Summer and Kristy Robinson

  That report will be sent to Chiarelli as well, along with results of a separate Fatality Review Board being conducted by Fort Riley, which shouldn’t be confused with the Initial Death Notification report that is supposed to be sent to Chiarelli within two days of any suicide.

  Meanwhile, army public affairs is working on a press release to go to the media and members of Congress about all of the army suicides that happened in the month Robinson died, which will need to contain a quote from Chiarelli or someone else from the army’s highest ranks.

  This should be easy enough, but sometimes it isn’t. After one especially bad month, the proposed quote sent to Chiarelli’s staff for approval was:

  The brave individuals who wear the cloth of this great Nation in combat deserve our deepest gratitude. It is remarkable all they have accomplished. I am incredibly proud of them and of their families. That said, they are tired. The persistent high operational tempo of this war, the terrible things some have seen or experienced in combat, have undoubtedly taken a toll on them. Many are struggling with the “invisible wounds” of this war, including traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.

  A good quote. Seemingly sincere. Even moving. Except:

  “The quotes from GEN Chiarelli are accurate, but I’m not sure they fit if we are indeed addressing the highest active duty suicide month on record,” someone responded.

  “I have a feeling the VCSA will want to be personally involved in the shaping of this message,” someone else responded.

  “I am not a fan of more meetings, but on this …” someone else responded.

  There were more e-mails, followed by a meeting, followed by another flurry of e-mails, and finally a new quote was crafted and sent directly to Chiarelli for his approval. “Sir,” the e-mail to him said:

  We would propose the following, with the goal of alleviating an “alarmist” reaction to the spike in July, while keeping to our message that suicide, albeit terrible, represents the most extreme end of the spectrum of at-risk/high-risk behavior. Bottom line: we want the Members and media to read the release and conclude that while the high number of suicides is discouraging (goes to your reputation as being frank/honest), we remain confident we’re doing the right things and having the intended positive impact.

  “Proposed quote for your approval:” it continued:

  As I’ve said many times, every suicide represents a tragic loss to our Army and the Nation. While the high number of potential suicides in July is discouraging, we are confident our efforts aimed at increasing individuals’ resiliency, while reducing incidence of at-risk and high-risk behavior across the Force, are having a positive impact. We absolutely recognize there is much work to be done and remain committed to ensuring our people are cared for and have ready access to the best possible programs and services.

  “That is fine,” he replied.

  “Success! :)” one of his staffers responded.

  Meanwhile, Robinson’s unit finishes the 37-Liner and starts getting ready for the actual briefing, a process that one battalion commander who went through it refers to as “ass-pain” because of all the attention that’s required when “the dreaded ‘suicide’ word is used.” Describing what he went through when one of his soldiers killed someone and then committed suicide, he says, “The unit starts to panic because everyone has been through suicide awareness training, and if this kid hasn’t we’re screwed. The first event is to circle the wagons and ensure his name is on the roster that he attended the mandatory training, because if he didn’t that will be the reason he killed himself. Doesn’t matter if he’s a murderer—if his name’s not on that roster, that’s why he did it. The good news in our case is he was on the roster. Lucky for us. Then comes the brief. About six months after the event, much of the original chain of command has moved on, the story has gone stale, but the Vice is going to take a brief, we are told. Really? The Vice? Disbelief at first but others who have been through it come online and confirm the Vice does sit in, so the brigade commander gets spun up. ‘This can’t be dropped! Doublecheck the font on the slides! Make sure the info is correct!’ The brigade commander rehearses the brief to staff—‘Check that damn font!’—briefs the chain of command—‘That last line’s font is off! Fix it!’—we check again with the Vice’s staff. ‘Does this type of suicide get briefed?’ ‘Yes! You better get on board’ … It took a few weeks of work, not constant but enough time to be distracting.”

