Crimwife (21 page)

At the end of the ’60s, when Lorraine was fifteen, she caught the bus to and from her suburban school. She was a quiet girl who usually kept to herself, but one day at the bus stop a boy named Joe started talking to her. Joe was older, about eighteen, and Lorraine was shocked to find out he had just been released from a boys’ home.

Lorraine had come from an average middle-class family. Her father was the town postmaster and her mother took care of Lorraine and her brothers and sisters. She had gone along with her family’s ways until she hit adolescence, when she started to consider her independence. Her parents, however, had different ideas and kept strict rules and curfews for their children.

Joe’s life had been completely different from hers, she soon found out. He had been in boys’ homes since he was ten years old, something that left Lorraine reeling. Joe had been deemed “uncontrollable” by his father and stepmother. His stepmother had refused to go to court when Joe had been found stealing the first time, and his father told the judge to “lock him up.” He was placed in a home for boys.

These institutions served more as work factories than homes, and the treatment of the children by the people that ran them was often horrific. Joe frequently ran away from the homes, but was brought back to do more time. Lorraine says the homes, “didn’t teach him any lessons, just how to be a crim.”

For a week, Lorraine and Joe saw each other every day at the bus stop. By Friday, Lorraine had agreed to find a way to go out with him. She said he was different from the other bad boys she had seen. Joe was sensitive and Lorraine thought he would probably change, although now she says, “You’re the one that changes, not them.”

She lied to her parents about spending the night with a friend, and spent it instead with her future husband. But after that night, Joe disappeared. He hadn’t told her that, for breaking into houses, he had just graduated to adult jail.

The next time Lorraine heard from Joe was two months later. He had been writing to her before then, but her father, the postmaster, had thrown the mail away. Joe finally got a letter through to her from jail and she decided to wait for him. Joe did six months in total, and on the day he got out he called Lorraine. She had known him a week on the outside, she tells me, bemused, but she ran away with him regardless.

The teenage lovers had the time of their lives. For six months they travelled around Australia in a van they’d bought, going wherever they wanted. They camped and explored the coastlines and inlands. They were free. And they were drug-free.

But love goes only so far and the couple had no money. They broke into houses for money and food and lasted a long time evading the law. There were plenty of places to hide back then, and Lorraine laughs remembering a high-speed police chase through country fields when they hid among the crops.

Eventually they were found and sentenced. Lorraine spent a week in police cells before being sent home, while Joe spent a year in jail. When he got out, he went to live with his mother, but Lorraine was soon pregnant with their first child. Joe moved out, got a job as a sales clerk, and was paying rent and living straight for the first time in years. The couple wanted to get married but Lorraine was only seventeen, and state law at the time did not allow marriage without parental consent until she was twenty-one years old.

Lorraine’s mother was OK to sign the papers, but her father refused. Then the laws changed, lowering the age of marriage, and days after her eighteenth birthday, Lorraine and Joe got married in the registry office. His family was present, but none of Lorraine’s was there.

Joe in no way wanted to go back to jail. His last whack after he’d first met Lorraine was in a wing that the crims called The Tracks. Joe had been sent there for attacking a prison officer. Joe had got into a disagreement about his cellmate and, after lunging at the officer, was rushed on by the squad and beaten savagely. Inmates in The Tracks were in their cells for twenty-three hours a day, allowed a shower and a change of clothes once a week, and were beaten routinely. Most of the blokes there were a lot older and harder than Joe was at eighteen. This jail time had changed him.

Things were quiet in the newlyweds’ lives when Lorraine gave birth to a daughter, Meredith. But when Merry, as she would be known, was six months old, the police arrested Joe. A break-and-enter he had committed two years before had been reopened with new evidence. Joe was sentenced to another six months. The jail was much better. He was out of his cell for six hours a day and the food didn’t taste as poisonous as in The Tracks, but things had changed. Joe had a wife and a baby, the family he’d always wanted. This time when he got out, he swore he’d never go back.

*

From 1974 to 1989 the family lived on the run. By the time Lorraine was twenty-five she had four children to look after. Joe did not want to be found by police and yet he didn’t know any other way of life. He worked at breaking, entering, stealing, commiting fraud and finding every way he could to rip off and thieve to support his growing brood.

The problem was that by the time Lorraine had those four children to raise, Joe had been running around doing full-time crime for years. He’d also picked up a heroin habit.

