by Jodi Picoult
I didn't answer. Instead I lay down on my bunk and stuffed more wadded-up toilet paper into my ears. And still, I could hear Calloway singing his white-pride anthems. Still, I could hear Shay when he told me a second time that he hadn't been talking about the bird.
That night when I woke up with the sweats, my heart drilling through the spongy base of my throat, Shay was talking to himself again. "They pull up the sheet," he said.
"Shay?"
I took a piece of metal I'd sawed off from the lip of the counter in the cell--it had taken months, carved with a string of elastic from my underwear and a dab of toothpaste with baking soda, my own diamond band saw. Ingeniously, the triangular result doubled as both a mirror and a shank. I slipped my hand beneath my door, angling the mirror so I could see into Shay's cell.
He was lying on his bunk with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his heart. His breathing had gone so shallow that his chest barely rose and fell. I could have sworn I smelled the worms in freshly turned soil. I heard the ping of stones as they struck a grave digger's shovel.
Shay was practicing.
I had done that myself. Maybe not quite in the same way, but I'd pictured my funeral. Who would come. Who would be well dressed, and who would be wearing something outrageously hideous. Who would cry. Who wouldn't.
God bless those COs; they'd moved Shay Bourne right next door to someone else serving a death sentence.
Two weeks after Shay arrived on I-tier, six officers came to his cell early one morning and told him to strip. "Bend over," I heard Whitaker say. "Spread 'em. Lift 'em. Cough."
"Where are we going?"
"Infirmary. Routine checkup."
I knew the drill: they would shake out his clothes to make sure there was no contraband hidden, then tell him to get dressed again. They'd march him out of I-tier and into the great beyond of the Secure Housing Unit.
An hour later, I woke up to the sound of Shay's cell door being opened again as he returned to his cell. "I'll pray for your soul," CO Whitaker said soberly before leaving the tier.
"So," I said, my voice too light and false to fool even myself. "Are you the picture of health?"
"They didn't take me to the infirmary. We went to the warden's office."
I sat on my bunk, looking up at the vent through which Shay's voice carried. "He finally agreed to meet with--"
"You know why they lie?" Shay interrupted. "Because they're afraid you'll go ballistic if they tell you the truth."
"About what?"
"It's all mind control. And we have no choice but to be obedient because what if this is the one time that really--"
"Shay," I said, "did you talk to the warden or not?"
"He talked to me. He told me my last appeal was denied by the Supreme Court," Shay said. "My execution date is May twenty-third."
I knew that before he was moved to this tier, Shay had been on death row for eleven years; it wasn't like he hadn't seen this coming. And yet, that date was only two and a half months away.
"I guess they don't want to come in and say hey, we're taking you to get your death warrant read out loud. I mean, it's easier to just pretend you're going to the infirmary, so that I wouldn't freak out. I bet they talked about how they'd come and get me. I bet they had a meeting."
I wondered what I would prefer, if it were my death that was being announced like a future train departing from a platform. Would I want the truth from an officer? Or would I consider it a kindness to be spared knowing the inevitable, even for those four minutes of transit?
I knew what the answer was for me.
I wondered why, considering that I'd only known Shay Bourne for two weeks, there was a lump in my throat at the thought of his execution. "I'm really sorry."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah."
"Po-lice," Joey called out, and a moment later, CO Smythe walked in, followed by CO Whitaker. He helped Whitaker transport Crash to the shower cell--the investigation into our bacchanal tap water had yielded nothing conclusive, apparently, except some mold in the pipes, and we were now allowed personal hygiene hours again. But afterward, instead of leaving I-tier, Smythe doubled back down the catwalk to stand in front of Shay's cell.
"Listen," Smythe said. "Last week, you said something to me."
"Did I?"
"You told me to look inside." He hesitated. "My daughter's been sick. Really sick. Yesterday, the doctors told my wife and me to say good-bye. It made me want to explode. So I grabbed this stuffed bear in her crib, one we'd brought from home to make going to the hospital easier for her--and I ripped it wide open. It was filled with peanut shells, and we never thought to look there." Smythe shook his head. "My baby's not dying; she was never even sick. She's just allergic," he said. "How did you know?"
