With Love from the Inside

by Angela Pisel

  “Aunt Sophie, are you almost done?” The excitement in Vivi’s voice reminded her of Max. Max, all alone, eating his creamed peas and processed turkey slices.

  “Almost done, Vivianne.”

  Maybe it was the letter looming in her purse with words warning her of a past that hasn’t gone away. And a mother who, no matter what she had done, still sat alone on Thanksgiving in a place no one would choose to be.

  “You feel okay, Sophie? You look kind of pale,” Caroline asked.

  “A little queasy,” Sophie replied as she excused herself and headed to the restroom. She closed the door and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

  Relax, snap out of this funk, forget about the letter—but nothing she told herself helped. She closed her eyes and shook her head, but old memories crept in and refused to go away. Pushing themselves into her presence, not allowing her to fight back.

  Thanksgiving Day when she was ten years old popped into her mind. Sophie in her twin bed, in her pink room, under her purple polka–dotted comforter. Protected and safe. Her puppy asleep beside her. She could hear her mom in the kitchen, opening and shutting the oven door, the smell of homemade sweet bread all around her. The mixer made a rhythmic clank as it hit the sides of a pan while she whipped the potatoes and added “just a smidgen” of cream cheese.

  Sophie heard a marching band on TV right before her dad yelled, “Wake up, sleeping beauty, the parade is about to start.” She could hear his footsteps moving closer to her door. He stopped long enough to taste the baked macaroni and cheese. “Creamy enough?” her mom asked.

  She saw them all sitting around their small, oval breakfast table eating on disposable plates decorated with giant brown turkeys (less cleanup, more time together, her mother told her), holding hands while her father said grace. “Thank you, Lord, for all we have. Our chairs are full and our hearts are grateful.” William slapped the tray of his high chair while their mom fed him small bites of applesauce. This was one of the rare days when he giggled like a normal baby, one that didn’t throw up all his food and spend his days being shuttled between medical appointments. Sophie wished she had more memories like that.

  Sophie took some deep breaths and tried to count to ten. How long had it been since she allowed herself to revisit these moments she could never get back?

  —

  “LET’S GRAB THE PAPER from your husband,” Margaret said to Caroline as Sophie walked back into the kitchen. “I want to see if Macy’s is putting their Coach bags on sale.”

  As they followed her into the living room, Carter saw them and put down the first section. “He deserves to fry,” Carter said, referring to the headline on the front page. Sophie read the bold print over his shoulder: “Walter Mayberry to Be Executed at Lakeland Penitentiary.”

  That’s the prison my mom is in.

  Something lodged in her chest.

  “Eye for an eye,” Carter continued, as though he was giving closing arguments in front of a jury. “The man killed young girls as a recreational activity. Murdered in his spare time. The world is better off without this scumbag.” Margaret covered Vivianne’s ears.

  “Calm down, Johnnie Cochran, this is your day off,” teased Caroline as she tried to grab the sales flyers from him.

  “Wrong side of the courtroom,” Carter served back. “I don’t defend people, sweet pea. I lock them up and throw away the key.” He tossed a pretend key over his shoulder and swiped his hands together, his imaginary victory won.

  “Baby-killer next on the chopping block,” Sophie heard him say just before her world turned black and her head hit the floor.

  GRACE

  My cell door unlocked right on time. All the doors on the cell block did except Roni’s. I’m not sure what she did this time to lose privileges, but it must have been something. I could hear Jada counting her steps in her cell. “One, two, three, four, turn. One, two, three, four, turn.”

  “You coming?” I said to her as I walked past.

  She ignored me, so I took a seat at the metal picnic table and started shuffling through the stack of magazines. Ms. Liz collected old publications from her women’s group at church and brought them to us once a month. All different kinds, from crossword puzzles to Consumer Reports, had one thing in common—the one-by-three-inch rectangle cut out of the bottom right corner of each front cover.

  Ms. Liz was my spiritual adviser, and we usually met at least once a week, but it had been a while. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been there, but I missed her and I needed advising now more than ever.

  “Ms. Liz coming today?” I asked Officer Jones, who was dialing the telephone from her desk in the dayroom. “Haven’t seen her,” she replied without looking up.

  “This is Jones”—her voice serious. She paused and then said, “So it’s a go?”

  I glanced up. So did she, and then she lowered her voice. “First one in several years; this place is going to be a circus.”

  The voice on the other end must have agreed with her. Lakeland State Penitentiary was the largest maximum-security prison in the state and had both a men’s and a women’s death row. The new governor had promised he would be tough on crime and even tougher on criminals. “Too much of your hard-earned money is going to support those who have broken the law. Those who have been sentenced to death are sitting year after year in our prisons while their appeals draw out and cost you, the taxpayer, more money.” He’d shouted the words as if he was promising a refund. “I promise to expedite this lengthy process and let their punishments be carried out.” The crowd cheered through the newscast.

  Officer Jones finished her call in private. Or I tuned her out; I’m not sure which. It was obvious someone in this place would be going before me. I didn’t know whom.

  Carmen came out of her cell about twenty minutes after I did. Even on death row, she made her appearances fashionably late.

