“He’s okay,” a voice said.
I lay on the hard metal for what seemed like hours. Panting and gasping for air.
Gradually my sight came back. I tried to get up, and a voice said, “Just stay there.”
I didn’t move. Though I turned my head to the right and when I did, I saw Hannah, maybe five feet away, prone on her back like I was. Her face was as pale as flour and her lips looked shriveled. Her eyes were closed. A man straddled her chest and he was pressing on it. Over and over. Then he stood and he slammed something to the ground. I heard it hit.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”
After that, I fell asleep.
There were those days in the hospital, people coming in and out, Berta and Danny Pedroia and Detective Martini from the Rhode Island State Police who was the one who told me that Hannah had died. He said it so matter-of-factly and I suppose I knew it already, but it didn’t go down any easier. It felt so unjust, my survival, and what bothered me the most was the finality of the separation. We either both should have lived, or we both should have died, and if only one of us wasn’t going to make it, it should have been me. I was born to the sea and in a perfect world, I should have died in the sea for what I loved. As my father had.
There was my incarceration in the wing for the criminally insane. The anguished wails of my fellow inmates who I seemed to have nothing in common with besides this building we shared. I saw their faces, contorted and half-human, and in them I never saw myself. Their pain was so palpable, so real, that they needed to be kept from themselves. They were their own worst enemies, and whatever they might say about me, I was not one of them.
There were the hours and hours with the doctors, going over the same material over and over. I held nothing back and I told them all I could. I told them everything they wanted to know, but mostly I told them about the love. The love I had for Hannah and the love she had for me. How most people live their whole lives and never know that kind of love. There is no adequate way to describe it and if you have not experienced it yourself you will never know what I am talking about. It’s like having a bad case of the flu that doesn’t go away, only it’s pleasant. You know you have it, that it has infected every part of you, but you don’t want it to go away. You want to succumb to it totally, let it course through your body and your mind like a virus. And the best part about it is that everything in this dark world makes sense for a time. The moon and the stars and the sun. The endless unforgiving ocean. The sand and the earth underneath your boots. It becomes real because of the touch, the feel, and the gaze of another person. You fall into each other and when you do there is no fear, no pain, no sorrow. There is just each other and somehow that is always enough.
The trial began on a Tuesday in October. The courtroom was stuffy and I remember that it was hard to breathe. The air was stale and still and I felt it in my throat. I stood to give my plea and I knew that all eyes were on me. They wanted to hear my voice, as if its very sound might answer all the questions they had about me. Danny Pedroia made me practice those words over and over. I tried to sound strong and confident, though I was neither of those things. I was indifferent at this point, to tell you the truth. I just wanted this over, the scrutiny. If I couldn’t live with Hannah, I at least wanted to be able to live with her in mind, where no one could bother me.
I stood, and I said, “Innocent by reason of insanity.”
I said it because I had to, not because I believed it. I knew what had happened and why it had happened. And other than the very end, when I was pulled out of the water against my will, I don’t know that I would have done a thing differently. But there was no forum for me to say that, and I did not. I said those five words, enunciating them as clearly as I could, and then I sat down.
The first person the prosecution called was Victor. He glanced at me quickly when he took the stand but the whole time he talked, he didn’t once look in my direction. He wore his suit from the funeral home and he played with his mustache. The prosecutor, a sturdy-looking woman with shoulder-length brown hair, kept having to ask him to speak up. But Victor did pretty well. He didn’t leave a whole lot out. He talked about the wake he did at the house, how he told me about the money. How I wanted it to use for college. He didn’t mention anything about his wanting the money, too, but that was okay. I wasn’t going to call him on it. Besides, the prosecutor went over this a dozen times, trying to show how clear-thinking I was. That I was making plans. Victor told them how we rode my skiff out and I insisted on going into the house alone. He told them how afterwards the only thing I would talk about was Hannah and when the woman prosecutor asked him if he thought that was odd, me talking only about the girl, Victor shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Tony always liked girls.” Quite a few people in the courtroom chuckled at that and I even allowed myself a smile.
Sheriff Riker went next. He gave all the details of the scene at the house, of seeing Hannah’s father on the floor next to the staircase. I tuned him out when he talked, to be honest. There was nothing new to what he said. Instead I scribbled on the paper in front of me, like I was taking notes. I also watched a long-haired woman in a flowing dress to my left, in the first row behind where the prosecutors sat. She had a big sketch pad and was drawing pictures of everyone in the courtroom. I liked to watch her work. She was fast and used colored pencils. She did a great one of the judge, and also a nice one of Danny Pedroia. She drew me a lot, and didn’t seem to mind that I could see her doing it. But the one I liked the best was the one she did of Berta. I thought she captured her perfectly, her stoic face and the sweetness and depth of her sad eyes. If I could have, I would have asked her if I could have it.
