“You’re welcome,” David begins. He sits up a little straighter in his chair, which causes a ripple effect throughout the circle, most of us correcting our posture too, like a choreographed dance, the mass movement of a hive mind. “So, when I think about acceptance, I think about all the stuff my mother has told me over the last two years, how she still loves me and how my father still loves me. She accepts the fact that I’ll always love my dad, even though he hurt us.” David pauses, his eyes shining through glassy tears that never spill out. They just remain, suspended like a liquid shield. “Sorry,” David says, sniffling.
Greg tilts his head to one side, his face more serious than before. “It’s okay. Take your time, David.”
“And I also think about how my mother accepts me as a man separate from my father,” David continues. “I mean, I’m sure she hates that I look almost exactly like him.” David laughs gently, and the circle laughs, a small puff of air that lightens us. “I guess that’s all. He’s still my father, and I still love him, in spite of everything. And my mom understands.”
Greg doesn’t miss a beat. “Amazing, David. Thank you so much for your words. That’s exactly why we’re here, to share our experiences and to know that our words can help others. Sometimes it will help in big, monumental ways.” Greg stretches his arms out as far as he can, attempting to measure the biggest breakthrough. “Sometimes it will help in smaller ways.” He collapses the space between his hands so that his palms are almost touching. He squints one eye like he’s looking through a microscope to see the tiniest of breakthroughs, epiphanies in miniature.
David looks younger to me now, his features softened, his hands small and folded on his lap. My vision blurs out of focus for a moment, and when I can see clearly again, there’s someone standing right behind David. Is it his father?
They do look alike—they have the same bushy eyebrows, the same ears that stick out slightly, the same slanted nose. David’s father puts his hands on David’s shoulders, and then slides them around his throat. He starts to squeeze, crushing David’s windpipe. David tries to pry his father’s hands away, but his father is too strong. David opens his mouth but makes no sound. His face turns red; his eyes become bloodshot. His father’s body tenses as he squeezes tighter and tighter, as he stops David’s breath.
Do you still love me now, David? Do you still love me now?
I had more control over these visions when I was younger, could freeze the frame before it went too far. Now it’s harder to make them stop. Closing my eyes doesn’t help, for what I conjure in the darkness is worse than the visions that materialize before me, those ghosts only I can see. So I just have to watch. Then remind myself that it’s not real.
I look down at my copy of the ground rules. We have the right to ask questions and the right to refuse to answer. We try to accept people just as they are. Our goal is not to change people. I fold the paper in half, then in fourths, then eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths. With each fold the paper becomes thicker, less defined, until it can no longer be folded anymore. When I finally open it up, it looks like failed origami—all those lines and creases come undone.
I look up again, and David’s father is gone. There are no handprints around David’s neck. His eyes are clear and blue. David wipes a tear from his cheek as Greg calls on the next person to share.
Chapter Five
The temperature is in the mid-seventies today, our version of winter. While the tourists from the North may not notice it, those of us who live here year-round can sense the change in the air. The humidity lessens, and the sun burns a few shades cooler. The sky is still clear and wide but a deeper, darker blue. Some prefer the Atlantic coast of Florida, but I like it here on the gulf side. I like my water a little murky, my waves a bit smaller, my own salty, makeshift ocean. I love to feel the warm gulf breeze on my arms and legs, love to hear the cries of seagulls in the air—those relentless high-pitched calls, keeee-oh, keee-oh, keee-oh.
I have a ritual on Saturdays. I like to wake up early, usually before my mother and Shea even begin to stir, and I walk down Gulf Way, as far south as I can go, down to the jetty. I don’t take anything with me—not even my phone. If my mother wants to find me when she wakes up, she knows where I am. It’s just a ten-minute walk from our apartment to my Saturday spot, a plot of sand next to the rock formation that juts out from the beach. The beach is rather quiet on Saturday mornings, mostly locals like me. Pass-a-Grille has a few small hotels in the historic district, but the pace is slower here, the area not as touristy as others on the Gulf Coast. Today, there are two beach joggers, a man and a woman in black spandex shorts. There is a middle-aged woman walking her gray poodle, and there are three twenty-something-looking women who are lounging under a blue-and-white-striped umbrella they’ve speared into the sand. Their sunglasses are mirrored, and I catch my own reflection in them for just a second as I walk by them, smelling coconut and strawberry as I pass.
Since it’s morning, the tide is still low, and the sand is wet and dense. I sit down near the edge of water, that line where two elements meet. The wind hits my skin, and the water licks the jetty rocks. The birds call out to each other, and there’s all this movement out here, all this momentum I can feel, although I can’t quite put my finger on where it comes from. All I know is that I feel like a small part of something bigger than me when I’m out here. I’m the whole world when I’m out here.
My ritual continues as I sit and think and look straight ahead, examining the colors of the horizon, allowing my eyes to drift out of focus. I imagine what’s happening on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico right at this moment. If I could swim 926 miles, cut a straight line through the water with my body, I’d reach Corpus Christi, Texas, another city on another beach, a place with a name that means body of Christ. I imagine someone sitting at the gulf’s edge in Corpus Christi looking out into the vast nothingness of sky before them, not realizing that they are looking right at me, that we are looking at each other.
