To his credit, Stefan had set stern guidelines: The story was to highlight Stefan’s rehabilitation efforts and The Healing Project. It was not to be about his own case or dig deeper into the night of the murder; it was to be about the process of trying to reclaim his life. The show would comprise interviews with us in our home, or on a walk in the arboretum, in comfortable places, not in front of an audience. Deanie Kessler agreed to all the conditions.
The day approached. I got more and more tense. I thought of my university colleagues. I thought of members of my book club. It wasn’t as though they didn’t know what had happened, at least that Stefan had been released. But I knew there were people who would think he was trying to make excuses for his conduct or to distract from his crime. I knew there were people who might think the same things about me. And yet, if they were going to gossip, let them. I couldn’t stop them, and, with everything else I had to worry about, there was no room for further unproductive stewing.
The night before, I asked Stefan again, “Do you really want me to be part of this? It’s not my story.”
“Well, it is partly your story, too, Mom. I would like you to, but it’s not essential.” Too quietly, he reminded me that I didn’t have to defend him. I reminded him, in turn, that it would be myself I was defending; and he pointed out that I didn’t have to do that, either.
Jep, who disapproved of the whole thing, went upstairs to finish packing, tossing back over his shoulder that he was grateful he would be out of town and not to let anyone photograph his hip-high pile of old jerseys that he kept on the floor of our walk-in closet and kept insisting had “plenty of life left in them.”
Deanie Kessler emailed us a sheet of tips for looking and feeling comfortable on camera.
For probably the first time in ten years, I overslept.
“This has to be some kind of psychological defense mechanism,” I said to Stefan from the hall. His door was ajar and I pushed it open, to find him reclining on the bed in just a pair of sweatpants. He snapped the laptop closed and sat up so fast it almost tumbled to the floor. Porn, I thought, for a moment irritated and then relenting, remembering being his age, when you couldn’t imagine that anybody could live without sex for a whole day.
“Could you maybe knock?”
“Could you maybe trouble yourself to get dressed,” I said. “You were the one who wanted to do this and they’re already down there in front of the house.” Filming the protestors, I thought but did not say. I glanced out through the window at the end of the hall and saw that some of Jill’s girls were especially dressed up and dramatic that morning with brand-new picket signs. Ready for their close-up, I thought.
Stefan rolled to his feet and said, “I am dressed, almost.”
“You’re not going to wear sweatpants for this.”
“What should I wear, a tuxedo?”
“Not the time or the place, Stefan. Just wear something normal.” A few minutes later, he came down in dark brown corduroys and a caramel-colored long-sleeved tee shirt. He tried to smile and so did I, but both of us were too anxious to fake it effectively. Grateful that Stefan would be interviewed first, and that his interview wouldn’t start for at least an hour, I grabbed my bag and headed to the local salon down the block to get my hair blown out, bringing along the fifty dollars’ worth of new makeup I had bought a few days earlier on impulse at the mall. The stylist had offered to help me apply it. I wasn’t exactly virginal about makeup, but I had no idea how to make the “bolder eyes” and “outspoken cheekbones” that online videos assured me were necessary for a camera-ready look. When the stylist was finished, I was startled, if not displeased, by my own image in the mirror. It was as if I was impersonating myself, wearing a costume of an unflappable, regal Thea who did this sort of thing every day. Which sort of defines exactly what I was doing.
Back at home, I changed into tights and boots and a long tunic in a plain, cheerful color. Was it green? Was it plum? Though I would watch the show several times, then and since, I would have a hard time, for reasons that weren’t clear beforehand, remembering details. I do remember being sick with nerves. I had never been on TV, at least not willingly, only captured in my own driveway or running into the courthouse in Black Creek—pictures that made me look deranged or drugged, the way actors look when you’re watching a movie and you hit Pause.
As I came into the kitchen, Deanie Kessler said, “Don’t worry, Thea. I’m not going to trap you.” So many people were milling around that I felt like a guest. “I can’t say that this will be easy, but it won’t be as bad as you fear.” She looked very young, and all those tumbled red curls were disarming.
“Are you going to trap Stefan?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you going to make him talk about the night of Belinda’s death?”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
In the end, there was no choice but to believe her.
Deanie Kessler went over some questions that didn’t sound particularly threatening—about the experience of having a relative incarcerated, my feelings about the protestors and the reactions of family to Stefan’s homecoming.
We decided to shoot in the backyard. From the hedge break, Charlie Ribosky watched as Stefan sat down at our patio table and the crew wired him up. I stood near the back door, appalled as several other neighbors drifted into Charlie’s yard and lined up next to Charlie.
“If you can’t hear, you can get closer, Charlie!” I called. The group pretended to disband but really just slipped behind a taller portion of Charlie’s privet hedge.
Showtime!
Deanie Kessler told us that she had recorded a brief introduction to the series and this program earlier, thus it would be possible to get straight down to business.
“So we’re not here to talk about the crime, Stefan. We’re not here to talk about prison. We’re here to talk about what comes after you did your time. What do you want people to know about you today, Stefan? What do you want people to know about starting over?”
“It’s hard,” he said. “A lot harder than you think. I didn’t know what to expect but it can take your heart out. At first, it feels like no one will ever trust you again, and nothing you do can ever make you anything but a loser.”
He talked for a few moments about incarceration. “The punishment you get doesn’t take away the responsibility. I think there’s a responsibility to do something good, too, not just survive prison and go on with your life. Like a counterweight, not that it would really have the same weight. That is my reason for starting The Healing Project.”
“Now, this is like a platform for people to do something for their victims or their families. Are you your own first client, Stefan?”
“No, I’m not,” Stefan said. “The first participant was a woman who broke into a summer cottage up north when she was a teenager and trashed it with her friends. She never even got caught. Those same girls are grown-up women now, and the owners of the cabin are grandparents in their eighties. To make amends, they went up there and fixed up the cabin and stocked it with all kinds of food and wine and stuff. I helped with that.”
Stefan obtained permission from his parole officer to travel for one day to northern Wisconsin, outside his fifty-mile radius. Amelia wrote a letter of apology and her husband Andy and Stefan and a carpenter friend of Andy’s fixed the porch, the roof and the door frames of the old cabin. Then my sister pitched in and they all cleaned it planks to rafters, laying in every manner of canned staple and delicacy for summers to come. The owners barely remembered the break-in but said afterward they were moved literally to tears. Amelia felt as though she’d lost twenty pounds. Stefan proffered Deanie long-ago Polaroids of the destruction, which the couple had given their insurance company, and of the renewed cabin. He also gave her a cardboard rendering of the official logo of The Healing Project, the silver arrow turning to gold.