Sleep Toward Heaven Read online

  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!”

  karen

  Sharleen, 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.

  “I keep waking up,” says Tiffany breathlessly, “and hearing Sharleen screaming, and I think he’s come back to get me!” She puts her hand to her throat. Today her nails are Peach Zinger. “The man that killed my girls,” she adds, for clarification.

  “Yeah,” says Jackie, “I keep thinking I’m hearing my husband from the grave.” Jackie is red because her hair is red. It snakes out of any rubber band, frizzing upward, like vines. She says, “My fucking hair! It’s alive, I’m telling you. I need conditioner. I just need some fucking conditioner.”

  Jackie hired a man to kill her husband and her two daughters. The man shot them and cut them up while Jackie was working at her beauty parlor, Get Snippy With Me. She says she was crazy then, but nobody believes her. She tells Veronica that she prays every night for another stay of execution.

  “What the fuck do you want me to do?” says Sharleen. There is menace in her voice. For a nineteen-year-old, she is very scary. Karen decides that Sharleen will be purple.

  “There’s no need to swear,” says Veronica.

  Sharleen laughs. “You gotta be kidding me,” she says.

  “Sharleen,” says Tiffany, “some of us are trying to live Christian lives here. Some of us are trying to be good people.” Tiffany looks at Karen, the only one of them who does not attend Bible study. When the chaplain comes in the afternoons and everyone opens their Bibles around the patio, Karen goes into her cell.

  Sharleen stands up from the table in a violent motion. “You think I wanna fucking scream?” she says in a strained voice. She looks at the chute, where the guards watch her steadily. She pinches her eyes closed and gathers her hands into fists. She is shaking. They all watch her, and wait. Even Veronica looks nervous. Sharleen takes a ragged breath, and then her hands unfurl and move down, tightly gripping the edges of the table. The table is bolted to the floor. Could she lift it, Karen wonders, and if she did, what would she do with it? Throw it across the room?

  But Sharleen does not lift anything. Instead, keeping her hands w
rapped around the edge, she opens her eyes. “You think you’re safe in here, don’t you?” she says in a low voice, too low for the guards to hear. “You think you’re safe, all locked away from the world.” She leans in, and her eyes narrow. “You think everyone who hates you is outside these walls,” she says. “But you remember one thing. I’m in here with you.”

  Things were not always like this for Karen. Her earliest memory is her happiest one. She hopes that death will bring her back to that night, with the smell of her mother’s breast: a powdery, caramel smell. The warmth of her mother’s hair, ironed on the kitchen table. A car horn honking, a bright moon sky. Her mother whispering a lullaby, soft vowels, papery voice. They are in the rocking chair, on the porch, wooden boards squeaking. And Karen is inside her mother’s arms. Is this a real memory? Is it any less real than the kicks to her stomach, the burns, the pricks shoving inside her? When she lies in her cell at night, when the TV is turned off and there is a lull in the noise, she thinks about the night on the porch. She tries to believe it was real. She counts the minutes until she will die. August twenty-fifth is sixty-two days away. 89,280 minutes.

  franny

  “Why did you sleep on the couch?” Nat was awake first, as always, his hair unruly, his T-shirt smelling of sleep. Franny wanted to place her cheek next to his chest, to hear his heart, but something stopped her. Nat was slathering an English muffin with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. He lifted his mug to his lips and drank. The metal percolator was plugged in. They had bought it at a tag sale in Connecticut from a woman in a wheelchair. “Answer the question,” he said. He added, “Honey.”

  “Did you save me some coffee?”

  He put down his mug. “Sorry.”

  “Do you even remember waking me up?”

  “When?” He took a bite of the muffin.

  “Forget it.” Franny sat down at the kitchen table and ran a hand through her hair. Nat had come to her in the night, smelling of smoke and telling her he knew something was wrong. “What’s wrong?” he had asked her in a slurred, sad voice. “What’s wrong, Franny? What’s wrong with us?” She felt guilty now about pretending to be asleep.

  “How was the funeral?”

  Franny sat up straighter. “It was difficult,” she said. “But I’m OK.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Yes.” In silence, Franny made coffee. She emptied the grounds, refilled the pot, and plugged it in. She stood at the counter while it percolated, not looking at Nat. When it was ready, she poured a cup.

  “Why don’t you add sugar and cream, like you used to?”

  “I don’t know.” She sank back down into her chair, one of a set they had been given as an engagement gift from Nat’s parents.

  “You did all right on the Scotch last night,” said Nat, “and I found these in your purse.” He held out the cigarettes.

  “What were you doing in my purse?”

  Nat paused. He sat down at the table, and leaned toward her. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t go through my purse. Jesus!”

  “I love you when you’re angry,” said Nat. Franny waited for the coffee to kick in. She sighed. Nat knelt next to Franny’s chair and put his arms around her waist. He took Franny’s chin in his fingers, turned her to him. “Franny, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” said Franny. “I just want my coffee.”

  “Sweetie, look at you. Amelia is dead. It’s okay for you to be down.”

  “Anna,” said Franny, twisting her chin from Nat’s grasp.

  “What?”

  “Her name is Anna,” said Franny, her voice rising. “Anna!”

  “Her name was Anna,” said Nat.

  “Fuck you,” said Franny.

  “Why won’t you let me help you?” said Nat.

  “Leave me alone,” said Franny. “Can I just have my coffee, please?”

  Nat snorted and shook his head. “You’re a real piece of work,” he said.

