Life Penalty

by Joy Fielding

  “Better not forget the bullets,” Gail reminded him. Irv secured the box, located the proper bullets, and put the whole package in a plastic bag before handing it over.

  “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” he smiled.

  THIRTY-SIX

  On impulse, Gail stopped at a bakery on the way home and purchased a small birthday cake. “‘Happy Birthday’ will be fine,” Gail told the saleslady when she asked if there was a name Gail wanted added. The cake was round and covered with white icing and pink flowers. Gail also bought a small box of birthday candles. She drove back to her parents’ condominium with the cake and the gun sitting in the seat beside her.

  When she got inside the apartment, she set the cake on the kitchen table and unwrapped the box containing the gun. She laid it on the table beside the cake and then changed into her bathing suit and went for a walk on the beach.

  It seemed there were fewer people out today, although the sky was as relentlessly blue as ever. There was only a handful of people out by the pool. The three homosexuals had departed over the weekend. The season had another month or so to run, then most of the tourists would disappear, leaving behind the locals. Half the stores and a good number of the restaurants would close their doors until next October. The houses would be boarded up. Hurricane shutters would be firmly in place. Like a cottage closed for the winter, Palm Beach would effectively shut itself up for the summer.

  Gail walked along the wide expanse of beach. The sand was hard and good for walking. She had always loved this stretch of beach. Even at its most crowded, its numbers never approximated the hordes of people who flocked to Fort Lauderdale or Miami. Gail moved her eyes from the ocean to the line of low white buildings. The newer condominiums displayed interesting curves and angles, with a maximum exposure to the ocean view, and as much window frontage as the rules allowed. Balcony railings curved around comers; people sat sunning themselves on their private deck chairs, a bottle of expensive wine at their feet. Could life be more perfect than this? they seemed to ask.

  Gail continued walking until she reached the bridge at Boynton Beach, marching past the men fishing off its sides, to its tip. The ocean was calm, its waves scarcely more than ripples. Gail watched it, thinking of how calm it had always made her feel, and realized that even now, it was having that effect. Nothing was that important, it said to her. Life was never meant to be taken this seriously.

  Gail turned around abruptly and headed back for the apartment. When she reached the pool, she glanced up at the clock and calculated she had been gone over two hours. Her legs were sore and she’d gotten more sun. Oh well, she thought, jumping into the pool to cool off, she would look glorious in death. She looked so well, she could hear them mutter as they filed past her open coffin. No, she thought, coming up for air, her coffin would undoubtedly be closed. Most people would not like to witness a head half blown away by a bullet, no matter how deep the tan on the remaining flesh.

  She laughed out loud, feeling silly. A woman, she noticed, was making motions at her from the side of the pool. Gail swam toward her. “Yes?” she asked, shaking her head to get the water out of her ears.

  “I said you’re supposed to take a shower before entering the pool,” the woman repeated testily, pointing at the nearby sign. “It says so right in the rules.”

  Gail made herself a nice salad for dinner. There were some shrimps that Jack had bought before he left, and Gail wondered if they were still good. She smelled them, couldn’t be sure, and added them to the salad. Then she removed a bottle of her favorite white wine, Verdicchio, from the fridge. She uncorked it and poured herself a tall glass. Then she sat down with the salad, the wine, the birthday cake and the gun in front of her.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  She ate her salad. When she was finished, she took the plate to the sink and washed it. She didn’t want to leave any dirty dishes. The apartment would be spotless for whoever found her. Who would find her? she wondered, finishing off her glass of wine and pouring herself another. Most likely the superintendent. Someone would report they hadn’t seen her. Perhaps someone would phone and become concerned when no one answered. She hoped it wouldn’t be her parents. No, that was unlikely. Someone would find her before her parents were scheduled to return. They would search through the rooms and ultimately find her in the bathroom, in the shower. That way there would be the least amount of mess. She didn’t want to leave a mess. Her suicide was probably against the rules as it was.

  She sat down with her second glass of wine and contemplated leaving a note. What would she say? Goodbye; cruel world? I took you too seriously. I leave you to your monsters. I don’t want to live in a world where children die before their seventh birthday. She looked toward the cake.

  There was no need for a note. Everyone would know her reasons. They would remark, correctly, that she just hadn’t been the same since Cindy’s death. Laura would blame herself for her ill-conceived remarks; Nancy would say that she had tried to make herself available, but that Gail never phoned. She would not attend the funeral, although she would doubtless send a huge arrangement of flowers. Laura would send food. Her parents would be numbed, but perhaps her death would propel them back toward each other.

  And what of Jennifer? She would be devastated by her mother’s suicide, would bear the scars of it all her life. She would blame herself, just as Gail had blamed herself after Cindy’s death. If only she hadn’t done this, if only she had done that. Guilt—the most useless of all human emotions, and the most pervasive. Gail prayed that Mark and Julie would be able to help Jennifer, convince her that what her mother had done was beyond anyone’s control. They had all tried so hard to help her.

  And Jack. How would he feel? What would this do to him? Like Jennifer, he would blame himself. If he hadn’t left her, this never would have happened. If he’d stayed and been the friend he always claimed to be.