To outsiders, they looked like any regular struggling family. The children were well behaved, and Lorraine was often complimented on this. What the neighbours didn’t know was that they behaved because they lived in fear of their father’s escalating temper and outbursts. Friends weren’t allowed over because of the criminal goings-on. The kids didn’t want to bring friends home anyway. They were too scared and too embarrassed. No one knew what was coming next.

The family was never in one place for too long. In the days before computers, they could last a couple of years in an area, using fake IDs. The kids were enrolled in school under false surnames and drilled on how to answer any awkward questions.

Before too long, though, Joe would get worried and the family would have to pack up in the night and disappear. “For fifteen years we were never separated. Joe was at the births of all our children. But we were never at peace,” says Lorraine.

In fact, when the police did finally catch up with them, Joe was told, “You’ve either been a very good boy or a very smart boy.”

During those years Lorraine lived a life of constant deception, raising her children on a foundation of lies. She had to lie to real estate agents and school teachers, mothers in the playground and her own kids. They lived a fugitive lifestyle. They chose houses on corners so Joe could keep a watchful eye on the streets. And every time they heard an unexpected knock on the door, they jumped and readied themselves to run. Or Lorraine did anyway. “Joe used to go to sleep when he thought the cops were coming. I was the opposite.”

She tried to protect the kids from what she could, but Joe yelled at them and lectured them, sometimes for hours. As his drug habit grew worse, he would pawn their TVs and stereos, promising to bring them back the next day and rarely following through.

That was hard for the kids, Lorraine admits. They had moved so much that they had very little. Money was either scarce or in abundance for only a short time, so it was hard to feed and clothe them all, especially with a heroin-addicted husband. The kids often went without. Despondent and depressed, Lorraine started smoking pot daily, as the violence in the house grew worse. Eventually she also took up heroin with Joe, after more than ten years of avoiding it.

Lorraine says she had no self-esteem by this point. “You know what domestic violence is like,” she says. “They come after you. He’d grab the kids, use them as a threat. If I escaped in the night and went to my mum’s, he’d drag me back.” Joe has always told Lorraine that if she left him, he would kill her.

*

The couple were never apart until 1989 when Joe was finally picked up by police. Over the next five years he was in and out of jail for six and twelve months at a time. “That’s where I learned first-hand about police brutality,” says Lorraine. “I was Joe’s wife, so I got treated like shit. The detectives used to love to tear my house apart. The cops would make fun of the things the kids had made at school, things you had stuck up on the fridge. They’d break them, too, and laugh.”

One night, when Merry was eight years old, she tried to call her auntie when the police arrived. Lorraine saw the cops hit Merry with a phone book, but there was nothing she could do. On a different night a detective grabbed her daughter Kim’s throat as they made their way out of the house. Kim ran down the hallway and slammed the door behind the cop, banging his head in revenge.

Once Joe was locked up, Lorraine’s own heroin use got worse. She did jail for a couple of months here and there over the years, leaving her older children to look after the younger ones.

Lorraine now also had the responsibilities that came with visiting Joe in jail. He expected money in his account and drugs to be brought in. Lorraine had never learned to drive, and taking public transport with four kids was hard, but she did it. Several times Lorraine was banned from visits for bringing in pot for her husband. Her own criminal record grew only once her kids were in their teens, so that hasn’t worried her. Despite the violence and constant worry of being on the run, she missed Joe when he was in jail. She also needed his help with the kids and their own problems.

Only one of Lorraine’s kids has been to jail. Andy was the right age to take full advantage of the freedom his parents offered him by spending their time searching for drugs. He wound up in jail a few times before settling into a more nomadic but less criminal life. Merry has four children and raises them alone. Kim has three, to three different jail boyfriends, but she’s the baby of the family and doesn’t know much of a different world. Her parents help her with her eldest boy, who at fourteen has all but abandoned school and taken up smoking and drinking.

All up, Lorraine has twelve grandchildren. She does what she can for all of them, but these things are not always under her control. Her sons’ children are with their mothers, and these relationships have troubled histories. The family, though, is surprisingly close. They all talk to each other a few times a week, as well as sharing the babysitting and throwing cousins’ birthday parties together.

For the first few years after they stopped living as fugitives, Lorraine and Joe’s lives were chaotic. Then, age and health wearied them. The couple stayed on methadone. After too many years of use, the drugs stopped working, and they lived a quieter life, smoking some pot and taking valium to help with anxiety. Their kids had long since moved out, none of them far away, but they had the house to themselves in their early fifties. They stayed home mostly, Lorraine often paralysed with the agoraphobia that jail had only compounded for her. She suffered panic attacks and hid in her home.

