Sleep Toward Heaven (3 page)

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not my fault that I can’t be satisfied in a monogamous relationship,” said the man. He shrugged, took his toothpick, and speared the olive in his glass. He chewed the olive with relish. “In some cultures,” he said, “I’d fit right in, is the thing.” He sighed, and Franny smelled a flat, sour smell. “You doing anything later?” said the man, “I mean, after this…this…”

“This wake?” said Franny.

“Well, yeah. Um, there’s this great jazz club in Alphabet City.”

Franny blinked. “I have got to leave now,” she said.

Her coat was hanging in the bedroom. As she slipped it on, a voice came from a dark corner: “Do you know how many nights I sat here?”

It was Mr. Gillison. He was sitting on a windowsill, looking out at the building across the courtyard. “I sat here,” he said, “and looked into all the other windows.” He breathed in and out. He held a glass of dark liquid in his hand. “I thought of all the other lives, all the people, just on my block. And they have bad times, right? I mean, everyone has problems.”

“Mr. Gillison,” said Franny.

“Dr. Wren,” said Mr. Gillison, and he turned and looked at her. His eyes were red and puffy. “I’m ashamed to say that I wished I could trade lives with any one of these people. Even that sad fuck.” He pointed to a window that Franny could not see. She wanted desperately to leave, to be outside this apartment.

“That guy,” said Mr. Gillison, “he’s got nothing. He watches television and irons his shirts. He doesn’t even have a plant. He’s got nothing.” Mr. Gillison laughed, but it was not a happy sound. It was a mean sound. “I’d give anything in this world,” he said, “to trade my life with that man.”

Franny sighed. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry, too,” said Mr. Gillison.

“She should have died here, at home. It was my fault. I know that,” said Franny.

“Yes,” said Anna’s father. “I know that, too.”

The streets were slick and shining. Franny breathed in deeply, and decided to walk for a while. Though it was June, the air was cool. She bought a pack of cigarettes at a kiosk, and lit one in the shadows of an ATM machine. It was a bad idea to walk through the park at night, but she turned in anyway. The night was silent, but for Franny’s footsteps and the wind in the trees.

On a bench, a figure was outlined in lamplight, completely still. Franny began to feel sick, and dropped her cigarette.

A man in a dress lurched by, murmuring. His dress was mauve taffeta. He wore no shoes, and his hair was long and matted. Franny walked faster, feeling heat rise underneath her arms. She broke into a run.

I don’t think I want to live anymore, Anna had said, and then, Don’t tell my mom. Franny shushed her, ran fingers over her scalp, as soft as a newborn’s. You do want to live, she said, yes, sweetheart, you do. Anna had not answered.

Her little feet. Her slippers were blue, and lined in lamb’s wool. Anna liked hot chocolate, pizza, and Gobstoppers. She did not like mushrooms. They were slimy, but she liked sushi, which was also slimy, so it didn’t make sense. Wasabi sauce was too hot, but Anna liked the green sauce on tacos, the hottest sauce.

Anna’s best friend was—had been—a girl named Kim. Kim had stopped visiting after the first chemo treatment, but she called, and Franny would hear Anna giggling on the phone. Kim had a boyfriend, Anna told Franny, so she was really busy. Kissing was slimy, like mushrooms, and Anna didn’t think she would like it, but maybe she would change her mind.

Franny thought of her lab coat, its chemical smell, her stethoscope. She knew what had happened, knew exactly what Anna’s body had done and had not been able to do. It was not God’s mystery. It was not a mystery at all.

She stopped running and lit another cigarette. She was halfway across the park. Franny watched the smoke from her mouth circle toward a streetlight, disappearing. She walked steadily until she reached Central Park West.

In front of her building, a man in a dark coat waited. He nodded at Franny, and raised his arm for a taxi that did not stop. Franny pushed the door open and smelled meat cooking. She unlocked her mailbox: cable bill, laundry bill, postcard. Franny flipped the card. Here I am in New Orleans! Remember Mardi Gras ’90? See you in August, Big Boy. The front of the postcard showed a Mardi Gras parade, a colorful float, a crowd of waving arms. One of Nat’s friends. They lived in a world of parades, stretching one party to the next. Franny stood in her lobby, trying to believe that she could spend her life knowing them, laughing with them, planning vacations. She wanted to be like the rest of the wives and girlfriends, giggling and rolling her eyes and pouring bags of corn chips into bowls.

