“What exactly did the doctor say?”

It was the morning after the hearing, and I’d arrived back at Frontenac at eight-thirty with my little blue bag. We had had four twelve-hour PFVs in the interim, and this was to be our first twenty-four since the kite and the cancellation back in June. There were no problems getting in, and by nine-thirty, we’d made the bed, hung up the towels, put away the food, and were in the kitchen making coffee and toast.

This time we were in the trailer closest to the visiting room, the one we’d been in for our first PFV, facing the stone wall and the guard tower of Collins Bay. Usually I preferred to be in one of the other two, with their backs to the prisons, but this time I was glad to be in the closer one. I hadn’t told Shane that I was anxious about this PFV. What if he suddenly took ill? What if he started choking and gagging, what if he passed out, what if he started vomiting blood all over the place? I am not, generally speaking, good with sick people, especially if there is vomit involved. Yes, there was an emergency phone in each trailer, but I knew from experience—once when we had to call because the sheets we’d been given were too small for the bed and another time when the coffeemaker wouldn’t work—that they didn’t always answer. What would I do if I needed help in the middle of the night? I didn’t think it would be a good idea to run out of the trailer and try to climb over the fence to get to the building. I would be directly in the sightline of the armed guards in the Collins Bay tower. No, definitely not a good idea. At least in this trailer, we were close enough that I figured if I stood outside waving my arms and screaming for help, they’d see me and hear me and come on the run.

“What exactly did the doctor say?” I asked as we sat down at the kitchen table. I also hadn’t told Shane that I had some questions about the cancer diagnosis. It had been almost a month now, and it seemed that none of the prison staff knew anything about it. Visiting one Saturday since, I’d mentioned it to a member of his CMT who was working that day. She looked at me strangely and said, “He never told me about that.” I knew that once a cancer diagnosis was made, the medical team quickly went into high gear to begin treatment. I assumed this would be true even if the patient was a federal inmate. But nothing was happening. I didn’t know whether to be suspicious or concerned.

“What exactly did the doctor say?”

Maybe Shane had misunderstood. A year before I met him, I had to have a biopsy on my left breast after a suspicious mammogram. Thankfully it revealed the presence of nothing more than benign calcifications. But early in our relationship, Shane had persisted in referring to this as the time I had cancer. Perhaps I still hadn’t made him understand that I never had cancer, that a biopsy doesn’t mean you have cancer, but is simply a test to determine if you do or don’t.

Now, thanks to the combination of doctor–patient confidentiality and CSC’s privacy policies, I had no way of getting more information about his condition.

“Did he say you have cancer? Or did he say you have to have a biopsy to see if you might have cancer?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to remember what he said?” Shane snarled and went into the bedroom.

Things went downhill from there. We were both exhausted after a stressful month and upset about the negative outcome of yesterday’s hearing. I wanted only to spend the day relaxing on the couch reading and watching TV. But he was already in bed, and it was clear what he wanted. I stayed in the living room.

The day passed. We were counted, then we had lunch. We were counted again, then we had supper. We were counted one more time, then we watched TV. By the time we went to bed, I was feeling better. But Shane said he was feeling sick now, he was too tired to have sex now, it was too late—why did I make him wait so long? Shutting the bedroom door behind him, he went back to the living room. I stayed in bed and tried to sleep.

The room as usual was bathed in white stripes by the Collins Bay spotlight. I lay flat on my back and looked down at them falling across my body. I stretched my arms up and wiggled my fingers in the stripes. I imagined I could feel them across my face.

I heard Shane coming back down the hall. He flung open the door, flicked on the ceiling light, and stood there staring at me. I stared back at him and said nothing. He shut the door and went away. Half an hour later, he was back again, coming into the room this time to get his clothes.

I dared to ask, “Where are you going?”

He grunted and said, “Nowhere. As usual.” He left the bedroom again.

He came back several more times, dressed now, and stood in the doorway in the stripes of white light.

I pictured the phone on the wall at the other end of the hallway. What would he do if I tried to use it? I pictured the knives in the kitchen drawer. I pictured him in the living room equidistant from the knives on one side and the phone on the other. What if I called them, and they didn’t come fast enough? What if I called them, and they didn’t come at all? I got up and got dressed.

I went down the hallway to the living room without looking at the phone. He was sitting in the dark scowling at the TV just like he used to at home. When he saw me with my clothes on, he said, “Here we go. Now I suppose you’re going to call them.”

“No, I just thought since you had your clothes on, I’d put mine on too,” I said inanely.

I sat down on the couch beside him. It was still dark. I don’t remember what time it was. I don’t remember what was on TV. I don’t remember if we talked. We sat there until the sun came up. Then I went back to the bedroom and packed my bag, brought it out to the living room. He cleaned up the kitchen, stripped the bed, put the sheets in the basket with the towels. He vacuumed the whole place just like he always did. At eight-thirty they came to let us out.

We followed them into the building, and with Shane standing over me, I filled out the form indicating that all had gone well. Just like I always did. I signed out on the clipboard, date and time. It was December 1: the fifth anniversary of the day I gave him the I-love-you card. We went into the bubble, where we were interviewed by the keeper. Just like we always were. I don’t remember which keeper was working that day. What was the point of this post-PFV interview? I wondered. Just like I always did. With Shane sitting right there beside me, I said everything was fine. Just like I always did.

Shane went back to his cell, and I went home. He called shortly after I arrived. Just like he always did. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. But I was lying. I knew what I had to do.

MY TERM AS WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE AT QUEEN’S began the second week of January. I was excited and anxious—excited because it had been a long time since I’d had a “real job,” not to mention a real paycheque at the end of each month; anxious because I didn’t know how Shane was going to handle all the changes to our routine that the job would necessitate. What were the chances he was going to make my life easier rather than harder? Would he be able to “let me” do what I needed to do instead of trying to sabotage me, as he’d often seemed to be doing in the past?

