The Moth Presents All These Wonders

by Catherine Burns

  Three days later I left for London for a book tour and brought his book with me on the plane. By the time I landed in London, I had read his book, and I sent him an e-mail.

  I said that I thought it was a “terrifying story, brilliantly told.”

  He wrote back immediately and said, “If you don’t mail me your book, I’m going to come to your house and stand outside your window like John Cusack in Say Anything.”

  (I hadn’t seen that movie, but you can bet that within the hour I had.)

  And that scene—John Cusack standing outside this girl’s window with a boom box, which is one of the great romantic scenes in movie history—has a soundtrack, which is Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” And I listened to that song over and over and over, trying to decipher it, trying to determine whether there was hidden meaning in the lyrics.

  That one e-mail made me feel alive for the first time in years. I sashayed through the streets of London feeling vibrant and sexy and gorgeous. I felt like a completely different woman.

  We e-mailed back and forth throughout that trip, and every time I saw his name in my inbox, I felt a small thrill, the tiniest of flutters. I was careful not to say anything overt or suggestive—not to flirt. But I was…enthusiastic. I wrote long, long missives and counted the minutes until he wrote back.

  It felt safe. He lived on the other side of the country, and his e-mails made me feel beautiful. They made me feel desirable. All he’d have to do was send me three lines and start it with “My sweet lady Jane,” and I would be putty for the rest of the day.

  Is this how affairs start? I thought.

  Not for me. I would never have an affair!

  Much to my dismay, his e-mails quickly dropped off. He still wrote occasionally, and when I’d see his name in my inbox, I still felt the tiniest of flutters. The truth is, life got busy. And better. But I missed the excitement.

  A little while later, my publishers phoned me up and said, “We have an event for you in L.A., so we’re going to send you out there.” I paused and thought, L.A. Young, handsome author is in L.A.

  So I got in touch and said, “Hey, I’m coming to town.”

  He said, “Great. Let’s get together.”

  So we made a plan.

  I went and found my husband, and I said, “Darling, I have to go to L.A. on September fourth.”

  He said, “September fourth?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  He said, “I don’t think so.”

  I said, “Excuse me?”

  I was affronted.

  He said, “Jane, you’re not going to L.A. on September fourth.”

  And I was outraged.

  I think I actually said, “This is my career. I’m going to L.A. My publishers want to send me, and I’m going.”

  He said, “Jane, September fourth? It’s my birthday.”

  I felt horrible. Terrible. Not only had I forgotten my husband’s birthday, I was planning on spending that day flirting my ass off with somebody else.

  “I could come with you,” said my husband. “We’ll make a weekend out of it.”

  I stared at my husband like a deer caught in the headlights.

  So my husband comes to L.A., and on the morning of our date (because my husband is now coming on my date), I spend an awful lot of time deciding what to wear.

  By the way, my husband knows about this author, because shortly after I met him at that book conference, we did meet for a quick drink in New York. When I got home at the end of the night, buzzed from martinis and flirting, my husband took one look at me and said, “Uh-oh, my wife has a crush” (which I furiously denied).

  So we go to the restaurant, and as we walk up, I see the author sitting outside on the bench. He’s got his sleeves rolled up, and he’s wearing aviators, and he is still impossibly handsome and cool.

  We say hello, and we go into the restaurant. We sit down, and I say…nothing. Because my husband and the author are getting on like a house on fire.

  At one point the author excuses himself to go the bathroom, and my husband looks at me and says, “Wow! He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen!”

  The author comes back and suggests we all go for a walk along the canals in Venice, but before we go, we stop at his house for him to get changed.

  And I get to see the greener grass—I get to see his house, and it’s beautiful. It’s very modern and sparse and serene. I think of my own house, with cats and dogs and children, and a chicken on every surface, and piles of papers everywhere, and noise and mess and chaos.

  The three of us set off for our walk. It’s a blisteringly hot day, and within ten minutes there are beads of sweat on my forehead and my hair has frizzed up into what is effectively a cloud of cotton candy. My jeans, which are already two sizes too small, now feel four sizes too small.

  And the sandals—the sandals that I had bought specifically for the brunch, because they said, Hey, I’m casual. I haven’t made too much of an effort, but I’m sexy—it turns out those sandals were built for brunching, not for walking.

  So I’m walking along, behind my husband and the author, and they have their heads together, and it’s some pretty major man love going on. And fifteen feet behind them, I’m limping along miserably, with blisters forming, and I’m hot, and I’m sticky, and I’m sweaty, and I’m sore, and all I can think is, It bloody well serves me right.

  That night I looked at my husband, at his salty-sea-dog gray beard, and his big, comforting hands, and the way he has brought so much kindness and stability and love into my life, and I felt ashamed.

  A friend of mine once told me that the grass is greener where you water it: I had forgotten to water the grass.

  The next day the author sent me an e-mail. And my heart didn’t flutter.

  He said, “Your husband’s great. He’s smart and handsome and lovely.”

  And I thought, Yes, he is absolutely right.

