Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  “Are you Charles Goodwin?”

  “Yes.” He looked up at me, and I knew he recognized me for the same reason I would never mistake him. And there we were, for the first time since he had left me to die twenty-four years ago, in a cafeteria on a bright sunny day in a community release center in Lincoln, Nebraska. I held out my hand. Introduced myself. He stood up, extended his arm for a friendly handshake. My mind started moving in a hundred directions with all the things I wanted to ask. We stood for the longest two seconds in history.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked, my heart beating so rapidly it was difficult to hear my thoughts. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your plans.”

  “Sure,” he said in a polite manner, offering me a chair. Somehow I put aside my feelings about his refusal to be videotaped, I put aside that just yesterday I had testified against his release at the parole board, I put aside my fears that he was still lying, and I became intent on finding the good in him. Our rapport felt instant; his amiability made it that easy.

  The first thing I did was thank him for agreeing to the Victim-Offender Dialogue. I told him the timing of my request so close to the parole hearing had been unfortunate, but until six months ago I hadn’t even known his name. He told me his friends and family were concerned when they heard I had approached him and told him not to agree to it. But he felt it was the least he could do. I’d unpack that later, but at the moment, it felt so good to feel like we were playing for the same team, I didn’t want to disrupt the equilibrium.

  I next asked him if he could tell me what kind of support he’d have once he got out, whether he had people to support him in the transition. He said he had a special relationship with the father of a young prison inmate who had died of a brain aneurysm while serving time. The man had all but adopted him. They attended church together, and Charles stayed with him on weekend furloughs from prison, part of the transition program to release.

  “He’s financially set,” Charles shared. “Not that it’s important to me, but he has said he will be there if I ever need help.”

  “So you don’t need to rob a bank to get by,” I joked, not able to help myself.

  “Yeah,” he laughed, a little too enthusiastically. “No more of that! He’s even helped me get a car.”

  I asked him if he could tell me about his more recent rehab program. He responded without hesitating that he enrolled in every rehabilitation program offered, including cognitive therapy and a sex offenders support group. “Most important, though, I have this lady psychiatrist who is there for more than just the paycheck. She’s good. I’ve been seeing her once a week, but that’s going to change to once a month. There’s not many out there like her. I’m really lucky.”

  “Yes, I know how tough it is to find the right therapist. I’ve had a few myself over the years.” I left it to him to draw the connection, which I don’t think he did. “You know,” I continued, “there aren’t many people out there who think violent offenders can change. It’s a pretty hostile world, and there’s very little faith in violent offenders turning their lives around because recidivism rates are so high.”

  He listened, then paused before speaking. “God has sent great people into my life, though.” He told me he was a member of a good church. The head minister had even written a note of support for him for the parole board.

  I had no interest in returning to the subject of God with him, and quickly moved on to asking about his family. He said he had lost both of his parents in the years he served in prison. While he wasn’t specific about the cause of death for his father, he offered that his mother had died of cancer. He added that he had two brothers. They were decent people, were well respected in the community, and he didn’t want to make their lives hard again.

  He was also proud to report that he had two jobs—one hanging drywall, the other telemarkteing. Told me his godfather said he didn’t know how he could do the telemarketing, deal with all the rejection, but Charles laughed. “It just slides off me.” I told him telemarketing was a good job. I’d done hundreds of hours of phone banking myself during elections, and respected the work.

  When it seemed as if we had established what felt like solid ground, I asked if I could say a few things to him. He nodded, saying, “Yeah, sure,” like no problem, I’m listening.

  “I’m not sure you understand the damage you did to my life that night,” I started. “I’m not saying this because I want to make you feel bad, but I need you to understand the long-term consequences of your actions. You not only terrorized me that night, you traumatized my father by threatening my life and making him stand there waiting for you. You changed my mother’s and my sisters’ lives forever. And then there were my friends at school, and at church and the Omaha Community.” The words came from a deeply broken place, yet filled me with a calm, peaceful strength.

  “I did nothing to you.” I wanted him to feel something of my pain—without shame, without judgment. “And it didn’t end that night for me.

  I have had to fight against the terror you inflicted on me every day since.” I felt no anger as I spoke—I felt a release in my soul, the chain of horror I had been carrying for years, the weight I had carried disintegrating. “The damage doesn’t go away. You cannot take it back.” I paused, waiting for him to catch up.

  “I want to say I’m sorry,” he said, glancing up and then looking down again, “but it sounds so empty.” He appeared to be fighting back tears.

  I told him I hoped he would make something of his future, find a family, happiness. And I meant it. I wanted it because I understood now the evil I had experienced could only surface in the absence of human connection.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for sharing those words.” Then another pause, a strange shift in energy. Perhaps he was gathering thoughts.