In addition to my office hours three days a week, I would be arranging, hosting, and giving a number of readings at other times in other locations, some in the evening as well. The people who had made appointments to see me at Queen’s would be sending me their work ahead of time by email. There would be much reading and critiquing to be done every day. Because my residency contract required that I also do something in the community outside of Queen’s, I would be facilitating a writing group at 99 York with interested members of the prison group. We would meet every other Wednesday morning for three hours. Somewhere in there, I was also going to have to find time to do my own work and keep up with the domestic end of things. The bottom line was, I’d have very little time for Shane in the next three months.

I’d already told him that I wouldn’t be able to continue our monthly counselling sessions with Edward Blake for the duration and that I’d be visiting on Saturdays only, staying home on Sundays to work. Fortunately he’d been approved to attend Sunday mass at the convent the way he used to. I warned him that I wouldn’t have much time during the day or the evening to be talking on the phone. Since Christmas I’d had him “in training” for this. We’d agreed that he wouldn’t call until after he’d had his supper, around five o’clock. He was doing quite well with this, although when he did call, I could sometimes hear that he was feeling twisted and resentful and sorry for himself—as if this were some outrageous and peculiar thing I was forcing him to do.

I said, “I love you with all my heart.”

He said, “I hope so. Sometimes I wonder.”

I didn’t see how he could wonder. I felt I’d done everything I possibly could for him, and still it was never enough. I had now been with him longer than any other man I’d been involved with.

I said, “Maybe I’m just not self-sacrificing enough to be in this relationship.”

He said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

We were on the phone. Again. Yes, he’d waited until five o’clock before calling. But it was now shortly after nine, and he’d called four times since.

I said it meant I was not willing to give up everything for him—my work, my friends, my independence, my sanity, my self, my life. I was on the edge of sarcasm, because, in truth, I felt I’d already sacrificed more than enough for him.

Expert though he was at slinging around the sarcasm himself, it often went over his head when he was on the receiving end. In this case, he agreed with me. Sincerely. In a tone that made it clear that he thought this was how relationships were supposed to work and that my shortcomings in the self-sacrifice department were another sad failing on my part, just one more thing he had to put up with. What had he ever sacrificed for me? I wondered but did not ask.

He’d said often enough in the early days that we would fall in love and become one. By “one,” I knew now, he meant him.

Even Dr. Quinn had once tried to dissuade him of this pop-song notion of love by drawing a Venn diagram on his notepad: two overlapping circles with the intersecting area in the middle coloured in to represent our relationship and the exterior areas of each circle representing our separate selves. Shane had persisted in not understanding this, had drawn instead two separate circles labelled SHANE and DIANE, and then two more circles, one on top of the other, labelled LOVE.

Shane said when two people truly loved each other, they’d stay together no matter what happened, no matter how badly one treated the other, no matter how unhappy one or the other or both of them might be. The more he elaborated on this theory, the clearer it became that when he said both people must abide by this compact, he meant the woman. He said this was unconditional love. Unfortunately he used his own parents’ marriage as an example. Dr. Quinn didn’t seem to find this nearly as preposterous as I did.

I HAD ALREADY TOLD HIM that I wouldn’t be able to have another PFV until late February during Reading Week, when I would have no office hours at Queen’s, and that I wouldn’t be able to have another one after that until April, when the residency was over. Since the last disastrous PFV, the truth was, I didn’t want to have another one at all ever again. If I had been waiting, subconsciously at least, for the last straw, I knew that had been it. I finally understood that I’d been mixed up for a long time about what being strong meant in this circumstance. That being strong did not mean staying. Being strong meant leaving. But I also knew I had to do this residency first, and I intended to do an excellent job of it.

Did I think I could postpone the catastrophes of my love life to accommodate the schedule of my working life? Yes, I did. Did I think I could put my work first while leaving Shane on the back burner for three months? Yes, I did. Yes, for once I did. First I would deal with the residency and all it required. Then I would deal with Shane.

The night before my residency began, he called late. We’d already talked three times that evening, him in a different mood each time, none of them good. I was already in bed, almost asleep. This time he said he was feeling afraid of what this year would bring. I knew he meant his health. It had been two months now, and he’d had a few more tests, but there had still been no definite treatment program outlined or implemented. I knew he was trying to manipulate me, putting his health issues in the front of my mind. How could I leave him if he had cancer? I knew he wanted me to feel guilty for being preoccupied with other things. How could any of those things be more important than him? I knew he wanted me to make him feel better. But I was annoyed and half asleep. I did not oblige.

Then he asked me if I would nurse him if he was dying.

“No,” I said. “No, I will not.”

I HAD BEEN WORKING AT HOME ALONE for so many years that I thought it would take some time to adjust to going out to an office instead. But in fact, I recognized almost immediately the appeal of having someplace else to go, of being able to close the door, get in the car, and leave it all behind: the dishes not done, the kitty litter box not changed, the floors not washed, the bathroom not cleaned. And Shane. I knew better than to have the office number added to his phone list, and he, surprisingly, hadn’t suggested it. I’d warned him that I wouldn’t have my cell phone on while I was in the office. Even better, I discovered once I got there that there wasn’t much reception inside those old stone buildings, and it didn’t work anyway.

I had often envied other people their ability to compartmentalize their lives, a fine art I’d never been able to master. But now I discovered I could do it after all, and I could do it well. I could do it without even trying. Each time I got in the car and headed to the university, I forgot all about him, all about prison, all about cancer, all about all of it.

Each time I walked down the hallway towards the office with my laptop in one hand and my briefcase in the other, I thought, This is my life.

Each time I went to the washroom at the end of the hall, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, Hello again, there you are. Long time no see. Sometimes, if the washroom was otherwise empty, I said it out loud.

IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, Shane had the first of what would be a lengthy series of procedures on his esophagus. As I understood it, the procedure, which took place under sedation in the operating room, involved the insertion of a dilating balloon that was then slowly inflated in an attempt to increase the circumference of his esophagus gradually so he’d be able to swallow and eat properly.

On the last day of March, my residency was officially over. Except for the prison writing group—they were all enjoying it so much, we’d agreed to keep meeting at 99 York every other Wednesday morning until the end of June. Which was not to say I was now going to take a vacation. I hadn’t had much time for my own writing for the past three months and was eager to get back to it. Plus I was now preparing to present my latest work at a national conference to be held at Humber College in Toronto in early May.

I decided not to resume Sunday visiting, would use the day to work instead. Shane was still going to the convent on Sunday mornings, but the rules had changed, and nobody was allowed to meet their partners there anymore. This rule change was said to be due to a couple having been caught in a compromising position in a church bathroom one Sunday—not at the convent, not even at some other church in Kingston, but somewhere in the western provinces. Following the same policy as teachers who punish the whole class when one student has done something wrong, CSC had prohibited the practice nationwide.

Edward Blake and I had agreed that there didn’t seem much point in resuming our counselling sessions at Frontenac. He would continue seeing Shane alone, although he said he wasn’t sure that was having much positive effect either.

Busy as I’d been throughout the residency, I’d kept every single one of my regular Tuesday appointments with Louise. She was the only person I had been entirely honest with about what had happened during the PFV at the end of November. She and Edward were the only people to whom I had admitted that I was now waiting for Shane to die, that I had resurrected my deathbed fantasy, that I figured this would make a good ending to our story, a clean and tidy ending that would let me off the hook, guilt-free.

On the final Tuesday of March, as we were winding down yet another hour of me going on about the problems with Shane, Louise waited until I stopped to catch my breath and then asked, “Would you be putting up with all this if he wasn’t in prison?”

I hadn’t thought about it this way before. But I didn’t have to think about my answer either.

“No,” I said, “I would not.”

DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL, Shane had two more dilation procedures on his esophagus. Between treatments he’d been taken to the hospital several times because of choking, usually caused by his having become so hungry that he’d eaten something solid when he was supposed to be on a soft diet. In fact, he was supposed to be having Ensure, the commonly available liquid nutritional supplement, but Shane said the prison doctor had refused to order it for him. It took the intervention of a keeper to get him the Ensure.

In mid-April we had what was to be our last twenty-four-hour PFV before we moved up to forty-eight. Like the previous one in February during Reading Week, this PFV went well enough. I did what I had to do to keep the peace. But still when I awoke the next morning, Shane was already up, sitting in the living room scowling at the TV. I had no idea what was wrong and no intention of trying to worm it out of him. They would be coming to get us in an hour. I couldn’t help but think that if this were a forty-eight-hour PFV, I would have another whole twenty-four hours to get through.

We got ready to leave. Since he was already in a mood, I figured now was as good a time as any to tell him I didn’t want to move up to forty-eight hours. Moments before Grant and another guard came to let us out, I told him.

We followed them into the building as usual, towing our stuff in the wagon behind us like children returning from the playground. As I filled out the form and signed the clipboard, I saw that John Logan was the keeper on duty. He was walking down the hallway to his office. Rather than going into the bubble with Shane to wait for John to come and interview us, I headed across the visiting room and down the hallway after him. I didn’t look back, and Shane, who had now put on his good-mood face for their benefit, didn’t follow me.

I tapped on the glass of John’s half-open door and went in. Without preamble and in a voice as lighthearted as I could muster, I told him I’d decided I didn’t want to move up to forty-eight-hour PFVs after all. I was well aware that I was doing something mutinous and revolutionary by refusing to take the next step. I did not say I didn’t want to be alone with Shane for that long. I said I was so busy with my work that I just wouldn’t be able to manage it. And besides, I said, I really couldn’t stand not being able to smoke. True. John was looking very surprised.

“Not only that,” I went on, “but the truth is, I don’t like being locked up.” Also true. The novelty of these prison sleepovers had now worn off completely. Of course, I’d never admitted this to Shane. After all, he’d been locked up for more than thirty years—who was I to complain that I could hardly handle it for twenty-four hours, let alone forty-eight? Who was I to complain about missing my son, my pets, my books, my computer, my iPad, my iPhone, my own bed, my own bathroom, my daily trip to Tim Hortons? How could I tell him that when I got home after only twenty-four hours in the trailer, it was with such a sense of joyful relief that you’d think I’d been gone for two weeks?

Now John was laughing. “I’ve done over thirty years,” he said, “and nobody has ever said that to me before.”

“Nobody?” I asked incredulously.

“I mean no visitor. No visitor has ever said that to me before.”

I may have been the only one who ever had the nerve to say it out loud, but I was quite sure I wasn’t the only one who’d ever thought it.

ON THE DAY OF THAT PFV, CSC announced it was cutting all funding to the LifeLine program, which would be completely discontinued—this despite the fact that it was an internationally renowned program that had received awards from the International Corrections and Prisons Association, the American Correctional Association, and just six months previously, was the recipient of the Canadian Criminal Justice Association’s Achievement Award. Not only would Stuart and the two dozen other lifers employed by LifeLine now be out of a job, but Shane and the thousands of other lifers they worked with would lose yet another essential means of support. The psychology departments had already been so pared down that an inmate might well have to wait months to see someone. The chaplaincies had also been reduced to the point that at Frontenac, there was now only one full-time on-site chaplain who was trying to look after more than two hundred men of all faiths.

A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told CBC News that LifeLine “wasn’t producing any results that improved public safety. We will not spend a dollar on Corrections that is not necessary to keep Canadians safe.” And yet the LifeLine program had been credited over and over again, even by CSC itself under previous governments, with having played an important role not only in the rehabilitation of lifers still in prison but also in their successful reintegration back into society without ever reoffending.

