by Angela Pisel
She tried to pull some of them away, but the deep roots held firm.
“I’m married now. I wish you could meet him. His name is Thomas.”
The wind started to blow. Dried leaves blew and covered his gravestone. Sophie wiped them off as fast as she could. She then used both hands to jerk every unwelcomed weed from the firm ground until her cold fingers bled.
“Please forgive me for not saving you,” she said to him, as she laid her head down on top of his.
GRACE
“What do you want done today?” I asked Roni. It was three and a half weeks since I’d been allowed to work in the salon. My hands were a little shaky. Several women had put in requests for haircuts, so today was going to be busy. I was glad for the distraction and thankful for the work.
Death row inmates took the first appointments of the morning so the officers could minimize the interactions they had with the general population. Kinda strange, I thought, since I was the one holding the scissors, but rules were rules.
“I want something different,” Roni replied, her face branded with resolve. Her disposition had changed since she started corresponding with her father. One might even describe her as chipper these days.
“Give me some layers.” She handed me a picture she’d torn out of People magazine. Jodie Foster was standing on the red carpet in a shimmering beaded gown.
“My dad said he loved her in Silence of the Lambs.”
I took the picture and studied it. I was all for a good makeover, but I wasn’t a miracle worker. Roni’s hair was short on the sides and long in the back, and vaguely reminded me of a serial shoplifter I’d once seen on The Jerry Springer Show.
“You realize I’m going to have to cut your length and let the top grow out some before your hair can look exactly like Jodie Foster’s?” I emphasized the word exactly so she didn’t lose the newly found glow in her cheeks.
Roni looked at her reflection in the plastic-coated mirror in front of her swivel chair. With a heavy sigh, she grabbed Jodie out of my hands and said, “Damn it, Grace. Just give me the usual.”
After a few minutes of reverent negotiations, I was able to talk her into taking a few inches off the length and softening the long gap between her bangs and the middle of her back. She also allowed me to cut in a few soft angles around her face.
Roni seemed pleased when she left. “Do you want a tip?” she asked me. An off-center grin started to emerge.
“Sure,” I replied. “Think this will be a first.”
“Get a different job.”
She was still chuckling at her own joke when the officer handcuffed her and led her out of the beauty salon and back to her cell.
I was on my twelfth haircut of the day when the officer interrupted and said, “Last haircut, Bradshaw. The warden wants to see you.”
This was my seventeenth year in Lakeland and I can say I’d seen Warden Richards only a handful of times. I heard him announce things over the loudspeaker and saw his name at the bottom of memos . . .
ALL INMATES FROM THIS POINT FORWARD ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO USE THREE-INCH TOOTHBRUSHES. NORMAL-SIZE TOOTHBRUSHES ARE AGAINST POLICY AND ARE CONSIDERED CONTRABAND. THREE-INCH TOOTHBRUSHES WILL BE ISSUED IMMEDIATELY.
WARDEN ELROD RICHARDS
It was weird to think I would never, ever use a normal-size toothbrush again, but hey, we all had to adjust.
I closed the salon as instructed. The two officers put my hands and feet back in shackles and I shuffled, sandwiched between them, to the waiting area outside the warden’s office.
“Take ’em off,” the female officer said to me. I dragged my feet behind the curtained area and forced myself to think about the taste of roasted marshmallows smothered between chocolate and graham crackers while the officers inspected me. They handed me a different uniform when they finished. This new waistband pinched my skin.
“Prisoner 44607 on deck,” the male officer yelled as he opened the door into the warden’s office.
Warden Richards was sitting behind a scratched metal desk. Ms. Liz sat across from him in a folding chair. Neither looked at me when I entered. I asked them if something awful had happened to Sophie.
“Please take a seat,” the warden said, motioning to the seat beside Ms. Liz.
He didn’t believe in pleasantries, nor did he look like he could be in charge of a maximum-security prison. His total weight with firearms couldn’t have exceeded 130 pounds.
He slid a paper across the desk to me. Ms. Liz didn’t say anything to me. Her eyes were closed. I think she was praying.
I bent over the desk to read the paper. I needed my reading glasses, but I could clearly see at the top of the page the paper read: DEATH WARRANT.
I took a deep breath and sat back in my chair. My vision blurred and I needed a minute to think.
Ms. Liz finally spoke: “Grace, the warden told me your final appeal had been denied. You are aware of that, right?” Her words were quiet and thin.
“My attorney told me. I met with him a few weeks ago.”
“I know this is difficult for you to do, but the warden needs you to read the paper. You have to be aware of what is going to happen.”
I bent over the paper again. The small print moved around.
Ms. Liz took the paper from in front of me. “Do I have your permission to read this out loud to her?”
“This has to get done some way,” the warden replied. A framed picture of him shaking the governor’s hand sat on the bookshelf behind him.
Ms. Liz inhaled slowly and started to read. “The South Carolina Department of Criminal Justice has ordered that on February 15—” Her voice cracked and she stopped reading long enough to take a drink from her bottled water. “That on February 15, Grace Margaret Bradshaw be placed in a room arranged for execution—” She stopped reading again.
