by Angela Pisel
When the sun rose, I decided to get up. I hadn’t looked at the papers they gave me, but I couldn’t forget about them, either. The manila envelope bullied me—three feet away and perched to suffocate me at any moment.
I took a deep breath and turned on the lamp. The Woman’s Day calendar recommended making shrimp-and-broccoli stir-fry for dinner tonight. If I closed my eyes, I could smell the shrimp sizzling in the hot wok as I threw them in. Paul loved stir-fry.
I picked up the November calendar and used my index finger to count back—it had been three weeks since I’d seen my attorney. I needed to call him when we got to use the phone this week to see if he could help with the forms. I picked up the envelope and poured out the contents.
Sophie’s report cards used to come in a similar envelope. Pleasure to have in class. All A’s, honor roll. Great class participation in English. Paul and I treated her to a root beer float. William scrunched up his nose when Sophie swiped her finger through the whipped cream and into his mouth. “If you get good grades, you can have more of this,” she whispered in his tiny ear.
A year after my incarceration, Paul visited without her. He did that sometimes when we needed to talk. He held Sophie’s report card up to the glass. Seems withdrawn. Poor participation. Missing work. Suggest counseling to deal with isolation and angry outburst.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Paul said, his skin blotchy around his eyes and mouth. “She won’t talk to me. I’m losing her.” He stooped over and put his elbows on the ledge as he held the phone.
“She loves you, Paul.” I tried to encourage him, but I felt helpless. I closed my eyes for a second so I could feel his scruffy face against mine. “One second at a time. She’ll come around.”
“I’ll get her to talk,” he said, reassuring himself as well as me.
I knew my legal bills had wiped out our bank account. We couldn’t afford to pay for a counselor for Sophie.
“Don’t worry about us.” He rubbed his chest with the palm of his hand. He was heartbroken, and I think the rest of him was now broken, too.
I shook my head, willing away the painful memories. I couldn’t think about the pain I’d caused them. I had to get this paperwork done. The thought of being reunited with William and Paul didn’t make leaving Sophie more bearable.
I pulled out the five sheets of paper and laid them side by side on my bed.
The first was headlined LAST MEAL REQUEST. Food allowance can not exceed $15.00 and must be purchased locally. Requests for alcohol will be denied.
The TV announcer’s words played in my ears: “Walter Mayberry chose to forgo his McDonald’s options and instead ate what the rest of the inmate populations dined on . . . beef stew with diced potatoes and carrots, cornbread, and an eight-ounce glass of sweet tea.”
I slid that paper underneath the rest. I wasn’t ready to hear what the reporter had to say about me just yet. I picked up the next sheet.
EXECUTION WITNESS LIST.
My mom, the only grandparent still living at the time of Sophie’s birth, had traveled four hours to be in the delivery room. She kept asking the nurse questions as I started to push. “Is she in much pain? Can’t you do anything about her pain?” Paul held my hand with one arm and steadied her back with the other as we witnessed the first of our two miracles.
I didn’t expect another. If Sophie did show up, I’d never let her see me be put to death. I checked the box that said No Request for Witnesses and signed my name. My going-away party would be small, but my homecoming celebration would be grand. I wondered if William was still a baby in heaven or if he was now full-grown.
APPLICATION FOR EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY.
I needed to talk to Ben about that one. Should I continue fighting? Only if it would buy Ben more time to find Sophie, I decided. That paper went to the back of the pile.
DISPOSAL OF PROPERTY and DISPOSAL OF REMAINS.
Name and address of family member designated to coordinate remains: ______________________ .
I’d always thought I’d be buried next to Paul and William. Didn’t think I’d have to provide my own transportation there. Maybe Ben could arrange this?
LAST WILL & TESTAMENT.
Ben had all of that on file. Everything went to Sophie. I’d make sure he knew to give a copy of my will to the warden.
This was all too much to think about when I’d gotten so little sleep. I stared at the papers again. The bold-print letters made my heart pound. What sounds good to eat before the needle goes in? Who’d you invite to watch you die? The cinder-block walls moved in closer.
I gathered all the papers together as quickly as I could and shoved them back in the envelope, pushing through and spreading the bronze clasp forcefully to shut up their words before they could taunt me further.
Deep breaths, I reminded myself. An exercise Ms. Liz practiced with me when my anxiety got the best of me. “Count to ten,” she told me. “Now take yourself away from here.”
I did what I did when I couldn’t stand this place any longer. I closed my eyes and pictured Paul kneeling in front of me. His wavy cinnamon-colored hair curled around his forehead and he smelled like cut grass. “I cannot take another breath without you.” He opened a red velvet box he’d hidden in the side pocket of his black trousers. I thought he might cry. “You are home to me. Please say you’ll be my wife.”
SOPHIE
Was it Thomas’s fault? Sophie couldn’t help but speculate. Mindy, although she hadn’t come right out and said so, didn’t go out of her way to imply otherwise. Thomas may have partially been responsible, and this mess had changed someone else’s family forever.
