Shatter My Rock

by Greta Nelsen

  “Would it surprise you to know that that number is Eric Blair’s cell phone number, and it was dialed from your cell phone the night you claim he raped you?”

  I stare at the mash of numbers and dates. “Not really.”

  She raises an eyebrow, smiles as if she’s caught me. “Why not?”

  “He’s sick. He must have made the call himself, while I was passed out.”

  Her shoulders slump. She changes direction. “Mrs. Fowler, you claim that your son, baby Owen, was stricken with a fatal illness called Dukate Disease, correct?”

  My face twitches. “Correct.”

  “Yet there is nothing in his medical records to verify such a diagnosis, correct?”

  “Correct,” I say again.

  “So we’re just supposed to take your word for it?”

  “He had it,” I say. “The myoclonic jerks…” I push away the image of Owen convulsing. “They were getting worse. It was only a matter of time before…”

  “If your son was so ill,” the prosecutor asks, her hands perched on her belly, “why didn’t you seek medical care for him?”

  The answer to this question is ugly. Incriminating. “It wouldn’t have helped.”

  “And who decided that?”

  I murmur, “I did.”

  “So you were just going to let him suffer?”

  My lungs feel frozen, as if I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. “I don’t know. I was afraid.”

  Ms. Tupper snorts softly. “Oh, you were afraid? Don’t you think your baby was afraid? Don’t you think…?”

  Zoe bolts to her feet. “Objection! Badgering!”

  Judge Parsons shakes his head. “Sustained.”

  “How much alcohol did you have to drink on the night of May 27, 2011?”

  “Enough,” I say. “More than enough.”

  “Any particular reason you were drinking so heavily?”

  Maybe she’s right, I think. Maybe I was dulling the pain of what I was about to do. “No.”

  “Just having a good time?”

  “You could say that, I guess,” I agree with a shrug.

  “So much of a good time that you’re not sure if you passed out, rolled on top of your baby and suffocated him, then ‘accidentally’ slipped and tossed him overboard?”

  I pinch my eyes shut. My mind hurtles back to the moment I held Owen’s lifeless face to mine, sprinkled kisses over his pudgy, bruised cheeks, left the prints of my tears on his cooling skin, grazed my thumb along his purple-blue lips one last time, if only to steel my resolve and finally let him go. “I don’t know what you’re…” I mumble, without the decency of opening my eyes.

  Judge Parsons’ rasp of a voice impatiently interrupts, “Are you fit to proceed, Mrs. Fowler?”

  I lick my lips and nod, open my eyes and lock them with the prosecutor’s. “Go ahead.”

  “Isn’t it true that you had an affair with Eric Blair and asked him to impregnate you?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it true that you hid your pregnancy from your husband, Tim, for months?”

  “I was…waiting for the right time,” I say.

  “Isn’t it true that, once Owen was born, you found him to be an inconvenience and wanted to be rid of him?”

  “No, it’s not. I loved him. I love him.”

  “Isn’t it true that, even though you claim Owen had a terminal illness, you failed to get him proper medical care?”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” I repeat.

  “Isn’t it true that, on the night of May 27, 2011, you got yourself good and liquored up so you’d have the nerve to kill your baby, like you’d planned?”

  “I hadn’t planned anything,” I mutter. “The trip was Jenna’s idea. I just…”

  “And isn’t it true,” the prosecutor demands, her voice barreling toward its peak, “that in the wee hours of May 28, 2011, while everyone else on that boat was asleep, you crept out of bed, snatched baby Owen from his basket and spirited him above board, where you used a deck pillow—a weapon of convenience, perhaps—to snuff the life out of your son? Isn’t that the truth, Mrs. Fowler?”

  The courtroom quiets to the proverbial pin-drop level, and every eye trains on me. I sense Zoe—and Rudy and Paul behind her—pulling for me, willing me to deny such a theory and be done with it, leave the jurors some doubt to which they may cling.

