Blessed Are the Wholly Broken (10 page)

Jeffrey lived for three days before dying in Anna’s arms. I would like to say he died peacefully, because had he done so, that might have offered us some peace, as well. But he didn’t. In spite of the phenobarbital prescribed by his doctors, Jeffrey continued to experience seizures, violently and repeatedly, until the moment of his death.

We had known the time was near. Upon our request, Jeffrey was released from the tubes that bound him and handed gently to Anna. We kissed him and stroked him and tried to cram everything we’d thought we’d have an eternity to experience into a few short moments, as if we could wrap our love, and our broken dreams, into a neat package and hand it to him to take with him when he left.

But I was going to teach you to play baseball
, I remember saying to him, as if he could somehow stop the journey his body was taking.
I was going to teach you to ride a bike, and tie a tie, and spot the Big Dipper. We were going to go fishing. I was going to teach you to drive, and yell at you for missing curfew, and you were going to roll your eyes and think I was the worst dad ever until you had kids of your own, and….

I knew immediately he’d passed on, not only because his tiny body was finally at rest, but because Anna turned her face to mine, and in it I saw every thought we’d refused to share, every fear we’d refused to voice. I saw not only into Anna, but into our future. She had just stepped into Dante’s dark forest, and the next step, for both of us, was hell.

How to describe the death of one’s child? They sent cards, our friends and family did, along with flowers and poems and prayers, and I wanted to burn every last petal and verse. I didn’t want to hear about angel wings or butterfly kisses and meeting in the Great Beyond. I was enraged by the idea that empty platitudes and trite rhymes were somehow supposed to fill the void, the raw, gaping, endless
nothingness
left by the death of our baby.

Lest you think I’m ungrateful for the sympathy extended Anna and me during that time, know this:  The condolences extended us were real; those who loved us hurt for us. There’s no doubt of that. But even as I knew that, I also knew the cards and flowers and poems about grief and loss were also for
them
, a box checked off a list. Death in the family? 
Check
. Card sent?
Check
. Casserole baked? 
Check
.

It’s what we do, as a society. God knows, Anna and I had done it often enough ourselves. We hear of a tragedy and we send gifts; then we go about our business hoping by the next time we see the object of said tragedy, the poor soul has managed to pick himself up and move on before we have to get a good, close look at the ugly truth of his pain. We don’t know what to do with it; it frightens us.

I don’t blame people for not knowing how to help us; there
was
no way to help us.
What do you need
? they asked.
What can I get for you
? And we shook our heads.
Nothing
, we said, because what else could we say?
We need Jeffrey
;
could you fetch him for us, please
?

We held a private memorial service, and Jeffrey was laid to rest in the small cemetery of the church to which Anna and I belonged. I had worried that Anna would break, that she would fling herself into the grave along with the tiny casket, but the breaking of Anna was instead a subtle affair; the cracks were fine but deep, much deeper than I realized at that time. The day of Jeffrey’s funeral, as well as for weeks afterward, she was on such heavy medication I had to physically keep her on her feet as she sagged against me and cried.

I wonder about that now. I wonder if it was a mistake, letting Anna hide from the pain, dulled by the tranquilizers so readily prescribed by our doctor. Overwhelmed by my own grief, I was grateful for the numbing effect the pills provided her. I could barely deal with my anguish; I couldn’t deal with hers. Like friends and neighbors with their sympathy cards, I handed Anna little blue pills, partly to help her through the darkness, partly to ease the added burden of her grief upon me.

If the fracturing of Anna was subtle, my own fracturing was brutal in comparison. The anger I’d felt upon first learning of Jeffrey’s condition continued to fuel me. Within hours of the funeral I’d cleared the nursery of furniture, tossing it into the yard and stomping it to pieces in front of shocked family and friends. When my mother rushed to me, begging me to stop, Brian was the one who gently pulled her back. “Let him be,” he said to her, enclosing her in his arms. “Let him get it out.”

Later, when he found me painting over the monkeys and giraffes Anna had so painstakingly stenciled on the nursery walls, he picked up a brush and set up station on the opposite side of the room, covering the bright, primary colors with broad strokes of dull white. We painted through the night, wordlessly, and by the time the sun began to rise, we’d nearly erased any evidence of a nursery. I suppose I’d thought by doing so I could set back the clock, erase the horror of the past week and reset our lives, starting sometime after the second miscarriage and before the conception of Jeffrey.

