Blessed Are the Wholly Broken (3 page)

Aside from his rough start at MSU, Brian was overall a good student; he was set to graduate on time with us, with a respectable grade point average and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. The three of us celebrated together with a spirited weekend on Beale Street before settling down to take a more serious look at our futures. I no longer remember whose idea it was to rent an apartment together, but shortly after graduation the three of us found ourselves sharing a two bedroom in a seedy area of Midtown.

Things were different in those days, at least as far as our families were concerned. I’d have no more shared a room with Anna than I’d have gone streaking through Midtown in broad daylight. That isn’t to say we were completely innocent of one another. By that time, we’d moved past quick kisses and begun a barely restrained exploration of each other among the cracked vinyl seats of my old car. But to have openly shared a room would have displayed a tawdriness out of place in our relationship. What we had was special, and we agreed, without even speaking of it, to keep our relationship pure—with the occasional exception of those stolen moments of passion in my backseat. Instead, for the short time Brian lived with us he and I shared a room, something we were used to doing, after all, while Anna bedded alone. Even so, our parents had been none too pleased with the arrangement.

“It’s not right,” Anna’s father told us when we met with her parents over dinner to tell them of our plans.

It was the week before graduation, and Brian was with us; Anna’s father had insisted on meeting him, too. “He wants to make sure I’m not moving in with any bad elements,” Anna had explained, causing Brian to laugh.

We had arranged to meet downtown at the Rendezvous, and I was quickly coming to second-guess the wisdom of that decision. It’s hard to make a good impression when one is covered in barbecue rub. Across from me, Mr. Tyler continued to voice his concerns, presumably unaware of the spices that clung to his chin and threatened at each breath to break free and take refuge in my glass of tea. It was difficult not to stare.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you boys; it really isn’t. You seem like nice kids, and Anna has nothing but good things to say about you.” He gestured wildly towards Anna as he spoke, and I quietly moved my tea glass to the other side. “She’s a smart girl; I have to trust her judgment, right? But what will it look like to people, my daughter moving in with two young men? What’ll I tell people who ask?” The chunk of spices finally broke free, landing—to my great relief—somewhere on his lap.

“How will we explain it to Cathy?” Anna’s mother interjected, plucking anxiously at the buttons of her blouse. She was a small woman, quiet and unassuming, and nearly invisible next to the mountain that was Anna’s father. “Anna, she looks up to you, you know.”

Cathy was Anna’s younger sister and from the stories Anna had told me, worrying about the impact our shared apartment would have on Cathy should have been the least of Mr. and Mrs. Tyler’s concerns. According to Anna, who gave me a warning pinch under the table, nineteen-year-old Cathy had already discovered that anything you could do in a shared apartment you could also do in a dorm room, a parked car, or on a park bench, for that matter. But it certainly wasn’t my place to share that with Anna’s parents.

In the end it was Brian who charmed his way past their concerns. “We’ll take good care of Anna,” he assured Mr. Tyler. “A young woman shouldn’t be alone in a big city like Memphis. She’ll be safe with the two of us; we’ll make sure of it.”

Mr. Tyler gave a receptive nod. “You make a good point,” he said. “I reckon if she’s dead set on living in the city, and it looks like she is, she could do worse than to have a couple of young men for protection.”

Brian’s presence wasn’t required at the meeting with my parents, but he tagged along anyway. I was glad for his company; he had a way of smoothing the rough edges of my family. “What are you worried about, Phillip?” he asked, noticing my hesitation when we pulled into the drive of their Bartlett home the following night. “What’s the worst they can do? You’re a grown man.”

“It’s not what they might do,” I told him, opening Anna’s door and helping her out. “It’s what they might say. I never know what’s going to come out of my dad’s mouth.”

My mother, while not as verbal with her concerns, made her feelings known through a series of sighs and worried glances as we gathered around the table. That evening, instead of ribs my mother served up lasagna, a dish with just as much potential for mishap, causing me to wonder briefly why the biggest events of our lives tend to be discussed over food and the embarrassing complications it can present. I handed Anna an extra napkin as she struggled with a stubborn string of melted cheese, then turned towards my father as he spoke.