  But on the other side of the courtroom, the side charged with exacting justice for Owen, I tune in to an undercurrent of pain and love, the embodiment of all that is bitter and sweet. The State aims to punish me not for reasons arbitrary and capricious, I reckon, but in protection of my sweet, gentle boy. To honor his innocent soul.

  I move my gaze from the floor to the defense table and then to Zoe’s eyes. I’m sorry, I mouth, the words suffocating before they reach my lips.

  When I glance back at the prosecutor, I find the same spark of empathy and understanding she displayed the first time we met, in that bare interview room long ago. She smiles, and I know I will tell her everything. And so I do.

  * * *

  In her closing argument, Charlotte Tupper told the jurors that my motive for killing Owen, while relevant to their understanding of the case, was irrelevant in that it could not be used as a determinant of my guilt or innocence.

  Irrelevant. She must have repeated that word ten times, but it still didn’t sit well with me. In my view, the only relevant thing was the why.

  But Charlotte Tupper said, “If a man holds up a bank to feed his family, is he not still a bank robber?” And, by extension, If a woman kills her child out of mercy, is she not still a murderer? The prosecutor never uttered these words, but they rang over and over through my mind nonetheless.

  Am I a murderer?

  The jurors were able to come to some agreement in the matter, finding me guilty of the lesser-included charge of voluntary manslaughter. From all other charges, they set me free.

  Chapter 24

  I tried to kill Ricky once. It was just after Christmas, nineteen seventy-eight. My ninth-grade American Lit. teacher, Mrs. Heller, had assigned some reading over the holiday break: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I’d cracked the book only to escape a drunken Christmas Eve row my mother was having via telephone with one of Ricky’s doctors, a cocksure, Harvard-trained blowhard who was insisting my brother had no need of an emergency room, despite a hundred and three degree temperature and a wild case of the shakes.

  I finished the book in one sitting. Dog-eared a bunch of pages. Copiously underlined. Scribbled what I thought were insightful notes in the margins, even though it was a school-issued text. I memorized one passage in particular, a bit of dialogue that read: “I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.” I thought about how George had stolen that Luger and plugged Lennie in the back of the head to spare him an even worse fate.

  Then Marjorie Blake called a couple of days later and invited me over to watch cable TV. Her parents didn’t care if we watched R-rated movies, and I had to break free of that carriage house before it flattened me, like it had Charlotte and Ricky.

  Marjorie had peculiar taste in movies that bent toward the classics, anything critically acclaimed, even some foreign stuff. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the pick of the day. We watched in stony silence all the way to the end, right past the scene where Chief Bromden holds that snow-white pillow to McMurphy’s face and suffocates him.

  I got up at four a.m. the next morning. Never slept the night before, really. Brought my own pillow with me to Ricky’s room and stood over him while his chest rose and fell. Willed myself to be brave like George; imagined I was Chief Bromden and Ricky was McMurphy. I wanted Ricky to open his eyes so I could be sure, but when he did, I flinched. He didn’t, though. Even in his deteriorated state, he knew what I was out to do. And he granted me silent permission. As I turned away, he began to cry.

  For more than thirty-two years, I carried that pillow around
in my mind. But no more. Now I have the guilt of Owen.

  * * *

  In the month since the verdict came down against me, I have not heard from anyone from the outside world, with the obvious exception of my attorneys. There has been nary a visit, or a phone call, or even a letter from Tim, or Ally, or Jenna, or…

  But today that changes. Today Judge Parsons will fix a penalty to my crime, and the legal portion of this ugliness, at least, will be done.

  Zoe squeezes my hand as Charlotte Tupper informs the judge that a number of my victims wish to speak before I am sentenced.

  My victims.

  I do my best to disappear inside myself, tune out everything beyond my own skin, an approach that succeeds until somewhere in the middle of my sister-in-law Emily’s victim impact statement.

  “She didn’t have any family of her own,” Emily says in the distance, her voice falling prey to the slightest quiver, “so we made her part of ours. And once she had Ally…well, that was it.” She pauses, maybe to look at me, but I’ll never know. “What I really want to say,” she continues, “is that I’m sorry for what happened to her. As a woman, that’s a terrible thing, I know. I understand that. But it doesn’t justify what she did. We all loved that baby, and she took him from us. I’ll never forgive her for that. And what she did to my brother? That was a crime too.