  Forgoing a greeting, she picked up last month’s Travel + Leisure and said, “I bet the person who donated this has never traveled out of the state.” Her long nails clicked on the metal table. “Her husband’s probably a cheap-ass.”

  She continued to flip through the pages, not appearing to care if I agreed or not.

  “I bet they travel all the time,” I said after a few minutes. I didn’t want to start a fight with Carmen, but I was trying to be love-worthy, after all, and this subscriber had been kind enough to donate the magazine. “She probably pays for her kids to get their hair weaved every time they go to the beach.”

  Carmen grunted and continued flipping the pages. She had been here the longest and was the toughest one for me to figure out. Roni I can understand. Burn marks from a hot iron framed her world. I’m not sure she ever felt the excitement of riding a bike for the first time without the training wheels, or experienced the joy that bubbles in your chest when someone said “I like your smile” or “You look pretty in that dress.”

  The same can’t be said for Carmen. She grew up in a house with a cook and a driver and had a story about every vacation destination mentioned in each donated issue. The way she cocked her head when she examined her slice of thin bologna or the green Jell-O served in a plastic cup told all of us this place was beneath her. Her shiny black hair, twisted tight in a French knot, framed sharp, high cheekbones and thin lips.

  “She looks like a praying mantis,” Jada had said once, when she thought Carmen was sleeping. “Damn, a gray hair or wrinkle is even too scared to live on that bitch.”

  “I’ll show you a praying mantis,” Carmen had screamed, rushing full-speed out of her cell, with her hand raised in the air. An officer intervened before Carmen had a chance to attack. She spent three days in isolation after that.

  Carmen tossed the magazine onto the pile and started browsing through National Geographic. “Venice is way overrated,” she said. “Stan wants to go, but I’d rather go someplace else.” Her eyes star
ed off and she didn’t continue.

  Stan was her fourth husband. They’d married seven years ago, after Carmen had been on the row for almost a decade. Ms. Liz conducted the simple ceremony; Carmen and Stan said their vows separated by glass. “Probably the safest husband she’s ever had,” one of the officers joked.

  Carmen was known to many as the Candy Bar Killer for adding various toxic concoctions to the baked goods of husbands one through three. We’d never talked about her convictions or her motivations, but one time while flipping through Taste of Home, Carmen said, “I made this crunchy layered caramel cake once for my second husband.”

  I looked for the November issue of Woman’s Day. I saved the calendars out of the back of each issue from the section called Month of Menus. Some housewives, I supposed, used this section and its handy shopping guide to plan meals for their families. I could picture them whipping up the Brown Sugar Meatloaf and mashed potatoes while their children fought over who licked the mixing spoons.

  I had a much simpler use for the Month of Menus. I used it to mark off my remaining days.

  SOPHIE

  “He’s hurting my ears,” Sophie cried, her glittery purple fingernails pressed hard against the sides of her head. “Make him stop crying!” Her mom tried to console William, jiggle him up and down, but nothing she did seemed to work. Baby William’s body didn’t look squishy anymore. He looked hard and unbending, like her Sabrina baby doll with the blue shiny eyes that didn’t move.

  “Uncle Thomas, she’s still saying funny things!” Vivianne yelled. The screech in the little girl’s voice startled Sophie.

  She opened her eyes but had no idea where she was. The dark room gave her few clues, although the sage-green chenille curtains looked familiar. She tried to lift her head and look around, but it felt heavy and sore.

  Sophie blinked her eyes and tried to focus. She could see Vivianne sitting crossed-legged at the end of her bed, drawing chubby hearts up and down each of her tiny thighs with a strawberry-scented marker.

  “Use your coloring book,” Thomas told her as he walked back into the bedroom.

  Thanksgiving. The Logan family. It was all coming back to her. Sophie sat up on the side of the bed and tried to stand, but the moving room caused her to almost tip over.

  “Slow down.” Thomas grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “What happened to me?”

  “You fainted,” Thomas said, his wide clinical eyes examining hers. Sophie pictured him putting on his lab coat, stethoscope around his neck, and asking her how long she’d been experiencing these strange symptoms. She knew as soon as he cupped her face he was not looking at his wife but for symmetry in the pupils of a normally healthy twenty-nine-year-old female.

  “Thought of a good sale made you that excited, huh?”

  Sophie grimaced and removed his scrutinizing hand from her chin. She reached around and felt the large egg on the back of her head.

  “Quite a bump.” He helped her lie back down. He tucked the comforter in all around her and sat down beside her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Uncoordinated,” Sophie joked. Her attempt at humor made her head throb even more.

  “You’ve been out for a while.” He brushed the hair away from her eyes and kissed her on the forehead. The concerned look in his eyes told her he was her husband once again. “I was getting worried.”

  “I don’t remember passing out.”

  “Caroline said you told her you didn’t feel well. Nauseated?”

  Sophie started to remember. Her mom and dad, their last Thanksgiving together, William in his high chair. Carter. The newspaper.

  The room and her stomach started to move again. She closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t throw up. Is my mom going to die?

