Blessed Are the Wholly Broken

by Melinda Clayton

  “Used to be.”

  He smiled, not unkindly. “I suppose in your current circumstances, being known as a ‘runner’ could cause problems.”

  I hadn’t felt physically well in quite some time, certainly not since my arrest. I’d had periods of breathlessness followed by a moment or two of dizziness, but had attributed the symptoms to a combination of stress, lack of exercise, and bad food. “All of which could be factors,” the physician agreed. “I’ll send you back with prescriptions to help lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. I’ll also make some dietary and exercise recommendations, but given your situation, they might not be easy to implement.”

  Brian insisted the trial be postponed until I was discharged from the hospital and medically cleared to attend court the following week. I didn’t care; after news of Peter, what difference did it make to me?

  “There’s the small matter of having a right to be there, but more importantly, I’ll be calling you to testify right after I wrap up with Martha Dunn,” Brian said on the day of my discharge. The guards waited just outside the open door, giving us our privacy. “She’s good, Phil, and I think the information she’s going to share with the court is a very accurate description of Anna’s last months.”

  I was swallowed by a wave of loneliness, the sadness enveloping me like a dense fog. It had been nearly a year since Anna’s death and I still missed her terribly. In my memory she was the beautiful, intelligent, witty woman I’d met the rainy Memphis morning she’d come sliding across the floor on her backside and figuratively bowled me over. In my nightmares she was something else entirely, but I had no control over those apparitions and I knew they weren’t really my Anna.

  “That wasn’t really Anna, you know,” Brian said, as if reading my thoughts. “That’s how I’ve managed to press forward with this. I remind myself that the woman we’re discussing in court wasn’t our Socrates.”

  “No, she wasn’t, but you know what bothers me?” Brian raised his brows at my question, and I continued. “It bothers me that I don’t know when she slipped away. When did Anna stop being Anna?”

  Brian rubbed his chin. “I doubt there was a specific incident, but I could notice subtle changes over the years when I visited you guys. Obviously I didn’t know the extent of the problem, but that was Anna. She never was one to confide, was she?”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes I feel so weighted down with guilt, you know? I should have known. I should have listened more. But I did try, Brian. I knew Anna had a hard time sharing any sort of negative feelings, so I paid special attention. You know what the irony of it all is?”

  “Tell me.”

  “All those years I tried to be so attuned to whatever she might have been feeling, whatever grief or sadness or loneliness she might have felt because of Jeffrey, or the miscarriages, or even our decision not to have children. I worked so hard to be sensitive to those issues, and in the end, that seems to be what destroyed her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I struggled to put it into words. “Williams, the guy….Peter’s father,” I forced myself to say it, ripping off the scab I’d spent nearly two years creating. “He said Anna worried she wasn’t enough for me. That I might prefer someone else, someone who could have children with me. There were a couple of times Anna became angry with me—furious, really, to the extent Anna ever became furious—when I mentioned not having had children. She accused me of not being able to let go of the past, said I was holding her back.”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Phil.”

  “The truth is I was sometimes sorry we hadn’t been able to have children. She told me more than once she’d moved on and had no regrets, but I refused to believe it. I always assumed she was just putting on a brave face, trying to bear up under the disappointment. All those years, all those assumptions about what Anna must be feeling, and I got it all wrong.”

  “Don’t you think Anna bears some of the blame for that?” Brian moved to sit in the chair across from me. “It takes two to create a misunderstanding, after all. At any given time, on any given day, Anna could have chosen to address the issues between the two of you, but she didn’t. You can’t shoulder the responsibility for the choices she made. Take the pregnancy, for example. What would you have done if she’d insisted on getting an abortion?”

  I winced at the word. “What could I have done? I would have been sad, upset, even angry, but I wouldn’t have left her. We would have had a rough time, but we’d have made it through. Even knowing all I know now, I think we would have made it. And even if we hadn’t, at least she’d still be alive.”

  “But Peter wouldn’t.”

  “No. Peter wouldn’t. But Brian, would he have been better off, too? What quality of life can he possibly have now?”

  “I don’t think those are questions either of us can answer. I know I’m certainly not qualified to determine the quality of anyone else’s life. Hell, I can’t even figure out my own. And it’s a moot point, anyway, because she didn’t insist, did she?”

  “No. Not after that first day. She never mentioned it again. She cancelled her appointment—at least I assume she did—without ever mentioning it to me.”

  “Look, Phil, my point isn’t to say whether or not your decisions or Anna’s decisions were the right ones. I can’t do that. My point is that Anna made choices along the way, too, and you can’t take responsibility for those.”

  “But she wasn’t well, Brian. It was my job to take care of her, and I failed.”

  Brian regarded me for a moment before shaking his head. “You’re not as powerful as you think you are, Phil. No matter how much you want to, you can’t always keep everyone safe and make everything turn out okay. Anna was responsible for Anna. Don’t forget that when I put you on the stand.”

  He turned to leave, patting one of the guards on the shoulder on his way out. A nurse entered with a wheelchair and the ever-vigilant guards marched beside us until I stood at the exit. We rode in silence the short distance back to the jail, which was fine with me. I was lost in memories of Anna.