  It wasn’t true, and Gail hoped he would recognize that fact in time. He’d never meant to leave her she knew that. He hoped only that this last desperate measure would pull her to her senses, force her to confront what she was doing to everyone, but mostly to herself.

  She pictured Jack sitting on their bed in Mrs. Mayhew’s house in Cape Cod. What had he said? Something about Cindy’s killer. Don’t let him take everything. Words to that effect.

  She was going around in circles, she thought, rubbing her forehead and pouring herself another drink. She was also getting drunk, she realized, admonishing herself to be careful. When she fired the damn gun into her brain, she didn’t want to miss and shoot the shower curtain instead.

  Gail stumbled to the counter and located the small box of birthday candles. She pulled out eight—one for each year and one for good luck. She arranged them around the circumference of the cake, placing the one for good luck right in the center, and then rummaged through the drawers looking for a match. She found a matchbox from a place called the Banana Boat and managed to light one of the candles before the match burned down to her fingers. It took one match per candle to finally get them all lit. “Make a wish,” she said to herself and then complied. “I wish I was dead,” she said.

  Mommy, when we die, can we die together? Can we die holding hands? Do you promise?

  She blew out all the candles, struggling with the one for good luck.

  She cut herself a small piece of cake, ate it quickly and washed it down with the last of the wine. Then she sat staring at the small black gun, so much heavier than it looked, so much deadlier than it seemed.

  She pulled it toward her and lifted it to her head.

  Through the temple or through her mouth? It was a tricky question and an important one. If she put the gun in her mouth, there was the chance that the bullet would be misdirected and would lodge somewhere inside her skull, causing blindness but not death, putting her into a coma but not into her grave. That wasn’t good enough. She lifted the gun to her temple.

  Then she started to laugh, throwing he
r head back and dropping the gun to the table. “Bullets,” she said aloud. “It helps to have bullets.” She stumbled to the kitchen counter and retrieved the bag with the bullets. Her head was very woozy; the room was barely standing still. Her hand shaking, she gripped the gun and raised it in front of her eyes, dropping a small, deadly bullet into each of the nine cylinders, the way Irv had showed her. “Ready, aim, fire,” she said, lifting the gun back up to her head.

  She had to go to the bathroom.

  Can’t you wait? she asked her stomach silently, and then decided that she couldn’t, remembering as she tried to stand up that she had intended to do it in the bathroom anyway.

  She sank down onto the toilet, the gun resting against its white porcelain base. Her head was throbbing. She would be glad to miss this hangover.

  The phone was ringing. At first, she thought maybe the noise was coming from inside her head but after four rings, she knew someone else was responsible. She debated for an instant, which felt like much longer, whether or not to bother with it, then decided she might as well. Her final words. She pushed herself off the toilet seat and stumbled toward the phone in the bedroom.

  “Hello,” she murmured into the phone, balancing on the side of the bed.

  “Gail?”

  It was Jack. She tried to clear her throat, almost gagged on the effort and concentrated very hard on keeping her eyes open.

  “Hello, Jack,” she managed, wishing she weren’t so drunk.

  “Is everything all right? You sound funny. Did I wake you up?”

  “I’m drunk,” she told him.

  There was silence. “Jesus Christ,” he swore softly, upset, not angry. “Are you by yourself?”

  “As far as I know,” Gail answered, straining to make her words coherent. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine here. I spoke to Jennifer. She’s okay.”

  “Good.”

  “Gail, I want you to come home.”

  “No.” She shook her head and watched the room spin.

  “Then I’ll come back and get you.”

  “No, Jack, please.”

  “I don’t think you should be alone. It was such a stupid thing for me to do. I guess I thought it would slap some sense into you, but …”

  “I know. Please don’t feel guilty.”

  “I can’t hear you, Gail,” he said. “You’re slurring your words.”

  Gail was surprised. She had thought she was managing rather well. “Please don’t feel guilty,” she repeated clearly.

  “I’ll fly down tomorrow,” he told her.

  “No, please don’t, Jack. There’s no need. It’s almost over.”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “I don’t want you to come,” Gail said loudly.

  “Jack …”

  “What?” he asked quickly.

  “I want,” she began, then swallowed hard. Her throat was very dry. She needed a glass of water. “I want you to get a divorce,” she said, knowing that as a widower a divorce would be somewhat redundant, but wanting to spare him as much guilt as possible.

  “Gail, you’re drunk. This isn’t the time …”

  “I want you to divorce me.”

  “I love you, Gail.”

  Gail lost her already shaky grip on the phone. “I love you too,” she muttered, her words just missing the receiver.

  “What? What did you say? I couldn’t make it out.”

  “I have to hang up now, Jack.”