It didn’t work, of course. As the darkness outside Jeffrey’s window turned to light, I raised my brush for one final stroke, one more coating of white over the vivid red of the parrot painted just inside the doorway, and I found myself unable to complete the task. I collapsed against the wet wall, stroking the outline of the paintings Jeffrey would never see, remembering the hours of work Anna had put into getting it
just right
, and I sobbed. Soundlessly, Brian crossed the room to stand behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder until the worst of the convulsions eased and I could catch my breath.

While I raged and stomped and painted, Anna slept, checked on periodically by both her mother and mine. When I think of that time, which I try not to do, I think of myself as having purged the blackness from my soul. My grief and anger were external, on display, and while it wasn’t pretty, the outward expression of my fury allowed me to empty myself of the poison.

Anna, on the other hand, took it inward, sleeping, sitting quietly, medicating. I picture her grief as a parasite, burying deep and changing her very composition with none of us—not even Anna—aware of the damage. And like a parasite, there it sat, waiting, as a parasite does, until it could destroy her, and me in the process.

Court Clerk:  State your full name for the record, please.

John Cooper:  Jonathan Wesley Cooper

The Court:  Your witness, Mr. Young.

Prosecutor:  Thank you, Your Honor. Where do you live, Mr. Cooper?

John Cooper:  Just off the highway. Fifty-one North, I mean. The road off the highway is just an old dirt road, Cooper Lane, named after my family because we’ve lived on it for generations. I’m at 121 Cooper Lane, if you need the exact address.

Prosecutor:  Thank you, Mr. Cooper. Do you recognize the defendant over there?

John Cooper:  Yes, sir, I do. He’s my neighbor to the south, Phil Lewinsky.

Prosecutor:  How long have you known Mr. Lewinsky?

John Cooper:  Oh, I’d say going on eighteen years now. Let’s see…he moved into the old Jones place back in the summer of ’95 and Mary Lou—that’s my wife—went over to meet them right away, invited them for supper that first night because she knew they wouldn’t have had a chance to get everything unpacked and straightened out.

Prosecutor:  Did they come for supper?

John Cooper:  Yes, sir, they did.

Prosecutor:  What was your impression of the defendant, Mr. Cooper?

John Cooper:  He’s always been a good neighbor. I just can’t imagine him doing what they said he did.

Defense Attorney:  Objection. Speculation.

The Court:  Sustained. Just answer the questions, Mr. Cooper.

Prosecutor:  Mr. Cooper, was there a time you witnessed violent behavior on the part of Mr. Lewinsky?

John Cooper:  Yes, sir, there was, but I don’t—

Prosecutor:  Just answer the questions, please, Mr. Cooper. So there was a time you witnessed Mr. Lewinsky acting violently?

John Cooper:  Yes, sir.

Prosecutor:  Can you tell the Court when that was?

John Cooper:  Yes, sir. I remember it exactly because it was the day of the baby’s funeral. The wife and I were over at the Lewinsky house paying our respects. It was a bad time. Their little baby hadn’t even made it home from the hospital before he died.

Prosecutor:  What was the date on which you witnessed Mr. Lewinsky behaving violently, Mr. Cooper?

John Cooper:  It was the second of March, 2001. A Friday. They had laid the baby to rest that morning, and some of us, friends, family, neighbors, you know, had gone back to the house with them after it was all over.

Prosecutor:  What happened then, Mr. Cooper?

John Cooper:  Well, Anna, Mrs. Lewinsky, was in the bedroom, all tore up over what happened with the baby. Some of us were standing in the kitchen, talking, setting out food like you do, when we heard a big noise from upstairs. Next thing you know, Phil was coming down the stairs holding pieces of a crib—more like a baby bed—in his hands. He went out the front door and threw it in the yard, then starting stomping on it, just smashing it into smithereens.

Prosecutor:  What happened next, Mr. Cooper?

John Cooper:  Well, he just kept bringing stuff out to the yard, smashing it up and cussing at it.

Prosecutor:  What was he saying?

John Cooper:  Now, you have to understand, he’d just buried his baby boy, so you can’t really—

Prosecutor:  Mr. Cooper, you’ll get to answer questions from the defense attorney in a moment, but right now I just need you to answer my questions. What was Mr. Lewinsky saying?

John Cooper:  Well…he was saying he wished Anna had never gotten pregnant. He was saying he’s make sure nothing like that could ever happen again. But, now, you can’t—

Prosecutor:  Thank you, Mr. Cooper. No further questions, Your Honor.