  Chapter 50: April 15, 2013

  The trial continued, but I was detached from it all. I felt slow and heavy, my brain struggling to make sense of the proceedings around me. Brian called old friends and coworkers to the stand to attest to my character, the state of my marriage, and my adjustment to fatherhood. Some part of me recognized the irony of their testimony; they spoke of me in relation to my family, my friends, my job, but I had none of those things. Who, then, was I?

  “Object Relations Theory,” I heard Anna saying, and in my memory she was wearing a yellow sundress and chewing on a straw, one of those little stir-straws used for mixing sugar and cream with coffee. It was a Saturday morning, the summer after our graduation. We were sitting on the patio of a coffeehouse in downtown Memphis, full of ourselves and our observations.

  We were confident back then; some may have said cocky. We had the world at our feet, and like all young college graduates we knew everything and loved nothing so much as discussing our profound insights with one another over coffee (on those mornings we felt particularly sophisticated), or booze (on those nights we were still young enough to think we needed to prove our membership into adulthood by the number of drinks we could handle).

  “Uh-oh.” Brian set his cup down and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. “Socrates is getting ready to pontificate.”

  We, or rather Anna and Brian, had been discussing Brian’s love life, a frequent topic in those days and an area of some contention. The apartment the three of us shared was small, and the parade of women Brian rotated through was large. Whereas I, and undoubtedly Brian, were most inconvenienced due to the fact we shared a room, Anna was troubled by Brian’s apparent lack of real interest or affection for any of his obviously willing participants.

  “But they’re people, Brian,” she had said that morning as she smeared grape jelly over a bagel in quick, jerky motions. This, I realized in the middle of
my memory, was something I had always loved about Anna—her complete lack of pretension, her eschewing bean sprouts or tofu in favor of good old-fashioned grape jelly. But that morning she was agitated, I knew, not only by the situation, but by Brian’s mocking dismissal of her concerns. “You can’t just use them.”

  “That statement,” Brian said, pointing at Anna while looking at me, “is an excellent example of sexism.” He turned back to Anna. “What makes you think I’m using them? What if, in fact, they’re using me? It’s possible, you know. I mean, just look at this.” He gestured toward himself, his mouth quirked in a smile, his legs tanned and muscular in khaki shorts. “It’s tiring, always fighting them off. Exhausting, I tell you.”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying they don’t want to be there. Good God, that last one had her drawers halfway off before you even closed your door.”

  Brian laughed. “That may be a slight exaggeration,” he said, “inappreciable, but still, let’s stick to the facts.” He ducked as Anna tossed the chewed straw in his direction.

  “Object Relations Theory,” she had pronounced then, and I slumped down in my chair, stretching my legs in front of me to prop my feet on the brackets under the table. It was a beautiful morning, the café awning providing just enough shade, the breeze ruffling Anna’s yellow dress until she gathered the hem under her thighs and sat on it. I had that lazy, dissociated feeling that sometimes comes when one is completely at peace, utterly content in one’s surroundings. I settled in to enjoy the debate.

  “I’m not pontificating,” Anna argued, “I’m trying to offer you some insight into your deviance.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite, just for fun. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s a theory; I don’t remember who came up with it. Several people. British, I think. Anyway, the premise is that we define ourselves by our relationships to the objects around us. Or at least that’s what I got out of it; it was a really hard class, with a really boring teacher. But that part stuck with me. The theory is pretty interesting, if you think about it.”

  “Explain.”

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the sun and the sound of Anna’s voice as she continued. “Your ego, your self, only exists in relation to something else. Or someone else. Or, in your case, lots of someones.”

  “You’re saying I don’t exist without women?”

  “Sort of. Your definition of who you are comes from your interactions with women. If the women were removed, who would you be?”

  “I’m not quite that simple, Anna. I also have friends, a job, a family. Okay, the family leaves something to be desired, but you know what I mean.”

  “All of which are objects, according to the theory. Who are you without all that? You define yourself by your relationship with your mother, your relationships with women, your job performance. External stuff.”

  “But the same could be said about any of us, right? According to your theory, we’re all just using each other to define who we are.”

  “True,” Anna acknowledged, “but doesn’t that give us some responsibility to not harm them in the process?”

  Brian whistled. “I’ve got to hand it to you; that’s deep stuff. Too deep for me this morning. But let me assure you, any moans or groans you hear coming from the bedroom aren’t because I’m harming anyone.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” said Anna, with a sigh. “But you know I’m right.”

  “No,” said Brian, “I don’t. But what I do know is that I have a whole weekend ahead of me. That’s forty-eight hours to find more women to help give me a sense of self, and I’m sitting here wasting them. Whose turn is it to pay? I’ve got theories to research.”

  I sat up, reaching for my wallet as Anna leaned across the table to peer at Brian. “Who are you, lover boy, without all the women? Without all the objects?”

  Her voice was light, teasing, but Brian stilled, his expression unexpectedly solemn, any hint of playfulness gone. “Who are any of us, Anna? If this so-called theory is right, wouldn’t that mean our lives are nothing more than a reaction to whatever—or whomever—we choose to keep around us? If that’s the case, we’d better be really careful with our choices, hadn’t we?”