  “Are you okay, Aunt Sophie?” Vivi mimicked Thomas and used her scented marker to look into Sophie’s eyes.

  For a moment, right after the nausea passed, Sophie considered answering that question honestly, blurting out to the both of them she couldn’t remember the last time she felt okay and her “excitement” had nothing to do with the after-Thanksgiving sales and that no matter how many navy suede pumps and Prada purses she owned, nothing would fill the empty cavern that had burrowed itself deep inside her the day her mother was dragged away from her in handcuffs. That her fainting had everything to do with his brother’s callous declaration of a man’s execution as if everything in his perfect world of right and wrong, cut and dry, fit neatly into a little box without emotion or backstory—devoid of any requirement for empathy. And the mother who’d bobby-pinned her hair away from her face and singsonged, “100 percent failure rate if you don’t try” might be next.

  She thought about asking Vivianne to leave the room and then grabbing Thomas and shaking him until he understood why he needed to make her feel better. Anything to help her get rid of the sharp pain that filled her every time she allowed herself to remember something good about her mother. The mom who sat beside her in bed just like Thomas was doing now, promising nothing bad would ever happen to her. Did she promise that to William, too?

  “Sophie, are you okay?”

  Sophie opened her eyes and looked at Thomas, searching for safety, gauging if now was the time or place to tell him the truth.

  “You were having a scary dream,” Vivianne declared before Sophie could speak. “Some baby wouldn’t stop crying.” She dug out a black marker that smelled like licorice from her plastic tote underneath the bed.

  “Who were you dreaming about? Do you remember?” Thomas rubbed Sophie’s forearm. “Who is William?”

  Sophie’s face felt cold and hot at the same time. What did I say? She replayed her dream over in her head. Her brother, that awful night, one of the last times her family was together in her home.

  “Max,” she said quickly, her competency at lying startling her. “I’m sure I said Max. It makes me sad when he has to spend the holidays alone.”

  Thomas seemed to believe this latest lie just like he believed all the ones before. Sophie licked her dry lips with her even drier tongue. Each white lie, no matter how justifiable, seemed to rip something from her, from them. Pretty soon, she feared, she’d have nothing left to shred.

  —

  SOPHIE FELT BETTER when she woke up the next morning, although she wasn’t sure she could make it through the rest of the weekend at the Logans’. The incessant questions—“How are you feeling, dear?” or “Are you sure I can’t make you something else to eat?”—were driving her insane. She knew Thomas’s family meant well, but her problems couldn’t be fixed with vegetable soup and a Tylenol. Her problems probably couldn’t be fixed at all.

  Time alone was what she really wanted. Time to think, to figure out what she needed to do. After much persuasion, Sophie finally convinced her mother-in-law and sister-in-law to go shopping without her. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I have two doctors plopped in the living room, watching football.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Margaret said. “Unless you come out dressed like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, they might forget you exist.”

  Sophie laughed and then pretended she was shaking some pom-poms. The Logan men did like their football. “You girls go on. I will not stand in the way of a good sale.” She raised her right hand as if she was a Girl Scout taking an oath. Caroline and Margaret nodded in agreement. Vivianne, in her hot-pink sequined sunglasses, camped out by the front door. “Let’s go, Mommy!” she squealed.

  “I’m going to read and then take a nap. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a dance move or two up my sleeve if I need to get someone’s attention.”

  Thomas yelled from the other room, “Looking forward to seeing that later.”

  After they finally left, Sophie told Thomas she was going to lie down. Instead, she locked herself in the bedroom, squatted down in the closet, and read the newspaper article Carter had been yelling a
bout.

  “Governor Makes Good on Promises—Refuses to Intervene with Court’s Rulings” headlined page three of the Charleston Daily News. “Governor Whitaker pledged swift justice for victims’ families and a speedy appeals process for those convicted,” the newspaper article stated. “‘We are failing to carry out the will of our justice system when we keep these inmates on death row and prolong the already lengthy appeals process. Let the courts do their job and let their death sentences be overturned or carried out.’”

  Sophie scanned through the rest of the article. The last sentence said the same thing Carter had so eloquently blurted out: “A woman convicted of murdering her infant son is the next in line to face execution.”

  Sophie wadded up the newspaper and checked her cell phone to see how many bars she had. She had to dial the number two times before she did it right, then her uncooperative hands barely held the phone steady enough for her to hear. When the call finally went through, a recorded message on the other end said: “You have reached the law offices of Benjamin Taylor and Associates. Our office is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. Please leave a brief message and we will return your call as soon as possible.”

  Sophie considered leaving a message but didn’t know exactly how to sum up her inquiries in a few short seconds. Is my mom next in line to be executed? A legal secretary with a sticky note might find that message somewhat disturbing.

  She ended the call and decided her message would best be delivered in person.

  —

  “I HAVE TO MEET WITH some prospective chefs for the fund-raiser,” she explained to Thomas after they returned home on Sunday. “I forgot my calendar and this completely slipped my mind. I should’ve told you earlier, but a group of them are participating in an exhibit close to Charlotte, so I can see most of my options in one place. It will save me a lot of time if I do it this way.”