They brought up Captain Alavares and he talked about how I didn’t show up for his boat that time and left him a note. The prosecutor asked him if I had ever caused any trouble before, and he said, “Anthony was an able fisherman.” It warmed my heart to hear him say it because I knew for Captain Alavares that this was the highest form of praise he could give.
Next they called old Terrence from the campground in Connecticut. I was surprised to see him and they cleaned him up for his big day in court. He limped up to the stand but otherwise he looked no worse for wear. He had a suit on. His face didn’t show any sign of our fight, but then again it had been a couple of months. He said how I attacked him, and then took his car. He conveniently left out any part about his interest in Hannah and how that might of affected things. But I whispered all that to Danny Pedroia and when it was his turn he grilled him on it hard. Terrence didn’t give in, though, and I realized he didn’t have to. It was his word against mine and I was the one sitting over here.
The final witness the prosecution called was Hannah’s mother, Irene Forbes. Everyone leaned forward in their seats as she made her way up the aisle and past me and to the stand. She wore a long black dress and heels, and the only hint of color came from a scarf around her neck that had a touch of red in it. When she sat down, the prosecution brought out a giant picture of Hannah and they propped it up so the jury could see it. It was slightly off center from where I sat, but I could see it nonetheless. It was only a shot of her face, and she was smiling, but there were her green eyes, and those freckles, and those full lips. I only looked at it for a moment. For in front of me was Irene Forbes, and in her face I saw more of Hannah than I saw in the photograph. She was a beautiful woman. The wrinkles coming off her eyes and her forehead seemed to accentuate her beauty, not detract from it. And in seeing her, I suppose I got a glimpse of what Hannah would have looked like had she lived, and the thought of this was almost too much for me to handle. I felt the tears coming and I fought them off as best I could. I looked away from her, toward the tall windows, and when I looked back she was staring right at me as she talked about her daughter. In her eyes I saw hatred. Pure naked hatred. And I couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t been with us. She couldn’t have known the truth about Hannah and me. All she knew was what was in front of her. That Hannah was in
the ground. And that I was here.
When the trial ended, the jury had found in our favor. Which only meant that I traded prison for a hospital. They drove me in a van to this place, and I got my first glimpse of its brick buildings and its manicured lawns, looking more like a college than anything else, except for the heavy fences with the swirls of barbwire at the top. There were the first few years in the buildings everyone calls the farm, and finally my move to this room on the third floor, this room that has become my home. This room that gives me the ocean in the distance when the leaves are off the trees.
I stand up from my desk. Outside my window the sun is coming up over the distant water. I take the notebook and I put it into a brown envelope. I write Dr. Mitchell on the front of it. Then I leave my room and walk those hallways that echo the sound of my shoes on the linoleum. I exit the building and walk across the green lawn to the administration building where Dr. Mitchell’s big office is. The campus is deserted at this hour. I don’t see anyone else except for a few orderlies over near the doorway to the farm smoking. They ignore me and I enter the administration building and at Dr. Mitchell’s office, I place the envelope into the plastic bin next to his heavy wooden door.
You can’t even understand how much I have hated you for what you did to my husband, and to my baby girl. During the trial it took all I had to look at you, and you looked so smug to me, like you didn’t have a care in the world. And yet you took two lives. They may have been imperfect, but who knows what could have come if they had continued to live?
It was very hard for me to write this letter. It took a number of years for me to draw the strength I needed. In the end, I did it for Hannah. I wanted you to know the type of person she was, the type of person she might have been. She was so much more than an object for your sickness. She was a beautiful girl, and more beautiful inside than out. She could have had an amazing life. Sometimes I think about her in her thirties, married with children, happy, living in the kind of marriage that I always wanted. She would have learned from my mistakes, I think, and avoided many of the pitfalls. She would have been a great mother.
I don’t hate you anymore. I haven’t forgiven you either. And I won’t ever try to understand what you did. But Hannah in her short life did not like hate. There was too much difficulty in her own home. She did everything she could do to bring light to the world.
My only hope is that somehow this letter gets through to you. That perhaps you can take something from it that will allow you to fully understand what you have done.
Dr. Mitchell and I sit across from one another. Between us is his leather-topped coffee table. This is October and outside the window I can see maintenance workers raking the bright yellow leaves of the great oak into big piles. On the table in front of us is my notebook.
“I want to give this back to you,” Dr. Mitchell says.
“What did you think of it?”
He pauses. “I read it as a doctor, you have to know that. I think what I want to do Anthony, is give you some reading. Something I wrote.”
“Oh?”
He leans over toward a side table and picks a big folder off the top of it. He puts it on the table in front of me.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Your file,” he says.
“My file?”
“Everything we have learned about since you have been here. All my notes, notes from the other doctors. Test results. A summary of our findings.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“You’re right to ask. It’s unusual. There are conditions under state law where patients can petition to see parts of their file, but seldom all of it. I agonized over this, Anthony. But after reading your account I came to the conclusion that it was the right thing to do. I think you will find the summary particularly useful. But you are welcome to read all of it. For all the obvious reasons, you cannot take it with you. You can stay here and read as long as you like. I will give you some privacy and will check back to see if you have any questions. Does that sound okay?”