  Versions of this ass-pain are happening at posts around the world as the day of the briefing closes in. On the day itself, at the appointed time, no matter if at that time it might be midnight in Iraq, 1:30 a.m. in Afghanistan, and 4:00 a.m. in Korea, various generals and their staffs gather in video-conference facilities and beam themselves into the Gardner Room, where name cards have been arranged and the SECRET sign has been lit.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice.”

  Eight months after he killed himself, Jessie Robinson’s briefing is under way. As usual, there are too many cases to get through in two hours, and to get through as many as possible, Chiarelli wants the focus to be less on what happened and more on lessons learned.

  The lessons learned, then, in Robinson’s case:

  “Additional training is required to inform soldiers of the dangers of self-medicating along with the associated risk of overdosing” is the first. “Encourage the use of a battle buddy among warriors” is the second. “Increase suicide prevention classes” is the third. “Increase communication to twice a day with high-risk soldiers” is the fourth. “Continue improvements in leader communication” is the fifth.

  And that’s that. Eight months. Five minutes. The army moves on to the next suicide. Case forever closed.

  In Kansas, meanwhile, Kristy Robinson has begun repainting the walls in the house where she stayed with her husband as long as she could, until finally, too frightened to remain, she took their baby and fled. She is thirty years old now, and if her husband’s trip was eventually to the Gardner Room, hers is to a place she has yet to arrive at and understand. She’s not even sure where her trip began. Was it before the war, when she was at a church dinner, bored to tears by the men talking to her, and Jessie came over, introduced himself, and swept her off of her feet? Was it four years later when Jessie—still the “polite, organized, hard-working, gentle, loving man that remembered everything,” as his obituary would say—went to Iraq? Was it a year after that when he came home wanting the towels folded a certain way and calling her a slut, bitch, whore, cunt, and pissed-on fire hydrant?

  Her lesson learned: it’s different from the army’s. To her, what happened is the lesson.

  “He laid out a blanket on the bed,” she says. “It was a quilt his grandmother made for him. He slept on top of the covers, on top of it.”

  He cut the grass. Cleaned out the drawers in the bathroom. Took out the trash.

  “He also turned off the AC.”

  That’s what he did, and now she gets to figure out why.

  “I guess to save on the electricity bill,” she says of why he turned off the AC, but is that something that someone in the act of committing suicide would think about? The electricity bill?

  “I think he was trying to get rid of anything embarrassing because he knew there would be an investigation,” she says. Is that why he cleaned out the drawers?

  “I think he was trying to make it look like an accident because I don’t think he thought insurance would pay out for a suicide.” Is that why he left no note?

  “To not make a mess”—is that why he slept on top of the quilt?

  “I still loved him very much.” Did he know that?

  “Did he still love me?”

  “Did he hate me?”

  She is back living in the house now with their daughter, Summer, who was ten months old when it happened. The kitchen floor still has nicks in it from the day he toppled the china cabinet. The door at the end of the hallway is still gouged from the framed family pictures that he picked up and flung. The walls are dented and scuffed from the furniture he overturned.

  Those are the walls she has begun painting. Light green for the living room. Dark green for the bedroom. Brown for the downstairs.

  “Jessie hated colors,” she says. “Walls should be white with nothing on them but mirrors and clocks.”

  Wherever she’s going on this trip, every brushstroke feels like a step. She just doesn’t know toward what.

  The army has its reports, she has hers.

  “Two days ago Jessie shoved me and kicked a laundry basket. Summer was on the floor next to the laundry basket” is how hers begins. The army has a 37-Liner. Hers consists of texts that she typed into her cell phone when Jessie wasn’t around, which she hid in a folder called “Tasks” and a subfolder called “Don’t Forget to Register.” He had been home for four years, and things had gotten bad enough that she wanted a record of what was happening. Hastily written, sometimes with misspellings and always with the feeling that Jessie was about to reappear, it ended up being a record of his disintegration.