  “All I can ask is that you give her enough time to consider what she’s done—the repercussions of such an evil—and repent. Truly repent. Because, right now, I’m not sure that she believes what she did was wrong. I hope you can change that, Your Honor. Thank you.”

  If I were to glance over my shoulder at the prosecutor’s lineup, I may find that an army of people have appeared to say their piece against me, to pass judgment anew on what I have done.

  Judge Parsons thanks Emily for speaking, and then Charlotte Tupper introduces Tim’s dad. There is a scuffing sound as he makes his way to the microphone that I attribute to a Korean War injury to his lower back and the strain of the “shit storm” he described to me over the phone.

  “My name is James Fowler. I’m Owen’s grandfather; Claire’s father-in-law,” he begins. “I traveled here today to say a few simple things—a few things I figured might not’ve got said otherwise.”

  He waits a moment as if he expects a response, but when none comes, he sighs. “Claire Fowler is a good woman. My son wouldn’t’ve married her if she weren’t. Now I don’t condone what she’s done. Not by a long shot. She should be punished for it; it’s wrong. But I’d like to think she could come home in time to see her daughter, Ally, graduate from high school. Because that girl’s got a desperate need for her mother, and you’re punishing her too. I just didn’t want anyone to forget that.” He stops for longer this time, coughs and clears his throat. “I guess that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  I feel an urge to turn and catch his eye, convey my humility and gratitude, but I mash it like a carpenter ant beneath my calloused toes.

  When I hear Tim’s voice, I flinch. “I was, uh, Owen’s father,” he mumbles. “Owen was a happy baby. Barely ever cried. Slept like a champ. Loved to cuddle and play. And he was smart. He had this light in his eyes, like he knew more than he was letting on, you know. I could tell he was going to do something big in this world, same as his sister. Those two were peas in a pod. Carbon copies of each other. All I wanted was for them to grow up happy. Do something they loved. Have families of their own. Live good lives.”

  He gives a little sarcastic huff. “But then…this. This is not how things were supposed to… I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept this. And she didn’t even tell me!” he cries. “That’s the kicker. She didn’t trust me enough to make a goddamn peep. What does that say about our marriage? It was a fu— It was a goddamn sham; that’s what it says. A mirage. I have no idea who… I thought I knew my wife. I really did. That makes me the idiot, I guess.”

  I am so lost to the abyss, so recoiled at my husband’s venom, that I do not recognize the tears when they come. Not that they matter. I could spill remorse from my pores without negating an iota of the harm I’ve done.

  Tim goes on, “The thing is, I would’ve helped her. I would’ve done something. Had that…had that scum locked up for what he did. Or worse. Taken Owen to every expert, every specialist, until someone could…fix what happened. Or help him somehow. I wouldn’t have just quit, like she did. Look where that’s gotten us.”

  I begin to sniffle, but Tim is unmoved. “She can cry all she wants,” he says with agitation. “So can I. Big deal. It doesn’t matter. Nothing we do now matters, because it’s over. And she didn’t even let us try. Owen deserved more than that. We all did. It wasn’t up to her to decide.”

  I let the edge of my vision drift Tim’s way just enough to see his hand balled into a fist—clenching, unclenching, clenching again. “If I could take it back, I would,” he says, offering me a dose of my own medicine. “Everything but Ally. The house? The cars? The parties and the trips? The perfect little make-believe life we built? She can have it all, because it ain’t worth a damn now anyway. Never was, I guess.”

  My husband sighs deeply, and a few of the spectators follow suit. “I don’t understand much about…about this whole thing. But I know one thing: She chose this. She chose this,” he repeats louder. “She chose it. That’s all.”

  My head falls into my hands and my shoulders sag.