  “Can I tell you something else, something I never told Jill?” He looked to me for approval to go on. “I told her about what happened to me when I was fourteen—in the holding jail in Douglas County. That’s when they broke my jaw. I was always proud of my smile until then.” He laughed in a self-deprecating way, as if to ease the tone. “In fact, I think I might get cosmetic surgery now that I’m out.” He paused. “But I didn’t tell her that I was raped in prison, by a guy, a racist.”

  He was in real tears now, sniffling, wiping his nose, not looking up. Holding his head in his hands. “I’m sure it had something to do with what I did to you.”

  If he was hoping I would feel sympathy for him, he was mistaken. Instead, I raised the meeting with Kim. “Did you come to terms with your trauma before or after the session with Kim?”

  “Kim Haller, your friend?” He was so surprised by that, his eyes grew wide.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get to talk to her?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Now, that whole thing freaked me out,” he said, leaning to the side of his chair, as if to get out of the way. “Did she tell you about that whole thing?”

  “Yes, but I’d like hear your story. She said you were a big help to her while she was working in prison.”

  “Yeah. Well, this isn’t easy for me to tell you. She was working at the release center and we got to be friends. To be honest, I had a crush on Kim. And it’s not easy for me to tell you. That’s before I found out she was connected to you in any way. So when I found out that she was one of your best friends, I felt sick, you know. I had really terrible nightmares for a long time, and after that, every time I met or had to work with a white woman in prison, I was afraid because I thought that woman was going to turn out to be you.”

  “But then you went and robbed the bank after that. And you terrorized another three people, three people who aren’t at this table today.”

  “And I’ve offended more. I hope to honor you by never hurting another human being again.”

  I felt awkward. “And how about honoring yourself?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking down.

 
He relaxed back in his chair.

  “You know,” he began, “all my friends were asking me why I would want to talk to you, why I would want to go back into that, when I’ve changed. They said they couldn’t imagine what your motivations would be. I told them I was doing it because it’s what God would want me to do.”

  Uninterested in hearing of God’s personal plan, I moved the conversation on. Asked him if there was anyone he felt close to, a guardian angel of sorts? He smiled like I’d just hit the jackpot, looked straight at me.

  “I had a girlfriend when I was a teenager. But she committed suicide when she was fourteen. An overdose. Alcohol.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, genuinely.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking down. “She was a good friend to me.” Then he looked me square in the eye. “She had hair like Farrah Fawcett.”

  My stomach tightened. The night before, when I had been with my group of old junior high school friends, they had all teased me about my Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, about the ever-present comb in my back pocket.

  “I’m glad I came to see you,” I said and stood up, wanting to thank him for proving he was an asshole. I looked over at Thomas, thought it might be a good idea for the two of them to meet. I asked Charles if he’d like to meet my husband. He said sure.

  Thomas came over. Charles extended his hand. My husband clearly didn’t want to take it, but I nodded in encouragement. Just then the court clerk called the name Charles Goodwin.

  “Good luck,” I said to him.

  The four of us attended the hearing. I couldn’t help but think as I listened to the speech he delivered to the parole board how much I wanted to believe him:

  “It is important to me to be honorable, not because I want to get out of here. I didn’t have a bunch of people come, I didn’t have a bunch of people write letters or anything along those lines, simply because for me this is not a game anymore. There was a point in time when there was a game about getting out of here. I got out and I failed because it was a game to get out of here, it wasn’t about staying out. It wasn’t about going out of here and doing the right thing. I was a very very young man. I was a child at the time. I acted like a child. I spoke like a child. I am a man now and I choose to act like a man. And I make my decisions like a man. I have chosen wise men to be good guides because I know my decisions aren’t always the best decisions. My choices aren’t the best choices. So I speak to wise people to get guidance. And I will very much so continue to try to do that. I will honor any regulations, any stipulations that the board would set here. And very much so, I will continue to honor my job obligations, and more than anything else, I will continue to honor God, and I will honor the people that I have harmed in the past by not harming other people. That’s the best I can do for the people I have harmed in my past.”

  What a rousing speech.

  As we walked out of the building, I realized that Charles Goodwin was no longer a monster of evil proportions in my mind. But clearly he was the human who had committed those gross acts of violence against me, my family, and the community I lived in. And he was about to be released again with his rights to live among the rest of us. He had taken his punishment. He had gone through treatment. He had served his time.

  I made one last check that he was registered as a violent sexual offender before setting off, and began counting the days to his next offense, hoping he’d prove me wrong.

  In Which I Consider What I Learned about Human Nature

  Shepherdstown, 2003—A week after I returned to West Virginia, my email inbox pinged. “What’s up?” It was Dad. I emailed him back, excited to share the news. I was exhausted, but happy and grounded and recovering from an incredible high. Thomas called it a week of miracles, and that’s how it felt. So much love from so many people I had connected with from those years. I told Dad I wish he could have been with me. I told him the parole board had been incredibly supportive, beyond my wildest expectations. After the parole hearing, Rachael Selway made it a point to walk me through the lobby and lent such heartwarming soulful words for my journey ahead that their power remains with me today. And Judge Morrison even walked us to the car and gave me a huge hug before I left. And best of all, Kent Friesen called me from Colorado the morning of the hearing.

