Sleep Toward Heaven Read online

  “Yes,” said Franny.

  “Here for the execution?” He said this in the same blasé tone, and Franny looked up at him. He pointed to the men at the other tables. “That’s why they’re all here. The Hairdresser of Death.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You don’t know about her?” Fred pulled a newspaper out from under the bar. He folded it back to show a grainy picture of a tired-looking woman. “Killed her whole family,” said Fred.

  “Wow.”

  “That’s nothing. We’ve got some real sickos up there.” Franny didn’t answer, didn’t even nod. She wanted the bartender to be quiet. “I’m gonna be a prison guard,” he said. He was a type familiar to Franny. She had gone to school with dozens of beefy boys who were likely guards now. It was one of the few jobs in town. Franny played with her cocktail napkin, and calculated how fast she could finish her drink and leave. Ten minutes, she thought, maybe five. “You okay, lady?” said Fred. Franny nodded. She drained the Scotch and pulled a five from her wallet. As she made her way out of the bar, the piano player sang, “I get no kick from champagne!”

  Back at the house, the phone was ringing. Franny picked it up. “Honey?” said Nat. “How is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh God, Fran. I’m getting the next plane.”

  “No,” said Franny.

  “What do you mean? You need me.”

  “Nat, I don’t want you.” Franny said the words without even thinking, but once they were spoken, she realized they were true.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you…here. I don’t want it. I’m sorry.”

  There was a silence. “I’m going to let you go now,” said Nat, his voice even with anger. “I’m very sorry about your Uncle Jack, and I’m going to call you tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye,” said Franny, and she hung up the phone and pulled the plug from the wall.

  She walked up the stairs again and paused at the door of Uncle Jack’s room. There was the bed she had once climbed into when she was scared or lonely. There was a time when she had been terrified of an imaginary group of people who would come at night and lock everyone in their basements. One night, in Uncle Jack’s bed again, Franny had told him about her terrible fear. “Baby Doll,” he had said, his hand on her head, pushing her hair behind her ears, “we don’t have a basement.” In that moment, Franny had known that he could save the world.

  She walked down the hall to her old bedroom, and lay down, staring at the ceiling. The crack had been repaired, but there was still a water stain in the left corner. She began to remember her last conversation with Uncle Jack. He had called on a Sunday a few months ago, and she had been running out the door to taste wedding cakes with Nat. “I just want to know how things are going, Baby Doll,” Uncle Jack had said. “It gets lonely here, nighttimes. I’d like a nice long chat one of these days.”

  “I’ll call you back,” Franny had said, thinking of sugar frosting and Italian cream cake. “I promise,” she said, but she never called. Had she told Uncle Jack she loved him? Had she ever thanked him for being a mother and a father and a friend? Franny made herself say it out loud: Uncle Jack is dead.

  celia

  The post office in my neighborhood is a squat building made of concrete. Inside, three fabulous men process mail: Claudel, a tall black man with heavy eyelids and a ready smile; Rick, a man I would call jolly—it certainly describes him—but for the fact that he is fat, and everyone always calls fat people jolly, and so very few of them really are; and Joe, a wiry blond who has a very foul mouth and doesn’t mind using it. (Joe is a bit pudgy, too, but he is by no means jolly.) In truth, I like Claudel the best, because he always asks me how I’m doing, and he really seems to care. Also, he’s sexy.

  So I went to mail my letter. I even bought a to-go cup of Starbucks for the occasion. I love the cardboard cup at Starbucks, and I love the little corrugated cardboard sleeve. The whole package just makes me feel like I’m going places. With one of those cups of coffee in my hand, I feel as if I’m on “Law & Order,” rushing to the rescue in black leather boots. But Starbucks is expensive. It’s really a ripoff. I only allow myself a cup on special occasions—for example mailing a letter to a murderess.

  There were many people in line ahead of me at the South Austin Post Office and the excessive caffeine in my Starbucks was starting to make me nervous and paranoid. What do they put in that coffee? I’d really like to know. I have a sneaking suspicion there’s something illegal in there, and at the prices they charge, there should be.