With the closing of LifeLine, I was struck again by the short-sightedness of the Harper government’s Tough on Crime policies. None of the people making these decisions seemed to grasp the basic fact that almost all of the inmates currently serving time in federal institutions across Canada were going to get out one day. They were going to get out of their prisons and come straight into our communities without benefit of sufficient support or counselling either while inside or after their release. This was not going to go well for any of them. This was not going to go well for any of us. There would be more crimes. There would be more victims.

Those who would say this could all be avoided if they just kept those criminals locked up forever should be reminded that, according to the Office of the Correctional Investigator, the annual average cost of keeping a male federal inmate incarcerated is now more than a hundred thousand dollars, and nearly twice that for each female inmate.

Eliminating the LifeLine program was yet another measure that had nothing to do with protecting public safety, yet another egregious decision that put all of us at greater, rather than lesser, risk.

THERE WAS MORE BIG NEWS TO COME. Following the cancellation of LifeLine on Monday, we learned that Vic Toews himself would be holding a news conference on Thursday afternoon to deliver another announcement. For some time, there had been rumours about the possible closing of Kingston Penitentiary. Surely it couldn’t be that. Even the guards were saying surely it couldn’t be that.

It was that.

With little preamble, Toews announced that Kingston Penitentiary would be closed and decommissioned within two years. The Regional Treatment Centre (RTC), a separate maximum-security psychiatric institution for mentally ill offenders located on the KP grounds, would also be closed, as well as medium-security Leclerc Institution in Laval, Quebec. These closures, Toews said, would save CSC 120 million dollars a year.

Opened in 1835 and designated a National Historic Site in 1990, Kingston Penitentiary was not only the most famous prison in the country, housing Canada’s most notorious criminals, but it was also one of the oldest continuously operating prisons in the world. It was a storied, legendary place, not only among the inmates but among the staff as well. One of the guards at Bath, when once asked by another visitor going in ahead of me if he’d ever worked at KP, said yes, he had, for twenty years, and it was like going to Beirut every day.

Vic Toews said an institution built in the nineteenth century was no longer effective or appropriate in the twenty-first century. He did not mention that in recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars had been pumped into KP to address these concerns. The closure of these three institutions would mean moving almost a thousand inmates, six hundred of them from KP and RTC. About the same number of prison employees would be affected. There did not seem to be a clear plan as to how this would be accomplished or where these inmates and staff members would go. He did not offer any suggestion as to how the profoundly mentally ill offenders from RTC could possibly be taken care of properly in an ordinary institution. Toews said no new prisons would be built, but existing institutions would be expanded. Again, there did not seem to be an actual plan in place to accomplish any of this.

Immediately after the press conference, the phone rang.

Shane said, “The mothership has gone down.”

If I’d imagined he would be jubilant about this news, I was wrong. In fact, he was stunned. They all were. I could hear the other guys on the phones all around him, calling home in shocked disbelief. Not only was KP was an integral part of the history and identity of the city of Kingston, but also of all the men, like Shane, who had ever been incarcerated there. It was a badge of honour, I think, for him and the other prisoners who could say they’d done time there and survived, had escaped the place, so to speak, with their lives. A part of each of them would be stripped away by this closure.

They were scared too.

“If they can do this,” Shane said, “they can do anything.”

I THOUGHT I HAD PLENTY OF TIME, but then the train was late getting into Toronto, and I hadn’t factored in the trouble my taxi would have getting through the construction in front of Union Station. Now I was running around the Lakeshore Campus of Humber College, trying to find first the building in which I’d be staying and then the building in which I’d be delivering my paper in less than an hour. I was clutching a campus map in my teeth, my overnight bag and my briefcase were banging against my legs, and my purse was ringing.

After checking into my dorm room, changing my clothes, organizing my papers, and charging across the campus to the second building, I had just a few minutes to gather my thoughts before my presentation. I sat down on a bench outside and fished around in my purse for my cigarettes and my phone.

During April and early May, Shane had had four more dilation procedures on his esophagus. They appeared to be working. He said it now looked like he didn’t have cancer after all. That was good news. He was having another procedure, the sixth, that morning. He’d left a message, and I had to listen to it several times before I could make out the words. His voice was faint and gasping. He said, “I nearly died on the table.”

I turned off my phone, dropped it back into my purse, put out my cigarette, and went inside.

I talked for an hour about my new work, an experimental project called By the Book, a collection of stories drawn in various ways from old books from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Putting them together had been like doing a jigsaw puzzle and ending up with a picture entirely different from the one on the front of the box. I was illustrating these stories with full-colour collages, which I showed in a PowerPoint on a large screen behind me while I read from the book.

Shane had had a hand in the genesis of this unusual project. When he was working at the recycling plant in Peterborough, he’d rescued a book from certain death by pulp and brought it home to me. Published in New York in 1900, it was a guidebook for Italian citizens immigrating to the United States at the turn of the century. He said he thought I might like it. Indeed I did. It so captured my imagination that it became the source book for the first and title story of this new collection.

Now here I was, four years later, finally bringing the project to an audience, and they were enthusiastic and excited. I was not thinking about Shane or the recycling plant or all that had happened since. I was not thinking about my cell phone silenced in my purse.

THE EVENING KEYNOTE SPEAKER was the American writer Tim O’Brien, one of my longtime favourite authors, especially for his book The Things They Carried. Published more than twenty years ago, it is now considered a classic work about the Vietnam War—or any war, for that matter. It is also about the process and power of storytelling itself. On the title page, it calls itself A Work of Fiction—but is it? Is it a novel or a book of stories or something else entirely? In the end, it doesn’t matter what you call it. In the end, it is a masterpiece about courage and fear, imagination and memory, truth and reality, loyalty and love—a tour de force of reasons to write and reasons to live.

