Relativity (23 page)

“I'm not going to admit that because you want to hear it.”

“Do you think I ever wanted to hear that you hurt Ethan? That he stopped breathing and had a brain hemorrhage. He was so tiny; he was only four months old.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes. “I know all that.”

“Babies don't stop breathing for no reason, Mark. Don't you understand the pain you've put him through, put me through? And for what, to save your neck? After everything, you still have the audacity to say you didn't do it.”

“But I didn't do it!” Mark threw his hands up in the air.

Claire felt the seed of doubt sprouting the smallest stalk. He wasn't going to do this to her again. She threw her crumpled napkin on the table. “You should never have contacted us. You should have left us alone.”

“I only wanted to make things right,” he said quietly. “I served time for nothing, lost years of my life, and now I don't want to lose any more.”

“Things will never be right. You voided any chance of that a long time ago.”

“But Ethan is my son,” he began.

Claire stood up. “He's my son. And I really need to go.” Her chair grated against the floor as she pushed it away. She couldn't look at Mark and turned away from him before walking quickly toward the exit.

Outside, some old men sat at a small table—schooners of beer and lit cigarettes in their hands—arguing about the future of the Labor Party. Swearing and slurring, spilling their beers on the newspaper, they squabbled about factions and leadership spills.

“Come join us, love!” one of the men said, winking.

“No, thanks.” Claire looked away.

“We'll buy you a drink,” said another man. “What do you want, legs? It's on us.”

There was something unforgiving about natural light: the men looked disfigured; the sun highlighted every ugly wrinkle and groove. Along Kent Street, a taxi approached the pub. Claire held her hand out and hailed it. “Sorry,” she said to the men. “I have to go home.” She got into the taxi, slammed the door, and drove away.

Ω

MARK TOOK ANOTHER SWIG
of beer. It left a biscuity aftertaste in his mouth. He'd finished his third drink now and his stomach flushed with warmth. One minute they were laughing; the next Claire stormed away. She'd always been capricious—there was a genuine need for a branch of science like meteorology to predict her moods—but he knew it wasn't to be cruel. Confidence was her problem. Claire never trusted her decisions; she'd always ignore her gut and regret it later. At least, that's what she was like twelve years ago.

An old man sat a couple of stools down at the bar, matching Mark drink for drink. “Waiting for someone?”

“More like recovering from someone. What about you?”

“Just enjoying my own company.” The old man smiled. “A woman?”

“My ex-wife.”

“Better have another beer then. It's on me.”

The old man ordered and Mark watched the bartender pour two more amber beers from the tap, white froth spilling carelessly from the rims.

The old man raised his glass. “Cheers. To ex-wives—may they stay that way.”

Mark laughed. “Thanks, mate.”

Inside the pub, the air was dense and thick with a fermented tang. Happy hour had just begun and the after-work crowd was seeping in—loosening their ties, rolling up the sleeves of their shirts—clouds of conversation filling the room.

The old man pulled his seat closer. “So, what did you do wrong?”

Mark looked into his beer. “She thinks I did something I didn't do.”

“That's a tricky one. Once a woman's made her mind up about something, it's tough to persuade her otherwise.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mark. He'd carried the weight of blame on his shoulders for so long that he couldn't imagine having it lifted. What it might be like to feel free.

Ω

MARK NEVER EXPECTED
that he'd go to jail. The guilty verdict was a shock. Just that morning as he'd waited for the jury's decision, he'd joked to a friend about how happy he was that it was the last day of the trial. That all this stress—police, charges, court—was finally over, and now he could finally get on with his life.

He didn't remember much of those fourteen days behind the dock. Long days, filled with evidence and experts, prosecution sparring with defense. Child-abuse allegations made people stop thinking straight, it made their feelings override common sense. Jurors stared him down. Mark's fate was in their imprecise hands; he had to trust these strangers. These days, if he passed one of the members of the jury in the street, he wouldn't be able to identify them. But Mark was the defendant, the accused, the prisoner; they'd definitely recognize his face.

That trial was an out-of-body experience. Floating in the courtroom, Mark watched himself from above. Listening to the witnesses, disagreeing with their evidence in his head, but making sure he kept his feelings hidden and off his face.

