Blessed Are the Wholly Broken Read Free Page A

spared a thought for Brian the rest of the night.
    It’s possible, even likely, Anna was right, but as a young man who’d spent more time as a third wheel than as a partner, it was difficult for me to muster sympathy for Brian’s self-inflicted game of musical women. Anna was different, though. She had a knack for seeing inside a situation and understanding each of the separate composite parts that made up the whole. I suppose this was why she chose philosophy as her major, a fact that led to no end of teasing from Brian.
    “What good is a philosophy degree?” he asked her several weeks after our first meeting. We were sitting on the side of a planter in the courtyard of MSU (even now, I refuse to say UofM), enjoying the warm spring sun between classes, and I recall being transfixed by the play of light on the auburn of Anna’s hair. I wanted to fall into that hair, I remember, wrapping myself in the wildness of it. Brian must have felt the same, because he reached over to tug at a curl as he asked the question.
    “How about it, Socrates? What does one do with a degree in philosophy?” he asked again, with a grin. “Find someone who’ll pay you to sit on a mountain and think?”
    She took the teasing in stride, as she took most everything in her own quiet way. Anna always exuded a Zen-like peacefulness that, during our marriage, was one of the things I loved most about her. Since her death, however, it has become one of the things I hate.
    But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
    I suppose it may seem odd to outsiders that the three of us spoke so openly about our affection for one another, particularly the affection Brian had for Anna, but that was the foundation of our friendship. We were unabashedly honest with one another, but I’ve come to wonder what good it does to be honest if the other person doesn’t understand the honesty for what it is. This is the question that haunts me.
    Anna and I were a solid couple by that spring, a situation I still can’t quite believe. I think we’d both felt it from that very first meeting; I know I certainly had. To say we clicked fails to describe the depth of the connection we felt. It was more as if we recognized each other, had even been expecting each other. Oh, there you are , I remember thinking as I grasped her hand to pull her from the puddle on the floor. I wondered when you’d come .
    For once Brian was the odd man out, and I suspect our sudden role reversal felt as strange to him as it did to me. To his credit, he handled Anna’s gentle rebuffs with grace, and I do believe he was happy for me. Brian was, first and foremost, my friend.
    I wonder now how things might have turned out differently had she chosen him instead of me. I’ve no doubt he wonders the same.
     

Chapter 4:  February, 1989
     
    “You’re so serious,” Anna had told me on our first date, “an old soul.”
    “Not always,” I found myself feeling defensive. “I know how to have fun, too.” A jolt of alarm went through me. Was she saying I was boring? Was this the dreaded friendship speech I’d heard all my life? In the few short days I’d known Anna, I’d become hopelessly infatuated, amazed that she seemed drawn to me, too. As I mulled over her words, my heart began to sink.
    We were walking along the cobblestones, watching the barges stretched out along the Mississippi River. The sun was setting, framing Anna’s silhouette against a fiery backdrop, and as her curls blew about in the breeze off the river, I remember thinking of Aphrodite, both beautiful and terrifying, and wholly mesmerizing. I was lost.
    In the distance stylish couples boarded a riverboat for an evening cruise; laughter floated back to us on the breeze. Farther down, a group of teenagers listened to a boom box, the bass a steady vibration in my chest. The rain had finally moved on, the air carrying a hint of the spring to come, but the evening was still chilly. I put my hand on Anna’s back, gently steering