It was too good to be true.
We walked down the prison corridor, the group of us, as one of my dudes carried the single small box of belongings I chose to keep. He knew I'd need my hands free. Man after man wished me luck, cracked jokes about my leaving, and even threatened me should I ever be dumb enough to return. A combination of hand shakes, hugs and even one “fight” just to keep me on my toes.
Hollywood was going home. The governor had pushed for a new law that suddenly made men like me eligible to file for judicial release. Having nothing to lose, I filed and was granted an early release after having spent literally half of my life inside those walls. I somehow broke the system and everyone celebrated my leaving. Yet I kept looking over my shoulder, anxious about something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
After a long bus ride and court hearing, I was released from the very same county jail I began in almost a decade and a half before. Exiting through a rear door of the downtown highrise, I shielded my eyes from the light reflecting from the myriad of glass skyscrapers around me.
The height of the buildings was too much for me to look up. I walked out wearing my prison blues given that literally nothing was left from before I had gone in. As the push bar door latched behind me and my knees almost buckled at the sound. I couldn't imagine a door locking to keep me out rather than in. Something didn't feel right about this.
Yet, as if to spite my fear and trepidation, there she was. Waiting outside on that busy downtown sidewalk was my wife. Her smile was brighter than the light reflecting from the sun above. An unforeseeable and amazing woman who I had met as a young teen and who had the nerve to marry me while I was still inside those walls.
Running, she dropped the change of clothes she'd brought for me and jumped into my arms. I drew in her familiar scent and that calmed me. The good person who'd chosen me over all the men the free world had to offer. That cheerleader I’d sneak away from my hood to see as a teen. The woman who stuck with me year after year after year and kept my feet grounded. Of all the people in the world, she had been the one waiting for me outside.
“I've never seen you look nervous baby” she commented as we walked to her car. She was concerned though still unable to stop smiling.
“It's fine. Jus' a lot to take in, ya know?” I responded in an attempt to seem casual.
“Too good to be true?”
“What?”
“Like, all of this.”, she gestured around her, “I still can't believe you're actually here” she beamed.
“Yeah. That's prolly it”. She had a point, I was on edge. Tense. Like I was waiting for something bad to happen. Wasn't it sunny out a minute ago?
I changed in the car as she drove us home. It was a longer drive as we had bought a house in a different city than the one I grew up in. Yes, I bought my first house while still incarcerated. I had enough money from hustling and playing games with power of attorney signatures is easy. She wanted a house, so I told her to pick one out. This was the first time I'd seen it outside of photographs.
I didn't know anything about this city. I didn't recognize the streets or neighborhoods. I was all turned around and lost. Here there were no row houses or corner stores. There were also no trap houses and no one slinging either. Strip malls and normal malls and restaurants and well maintained homes. People were walking their dogs and jogging and mowing lawns. It was like something I'd seen in a movie.
So this is what middle class hoods looked like. It was so quiet. Almost eerily so. If one had asked me to invent a “good neighborhood”, I'd imagine this is what I would've come up with. It was almost otherworldly.
Everyone had warned me before I got out that finding a job was going to be a nightmare given my record. Yet I was hired by the first place where I applied. That job then eventually led to my next. Every move was an upward one. I just kept going to work and things kept improving. Eventually leading to an actual career where my family no longer needed to worry about money any longer. It was almost too easy but I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
During this time I reclaimed my estranged daughter, bringing her home with me and safe from the world we'd grown up in with her new siblings and my wife. In addition I also took in my nieces. The courts just kept saying yes over and over in spite of my past felonies. My wife and I had always talked about having a large family however we never saw it coming about like this.
All of my daughters were daddy's girls, my son adored and looked up to me. I loved it. I loved them. Yet I found myself wondering how I was able to be a functional father or even husband to their mother. No one taught me these skills, I had no examples growing up of either to draw from. It was uncanny. My children never once caused me the hardships I inflicted as a child. My wife was attentive and loyal. She and I never even fought. Every day was amazing.
I started grappling with this more and more. This feeling in my gut that this wasn't right. That I didn't deserve this life I was leading. I'm a thug and a felon. How did I go so seamlessly from all of that death and destruction to this dream life? I found myself pacing at night not only grappling with the astonishing unlikelihood of my life but also in trying to understand how I was even living in it.
Not only was it almost too perfect, it was as if I were someone else living it. It's me, I'm the one doing these things, I'm the one making these decisions and moving the pieces into place as everything gets progressively better each day, but how? How did I know what to do? This successful life was completely contrary to everything I've ever been taught and experienced and know.