The keynote was a public event being held not at Humber but half an hour away at Harbourfront. We were all talking on our phones in the parking lot while waiting for the bus that would take us there and back. Shane called again, said he was feeling better now; maybe he didn’t nearly die on the table, but it sure felt like it. Our bus arrived, a big yellow school bus of the sort I hadn’t ridden since Alex was in Grade 2, and I had accompanied his class on a field trip to the Toronto Zoo.

At Harbourfront we all found seats in the crowded room, the lights went down, and a small man in faded jeans and a red baseball cap took the stage. As always seems to be the case with someone I’ve admired and looked up to but never met, I had thought he would be much taller. He did not give a lecture, a speech, or a conventional reading. He told us a story—a story, he said, that was hard to tell, a story that still made him squirm even now, more than forty years after the fact.

It was the story of what had happened after he received his draft notice in June 1968. He was twenty-one years old, had just graduated from college, was still living with his parents in Worthington, Minnesota, working in a meatpacking plant for the summer. He was against the war. He told us the story of how he took his father’s car and drove north that August, north to the Rainy River, which marks the border between Minnesota and Ontario. I know the Rainy River. I’ve been there. It is about four hundred kilometres west of Thunder Bay.

The entire audience was entranced as he told the story of finding an old fishing lodge in the bush, how the elderly owner let him stay in a cabin for six days, how he kept looking at the Rainy River and across to Canada. He told the story of how on the sixth day, the old man took him out fishing on the river, how he tried to decide what to do, how he cried in the boat. He stayed in the boat, did not swim across to Canada, went back to the lodge with the old man that night, and in the morning, he got back in his father’s car and drove home. And then he went to Vietnam. Many people in the audience, myself included, were tearful now.

Then Tim O’Brien said none of this really happened. We gasped. This was just a story, he said. In reality, he was drafted; he did not want to go to the war, but he went. This was not an act of courage, he said, but of cowardice. It had been so long since I’d reread The Things They Carried that I hadn’t recognized this story as one from the book: “On the Rainy River.”

Reality, he said in conclusion, has an important function in the world—of course it does. But it isn’t always sufficient. Sometimes it is only a story that can tell the truth, only a story that can save us.

Afterwards the applause went on and on. Then there was a crush of people at the book table. I was too shaken to line up with the others to buy a signed book from Tim O’Brien, to perhaps exchange a few words with him. How ridiculous and crazed would I sound if I shuffled up to the table clutching his book to my chest and told him he had just made me see the truth of my own life? The truth I’d been unable or unwilling to face or accept—the truth I’d been avoiding or disregarding for years.

I made my way through the crowd without speaking to anyone, stood outside, and smoked. Darkness had descended, and the street lights had come on. I got on the empty yellow school bus to wait for the others.

I sat alone on the bus staring out the window at the passing traffic and at the reflection of my own face in the glass. For the first time in years, I could see myself. That night I finally understood that I was in love with the story of my relationship with Shane. That the story—oh, the story—was so beautiful, tender, and romantic. But the reality was not any of those things. The reality was only abusive, destructive, and unbearable. I knew Tim O’Brien was right when he said stories can save us. I am a writer of stories after all. But now I understood that they can strangle us too. That night I understood that for all those years, I’d been in love with the story—not the reality—of my life joined to Shane’s. The story of myself as the one who could lead him out of the darkness, the one who could make him whole, healthy, happy. The story of myself as the one who could save him.

TWO DAYS AFTER I RETURNED FROM HUMBER, I had my regular Tuesday appointment with Louise. I told her about the conference, and then, despite my revelation, I found myself going on and on about the same old stuff with Shane. I was inching ever closer to leaving him. I knew I had to do it, had known it for months, had intended to do it right after my residency at Queen’s, but still I’d been dragging my heels, waiting for the right moment—whatever that meant. Trying to break free of any kind of addiction or obsession—be it alcohol, cigarettes, food, heroin, or love—is never a simple or straightforward process. Even when you know you have to. Even when you know your life depends on it.

I was trying to explain to Louise—again—why I hadn’t done it yet. A month before, at her request, I’d given her a list of the reasons. Because I didn’t want to admit I’d failed at yet another relationship. Because I didn’t want to be one more person who’d given up on him. Because I was afraid of falling apart the way I had after we broke up the first time. Because I was afraid of what he might do, not to me but to himself. Because I was afraid that the chaos of leaving him would be even bigger than the chaos of staying. Because I still loved him. Yes, despite everything that had happened, I did.

Suddenly I stopped myself and asked, “Are you getting bored with this?”

Louise smiled wryly and said, “Are you?”

At the end of our hour, she wrote down the name of a book she wanted me to read: The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships by Patrick Carnes.

That day I went directly from her office to the prison. I didn’t usually go on Tuesday evenings anymore, but this time, having not seen Shane for ten days because of the conference, I’d booked a visit. He was unpleasant all evening. He wasn’t interested in hearing anything about the conference. When I tried to tell him how encouraging it was, how much they liked my new work, he waved his hand in the direction of my mouth and said, “I thought you would at least whiten your teeth and get rid of your moustache before you went.”

I finally understood that the only parts of me and my life that mattered to him were those that existed in relation to him. That he could not bear to see me feeling too good, too confident, too happy—if what had caused me to feel that way was not him. That he wanted to divest me of all pride, self-esteem, and self-respect, to knock me down until I was as miserable as he was. That he was afraid I was going to wake up one morning, take a look at my life, and come to my senses—that I was finally going to realize I would be better off without him, that he really was, as he’d often said, an albatross around my neck.

I said, “Stop it.”

He said, “What?”

He said the bottom line was, he needed to know now if I was going to stay with him forever. He said he needed to know for sure before his next parole hearing, which would be in the summer if his appeal was approved.

I said, “Don’t worry. You’ll know by then.”

He said if I broke up with him, how was he to know that I wouldn’t show up at another hearing as a victim, like I did back in 2009?