  “Gail …”

  She hung up. “I need a glass of water,” she said aloud, and tripped into the bathroom to get one. She drank two glasses in rapid succession, realizing as she put the cup back on the side of the sink that she had left the gun on her bed. “Dumb,” she cursed, and guided herself along the walls of the narrow hallway to her room. So it would be Jack who found her she thought as she reached across the bed for the weapon. Her knees gave out as they slammed against the low baseboard, and she fell forward. As her head hit the soft, quilted bedspread, she felt the tip of the gun smack against her temple, and she wondered, as her eyes closed, if she had managed to pull the trigger.

  She heard the ringing as if it were coming from somewhere far away, and so she didn’t bother to open her eyes. Then she remembered the events of the night before—she quickly realized it was morning—and she forced them open. She was not dead, she knew. The gun, despite its proximity to her temple, had not been fired. She had gotten herself too drunk to pull the trigger. There was no blood. Oddly enough, there was no hangover either. Perhaps, she thought, reaching over to silence the ringing phone, she was dead after all.

  “Hello,” she said, sitting up very straight.

  “Gail,” she heard Jack say, his voice strong and full of urgency, not hesitant like the night before. “Listen to me. Can you hear me all right?”

  “Yes,” she told him, angry with herself and her failure. She had the gun, she thought, moving it into her lap, but she still lacked the guts. The governor had granted her yet another, unwanted reprieve, condemning her to the rest of her life. She was doomed to survive.

  “I have something to tell you, and I want to make sure you’re not too drunk to understand.”

  “What is it?” Gail asked, feeling frightened and unsettled. “Is Jennifer okay? You told me Jennifer was okay …”

  “Jennifer’s fine. This isn’t about Jennifer.”

  “What then?”

  “I just got the call a few minutes ago. I literally just hung up the phone. The police called …”

  “Jack, for God’s sake, what is it?”

  “They found him,” Jack said simply, and at first Gail didn’t understand. “The man who killed Cindy. Some drifter. He’s confessed.” Gail felt her entire body beginning to tingle, every nerve beginning to twitch. She couldn’t sit still. She began rocking back and forth, standing up and then immediately sitting back down. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She knocked the gun up and down against the bed, tightening her grip on its handle, loosening it until it almost fell. “Gail, did you hear what I said? They found the man who killed Cindy. He’s confessed.”

  “I’m coming home,” Gail informed him, her fingers firmly closing over the top of the gun. The airlines might give her trouble if she tried to carry it on board. “I’m going to drive,” she said, calculating that she could drop the rental car in Livingston. “I should be home in a few days.”

  “Drive?! Gail, you can’t drive all that way alone. It’s much too far for one person to drive all by themselves.”

  “You forget that I’m used to highway driving,” Gail told him. “I’ll be fine, Jack. Really, it’ll relax me. Are they sure he’s the right man?”

  Gail could sense Jack’s confusion through the telephone wires. “The police seem satisfied,” he said. “He’s confessed.” He paused. “Look, let me fly down—we’ll drive back together if that’s what you want …”

  “I’ll be home in a few days,” Gail told him, not letting him continue.

  She hung up the phone, packed her suitcase, tucked her gun inside her purse and carried her belongings out to the car.

  Then she drove straight through to Livingston in twenty-four hours without stopping.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  By the time Gail got hack to Livingston, the drifter had retracted his confession. He claimed he had been denied his legal rights, that he had been pressured by the police into signing his confession. The police said otherwise. The accused had been read his rights in the presence of many witnesses; they had needed to create no pressure whatsoever to extract his confession. In deed, they continued, the man seemed eager to talk about what had happened, almost boastful. At any rate, they continued in the radio reports, they remained confident of a conviction with or without the confession.

  Gail was initially stunned by the retraction. She had arrived home hoping to have all the loose ends bound, the killer on his way to a speedy conviction. She found, instead, added tangles to the stri
ngs already left dangling too long.

  Her family was waiting for her, huddled together in the living room as they had been nine months before. The sense of déjà vu was startling but not overwhelming, as it would have perhaps been earlier. Now there was no question about what time it was or if she had been living a dream these past months. She knew with certainty that her nightmare was horrifyingly real and that she had been awake for the duration.

  Nine months ago, she thought, aware of the irony, she had returned from the hospital to find a similar scene. Now she saw her parents, looking no less tanned but somehow less substantial; Carol, drawing nervously on her ever present cigarette; Jennifer, fragile and pale, surrounded on either side by Mark and Julie. Lieutenant Cole was talking animatedly in the far comer between Laura and Mike. Jack stood alone by the window.

  Gail rushed into her husband’s arms. In the next minute the room converged, everyone surrounding her with their arms, with their tears. Tears of anger, of joy, of relief.

  “Tell me everything,” Gail said, clinging tightly to Jack’s hand. “The radio said he’s retracted his confession. Are they still sure he’s the one?”

  Jack led her toward the sofa. Everyone automatically arranged themselves around her.

  “We’re sure,” Lieutenant Cole said, his voice leaving no room for doubt.

  Gail noticed the newspapers on the coffee table in front of her. She leaned forward to get a better view of the grainy black and white photographs spread across the front pages.

  “His name is Dean Majors,” the lieutenant began. “We were on the right track—he’s a drifter, no permanent address. A history of arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct, served six months for assault a few years back.”