  Who, indeed? Sitting at the defense table with Brian and an assortment of the best attorneys my assets could buy, I realized as my former friends and coworkers swore under oath I’d been an excellent father, a loving husband, a competent coworker, I was no one. My objects, as Anna would have said, no longer existed, and so neither did I. Perhaps, as Brian had said decades before, I had chosen unwisely. Or perhaps, and more likely, the most subtle variation, the most infinitesimal disparity, can inadvertently destroy the entire system.

  Chapter 51: April 16, 2013

  Martha Dunn, a psychologist from Memphis, testified for the better part of two days. Brian had consulted with several mental health experts, all of whom agreed that at the very least, Anna had suffered from a severe case of postpartum depression. Mrs. Dunn, a self-proclaimed expert in women’s issues, believed Anna’s suffering ran deeper than that, testifying in a strident manner, her voice loud and nasally, that according to her research Anna most likely suffered from postpartum psychosis, a diagnosis I’d never even heard of until the trial.

  Mrs. Dunn told the jury that her review of Anna’s doctors’ notes, in conjunction with her interviews with both Cathy and Mrs. Tyler, led her to believe that Anna was not only severely depressed, but also delusional. “She vacillated between thinking the baby was evil,” she testified, “and believing she—Mrs. Lewinsky herself—was evil. Sometimes she expressed a need to save the baby, and other times she expressed a need to save herself. According to the notes provided by her OBGYN, Anna felt both her husband and her mother were plotting against her, and at her most dysfunctional, she was convinced their actions were in some way influenced—directed, even—by the baby.”

  “What causes postpartum psychosis?” Brian asked. He paced in front of the witness box, hands clasped behind his back, ever the professional. In such moments he seemed a completely different person from the Brian who’d crashed at our house, feet propped on the coffee table, a beer in his hand.

  “It’s extremely rare,” Mrs. Dunn was saying, “affecting only about one woman in a thousand, and while there is no definitive cause, fluctuating hormone levels are believed to be a contributing factor to postpartum depression. We know that women who have a history of mental illness, or who have a family history of mental illness, are then at greater risk of developing postpartum psychosis.”

  Brian gazed at the floor, as if gathering his thoughts. “Mrs. Lewinsky had a history of major depression after the death of her newborn son in 2001. Could this have placed her at a higher risk for developing postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis after the birth of her second son?”

  As the prosecuting attorney voiced his objection to Brian’s question a soft cry rose in the courtroom, followed by rustling sounds and the quiet thump of the door. I knew without looking Mrs. Tyler had hurried from the room, unable to listen to more of Mrs. Dunn’s testimony. I also knew she must have been wrestling with the same guilt I was feeling. Anna had been unwell, and we hadn’t saved her.

  Brian continued with a few more inquiries before the prosecuting attorney took his turn, clarifying through his questions and her responses that Mrs. Dunn had never met Anna and certainly couldn’t attest to Anna’s state of mind on the morning of her death.

  “Were you there the morning of June 3, 2012, Mrs. Dunn?”

  “No. I was not.”

  “Had you spoken to Mrs. Lewinsky that morning?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “So you can’t speak to her state of mind that morning; is that correct?”

  “I can’t speak to her state of mind that particular morning, but from my interviews—”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Dunn. No further questions.”

  Shortly thereafter the judge imparted some directions to the jury and we a
djourned for the day, Brian standing with me as the guards prepared to transport me back to my cell. “You’re up tomorrow, Phillip,” he said. “I’ll lead you through events just as we’ve discussed. Finally, it’s your chance to help the jury understand what really happened. Try to get some rest tonight, okay? You’ll need to be sharp tomorrow.”

  But as it turned out, I got no rest at all.

  Chapter 52: April 16, 2013

  Other than Brian and his team of attorneys, the only visitor I’d had during my months of incarceration had been my pastor, who showed up every week or two to pray with me. I never knew, during those fervent sessions, whether the prayers were for me or for him. He seemed to feel a great sense of responsibility for my soul, much more than I felt, and I imagined his impassioned pleas for God to save me as bullet points on a resume: Pastor, 2002-2013, Built a new wing onto the church and saved ten souls.

  No doubt I’m being unfair; I suppose I should have been grateful for the company. After all, no one else had bothered to come, the circumstances too awkward and uncomfortable to navigate. Nevertheless, when the guard announced I had a visitor, my first inclination was to decline. I wanted to be left alone. I had neither the energy nor the interest in conversing with anyone, and I no longer cared to be saved.

  “Not the preacher,” the young guard said, leading me from my cell. “An old woman. I’ve seen her in court. Don’t know who she is; they just told me to get you.”

  I hesitated when I saw her, suddenly afraid, not of what she might say or do, but of the emotions her presence brought to the surface. She didn’t look up as I took my seat. I don’t think she was aware I was there until I placed my hand on the glass. She lifted her head then, slowly, and even more slowly her hand, until she placed it on the glass opposite mine.