  The people in line started chatting, as will sometimes happen in cramped spaces like buses when the driver gets off to go to the bathroom leaving you stranded at some curb, and (I have heard) submarines. There was one woman with a large package that, she announced, was candy for her niece at summer camp. Holding up an enormous overnight envelope, a boy confided he was sending his first novel to a literary agent. Like we were in a group therapy session, a man piped in that he was mailing a book about plants to his mother in Topeka; a tween said she was mailing a letter to the Spice Girls Fan Club (I have read about these “tweens” in Time Magazine, these twelve- to fourteen-year-olds who are running our economy); a girl bashfully admitted she was sending a love letter to her boyfriend, home for the summer in Maine. “I promised I’d write every day,” said the girl, blushing. “But I ran out of stamps.”

  I’d been smiling away, listening to everyone’s confessions, nodding encouragement, and when the silence fell, they looked to me. The line still had quite a way to go. I lifted my gaze to the posters of stamps on the wall. I pretended to be deeply interested in the Marilyn Monroe Collector’s Edition Stamp Set.

  “How about you?” said the wannabe novelist, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. “What’s up with your letter?”

  First of all, it’s illegal to ask questions like that. I’m sorry, but it is. Secondly, I could see his little brain turning: Wow, is this going to be a great short story! I’ll call it “At the Post Office,” or “Fed-Exing My Heart.” I clutched my envelope.

  “Uh,” I said. The group-therapy post office line looked at me expectantly. The candy lady hefted her package to her hip. Topeka man raised his eyebrows encouragingly.

  I decided to play it straight. (This was when my sanity began to come into question. Maureen would have told me I could have demurely mentioned “a pen pal” and let the matter rest. But I did not.) “Well,” I said, holding up the letter, which was neatly packaged in a clean white envelope, the kind I use to send student loan checks and bank deposits, “I wrote a letter to the woman who murdered my husband. She’s on Death Row.”

  There was silence. The candy woman’s face drained, and she turned away from me. She had a sweat stain on her back, between her shoulder blades. Everyone looked away, except the eager novelist, who perked up. “What did you write to her?” he asked.

  “None of your fucking business,” I said. Then I said, “Just kidding.”

  He looked sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, with his guileless expression and pretentious little haircut.

  “I just told her how angry I was,” I said. “I told her about Henry.” The boy listened quietly. “I told her how Henry used to—” I said, and then I felt something hot in my throat. “How he used to chase the dog around on all fours,” I said. “How he used to pretend to talk to the dog, and tell her to make us coffee and bring it to us in bed.”

  I have never heard a post office so quiet. The shuffling, the tossing, the stuffing, the stamping, it all fell silent. “Hey,” said Claudel, who had finally noticed us. “Leave Celia alone!”

  Instead of crying, I turned, and I left.

  The boy with the novel ran after me. In the parking lot, he grabbed my arm. “Could I—do you want some coffee?” he said. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. The boy dropped his novel on the ground. I held my letter. He took me in his arms, and I cried.

  karen

>   “Karen,” says Rick Underwood, “what’s this about not appealing?”

  Karen lifts her shoulders. Her hands and feet are shackled. Rick looks even more tired than usual. He looks old. When Rick talks, spittle hits the glass between them. “Karen,” he says, as if repeating her name will change things, “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m tired,” Karen says.

  “You’re tired?” Rick puts his thumb and forefinger between his eyebrows and presses. His nails are bitten to the quick. Ouch, thinks Karen. “Karen,” he says again, “if you do not appeal, you will be executed on August twenty-fifth.” He looks at her pleadingly. She knows that this is the only power she has: she can decide to stop fighting.

  “Rick,” she says, “I’m so tired.”

  “You look terrible. Are they giving you anything?”

  Karen shakes her head. “The doctor’s gone.”