The elevator was broken again. Franny climbed the stairs heavily. She unlocked the apartment door and flicked on the light. “Hello?” she called, “Nat?” There was no answer, but her cat, Ophelia, came running. “Hi, sweet,” said Franny, scooping up Ophelia and holding the warm fur to her neck. Franny dropped the mail on the side table and walked into the kitchen. “Honey?” she called. On the kitchen table, there was a note written on the back of a bank statement: Where are you? Got lonely—Went for a drink at Paddy’s—Come join? N.

Franny put down the note. She did not want to be filled with rage. Ophelia jumped from her arms and ran, leaving a scratch on Franny’s hand, a line that filled with blood. “Fuck!” Franny cried. For a moment, she considered putting her coat back on, but the convivial scene unfolded before her—the dartboard, laughter ringing through smoke—and she shivered. No.

She opened the liquor cabinet and poured a hefty tumbler of Scotch. In the living room, she sank into the futon and turned on Nat’s enormous television. A face filled the screen. “Oh, Lucy,” said the face. “Do you really mean that?” Franny shut off the television. She gulped the whiskey, and put her head in her hands.

It came slowly, then, but steadily. The darkness. The anger Nat did not understand. It started in her gut, gathered force. She took another sip, tried to think of something else: the wedding, a good steak, her Uncle Jack and his Old Spice smell.

It did not stop. It ran through her and over her, like a river. Anna was dead, she had died in the most horrible manner possible, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Franny could do.

A
lthough my mother disagrees, I have moved forward with my life. For example, I’ve bought a new bikini. I do not know what possessed me to do it, but do it I did, late one night. I was watching TV (I had called the cable company and asked them to install every single channel possible. I figured I deserved the Movie Channel, HBO, Cinemax, and whateverall else. I deserved at least that). The show certainly did not lead to my decision; it was “Law & Order,” and everyone was wearing chic coats as they fought injustice in cold climes. But summer was in the air in Texas, and I must have been thinking about the kids coming into the library for their summer reading books. Why the teachers insist on assigning books like The Hobbit I will never know. Those poor little ones with that thick tome. Nobody asks me for my opinion, but that’s another story entirely. Summer, summer, summer.

I swiped the J. Crew catalog from the teachers’ lounge when I dropped off some books at the elementary school on the other side of Austin. You’d think, being people who chose to spend their lives serving others at a menial salary, that the teachers would be nice. You’d be wrong. I have never met a group of such catty, unhappy people in my life. And they’re not very bright. They spend all day leafing through catalogs, smoking, and saying how much they dislike their students and how they’ve got to lose weight. Every single one is on a diet. The juice diet, the rice diet, the cigarette and coffee diet. The only ones not on diets are pregnant. I’ve got to wonder, too: do they talk to their lovers the same way they talk to me, as if I were a dog that needed some training? “Oh, Celia, when you put coffee in the filter, please try not to spill it all over the counter. OK, honey?” It makes me want to smack them. And their Crayola-colored clothes!

My therapist, Maureen, says I have anger issues. She tells me that although I am through the official “Hostility” phase of my grieving process and full-on into the “Depression” and “Inability to Resume Business-as-Usual Activities” phase, I still “harbor intense reserves of uncontrollable anger.” Maureen is a smart and insightful woman, and she may well be right, but I haven’t smacked anyone, and that’s a fact. I haven’t taken heroin or tried to drown myself in a soapy tub. I ordered a bikini. Now, I ask you: doesn’t that sound normal? It was on page thirty-four, a magenta stunner, worn by a WASPy girl with blonde hair tied into a ponytail. The girl was riding on the broad shoulders of a man who looked exactly like my high school boyfriend, George MacKenzie. Dark hair, chocolate eyes, that olive skin. God, I adored him. Last I heard he was a waiter at a Bennigan’s outside Detroit, but the way he would make me come in the lunchroom when everyone else was in classes, rubbing right through my jeans! The few times I saw him asleep—once on a bus, during a school trip to a candlemaking factory, and once when we rented a hotel room after the prom—something opened in me, and a warmness slid in. Until he dumped me for some girl in Mississippi, where he went to college (before flunking out), I had a chance at being a warm human being. And I got a second chance. But now that’s over.

