Blessed Are the Wholly Broken

by Melinda Clayton

  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.

  Chapter 7: June 3, 2012—The Arrest

  “I can’t be your attorney,” Brian said, startling me from my memories. He was pacing again, holding a hand palm-out as if to stop my words.

  “I hadn’t expected you to,” I said. “You’re here as my friend, Brian. They asked if I wanted an attorney and I said your name. That’s when they let me place the call.”

  Brian nodded slowly, as if in thought. “Then how do you plan to explain at the arraignment that you don’t have an attorney?”

  I hardly knew what an arraignment was, and said so to Brian.

  “You’ll go before the magistrate,” he said, “maybe tomorrow, but more likely Monday. You’ll be told the charges and asked if you want an attorney. You do, but it can’t be me, so don’t even suggest it. I’ll try to come up with some names for you. They’ll ask how you plead, but you don’t, not until you have an attorney. If it comes up, we should both say that this initial consultation was covered by the attorney-client privilege, so neither of us will have to divulge anything we said to each other, but after that, you need new counsel. And they won’t consider bail, Phillip. Not under these circumstances.”

  That got my attention. “I have to have bail, Brian. I have to get to Peter.”

  Abruptly, his pacing stopped. “Phillip,” he said, bending towards me, hands on his hips. “You don’t get it, do you?” He spoke slowly, as if to give me time to process the words. “Peter’s gone.” His voice was harsh. “They think you tried to kill him. You won’t be allowed any contact with Peter.”

  I sat back, momentarily stunned into silence. “But I didn’t,” I finally managed to say. “I would never, ever hurt Peter. They’ll see that, right? And then I can see him?”

  Brian hesitated. “If it comes out during the trial that you aren’t responsible for Peter’s injuries, child welfare will take that into consideration. But Phil, there are so many factors in question. You’ll also be charged with the murder of…of Anna.” He paused again, and I saw his throat working as he struggled to maintain control. “I can’t possibly predict the outcome of all this, Phil. And even if I could….”

  “What? Tell me, Brian.” My heart was pounding under the thin material of the county’s jumpsuit.

  “Even if I could,” he said, turning his back to me, “it may be too late for Peter.”

  “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

  But he didn’t answer me; he simply paced.

  Chapter 8: June, 1995

  “I want a baby,” Anna said, apropos of nothing. We were packing, preparing to move to Ripley, Tennessee. In some ways it was difficult to leave the little apartment we had at one time shared with Brian, but it was time.

  Anna had finished her graduate degree a couple of years prior, and although she’d accepted a job teaching in the city school system, her ultimate goal was to teach at the college level. There were aspects of her job she enjoyed, but it was also challenging, offering few resources to the impoverished kids with whom she worked. She was restless, ready to move on, so when I was offered a midlevel job with a medical lab in Dyersburg, our decision didn’t require much thought.

  “What did you say?” I thought I must have misheard her. We’d discussed having children, of course, and I was certainly open to the idea. I just hadn’t expected to hear that from Anna that summer afternoon of 1995. Always before, when we’d discussed starting a family, we’d decided the time wasn’t quite right.

  “You heard me,” she said, smiling. “I want a baby.” Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, the loose strands curling around her face in the humidity. She was barefoot, dressed in cut-off denim shorts and a white sleeveless blouse, and I could think of nothing I’d rather be doing than giving her a baby.

  “Like, right now?” I asked, returning the smile. “I’ll have to clear these boxes out of the way, but I’ll do my best.”

  She laughed and threw a roll of packing tape in my direction. “Not at this exact moment,” she said, “but soon.”

  I taped a box of books closed and slid it towards the door. “What made you change your mind? Not that I have a problem with having kids; you know that. But why now?”

  “Why not now?” she responded. “It’s the perfect time. You’re getting a nice raise, we’re buying our own home out in the country, and I’m leaving a stressful job behind. Everything’s falling into place, don’t you think?”

  I hadn’t thought about it until then, so preoccupied was I with the move and all it entailed, but I had to admit she was right. We’d closed on a three-bedroom house that Anna referred to as “adorable” and I referred to as “affordable.” It was located on five acres just north of Ripley, within easy driving distance of my job, but rural enough to allow us the privacy we wanted. It was natural to complete the picture by adding a couple of kids, a swing set, maybe a dog.

  “Then let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s have a baby.” I was rewarded by a lapful of Anna as she leapt across the boxes to give me a kiss, which I happily received.

  “Unless you want to start this project now,” I said, laughing as she pushed me down, “you’d probably better get off my lap.”

  “Now is fine,” she replied, and our packing was finished for the day.

  Chapter 9: October, 1997

  The first question any couple is asked after marrying is, “When are you going to have a baby?” Although frequently annoyed by it, Anna and I had gotten used to deflecting that question in the early years of our marriage. She was still in school, I was building a career, and we had a small apartment in the middle of Memphis. The reasons for waiting were plentiful and easily understood.

