Jep turned back to the room then. “Stefano, if you could get people like them to believe one thing about you, what would it be?”
“That not everyone is the same,” Stefan said.
If he hadn’t been speaking about himself, and he had not been flesh of my flesh, I would still have been fascinated by what Stefan had to say next. While we stood in the kitchen, he talked to us about what he thought was the real reason that most people reoffended after they got out of jail. He believed that it’s not because they’re intrinsically evil and not because they’re any more susceptible to their peers than anyone else. He pointed out he had watched how the whole concept of being a team relied a lot on what people thought of you—the coach, the other team members, the fans, the school, the community, even history. If you did wrong, or even if you didn’t do all you could, it was a betrayal to all those people, seen and unseen. But habitual criminals, he said, don’t usually have somebody who really wants them to do their best, who motivates them, just people brokenhearted or enraged because they didn’t do their best. Which is sad and awful, but also very ordinary and human. The most common thing that he and his friend Roman, the only real friend he ever made in prison, observed about his fellow criminals was surprisingly how easily they got bored. Most didn’t have the patience for going through a process, trying and failing and trying again. Maybe the first time they had to do that was in prison, but it was a whole new thing for them. “Like, in their brain. Their brain isn’t usually used to that,” Stefan said. “Trying and failing and trying again is not exciting. Doing a crime is really exciting—not, like, me, comatose, but doing a robbery or a burglary, it had to feel really exciting…living on the knife’s edge, anything could go wrong, it’s like a race against time, the Olympics of being bad.”
It was his own opinion, but Stefan didn’t think that criminals usually committed crimes for money. Most of them just went through it all quickly anyway, he said. He believed they craved the excitement, the adrenaline, the heightened sense of existence. Advocates were so let down when the criminals who were really bright, big readers say, for whom they found good jobs, would get out and either then reoffend, repeating almost exactly what they’d done before, or sometimes kill themselves. Having a good job, that can be pretty much the same routine every day; that’s boring if your brain is trained a certain way. Being sober is slow and boring if you’re used to being high.
“So what do you think’s the answer?” I said.
“Roman believes you have to find a way to make doing good feel just as exciting, the same as when you’re doing bad, the same rush,” said Stefan. “Like Robin Hood. There has to be a thrill.”
Other criminals he met were as smart as he was, he said, a lot of them even smarter. They had talents. But what set him apart was what he had before…because of that advantage, he had time to think about a different future for himself because he knew he had a safe place to come home to.
Jep took it all in quietly, then told his son, “You’ve given us a lot to think about, Stefan. But honey, you know, you don’t need to worry about changing the world today or tomorrow. The day after would be fine. What you need most right now is what soldiers used to call R&R, rest and recreation, as much as you need clear purpose. Give yourself some time to recover from prison. As the doctor told you, it’s almost like you went to war.”
That night, I heard a commotion at the front door. Julie, my best friend, had been traveling when Stefan first came home. She was often traveling for an international dental outreach she sponsored, while her husband, Hal, manned the home front for their boys, who were eight and twelve. So I hadn’t seen her more than in passing. Now she had arrived in full benefactress mode, bustling through the door with packages and bags. Presents were her delight, and she wouldn’t let you feel guilty. Until last year, Julie had merely been wealthy. Trained as a dentist, she had worked for her father, who’d invented some widget that caused what Julie called “an orthodontic revolution.” That still made me laugh, picturing legions of white-coated marchers, all carrying flags emblazoned with retainers. After her father retired, she and her older brothers helped him sell his business for what she called, in her way, a “silly amount” of money. Even more would come when he died. There were times when I was struggling trying to rob from the lawyer’s bill to pay the electric bill, when I knew that if I asked Julie, she would pay both, then buy me a Max Mara silk-and-cashmere coat, on top of that. When I admired just such a new coat a few years back, she took it off and gave it to me.