So there I was, watching “Law & Order,” drinking margaritas in my apartment on the south side of Austin. Outside, the sun had fully set, and the sound of cicadas rang like ripples around me. “Law & Order” was all about some cop who had murdered a lady in a restaurant, gone home, changed into his police uniform, returned to the restaurant, and then pretended to discover the body. Really, isn’t life complicated enough?

So I looked down at the catalog, and there was the WASPy girl in the bikini, and it made me think of a better time. A time when I had never been dumped, for one thing, and when I had never been married and my husband hadn’t been shot to death. A time when I didn’t understand how fragile the whole world was, and how much could be taken away from you before you even realized what you had to lose.

The night my husband was murdered, I had wanted some beer. It was hot. This was long ago now, five years ago. But that night is clearer in my memory than last night, or the night before. The air smelled of grass. My husband had just cut the lawn. He was sticky and smelled like lawnmower fuel. He had blades of grass on his legs, glued to his socks and sneakers. He wore a big straw hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. Sitting on our porch swing reading a magazine—Vanity Fair—and petting our dog, Priscilla, I had watched him mow the lawn.

I’d won a bet—my husband had bet me that he could make Priscilla sit still with a biscuit on her nose, but he couldn’t. Priscilla kept snapping her head around and eating the biscuit. I won the bet, so he had to go buy the beer. “Get something good,” I yelled, as he pulled the truck out of the driveway. “None of that Miller Lite crap!” And that was the last word he heard from me: crap. I’m sure he heard some other words afterward, maybe a song on the radio, the price of the beer from the cashier. I can watch the tape if I want to find out exactly what Karen Lowens said. But the last word he heard from me, from his beloved wife, was “crap.”

I called the J. Crew number and a cheery woman with a Southern accent answered the phone. She was very good-natured about the magenta bikini, which was not only available, but could be purchased with a small top and a medium bottom, what a deal! I gave her my credit card number and it was easy as that. I called my mother and told her the news and she seemed happy to hear it. “Just think,” said my mother, in the middle of dinner with her new husband, a thousand miles away, “now you have something to look forward to!”

S
harleen, they find out quickly, screams throughout the night. There’s a long, earsplitting scream first, and then one or two whimpering cries. After a few nights, Karen finds a note in her cell after her shower. It is Veronica’s handwriting: MEETING AT PATIO TABLE, TUESDAY DURING LEEZA. TO TALK ABOUT YELLING AT NIGHT.

They often write each other notes. There is something official, something polite and elegant, about the written word. Although they have all failed to live outside prison walls, they want to be considered polite. They write when there is something important to be said, something hard to say. Also, the guards cannot hear their letters. Though the guards will confiscate and read them later, the notes allow a fleeting sense of privacy.

On Tuesday, when Karen is waked by a guard with cold hands, the television is already on, a commercial for the ThighMaster. The guard smells like cigarettes and Vitalis.

Karen is handcuffed and led outside her cell. While the male guard goes through her books and drawings, a female guard’s hands are searching her, inside, outside, cold hands. The other girls talk and scream, words and words, but Karen does not make a sound. They are searched six, sometimes eight times a day. Breakfast is a bun and cold coffee, maybe corn flakes with powdered milk. The coffee tastes like mud.

The Death Row inmates live next to the mentally ill prisoners, and can hear them, their voices like lost birds, rising and falling, the pepper spray, the mace.

After “Montel” (“Teen Sluts Speak Out”), they gather on the patio. There are only four chairs around the metal table. Jackie, busy sewing, is the last to arrive at the meeting, but instead of letting her sit on the floor, Karen stands up and gives Jackie her chair. They all know there will be enough chairs soon.

“I’m sorry to have to say this,” says Veronica, her hands open on the table in front of the television, “but Sharleen, dear, this yelling has got to stop.”

In her mind, Karen has assigned everyone a color. Karen herself is gray, no color. Veronica is black, because she is called the Black Widow on TV. Tiffany is pink, because everything is pink for her: bracelet, earrings, lips. Tiffany was tan before she came to Death Row, but now she is pale. She has bright blue eyes and hair the color of wheat. She looks like a Charlie’s Angel, with her winged-out bangs and long legs.