“Mrs. Logan,” a stout nurse dressed in scrubs called from the waiting-room door. “Come on back.”
Sophie stood and followed her to the nurses’ station.
“One-ten over sixty-four, that’s good. Temp normal. Let’s weigh you and get you into a room.”
Sophie stepped on the scale. The nurse moved the weighted measure over to the hundred-pound mark and then slid the small weight over to the right. “Looks like you’ve lost weight since your last visit. Eight pounds.” She scrolled through the electronic chart. “Better eat over the holidays or you’re going to blow away.”
“I’ve not had much of an appetite,” Sophie said, looking down at her hands and twirling her wedding ring around on her finger.
The nurse escorted Sophie into another room, handed her a paper gown, and sat down on a stool across from the exam table. “Is weight loss what brings you here today?”
Sophie sat down on the exam table and crossed her legs. “My husband is what made me come today.” The paper gown still in her hands. She didn’t know if she was supposed to put it on now or wait. “He apparently thinks a person fainting on Thanksgiving is an abnormal occurrence.”
The nurse typed something into the chart. “I’d have to agree with your husband on that one.”
Just then, Dr. Chemales opened the door.
“Good morning, Sophie, good to see you again.” Dr. Chemales held his hand out to shake hers. “It has been a while.”
“It has.” Sophie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him. Maybe only once or twice since she and Thomas moved here. Dr. Chemales had lost some hair since then, but he still had the same genuine bedside manner. “There’s really no need to see me today, but Thomas insisted.”
“I know how those doctors can be with their wives,” he said with a grin. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Thomas mentioned something about you fainting.”
“I did faint, but only once. I’m feeling better now.”
Dr. Chemales sat down on the stool and put his chart on the table. He pointed and clicked, and then asked, “Both parents deceased?”
“Yes,” Sophie said, having forgotten for a minute that she had even lied on her medical records.
“Da
d died of heart disease?” he said while still looking at the chart. “Age fifty-two?”
“Yes.” Did a shattered heart fall into the disease category?
“That’s young.” Dr. Chemales looked up at Sophie.
“Very,” Sophie replied.
“And your mom?” His eyes returned to the chart for information. “What medical issues did your mom have?”
Her fabricated stories were getting more and more difficult to tell and harder to cover up. Coming clean seemed too overwhelming. “She died of breast cancer when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.” His medical questions were more empathetic than clinical.
“Are you seeing your gynecologist for mammograms? Breast cancer is hereditary, you know.”
“I do and I am,” she replied quickly, hoping this visit would be over soon.
Dr. Chemales prodded and poked, then finally said, “Well, everything looks fine to me. You probably were a little dehydrated. Let’s get some blood work and a urine sample to make sure nothing else is going on.”
“I told Thomas I was fine,” Sophie said, glad to be right about something.
“You are fine, but fainting is certainly something you should get checked out. Thomas was right to have you come in.”
“Better safe than sorry, I know,” Sophie said, repeating the phrase her dad always told her when he asked her to do anything from wear a bike helmet long before the law required it to turning on the outside lights before she walked down the stairs.
“The nurse will take you to the lab. I’ll call you if there’s anything to cause you concern.”
—
JUST AS SOPHIE PULLED HER CAR into an open parking space in front of Barnes & Noble, her phone rang.
“Mrs. Logan?”
“This is she.”
“This is the nurse from Dr. Chemales’s office. He wanted me to call and tell you we don’t have to wait to get the results of the rest of your tests to find out why you fainted.”
“What?” Sophie asked. “He said I was dehydrated.”
“Wait one moment, Mrs. Logan.”
“Sophie, this is Dr. Chemales. Congratulations. You and Thomas are going to have a baby.”
GRACE
I rushed out of my cell as soon as the doors clanked open. Ms. Liz should have left the December Woman’s Day, and I wanted to grab the calendar before someone else did. Officer Jones smiled when she saw me. She waved the magazine in the air to let me know she had my back—in this area, anyway.
“Thank you,” I mouthed to her.
“Got another one,” Roni said from behind me. She shoved a letter in front of me before I could make my way over to claim my calendar.
“Your dad must write a letter a day!”
“Read it to me,” she said.
“Sit down.” I directed her over to the table. “We’ll read it together.”
She tore open the envelope, careful not to rip through the red hearts drawn all over the backside. Carl had written DAD on one heart with an arrow going straight over to the other hearts. Missing you was written over top of that.
Ten days, the first line started. I asked Roni to sound it out. “Ta-ta-ten.” I nudged her.
After a few tries, she grew frustrated. “Is he coming or not?” she yelled, sweat beads mounting on her forehead as she started to stand up.
“Ten days until I see you face-to-face,” I responded back fast. “I’m just trying to help you learn.”
Her foot started tapping, quickly at first, then she stopped. Her nostrils flared out as she inhaled. “I’m tired of feeling stupid. Will you please just tell me what he wants?”
I scanned through the rest of the letter. “He says the only thing he wants for Christmas is to meet you.”
Roni took the letter from me. She grunted something I didn’t quite make out before she jolted up and walked back to her cell.
