To False Confessions

Who would admit to a crime they did not commit? Not just any crime but armed robbery? Or murder?

We imagine ourselves in the room. The empty table between us and the detective. He's asking where exactly we were between 10:40 and 12:05. The precision of the time alone throws us. 10:40? Was the news on? Were we in the kitchen?

We were on the phone. A friend from the west coast. Started a new job. We haven't spoken in a while.

Mark Evans via Getty Images

And the friend will vouch for you?

We think never. Never would we admit to a crime we did not commit. We would never say I did that when we didn't.

It turns. We go from being sure we are innocent, having no idea what he's talking about, to wondering what we can do to just make this stop. Stop the questions; stop the accusations. There's evidence, he says. They know.

We have never been perfect. And, hours or days later, it begins to feel like a gift. He says they will go easy on us if we talk now. We can see our kids again. We can get past this, but we have to tell the whole story. He's right. Maybe not this crime, but we know we are guilty. We did it and never got caught. It was just a matter of time.

We describe the scene. Dark. The victim was young. Never saw it coming. The window was open. Who can resist? Climb in. Take a look around. Take any story that is not your own. It will feel peculiar and familiar at the same time.

To The Song “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls

“He’s perfect,” the midwife said, stroking my hand. “And it’s a good day for a birthday. It’s my birthday, too.”  She knew I had complete faith in her. “He’s perfect.”

Nothing went the way we thought it would, ending in a c-section. APGAR score of 1. Oxygen. 

He’s quiet. He never once cried.

Three weeks later and we are living in the NICU with occasional visits home to sleep a bit, shower. One day, I decide to pray. It’s the last time I will ever do that. The doctors know nothing and every day, with every new symptom, they know less, not more. Then the seizures.

I was driving home. If I ever become independently wealthy, I will create a non-profit driving company for people taking care of loved ones in the hospital. Driving requires attention and awareness. I had neither.

But I did have the radio on. And you come on, “Iris.”

“And I'd give up forever to touch you

'Cause I know that you feel me somehow

You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be

And I don't want to go home right now”

He’s in an isolette and though we can hold him, we can’t just walk in and pick him up. Vent, feeding tube, other assorted wires and leads. I have to get permission and then help. Sometimes they say no.

           “And I don't want the world to see me

'Cause I don't think that they'd understand”

Friends and co-workers are calling. The birthing group is waiting to have a reunion with the babies so that we can be there. They all reassure us it will be ok, talk about when he will come home. We say nothing.

“When everything's meant to be broken”

We won’t know this until over a year later, but it’s genetic, the very code of his being says this is who he is, made to be broken.

The words are every thought I have had since Rainer was born.

“I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am”

He doesn’t open his eyes. We think he can hear. He doesn’t cry or make a sound.  

I have to pull over into a parking lot. I’m not sure I will make it home. Of all the things I worried about, the idea that he might not know us, that in his life, he might feel alone in the few weeks he he has, this is the hardest of all. If he dies, he needs to know he was our son. 

And we don’t know how to make sure he knows.

To Memory

You are the most unreliable of narrators, but the most convincing. You seem as real as the keys on this keyboard, as real as the dog sleeping beside me, as real as my mortgage. Real as rain.

Part of you is true, the part I rely on to not have to start my life over every single day. I know where we keep the coffee cups and that I drink it black. I remember how to get to the office. I remember going to Madison last summer and driving around the city like I did before we left. We went to Rainer’s grave site and I remember holding him when he died. I remember him.

But mostly, you lie. You lie about little things: the color of my favorite dress when I was in 4th grade, the pictures on the wall in the doctor’s waiting room. You lie about who made those little mint cookies I liked when we would go camping with the Wolfes. You lie about the color of the backgammon board my brother had. You lie about the word I got wrong in the 7th grade spelling bee. I swear it was “orientation.”

We call on you to witness. We ask you to repeat what happened that day. Who got angry first and who started yelling? What did she do when he walked away and how long before he came back? You say she was upset before they started talking, that he jumps to conclusions. She is stubborn but he is wrong. You can’t resist filling in some of the blanks: she left her potatoes on the plate. The picnic table was under the tree, not on the deck. The nephew was sneaking olives and cheese off the deli tray. In the background, a baseball game on the television.

But maybe it was winter. Maybe it was the year after our grandmother died. No one argued, but they wanted to. He is really me and she is really someone I have only just met. I think I am the same person every day. I tell the same story. I remember it all so well.