  “Well, for fuck’s sake,” says Rick, balling his fists. “I want you to think hard about appealing. You don’t have much time. I suppose you know that. In the meantime, I’ll get you a doctor.” He tugs on his ill-fitting jacket. “Where the hell is Dr. Wren?” he mutters, shaking his head. “Oh,” he says, before leaving, “here.”

  It is a plain white bag. Inside it, an origami book and colorful squares of paper.

  When Karen was first arrested, Rick visited her in jail. She was still crazy with grief, and could not believe that Ellen had turned her in. Karen had been waked in the middle of the night at the Hi-D-Ho Motel and dragged outside in a T-shirt and underwear, her hair wild and her eyes blinded by the flashing police lights. They handcuffed her and put her in the police car. Karen cried, “Ellen!” looking out the window of the car, her eyes clouded with tears.

  But Ellen did not answer. She was standing in the doorway of the motel room, looking down at the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. She did not look up as the police drove Karen away.

  Karen was read her rights: multiple murders, roadside prostitution, right to remain silent. They told her to confess, slamming fists on the metal table. She did not speak. She needed Ellen, and Ellen needed her. The police told her, their growling voices, that Ellen had called her in. It was not true. It could not be true. Ellen wore on her own body the ring from the first, the necklace from the third, the pinkie ring from…was it the sixth or seventh? Ellen drank the beer, ate the Stouffer’s dinners, shot the men’s money into her arm. It could not be true. It was not true.

  Karen was in a cell with other women (and had just begun to understand the noise of the prison, the way it cut into you and would not let you rest) when Rick came with a guard to the door. “Karen Lowens,” the guard said, his voice flat. Karen stood (the other women arguing, talking, who you think you are bitch fucking bitch and on and on and never being quiet never never just shutting their goddamn mouths) and the guard unlocked the door and let her through.

  “I’m Rick Underwood,” said the man with the crazy black hair and the eyes like a bird, darting. He held out his hand, and when Karen touched it, wrapped her fingers around, he did not wince or pull away. His fingers were firm; they gripped Karen’s hand, squeezed some strength into her. Rick and Karen went into one of the concrete rooms and Rick gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. His voice was slow and drawling, deep Texas, his manners a gentleman’s.

  “You’re in a pile of trouble,” he told her. “Your girlfriend called the cops on you.”

  “No,” said Karen. “That’s a lie.”

  “Honey, I wish it was. She called the cops and she told them everything. They’ve got the jewelry.”

  “The jewelry?” Karen’s voice wavered.

  “Let’s see,” said Rick, reading off his notes, “one large gold wedding band, inscribed ‘Forever Mary.’ One gold chain. One pinkie ring with diamond chips. You want me to go on?”

  “No,” said Karen. She was silent for a moment, breathless, as if she’d been punched in the gut. “Can I—can I see her?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to see her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Rick put out his cigarette in the plastic ashtray that said “Property of Texas.” He leaned back, lifted his arms, and laced his fingers behind his head. There were two wet spots on his shirt under his arms. “So, what’s the story?” said Rick.

  Karen looked at her fingers, did not speak. She had a hangnail on her right hand, and started to pick it, drawing blood.

  “Karen, I’m not here for my own benefit. They’ll put you to death. Did you kill these men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Karen looked into his sharp eyes, and began the story. She told him everything. Ellen’s curls, the first time they had made love after drinking too much beer at Ed’s Saloon, their movements slow and sweet. The heroin, and the way Ellen would cry and say that Karen didn’t love her. Ellen, packing her things in the blue suitcase and slamming out the door. The joy on Ellen’s face when Karen came home with flowers, beer, sandwiches, money. The men at the rest stops and the parks, the creased twenties, dirty tens. The spread-out blankets, the smell of shit from the woods mixed with the smell of dirt, the hot pricks, rubbing on her dry insides. And then the one she killed. The first one, his gun hitting her cheekbone. The one who cut her, stuck a knife inside her, blood on his pinkie ring. The one who punched her black and blue until she pulled the gun.

  “How many?”

  I don’t remember, I don’t remember.

