Sleep Toward Heaven

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  “No,” said Franny. “I’ll see you there.”

  “Great. I’ll be waiting outside.”

  “Okay.” Franny hung up the phone. When she looked in the mirror, she realized her hair was oily and lank. As the bathtub filled, she sat on Uncle Jack’s toilet seat, her chin in her hands. The bathroom badly needed cleaning, but the effort required to buy Ajax, sponges, brushes…it was just too much. One ratty towel hung from the towel rack. When she went to shave her legs, Franny found that her razor was rusty.

  As she pulled into Andy’s, Franny saw Rick waiting by the entrance. He was undoubtedly the worst dresser she had ever seen. He wore a mustard-yellow jacket with a blue shirt and a string tie. Holding up Wrangler jeans was a leather belt with an astonishingly hideous buckle featuring a longhorn bull. Rick took a drag of his cigarette, then dropped it to the pavement and ground it out with the heel of his boot. He looked less like a lawyer than he did a Bible salesman. Franny stepped from her car and Rick smiled uneasily. His smile, one bottom tooth crooked.

  “Hello,” said Franny, holding out her hand. Rick’s grip was strong. The smell of his skin: clove, salt, fire.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” said Franny. “Really.”

  “It’s just…” Rick shook his head. “Anyway,” he said, holding open the door. As they waited for the hostess to seat them, Rick said, “Not a whole lot of people go out of their way.”

  Franny laughed, and Rick looked surprised. “That’s the understatement of the year,” she said. He shrugged, seeming uncomfortable with the bite in her voice.

  On the bulletin board, there were pictures of horses, dogs, trucks, and guns for sale. And in the corner, a new, lavender flyer: YOGA WITH YOLANDA! SUPER STRESS RELIEF! WEDNESDAYS AT SIX, BASEMENT OF ST. DAVID’S!

  “Right this way,” said the hostess. She led them to a vinyl booth.

  Rick ordered the Spaghetti Special with extra garlic breadsticks. Franny had the same. The televisions were turned off, and Franny could hear the conversation at the next table. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” said a man.

  “Believe it, buddy,” said a woman.

  The late dinner crowd at Andy’s was subdued, mostly tables of two. The fluorescent bulbs illuminated the dining room with such bright light that Franny felt as if she were in a school cafeteria. From hidden speakers, Barry Manilow crooned: Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl. With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there…

  “What you’re doing over at the prison, Dr. Wren,” said Rick, “well, I think it’s a great thing.”

  “Thanks,” said Franny. “Are you in private practice?”

  “No. I’m one of the court-appointed attorneys. I get the real grisly stuff.”

  “Like Karen.”

  Rick nodded. “You’ve gotten to know her?”

  Franny lifted her shoulders. “Some,” she said. “I’ve been trying to help with the AIDS-related symptoms. She’s pretty far gone, I’m sorry to say. I’m starting her on a new drug regimen, though. Just in case.”

  Rick’s eyes were a light brown. “Why?” he said.

  His gaze made Franny nervous. “Well, it just seems like the right thing to do,” she said. She picked up her fork, then put it down.

  From the next booth, the woman said, “You can have the dog, Jim.”

  “Anyway,” said Franny. “Is that all you needed to discuss with me?”

  “Well, Karen’s had a hard time,” said Rick. “I’m not sure how much you know about her life.”

  “Not much.”

  Their salads arrived, and as Franny speared wilted lettuce, Rick told her many of the facts she already knew from the gory library book: the rural childhood, the prostitution, the murders committed in self-defense.

  “And you truly believe they were self-defense?” said Franny.

  “Well,” said Rick, “I’m not going to lie to you. She took these fellows’ jewelry, their money, gave it to her junkie girlfriend. But she had been beat up pretty badly at some point. The examining doctors found scars from stab wounds, tears in her vagina and anus. Certainly, there’s evidence that her accounts of the murders could be true. And, again, she had the opportunity to kill hundreds of men. She claims she only shot in self-defense. But then there’s Henry Mills. He was a young guy, walked into a convenience store to get some groceries…Karen had just shot a john. It was the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. He left a young widow.” Rick sighed, stared into space for a moment. “But Karen didn’t seem to get any thrill from the murders, the way your typical serial killer would.”