"I didn't--"
"It doesn't matter." Smythe dug in his pocket for a small square of tinfoil, unwrapping it to reveal a thick brownie. "I brought this in from home. My wife, she makes them. She wanted you to have it."
"John, you can't give him contraband," Whitaker said, glancing over his shoulder at the control booth.
"It's not contraband. It's just me ... sharing a little bit of my lunch."
My mouth started to water. Brownies were not on our canteen forms. The closest we came was chocolate cake, offered once a year as part of a Christmas package that also included a stocking full of candy and two oranges.
Smythe passed the brownie through the trap in the cell door. He met Shay's gaze and nodded, then left the tier with CO Whitaker.
"Hey, Death Row," Calloway said, "I'll give you three cigarettes for half of that."
"I'll trade you a whole pack of coffee," Joey countered.
"He ain't going to waste it on you," Calloway said. "I'll give you coffee and four cigarettes."
Texas and Pogie joined in. They would trade Shay a CD player. A Playboy magazine. A roll of tape.
"A teener," Calloway announced. "Final offer."
The Brotherhood made a killing on running the methamphetamine trade at the New Hampshire state prison; for Calloway to solicit his own personal stash, he must have truly wanted that chocolate.
As far as I knew, Shay hadn't even had a cup of coffee since coming to I-tier. I had no idea if he smoked or got high. "No," Shay said. "No to all of you."
A few minutes passed.
"For God's sake, I can still smell it," Calloway said.
Let me tell you, I am not exaggerating when I say that we were forced to inhale that scent--that glorious scent--for hours. At three in the morning, when I woke up as per my usual insomnia, the scent of chocolate was so strong that the brownie might as well have been sitting in my cell instead of Shay's. "Why don't you just eat the damn thing," I murmured.
"Because," Shay replied, as wide awake as I, "then there wouldn't be anything to look forward to."
Maggie
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There were many reasons I loved Oliver, but first and foremost was that my mother couldn't stand him. He's a mess, she said every time she came to visit. He's destructive. Maggie, she said, if you got rid of him, you could find Someone.
Someone was a doctor, like the anesthesiologist from Dartmouth-Hitchcock they'd set me up with once, who asked me if I thought laws against downloading child porn were an infringement on civil rights. Or the son of the cantor, who actually had been in a monogamous gay relationship for five years but hadn't told his parents yet. Someone was the younger partner in the accounting firm that did my father's taxes, who asked me on our first and only date if I'd always been a big girl.
On the other hand, Oliver knew just what I needed, and when I needed it. Which is why, the minute I stepped on the scale that morning, he hopped out from underneath the bed, where he was diligently severing the cord of my alarm clock with his teeth, and settled himself squarely on top of my feet so that I couldn't see the digital readout.
"Nicely done," I said, stepping off, trying not to notice the numbers that flashed red before they disappear
ed. Surely the reason there was a seven in there was because Oliver had been on the scale, too. Besides, if I were going to be writing a formal complaint about any of this, I'd have said that (a) size fourteen isn't really all that big, (b) a size fourteen here was a size sixteen in London, so in a way I was thinner than I'd be if I had been born British, and (c) weight didn't really matter, as long as you were healthy.
All right, so maybe I didn't exercise all that much either. But I would, one day, or so I told my mother the fitness queen, as soon as all the people on whose behalf I worked tirelessly were absolutely, unequivocally rescued. I told her (and anyone else who'd listen) that the whole reason the ACLU existed was to help people take a stand. Unfortunately, the only stands my mother recognized were pigeon pose, warrior two, and all the other staples of yoga.
I pulled on my jeans, the ones that I admittedly didn't wash very often because the dryer shrank them just enough that I had to suffer half a day before the denim stretched to the point of comfort again. I picked a sweater that didn't show my bra roll and then turned to Oliver. "What do you think?"
He lowered his left ear, which translated to, "Why do you even care, since you're taking it all off to put on a spa robe?"