  What I didn’t tell Dad was one of the most invaluable lessons of that day—that I had an opportunity to see my own defensive reactions at play. No one watching me approach Charles Goodwin that morning would have guessed our history. Despite the adrenaline flowing through my system, the bold aggressive impulsiveness of my move, I pulled up a chair as if we were old friends. I sat there and played the role of support, asked him how he felt, ran through the checklist, showed care, concern for his future. Told him how he had damaged my life, and in the following sentence, wished him the best life had to offer. I’d like to think it was the better part of my nature, but if I evaluate it at a more primal level, it was more basic. I was scared of him. I didn’t display an ounce of rage, of anger, of judgment that would have been appropriate to the situation—because it might have pissed him off.

  What’s more, there’s only one other person who could do that to me, induce that familiar trancelike dissociative state where I could disconnect from my feeling brain. And that was Mom. I’m not saying I was conscious of it. But I saw it clear as day when I was sitting in Shepherdstown looking back. I’d learned the coping mechanism from an expert—Dad. He’d adopt the same trance around her. He’d go silent, not argue, become submissive when he should fight. He was her mood handler.

  Goodwin and my mother might be two completely different people, but there was something about their nature that evoked the same response in me. And I was tired of allowing their violence, past or present, into my inner world. I couldn’t deny that Mom, like Goodwin, had learned new behavior—that she was trying her best to exercise her new skills. And I still had a fear that I was making a monster of her just to free myself of the emotional inconvenience of her. But it was a healthy fear and one I could live with. I was not going to let her gaslight me anymore. I would no longer be receiving either one of them in my personal world.

  Dad and I continued to be in touch by email and post. He liked sending me cards with puns. And before long, Mom made her next move. She copied me on an email to Gayle and asked me what Christmas presents my son and daughter would enjoy. I called Gayle for support, and she told me she’d let Mom know the gifts weren’t appropriate.

  Two weeks later a UPS truck pulled up in front of our house with a refrigerator-size box, which the child minder signed for. The kids were putting the wrapped presents under the Christmas tree by the time I got downstairs. I noticed my mother was listed as the sender and the contents were insured for one thousand dollars.

  Thomas called my father. Dad apologized for the situation. Gave us a UPS number and suggested we call the driver back. He’d tell Mom. My son and daughter, four and five years old, cried as they watched the driver take the presents away. I felt horrid, a failed mother. I’d just displayed to my children that gifts could not be trusted. How could this be a good example to set for them? It was a great game, this game of my mother’s. She won if we accepted the gifts. She won when they were sent back.

  I wrote her an email. I asked her to accept the reality of our situation. I wasn’t trying to punish her, shame her, judge her. I wasn’t angry. But it would not be possible for us to have a relationship until she recognized the nature of her past and present abusive behaviors. I didn’t expect that to happen. But I did want a relationship with my father. And I hoped I would be able to see both him and Vivian after Christmas.

  I received a letter back. She said that she would not get into a war with me over relationships with Dad, Vivian, and Gayle, but warned me to not continue my campaign against her. “It is not within your power to erase the reality that I am your mother, biologically and emotionally. I did give everything I had to give in raising you. I know I made some major mistakes in parenting but I NEVER in
tentionally, or with malice, did anything to harm you or your sisters.” She told me she would continue to send tokens of love to her grandchildren whenever she saw fit.

  How I wish I could have explained to her that whether or not she did anything with malice had little to do with it. It was her lack of perception or concern for my pain, or anyone else’s, that allowed her to behave so violently in the first place. And her insistence that I had it wrong was only adding further injury. She concluded the letter with the following:

  “I hope that someday, you can find the desire to find out who I really am and understand that I do love you very much and know that I had a lot to do with the woman you are today. You are made of good stuff and capable of becoming a loving compassionate person who can make a big difference in her world; the energy spent on trying to get rid of me as a member of your family is energy that could be spent on loving the rest of your family. Love, Mother.”

  This was classic Mom. She made the problem me, she denied her abuse, and she claimed my successes for her own. I wasn’t going to win by responding.

  I received an upset call from Vivian next. A number of the returned gifts had been carefully selected and wrapped by her. I explained what had happened and apologized for hurting her. I told her Gayle had made it clear to Mom that the presents wouldn’t be welcomed, but she sent them anyway. Then Vivian shared some hard truths with me. She had moved out of my parents’ home two weeks ago. Now, having just settled into her new apartment, her body wasn’t adapting well to dialysis treatments and they left her feeling sick. She would really like to see me, Thomas, and the kids. We agreed by the end of the conversation we would see her the first weekend after the New Year. I wrote to Dad and told him. And said he’d be more than welcome to see the kids at Gayle’s house, but Mom would not.