I said, “Don’t worry. If I break up with you this time, you will never see me again.”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, after popping over to Tim Hortons to get my French Vanilla, I came home to find a phone message. “What about that book you’re supposed to be writing?” said Shane in a withering voice.

I had an appointment in the early afternoon with a woman named Julie, who’d brought her writing to me at Queen’s and had now hired me to continue working with her privately. Shane called again just before I left to meet her. We argued about the earlier message. He demanded to know where I was. I demanded to know why he’d called me during my work time again. He said obviously I wasn’t working, I was out. I reminded him that I always went to Tim Hortons to get a coffee in the morning, had done so for years; it was just part of my routine, and he knew that. He said he wondered about that. What was I really doing, and who was I doing it with?

Julie had invited me to attend her monthly writing group at an art gallery downtown at five-thirty. Our afternoon meeting ran long, and there seemed no point in going all the way home again before going to her group. Instead I had a sandwich downtown. Shane called, and I told him what I was doing. The writing group wrapped up shortly after nine o’clock. Afterwards, as I got into the car and headed home, my phone began to ring. Of course it did. He seemed to think that because he had a stand-up count at nine o’clock, I did too. I kept driving. The phone kept ringing. When I got home around nine-thirty, I discovered he’d been calling there too—a dozen times in half an hour. He called again. We argued some more.

The next morning, he had the seventh procedure on his esophagus. In the immediate aftermath of these procedures, he found it difficult to talk, but still he called several times that afternoon. Each time the phone rang, I heard Louise’s voice in my head: Don’t answer it, don’t answer it. But usually I did. Usually he was unpleasant. That was Thursday. Friday was more of the same.

I was booked to visit on Saturday as usual. I considered not going. But I went. I wanted to say what I had to say one more time and to his face, calmly and firmly and not over the phone.

Once we got settled at our usual table with our vending machine coffee, I said, “Shane, I love you with all my heart.”

His eyes filled with tears.

“And if you keep treating me this way, I will leave you.”

I might have been still struggling with Louise’s advice not to answer the phone, but finally I had learned her lesson that following the phrase “I love you” with the word “but” cancels out the second part. I finally understood that unconditional love, a concept that had previously made sense to me only in terms of my son, does not mean you have to put up with anything your loved one throws at you. Shane seemed to think unconditional love gave him a licence to do whatever he wanted, and I would stay with him anyway. With Louise’s help, I finally understood that it was the “stay with him anyway” clause that wasn’t true. That I could, in fact, love him and leave him.

Over and over again, I had stood up to him. Over and over again, I had let him pull me back in. I didn’t know yet that this would be the last visit.

He said nothing for a long time. Then we went on with our regular Saturday. At home afterwards, I did some yardwork: it was the middle of May, almost time to plant. He called only twice. He was pleasant both times and didn’t mention what I’d said at the beginning of the visit. Late in the evening, I put on my pyjamas and curled up on the couch to begin reading The Betrayal Bond, which I’d purchased as an e-book on my iPad.

            Over time I learned that I bonded with people who were very hurtful to me and remained loyal to them despite betrayal and exploitation. . . . Betrayal. You can’t explain it away anymore. A pattern exists. You know that now. You can no longer return to the way it was (which was never really as it seemed). That would be unbearable. But to move forward means certain pain. No escape. No in-between. Choices have to be made today, not tomorrow.

I stayed up very late reading.

            The worst is a mind-numbing highly addictive attachment to the people who have hurt you. You may even try to explain and help them understand what they are doing—convert them into nonabusers. You may even blame yourself, your defects, your failed efforts. You strive to do better as your life slips away in the swirl of intensity. These attachments cause you to distrust your own judgment, distort your own realities and place yourself at even greater risk. The great irony? You are bracing yourself against further hurt.

                   The result? A guarantee of more pain. These attachments have a name. They are called betrayal bonds.

ON SUNDAY AND MONDAY, SHANE WAS FINE, but by Tuesday, he was starting again, his voice on the phone sliding into sarcasm and nasty innuendo. I worked in the morning, and, by force of habit, I booked my Saturday visit as usual. I had a late lunch with Brenda, Tammy, and Rosemary from the prison group at our usual Chinese place. He called several times while we were eating. I answered the first time, then I turned it off. I went home to take the dogs out before going to see Louise at five. He called again, suggesting I’d had more in my mouth than Chinese food. I spent my hour with Louise going over my notes from The Betrayal Bond. I wasn’t even halfway through the book, but I had pages and pages of notes.

On Wednesday he was worse. I had a session with the prison writing group in the morning, then I went to a book launch downtown in the evening. I was home shortly after nine, not because I was trying to obey the curfew he’d imposed on me, but because that was when the book launch ended and everybody left. His phone calls that night were almost an exact duplicate of those the previous Wednesday after I got home from Julie’s writing group.

Thursday during the day was more of the same. In the morning, I worked, and he had an appointment at the Heart Clinic. It seemed there could be problems with his heart again. In the afternoon, I went to the garden centre. It was the twenty-fourth of May, the traditional spring planting day. I whispered a few encouraging words to the bleeding heart plants that were once again coming up in the driveway. I didn’t think about the time Shane and I had done the planting together. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or bothered by the fact that I was now able to carry on around his unpleasant phone calls without even feeling upset.

He called again in the early evening. He began by saying he knew he wasn’t like all the uptown writers I knew. He went on about being sick and how I said I wouldn’t nurse him. He said I thought he wasn’t good enough for me. He said I thought he wasn’t worthy. He said I thought I was better than him. Again he accused me of being with someone else—a healthy wealthy writer perhaps.

I warned him. “Remember what I said on Saturday.”

He said, “How am I supposed to remember what the fuck you said on Saturday? You’re always saying things. You’re always just talking and talking and talking all the fucking time.”