As usual, he was right. It's a little hard to hide your flaws when you're wearing, well, nothing.
He followed me into the kitchen, where I poured us both bowls of rabbit food (his literal, mine Special K). Then he hopped off to the litter box beside his cage, where he'd spend the day sleeping.
I'd named my rabbit after Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the famous Supreme Court Justice known as the Great Dissenter. He once said, "Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being tripped over." So did rabbits. And my clients, for that matter.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," I warned Oliver. "That includes chewing the legs of the kitchen stools."
I grabbed my keys and headed out to my Prius. I had used nearly all my savings last year on the hybrid--to be honest, I didn't understand why car manufacturers charged a premium if you were a buyer with a modicum of social conscience. It didn't have all-wheel drive, which was a real pain in the neck during a New Hampshire winter, but I figured that saving the ozone layer was worth sliding off the road occasionally.
My parents had moved to Lynley--a town twenty-six miles east of Concord--seven years ago when my father took over as rabbi at Temple Beth Or. The catch was that there was no Temple Beth Or: his reform congregation held Friday night services in the cafeteria of the middle school, because the original temple had burned to the ground. The expectation had been to raise funds for a new temple, but my father had overestimated the size of his rural New Hampshire congregation, and although he assured me that they were closing in on buying land somewhere, I didn't see it happening anytime soon. By now, anyway, his congregation had grown used to readings from the Torah that were routinely punctuated by the cheers of the crowd at the basketball game in the gymnasium down the hall.
The biggest single annual contributor to my father's temple fund was the ChutZpah, a wellness retreat for the mind, body, and soul in the heart of Lynley that was run by my mother. Although her clientele was nondenominational, she'd garnered a word-of-mouth reputation among temple sisterhoods, and patrons came from as far away as New York and Connecticut and even Maryland to relax and rejuvenate. My mother used salt from the Dead Sea for her scrubs. Her spa cuisine was kosher. She'd been written up in Boston magazine, the New York Times, and Luxury SpaFinder.
The first Saturday of every month, I drove to the spa for a free massage or facial or pedicure. The catch was that afterward, I had to suffer through lunch with my mother. We had it down to a routine. By the time we were served our passion fruit iced tea, we'd already covered "Why Don't You Call." The salad course was "I'm Going to Be Dead Before You Make Me a Grandmother." The entree--fittingly--involved my weight. Needless to say, we never got around to dessert.
The ChutZpah was white. Not just white, but scary, I'm-afraid-to-breathe white: white carpets, white tiles, white robes, white slippers. I have no idea how my mother kept the place so clean, given that when I was growing up, the house was always comfortably cluttered.
My father says there's a God, although for me the jury is still out on that one. Which isn't to say that I didn't appreciate a miracle as much as the next person--such as when I went up to the front desk and the receptionist told me my mother was going to have to miss our lunch because of a last-minute meeting with a wholesale orchid salesman. "But she said you should still have your treatment," the receptionist said. "DeeDee's going to be your aesthetician, and you've got locker number two twenty."
I took the robe and slippers she handed me. Locker 220 was in a bank with fifty others, and several toned middle-aged women were stripping out of their yoga clothes. I breezed into another section of lockers, one that was blissfully empty, and changed into my robe. If someone complained because I was using locker 664 instead, I didn't think my mother would disown me. I punched in my key code--2358, for ACLU--took a bracing breath, and tried not to glance in the mirror as I walked by.
There wasn't very much that I liked about the outside of me. I had curves, but to me, they were in all the wrong places. My hair was an explosion of dark curls, which could have been sexy if I didn't have to work so hard to keep them frizz-free. I'd read that stylists on the Oprah show would straighten the hair of guests with hair like mine, because curls added ten pounds to the camera--which meant that even my hair made objects like me look bigger than they appeared. My eyes were okay--they were mud-colored on an average day and green if I felt like embellishing--but most of all, they showed the part of me I was proud of: my intelligence. I might never be a cover girl, but I was a girl who could cover it all.