One night when Lorraine and Joe were in bed, they heard noises downstairs in their townhouse. Joe’s instincts drove instant action, and he jumped up and went to investigate. Coming through the kitchen, he grabbed a knife from the drawer. He had no intention of using it, but it was an automatic response for him to go into battle armed. As he walked into the living room, he realised he’d been right. In the dark in front of him, a man was unplugging their TV. When Joe confronted him, the man reached for his belt and made a move towards Joe, who mistook the shine of the buckle for the glint of a gun and stabbed the intruder once, fatally. The jury did not accept the case was self-defence and Joe was sentenced to a minimum of five years for second-degree murder.

Lorraine had the burden once more of supporting her husband through jail and a hell he had never wanted. Joe was a con man and a thief. He had always been horrified at the idea of taking someone’s life, but Lorraine knows he could only do one thing when his family was under threat. Decades of jail training had left him no choice but to defend by attacking first. Life or death.

For five years, Lorraine was alone again. She spent time with her daughters and tried to manage her sons. Joe found jail hard in his fifties, at times sharing a cell with four others, the beds harder on an older man’s back.

When I last spoke to Lorraine, Joe was nearly due out from that stretch. He’d been given a release date, having been granted parole the first time he applied after five years. But a week before he got out, Parole had changed its mind.

The intruder had been a local crook, an ordinary thief who had only just started breaking into houses. His family still lived in the area, and five years on had put in a request to have Joe barred from the local area, due to their distress.

“It’s not fair,” Lorraine said. “We’ve been married for thirty-five years. He’s done his time, and we’re not allowed to live together. I moved after it all happened and he got locked up, but I have to move again if we want to live together, and all the kids are here. They’re still controlling us after all these years.”

The crimwife’s inner jail clock ticks on through the calendar months which make up a sentence of years. Visit routines are inbuilt. Jimmy used to say it took a couple of months to settle into a new jail, and he’s about right. Everything is structured around these non-negotiables. As the Earliest Possible Release Date, or EPRD, draws closer, there’s much more to schedule. The EPRD is usually the end of the non-parole period of the sentence, unless the offender has been charged with an old crime that had previously been undetected or unsolved.

The Department of Corrective Services, which parents Probation and Parole, prefers inmates to be released earlier so that they can be supervised in the community. If they do their full sentence in jail, they can walk out free and do whatever they like, without having to report to anybody. Some people choose to be in jail rather than under supervision. Parole has the power to decide with whom a parolee may associate, where they can live, work and even socialise. It is then at Parole’s discretion whether to breach a parolee for defying these requirements, being late reporting in, missing an appointment, and the one that scared us most: failing to adapt to lawful community life. Jimmy was convinced they would send him back to jail if he didn’t appear to be Joe Citizen with a job and houseplants. He knew every loophole in the law, for and against him.

Any breach of conditions can result in immediate arrest and being sent straight back to serve the balance of the original sentence. I had thought being out was being out, but apparently, as Jimmy let me know, it would not even nearly be over. When he got out, there would still be another eighteen months of Parole, the putrid dogs, running his life.

Jimmy’s first EPRD was 31-01-07, another date seared in my brain. There was no way to speed up time before that date. I was forced to practise patience, because there was absolutely no way things would change, without an act of God.

It was over two years from 06-05-04, when things began, until 31-01-07. Jimmy wasn’t sentenced until January 2005. He had already been on remand for two years in Victoria before being extradited and waiting on remand for another two in New South Wales. When he was finally sentenced, he was two-thirds of the way through the time he would serve. I had been secretly hoping that, like at the end of any TV drama, the court would drop the whole matter to make way for the main characters’ love. But, as the Victorian Armed Robbery Squad had told him early in his career, “You can bash ’em, you can rape ’em, you can kill ’em, but you can’t take their money.” The police were telling the truth.

Jimmy was sentenced to six years on the bottom, which is the non-parole part, and seven and a half on the top, the full sentence. Or seven and a half with a six, if you’re in a rush, for his part in two armed robberies. His co-accused, or coey, testified that Jimmy had threatened his life, his girlfriend’s and their child’s, so Jimmy was deemed the ringleader, the instigator. Jimmy told me and the court that his coey had begged him to come along on a stick-up job, and sung like a bright yellow canary when they were arrested and separated. The coey claimed duress and assisted the police wherever possible. Jimmy was not surprised at the length of the sentence. He knew the risks involved with taking money. Overall, he felt satisfied that what he had been punished for was fair in light of everything else he had done.