  November 1: “Jessie overturned the coffee table. He took my cell phone away from me. When I tried to leave the house he held me and pushed me back inside the house. I was holding Summer in my arms durring all of this. He said that if I called the police they would take Summer away from both of us. He wouln’t let me near the front door or the back patio door.”

  November 12: “Jessie said that the only reason he sleeps in our bed is because it is the most comfortable place to sleep.”

  December 12: “Jessie woke up telling me that he was ‘this close to beating the living shit out of me’ and tha I was lucky I just hadn’t made him mad enough. He spat at me.”

  December 24: “Jessie got up, yelling at me that I forgot to set his alarm clock. He threw a bugger bulb at me. He said that the only reason he puts up with a monster like me is because of Summer, and that she would be worth giving up to get away from me.”

  December 25: “This morning Jessie left at 9:00am. When I got out of bed I found the Christmas tree tossed off the deck into the back yard. He came home just after 2pm, took a shower and wend to bed.”

  January 11: “Jessie yelled loudly in my face, I was holding Summer—she began crying because of how loud he yelled. He said he should smack me so I would know how a battered woman really felt. He threw the bed post across the room. He said he ‘could just bash (my) fucking head in.’ ”

  January 16: “Jessie demanded that I leave work early and get home immediately. He said he had been posing as me on Instant Messanger and contacting people I have no desire to be in touch with. When I got home, he left. He came back later with a liter of vodka & orange juice.”

  January 19: “Jessie yelled, called me a feminist bitch, a live in prostitute. He emptied a vase, thrw it away and then urinated on it from the top balcony of the deck. He said since he’s already labeled a perpetrator of abuse, it really wouldn’t be a suprise, he should live up to the label. He said he hoped to get arrested—he was aiming to get arrested.”

  January 20: “Jessie woke me up at 5:00 and began yelling again. He said that tomarrow he is going to raise a stink. He grabbed my hair and ear and shoved my face to the bed while I was feeding Summer.”

  February 27: “This morning we woke up and played with Summer. When she calmed down I started breast feeding. Jessie started yelling at me ‘I’m fucking talking to you!’ i’m going to break every knuckle of your conciousness. When I get done with you you’ll wish you had only been chocked. He says i’m a yo-yo that he’s kept on his finger for the past year and a half, and that i’m falling perfectly into his trap. He said I’d better hope my car doesn’t brake down. I’d better be careful because in twenty years or so I might have an ‘accident.’ … he said I should watch out because ‘you never know when you’re being recorded.’ ”

  February 28: “Jessie said he has the scanner listening to and recording the house and my cell phone conversations. When I took Summer into the bedroom to lay her down asleep, Jessie yelled at me and shoved one dresser into the other. The noise startled and woke Summer crying. In the kitchen I was holding and trying to calm Summer, Jessie yelled loudly in my face and stomped his feet, Summer started crying.”

  March 4: “6:30am Jessie woke up calling me a fucking bitch. He said he used to think about getting me flowers, now he thinks about punching my fucking nose and watching it bleed.”

  March 11: “Jessie didn’t sleep at all last night. He has barely slept at all since Saturday. He’s been telling me that he’s been being watched and has been for a long time. On Saturday he said the substitute mail carrier was in on it. Sunday night he went to the store for smokes—said he had a really bad headache, and didn’t come home till Monday afternoon … He spent Monday night working in the garage. He screwed the windows shut and blocked them with pegboard. He turns on all the outside lights and leaves them on all night. We went to a sevice at Faith Tabernacle Church yesterday. It was very loud. The people were nice, but I didn’t get anything out of the service. Afterwords, Jessie didn’t come home right away and he didn’t come to bed at all last night. This morning he told me our house is wire tapped. He said he could tell because of the telephone jacks and tlephone wire attatched to the house. He said our neighbors are croocked and the house down the street that is for sale is empty so they can spy on us. He has stopped putting the trash out ad started sorting recyclables because he says they look through our trash to get information on us. The treash bill is paid through April, but he wants to cancel service. He wants to use mainly cash because he says they look at our bank transactions and credit reports. He says the daylight savings time adjustment is part of the cover up. Claims US has technology to affect climate/weather. Says there was an anomoly-mistake that resulted in tsunami, was US’s fault, that’s why US sent so much aid/relief. Says Junction City/Fort Riley are running lots of cables for new doplar radar. He says the doplar radar is a cover—hiding the ‘battery’ created using the water of Milford lake. He talks quite a lot about preparing for when everything goes sour and what we’ll need to live without electricity. He has began saying that things done in the past were done on purpose, and all part of his plan. He said its good for people to think we’re not getting along.”