  Tim’s mother wears her heart on her sleeve when she tells the court about Ally, how my girl is stricken with insomnia and, when she does sleep, nightmares. How my precious daughter, in so many words, told a psychologist she has pondered suicide. How the spark has gone out of Ally’s big hazel eyes—and her spirit.

  When Ellen speaks of Owen, she sobs. And in the space between, she opens a window on her love for my boy, despite what a DNA test might have shown.

  On the subject of my fate, my mother-in-law is apathetic, too many of my problems now clogging her plate. “Do as you see fit,” she tells the judge. And by the time she finishes speaking, gladness for prison settles over me like a blanket of humidity in front of a hurricane.

  Chapter 25

  I never really believed Ricky would die, and I’m glad I wasn’t there at the end when he did, because my brother deserved more from life, from doctors, from our parents, from God and from me. He deserved to swing a baseball bat and hit a pop fly, ace a spelling test and earn a gold star, play one of the wise men in a Christmas pageant—or mercilessly beg our parents not to make him do so. He deserved to kiss a girl, have his heart broken, look into the eyes of his own child one day.

  But if none of this was meant, my brother at least deserved freedom from suffering and pain, a say-so in how he lived his life—or whether he lived it at all. A choice I stole from Owen in a dark moment, never to be undone.

  * * *

  My transition to prison should have been more difficult. More painful. But I have descended so far down this rabbit hole there’s nowhere left for me to go.

  Yet on day twenty of my ten-year sentence at the Maine Correctional Center, my salvation comes in three parts. The first is a note from Ally, who, in defense of my heart, I’ve convinced myself has abandoned me.

  But it isn’t so.

  Dear Mommy, the note begins, an opening so sweet and gentle it is, on its own, enough. But there is more, of course. A page full of delicate cursive letters I inhale in a single breath.

  Dear Mommy,

  How is the new place? I hope it’s okay and it goes by fast. Did you know that Dad and I are moving too? He found a house for us to rent near the river, about a mile from Gran and Gramp’s. Gran seems kind of sad to see us go, but I think Gramp’s happy to get rid of Muffin and Cupcake (they’ve been digging up the yard, and he can’t fill in the holes fast enough). The house is small, but since it’s just me, Dad, and the dogs, it should be okay.

  I can’t believe school is starting again in two weeks! You missed it, but sixth grade pretty much stunk. I have a few more friends no
w, though, so seventh grade will be better, I think (I hope).

  Dad and I drove by our old house last week. I don’t know why, but we did. There’s still a For Sale sign in the yard, even though the place is a pile of rubble. I said I didn’t know why those women had burned it down, but Dad said he did. He said he knew why, but it was wrong. I know why you did what you did to Owen. I also know it was wrong. But I forgive you. I just wish none of this had ever happened. When I told Dad that, he said he wished the same thing. He wished we could go back to the way it was before Owen. I feel bad about saying it, but I wish that too. We were happy then, and now Dad is sad all the time, even though he tries to fake it.

  I’m going to try to talk Dad into visiting you soon. I’ve brought it up a few times, but he keeps making excuses. I think he’s just not strong enough yet. Don’t worry, though. I’m going to bug him until he gives in.

  I love you, and I miss you. I’ll send you one of my school pictures once we have them taken, which is supposed to be in the first few weeks of school. And maybe I’ll even see you before then.

  Hugs & Kisses,

  Ally, Muffin, & Cupcake

  I read Ally’s note twice more, notice how she’s traded that neon-purple ink for a sophisticated black felt-tip, how, even in her words, she has matured, begun slipping away.

  But she won’t, I tell myself, running my fingers over the page as if I can absorb a bit of her. She still loves me, I think. And the proof is right here.

  I fold the note and tuck it inside the Bible I have procured from the prison chaplain in hopes of redeeming my soul. Then I stare at my lap for a moment, perplexed. Because there is another letter for me today, a communication offered on golden stationery in a sure hand. A hand I do not recognize and one I may not identify by its return address, as the prison removes all envelopes before we inmates get a glimpse of the mail.

  I think about flipping to the end of the letter to discover the identity of its mysterious author, but this swiftly becomes unnecessary.