  “Your typical serial killer,” said Franny. “Jesus.”

  Rick took his last bite of salad and picked up his napkin. “I represent several,” he said, shaking his head. “How I ended up in my life I don’t know. Sometimes I just can’t believe it.”

  “I feel exactly the same way,” said Franny. “Just today I was wondering what the hell I was doing in Gatestown.”

  “Having a Spaghetti Special,” said Rick, as the waitress set the steaming plates down. He lifted his beer, and Franny touched her glass to his.

  “To Gatestown,” said Rick.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Rick spoke. “For whatever reason, Dr. Wren, Karen tells me she feels close to you.”

  Franny looked up. “Really?” she said.

  “Yes. I think you may be one of the few people who speaks with her at all.”

  “Rick, what do you need from me? Is there going to be another trial for Karen?”

  Rick sipped his beer, and appeared to be choosing his words. “No. To answer your question, no, there’s not going to be another trial. But there is one appeal left to keep Karen from being executed.”

  “And do you have high hopes?”

  “Well, no. The governor, he’s not too sympathetic. But that’s where you come in. I was hoping you’d be a character witness for Karen. Just write a letter. It’s a shot in the dark, I know. But if the governor doesn’t change his mind, Karen will be executed on August twenty-fifth.”

  “I know,” said Franny.

  “I just thought I’d tell you,” said Rick. “And, well, I was hoping that maybe you’d try to help.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Rick. I’m not the jury. I mean, it’s not my place.”

  “Just think about it,” said Rick.

  “To be honest,” said Franny, “I don’t know if the AIDS won’t kill her first.”

  “Maybe that would be a blessing,” said Rick. He leaned in close to Franny, and she could smell him, his skin. “Will you think about it?” he said. “Writing a letter to the governor?”

  “Sure,” said Franny.

  “That’s all I ask,” said Rick. When the check came, he paid it.

  celia

  Surprisingly, things at the library remained much the same as they had been before I took a young lover into my bed. I received no sly glances, no comments, and there seemed to be no heat or sex vibes exuding from me. Even Harriet Peabody, a hippie-turned-aqua-aerobics-instructor who checks out books like Harnessing Your Psychic Self and Crystal Ball Creativity, walked by me without a glance. (She had come in to see if we had received the new issue of Cat Fancy; we had not.) I must admit, it was a bit disappointing.

  Marc had not called, and I was glad. Although an orgasm with a young stud was fabulous in its own way, I really wasn’t prepared to date a man who could not buy wine on the way over for dinner. Also, the charm of a struggling artist wears off fast. I know: Henry had wanted to be a composer, but had become a Java programmer instead. Those long nights, those conversations in which Henry had strummed his guitar and started in with the I have given up on my dreams…Honestly, I couldn’t go through that again.

  However, my sexual appetite seems to have reawakened. I find myself checking out patrons as they are checking out books. Good old Charles, who reads all the weepy women’s novels, suddenly seems attractive in his hospital scrubs. Ken Me
ndel, who’s been writing a book about the history of golf for years, seems less a drunken freak and more a possible afternoon liaison. Even Abe, I have to admit, looks pretty good for eighty. (I will note here that I have not checked out young Finnegan for even one second.)

  What to do? I am a horny widow, not something I’m thrilled about being. In my evening appointment with Maureen, she told me to take it one day at a time.

  “Oh, Maureen,” I said, jamming my mouth full of jellybeans from the bowl she keeps on her desk, “how else would I take it? I mean, really.” Maureen, a bit snide but a good person at heart, admitted that I had a point.

  Geraldine Flat comes straight from Huntsville to my desk at the library. “What?” I say to Geraldine. She looks terrible. She has circles under her eyes, and her hair looks like a bird’s nest (one of my mother’s favorite expressions, and very applicable in this circumstance).

  “I have been,” says Geraldine, pausing dramatically, “at an all-night vigil protesting the death penalty.”

  I sigh. She is blocking my view of the hot new lawyer in town, who is flipping through the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature.

