Escape (10 page)

At first Jessica ignored the younger woman's "enthusiastic" fawning over her husband and the exchanging of meaningful glances whenever the two were in the same room. Then, when it was impossible to ignore any longer, she decided that she would be "open-minded" about the relationship. After all, if the President of the United States could accept blowjobs from interns in the Oval Office, who was she to deny Charlie his "fling"? In truth, she found sex to be a messy, unwanted chore. So if Diane could relieve her— pun intended—of that responsibility, then it was okay by her, so long as Charlie came home to roost.

However, after the birth of Hillary, she became increasingly conscious of the fact that she'd never regained her figure, which had been nothing to shout about to begin with. Now, ever since the pregnancy, the Anjou pear had more closely resembled a gourd. But her insecurity went further than the broadening of her ass.

She'd once believed that Charlie would never risk losing her family's money and influence, or risk the damage a messy divorce might do to his political career. But now that he was more established, she began to worry that he might leave her for the younger woman.
Especially if the whore is willing to give him the
son
he wants,
she'd think to herself as she lay alone in bed at night.

So in the end, Jessica acquiesced to his desire to impregnate her again. She was convinced that with another addition to the family he would be even less likely to abandon her.

When Chelsea was born in the spring of 2003, not only was the disappointment of another daughter written all over Charlie's face, but within a week the postpartum depression returned with a vengeance. Jessica could hardly stand to look at the infant, or Hillary, and she recoiled from any effort her husband made to encourage her toward motherhood as if he were a serpent who'd poisoned her with another child.

She began hearing the voice in her head. At first it was no more than a whisper, as though from down a long hallway. But as the days passed, the voice grew stronger, more like someone talking to her through a closed door.

It explained that her aversion to her children was to be expected and was quite normal. After all, they were the product of her fornicating with an evil man. But she dismissed the assertion. She didn't consider her husband "evil"—a lying, sneaking adulterer whose political convictions changed with expediency, yes, but "evil" was an ignorant and inappropriate term tossed about by the Christian Right to vilify anyone who didn't agree with their agenda. Philosophically, she didn't believe in a metaphysical concept of good and evil existing as forces within the universe any more than she believed in the existence of God, Satan, heaven, or hell.

Jessica did not mention the voice to her husband. He'd already warned her not to talk to anyone, especially someone who might leak it to the press, about the fact that she was taking "brain medicine" for depression. He pointed out that revelations about mental illness had ruined the political career of Senator Thomas Eagleton and could well spoil any aspirations she had of being the wife of a congressman in Washington, D.C., or getting a position at Georgetown University. It had to be their secret.

Jessica hated Charlie for making her feel ashamed. She was clinically depressed, which the doctor had explained wasn't her fault. It was like having the flu, or cancer—a person didn't ask for it. Nor could she just "snap out of it." But Charlie didn't buy the "mumbo-jumbo."

Meanwhile, the voice was nothing if not persistent. It was now more like listening to someone in the same room with her, though she could not see him. Eventually, the voice convinced her that evil did exist, and it was personified by her husband, the lying, cheating son of a bitch who was going to hell. Unfortunately, the voice said, that also meant her children were damned, too.

Thus, she found herself one night standing in the nursery clutching a pillow as she stared blankly down at sleeping Chelsea. The voice urged her to place the pillow over the child's face and then repeat the effort with Hillary. Your
children's souls are at risk,
said the voice.
They are the spawn of Satan. If you want to save them, send them to God.

Crying out from the effort, she flung the pillow aside and fled the room. She crawled into bed next to her snoring husband and spent the rest of the night shivering and telling the voice to leave her alone.

Charlie had not wakened to comfort her. Nor did he seem to notice the bags beneath her eyes or the haunted look on her face the next morning. In fact, he hardly acknowledged that she was alive until he received a panicked call from the nanny telling him that his wife had swallowed her entire bottle of Prozac and was being rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital uptown on Fifth Avenue.

At the hospital, Jessica had her stomach pumped full of a charcoal solution to absorb the drug and induce vomiting. However, retching until she thought that her internal organs would fly out of her mouth wasn't the worst part of the experience—the worst part was the angry look on Charlie's face and the icy hardness in his voice after the doctor left the room.

"What the hell are you trying to do, ruin me?" he snarled. "That's all I need for headlines: Candidate's depressed wife tries to kill herself." Even when Jessica started crying he didn't let up. "Diane is doing everything she can to keep this quiet," he warned. "Right now, your name is Betty Jones, and you're here for an appendectomy. If word of this gets out, I'll ..." He stopped before he said anything else, but she got the idea.

Charlie did keep his promise to take her to a psychiatrist, though this one was in Newark, where Diane thought they would be less likely to be spotted. But he wasn't happy when the psychiatrist, Harry Winkler, asked to speak to Jessica alone first.

"First of all," Winkler said when he was alone with Jessica, "you have nothing to be ashamed of. This is not your fault, no matter what your husband, or any others, may imply."