Something that Greg said at the end of group is sticking in my head, his voice repeating and repeating, no matter how hard I try to shake it from my brain. “Own your feelings. They belong to you, and only you.” I’ve always felt the opposite, walking through life with a shield around me, a guard against feelings, especially about my father. In my dreams, I cast off all my feelings about him, shed them like an insect shedding its exoskeleton, a brittle replica that appears full but is actually hollow, crunching underfoot as you pass.
When you begin your life as the only child of a single mother, it can be difficult to distinguish between what is yours and what is hers. Our feelings are connected somehow, each one a small fishhook in a bowl full of fishhooks. Reach for one and you are bound to pull many, because they catch onto each other without even trying. Maybe it’s inevitable that our feelings are all tangled up in each other, my mother and I having spent so much time together, the two of us against the world. My mother is an only child like me. Her father is dead, and she doesn’t speak to her mother, hasn’t since I was a toddler.
I shadowed my mother as a little girl, following her around the house most days when I was young. I was always just a few paces behind her, tailing her like a secret agent. I promise my intentions were purely observational. I simply wanted to commit to memory the changing inflections of my mother’s voice, wanted to study her facial expressions, to find and catalog all the ways we are different and alike.
But my mother has grown accustomed to my behavior, however unsettling it may have been at first. Now it’s taken on an endearing quality, and she’ll call me Evelyn, the Spy, and we’ll laugh about my voyeuristic tendencies. I can’t help it. I just like to know what everyone else is up to. If I can peek through someone’s window, or catch a glimpse of a family watching TV, then somehow it proves that I’m not alone. If I can read someone’s blog or mine their Twitter feed for personal revelations, it’s like reading someone’s diary—so forbidden, but so human at the same time.
The first difference I remember recording is that my mother isn’t afraid of insects and I have a mortal fear of anything with antennae or a segmented body or too many legs. To me, insects are the most terrifying creatures that exist, especially palmetto bugs, the large flying roaches that are everywhere down here in Florida.
I remember stumbling into the bathroom half asleep one night, only to find a palmetto bug that I later described as the size of a lobster, trying to get out of the bathtub, its legs so thin, so fine, I wondered how they could even hold up its body. I shrieked and ran into my mother’s bedroom to tell her about the light tapping sound of the creature’s legs on the blue porcelain.
She woke quickly, as mothers tend to do, always on the lookout for a child’s cry for help. She went into the bathroom, scooped the bug into her palm, and took it outside, releasing it back into the wild. I followed her—into the bathroom, down the hallway, out the sliding glass door—until the palmetto bug was in the grass where it belonged, its black body looking shiny and wet in the moonlight. I pretended that the bug would never be able to find its way back to us. I pretended that it couldn’t flatten itself, making its body thin enough to sneak back inside, through the tiniest crack or fissure.
I can do that—pretend that I don’t see things, turn my energy down and turn my powers of perception off as I choose. If I pretend long enough and hard enough, sometimes things feel like they’ve disappeared and then they just don’t matter anymore. In my elementary school days, I would sit at a Formica desk with my feet flat on the floor and pretend to be listening. I would even throw in a head nod or two, pretend I was there in the room with its faint smell of photocopy ink, with the other children, who mostly had geographic names like Dakota and Brooklyn. But the trick was, I wasn’t really there at all.
After a few hours at the jetty, after I’m sure I’ve stared long enough into the colors of the sky, I stand up and find that my body has hardly made an impression in the dense sand. There’s barely any proof I was here. I take Pass-a-Grille Way home, past Merry Pier, where a neon sign advertises sunset cruises for $25. I pass the historic Sea Horse Restaurant, serving breakfast and lunch and closed on Tuesdays. Outside, there’s a small courtyard area where some locals wait on wooden benches that are painted dark green to match the stripes of the canvas awnings above the windows.
I reach our building, a concrete square with two units, one upstairs and one down. A woman lives alone upstairs, and sometimes I worry for her. In 1984, a woman was murdered in nearby Redington Shores, one of the few homicides recorded on the south Pinellas beaches. Her name was Kate Harvey, and although many neighbors in adjacent apartments heard her screams in the night, no one called the police. She was found dead days later, her throat cut, her body tortured. A man who lived across the street from her was eventually convicted of her murder. He’d broken into her apartment, waiting for her in the dark. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but cancer killed him after he’d served three.
I imagine police tape stretched across her door, bright yellow with black letters, an attempt to preserve the scene. Inside, they collect hairs and fibers, photograph the patterns of blood splatter on her bedroom wall. I conjure her body splayed across her bed, dark red soaking the bedspread, the sheets, all the way down to the mattress.
I walk through our front door and into the kitchen, and find my mother is at the table, shucking corn for lunch. Shea is standing at the sink, filling a large silver pot with water. My mother tears outer layers from the ears of sweet corn, depositing the bright green husks into a paper bag nestled between her legs. She takes extra care to remove the corn silk, which is fine as hair. Radiohead is playing from the portable speaker, their album The Bends, one of Shea’s favorites from her high school days.