  Not so after years of trying. At that point, the questions were no longer annoying; they were painful. We didn’t worry at first. We were healthy adults, in so far as we knew, with a normal sex life. If it was meant to happen, it would. We told ourselves this for two years, years during which we made Ripley our home. We settled easily into our new house. We joined a church and made new friends. We took pleasure in painting and papering and landscaping. I tilled a section in the back, and Anna planted a small garden. We had squash and tomatoes, turnip greens, lettuce, and radishes.

  We even harvested a couple of pumpkin plants, and while our yield was small and sickly due to the late planting, we spoke easily and often of the joy we’d eventually experience with our children. I envisioned the planting, small hands dropping the seeds, and the hoeing, as I instructed on the proper technique. Anna, I knew, dreamt of jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treaters, costume parties and shrieks of laughter.

  And so it was on a beautiful fall day in 1997, as Anna scooped pumpkin seeds into a colander to be washed, that she finally brought up the topic both of us had surely been thinking. “We need to see a doctor, Phillip.”

  I didn’t ask why, because I knew the answer. Our attempts to have a baby had morphed from a healthy enjoyment of our sex life to calendars, thermometers, and a slew of drugstore pregnancy tests, all negative in the end. We’d gone from daydreaming out loud all the scenarios our baby would complete, to tense silences, both of us afraid to speak the words.

  “Two years isn’t that long, Anna,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was balking at the thought of medical intervention. Maybe it was because to give in to it would indicate some sort of failure on our part. It stung that we couldn’t seem to achieve this most basic of human functions.

  “
I’m thirty years old, Phillip. We’re not kids anymore.” She turned off the faucet and stared out the window, avoiding my eyes. “How long should we wait? Until I’m thirty-five? Forty?”

  I stepped behind her to encircle her waist, pulling her against me. She leaned back, tilting her head to look up at me. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I wanted to marry a wonderful man who’d love me forever.”

  I leaned down to kiss her on the nose. “You did,” I said, “and I will.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “I know.” She patted my cheek. “But I also wanted to have a houseful of kids. I know two years isn’t that long, but I feel like I’m running out of time. You work in a medical lab, Phillip. You know the challenges older women face. What’s the magic age? Thirty-five? That’s not that far away. Maybe nothing’s wrong, but if something is, I need to know it so we can fix it. Don’t you agree?”

  I did agree, but even if I hadn’t, I would have done anything for Anna.

  Chapter 10: June 3, 2012—The Arrest

  “Why are you telling me this, Phillip?” Brian had finally given up pacing and stood with his back to me, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

  “I need you to know,” I said.

  “To know what? How hard you and Anna worked at having a baby? I do know that, Phil. I stayed with you for days after Jeffrey was born, remember? And again for Peter.”

  This was true; Brian had visited with us both times Anna had given birth. He’d been the godfather of both of our children. He’d also been there when we’d lost Jeffrey, and for many days after. I don’t know how either of us could have survived without him. Not only had he held Anna as she cried, he’d been the one person who understood what I needed, even when I didn’t know it myself. He let me rage when I needed to rage, and be silent when I needed to be silent.

  Finally, ever so gently, he had nudged each of us, kicking and screaming, back into the world, and he’d anchored us there ever since. Brian knew so much about us, but he didn’t know everything.

  “But you weren’t there before,” I said. “You didn’t see how hard it all was on Anna.”

  Brian spun around to face me. “So I took a couple of years off to have a life of my own, and that’s somehow a problem? That has something to do with all this? Jesus, Phillip.” He was angry partly, I think, because I wasn’t explaining myself well, but partly because given the enormity of my circumstances, he didn’t know how else to react.

  I shook my head, desperate to make him understand. “No, Brian. No, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry; that came out wrong. I just meant I need you to know what that whole experience did to Anna—to us. There were things we didn’t share, times we found it easier not to talk about. I need to tell you about those times. Then you’ll understand.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Brian said, and turned back to face the wall.

  Chapter 11: October, 1999

  Neither of us, as it turned out, had any detectable medical reason for having failed to make a baby. No low sperm count, no endometriosis, no hormonal imbalances. When all the tests were completed and all the results were read, we were sent home and told, essentially, “Relax and have sex. It’ll happen.”

  While on the one hand we were both relieved to know there were no issues with our plumbing, so to speak, that still didn’t answer the only truly important question we had: Why, then, can’t we make a baby?

  “Maybe they’re right,” Anna said one night as we sat in silence, she with a book in her lap and I catching up on some lab notes I’d allowed to fall behind. “Maybe we do just need to relax and stop worrying about it. I mean, if all the parts are working right, it stands to follow at some point it’ll happen. Or we’ll grow old trying. Worrying about it isn’t going to change the outcome, at least not in any positive way.”

  I looked up at her, taking a moment to pull my brain away from cell morphology and blood types to focus on what she’d said. “Look, Anna,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. We’ll have a baby, one way or another. We can always check into artificial insemination, or in vitro, or whatever the hell it is. Or adoption. I’m open to adopting, too. We’ll do whatever we need to do. Right?”