Winkler's kind and understanding tone gave Jessica hope. She told him everything. Well, almost everything. Tearfully choking over the words, she recalled how she'd stood above her daughter's crib prior to her suicide attempt and contemplated murdering her children. But she didn't tell him about the voice in her head. That was her secret.

The doctor had listened to the entire story as if he were being told about a trip to the zoo—mildly interesting but nothing to write home about. "Chemicals," he said when she finished talking. "It's just chemicals. First adolescence, and then pregnancy and giving birth, simply threw off the chemical balance in your brain." He said he was going to prescribe lithium as a mood stabilizer and to combat the depression.

The psychiatrist had then called Charlie into the office and explained what was going on in his wife's life and why. Then he dropped the bombshell. "It is my professional opinion that it would not be advisable for Jessica to have any more children."

Charlie blinked several times like he'd just been told that he was going to die. "So what are you saying?" he demanded.

"Well, on rare occasions," Winkler pontificated, "postpartum depression can be dangerous, not just to the mother—as you've recently experienced—but also to the children. And I'm afraid, there is some history, an incident during which your wife considered doing harm to your children."

"What!?" Charlie scoffed. "I don't believe it. Jessica let her mood get her down and she acted out... what you shrinks call a 'cry for help.' That doesn't mean she would have hurt the kids. That's nuts!" He turned toward Jessica. "This isn't true?"

Jessica nodded but kept her eyes on her hands folded on her lap. As if trying to wake from a dream, he shook his head rapidly and turned back to the doctor, clearly angry. "So again, what are you telling me ... us?"

"I'm saying that the chemical imbalances brought on by pregnancy and ... childbirth exacerbate what I'm diagnosing as clinical depression," Winkler said. "And, it could get worse with each childbirth. So as I said, I strongly advise against having any more children, unless you want to adopt." Charlie took the final warning in silence, and he remained quiet for the remainder of the consultation. However, once back in the car, he let loose. "I think he's full of bullshit. Psychology isn't a real science; it's a bunch of guesswork and theories."

"I don't agree, Charlie," Jessica said evenly. "And besides, we have two beautiful kids. I think that's plenty."

Charlie gave her a dark look but fell back into silent mode for the rest of the ride back to the Upper West Side. He then made an excuse and went out for the evening.

The lithium took the edge off Jessica's mood swings, but it also caused her to gain weight. Looking in the mirror one morning several months later, she thought she looked like one of the "Before" photographs from a weight-loss advertisement. She started hearing comments about her "big backdoor" and sniggers from some of the students at NYCU. And Charlie didn't even bother to make his half-hearted attempts at sex with her anymore.

Jessica quit taking the drug. The excess pounds started to come off, though the mood swings returned. But they were mild, and she decided that she could deal with them without pharmaceuticals. In fact, she found once again that she was capable of prodigious amounts of work and creative thinking during the "up" swings. And whenever she was depressed, she found that smoking a little pot and sleeping a lot helped.

It wasn't like Charlie was around much to notice, especially after he announced that he would be running for the 8th Congressional seat in the November 2008 election. He was always off with Diane at some fundraising dinner or "fact-finding" junket.

The surprising thing was that in the middle of all this she'd let Charlie talk her into having a third child. It began when he started talking about trying one more time to have a son to "complete our family," not to mention how good it would look in his campaign literature.

When she pointed out that the psychiatrist said it could be dangerous for her to have any more children, he'd grown angry. "What does that quack know? This is all in your mind."

"Are you blaming me?" Jessica scowled.
"Of course he's blaming you,"
said the voice, which had returned when she stopped taking the lithium.
"That's what evil people do. Blame others to hide from their own sins."

"I just think that you could handle it if you wanted to," Charlie said, then decided that he'd rather avoid a scene. He tried to soften his approach. "Look, the girl I met, fell in love with, and married was so strong. She wouldn't have let some witch doctor tell her what she could and couldn't do with her own body. Where's my old pro-choice hellraiser?"

"
Adulterer,"
whispered the voice.
"Fornicator."

"Don't be so fucking condescending," Jessica snapped. "Why do you want to have sex with me? Aren't you getting enough from your whore Diane?" The understanding look disappeared from Charlie's face and was replaced with a sneer. "At least she's not fucking crazy ... or a fat cow," he spat. He leaned forward into her face. "If you do this, I'll stay with you. You can be a congressman's wife and attend your stupid little left-wing parties in Washington, D.C.—as long as you don't embarrass me. But I want a son, and if you won't give me one, then Diane will."

Jessica knew that the only reason Charlie was offering to stay married was because he needed her family's money and political connections. Otherwise, he'd probably be willing to take his chances on the fallout of the divorce and the exposure of his affair. So she agreed to have sex with him in order to be impregnated.

It was a clinical, loveless act. She would lay down on the bed at the appointed time, and he would finish as quickly as he could. There was no kissing, no lovemaking. Only procreation at its bleakest.

