Book three of a trilogy
Standing Stone Books
Summary
The Morletti women have a problem named Rudy Morletti. Bad habits and manic choices have landed him in jail. His mother, Carla, promises bail only if he agrees to tough conditions; his grandmother, Angela, presses him to go to Confession, but that being unlikely, she focuses on getting him the best attorney recommended by the jailhouse lawyers; and his sister, Tess, a vet tech student, hopes her summer internship working with chimpanzees will lead to a job at an exotic zoo far, far away from all of them.
Listening to the voices of the mother, the sister, the grandmother, and Rudy, we begin to hope Rudy will make it; that every time the phone rings, it doesn’t signal a crisis. But then there are no calls, and the silence is even more frightening.
Compelling, gritty and funny, Doing Time Outside, travels the back roads of family life to better understand what it means to be tied by blood and love to the world of mental illness, addiction and incarceration.
Excerpts
1: Commence Lockdown
Carla pokes her daughter’s thigh and grabs Queenie’s collar. “There it is. You better slow…”
Tess swings wide and makes the turn. The truck skids to a stop in front of the sign:
Public Safety Building
Onango County Correctional Facility
State of New York
“Any faster you’d have put me through the windshield.” Carla stops clutching the door, lets go of Queenie’s collar, and gives Tess a hard look. “Me, your own dear mother.” She leans forward and squints at the sign. “Correctional Facility: You know I hate that, but it’s better than parking by the razor wire.” She gropes around in her pockets for loose change and dumps a fistful into the ashtray. “You might as well get rid of anything metal out here.”
Tess does not move.
Carla shrugs out of her jacket and takes her driver’s license from her wallet. “Got to have photo ID,” she says. She pulls off both Velcro wrist braces and stuffs them and her purse under the seat. “I’m not putting anything in those lockers.”
She darts a glance at Tess. “They won’t let you in there in that sweatshirt. No sweatshirts with pockets.”
Still no response.
Carla brushes the dog hairs from her good black pants and opens the door. “Those guards—I don’t let them look at me through their bullet proof glass like I’m some…welfare-person.”
She takes a deep breath and then turns to face Tess, unmoving behind the wheel. “You mean it? Are you still saying you aren’t going in?”
Tess puts an arm around Queenie and cozies her up against her thigh. She pulls her duffle over the seat and slides her Comparative Anatomy book out.
“I’m still saying, Why are you stepping into the path of a tornado?”
“Tess, Rudy is your brother.”
“I’m saying, the siren is screaming … screeeeeming. ‘Time to take cover.’”
“You forget how he pulled you out of the brook when you went under.”
“I know you can hear the warning blasts: Hit the ditch.”
“How he wired you money when your truck broke down in Texas. We’ve all made bad decisions. You, too, Tess.”
“I was seventeen. Rudy is thirty-five.”
“Who else does he have? We’re his only family.”
Maybe the jut of Tess’s jaw gives a hair on that plea. Maybe.
Carla takes hold of Tess’s sleeve, tugs on it. “He sounded good on the phone. They’ve even made him a trusty for being so cooperative. Got him fixing their broken-down equipment.”
Tess grips the wheel. No blast of any kind will eject her from this truck.
Carla leans over so she can look Tess in the eye. “It’s like he finally gets it.”
“Mamo, you know what he wants.”
“What?”
“He wants you to come up with the money for the bail bondsman. He wants you to get him out.”
Carla pulls a tissue from her sweater sleeve, blows her nose. She gets out of the truck. She swallows and draws herself up. “I’m his mother,” she says and closes the door.
FAMILY GUIDE
If you are a family member or friend of a person incarcerated in a correctional facility, your life has changed in many ways. Some call this “doing time outside.”
Whatever you may call it, this time can be painful and difficult for you. Changes have to be made in order to maintain the relationship with your loved one.
This handbook was designed to help you better understand the correctional system. We hope it will guide you as you cope with these changes in your life.
