by Anna Berry
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about your brother,” Mom laments on the phone to me in Chicago. “The Army won’t take him because of—well, you know, because of the learning disabilities he has.”
“Kick him out,” I say. “Practice tough love.”
“I can’t kick him out, Anna! He’ll end up on the street if I do that.”
“The street might do him some good,” I snap. I’ve just finished my master’s degree and I’m working my first real job as a financial editor at a big-city brokerage firm. I am young, cocky, and arrogant with my newfound success—I have yet to taste the cold reality of the streets, though I’ll face the very real possibility of living on them myself in a few years.
“Anna, you’re so cold-hearted. I swear, I don’t know what to do with either one of you kids,” Mom sneers, and hangs up.
Things come to a head at Mom’s house not long after that. Mom tells Mark he needs to move out or join the Army by the end of the year, or else she’ll throw him out. Mom even helps pull some strings at QCB to help Mark find a psychiatrist who might be willing to reevaluate him in a way that will be satisfactory to military recruiters. “It’s the only thing I know to do to help get Mark out of my basement,” she says, though she concedes getting any qualified psychiatrist to declare my brother fit for military duty—or even take him off his meds—is probably impossible.
Ha. Apparently not.
Mark hooks up with a psychiatrist who, for a fee, gives him a certified clean bill of mental health and immediately takes him off his prescribed antipsychotic meds. Mark takes that certificate to his Army recruiter, who enlists him the same day. Even after all of these years, I still don’t know how this could possibly have happened given the Army’s strict rules about recruiting anyone with even a hint of mental health problems, but it did.
The U.S. Army gives my unmedicated, severe paranoid schizophrenic brother a uniform and a gun. Not only that, they make him a medic. An ambulance driver, as a matter of fact. My brother spends a little over a year in the Army (albeit two-thirds of it he’s off-duty in Army hospitals for “ailments” that range from E. coli food poisoning at Fort Sam Houston to a supposed back injury and asthma in South Korea to “service fatigue” once he gets back stateside, and he eventually gets a medical discharge that entitles him to veterans disability pay of $800 a month for life).
The relatively little time Mark isn’t in military hospitals or scheming for ways to get a medical discharge, my brother the unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic drives an armored ambulance in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea—arguably the most dangerous two-mile strip of land in the world.
God help the United States of America.
Oh, and it gets better.
When Mark joins the U.S. Army, he’s a quasi-liberal committed atheist. When he comes out, he’s an ultraconservative Maronite Roman Catholic. I don’t know exactly when or how his conversion (or reconversion, since we were raised Catholic until Mom and Dad divorced) occurred, but the almost medieval Catholicism Mark spouts from the minute his feet are back on U.S. soil proves that hell hath no fury like a schizophrenic religious convert.
Mark proclaims all kinds of outrageous religious edicts, as if he is personally channeling a fascist version of the Holy See: all non-Catholic religions should be banned; possession of birth control should be made a felony; women who have abortions should be executed; all non-Orthodox Jews should be converted by force to Catholicism (but Orthodox Jews can continue practicing “pure” Judaism as a historical referent for “true” Christians). He says a global war should be fought to force all of this to happen, a war that he will personally orchestrate and oversee, no less.
Mark’s VA physicians put him back on antipsychotics around this time.
Within days of returning home to Indiana, Mark announces he’s joining the priesthood.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I scoff at Mom when she calls me with the news.
“I really think he’s serious about this,” Mom replies. “He’s hooked up with a program at one of the parishes here in town aimed at recruiting new priests. They’re doing all sorts of things to help Mark.”
“What kinds of things?” As if I can’t guess.
“Oh, they’re giving him money,” Mom says. “An allowance. And housing assistance I think, and some other nice things while he takes classes with the priests there at the church that will help prepare him for seminary. Oh, and they want him to finish college too. Some of his Army money will pay for it, but the church will help him out some too. I don’t know all the details, but—”
“The Catholic Church must be pretty hard up for priests if they want Mark,” I say, and hang up.