In January she'd given birth, and to Charlie's delight the infant was a boy. Charlie agreed to name him Benjamin, after her father. Afterward, he'd even treated her a little nicer. If not his lover, she could be the appreciated mother of his children and his political partner. He even started talking about the high-brow functions they would attend in Washington, D.C., after the election and suggesting that she apply to Georgetown if there were any openings in the political science department.

Jessica embraced the idea of being the political wife. She didn't need Charlie as a mate; it was more of a business partnership. The fantasies of life in Washington, D.C., even helped her deal with the familiar depression that returned with Benjamin's birth.

In fact, there were days when she had so much energy, she didn't know how to fill them. She'd written the essay "What Goes Around, Comes Around" by staying up all of one night, feverishly pecking at the keyboard. But it all came crashing down. First, there were the attacks on the article, which she'd expected and relished until the university regents sided with her detractors. And then that bitch reporter Stupenagel started looking into the allegations from jealous colleagues about the efficacy of her work, followed by more accusations of plagiarism and inaccuracies—all of which had some basis in fact; but everyone did it—she was just being attacked because of the essay.

Then came the night when she turned on the news and heard Charlie trying to put his spin on her work. "I don't need you interpreting me for the masses," she'd screamed. "Or using our son for cheap political theatrics!"

"Great, here we go again with one of your fucking mood swings."

She grabbed the crystal ashtray and flung it at him.
"You re evil! Fornicator! Adulterer!"
the voice screamed in her head.

"You're fucking nuts!" he'd shouted and stormed out of the brownstone.

Charlie hadn't come home that night or the next. As she lay in her empty marital bed, Jessica listened to the voice consoling her. Only then did she realize that it was more than just some disembodied figment of her imagination. It was the voice of God.

Still, she recoiled from God's repeated demand that her children needed to be sacrificed to save them from Satan. "Why them?" she complained. "Why not kill Charlie? He's the evil one. He's the lying, cheating son of a bitch."

"
His soul is already lost,"
replied the voice. "But
you can still save the souls of your children."

"But it's wrong," she cried. "It's murder."

"Is it murder to save souls from eternal damnation?"
the voice argued. "I
command it!
"

"But I'll get caught," she whimpered. "They'll send me to prison."

"Oh, but you'll have an excuse,"
the voice reasoned. "You
heard Charlie. Everybody will think you were crazy. They'll put you in a hospital for a little while and then all will be forgiven. But you have to be careful; if Charlie suspects, he'll have them put you away before you can save your children. They'll put you in that hospital anyway and force you to take the pills that make it hard to hear the voice of the Lord thy God."

"But I love my children," Jessica cried out in the dark. "I don't want to kill them."

"If you love your children, you'll do as I say,"
the voice said.

And at last Jessica had agreed.

As the day of the sacrifice approached, the voice told her to be more cautious. "You
need to be the perfect wife and mother,"
it said. So outwardly, she accepted Charlie's infidelity and lack of affection. She talked eagerly of returning to her classrooms and didn't complain when he left for overnight trips and took Diane with him. But inwardly, the fire of holy retribution burned brighter and hotter with each day.

Adulterer. Fornicator. Liar.

He would lose his bid to damn her children to hell. Yes, she understood that others would accuse her of murder, but that was because they didn't see that in this case, the ends justified the means. Occasionally she quailed at the thought of what could happen to her—prison, or even the death penalty.
But not if they think you're crazy, and think of what it will do to Charlie's fucking political career.

The warmer days of March arrived. The time was at hand. She'd taken the family Volvo and gone shopping in Newark to pick up the supplies she needed. She also found a map and planned where she would take the bodies so that no one would ever know what had really happened, and Charlie wouldn't be able to find them.

On the big day, she woke with her spirits soaring. She would do God's work, her children would go to heaven, and someday she would be rewarded by meeting them there.
While Charlie bums in hell!

Jessica got up and fixed her husband a western omelet, bacon, and an English muffin. When she heard him stirring, she fired up the espresso machine so that the coffee would be good and hot when he came down. She'd finished knotting his tie, resisting the urge to tighten it until the veins in his head burst. Then she'd kissed him goodbye and sent him out the door.

Are
you ready?
God asked.

Hineini, she replied. Here I am!

In the visiting room at Bellevue, Nickles guided Jessica through the questions. "Has there ... ever, um, yes ... been a period of time ... when you felt... much more ... self-confident than usual?"

Jessica considered the question. It had been a while, but yes, whenever she'd seen her name in the newspaper, fighting for a cause, she'd felt more self-confident then. She shrugged and marked "Yes."

Most of the remaining questions seemed no more penetrating or revealing. Was there ever a time ...

... she got much less sleep than usual and found she didn't really miss it?
Well sure.

...
she was much more talkative or spoke faster than usual? Yes,
but didn't everybody?

...
that thoughts raced through her head and she couldn't slow her mind down? Wasn't
that just because she was smart?

...
she was much more active or did many more things than usual?
Everybody has energy highs and lows.

She began to wonder if anyone answered no to any of the questions, and if not, what did that mean for the entire population?
That we're all crazy, I guess.