“Don’t you go getting this girl pregnant, Phil,” he said, and I felt Anna startle beside me, while across from me Brian snorted, unable to hide his laughter. My father continued, oblivious. “I know you say you two aren’t sharing a room, but I was a young man once, too, and I know how these things go. Keep it wrapped up. You hear what I’m saying?” He tore off a bite of garlic bread for punctuation, regarding me from under bushy brows as he chewed.

“Daniel,” my mother interjected. “Was that really necessary?”

“What? You’re too easy on the boy, Maria. Brian knows, don’t you Brian? You know what I’m talking about. Boy better keep his pants zipped.”

I would have given anything at that moment to melt away into the linoleum, my embarrassment was so acute. Even worse, I had the distinct impression that underneath the rude warning he was in some way proud of me, hoping, maybe, I’d finally be a
normal
young man, the kind he’d expected when the doctor had announced with a flourish, “It’s a boy!”

Later, on the short drive back to the dorm, I tried to apologize. “He can be an ass sometimes,” I said, but Anna dismissed the topic with a wave of her hand.

“I think he’s kind of cute,” she said. “In a rough sort of way.”

“Your dad’s okay, Phillip,” said Brian from the back seat. “He’s just trying to look out for you.” He broke into laughter again, unable to contain himself. “Keep it zipped—oh, my God, that’s priceless.” By the time we reached the dorm, all three of us were laughing, my embarrassment forgotten.

With the difficult task of announcing our plans to our parents completed, we were on our way, all three of us, and excited to be there. Brian had done well enough on the state test to land an entry-level position as a probation officer with the juvenile justice system. While I was initially surprised at the career he decided to pursue, in retrospect, it made perfect sense. Brian knew as well as anyone the hurdles faced by children caught up in the system.

That was the thing about Brian. On the surface, he was a playboy, the stereotypical jock. But those of us who knew him understood his philandering approach to life was carefully crafted to hide a sensitivity of startling depth. This would never be more evident than in the months following my arrest, though we could not have imagined, as we unpacked our meager belongings in the shabby little apartment, the heartache awaiting us years down the road.

Anna, having realized there was some small truth in Brian’s teasing, had a more difficult time with job hunting. Within a few weeks of graduation she decided to apply to graduate school. “There seems to be a hiring freeze for the position of sage,” she told Brian, smiling. “Not enough room on the mountain. For now I guess I’ll have to keep my deep thoughts to myself while I pour coffee and bus tables.”

As for me, I’d landed a job as a lab technician for one of the hospitals downtown. The hours were long and the pay wasn’t great, but I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. First job, first apartment, first girlfriend, best friend. What more could I have possibly wanted?

When I remember that year it’s as if I’m straddling a line between then and now, fully a part of each reality while at the same time separate from it. In many ways, we remained true to our younger selves throughout the years. If one only sees the surface of our lives, we look like any other group of adults, hitting milestones, fulfilling expectations.

Anna and I married, as everyone had assumed we would, and I began the long process of moving up the career ladder, eventually becoming the director of a medical lab in the city of Dyersburg. Anna completed her graduate degree and climbed through the levels of her own career, ultimately becoming the Dean of Students at a community college close to my office.

To our great surprise Brian also found his way back to school, obtaining a law degree from the University of Tennessee and ultimately building a successful law practice not far from our old apartment. He was a more polished, more accomplished Brian with an even larger vocabulary, but he was still Brian. He had dozens of friends and even more women. He had an income that was more than adequate to provide not only the necessities, but many of the finer things in life.

Throughout our marriage, Brian remained a steady fixture; it’s impossible to remember us, Anna and me, without also remembering Brian. He met us out for dinner and drinks, spent holidays with us, and even kept a change of clothes in the closet of our guest room. He accompanied us on many of our hiking and camping trips, as avid a lover of the outdoors as was Anna. On some occasions, if the weather was particularly chilly or the water especially rough, he and Anna braved the wilds without me as I, less adventurous than they, relaxed at the campsite, catching up on reading or cataloguing plant species, content to greet them with a warm fire and a cold drink on their return.