I had not expected another visit from Brian. He had made his phone calls and worked his magic, and I had a team of three attorneys representing me, with Brian taking the third position and consulting, coordinating, and—I believe—directing them as needed. In the months following my last meeting with Brian I’d been summoned numerous times to meet with my new attorneys, but only once had Brian been present, on a drizzly day in October, and that was to tell me Anna’s father had died of a heart attack the previous night.

I was sorry about his passing; I had liked Mr. Tyler (I had never been able to bring myself to call him Mike). In some ways, I felt closer to him than I had my own father, who had died, along with my mother, in a car crash on I-40 a couple of years after we lost Jeffrey. I wasn’t close to Mr. Tyler in an affectionate way, but rather in a sympathetic way. I understood his neurotic tendencies, his proclivity for finding the sliver of danger in any given situation and worrying over it incessantly. I had those same tendencies myself; besides, hadn’t he been right in the end?

When, after a long day in court, I was summoned to the little room with the scarred table that January evening, I was surprised to see Brian alone, facing the door, hands in his pockets. I wish I could say I was happy to see him, but as the guard escorted me into the consultation room and removed the cuffs, what I felt was a slight unease. It wasn’t that I no longer cared about Brian; rather, I had worked hard to maintain a distant numbness, and the sight of Brian, alone and outside of the courtroom, threatened that.

I suppose it was a coping mechanism; I didn’t put thought into it. I arose at the crack of dawn with the other inmates, ate breakfast, answered roll call, and was escorted back to my cell. Due to the egregious nature of my crimes, I was kept in what passed for solitary confinement. While trustees and various other inmates worked during the day, either inside the jail or out, I lay in my cell and made a game of dissociation. The further I could mentally remove myself from my circumstances, the saner I could remain. I suppose it sounds odd to say I saved my sanity by loosening my hold on it, but it’s true. My current reality was more than I could bear, so I fashioned a new one, if only in my mind.

In the world I created for myself, I’d attended college abroad instead of settling for the familiarity of Memphis State University. I’d roomed with a nerdy kid named Pierre instead of a jock named Brian. In my make-believe world I majored in math and taught algebra to reluctant college kids in a make-believe town that boasted cobblestone streets and a curious absence of billboards. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and spent evenings listening to live jazz bands at the town’s cultural center and Sundays mornings working crossword puzzles over coffee at a café overlooking the ocean.

It was a very detailed life, this dream world in my head. After all, I had hours, days, weeks, months in which to create it. It soothed me to imagine my dimly lit theater, deliciously cool, and the blue velvet curtains sweeping back to reveal the shiny brass of the jazz bands of my mind. I was calmed as I conjured up the path along the dunes that led to my ocean café. I not only pictured the wildflowers growing alongside the trail, but named them all:  evening primrose and morning glory, silky beach pea, sweet beach strawberry.

I don’t know where the images came from, the names, the tastes and sights and smells. I don’t know if any of it was real. Do such flowers even exist? It’s alternately exhilarating and frightening to explore what the mind is capable of when it’s in danger of breaking. I could see every grain of sand; I could feel the cold spray of the ocean and the sun against my back.

Of all of those details I labored to create, one remained constant:  There was no Anna in my dream town. There were no babies, no Brian, no friends or family at all. I inhabited my town alone save the ghostly figures that took up seats in my imaginary algebra class, perched on wooden stools at the counter of my café, or sat upon the stage of my shadowy theater. It was this detail that soothed me most of all; one cannot lose what one does not have.

I tell you all this by way of explaining my reaction upon seeing Brian the evening I was summoned to the consultation room. Somewhere, beyond the fantasy life I lived while lying alone in my cell, Brian was still my best friend, but to acknowledge that would mean acknowledging everything else, and I wasn’t strong enough to do that. If I allowed myself to open that door even the tiniest crack, I’d drown.

I don’t know why Brian had chosen to stay away. I think professionalism played a part in it; he didn’t want our history to somehow color the outcome of my trial. But I think he also stayed away because, like me, he didn’t know how to deal with the emotions my situation brought forth. Unlike me, Brian didn’t have the luxury of checking out of this world and creating a more tolerable one.

Whatever his reasons, I was not happy to see him again. The last time I’d seen Brian outside of court, he’d told me of Mr. Tyler’s death. I did not believe his visit this time would be any more pleasant.