A seemingly impossible string of events, filled with enormously amazing people, combined with an ability to thrive I didn't know I possessed, all coming together to give me something I didn't deserve. It was overwhelming, this conflict I felt. I needed to understand it however I had to accept as time went on that I wasn't going to. It was beyond me.
As the years passed, I learned what it meant to be grateful. To accept things as they were while cherishing and protecting them. I saw the value in these moments and people. Whether or not I deserved them didn't diminish their independent value in any way. If anything, that understanding only increased it ten fold.
The highlights kept coming too. Men I knew and loved inside the joint got out and themselves thrived. I was able to say goodbye to my unhinged mother before she crossed the country to die in a state far away mere weeks later. She’d actually told me she loved me before pulling away, it was so unlike her. My bastard father apologized to me, apparently having found religion in his old age, for having never been my dad. It's like I had getting closure down to a science.
Every year that passed outshined the one before it. I understood and accepted my place now. I deeply loved and was loved by those around me. All leading up to what had literally become the only holiday I celebrated in my heart. Thanksgiving.
I sat at the head of our massive dining room table with my wife, children, in-laws and grandbabies. Everyone was there and it filled me with something so great I couldn't describe it. My hair had gone gray, my body a fraction of the machine it no longer needed to be, my smile a normal expression that needed no specific inspiration to be worn.
They were perfect.
This was perfect.
I stood to speak, getting everyone's attention as they laughed and talked over each other. I needed to get this feeling out. I needed them to know. Once all eyes were on me I raised a toast to them.
“I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have each of you in my life. How I couldn't have imagined a better family to spend this day with. I don't deserve any of you and…”
There was a sharp and sudden pain in my midsection. It took my breath away.
“Dad?” My ten year olds voice was full of concern, seeing my reaction.
“Just give me a second” I reassured her through clenched teeth as I attempted to muscle through whatever this was.
“I guess it's that time, huh?” my son announced to the table.
I was so confused as the pain in my gut grew. I didn't know what to do as everyone at the table quietly and casually watched me. I was so cold.
“What? I…. What?” I stumbled with my words as I braced myself on the table. Was I sweating? My body felt wet.
My wife stood at the other end and walked around to me. I barely noticed her as I look d down at my hand. Am I bleeding? She got my attention with her palm on my cheek, my eyes rising up to meet hers. She had aged so beautifully, as if time somehow made her even better. I loved her gray hair and wrinkles that matched my own. It was getting hard to see her though, something was wrong with my vision.
“We're all grateful for you too, baby. You did so so good.” She said to me sweetly, her eyes filling with tears. “But you have to go now.” she gasped, “I love you.” she finished as she leaned in to kiss me.
A kiss as warm and loving and perfect as I had ever known or could've imagined.
But it was too good to be true…..
I flinched suddenly from the pain and when my eyes opened I found myself in a once familiar place. I remember this. I'm in my old cell.
Then I saw myself. Not in a mirror but lying on the bottom rack in front of me. It was me however I looked different. I hadn't looked like that in many, many years. I watched my old friends in a frenzy trying to figure out what to do as blood trickled from the open wound in my stomach.
I remember this day. I had been stabbed outside the chow hall and they had pulled the metal from me before cauterizing the wound. We had laughed and cracked so many jokes that day.
Didn't we?
Oh. Now I understand. Why did everything feel so matter of fact now?
They hadn't saved me that day. In fact, it still was that day. This wasn't even done becoming a memory yet. That piece of metal had actually pierced and shedded my organs. From where I stood watching, I was very aware of the internal bleeding taking place in my motionless body.
My body.
I could barely even remember having ever been that young while realizing I was never actually older.
My status in prison, my wife reaching out to me in there, my wedding day, finding my daughter, getting out, my career, the family I loved and life I built, none of it ever happened. It was never real. Yet, I felt every moment as if it had been.
I could remember all of the perfect moments I never lived.
Yet this decades long, single second in time, was coming to an end. I understood what they meant now. My life did flash before my eyes. However it wasn't a replay of the one I had lived but rather the creation of the one I wanted.
I closed my eyes.
It was a good life.
Even if it was too good to be true.
Holy shit, man... I mean, HOLY SHIT.
Fantastic work...
I wasn’t ready for it.
Taking the reader to the place the protagonist is is not an easy thing in a short story but you did it.
Feeling time is more dimensional than linear leads me to believing it’s true.