Then he started going on about everything I’d taken away. The Tuesday evening visits. The Sunday visits. The counselling with Edward Blake. The forty-eight-hour PFVs. Then he said, “What else are you going to take away?”

Although I hadn’t planned that today would be the day, I said, “I am going to take it all away.”

He was so deeply involved in his own twisted misery that he just kept talking. I had to say it twice more before he heard me.

“I’m going to take it all away. Right now. It’s over. I’m done. Just to be clear: the bottom line is, you no longer have a girlfriend.” Then I hung up and turned off all the phones.

HE CALLED AGAIN TWICE THAT EVENING and left messages. In the first, he was tearful and contrite. Sorry sorry, so sorry. He wasn’t feeling well. He had a bad day. His blood pressure was up. His leg hurt, his esophagus too. There was blood on his pillow. Now there was his heart. Sorry sorry, so sorry. These weepy apologies had always worked before.

In the second message, he was calm and practical. What about his CPP cheques, and what about his stuff? Since turning sixty, he’d been collecting just over a hundred dollars a month from the Canada Pension Plan. Through his lawyer, I’d acquired Power of Attorney, so his cheques could be delivered to me, thus avoiding the usual CSC deduction for room and board. Each month I took him a money order for a hundred dollars, which was then deposited into his inmate account to cover the phone calls and some canteen items. As for his stuff, shortly after we got back together, I’d made a trip to Kenworth to pick up several boxes of his belongings that had been stored in Roy and Darlene’s garage.

Early the next morning, he called again. Miraculously I had no problem not answering the phone. He didn’t leave a message. I sent Louise an email to tell her the news. She sent me a note of congratulation and a reminder to feel what I was feeling, to give myself time to adjust, to be good to myself. She said, “If you need me, I’ll be here.”

He didn’t call again. I didn’t call anyone. I knew how happy Dorothy and my other friends would be—but I wasn’t yet ready to hear their hoorays. The only person I told was Alex. He, as usual, didn’t say much, but I could tell he was pleased. I spent the morning reading The Betrayal Bond and replaying last night’s phone call word for word in my head a hundred times.

I had a long nap in the afternoon. He still didn’t call. I treated myself to lamb chops for dinner. They came in a package of six. I ate them all and wished for more. He didn’t call in the evening either. This was so strange that by bedtime, my imagination was running wild in several directions at once. What the hell was happening? There was no end of possibilities to feed my growing anxiety: stroke, heart attack, esophagus, suicide, escape. Maybe he’d acted up and been shipped out. His uncharacteristic silence kept me on the line, still embroiled in his drama, still bracing for whatever he was going to do next.

I recognized this feeling from when we broke up the first time. Fortunately I’d learned enough by now from all my hours with Louise and from reading The Betrayal Bond to know that this was part of it—part of the trauma bond that had held me so tightly to him before, that had made getting back together seem like a reasonable thing to do, that had kept me believing everything would be okay eventually if only I could hang on long enough to get to the good part.

He didn’t call on Saturday. Now I felt relieved. Someone must have made him realize it would be better for him if he didn’t harass me by phone. I was sure they were keeping close tabs on him. I was booked for a visit that day, and I wasn’t there. I was sure I’d be hearing from them any day now. They’d want to know what happened; they’d want to hear my side of the story. In the afternoon, I packed up some of his things. I felt neither elated nor upset, and I was not talking to him in my head while I did it. I put the beautiful jacket and the WAIT, TRUST, HOPE, REJOICE fridge magnet in a bag to be donated to Vinnie’s. For once in my life, I felt neutral and detached.

He didn’t call on Sunday.

He didn’t call on Monday.

He didn’t call on Tuesday.

I was now feeling more surprised that I still hadn’t heard from “them” than I was by not hearing from him.

The next morning, his familiar handwriting appeared in my mailbox, and some of my questions were answered. This letter was two neatly typewritten pages, with his full signature at the end, his name and inmate number typewritten above it, and a note requesting that a copy be attached to his file and another sent to Psychology. Please and thank you. Even I could see this letter was more for their benefit than mine.

It had been written on Saturday. He said he’d cancelled our next scheduled PFV and taken me off his visiting and phone lists, so no one could accuse him of calling too much. I felt he had done me a favour there, sparing me having to take myself off his lists, but I also knew he’d done it to make himself look good in their eyes. And perhaps, I realized later, to avoid giving me an opportunity to speak to them myself. He sounded calm and reasonable, just like he always did in letters. He wished me the best in all my endeavours, which, he said, were sure to bring me money, prestige, and happiness. He noted that although the word controlling had often been directed at him, in fact I was the one who’d been controlling and that people have to give and take, not just dictate. He referred to his ill health a few times, asked again what we were going to do about his CPP cheques, noting that these were all he had, and no one else was stepping up to help him. He said he’d talked to his CMT, Psychology, and Stuart, and he was now ready to get on with his life. Even I could see this letter was mostly a matter of emotional manipulation, to which I did not succumb.

The next morning, the phone rang early. In the call display, it said “Government of Canada.” When Shane called, it always said “Bell Pay Phone.” Finally, I thought, finally they were calling to find out from me what had happened. But no, it wasn’t them. It was him. A member of his CMT had given him permission to call me from her office about the CPP cheques. It was a two-minute conversation. Then he said he would always love me, started to cry, and hung up. I felt nothing.

OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I stopped expecting CSC to contact me. Clearly they had no desire to hear my side of the story. Considering that in all these years, they had never replied to a single one of my letters or phone calls, I didn’t think there was any point in attempting to contact them.

I received a handful of letters from Shane and one more phone call. Early on a Sunday morning near the middle of June, the phone rang, and the call display said, “Sisters of Providence.” So I knew it was from the convent, and I knew he’d likely be there for mass right then. But I didn’t seriously think it could be him on the line. Maybe the nuns were calling me for some reason. What? To tell me he was dead? In retrospect I realize this didn’t make much sense, but I answered the phone. There he was. He said his escort said he could call me. I knew this was definitely not allowed. He was crying and wanted to know if this was really the end. He asked if I broke up with him because there was somebody else. Clearly he wanted to believe this was the case. Then he could feel like a victim: Oh, poor Shane, that nasty bitch left him for another man. How could she?