Prison life had crossed his mind; he'd normalized the idea, thought maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Lots of time, few responsibilities. How terrible could it be? He could study. Read lots of books. Not worry about paying bills or cooking meals. But going to jail wasn't a likely scenario. His legal team said there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction; his case was impossible to lose. Guilty beyond reasonable doubt with no witnesses? Reasonable doubts were easy to find.

When the verdict was read—we find the defendant guilty—Mark hadn't believed it at first. His ears were playing tricks on him; this verdict was wrong. But he could see the verdict on the faces of everyone else in the court. He'd been found guilty. Some people seemed surprised; others seemed pleased. Guilty. It wasn't possible. He felt like he'd just received the heaviest blow to the head. Guilty. Before Mark knew it, he was on the floor. He was crying; he was a mess. Friends and family rushed over to the dock, climbing over seats before the guards took Mark away. When he finally stood up, Claire had already left the court.

“We'll appeal,” his lawyer said. “We'll make sure the sentence is light.”

But after three years of court—arraignment, bail hearing, custody and divorce proceedings, indictment—Mark didn't have any strength left. Three years of subpoenas, matters, and statements. Three years of waiting for the trial and putting his future on hold. This was supposed to be the end, the beginning, the first day of the rest of his life. Now he'd been robbed of that and it destroyed him. Guilty. All it took to break him was that single word.

That afternoon, Mark sat for hours in the courtroom cellblock waiting for whatever happened next. It was freezing inside the cells, dry air reddening his eyes. He wished the jacket of his suit wasn't so light; its silk satin lining didn't keep him warm. Later that evening, he was taken to Silverwater Correctional Complex. Incarceration limbo, where he'd be received, before getting transferred to another prison.

Mark handed over the essential pieces of his life, his self: his wallet and driver's license, his shoes and suit, his keys, his cell phone. At Silverwater, he was given a six-digit Master Index Number, his new identity: 251429.

“That's a prime number,” Mark told the correctional officer.

“Down the hall for the strip search.” The officer handed him his prison greens and toiletries.

Standing naked in the bright concrete room, Mark closed his eyes. His cheeks were hot but the room was arctic. Cold palms on his thighs, running along the hairs of his legs, pushing his butt cheeks apart. Latex hands pulled on his skin, stuck to his body hair, explored deep inside his mouth. The gloves left bitter powder on his gums and his stale tongue clicked from dehydration. It was humiliating, being treated like this; indignity sank into the cavity of his chest.

As the male officer attentively checked every hole of his body, Mark went to another place in his head. He played violin solos in the concert hall of his mind and listed the next prime numbers: 251431, 251437, 251443. Medical and psychological checks were done next. Then they watched a “Welcome to Prison” video and were sent to bed. On that first night, he barely slept.

Two days later, Mark was put into segregation. Segro, they called it on the inside. Stupidly, he'd told one of the guys in his pod about the trial. He'd sounded concerned—interested in the case—but the bastard didn't keep the details to himself. Out of the blue, a group of men attacked Mark in the empty gym.

Fucking monster, they'd called him. Baby-shaker piece of shit. You're a fucking disgrace. They held Mark to the wall and pushed his face against the concrete slab. He hadn't known crimes against children were worse than murder within these walls. He hadn't known he'd be a target. With a sharpened fingernail, they sliced the flesh on his cheek open. Said they were going to rape him. So Mark punched one of them right in the head. He hadn't meant to hit him that hard, but it was self-defense.

Mark enjoyed the isolation of segro. Some people couldn't handle their own company, went mad after long hours alone trapped under the shame of fluorescent lights. But he'd never had trouble being on his own; he could relax, he could think. During those secluded days, he'd listen to the distant sounds of keys turning in locks, the clicks and twists of cuffs and latches, soft voices behind solid brick slabs speaking indecipherable words.

The screws kept him under protection orders for fourteen days. Day and night dissolved at the edges until they were one single knot of time. But this brief dalliance with incarceration would be over soon. Mark's lawyers assured him the sentence would probably be light; he was young, he was smart. There was no way he'd get the max.