  “They killed Jackie Ford,” Geraldine says, letting her shoulders slump forward. “And Karen Lowens is next.”

  I begin to laugh. I can’t help it. The thought of Geraldine Flat, poking a cardboard sign in the air, surrounded by eighteen-year-olds, well, it’s just too much. “Are you laughing?” says Geraldine Flat.

  “Oh, Geraldine,” I say, “Why don’t you fuck off?”

  karen

  Karen’s visits to Dr. Wren are the highlight of her day. Although she feels weak most of the time—the nausea is constant now, a sickening weight, and her pneumonia makes it hard to breathe—her visits to the clinic are peaceful and quiet. Karen thinks constantly about Dr. Wren’s small earlobes, her perfume smell, her long white teeth.

  In the Medical Center, Dr. Wren slides a syringe into Karen’s arm. Karen remembers Ellen sliding the needle in. Karen will have the same track marks.

  Karen can feel it: she is dying. She has to fight for breath, and even the sedative does not quell her panic. Dr. Wren is looking out the window. There is only a concrete wall there. Karen opens her mouth. “I don’t want it to be this way,” she says.

  Dr. Wren turns; the light from the window makes a line on her face. “What?”

  “I don’t want to die choking.”

  Dr. Wren is silent, and then she comes and sits next to Karen. She touches Karen’s hand, and looks into her eyes. “Does it matter how you die, do you think?”

  “It matters to me,” says Karen.

  And it does matter, a great deal. Karen has begun talking to God in her cell at night, and God has given her visions. Karen sees her body, giving up its soul. A clean break is the best way; struggling for breath will cut her to pieces. She also has a vision where her soul rises (in these dreams, her soul is smoky, glowing, and the body it leaves behind is brittle and dry) but Dr. Wren runs after it, jumping and grabbing bits to bring them back, trying to press them inside the shell on the table. In the vision, Dr. Wren will not let Karen’s smooth soul escape.

  “Do you think the morphine tablets are helping you?” says Dr. Wren. Karen shrugs. The pain is constant, gnawing. “We can put you on a drip,” says Dr. Wren. She points to the machine in the corner of the room, a bright cylinder.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d have the IV in all the time,” says Dr. Wren. “And you could give yourself morphine when you needed it, just by pushing a button.”

  Karen stares at the white canister, the tubes snaking from it like arms. “Could I give myself enough to die?” she says.

  “What?” Dr. Wren’s eyes narrow.

  “I’m just joking,” says Karen. But she is thinking about how it would feel, the warmth spreading through every limb, morphine filling her veins. The noise, the guards, the pain fading away, and God opening His arms to hold her.

  “I’d program the machine, limiting the amount you could administer, of course,” says Dr. Wren. From her lab coat she pulls out a small, red notebook. “I’ve got the code to the machine in here,” she says. “And I’d make sure you only had what you needed.”

  “Not yet,” says Karen.

  Dr. Wren looks at her notebook, and puts it away. In the corner, the machine waits.

  Later, as the guards lead Karen back through the screams and the banging metal, she pretends she can still smell Dr. Wren. Dr. Wren seems so young, and so nervous. Ellen was like that, back before everything went wrong.

  It is not that Karen loves the doctor. It is just that Dr. Wren is empty, without faith. Maybe, Karen thinks, she can help her somehow, take care of her the way she took care of Ellen. Karen is tired of having nobody.

  franny

  When Franny left the prison Tuesday evening, she tilted her head to the sun, and took a long breath, smelling the grass. She felt like crying with the joy of it.

  The big news in the prison that week was the Black Widow’s wedding. This woman had married seven husbands, and now she was engaged again. Karen had told Franny that Veronica was a kind person, that she really loved this new fiancé, Jimmy. Franny had a hard time believing it.

  On Friday, Veronica’s wedding day, Franny woke early. As she showered, she felt giddy, as if it were prom night. She dressed in a gray suit (she had not worn anything other than cotton slacks in days, and her pumps felt strange now that her feet were used to sneakers) and applied lipstick. She had run out of her expensive New York shampoo and used bars of soap instead. She had stopped using her hair dryer, usually pulled her hair back in the rubber band from the morning paper, the Gatestown Messenger. Dark clouds rolled across the sky, and it began to rain as Franny drove to the prison.