Although he had already done four years and was in the last trimester, the idea of two full years of jail was mind-boggling to me. I wanted to spend time with this man, but could I commit to a future in two years’ time? Did I want to? Which of my friends would contemplate this stupidity?

I decided I would continue to see Jimmy, but that if some other kind of wonderful turned up, he wouldn’t be ignored either. I was looking for a job, and then within months I had my first book contract, a dream come true. I got on with my life, went to visits, took phone calls, wrote letters. Nothing else changed apart from the parallel universe in which I visited, and the alien there who said he loved me. I lived my life as I had previously, and dipped into the secret world as scheduled.

Then one day, with not one gallop of a knight in shining armour, or even anyone with a decent sense of humour, the EPRD was upon us. In all, it had taken me about eighteen months to adjust to the decision I had made. On the day we’d met, I was in no way ready for Jimmy to leave the nice safe jail. Neither was he. We both knew we needed some more time, and were strangely grateful for the certainty of separation.

But even though I had moved on from the initial shock and shame of my choices, I was filled with fear at the mere thought of his getting out. My gut told me that when Jimmy was released, he would say goodbye to me at the gates or go on a crime spree that ended at my house. There was no predicting who this man really was or what would unfold if our plans ever did see daylight. I had no insurance for what I had signed up for. Jimmy said, “Always go with your gut.” But I could never tell the difference between my gut, head, heart, hormones, blood sugars or star sign. I did not know what to expect. The only literature on this subject said things almost always went badly after release, mainly for the female, who had way more to lose. Faced with the real world’s pressures, the Met While Incarcerateds fall apart outside where there are no limits, security or distances.

Was that really going to happen to us? Even the better-sounding case studies ended madly, badly and sadly. It was the same story, but over years, not months or days. The only thing for me to do was continue as I had started, by ignoring reality on the sound basis that nothing regular applied to me.

Then one day at the end of September, a representative from Probation and Parole calls, right when I’m not even thinking about jail. The man on the phone announces that he’ll be coming over to inspect my home. He will assess its suitability for an ex-prisoner to live in, which is ironic, since it couldn’t get any worse than the rat-infested, sewer-leaking drug den the state currently provides. At Parramatta a special call had to be made asking inmates to refrain from catching, cooking and eating the pigeons that flew in, due to health reasons. But, come on over, Parole, I’ll put the kettle on.

Better Cells and Gardens
must be placated. Suitable accommodation is the number one requirement for a successful parole application. If I want Jimmy on this side of the wall, I have to play the part.

But what is the part? Should I be the sort of person who sits up straight with clean fingernails, in an orderly home, and who can answer the impending questions appropriately? I can’t appear as too much sweetness and light, because then I am either wearing SUCKER or PSYCHO on my forehead.

I have to demonstrate understanding of my Beloved’s needs to readjust but clear intolerance of his law-breaking tendencies. Should he display any worrying behaviours, Parole tells me, I should refer all my worries to them. Parole is there to help.

Parole is there to help like Corrective Services is there to rehabilitate.

There is nothing as joyous as an inspection of your private life, and this home invasion was to be by the State Priest. A governmental Santa Claus, who put me on the Potentially Good List so I might get my present.

This inspector is benevolent. Actually, he is overly curious. By the time he arrives, I have hit the coffee hard and decided to go into best-friend mode. The “We’re on the same side to help fight crime by keeping Jimmy under surveillance” perspective. While simultaneously being in the “He’s not your regular crim/I’m not fooled or anything” mode.

His third button is undone, revealing his abundantly hairy chest and gold chain. Not long after he sits down, he shares with me that he has been in the job for over twenty years. He’s from somewhere in the United Kingdom and so I pretend we’re in an episode of
The Bill
.

“It’s very hard for them to adjust,” he says.

“Don’t I know it?” I look to the ceiling and nod.

“He must have a routine,” he reminds me.

“Most important thing,” I say. Not that I have one myself.

“Do you think this relationship is going to work out?” He can’t help himself.

Of course not. I’m indignant: “What do you take me for? But I love him and I’m prepared to go with that.” Plus, I sheepishly admit, with a coy half-smile, I could use the childcare, you understand. Nothing better than an agoraphobic for childcare.