I look down at the fat file on the table. Papers spill out of it. “All right, Dr. Mitchell,” I say.
He stands up in front of me, smooths out the creases in his suit pants.
“I’ll check in, Anthony,” he says, and he leaves me alone.
I open the folder. There is a lot of paper, but of course I have been here a long time. In the back there are smaller, random pieces, handwritten, and as I flip through I also see charts and spreadsheets, no doubt the results of the dozens of tests I have taken over the years. In the front is the summary and as it turns out, it is all I need to read.
The subject, Anthony Lopes, came to Edgewood at eighteen years old after a successful insanity plea in the trial of a murder of another teen. With very little formal education, he had worked as a commercial fisherman before his arrest. Nevertheless, the subject is hyperintelligent, articulate, manipulative, and generally very lucid. He manifests all the obvious traits of narcissism. He can be very persuasive and charming. He will explain in great detail the nature of his crime though he shows very little outward emotion. There are no signs of auditory or visual hallucinations, as one would find in schizophrenia. It is difficult to ascertain, of course, but the subject may have had olfactory and tactile hallucinations.
It is the conclusion of this committee that the subject suffers from an acute, and rare, form of delusional disorder, erotomanic subtype. The subject has always maintained the victim of his murder had been in love with him, and that in fact, the two had been engaged in a loving relationship over the course of several months. While it is unusual for the erotomanic subtype to be present in males, some forensic samples do contain a preponderance of males. Many of these patients are associated with dangerous or assaultive behavior. There is no evidence to suggest that the victim was ever in love with the subject. In fact, the overwhelming evidence presented at the trial shows that the delusional disorder may have begun after the subject encountered the victim during a larceny. Following that event, the subject became convinced that the victim was in love with him and that he was in love with her. He developed elaborate rescue fantasies, consistent with erotomania. He then proceeded to act out these fantasies, abducting the victim at her family home and keeping her hostage for several weeks. After being apprehended, he managed to escape custody and reached the victim once again, abducting her a second time. This abduction resulted in her death, in what appeared to be an attempt at a murder/suicide.
What separates this case from others in the literature is the length of time of the delusion, and the fact that the delusion has survived the death of the object of the erotomania. There has been no transference to other victims. The subject has been repeatedly exposed to other patients of the opposite sex and has demonstrated no interest. Other than a brief trial of somatic treatment—the subject was given atypical antipsychotics for a six-month period with no sign of benefit—the treatment has been confined to individual psychotherapy. The subject’s reticence to acknowledge a disorder and to view the events in question in any other light but the delusion has made treatment largely ineffective. The subject’s intelligence and manipulative behavior have also impeded the therapy.
While the feeling of the committee is that the subject no longer presents a threat to himself or others, without progress in addressing the underlying delusion, there is nothing to recommend release.
I close the folder and stop reading. I lean back against the couch and I watch the men gathering leaves outside. It is a beautiful October day, and in the bright sunshine, they stand under the magnificent oak, now stripped bare and with stark limbs, and fill a cart attached to a tractor with all that yellow.
The door opens and Dr. Mitchell walks in. He comes over and takes his seat across from me.
“Do you need more time?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
“You understand the nature of our problem, then, Anthony.”
I nod. “I think I do,
Doctor.”
Sometimes it is easier not to fight anymore. I decide to give them what they want, though I know enough to know that I will have to do it slowly, piece by piece. Any quicker and they will suspect that I am just trying to satisfy them and that they have given me the blueprint for doing so.
I do ask for one thing in return and on a beautiful autumn day that feels like summer, Dr. Mitchell grants my wish.
Two orderlies and a golf cart take me down to the southernmost edge of the campus. A guard is waiting at that gate and he opens it and we get out of the cart and walk through. We follow a bike path and when we reach the dunes, we walk along wooden boards and out to the beach.
It is wide-open Atlantic here, no islands or land visible when you look straight out. The orderlies wait for me while I walk across the empty beach to the water. My shoes sink into the sand but then I reach where the tide rolls in and the sand is hard here. I bend down and kick off my shoes. I go to the edge of the small whitecaps and then walk into them. The water is cold on my feet but I don’t care. The waves lap against my legs and soak my pants. I look to the limitless horizon, to where the sky and the ocean become one.
It is so big and incomprehensible that it humbles me. I want nothing more than to dive into it, and swim for all I am worth. But I know the orderlies will be on me in a flash and I will accomplish nothing. No, I have to be patient, and work through this. I look down at the tide. I take the folded sheets of yellow legal paper out of my pocket. I lean down and place them on the water. They roll away from me on a small wave. The next small wave brings them back to me again. I watch them moving back and forth in the easy tide. The change is imperceptible but the tide is moving out. In an hour the folded paper will be thirty yards out. And maybe later it will get caught in the undertow. It will be swept out to sea.
Envious Moon Page 17