I was never jealous of their friendship, and I never doubted their loyalties. Some would call me a fool for my blind trust, but I believed in the bonds we had; I never had reason not to. If anything, at the end of it all, it was I who failed them.

Aside from a brief—and nearly forgettable—marriage in his late twenties, Brian remained ever and always the same incorrigible bachelor he’d been in our college days. If we came over time to view him as the
puer
aeternus
, our own eternal boy, he willingly accepted the role.

We provided him family and stability, a port in the storm, and he provided us an indirect experience of freedom and spontaneity. He crash-landed among us with some frequency, and while we privately lamented his seeming inability to settle down, some small part of me—and I think of Anna, too—ultimately came to envy the autonomy with which he lived.

Brian had all the trappings of a successful life, but he didn’t have what Anna and I had, that spiritual connection that comes from spending years building a life with someone you love. Perhaps I should have pitied him for that—Anna always had—but I didn’t, not then. After all, Anna and I came to know what it felt like to have our world ripped apart. We knew what it felt like to bear the unbearable, to have loved and lost. Brian had never loved in such a way; therefore, he had never lost in such a way. This was what I had believed, and I had envied him. But I was stupid.

Our wedding was small and simple, held on a warm September day in 1989 in the Tyler family’s rose garden. It was an intimate gathering of close friends and family; we shunned anything larger. We were of the age that both of us, together and apart, had suffered through our share of weddings. The summer after our graduation it seemed nearly everyone we knew was getting married, and it was after one incredibly long and complicated—and undoubtedly expensive—ceremony that I hoped Anna was sufficiently sentimental to consider accepting my proposal.

I had managed to scrimp and save enough over the summer to buy her a modest diamond. The jeweler had assured me it was of the best quality, but it was nowhere near the size of the rings many of her friends were sporting, and this worried me a bit. I had carried it in my pocket for days, waiting for the right time and place while also working up the courage I needed to go through with it.

It was sometime during the lighting of the candle at that long and complicated ceremony that I determined this would be the day I proposed to Anna. Once the decision was made I could hardly sit through the rest of the ceremony without fidgeting. The room suddenly seemed too small, the crowd oppressive. My tie was choking me, and sweat dripped between my shoulder blades as I waited through what seemed an endless prayer. When the songs were finally sung and the groom had kissed his bride, I turned to Anna to suggest we leave, only to find her lifting the hair off her neck, her face flushed.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “This is all just too much.” I smiled, flooded with feeling for this woman whose thoughts were so much my own. I led her by the hand through the crowd, bypassing the receiving line and ducking through a side door, finally emerging into a narrow alley shaded with elms.

“Thank God,” we said at the same time, and then laughed.

I shrugged off my coat and yanked my tie loose. “Was it just me,” I asked, leaning against the building, “or did that seem to go on forever?” I glanced over at Anna, did a double take.

“Forever,” she agreed, bending down to step out of the pantyhose she’d somehow managed to push down to her feet without me noticing. She struggled to remove a foot, tripping in the stretchy material, and I reached over to steady her. “Thank you,” she said, laughing at the expression on my face. “Well, it’s hot, isn’t it? And I hate these things. The slip is next, so if that’s going to embarrass you, you might want to turn around.”

Sometime during the final prayer I had determined to take Anna to the riverfront to propose. It seemed fitting, after all, since that was where we’d had our first date. But as she stood in front of me shoeless, her feet tangled in the discarded pantyhose, I was suddenly on one knee without remembering precisely how I’d gotten there. Her eyes grew huge as she realized what I was doing.

I fumbled with the box and felt my cheeks flaming. “It’s not much,” I said, and cursed myself for saying it. “I mean, I wish I could—” I stopped again.
Stupid
, I told myself.
Why don’t you just point out how broke you are?
That’ll
make her say yes
. I looked up at Anna to see her smiling down at me, and my breathing returned to normal.

“Anna,” I took her hand. “I’m trying—not very well—to ask you to marry me. So, how about it? Will you?” I hated how desperate I sounded, but in truth, I was.

