason that most people reoffended after they got out of jail. He believed that it’s not because they’re intrinsically evil and not because they’re any more susceptible to their peers than anyone else. He pointed out he had watched how the whole concept of being a team relied a lot on what people thought of you—the coach, the other team members, the fans, the school, the community, even history. If you did wrong, or even if you didn’t do all you could, it was a betrayal to all those people, seen and unseen. But habitual criminals, he said, don’t usually have somebody who really wants them to do their best, who motivates them, just people brokenhearted or enraged because they didn’t do their best. Which is sad and awful, but also very ordinary and human. The most common thing that he and his friend Roman, the only real friend he ever made in prison, observed about his fellow criminals was surprisingly how easily they got bored. Most didn’t have the patience for going through a process, trying and failing and trying again. Maybe the first time they had to do that was in prison, but it was a whole new thing for them. “Like, in their brain. Their brain isn’t usually used to that,” Stefan said. “Trying and failing and trying again is not exciting. Doing a crime is really exciting—not, like, me, comatose, but doing a robbery or a burglary, it had to feel really exciting...living on the knife’s edge, anything could go wrong, it’s like a race against time, the Olympics of being bad.”
It was his own opinion, but Stefan didn’t think that criminals usually committed crimes for money. Most of them just went through it all quickly anyway, he said. He believed they craved the excitement, the adrenaline, the heightened sense of existence. Advocates were so let down when the criminals who were really bright, big readers say, for whom they found good jobs, would get out and either then reoffend, repeating almost exactly what they’d done before, or sometimes kill themselves. Having a good job, that can be pretty much the same routine every day; that’s boring if your brain is trained a certain way. Being sober is slow and boring if you’re used to being high.
“So what do you think’s the answer?” I said.
“Roman believes you have to find a way to make doing good feel just as exciting, the same as when you’re doing bad, the same rush,” said Stefan. “Like Robin Hood. There has to be a thrill.”
Other criminals he met were as smart as he was, he said, a lot of them even smarter. They had talents. But what set him apart was what he had before...because of that advantage, he had time to think about a different future for himself because he knew he had a safe place to come home to.
Jep took it all in quietly, then told his son, “You’ve given us a lot to think about, Stefan. But honey, you know, you don’t need to worry about changing the world today or tomorrow. The day after would be fine. What you need most right now is what soldiers used to call R&R, rest and recreation, as much as you need clear purpose. Give yourself some time to recover from prison. As the doctor told you, it’s almost like you went to war.”
That night, I heard a commotion at the front door. Julie, my best friend, had been traveling when Stefan first came home. She was often traveling for an international dental outreach she sponsored, while her husband, Hal, manned the home front for their boys, who were eight and twelve. So I hadn’t seen her more than in passing. Now she had arrived in full benefactress mode, bustling through the door with packages and bags. Presents were her delight, and she wouldn’t let you feel guilty. Until last year, Julie had merely been wealthy. Trained as a dentist, she had worked for her father, who’d invented some widget that caused what Julie called “an orthodontic revolution.” That still made me laugh, picturing legions of white-coated marchers, all carrying flags emblazoned with retainers. After her father retired, she and her older brothers helped him sell his business for what she called, in her way, a “silly amount” of money. Even more would come when he died. There were times when I was struggling trying to rob from the lawyer’s bill to pay the electric bill, when I knew that if I asked Julie, she would pay both, then buy me a Max Mara silk-and-cashmere coat, on top of that. When I admired just such a new coat a few years back, she took it off and gave it to me.
So I never asked.
“Hey Jujubees,” Stefan said. It was his nickname for his honorary aunt. “My mom wants to trek on a camel across the Sahara Desert. Can you take her? She was thinking a couple of months, maybe. She needs a break from me and, oh boy, do I ever need a break from her.”
“You’ve been home for like, ten minutes. What, did you hit the ground hard?”
“What you think is the end is really the beginning.”
“That’s deep, man,” Julie said.
“I know, man.”
“I think you need to seek solace in nature, Stefan,” Julie said. Nature was Julie’s prescription for everything short of an arterial stent, and she was full of suggestions. She could give Stefan the keys to her family’s cabin. (Her “cabin” was a ten-bedroom flagstone pile in Door County with four cub cabins on the same woodland site, where all of us had stayed many times.) Or he could go to Mendota County Park and find a soldierly stand of trees that, even in the leafless deeps of winter, would shelter him.
“This is a great winter camping tent right here,” she said. “You can test yourself by sleeping out a few nights. By morning, you’ll appreciate your mom and your humble bed.” She brought a digital thermometer on a leather cord that set off an alarm when your body temperature got too low—“In case you don’t realize you’re freezing”—stormproof matches—“So you don’t end up like a Jack London story”—a red sleeping bag of Everest caliber and an inflatable down-filled camping bed that packed down to the size of a wallet “for meditating in the holy wild.” She brought him cave-aged cheddar, pumpernickel bread, homemade truffle risotto from our favorite snobby diner, Racine Kringle, chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and coconut, and the largest jar of Nutella I’d ever seen.
Stefan said, “I accept these spectacular gifts from your spectacular self. And I promise to take my Nutella to the cathedral of nature.”
Julie always had a better everything. When Stefan told her that the list of therapists he got from his parole officer hadn’t been updated in fifteen years, she promised to email him some recommendations. I was glad he trusted her, but it made me wistful too. I wasn’t Julie, representative of the new and more efficient universe. I wasn’t a fixer with treats and answers. I hugged her. She’d brought me ten novels, five sweaters and the kind of lounging pajamas she imagined French writers wore while they composed.
Later that night, after I’d placed my phone on its charging station, the screen lit up with a text. It was so late that I knew it was the girl with the little voice.
How is Stefan? Did you tell him about my calling? Did you remind him not to talk about that night?
I hadn’t yet. I didn’t know how. And he would ask why. I turned the phone off.
4
It had been over a month since Stefan came home. If I didn’t ask my extended family to come celebrate his homecoming soon, it would look to him and to them as though I were ashamed. “You’re overthinking this,” Julie said the next time she stopped by. “We’ll just have a party with lots of food. We can have it at my house to avoid the usual ‘greeters’ who tend to camp out at your doorstep.” I agreed, especially when Jep pointed out that hosting a coming-home-from-the-penitentiary party at a house with picketers was like hosting a pool party with piranhas.
Julie even tied a yellow ribbon around a tree in her yard that Sunday afternoon. We set out platters of pastitsio and dolmades and huge bowls of salad salty with olives and feta for parents and my sisters and Jep’s sister, all their husbands and children. We all gathered at the table-for-twenty in Julie’s huge dining room, which reminded me of the kind of hall where a sixteenth-century king would have hosted a warrior banquet. Hal set up card tables for the kids.
Once we were serving dessert, I spoke up.
“Guys, all of you, Stefan has been having the worst time trying to find a job. He’s tried everywhere, and he doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Even the people who say they’re committed to hiring people like him, you know, with his status, say that they don’t have any openings. Please, Andy, Amelia, will you see what you can do?” Amelia’s husband Andy owned three lumberyards. Stefan had worked at one of them every summer in high school.
“Don’t put your sister on the spot!” my mother said.
“I’m not!”
“You are a little,” Stefan said.
“Let me think about this,” Andy said.
“Unkie, take your time.”
Andy studied his slice of almond-coconut cake. “Okay, I had enough time. Stefan, when can you start?”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. You’re a good worker, you already know the ropes, and you’re family.”