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.
Deanie laid both the photos and the logo aside, promising that the broadcast would feature them and the number to call The Healing Project. Something walked lightly across the back of my neck. I was like a dog that could feel a thunderstorm coming.
“So to be a participant in The Healing Project, the person has to state their remorse in writing. How about you, Stefan? Have you done that?”
“I have. My remorse was the inspiration for this program. My renewal was starting it.”
“Can you tell the viewers what you said?”
“I said I was responsible for the death of the girl I loved. Belinda McCormack.”
“You hit her with a golf club and killed her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I really don’t know what happened. I really don’t. I took a lot of drugs in the evening.”
“More than usual?”
“Well there was no usual. At first, it was just that I took…well, methamphetamine to keep up…with school. With Belinda. She was so much smarter, and I was worried all the time.”