She bent down and kissed me on top of the head. “I would love to marry you, Phillip,” she said, stroking a finger down my cheek. “But only if you promise our wedding won’t be like that one. That was a little over the top for me. And if you’ll help me out of these awful stockings before someone sees us.”

We decided on September, and Anna wore ivory, not one of those full, flowing dresses most brides seem to prefer, but a soft, clingy gown that fell just above her ankles and hugged her curves in all the right places. She carried a bouquet of late-blooming roses from the garden, and she was beautiful. I get a lump in my throat just remembering.

Brian was my best man, and Anna’s sister Cathy was maid of honor. I had met Cathy a handful of times by then, and I’d never known quite what to make of her. To label her flirty would be an understatement. She found occasions to rub against me, lingering too long when I hugged her in greeting, leaning in too close when we fixed our plates at family dinners, bending over in front of me when she seated herself across the table, affording me a generous view of her even more generous cleavage.

At first I thought I was imagining things. After all, until Anna no girls had ever even noticed me, and I knew if it weren’t for Anna, Cathy and I would have never crossed paths. Young women like Cathy weren’t interested in young men like me. I knew this from years of ruminating on the unfairness of life.

Cathy was a beautiful girl, in an overstated sort of way; I remember thinking of her as an exaggerated version of Anna. She had Anna’s delicate features but emphasized the exotic tilt of her eyes—a feature of Anna’s I adored—with dark, heavy makeup. Her lips were slightly fuller than Anna’s and thickly glossed, and her figure was curvier, straining against the tight tank tops she seemed to prefer.

Although I favored Anna’s natural beauty to Cathy’s more flamboyant style, I had no doubt Cathy had her pick of young men, and I initially chastised myself for reading more into her actions than was surely warranted. Cathy was just more exuberant than Anna, I told myself, and I, as a relatively inexperienced young man, was overreacting. Before long, however, I couldn’t deny her flirtations were intentional.

Over the weeks of our engagement I had managed to ignore Cathy’s unwanted touches and insinuations, diligently side-stepping her embraces and avoiding conversation, but then she upped the ante, leaving me no choice but to respond. It happened the week before our wedding, as Anna and her mother sat at the kitchen table and made plans, and I, tiring of the sitcom Mr. Tyler was watching and in need of fresh air, made my way to the back hallway in search of the garden. Just as I reached for the doorknob, I felt a hand slip into the back pocket of my jeans and cup my hip. I turned, startled. Anna would never have touched me in such an intimate way in her parents’ home. But Cathy, it turned out, would.

As I spun to face her she kept the original offending hand in my pocket and encircled my waist, pressing her pelvis against my groin as she slipped her other hand into my remaining pocket. There I was, in a full-on frontal embrace with my soon-to-be sister-in-law, shocked speechless as she pressed into me, groping my behind.

“Cathy,” I managed to sputter as I gripped her elbows, attempting to pull her arms away from me. “What are you doing?”

She tilted her head back to look into my face, and laughed. She looked so much like Anna, but wasn’t Anna at all. “Relax.” she said. “Take a chill pill. I’m just giving my new brother a hug.” With a final squeeze she released her hold on my hips and stepped away, disappearing into a nearby doorway so quickly I almost couldn’t believe it had actually happened.

I worried over the incident for at least a week before I decided to talk with Anna. I had no idea how she’d react, but I felt I needed to be honest about what had happened. I also dreaded my next visit to her parents’ house. I was marrying Anna, for heaven’s sake. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in fear of being groped by her sister. I had to tell her, and I finally worked up the courage the next Saturday morning as we strolled through Overton Square, sipping on carryout coffee and enjoying the morning.

She listened without commenting, walking quietly beside me with her hands wrapped tightly around the Styrofoam cup. When I finished she sighed, her mouth a grim line. “I’m so sorry, Phillip,” she looked up at me, but I couldn’t read her expression through the dark lenses of her sunglasses. “Cathy is a mess; she always has been,” she continued. “I don’t know why, but she’s always seemed to feel as if we’re in competition with each other. Maybe because I’m the oldest? Who knows,” she answered herself.