“For God’s sake. Give me the paper,” the warden ordered. He pushed his silver-rimmed glasses up on his nose.
“That on February 15, Grace Margaret Bradshaw be placed in a room arranged for execution and be injected with a substance or substances in lethal quantity sufficient enough to cause death and to continue with injection until such time until the said Grace Margaret Bradshaw is dead.”
He read the words without stopping. “Do you understand the order as it has been given?”
I answered yes. And that was the last thing I remembered.
SOPHIE
Ben Taylor sat at the back booth in the corner of the 40th Street Café. He seemed to be involved in something significant, because his eyes didn’t look up from his laptop even when the bells jingled as Sophie opened the front door.
“Welcome to the Fortieth Street,” said the waitress, juggling a turkey club platter in one hand and a coffeepot in another. “Sit down anywhere you’d like.”
The waitress didn’t recognize the grown-up Bradshaw daughter, but Sophie couldn’t forget her familiar face. Sophie’s dad, too tired from work and too depressed to eat another meal at their once-full family table, often took her to the café for dinner. Their once-a-week treat turned into three to four times. She always ordered the grilled cheese on sourdough, her dad whatever special Lucy suggested.
“You need some meat on those bones, Paul,” Lucy said, with a wink at first, then a slight brush of her arm against his when she scooted by with menus and waters. Her long nails changed color every time they ate there: sometimes they were deep red, other times clear, with rhinestones outlining the top.
Sophie knew Lucy desired more from her dad than weight gain. Her father, oblivious to anyone’s affection, would read the newspaper and ask Sophie the same questions day after day: “How was math today?” or “Everyone at school being nice?”
One day, between serving him his chicken-fried steak with fried okra and rhubarb pie, Lucy worked up the nerve to ask him on a date.
“Paul, you know I
do a lot of the cooking around here and you do a whole lot of the eating,” she said, as her voice and gaping neckline lowered. “Why don’t you let me come over and make you a home-cooked meal.”
Sophie stopped gulping her milk long enough to blurt out, “My mom is gone, not dead.”
Her dad, whose face now resembled the color of Twizzlers, gave Sophie “the look.” She didn’t get that look often, but when she did, she knew he meant business.
“You are a great cook, Lucy, one of the best, but Sophie and I are doing just fine. I’ll continue to enjoy your creamed corn from right here, if you don’t mind.”
“You know where to find me if you change your mind.” She touched his hand as she refilled his water. When he left a ten-dollar tip instead of his usual five, Sophie knew he’d felt bad about hurting her feelings.
Sophie stood at the end of Ben Taylor’s booth, waiting for him to look up. “Hello,” she finally said, after he still hadn’t noticed her.
“Hello. Glad you came.” He slid out of the booth and stood while she sat down. “Are you hungry?”
Sophie realized suddenly that she hadn’t eaten since she entered Brookfield. “Yes, a little bit.”
Ben handed her a menu, but Sophie declined. When Lucy came to take their order, she wanted the usual—a grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough.
Sophie and Ben made small talk throughout lunch. He asked about her life, her husband, and if she worked. Her answers were polite but brief, since she didn’t want her mother to know anything about her, especially since she was using her lawyer as a go-between. To deflect his questions, she asked questions back to him. Two grown children, one a lawyer just like him, and the other a girls’ volleyball coach at a small D-I college outside Chicago. Both boys.
“How long have you been married?” Sophie noticed Ben didn’t mention his wife one time during their discussion.
“Twenty-three years,” Ben answered. “My wife passed away a year after we moved to Brookfield.” He pulled out his billfold to show her an old family photo.
“She was beautiful,” Sophie said as she took the photo out of the plastic covering. “How did she die, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“A brain aneurysm. It was very sudden.” He took the photo back and looked at it for several seconds before he slipped it into his wallet. “I took the time I had with her for granted. My biggest regret.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“And I’m sorry for yours.”
Both remained silent for a moment before Ben brought up the conversation they were here to discuss.
“As I told you earlier, I’ve been your mother’s attorney for the last several years. The first case I took since moving here, actually. The public defender she had did a horrible job. She didn’t interview witnesses she should have and put people on the stand who were not well prepared. They were eaten alive by the prosecutor.” He rolled a straw between his stiffened hands.
“My dad wasn’t thrilled with them, either, but I saw the evidence. We didn’t have a lot of money and they didn’t have a lot to work with. The ethylene glycol in my brother’s bottle, the windshield-wiper fluid hidden in our house . . . it didn’t look good.” Her voice sounded cold as she spoke those old words.
“I know the evidence and their accusations quite well. The prosecutors drilled into the defense that your mother had Munchausen—”
“That my mom purposefully made my brother sick so she could take him to the doctor.” Words she regurgitated out loud, but had said many times before to herself. “She craved attention.”
“Refill?” Lucy grabbed their water glasses before they could decline.
“Yes, that’s what they said,” he repeated after Lucy left, agreeing with the definition but not the charge. “She doesn’t fit the profile.”
“My brother is dead. He became sick only when he was around her. Profile or no profile, the evidence convinced me.”