Shea glides from sink to refrigerator to stove like a dancer, her every movement appearing choreographed, a routine that springs from her body on its own. My father had his own choreography inside the jewelry store, his movements a careful sequence of steps. He sidestepped toward a customer and shot her point-blank in the back. He glided around the room and killed everyone in the store but his wife. He led her to his car, holding the gun against her ribs, holding her body close to him, his breath against her neck. In her ear, he whispered, Don’t you dare make a sound or you’re dead.
Shea sprinkles salt into the boiling water, rolls a lemon on the cutting board, and then slices it into wedges with a sharp knife. It’s such a simple pleasure—the mortal pleasure of food, the taste and texture and aroma of it all. Perhaps that’s why even the condemned are permitted a special request for their final meal, one last act of kindness before the final act of cruelty. I looked it up online once, wanting to know if the last meal was real or just an urban legend like Bloody Mary or Walt Disney’s frozen head. But it’s true.
I found that there are rituals and regulations for all the events leading up to execution. On the day of execution, the final meal will be served at approximately 4:00 p.m. The inmate may request a special meal, and accommodations will be made within reason. There’s the primal joy of eating, the satisfaction of preferred taste and texture. Prior to 6:00 p.m., the inmate may shower and dress in clean clothes. There’s also the primal joy of being clean, of water purifying the body, the symbolism of washing away sin.
The warden and certain individuals designated as operations personnel will assemble at approximately 5:55 p.m. in the lounge adjacent to the visiting room, along with witnesses to the execution. All necessary arrangements to carry out the execution shall be completed at the predetermined time. There are instructions to follow, an intricate plan in place. So many people and systems working to end one single life. So many people with access to my father’s file.
Shortly after 6:00 p.m., the door will be unlocked, and the inmate will be removed from the holding cell. The inmate will be taken from the cell area into the execution chamber and secured to a gurney. A medically trained individual (not to be identified) shall insert an intravenous catheter into the condemned person’s arm, and a saline solution will begin to flow. At a predetermined time, the witnesses shall be escorted into the execution chamber.
Witnesses shall include the media: one Florida bureau representative designated by the Associated Press, one Florida Bureau representative designated by the United Press International, and one representative each from established print and broadcast media, provided those designated agree to meet with all media representatives present immediately after the execution. People love a good revenge story so the public will want to hear the details. And even though it’s a secondhand account, their pulses will still flutter. They will still imagine my father’s body sputtering and jolting as he dies under the glare of fluorescent light in a small room built like a glass theater.
No recording devices, audio or video, shall be permitted in the execution chamber. Reporters from the community where the crime was committed have first choice to witness the execution. Policy allows for up to five preapproved witnesses requested by the condemned. Policy allows for up to five immediate family members or close friends of the victim(s) to attend. Who will be there for my father? For his dead wife? Who will be there for the others, a dozen victims in all? Will the family members want to see him die? Or will it be enough for them to know that it happened, to see the death certificate in black and white?
Once the witnesses are in place, the warden shall allow the condemned person to make a last statement. There is a microphone secured above the gurney for this purpose, which will only be turned on briefly for the last words. Upon completion of the statement, if any, the warden shall signal for the execution to proceed. At this time, a designated individual shall induce, by syringe, substances necessary to cause death. This individual shall be visually separated from the execution chamber by a wall and a locked door and shall also not be identified.
First, an anesthetic is given to induce unconsciousness. Next, a muscle relaxant flows, causing paralysis and respiratory arrest. Final
ly a dose of sodium chloride is delivered, stopping the heart.
After the inmate is pronounced dead, the body shall be immediately removed from the execution chamber. The inmate may request their body be donated to the state anatomical board for medical research purposes.
The director of the Florida Department of Corrections shall return the death warrant and certificate to the clerk of the court with a statement showing what disposition was made of the body of the convict.
My father’s death will be documented and processed, his body removed according to a predetermined plan. Afterward, someone will disinfect the room. Someone will wipe away what’s left of my father—the last molecules of him, the last traces of his warm breath still clinging to the chamber walls. Someone will clean the window glass until it’s so clear you’ll believe you can walk right through it.
Now Shea is putting a bright orange crab into the silver pot. I pretend not to see how she handles it so gently, how she lowers the body down carefully, like a girl putting her favorite baby doll to bed. I pretend the crab isn’t struggling inside the pot, that it isn’t being boiled alive, drowned in the bubbling waves, in salted water that spills from the pot and splashes down, making a hissing sound on the electric burner that is coiled like a red-hot snake. And when I finally take a bite of the sweet white meat on my plate, I’ll pretend that I’m eating air, that I’m eating nothing at all.
Chapter Six
Greg has just asked a question, and we’re all sitting in the circle in silence, looking at our shoes as if they’ll save us from having to answer him, as if shoelaces can come up with something brilliant to say. “Open your hearts, open your minds,” Greg says. “We are all here to listen.” His voice is a soft pulse, the bass of a faint heartbeat, a patient on the table about to flatline. “Someone get us started. Break the ice,” he says.
Girl at the Edge Page 4