“My friends, my accomplishments, my boyfriends, it didn’t matter,” she said. “Whatever I had, Cathy wanted. And the thing is,” she ran a hand through her hair, her voice rising, frustrated, “it’s not as if she really cared about any of it. Whether it was a blouse, a pair of shoes, or a person, she only wanted what I had so I wouldn’t have it.” She looked up at me again. “Does that make sense?”

I nodded; I understood what she was saying, but the implication gave me pause. “The things that make you happy,” I said, searching for words, “the people—she doesn’t want them for their value to her; she wants them because they have value to you.”

Anna nodded. “And she wants to take that away from me.”

I put my arm around her, and she leaned against me as we walked. “But why?” I asked, knowing Anna had no answer. “I always wanted a brother, or a sister, someone to share my childhood with. I’d have given anything to have a brother a couple of years older than I am. Like a built in best friend. I can’t understand why she’d want to hurt you.”

Anna shrugged. “My parents have gone through hell with her,” she said. “We all have. She’s always been angry, not just with me, but with everyone. My mother tells stories about Cathy’s tantrums as if telling the story somehow makes it humorous, as if it were just one of those terrible twos things that parents have to deal with. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was scary. And they don’t know the half of it.”

I was left to wonder how far Cathy had gone—how far she would go—to hurt Anna. The thought was unsettling.

I hadn’t returned to the Tyler’s home until the rehearsal the evening before our wedding, and I was nervous about seeing Cathy again. As it turned out she was perfectly cordial, as if nothing had ever happened. I’m sure it helped that Brian was with me. At any rate, I was relieved, and I hoped Cathy and I could bury the past and move forward without further incident. I was naïve back then. I had no inkling of the dark forces that drove Cathy’s behaviors. I doubt Cathy herself knew what motivated her to act as she did.

The rehearsal was the first time Brian and Cathy had met, although I had told him about my own odd encounter with her. In true Brian style, he had laughed. “You’re getting married,” he said, jabbing me in the chest, “but I’m not.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to meet her. Is she hot?”

As if a kindred spirit, temperature was also Cathy’s first thought. “Who’s your hot friend, Phil?” She was sitting on the back steps in a tank top and shorts, legs splayed as she painted her toenails, when we walked up the path for rehearsal. Before I could reply, Brian stepped in. “I’m Brian,” he said with a wink and a smile. “And I’m single.” I left them to each other and went in search of Anna.

I found her at the kitchen table with her mother, patiently removing the thorns from a stack of roses. “To carry tomorrow,” Anna said, tilting her face towards me. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

“Not as gorgeous as you,” I said, leaning down for a kiss, surprising both of us with my boldness. Although we’d been dating over six months, I was notoriously shy about showing affection in front of Anna’s parents. But she had looked so cute sitting there, cross-legged in the kitchen chair surrounded by flowers, I couldn’t resist.

“It’s okay, Phil,” her mother said, smiling. “You can kiss her now, but not for too long.” She shook a finger at me, and I laughed aloud, surprised by her comment. “It’s good to have you join our family,” she said, reaching out to pat my hand, and I was suddenly struck by how similar to Anna she was. An older version, to be sure, but with the same sweetness and sense of humor.

As awful as it sounds, I’d hardly paid attention to Anna’s mother. She always seemed to stand in the shadows of her family, alternately worrying over Cathy or reassuring her husband. Mrs. Tyler was a quiet woman, and I wondered sometimes if she’d always been quiet, or if she’d simply given up trying to be heard after the many years she’d lived with Anna’s rebellious sister and apprehensive father. I was oddly pleased, if slightly embarrassed, to be at the receiving end of her teasing, and I found myself wanting to get to know her better.

The rehearsal went off without a hitch, save the fact Brian and Cathy didn’t show up until it was over. I didn’t ask where they’d been; I didn’t need to. Neither did Anna or her parents. I wondered if they were as relieved as I was at Cathy’s absence.

The wedding the next day unfolded exactly as Anna and I had wanted. Surrounded by those closest to us, we pledged our love and stepped together into our future. We were young and idealistic, as most young married couples are. We saw the future as a long, vibrant road of endless possibilities. Perhaps the harshest lesson of all is that nothing is endless.