He agrees. And after two hours of assessing the situation, he and my good self, who he reassures me is “not an unattractive woman” and “not the sort of client I come across often,” decide I’m ready for the challenge. He assures me I’ve passed the test.

And I guarantee him, like a twelve-year-old being offered a paper run, that he won’t be disappointed.

None of this means anything. As soon as he leaves, I go into instant Jail Panic. Probation and Parole are the minion spawn of Jail. This man was out to get me. Jimmy would agree, if he were here. Jimmy would definitely say that while he was in our house (it’s now ours) he was taking some kind of notes that I couldn’t know about (Jimmy would have known straightaway) and that he’ll put these secret conclusions at the top of his report, with one of those big American rubber stamps that slam down, screaming PAROLE DENIED.

I’m convinced now, just as Jimmy would be, that the home inspection failed and that I’m probably going to lose the house and the child as well, just because parole officers see all and know everyone. Dogs. Make no mistake, Jimmy would have said, they’re just like screws on the outside. Putrid dogs, the lot of ’em. Don’t ever be fooled. Then, I think, Jimmy would say, “Well, you might be in with a chance.” It was that paranoid optimism or optimistic paranoia that he did best.

I call Mr Parole the next day and tell him that he’s changed his mind. He says that he hasn’t and that I must not worry. Liars, they’re all liars. I know it. The parole hearing is still two months away. We’ll see if Mr “I have power over your whole world” Parole is lying then. Time to block out time again. Time to begin preparing.

Two months is a long time in jail. There’s still all the violence and death and food poisoning and heat. More, now that he’s going home. Jealousy makes cruelty crueller. Anything could happen before he is actually out.

An old favourite trick of the cops, I’ve heard, is to wait for the newly released inmate outside the prison gates to re-arrest him on new charges. DNA has made criminal life more unpredictable than ever. A cigarette butt dropped at a house twenty years ago can now be matched to those whose DNA is on record. A lot of old-timers who presume they got away with everything get a surprising knock on the door. But repeat offenders, especially those whom police want to punish, can run the risk of finding this out moments after their first steps of freedom.

Jimmy tells me he has called all his charges in a long time ago. There shouldn’t be any police cars outside when he’s released, but what would he know? Jail Panic is deep-seated and with good reason. Jimmy is sure of lots of things that never happen.

People don’t remember the last ten years you did of jail, Jimmy tells me on the phone, they remember the last two weeks. They turn nasty, he says, so I’m surviving as best I can. Even at the end, there’s stress. He has to figure out who to leave his TV and spare prison clothes to. This could lead to problems. Nothing he can’t handle, though, but problems all the same.

While I wait, I re-read the old letters. Letters full of misery and promises. Announcements of unearthed insight. Pain, sorrow and determination. And letters of love that still make me smile, then kick myself. I hate love stories.

There’s no one to talk to about this. It’s emotional survival boot camp, all in the comfort of my living room. And how could you explain it anyway? There’s no way that Dear Cosmo Relationships will sympathise.

The day of Jimmy’s parole hearing is one long-spinning roulette wheel as my heart goes bumpity-bump over the hours. Where will the ball of my future land: black or red?

And although I tell myself repeatedly how unimportant this is to me, I fool none of the cheer squad in my head, who are urging me to GET ON THE PHONE.

The local parole office tells me to call head office. Head office presents a dissatisfied receptionist, who says there’s no point calling this morning. The Board is sitting on new arrests. The Almighty Board. After lunch, she says. What is this term “after lunch”? It’s meaningless to me as a grazer. I call at midday. Four pm, says a different yet similarly unimpressed employee.

So I call back at 1 pm. The previously disgruntled voice is cheerier. She says, “I have some good news for you,” which feels as though I’ve taken a pregnancy test. Who is she to assume it’s good news? Maybe I’m not really ready. Parole has been granted, she says. My due date is 31-01-07. I thank her. For what? Informing me that an armed robber is going to live at my house? I’m embarrassed and I hang up.

Mainly I’m scared. I don’t know if I possess the energy to go through with this. Or the love. But I’m also so, so, so excited. We did it. We did it.

First time. Or, Jimmy did it and I provided the parole address. There is a great sense of achievement. I know the reality is that most people get out of jail as a matter of course. Most don’t die there. But I feel as if we’ve won, and we’ve won against them, whoever they are. I never used to think like that. The policeman was your friend, we had been taught. He visited my second grade class and told us so.