Now nearly thirty, Mark returns to college for the umpteenth time. He gets a car and a studio apartment just up the road from my grandparents. His degree will be in psychology with a minor in theology, and if all goes well he’ll finish it within two years and then go on to seminary.
Whatever time he isn’t spending on campus or studying, Mark spends either at church, socializing with priests and parishioners, or at a local Irish pub, where he drinks gallons of Guinness and listens to Celtic music. He doesn’t work a part-time job; as far as I can tell, Mark lives on a combination of his military disability payments and largesse from the Catholic Church designed to tempt him into the priesthood.
I’m suspicious of Mark’s motives from the start.
Against my mother’s wishes, I take Mark aside when I come home for Christmas that year. “Why do you really want to be a priest, Mark?” I demand. “I don’t believe for a minute this is about God. You and God have just never been very tight.”
I expect Mark to express outrage at my question. But he doesn’t. He mulls it over for a moment, then he grins. “I want to be a priest because I want to be rich. And being a priest is a great way to get rich. A lot of priests are millionaires.”
I’m floored. I know Mark is interested in the priesthood mostly for financial reasons, but I’m stunned he thinks he can actually become a millionaire as a Catholic priest. It’s clear his delusions are getting the better of him.
“Priests take a vow of poverty, Mark. You know that, right?”
“Oh, that’s just a formality,” he says. “Priests get very generous compensation packages, investment portfolios too. Plus, you have basically no living expenses, since the Church pays for those. All the money you make is yours to keep. I’ll be a millionaire, and retire early. It’ll be great.”
“Fine, whatever. What exactly are you basing the priest-millionaire thing on?”
“Oh, I’ve figured that out for myself. Too bad you’re a female, or you could be a priest-millionaire too.”
“Fuck you, Mark,” I seethe, and dig into the macaroni salad.
Mark’s future as a Catholic priest seems assured until about eighteen months later, when he starts dating a much younger computer-engineering coed named Stephanie O’Reilly. Stephanie is an academically brilliant but socially naive young woman from an ultraconservative, ultra-devout Catholic family. Even though she has two more years to go for her engineering degree, she already has a high-paying job at a major defense contractor’s jet-engine division waiting for her upon graduation. Stephanie lives at home with her parents (who still impose very strict rules on her despite her adult age), is still a virgin, and has never dated anyone before my brother, who is eleven years her senior. When it becomes clear to Stephanie’s parents that Mark is seriously interested in their daughter, they forbid her to see him, and they even go to extreme measures (like locking her inside her bedroom on weekends) to prevent them from seeing each other.
At one level I can understand why the O’Reillys don’t want their only daughter to date a paranoid-schizophrenic, unemployed student eleven years her senior who also has no means of sustainable income beyond the handouts he gets from the government and the Catholic church. I also suppose as devout Catholics, they don’t want Stephanie to ruin Mark’s chan
ces for becoming a priest, either.
After a few more months, however, Mark switches allegiances. He decides he doesn’t want to become a priest anymore; he wants to marry Stephanie instead. He and Stephanie get engaged, and Stephanie even announces her intention to support Mark financially when she graduates—he plans to be the full-time “homemaker” in their marriage since he (supposedly) has multiple physical disabilities that prevent him from working.
Stephanie’s parents promptly disown her. Her mother starts incessantly calling the priest who plans to marry them, threatening him with bodily harm if he doesn’t put a stop to the wedding. Stephanie’s mother even threatens to throw herself on the altar in the middle of the ceremony. I wonder who’s craziest—Stephanie’s mother for harassing priests and locking up her adult daughter; Mark for being the lazy, manipulative, paranoid-delusional schizophrenic he’s always been; or Stephanie for marrying him.
Then I figure, being a certified nutjob myself, I’m in no position to judge anyone’s sanity. I agree to be a bridesmaid, buy my brother and future sister-in-law a wedding gift, and shut up.