Onango County Corrections 2003
State of New York
The four voices from Doing Time Outside:
Carla:
She paces back and forth on her side, rubs her hands up and down her sweater sleeves to try to generate some heat. She does not want to have the blue-chatters when she begins her negotiations with Rudy. Okay, big thing is to leave no loopholes. Rudy, are you listening good? Have I got your full attention? I am considering…you hear that word ‘considering’ because I’m only considering…first hint of any attitude and I am un-considering…I am considering trying to raise the money it’s going to take to post bail. Put my house up for collateral, my house which I could lose if you take off, with the police dogs tracking you down all over the county. So, maybe I’m going to try to raise bail under these conditions:
Tess:
Cold, but she doesn’t want to run the heater. Got to conserve gas. No doubt she’ll end up driving her mother to Roscoe, the closest bail bondsman. Probably just as well they did impound Smithy’s truck, that her mother has no vehicle right now. Otherwise, when Rudy gets out, he’d borrow Mamo’s wheels or commandeer them. Certainly he’s not taking her truck—even though it means going to bed with her keys.
When she gets to the library, she’s going to google all the parts of the male brain, compare them to the female brain. She and Rudy have common ancestors, but no question, they’ve got different circuit breakers.
Angela:
And then, there’s someone being pushed along in a wheelchair. A frail woman, a pale woman, wearing a terrible black wig. A wig that makes them both want to turn away.
She sees them. “One moment,” she tells the airport attendant. Then she rises up and moves toward them, her face a glow of joy. She takes them both in her arms. Who would think such thin arms could encircle so much and with such force?
“Here we are at last,” she cries. A laughing cry. She kisses Carla on both her Italian cheeks. Then places her hands on her granddaughter’s face. “Tess, sweet Tess, what a beautiful child you are.”
Rudy:
He sits as far away from the other trusties, the crap blasting from the TV, as he can. He presses both hands against his ears to better hear the last part of his letter. He crosses out ‘the good days’ and writes in Portland, Toronto, the city. Or maybe he should say: Remember, Sunny, the time on our way to Blue Mountain Lake when it was raining so hard we had to leave the motorcycle in the ditch. I can’t believe it, you kept saying when we found a lean-to with a stack of dry wood and a double sleeping bag wrapped in plastic, pinned to it a note ‘please leave me for the next wayfarer in trouble.’ That’s us for sure, you said.
Reviews
“These three women could be a novel in themselves, with their mingled strands of love and resentment birthed over decades of caring and mistakes and half-told histories. Through Rudy’s crisis, they are slammed together like billiard balls breaking and forced to dive deeper into each other’s assumptions and realities.
Rudy, his mistakes and lesser moments notwithstanding, has a desire to do right as he picks his way through a minefield. … You start really, really wanting Rudy to make it, a topic around which Howard builds mind-bending suspense.
It all comes together in a knockout ending—Howard’s characters have grown and so have we. A beautiful read.”
— Anne Pyburn Craig
Chronogram.com
November 1, 2013
“Doing Time Outside refers to the painful and difficult period of time spent by a family member or friend of a person incarcerated in a correctional facility. .. Ms. Howard carves a slice of time out of the Morletti family’s world. Each individual—mother, son, and daughter—is in some way damaged; each individual is in some way brimming with resilience…(The author) writes as if she’s creating a mosaic—laying down each piece of stone as snippets from life—each snippet being told from a different point of view until an image of a family is slowly created. The final image isn’t always pretty, but it’s intriguing and charming, and formed with humor and love. .. Doing Time Outside is an emotional and engaging slice of life. It’s well worth doing time with this family. ”
— Karen Winter Schwartz,
New York Journal of Books
September 16, 2013
Click here to read the full review at
the New York Journal of Books
“Ginnah Howard guides us through a gritty America caught between a small-town bar, a church, and a jail cell. Through Howard’s compassion for her characters and the buoyancy of her voice, Doing Time Outside does what the best fiction can: deepens our empathy for human frailty and sharpens our intelligence of the heart.”
— Mermer Blakeslee, author of
When You Live by a River