  March 12: “Jessie says there was a ynegative atomic blast last night—he felt it. Said everything is going to go sour really soon. Said he cut the hard lines of the wire taps.”

  March 18: “It’s 3:40am. Jessie hasn’t gone to bed at all yet. I woke up hearing him searching through my dressor drawer and jewelry box. When he saw me awake, he asked for my keys. He took the Jeep key and key fob. He rearranged my keys. I had one on a single ring—he asked what it went to. I answered ‘the front door.’ ‘the front door to what?’ ‘our house.’ He asked if I had, or had seen the key to his locker. He went downstairs and started a vehicle. The garage door went up/down 3 times, after about 5 minutes he drove off. It is now 3:49am.”

  March 22: “For the past two months, Jessie has insisted that I have a bag packed for me and Summer incase we need to blitz. tonight Jessie decided we needed to blitz. He packed the car with my bag, and blankets, baby toys, two coolers, my medications in a false book of War & Peace, a stroller, frozen dinners and sandwiches. His Jeep was packed—crammed full of duffle bags, suitcases, boxes, totes as well as his rollerblades, our home computer, a reciprocating saw. He also took the dog. Jessie insisted that I trust him and just get in the car and follow him. He gave me a walkie-talkie and had us use that for communication. He insisted that the radio/cd player be completely turned off, and cellphones turned off also. He had us stop several times to change the Walkietalkie station that we were talking on. In Topeka, he had us drive around, in circles, random paths, through parking lots to make sure no one was following us. We drove to my parents house and got there late, i think around midnight. They were already asleep, so we came in and I got myself and Summer ready for bed. Jessie said he was going out for smokes to the corner gas station. Around 2:30am there was a knock at the door—the Raytown police asked to talk with me. They said Jessie called them, and they were stopping by to see if I was okay and what was going on. The police asked me if he had a history of mental illness, I replied ‘only suspected.’ They asked why I was in Kansas city, I told them because my husband insisted that we pack up and go. After there questions, the police left and went back to talk with Jessie. (another officer was still with him.) They brought him back to my parents house for the evening.”

  March 24: “I found out that Jessie had been voluntariely committed at the VA hospital in Topeka. My brother Randy went with me and Summer to see Jessie. He told me that everything was okay … he was at the hospital for witness protection/safekeeping.”

  April 6: “Jessie checked out of the VA and came home. Jessie didn’t sleep.”

  April 9: “Jessie took the car to work. Uneventful until evening.”

  April 10: “Jessie aressted for domestic battery.”

  That was her last entry. She left with Summer soon after. His suicide at that point was three months and nine days away.

  More questions that she asks herself: Why did she stay so long and believe he would get better? Why couldn’t he get better? What happened over there?

  He told her a few stories when he got home. Volunteering for first truck in convoys. The roadside bomb that hit the truck behind him and the injured sergeant whose skull he held together. The decision that had to be made about who would disarm a bomb—the guy who was leaving for good the next day or his replacement who had just arrived. It was his choice, he told her, but before he could make it, one of the guys volunteered, and when the guy got blown to bits, it was like seeing “a pink mist.” Did that really happen? Did any of it happen? It must have, because how else to explain why her funny, charming husband would come home demanding that the towels be folded a certain way and angrily pack to leave when they weren’t? “I begged him like crazy,” she remembers. “I would do whatever I could to fix it.”