Mark and Stephanie marry. The years pass, and they eventually have a child, which worries most of us in the family because we all know Mark isn’t exactly good parent material. He’s never held down a job, he often sleeps well past noon, and when he isn’t sleeping or playing computer games well into the night, he either drives around town aimlessly or drinks with friends in bars. He’s also heavily medicated on antipsychotics that make him sluggish and overweight, and he’s fallen into some of the drug-seeking patterns our mother once did. When Stephanie is pregnant, George and I drop by to visit them at their new house when we happen to be in town, and we find Mark doped out of his mind—slurring his words, staggering, and at one point falling down on the floor. At first we think he’s drunk, but we later find out he fell and bruised his elbow on a patch of ice then went to the emergency room where he managed to extract an oxycodone prescription from the ER physician. He shouldn’t be taking heavy meds like that with his antipsychotics, which makes me suspect he didn’t tell the doctor he was on them. George and I become uncomfortable at my brother’s drug-addled state and soon leave.
Stephanie seems to understand that Mark isn’t a reliable parent. When their newborn daughter is only six weeks old, she places the baby in full-time daycare despite the fact that Mark is unemployed and could therefore theoretically serve as stay-at-home dad. Stephanie simply doesn’t trust him to be his own child’s caregiver, and I can’t say that I blame her. After all, the one time my brother held my own infant son at a family reunion (against my wishes; I was in the other room at the time, and I was livid afterward, to say the least) he almost dropped my two-month-old baby on his head.
Mark’s VA psychiatrists keep him pumped full of drugs but don’t seem able to help him secure employment or otherwise manage his life. Stephanie frequently pleads with Mark to secure some kind of job, and she even threatens to leave him multiple times, but he never holds down any kind of employment while continuing to spend his wife’s hard-earned money on travel, electronic gadgets, and partying with friends. Stephanie never makes good on her many ultimatums though, and they somehow manage to stumble on, albeit massively in debt. Stephanie even takes on a second job teaching math courses at a local community college to help make ends meet.
There comes a point, though, where Stephanie does seem on the verge of leaving Mark. The only thing that saves their marriage at the time is Mark’s promise to complete a paralegal certificate program, which Stephanie pays for, on the condition he find work as a paralegal once he’s finished. I’m skeptical, of course, but the rest of the family is convinced that this might be what finally pushes Mark into the work force.
The paralegal certificate program lasts about three months. Predictably, Mark finishes it, passes the certificate exam, and then doesn’t get a job. Some months go by, and then Stephanie demands that Mark find some kind of paying work or she’ll throw him out of the house. She even helps him find something: an attorney her family is acquainted with who helps veterans obtain VA disability benefits needs a paralegal. And since Mark has successfully (if somewhat questionably) obtained VA disability benefits himself, he’s the perfect candidate for the job.
Since I never speak to Mark unless I absolutely have to, I hear all of this third-hand from Mom. She’s cautiously optimistic, but she’s still taking a wait-and-see attitude. But when Mom calls me a month later with a report on how Mark is doing with the paralegal job, a big red flag goes up. Of course.
“Anna, can you answer a question for me?” Mom says on one of our weekly calls.
“Sure.”
“Have you ever worked for a lawyer?” Mom pronounces it “LAW-yer,” one of the many ways her now mostly hidden Southern Appalachian accent pops up at random.
“Yes, I have. I have done a lot of freelance and contract work for attorneys over the years,” I say. “Legal writing and research, that sort of thing. And when I worked as a health policy analyst, most of my colleagues were attorneys. Why do you ask?”
“Well, something about this job Mark is doing for the lawyer seems strange, is all.”
I heave a sigh. “How do you mean?”
“Well, I asked how Mark was doing with his new job. Money-wise, and everything. And he told me he hasn’t been paid anything yet.”
I blink. “Well, he’s been there less than a month. Maybe they just screwed up the payroll or something.” Though I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not the reason at all.