  And the last night, when the man hadn’t died, lying down on the ground like the rest of them. Somewhere, some park in Austin. The man with the black van and the flannel shirt who had fucked her up the ass until she threw up and had then kept pounding, pushing her face down. He had smelled sour, the sweat, old beer on his skin. After she had taken the gun from her coat and shot blindly to make him stop, the man had run from Karen. His shoulder bleeding, a red blossom growing on the flannel shirt. He ran and Karen ran after him.

  The power washed over her.

  “The power?” said Rick.

  The power, yes. The man ran quickly, despite the shot. He reached his van, but his keys were in his pants, and his pants were in the woods.

  He ran from the rest stop, heading to a bright building, a 7-Eleven. Karen ran after him. It happened so quickly: the man, yelling at the cashier, and Karen aiming the gun. She shot him in the back, and then the cashier, a thin man she barely saw. But it wasn’t over. The neon lights of the store, the rows of chips and candy, the radio so loud in her ears, louder than her own thumping heart. She had to get back to Ellen. “At least two hundred dollars,” Ellen had said.

  Karen shot the cash register. She pulled the money, stuffed it in her pockets, knew she had only seconds to get back to the motel and to Ellen. The radio, the radio and then the door swung open. It was a white man, with dark hair and a smile that went cold as he looked around him. He wore a T-shirt that said “Elvis Lives.” He looked at Karen and began to shake his head and bring his hands up, as if they could save him, as if they made any difference and he was in between Karen and the door and she shot him and she shot him until he fell down and the path was clear.

  But she did not leave. The man’s eyes went to Karen, and she held her breath. She watched him open his mouth. “I’m going to die,” the man said, but it was a question. Karen held the gun with one hand, and put the other to her mouth. She watched him go. He said something before he died, something that made no sense to Karen.

  “No, Celia,” he said. And then he was dead.

  She had never seen one pass over before. She had shot the men and left them in the shadows. She bent down, touched the man on the head, it wasn’t even real. She left. She ran to the motel, and to Ellen, her feet slapping the road like words.

  Rick had taken notes as she had talked. The guard in the corner had snorted and made sounds of disbelief. But Rick listened, wrote in his careful hand, looked up, looked right at Karen. When she was done, tears covering her cheeks, he stood and put his hand on h
ers. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said.

  “Ellen,” said Karen. “Can I see her, please?”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” said Rick again.

  Ellen visited, once. They took Karen from her cell without telling her where she was going, without giving her a chance to brush her hair. Ellen sat behind the glass, straight-backed in a wooden chair, her face still, her lips thin and tight. She picked up the phone without looking at Karen. Her nails were manicured.

  “Ellen,” said Karen, “Ellen, I love you. Do you love me?”

  “Yes,” said Ellen. “Of course I do.”

  “Really?” Karen held the receiver so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her breathing was shallow and fast. Ellen did not want to be there, and Karen did not want to see it, the fear on Ellen’s face. “Did you…did you do this? Did you call the police?”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” said Ellen. Her voice was stiff, starched.

  “What?”

  “When I found out you had killed people, I was afraid.”

  “Ellen, you always knew! How could you…why did you…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ellen. Before the police, Ellen had gone to visit her parents in Dallas. They had put her up to this.

  “Did your parents do this?”

  “Look, Karen, I’ve got to go.”

  “No.” Karen stood, pressed her hands to the glass. “Please, no!”

  Ellen sighed. “Just admit that you killed those men,” she said. “It’s best for everyone.”

  “I did it for you.”

  Ellen shook her head. “I’ve got to go. I brought this for you.” She took a package wrapped in brown paper, and gave it to the guard. “Good luck, Karen,” she said. She took her phone and hung it up. Karen cried out, but Ellen had turned away, and was motioning to the guard. She did not look back. Karen screamed, and the guards came for her, peeled her off the glass, put her back in a cell. It was over for Karen then, except for a few letters to Ellen that went unanswered. Karen started waiting to die.