  JANE GREEN is the author of seventeen novels, sixteen of which were New York Times bestsellers. A former journalist in the UK, she has had her own radio show on BBC Radio London and is a regular contributor on radio and TV, including Good Morning America, The Martha Stewart Show, and the Today show. Together with writing books and blogs, she contributes to various publications, both online and in print, including the Huffington Post, the Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan, and Self. She has a weekly column in the Lady magazine, England’s longest-running weekly magazine, and published three books in 2016: Falling: A Love Story; Summer Secrets; and Good Taste. Good Food. A Good Life. She lives in Westport, Connecticut, with her husband and their blended family.

  This story was told on November 9, 2015, in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City. The theme of the evening was State of Affairs. Director: Meg Bowles.

  It was the week before Christmas, and I was sitting in the death cell in Portlaoise Prison in County Laois, Ireland. Some weeks previously I had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death by the Special Criminal Court for a murder I did not commit. The Special Criminal Court is a non-jury court.

  I sat in that death cell, which was a very dismal place. The windows had been blocked off. There was no natural light and a bank of fluorescent lights overhead, which were never turned off day or night and which after a little while began to burn my eyes. I was forced to be always in the presence of at least two jailers, and they would sit quite close to me.

  One day I heard them having a conversation. They were discussing what role they might have to play in my hanging.

  One said to the other, “Seamus, were you told also that two of us would have to participate in his execution?”

  (This was said as if I didn’t exist, as if I wasn’t a human being.)

  And Seamus said, “Yes, that’s right. What do you think we’re going to have to do?”

  The third guy, Eddie, said, “Well, whatever we have to do, they’re going to have to pay us extra money, because that is not our usual job, and so we’re going to have to get a bonus for doing t
his work.”

  They went on to discuss what role they might have to play, and they came to the conclusion that at my execution two jailers would be positioned underneath the gallows. When my body came down through the trapdoor, each jailer would have to pull on one of my legs to ensure that my neck was broken quickly.

  It was as if I was not there. It was as if they weren’t speaking about me. And I was very angry and upset and disturbed by this, but it illustrates the inhumanity of the death penalty. It even affects the jailers. They’re not allowed to speak to the condemned prisoner, because it wouldn’t do them any good to learn to like the prisoner or to respect the prisoner. Because how can you cold-bloodedly help to kill somebody that you like or respect?

  Now, this was in the year 1980, and it was twenty-six years since this state had executed anybody. And there was a body of opinion which said that it was unlikely they would carry it out. But when I heard these jailers discussing my execution, and the fact that the authorities had told them there would be a role for them in it, there was no doubt in my mind that I was facing death. I tried as best as I could to distance myself from that, and to curb my anger.

  Christmas passed in a lonely, dismal way without any contact with the outside world, and without any contact with my loved ones. Shortly after Christmas, as the post was being delivered to the prisoners, a jailer came and handed me a postcard. And this postcard was extraordinary.

  It was written by a woman whom I did not know, and she told in the postcard how the day after Christmas she was walking on the shore at Greystones, south of Dublin, grieving for her brother, whose name was Peter. He had been a seaman and had lost his life in an accident at sea.

  And she remembered that there was another Peter who was facing death. You see, I had been a fisherman, and I had spent a long time at sea. She remembered that there was another seaman named Peter, and she thought she would write to me to wish me well, and to pray that I would not be executed.

  When I got that card, it just lifted my heart. That lady, whom I didn’t know, restored my humanity to me and lifted my spirits. And while I knew that I was facing death, and I knew with certainty that the worst thing that they could do to me would be to kill me—until such time as they did that, I was my own person.

  While they could imprison me physically, they could not imprison my mind or my heart or my spirit. And so it was within those realms of myself that I determined that I would live. Within that death cell, in that small space around myself, I had my own sanctuary. I learned to almost totally ignore what was around me.

  Sometime later, almost six months later—and eleven days before my execution date—my sentence was commuted from the death sentence to forty years’ penal servitude without remission, and I was placed back out into the general prison population. This was done because an execution was not in the political interest of the government at that time.

  Now, I knew I couldn’t possibly face forty years there, and, inspired by getting off death row, I determined to try to prove my innocence. I studied law in the prison, and I took my own case. With the help of a human-rights lawyer named Greg O’Neill, we took the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal. While there were a number of grounds upon which my conviction could have been overturned, in May of 1995 my conviction was overturned because of conflicting testimony of police, and I was released from the Special Criminal Court.

  It was almost surreal, and when I stepped outside the court, I was faced with a huge crowd of media people with their cameras and their microphones. They were all shoving them in my face, and throwing questions at me, and wanting me to do things like give a clenched-fist salute and all that nonsense.

  I didn’t have a moment to myself. And then my lawyer took me, and we went to the television station, and we had an interview for the news. Afterwards my friends had organized a party, and everybody was drinking and happy and enjoying themselves and talking to me and clapping my back.

  But I wasn’t really in it. I hadn’t had time to assimilate my liberty.

