Loading up on groceries sounded like a great idea to me, and I could tell that my friend David (who’d come with me to see my fiancée, Piper) and another husband in our Brooklyn-to-Danbury carpool (a New York professional whose wife was serving two years) were equally enthused about the prospect. He’d brought along his good-natured infant son, born a few months earlier in a hospital near the prison, who of course was up for anything.
And so it was that we bid goodbye to our women for another week and headed into the aisles, an oddball quintet in search of snacks.
None of us saw any reason that we shouldn’t indulge ourselves at Trader Joe’s while our women ate mystery meat in the prison cafeteria. Personally, it never occurred to me not to make the best of the situation. And my situation was this: Once a week, for 13 months, I visited my fiancée in prison, where she was serving her time for a nonviolent crime she’d committed 10 years earlier.
Before she left, Pi
per told herself that anyone could survive anything for a year. And that applied to me, too. Even in dreary downtown Danbury, I knew there had to be decent coffee and good pizza, and there was. The first time I saw Ernie’s Roadhouse restaurant, I envisioned a melodramatic scene of ending my visits to the big house with a burger and a stiff bourbon at the bar, muttering, “Pour me another, Ernie,” as I stirred my drink with a little red straw.
And the drive itself became less about the hassle — which it surely was, even as I knew I was fortunate to live so close to the prison — and more of an opportunity to slow down and think as I cruised north, and then back south, essentially on autopilot.
I knew Piper had skeletons in her closet. Doesn’t everyone? But hers jumped out in a way most of us never experience.
One day in May 1998, while I was at work, a pair of Customs agents buzzed our apartment. When Piper asked what they wanted, they suggested it was better to talk in person. So up they came, five floors, and explained to Piper (who was still in her pajamas, working from home) that she had been indicted in federal court for crimes they said she committed many years before in an international drug ring.
When she called me and said in an uncharacteristically shaky voice: “We have to talk. Right now,” I wondered what I’d done wrong this time.
But it wasn’t about me. Rapidly, she filled me in on a series of unfortunate events that led to that very bad morning.
I had known Piper for four years and dated her for two. Brassier, bolder, more adventurous than anyone I know, Piper is not your average girl. But she is still a pretty, blond Smith grad who looks as if she descended from Mayflower stock: the last girl you’d expect to end up behind bars. I mean, come on, an international drug ring? Didn’t see that one coming.
To say she was freaked out and wondering if I would stick around for the messes sure to come is an understatement. To say that it never once crossed my mind to bail on her is simply a statement of fact.
For the next five years as the legal system played out, a constant hum of anxiety became the third wheel of our relationship, an ugly piece of furniture we lived with every day. Well-meaning if misinformed friends shared a common refrain: “Don’t worry, girls like Piper don’t end up in prison.”
Her lawyer told her that if the case went to trial she would be as good a defendant as they come, having lived a model life since her brief period of recklessness. He also told her that if she lost — and she never claimed to be framed, just young and stupid — she could easily serve seven years or more.
After the legal dust settled, the lawyer arrived with the good news-bad news: Her plea bargain for money laundering would mean a 15-month stay in a minimum-security slammer à la Martha Stewart, 13 with good behavior, which we were sure Piper would exhibit.
