介绍： 043 | Sharing the Shame After My Arrest

WE had been married for just over a year when the F.B.I. showed up at our house at 6 a.m. and arrested me. They arrested my husband, too, although at the time that seemed beside the point. A stickler for rules who had never even gotten a speeding ticket, I was handcuff...

介绍： 043 | Sharing the Shame After My Arrest

WE had been married for just over a year when the F.B.I. showed up at our house at 6 a.m. and arrested me. They arrested my husband, too, although at the time that seemed beside the point. A stickler for rules who had never even gotten a speeding ticket, I was handcuffed in my mismatched pajamas and hauled away. My teeth weren't even brushed.

The charges against me — against us both — were wire fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. In a state of shock, I began babbling to the F.B.I. agents that I would never open mail that wasn't addressed to me. (Never. Ever.) If only it were that simple.

When the indictment was unsealed, I learned that my dear husband had, in the simplest terms, used my identity to embezzle tens of thousands of dollars from his workplace, among other crimes. His using my identity made it look as if I was involved. I wasn't.

I appeared in a federal courtroom to plead not guilty. A newspaper photographer chased me down the street, trying to get a picture of my face. I handed over my passport to the court. I took drug tests, a process that almost made me laugh. What would show up: my Claritin?

I was assigned a probation officer that I had to see every week. I took more drug tests. I wasn't allowed to leave the state unless the court approved. I died inside, day by day.

I vacated the beautiful house my husband and I had bought eight months earlier, leaving my clothes and the new kitchen gadgets from my bridal shower, leaving the new neighborhood where I had begun to make friends, and leaving my husband, and I moved home: a 28-year-old going back to my parents' house while my personal life was plastered across the news, everyone saying I had conspired to commit crimes.

At first my husband tried to communicate with me, tried to apologize, but my lawyer contended it was unwise to be in touch given the charges. So my contact with my husband, my love of five years, ceased completely.

The federal charges were held against me for 90 days. That might not sound like a long time when discussing, say, party plans. But when facing criminal charges, losing your home and leaving the man you loved (or thought you loved, because, after all, who was he, really?) without so much as a word of goodbye — when that's your life, 90 days is an eternity.

I decided to sleep on the couch at my parents' house. I was unable to go into my bedroom, where I had played with dolls, learned to paint my nails and held slumber parties. It seemed like a sign of true regression and failure to sleep in my childhood bed at 28. So I slept on the couch.

The couch was perpendicular to the TV so I could lie down and watch mindless programming all night. It was parallel to the matching love seat: a furniture set covered in stiff, green, outdated fabric.

I slept on that couch for 90 nights, the full period I faced federal charges. And for those 90 nights, my mother slept on the love seat, her limbs hanging off at odd angles. I didn't ask her to sleep there. She just did.

"We have so many beds in this house," my father said. "Why isn't anyone using them?"

"Because Brooke can't," my mother answered.

I mostly stopped eating. My mother mostly stopped eating. My father tried to encourage us to take a few bites at each meal.

"We can't," my mother said.

My days were spent in a dark haze. I fantasized about accidental death. While driving I would think, "How fast would I need to go to miss the turn and hit a tree?" While walking up stairs: "What if I were to trip and fall backwards? Might I hit my head and never wake up?"

I could barely see my mother during the night even with the light from the TV, though she was only 10 feet away. Occasionally I could hear her breathing or her movements as she adjusted an arm or leg in her cramped quarters. I'd stare in her direction, wondering if she was staring back. I didn't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time, my heart pounding.

"Are you O.K.?" she'd whisper.

"Are you O.K.?" I'd whisper back.

It was our code. There was no real answer, but asking the question was enough. And the answer, the repeated question, at least meant that we were alive.

.......

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