  I was rewarded with a smile the likes of which I hadn’t seen for months. Anna’s whole face curved when she smiled; it was impossible not to smile back. She unfolded herself from the couch and came to sit in my lap. “Are you seriously willing to check into those things?” she asked.

  “I am,” I told her. “Of course I am.”

  She wound her arms around my neck and pressed her cheek against my chest. “That’s such a relief to me, Phillip. Thank you.”

  I stroked her hair, remembering how I’d spent months longing to lose myself in those curls back when we were college kids. It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest we give the natural method of impregnation another go when I realized Anna was asleep, heavy against my chest, her breath warm and steady on my neck. I gathered her to me, like a precious gift I didn’t want to lose.

  “I think I’m coming down with something,” she said the next morning. I’d managed to rouse her enough the previous night to get her to bed; she hadn’t even bothered to put on a gown. Instead, she’d stripped out of her clothes and pulled the covers to her chin, asleep before I’d closed the door. I hadn’t joined her until the wee hours of the morning, after completing the reports I’d brought home and swearing—not for the first time—not to allow myself to fall so far behind again. She hadn’t stirred when I’d stripped off my own clothes and scooted next to her in search of warmth.

  I looked up from the newspaper that morning, vaguely anxious. Anna was the healthiest person I knew, seldom ever sick. She ran two miles each morning and was an avid biker, hiker, and camper. Vacations for us typically meant either a campsite or a cabin; no trendy Las Vegas trips or Carnival cruises for us. But that morning she did look pale, and her coffee sat in front of her untouched.

  I reached across the breakfast bar to feel her forehead. “No fever,” I pronounced, but you look tired, hon. Why don’t you call in sick today and get some rest?”

  “I think I will,” she said, surprising me. Anna had never taken a sick day. She stood and came around the bar. “Bye, sweetie,” she stood on tip-toe to kiss me. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “Call me if you need something,” I said. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing a day of rest won’t fix.”

  “I could always take a day off, too,” I said. “Keep you company. Work on this baby thing.”

  She smiled. “I appreciate the offer, but I believe I’ll take a rain check. I’m not sure your definition of ‘rest’ and mine are the same.” She kissed me again before padding down the hallway and gently closing the bedroom door.

  She wasn’t sick, of course, and after a week of exhaustion during which she barely managed to keep any food down, and then only the blandest of offerings, our suspicions were confirmed: After all the years of trying, the stick was finally blue.

  “I’ve never been so excited to feel so sick,” Anna said, beaming up at me from where she lay on the couch, an afghan drawn up to her chin. Her face was pale, emphasizing the dark circles under her eyes, but she’d never looked more beautiful to me. I pulled her feet into my lap and began to massage them, pressing my thumb in a circle over the ball of her foot. Anna sighed contentedly and snuggled further into the cushions.

  “Who should we tell next?” she asked, her voice already fading into sleep. She had called both sets of parents right away, but other than that, we’d not made any official announcements.

  “Brian?” I suggested. Truthfully, I was happy to have an excuse to call him. It had been close to two years since we’d seen him, the longest we’d ever gone, and our last visit had been a surprisingly uncomfortable encounter. It had been the first, and last, time we’d met his wife.

  Brian had surprised everyone by getting married, not only because none of our old crowd had known he was seriously dating
anyone, but also because they had eloped. None of us had known a thing about it until Brian began working his way down a list of phone calls in the winter of ’96. Anna had been the one to answer the call; I’d been on the porch replacing a rotted slat in the swing.

  I knew immediately it was Brian; I could tell by Anna’s pleased tone. This was in the middle of our attempted baby-making years, and while Anna hadn’t yet reached the level of anxiety she later attained, hearing her voice raised with pleasure was a welcome circumstance.

  I’d just stepped inside when Anna came running into the room, motioning me to pick up the corded extension on the mantle. “Brian?” she was saying. “I’m going to have Phillip get on the extension so you can tell both of us about it, okay?”

  I picked up the phone just in time to hear Brian’s voice, sounding unusually hearty. “Get him on here, too, Anna,” he was saying. “I want to introduce both of you to Sylvie.”

  I raised my brows at Anna as she mouthed, “His wife.”

  I nearly dropped the phone.

  “Phillip? You there, Phil?”

  “Brian!” I finally managed. “What’s up, man? Anna came running in here as if you had something important to tell us.” I shrugged in Anna’s direction. What else was I supposed to say?

  “I did it, man,” he laughed into my ear. “I bit the bullet. I want you to meet Sylvie, my wife.”

  “Hello?” a sultry sounding voice floated through the lines. “Phillip and Anna? Brian has told me so much about you.”

  I wish I could say the same, I thought, but managed to keep from saying. “Sylvie!” I had said, sounding like an idiot. “Well, this is a nice surprise. Brian?” I stumbled; I had no idea what to say next. Luckily Anna rescued me.