The problem was, you never heard anyone say, "Wow, check out the brain on that babe."
My father had always made me feel special, but I couldn't even look at my mother without wondering why I hadn't inherited her tiny waist and sleek hair. As a kid I had only wanted to be just like her; as an adult, I'd stopped trying.
Sighing, I entered the whirlpool area: a white oasis surrounded by white wicker benches where primarily white women waited for their white-coated therapists to call their name.
DeeDee appeared in her immaculate jacket, smiling. "You must be Maggie," she said. "You look just like your mother described you."
I wasn't about to take that bait. "Nice to meet you." I never quite figured out the protocol for this part of the experience--you said hello and then disrobed immediately so that a total stranger could lay their hands on you ... and you paid for this privilege. Was it just me, or was there a great deal that spa treatments had in common with prostitution?
"You looking forward to your Song of Solomon Wrap?"
"I'd rather be getting a root canal."
DeeDee grinned. "Your mom told me you'd say something like that, too."
If you haven't had a body wrap, it's a singular experience. You're lying on a cushy table covered by a giant piece of Saran Wrap and you're naked. Totally, completely naked. Sure, the aesthetician tosses a washcloth the size of a gauze square over your privates when she's scrubbing you down, and she's got a poker face that never belies whether she's calculating your body mass index under her palms--but still, you're painfully aware of your physique, if only because someone's experiencing it first-hand with you.
I forced myself to close my eyes and remember that being washed beneath a Vichy shower by someone else was supposed to make me feel like a queen and not a hospitalized invalid.
"So, DeeDee," I said. "How long have you been doing this?"
She unrolled a towel and held it like a screen as I rolled onto my back. "I've been working at spas for six years, but I just got hired on here."
"You must be good," I said. "My mother doesn't sweat amateurs."
She shrugged. "I like meeting new people."
I like meeting new people, too, but when they're fully clothed.
"What do yo
u do for work?" DeeDee asked.
"My mother didn't tell you?"
"No ... she just said--" Suddenly she broke off, silent.
"She said what."
"She, um, told me to treat you to an extra helping of seaweed scrub."
"You mean she told you I'd need twice as much."
"She didn't--"
"Did she use the word zaftig?" I asked. When DeeDee didn't answer--wisely--I blinked up at the hazy light in the ceiling, listened to Yanni's canned piano for a few beats, and then sighed. "I'm an ACLU lawyer."
"For real?" DeeDee's hands stilled on my feet. "Do you ever take on cases, like, for free?"
"That's all I do."
"Then you must know about the guy on death row ... Shay Bourne? I've been writing to him for ten years, ever since I was in eighth grade and I started as part of an assignment for my social studies class. His last appeal just got rejected by the Supreme Court."
"I know," I said. "I've filed briefs on his behalf."
DeeDee's eyes widened. "So you're his lawyer?"
"Well ... no." I hadn't even been living in New Hampshire when Bourne was convicted, but it was the job of the ACLU to file amicus briefs for death row prisoners. Amicus was Latin for friend of the court; when you had a position on a particular case but weren't directly a party involved in it, the court would let you legally spell out your feelings if it might be beneficial to the decision-making process. My amicus briefs illustrated how hideous the death penalty was; defined it as cruel and unusual punishment, as unconstitutional. I'm quite sure the judge looked at my hard work and promptly tossed it aside.
"Can't you do something else to help him?" DeeDee asked.
The truth was, if Bourne's last appeal had been rejected by the Supreme Court, there wasn't much any lawyer could do to save him now.
"Tell you what," I promised. "I'll look into it."
DeeDee smiled and covered me with heated blankets until I was trussed tight as a burrito. Then she sat down behind me and wove her fingers into my hair. As she massaged my scalp, my eyes drifted shut.
"They say it's painless," DeeDee murmured. "Lethal injection."
They: the establishment, the lawmakers, the ones assuaging their guilt over their own actions with rhetoric. "That's because no one ever comes back to tell them otherwise," I said. I thought of Shay Bourne being given the news of his own impending death. I thought of lying on a table like this one, being put to sleep.