  “I can see you dressed up for the wedding,” said Deborah, pouring coffee in the Medical Center.

  “Oh, is that today?” said Franny.

  Deborah put her hands on her hips. “You know it is,” she said. Deborah was round and small, and there was something strange about the way she acted around Franny, something in her tone. She treated Franny like a wayward teenager.

  The morning was filled with flu shots and a woman whose eye had been punched almost out of the socket. “That fucking bitch,” said the woman, who was skinny with pigtails. Franny tended to the wound, and did not say a word. “She fucking jumped me,” said the woman. “In the fucking shower. Bullshit.” Franny did not respond.

  The wedding was planned for visiting hours. Veronica would have to be handcuffed throughout. She and her new husband would not be granted conjugal visits.

  At four, Deborah came into the clinic. “Are you coming, Franny?” she said.

  “No, I’m too busy, thanks.”

  “There aren’t so many good things here,” said Deborah. She looked as if she wanted to say more, but Franny had bent her head to write notes. “Laceration above and below brow,” she wrote. Finally, Deborah left.

  Franny decided to make a pot of coffee. She dumped the morning’s coffee in the sink, and got a new filter from the cupboard. Who would marry a woman on Death Row? she wondered. A sixty-year-old woman who had killed seven husbands before? Franny could imagine presenting the case before her psych class in med school. Her classmates would furrow their brows, ask questions in bewildered voices: Did the man believe Veronica was innocent? Didn’t he know she’d never be free? Did he have a death wish, do you think?

  When her mug was full, Franny took a sip, and then put it down. She just had to see the ceremony. Franny walked quickly down the hallway to the visiting room.

  “Going to the chapel and she’s gonna get maaaaried…” sang a voice. Franny hurried along, her head down. She hated the way the inmates yelled coarsely, insultingly, incessantly. At the window to the visiting room, she stopped.

  The room was filled. There were people on both sides of the glass wall that separated the guests from the prisoners. Guards surrounded Veronica, some smiling, some watch
ing passively. Visitors and staff stood on the other side of the glass. Some of them looked a bit like Veronica—daughters, maybe, sons. Some cradled babies in their arms, and there were children—children!—in frilly dresses and pressed pants. Franny shook her head.

  In the front of the room, the chaplain, a mousy woman named Moira, read from her Bible. Moira held a telephone mouthpiece, so that Jimmy, on the other side of the glass, could hear. Veronica wore a long, white gown. (She had ordered the dress from a discount bridal catalog, Karen had divulged. Veronica’s gray hair was covered with a sheet, trailing behind her to the floor. She was made up like a showgirl: bright lipstick and rouge.

  The husband had to be twenty years younger than Veronica. He was bone-thin with dark hair and a dark complexion. He stood proudly, holding the receiver to his ear. Through the glass, he gazed at Veronica.

  Franny squeezed into the visiting room. The door closed with a bang, and everyone turned around. Franny stared into her coffee. The chaplain looked up, but then resumed reading into the mouthpiece. Jimmy began his vows, speaking quietly and forcefully. Franny could not help feeling a shiver when he said, so seriously, “until death do us part.”

  As Jimmy spoke, Franny looked at Veronica’s face. It was clear, shining, and something inside Franny melted. She forgot the circumstances, just for that flickering moment, and she saw two people in love.

  After the ceremony, the guards led Veronica away, and her new husband watched her go. He was hugged by his relatives, and a baby started crying. There were no pictures, no flowers, no music. When everyone had left, Franny went to pick up a gum wrapper on the floor.

  “Franny, how are you doing?” Franny stood quickly, and turned around. Deborah was in the middle of the room. “I mean, really,” said Deborah.

  “I’m fine,” said Franny, but she suddenly felt tired. “It’s just so sad,” she said. Deborah came forward, put her hand on Franny’s arm.

  “Jack told me you kept it all inside,” said Deborah, and then she stopped.