“You and every appeals board,” Ben responded matter-of-factly. “Your mom’s case keeps me awake at night. The pieces just don’t fit.”
Sophie chewed the last bite of her grilled cheese.
“Why didn’t your mom make you sick?” Ben asked. He spoke softly, because Lucy was wiping down the still-empty booth behind them for the third time.
Sophie swallowed twice, but the cheese from her sandwich didn’t go down. She picked up her water and took a long sip. After swallowing again, she said, “Maybe she did.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked, not disguising his surprise.
“I don’t know what I mean. I’m second-guessing everything that happened in my childhood now. Every time I threw up, every stomachache—did she cause that, too?”
Ben took his napkin off his lap and put it on the table. “Do you think she would do that?”
“I really don’t know.” Why not me? Why William?
Ben didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Sophie felt like he was giving her a chance to reconsider, to say something that would help him help her mother. When she didn’t, he finally said, “I have done everything I could think of to get the courts to retry her case, but unfortunately your mother’s last appeal has been denied.” He stopped, giving her time to absorb what was coming next, but before he could continue, Lucy rushed over with the coffeepot.
“Sophie Bradshaw, I should have known it was you when you ordered that grilled cheese. I haven’t seen you in ages.” She plunked the coffeepot down on the table and moved in for a side hug. With her arm squeezing Sophie’s, she said, “I hope this lawyer here can help your mom before she’s executed.”
—
BEN PAID THE BILL, helped Sophie put on her jacket, and escorted her across the street to his office. Lucy’s exaggerated greeting had stirred the café, and the subsequent stares of the people sitting along the counter were too much for Sophie to handle.
“I hate this place,” she said as she followed Ben into his office. “I couldn’t wait to leave. I can’t believe I’m here now.”
The old feelings of being the center of unwanted attention overwhelmed her. She didn’t know whether to sit down or run.
“You didn’t deserve this, but I don’t believe your mom deserves this, either. I need you to understand me. Your mother’s appeals are gone, and her execution date has been set. If the governor doesn’t intervene, your mother will die by lethal injection on February fifteenth.”
—
SOPHIE CRIED MOST OF THE way home. What did Ben Taylor expect her to say? That all of a sudden she believed her mom was innocent? She didn’t. But did she really want her to die?
Going back to Brookfield, dredging up mud she’d shaken off long ago, had been a huge mistake, she decided. “I’m going to seek clemency from the governor,” Ben had said, “but it’s a long, if not impossible, shot. Please consider visiting your mother one last time, before it’s too late.”
Sophie had left his office without committing either way. She did agree to give him her cell-phone number, and asked him to call only if absolutely necessary. She didn’t know in this situation what exactly constituted an emergency.
She took his number as well, promising to call if she decided to visit. “My husband and his family know nothing about my past, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
He’d nodded, but his downturned gaze said he didn’t understand. “I believe in Grace,” he’d said, walking her to his office door. “Help me figure out what we are missing.”
At every red light, when Sophie had time to pause, she pictured her mom being strapped to a gurney. Long needles being pushed into her veins. Her voice quivering as she said her last words. Her mother dying all alone.
It was almost 7 p.m. when Sophie swiped her card and pulled into the parking lot outside Thomas’s office, thinking he’d be working late again and not yet at home. She checked her cell phone as soon as she p
arked. It was surprising that Thomas hadn’t called since the day before, but then again, she hadn’t felt like calling him. No communication until she returned home felt better than making up more lies.
She riffled through her purse for her makeup bag. Eye concealer didn’t do a thing to cover her dark circles. Lack of sleep and puffy eyes had clearly won this battle.
She ran her fingers through her hair and applied Thomas’s favorite shade of lipstick. On this night she couldn’t care less about sexy, but understanding and forgiveness she would take. She had to tell him the truth and she had to do it now, before she lost her nerve. Thomas had to understand why she lied to him and why she hadn’t told him before now. She needed him to help her decide what to do.
Sophie walked to the back of the building and tried the outside door. It was locked, so she walked around to the other side and tried another entrance. Had everyone left for the day?
She scanned the lot. Thomas’s car was parked in the usual spot, and another car she didn’t recognize was parked behind the dumpsters. A white van with the logo VERY MERRY MAIDS was parked by the side door.
Other than the cleaning crew, everyone seemed to be gone. Sophie tapped on the side door to get someone’s attention. A vacuum hummed in the background, telling Sophie her pleas for entry might take a while.
She pulled her cell phone out and texted Thomas: R u busy? She sat down on the sidewalk curb to check her e-mail when he didn’t answer right away.
Extremely, Thomas replied a few minutes later. She could see little dots on her message screen indicating he was typing. At hospital. Late surgery. Call u later.
She walked back to the parking lot to make sure it was his car she’d seen. A WEST LAKE HOMEOWNER sticker proved she wasn’t crazy. Did he ride from his office to the hospital with one of his partners?
Sophie braced herself on the hood of his car.
A lady carrying a vacuum and a bucket of water opened the side door.
“Hold the door,” Sophie yelled to her. “Everybody gone for the day?” she asked as she walked in.