“No, Anna, that’s not it. Mark says that he only gets paid when he wins a case. He says it’s something called—I don’t know—continual, continuation, something—”
“Contingency?”
“Yes, that’s it. What does that mean?”
The wheels turn in my head. I am having real trouble grasping how somebody who isn’t a lawyer somehow ends up working on a contingency basis. I’m guessing that’s probably quasi-legal at best. “Mom, contingency means that a lawyer takes on a case without pay unless a paying settlement is reached, then the lawyer splits the winnings with the client on the back end,” I explain. “But Mark isn’t an attorney, so he shouldn’t be able to do that. Paralegals are administrative staff, and attorneys generally have to pay them either a salary or by the hour no matter what.”
“Well, Mark says he’s working on contingency.”
I cough. “I think that’s called practicing law without a license, Mom. He could get into very big trouble for that. So could the lawyer who’s supposedly employing him.”
“But Stephanie knows this lawyer! He’s a friend of hers.”
“So Stephanie’s friends with a crook.”
“But Anna, Stephanie knows this person, she helped Mark get this job, it can’t be like, wrong, can it?” I can tell that Mom is trying really hard to believe that things are different with Mark this time around, even when they quite obviously aren’t.
“Mom, listen to me very carefully. I don’t know what kind of lawyer Stephanie’s friend is, but he’s taking advantage of Mark. Paralegals are staff. They are supposed to be paid either an hourly wage or a salary. They aren’t lawyers and they can’t act like them. Mark is just being used as free labor.”
“Mark says he has the potential to make a lot more money working on contingency. He’s doing all the legwork and research for the attorney, and even meeting with clients. He’s—”
“He has the potential to end up in jail too. I’m pretty sure what he’s doing is illegal. Or at the very least, highly unethical.” I shake my head and sigh again. “Why does Mark always get sucked into this sort of thing? Why doesn’t he just get a real job like everybody else?”
“Anna, he says this is a real job. By the way, I wanted to let you know that Mark is going to call you later today. He wants some advice on where to buy some kind of legal books or something.”
“Fine, whatever. But I can’t guarantee I’ll answer the phone.” I absolutely hate
talking to Mark, which is why I try to limit it only to about once or twice a year, at Christmas and on his birthday. I brace myself for the call, expecting I’ll get some kind of sales pitch or be hit up for cash.
The call comes about an hour later, as expected. It’s the first time I’ve spoken to Mark in about six months. “Hi sis, how’re ya doin’?” he says in his singsong antipsychotic-laden voice. I notice that his Southern Indiana accent sounds a lot thicker than it used to. Probably another side effect of all the meds he takes. “Got a question for ya.”
“Go ahead.”
“Anna, you know a lot about medical terminology and healthcare policy and such, right?”
“Well, yes I do. I work as a healthcare journalist, and I used to do a lot of policy work for organized medicine—the AMA and such.”
“Do you use like, books and stuff to help you find out things about law and policy?”
“To a certain extent, yes.” I’m losing patience with the conversation already. I’m tempted just to hang up and then blame a bad connection, but I don’t.
“Well, my boss wants me to do some research for her on a certain medical condition and I don’t know where to look. Can you um, help me?”
I have to bite my tongue hard to keep from spewing out a string of profanity. True to form, my brother has called me only because he wants something. And what he wants could easily take him months to find—you don’t exactly become a competent medical policy expert in one afternoon, and I already know he lacks the necessary focus and discipline to do what’s required. But rather than berate him, I decide just to give him a gentle nudge in the right direction. “Well, you could go to your local bookstore and look in the health and medicine section,” I suggest. “You could buy the AMA Stylebook, which covers how to do citations and how to write up medical research reports, and some other general reference titles. For more substantial information, like the latest medical journals and such, you’re going to have to visit a good medical library. You can probably get a public access card to your college’s library for free, since you’re an alum. Or drive to Indianapolis and go to the main public library downtown.”