Authors: Molly Brodak
Bandit (20 page)
F
ifteen years after divorcing Dad, Mom got married in her hiking boots, to a steady, supportive man, the one she’d been looking for. It was just a few of us with them in a sunny park as they said their vows. A large dragonfly settled on Mom’s shoulder like a brooch and stayed there until they turned to walk back to us as husband and wife. They live in a small home on a strip of land where Mom grows a giant patch of strawberries and my stepfather practices his bow and arrow on a homemade target. They go camping as often as they can.
And my sister married too. She never released me from the promise never to talk to Dad about her, where she lived or worked, or what her life was like now, so I never mentioned the wedding in my emails with him. But he found out from his siblings, who must have told him about it in their letters. Twice his recent emails mentioned it, in a slyly hurt
way, saying he heard the wedding was fun and beautiful out there on the golf course, and he wished he had known about it sooner, a passive-aggressive jab at me. I recognized he was trying to manipulate me. Just as Mom said he would, and for no other reason but to make me feel a little bad, to seed our relationship with an imbalance of guilt.
But I had learned this weaponizing of pride; it had no effect on me. Instead I thought of him alone in prison, enjoying his daily distractions, but without progress, suspended in the timeless nowhere space of punishment. Suspended in betweenness.
I saw myself suspended too. My family has changed and I’m so glad for them, having evolved past him, past even his invisible reach that hung over everyone but me. And now it is everyone but me who is finished with him.
H
e loved to pretend to crash the car. We’d be driving anywhere and he’d swerve it clownishly, jolting us side to side, and we’d laugh and shriek. He’d slam the breaks and pump them twice, thumping and yelling “OH NOO, FLUFFY!” to make like he’d just run over a cat. He’d do a Donald Duck squabble and tears would stream down my face from laughing so hard.
“MOLLY LOVES YOU” he’d yell out of the car window at any random boy walking on any sidewalk as we drove by. I’d squeal and hit him and whine “Daaa-aad!,” honestly embarrassed when the boy would look back at us, a classmate sometimes. I’d sink into the car seat, blushing, angry but laughing. He’d just lean again out of the window and yell louder, “MOLLY LOVES YOU!”
T
wenty-one years went by since the first robbery and I never talked to him about it.
I saw what happened when Grandpa asked him about his motives and I assumed that would happen to me too, if I brought it up. And I didn’t really want to hear what he had to say, because I didn’t want the feeling of watching him lie to me ever again. He’d say the sort of stuff he said at his trials, use the logical explanations, put me on that side of things, put an official story between us.
But what did I really have to lose? I had tried everything else, everything except directly asking him to explain himself.
I wanted the real version. But I felt like the last person on the list who should be asking him about his crimes. After enough time passed I started to think he just couldn’t say the real version, and who was I to deserve it anyway. And after
even more time passed I started to think I already have the real version.
What was left to know? His choices are plain. Still, I wanted to know which parts were real and which parts were fake. For example, did he love Mom? It mattered to me somehow; it has something to do with the way I think about myself. If I were hurt more, I’d write him off like everyone else and just assume it was all fake, and that book would shut.
Now I’m first on the list to ask him, because I’m the only one left. I see a future where he appears again and I am there, and I don’t know why. I might be the only one there. Also, I know a liar wants to be known. I know a criminal wants to be caught, because it is the only way of being known. I think a person who feels mortality sidling up wants to be known. Besides, he might be different now.
So I started there. I labored over an email to him that began with normal pleasantries and then something about getting older, and how I felt as if I was so different now from when I was in my twenties. Gingerly I transitioned into asking him about getting older, too. I asked if he felt different from before. If he ever thinks about the crimes, and if he sees them differently.
Open, nonjudgmental, baggy questions. Invitations to talk more than questions, really. I hoped with all my will he’d talk.
I checked my email every other day for weeks—no answer. A month went by, two months, three months. I figured I was cut off.
Then, a fat envelope in my mailbox. A six-page letter from him.
In the end, I don’t know what I owe him. The layers of my feelings toward him seem to have no conclusion, however much I peel and dig. I don’t want to say anything about this letter. It’s the least I can do now, to let him speak for himself.
Dear Molly,
Instead of using the computer I decided to sit down and write a letter. There’s a charge for email service and a half-hour time constraint. Most of the time, too, there’s a waiting line for computer use—only four PCs are provided for about 150 people. I try to email early in the morning or when its mealtime and most guys are at the chow hall.
First of all, I’m glad you received that Christmas gift that Carol sent. As far as your sensitive question is concerned, I am a changed man.
My crime sprees (1994) (2009), although financially motivated, happened for different
reasons. What I understand now, however, is why I acted impulsively and without regard to the law. At the time I also compromised my religious beliefs.
Back in the spring of 1994 I was apprehended for possessing a company car and, subsequently, GM fired me. The labor union made a deal and I was going to be rehired after spending a year away from GM. At the time I was renting a condo and had credit card bills to pay. I tried working at a couple of tool and die shops but quit promptly—these places offered less hourly pay and much less comfortable work conditions.
So, I decided to rob a credit union.
I got the idea of a demand note and a toy gun from witnessing a robbery, at that same credit union, by a young man who quietly pulled the caper and just drove away.