  Franny liked to think things through. She made lists before she made decisions. After college, she had made a list of 157 careers she was suited for. She then spent twenty hours (drinking two pots of coffee before Uncle Jack cut her off) imagining each possible life. She winnowed the list to twenty-six (mourning each lost career: editor, dancer, real estate agent) when Uncle Jack told her she was going to medical school and sent her to bed.

  In the morning, she had made a list of sixteen medical schools.

  Now, on the subway, Franny took a pencil from her bag and tried to unravel the aching mess in her mind. She wrote, Advil—need more. She wrote, funeral—bad idea. She should not have gone to the funeral. She knew that what she had said to Mr. Gillison was inappropriate. He could go straight to the hospital and repeat her statement: “It was my fault.” That polygamous man could testify to her many glasses of wine. Guilt sat heavily in Franny’s stomach. She imagined her mentor, Jed Lewis, looking at her. “I am disappointed in you, Franny,” he would say. And Uncle Jack, who had sacrificed everything to send her away from Gatestown. He had told her, after she had graduated from prep school and college, that it was up to her to make something of herself, to make something better of the world.

  Franny gripped the pencil. Not again. Stay professional, be strong, she wrote. She resolved right then and there, the subway careening around a corner, picking up speed, that she would not let her emotions become tangled. Patients were bodies, cells, synapses, blood. She had to look at them as if they were jigsaw puzzles: maybe if I put this piece at this angle…She had always been good at jigsaw puzzles. It was the guessing games she had hated.

  Jane Dikeman was brushing her hair in the hospital locker room. Franny smiled quickly, opened her locker, and pulled out her coat. “Franny?” said Jane, not turning from the mirror, gathering her hair into a ponytail, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that girl.”

  Franny shrugged and stared into her locker. She pressed her lips together. She looked at her apple shampoo, her red running shorts, dog-eared books. Her locker smelled like mold.

  “Did you hear me?” said Jane.

  Franny turned around. “It’s fine,” she said. In her own ears, her voice was breezy. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling on her lab coat as she walked past Jane.

  Franny’s beeper sounded as she was gathering charts: Jed. She simply wasn’t ready to talk to him. She needed more time. The charts swam in front of her eyes: diagrams, notes in her steady hand. Franny thought suddenly of Nat, of making love to him, covering him with kisses in a hot bathtub. Her knees went weak, and she grabbed the edge of the counter. She could hear her blood in her ears. She went quickly into the ladies’ room, slipped into a stall. She pressed her face against the cool metal door.

  Don’t cry, she heard Uncle Jack tell her, his syllables long and slow. Don’t let them see you cry, Baby Doll.

  Jed was in his office, transcribing tapes. He was a tall man with skin the color of licorice. His coat had coffee stains on it, as usual, and something else: peanut butter? He was Franny’s mentor, the chief internist, and one of her only friends. “Hello?” Franny tapped at the door.

  “Franny, come in.” He stood, snapped off his recorder, and took a pile of papers off a seat, gesturing for Franny to sit down. “I’m sorry about the Gillison girl.”

  Franny nodded. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  Jed smiled, shook his head. “How could you be?” he said. He closed his door, blocking them from view.

  “Well, I’m not going to…”

  “What?” said Jed.

  “I became involved, I guess, in a way that I won’t again,” said Franny.

  Jed looked at her. “I know,” he said.

  “Dr. Duncan seemed so distant. As if he’d given up on Anna. I tried to step in, to…” Franny stopped and looked at the floor. “I know that I can’t think of my patients as—”

  “As human? Good luck, Fran. I remember the first patient I lost,” said Jed. “Randall Eggers. He w
as a professional golfer. We talked about golf. I misdiagnosed his tumor as a headache. By the time my attending gave him a CT, he had lost months, maybe a year of his life.” Jed took a sip of the coffee on his desk, made a face, and spit it back. “Don’t want to know how old that is,” he said.

  “Thanks, Jed. I—”

  “Franny, listen, you’re going to care. We’re not robots.” He paused, as if searching for words that she could keep. “Don’t take it home with you,” he said, “That’s one thing. I lost Rachel that way. Don’t let that happen to you and Nat.” He sighed. “You have to turn it off,” he said. “It’s like a faucet, Franny, and you let it run, and then you turn it off and go home.”

  “I can turn it off,” said Franny, and she knew it was true.

  “Good,” said Jed. He seemed to be thinking of something else. “That’s good for you,” he said.

  That weekend, Franny woke in Nat’s parents’ house, on Milton Road, in Rye, New York. It was six weeks before their wedding. She could smell Nat’s family downstairs: the bacon sizzling, the lime aftershave splashed on his father’s pitted cheeks, the salty smell of Porter, the Labrador, and Nat’s mother’s perfume—Safari. Coffee, Lemon Pledge, ocean. Downy fabric softener, blooming dogwood trees, butter. The smell of Westchester County, so different from the heavy, scorched smell of Texas. The June morning was warm, and the sea crashed outside the window, its breezes snapping the sails of the boats lined up along the swaying dock. Nat’s family’s house was right on the water, and if Franny were to open her eyes, she would see Long Island Sound. I am so lucky to be here, thought Franny, willing herself to believe it.

  In her head, she made a list of the things she did feel: trapped, nervous, apprehensive, sad. She wanted to slip out of the expensive sheets, tiptoe down the stairs, past the kitchen, out the front door with its huge brass knocker in the shape of an anchor, down the pathway to the wooden gate. Once outside the gate, she would hitch a ride in someone’s BMW to the station and buy a ticket back to the city. She would find a new, clean apartment, and…But the fantasy ended there, alone in an empty apartment.