His sentencing hearing was set for two months later. The legal team got his hopes up, said they'd probably let Mark go home right away, since he'd already done time on remand. A white van drove him back to town. Behind the van's caged windows, Sydney looked like a foreign city.

In the court, Mark was made to wear handcuffs. He tried to hide them under his sleeves, but it was impossible to conceal the metal chain that linked his wrists. Some of his friends were there, his father and brother. They shouldn't see him shackled like this.

At that sentencing hearing, the judge gave him four years. Two years nonparole. The prisoner displayed no remorse, was the judge's comment. The prisoner won't acknowledge that his actions caused the crime. Mark wanted to yell and scream at the judge—you're wrong, Your Honor, you have no idea—but he wasn't allowed his voice. His lawyer made him keep his mouth shut. Said making any statement or remark would just make it worse.

After the hearing, the same miserable white van—heavy sliding doors, mesh steel walls, stained upholstery—drove Mark back to his new home. To the next four years of his life.

Within a few weeks, he was moved from Silverwater to a minimum-security complex in country New South Wales, with other C class inmates. Mark was put in protection again, but this time he didn't say a word about his supposed crime. He fell into a routine. Cornflakes for breakfast, ham sandwiches for lunch, bland spaghetti bolognese every Wednesday. For the first few months he lost himself, became just another head to count during muster and lockdown.

In the summers, the inmates could smell the eucalyptus smoke of the nearby bushfires. Winters were so cold they saw their breath billow inside their cells. Mark learned a new life and new language: buy-ups, cell ramping, shanghais, rock spiders, numbing out. He hid his books from the screws; they'd kick them out of his hands if they saw them, reminding him he wasn't there to learn, he was there to do his time. After the incident at Silverwater, Mark made sure he kept a low profile. He did his job, kept to himself, and worked out in the prison gym.

Exercise became an addiction, the daily release of endorphins after lifting weights Mark's sole comfort behind bars. That single moment of the day when he felt pleasure's spark. With his newly carved muscles, he took on another identity: tough, mysterious, intimidating, shrewd. After several weeks of weight training—bench presses, barbells, dumbbells, sets and reps—his body was resculpted into one Mark didn't recognize in the mirror. He looked like a proper criminal.

After one year inside, Mark was contacted by an investigative journalist. In her letter, she explained that she was researching shaken baby syndrome and wanted to speak with him about his case. Mark declined. He didn't want to talk about it. The woman—her name was Kate Levy—wrote to him again. The doctors were wrong, she'd said. New evidence proved shaken baby syndrome was a dangerously common misdiagnosis, that parents were falsely accused of abusing their children all over the world. Mass hysteria was putting innocent people behind bars.

During his trial, Mark was struck by the methodological shortcomings of proving shaken baby syndrome. There were so many inconsistencies and weaknesses in the scientific evidence. Diagnostic goalposts kept moving. He knew he was sent to prison on this imperfect paradigm. According to Kate, there'd even been stories about how vaccination might cause infant subdural hematoma, that half of all newborns had bleeds in their brains from birth.

What forensic doctors claimed happened to these babies was unproven, she wrote. With a pointed finger, they ruined lives. Called themselves expert witnesses when they didn't witness anything; their evidence was just faulty science. And Mark was versed in the iterative cycle of scientific method: question, gather information, hypothesize, test, experiment, analyze, interpret, retest. Physicians weren't physicists. Their hypothesis about shaken baby syndrome, Kate said in her letter, was showing to be inconsistent with the anatomy and physiology of infant brains.

Kate Levy believed Mark was innocent. He didn't fit the profile. She came to visit him at the correctional center over the course of several months, brought him reports on other causes of cranial bleeding in infants. The so-called constellation of symptoms wasn't enough; intracranial pressure caused all of them. Shaken baby syndrome couldn't be tested by experiment, so it could never be proven. Every visit, she'd buy a can of soft drink from the vending machine and sip it through a straw. Kate found him attractive, Mark could tell. But she seemed like a complicated woman, too composed and polished, no vulnerability and all veneer.