By now I knew he was never going to accept or understand the truth. I replied in a calm clear voice. I didn’t use any of the words that always sent him into a rage.

Controlling.

Manipulative.

Narcissist.

Bully.

Abuse.

I said, “No, Shane, I broke up with you for one reason and one reason only. Because you treated me badly, and I deserve better.”

IN THE LETTERS, he was rapidly cycling from one mood to another, the salutations flipping wildly from an indignantly formal Ms. Schoemperlen to a simple Diane, and finally, to Hello again Pixie.

He said the staff had been rallying around him—even the ones he didn’t get along with before, even the ones who’d liked me better than him—and commending him for how well he was handling the breakup. He said he could feel personal growth taking effect, that he’d become such a gentleman now, but only if he received respect too. As if I was going to believe he’d become a whole new person in less than a month. If a total transformation was that easy, why didn’t he do it when we were still together?

He said the CPP representative had been to Frontenac again and told him I was eligible to receive his survivor’s pension after his death. Would I please accept this as a gift from his heart to mine? Several times he said he wanted to be friends, that we’d be better friends than lovers. He said he knew it couldn’t be as friendly as I was with some of my other former lovers, but still he’d like to have a letter and a phone call once in a while. He said he missed me.

Over and over again, I could feel him trying to pull me back in. With Louise’s help, I resisted. Each time I received another letter, we parsed it together line by line, her helping me see how these missives cast him as both the victim and the hero in this sorry little narrative and me as the villain, how afterwards he’d be able to claim that he was the reasonable one who just wanted to be friends, and I was the nasty vengeful bitch who refused.

He said his appeal had been successful, and his next hearing was scheduled for mid-July. Would I be attending? No, I told him, I would not.

In my replies, I stuck to practical matters. I declined his offer to make me the recipient of his survivor’s pension. Despite his protests to the contrary, I knew this was a trap. I said several times that I would no longer be the person in charge of his end-of-life care and his death. I reminded him to tear up the Living Will. He persisted in acting as if he did not understand what I was saying, kept asking the same things over and over. As he requested, I sent him a list of all his belongings, now packed safely in three Rubbermaid tubs. Roy and Darlene came and picked them up, a brief exchange involving less than five awkward minutes in the driveway. I mailed the necessary documents to resign as his Power of Attorney. I closed the bank account in his name and had his CPP cheques sent directly to Frontenac.

Each of his letters caused me some degree of upset, as did writing my replies. I’d thought I could follow what in The Betrayal Bond was called “The Path of Limited Contact.” But now I realized I had to choose the other path: “The Path of No Contact.”

I closed my next and final letter by saying, Once we’ve finished sorting out the practical matters, I do not want to have continued contact with you by letter or phone in the future. He did not reply.

TRUE TO MY WORD, I did not attend the summer parole hearing at which Shane was again requesting a series of UTAs to the Ottawa halfway house. Because I was still signed on with the Parole Board Registry of Decisions, I received a copy of the paperwork a week later. Seven legal-size pages, typewritten, single-spaced, written in the second person, as these decisions always were, addressing the offender directly in a personal and conversational tone.

His request had been granted. I skimmed the first three pages, the usual recap of his earlier crimes, convictions, and incarceration. On the fourth page was their commentary on recent events. Here it stated that Shane had told them at the hearing that he had ended our relationship in late May because he felt I was pulling away, and he was not prepared to go through the agony of another separation. They noted that although it was evident this had been a painful situation for him, he had handled it with maturity and wisdom.

Parole hearings don’t include swearing on the Bible, but I had always considered them to be like courtroom proceedings, where everyone, especially the offender, is required to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Of course, I wasn’t entirely surprised that Shane had lied at the hearing. Maybe the lie shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. Maybe part of my outrage was just me wanting to set the record straight, wanting to have the last word. But I was surprised that the Board members had apparently believed him. I was also still surprised that no one from CSC or the Parole Board had ever contacted me to get my side of the story. Would knowing the truth have changed their decision?

I felt some obligation to enlighten them. For two weeks I pondered how best to do this. I was reluctant to do it directly, because I didn’t want to become enmeshed in the whole mess again, nor did I want to further enrage Shane for fear of possible retaliation. In the end, I wrote him a letter telling him that I’d received the decision paperwork and knew he’d lied at the hearing. I reminded him that I had ended our relationship in no uncertain terms on the phone on the evening of May 24. I concluded by once again stating that I wished to have no further contact with him, now or in the future, by telephone, letter, in person, or by any other means.

Much as I wanted him to know that I knew he’d lied, mostly I was doing what he’d done: writing this letter for their benefit. I hoped the officer who checked his mail would read it and feel compelled to do something. They always had the right to monitor our phone calls. I hoped maybe they’d heard and recorded that one on May 24. But nothing happened.

A month later, my letter was returned to me inside a larger CSC envelope addressed in someone else’s handwriting. Across the original envelope, Shane had written PLEASE RETURN. NO CONTACT. My letter itself had obviously been carried in a pocket, passed from hand to hand, read and reread, folded and refolded many times.

I never heard from or saw him again.

FINALLY ALL OF MY QUESTIONS HAD BEEN ANSWERED. Finally I understood that I could not fix him or heal him or make him happy. I could not make the world a better place for him. I could not lead him out of the darkness. Finally I understood that no matter how much I loved him, I did not have the power to make up for or undo the damage—neither the damage he’d suffered nor the damage he’d done. Finally I had stepped out of the story and surrendered to reality.

Now I knew I could not save him. I could only save myself.