When I was about to rob that Royal Oak credit union, I told myself that I was on a paramilitary mission and my plan
had
to be completed. This attitude provided the daring and lack of conscience that were required for committing the crime. I believe that this attitude resulted from my combat experience.
Since the take from the credit union robbery was small (a few thousand), I had to continue robbing banks in order to maintain my lifestyle—I had custody of your sister and paid support for you.
Thus, my greatest fear was losing custody of my daughter.
After a few months I decided that I was going to commit one last crime—I had a good job offer and the winter months would be perfect to work at a small shop before returning to GM. But, I was caught, and for the first time in my life, I was locked in jail.
This experience was frightening and very uncomfortable but I hung in and was finally released in 2000. A few months after settling in at GM and in a nice apartment with your sister, I met Carol. She was different than the women I had as girlfriends. Carol was financially independent, had old-fashioned values, and most significantly, reminded me of my first wife.
When I met Carol I was not the least bit interested in meeting any women. In fact, I attended a singles dance at a church, in order to speak to a friend who had a good position at a bank and who I was hoping would help get your sister hired there.
The reason I was not interested in having another girlfriend was my criminal past—no decent woman would accept me for a meaningful relationship. Nevertheless, I pursued Carol and never told her of my crimes. She was satisfied with my response that the past is irrelevant.
Before long I was able to get a mortgage and move to that other house with your sister. Meanwhile, at work, the plant I worked in for many years closed and I was moved to a building that had very little security. As a condition of being rehired by GM I worked the afternoon shift. But now, at the new facility, I worked the day shift and, like many of my coworkers, I snuck out of the plant for hours at a time. The Detroit casinos were opening at this time, so I found a fun place where I spent most of my work day.
Since I had a mortgage I was able to get new credit cards and quickly ran up charges. Eventually I used the cards to offset gambling losses at the casinos.
At the same time, my relationship with Carol blossomed and I wound up moving in with her. My GM income was healthy but it was all used towards a high mortgage payment, an auto loan, multi-car insurance, and a number of credit cards. Not to mention what I gave to you and your sister.
In the end I fell behind on my mortgage and car payments and misappropriated your sister’s credit card account, so I decided to retire from GM.
A $50,000 early retirement payoff covered the money I owed your sister plus some other bills.
So, here I was, 63 years old, retired, earning $1,700 a month from Social Security and $1,000 a month from my pension, but I still couldn’t pay my bills. I was still gambling every day.
In January 2009 I decided to stop visiting the casinos and I returned to a mission of stealing money from banks so I could catch up with my debts and finally break even. I wanted your sister to be able to stay in that house.
As you know, my plan did not work.
I was locked up again. When this happened I was certain that your sister would be there for me and that Carol would be out of my life forever. Quite the opposite happened, though. I deceived Carol about my past (lie of omission), her house was raided by the FBI (they smashed the front door, confiscated her personal property) and she was interrogated.
To my surprise, Carol forgave me for lying and supported me after my arrest. It was then that I learned this: had Carol known about my debts she would have paid them off and there would have been no need to rob banks.
This revelation changed my love for Carol. For five years now she has waited for me. The fact that Carol has committed herself to me has changed me. From now on the rest of my life will be devoted to this angel of a woman.
Thus, as far as I’m concerned, the rest of my life has a new meaning. A devoted, loving woman waits for me. We will share our remaining years together and I will also try to be a good father, grandfather, and sibling when possible.
In the interim, I’m hoping to complete this, my final time here, soon. If all goes well I’ll transfer to Milan, Michigan, where I can be closer to Carol for the purpose of her visiting me. Then I’ll be returning home—my real home. I’ll be with Carol again.
By the way, once I’m home again, I’ll continue my retirement. Perhaps I’ll join Carol and we will sell birdhouses as a hobby. We are talking of becoming snow birds, do some traveling and investing in property up north.
Out of room. Hope that answers your question.
Love,
Dad
“T
hese might tell you something!” Mom had written on a piece of cardboard bound with a rubber band to a few photos she wanted me to have, sent in a manila envelope covered in
HAVE A NICE DAY
stickers.
Thick, orangey photos with rounded corners and a faraway matte finish, photos I had never seen before, of their wedding day. Dad is wearing the gray-collared polo shirt he wore in the square portrait he’d sent to Mom. They sit together for one photo over a forest of beer and pop bottles on the table in front of them, his arm around her shoulder. Mom is the most beautiful I have ever seen her. Sharply pretty, with a perfect ruby smile like my sister’s. In her eyes, a little tiredness, or drunkenness, or something worse. On her shoulder, Dad’s hand is pressing hard, the gold glint of his wedding ring a bright point of light. His chin is up, eyebrows raised,
mouth curling in a goofily proud grin that could be real or just kidding, I can’t tell.
Another photo, a firework, a ground bloom spraying up and off to one side in the wind like a fire feather against a bank of dark apartments. No one is in that photo, just the wires of sparks, the shadows behind, and a pale evening sky.
Thank you to Blake Butler, Bill Clegg, Amy Hundley, Amy McDaniel, Kathryn Stockett, Paul and Barbara Brown, Lindsey Duvall, Christiana Worth, Ed Haworth Hoeppner, and most importantly, thank you Mom, Dad, and Boo.