  That night I stayed with a friend in the suburbs of Dublin. The following morning I woke up early, and I went downstairs. The rest of the household was still asleep, and I went out to the backyard.

  They had a lovely backyard. It was stretched way back from the house. And I walked down the back garden, and the sun was shining, and I felt so good. I began to breathe in the fresh air and the colors and the greenery and hear the birds singing.

  Down at the bottom of the garden, there was an old, old apple tree. I went up to this apple tree, and I put my hand out, and I touched the bark of the tree, which was gnarled.

  I was thinking about this tree, which had been growing there for countless years, season in and season out. Every year producing its fruit, shedding its leaves, producing new leaves, and just carrying on its business in nature, oblivious of the big city around it.

  Oblivious of the hatred and the anger and the injustice and the wars, the depredation and the hunger and everything that goes on. Just simply being in nature.

  And I put my arms around that tree, and I wept.

  PETER PRINGLE won his freedom in 1995. He since has established the Sunny Center, with his wife, Sunny Jacobs, where they provide respite and rehabilitation to other wrongly convicted people once they are released. Learn more at thesunnycenter.com. Peter is a graduate of The Moth Community Program and participated in a workshop in collaboration with the Innocence Project.

  This story was told on September 5, 2014, at the Freemasons’ Hall in Dublin, Ireland. The theme of the evening was Don’t Look Back. Directors: Sarah Austin Jenness, Larry Rosen.

  I am driving my silver Volvo station wagon from Brooklyn to my mother’s house in Rosedale, Queens, on a hot midafternoon August day in 2003.

  My mother is a widow. My father has passed away from lung cancer fifteen years before, in 1988, and she has not resumed dating. She has sworn off men in no uncertain terms.

  She has told me that “I am never, ever going to wash another pair of men’s underwear again. I am finished with the species. I’m done.”

  She’s somewhere around eighty years old, but I don’t know for sure, because she’s never told me how old she is. As a matter of fact, on my birth certificate, you can see that she has altered her age.

  I’m very close with my mother. We’ve always had this bond, this silent love between us. I check in with her almost every evening to make sure she’s okay, and to alleviate her loneliness.

  As long as I can remember, I’ve always been my mother’s protector against my father, my brother, and the rest of the world, and she’s also been mine.

  I grew up in a very volatile house. My father was a World War II veteran. He suffered from post–traumatic stress syndrome, which wasn’t really diagnosed in those days. My older brother, who also had problems, lived downstairs.

  As my father got sick from cancer, he lost his booming voice. But as his voice faded away, my brother’s voice in the basement rose. And I could tell that this was not a good sign for things to come.

  You know, when we grow up, we all think we’re gonna get married, we’re gonna have our own family, and we’re gonna leave the other family behind—our siblings and our parents. But it doesn’t actually always occur that way. It’s very hard to break those ties from the first family that formed you.

  Anyway, my mother and I get in the car that day, and we’re going to visit my brother Ralph, who no longer lives with my mother. He now resides at the Creedmore Psychiatric Center. It’s the state mental hospital, the one that’s located in Queens off Union Turnpike.

  He’s not too happy about living there, but that’s where he’s been for the last seven years. He’s been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, borderline personality—any diagnosis that’s out there, he’s got it, okay?

  So he’s been to therapy. He’s had shock treatments. He’s had every combination of antipsychotic drugs and all the side effects that go with them—the weight
gain, the teeth loss, the tremors, the shaking, the stiffness, the diabetes.

  When he’s stable, we’re actually allowed to take him out on a pass, and he loves to go out on passes, because we take him shopping, and he can get something to eat, because he doesn’t like the food there.

  He also loves to go to the hair salon. My brother Ralph’s hair is very important to him. He doesn’t have many teeth, but his hair has to be done just so. If it’s not just so, his emotional state plummets, and then we have to deal with that.

  So we’re on the way to Creedmore. He lives in Building 40, a seventeen-story building, and he’s in a locked facility on the eleventh floor.

  When we were kids, we used to pass Creedmore on the parkway, and it was a place where the boogeyman lived—where all the crazy people lived.

  My father used to say, “You don’t want to wind up in Creedmore.”

  And now it’s my brother’s home.

  We get there, and we have to go through two sets of doors, and then we’re locked in. I walk to the elevator, and I press the button, and as we’re waiting for the elevator to descend to the lobby, the lights go out.

  We’re all looking around. We don’t know what happened. It’s two years after 9/11. Everyone’s a little jittery. We’re thinking, Hey, maybe this could be another attack or something. It’s 2003, most people don’t have cell phones. I don’t have a cell phone.

  About ten minutes later, they say, “It’s a blackout.”

  It’s the blackout of 2003, which affected, I think, 50 million people and knocked out Ontario and eight states here in America. But we don’t know this at the time. All I know is that my brother has a pass, and he wants to go out—he’s looking forward to it.

  So I ask the guys, can they call upstairs and talk to the doctor? And they do, and they say I can go up there.