Carmen and Jada were sitting with the prison’s recreational therapist. She was allowed to visit us in a group twice a month if we had no write-ups. We usually saw her four or five times a year.
Jada didn’t look up when I sat down. “My kids are going to like this ornament,” she said as she sprinkled red glitter all over the glue-soaked pinecone.
Carmen rolled her eyes at me and then rolled me a pinecone. “Take your mind off your troubles.” We hadn’t talked about my upcoming date—or discussed the fact she was probably next.
I picked up the Elmer’s glue and started to squirt. This would be the seventeenth Christmas ornament I’d made on the inside. My tree, if they allowed us to have one, would be decorated with a variety of Christmas cheer fabricated with Popsicle sticks and white paper snowflakes. On the back in red Sharpie I always wrote To Sophie, Love Mom.
I turned the pinecone around and looked at all sides, not sure where I’d write that this year.
Carmen read my mind and slid over a tag made out of gingerbread-embossed scrapbook paper. “Here,” she said. “Write to your daughter on this.”
I give her a faint smile. Carmen wasn’t usually insightful or compassionate. Her records, according to her, diagnosed her with narcissistic personality disorder. I looked it up one time when the rolling book cart had a medical dictionary. The fat royal-blue book said she was incapable of recognizing feelings in others and pursued mainly selfish goals.
I couldn’t help but see what the fat blue book had to say about me. I flipped the pages in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Munchausen by proxy: a psychiatric disorder in which someone inflicts harm to someone in their care to garner sympathy and attention.
“Here, use the white glitter,” Carmen offered. “It’ll remind Sophie of snow.”
I picked up the tag Carmen had slid my way, thankful that just for today her diagnosis (and mine) was more than a little off.
SOPHIE
Sophie found herself sitting on the exam table, cold and shivering, waiting for the obstetrician to walk into the room. One of the perks of being a doctor’s wife is knowing other doctors’ wives. A quick phone call to Kate, and Sophie became the first patient on Jack’s packed December 23 morning schedule.
Of course, Sophie didn’t tell Kate the real reason she needed to see her husband. And it wasn’t any of Kate’s business she’d fainted, so she made up another plausible excuse, “feeling tired, probably anemic” and needed “energy quick” to finish the preparations for the Secret Chef fund-raiser. A weird phone call at best, asking Kate to pull some strings so her husband could examine her hidden parts. Low iron seemed believable and important and didn’t require Kate to picture Sophie undressed from the waist down with her legs spread wide open and resting in stirrups.
Normally, she saw Dr. Johnson, a female partner in the practice, but she was lecturing at the medical school and couldn’t fit Sophie in until the week after Christmas. She couldn’t wait, and no matter how weird it was being examined by a neighbor, she needed additional confirmation that the three sticks she peed on last night were telling the truth as soon as possible. Dr. Chemales was an internist, not an obstetrician. Couldn’t he be mistaken?
Sophie didn’t tell Thomas about her visit beforehand. Not that he would have heard her anyway. As soon as he walked through the door, he kissed her on the top of her head, went for a run, and made a phone call to his dad. He closed the study door, but Sophie could hear him say things like “I think I need to settle this” and “I don’t know what the ramifications will be.”
The last thing she wanted to tell Thomas was that she was pregnant. She didn’t believe it herself. She wasn’t ready for a baby. She wanted Max.
Sophie picked up her iPhone and started to search “conditions causing a false pregnancy test,” when the doctor tapped on the door.
“Well, I guess congratulations are in order.” He held his hand out to hers after she dropp
ed her phone into her purse.
Sophie forced her mouth to turn upward, a gratitude of sorts for him working her into his schedule and for liking her enough to be excited for what he presumed to be good news.
“Are you sure?” she asked, giving him one more chance to change his story. “I haven’t missed a period.”
“Positive. Your hCG levels are quite high.” He checked her chart again before he spoke. “I take it this was unplanned?”
Unplanned. Unprepared for. Take your pick.
“Having any symptoms? Morning sickness, tenderness in your breasts, overly tired?”
“My stomach has been a little queasy, but I’ve always had a weird stomach. I fainted, but just one time. Incredibly light-headed.”
“Your blood sugar may have gotten a little low or you may be anemic.”
Sophie welcomed the anemia. At least her white lie to Kate would be partially true.
“I’ll check your iron when we draw your blood. I know you see Dr. Johnson, but I feel like we should do an initial prenatal workup today, if your schedule allows.”
“Uh . . .” Sophie stammered, and reached for her phone to check the time. When she didn’t give him an answer, Jack asked again.
“I can’t have my neighbor leaving here and passing out. Kate would never forgive me. Can we at least do some blood work and an ultrasound, find out how far along you are?”
Sophie nodded, still trying to believe she had a tiny human growing inside of her. She put her hands over her stomach and tried to make herself feel like she’d imagined a good mother would. Ecstatic? Frantically texting all her contacts: I’ve waited my whole life for this.
Jack opened the door and called for his nurse. “I’m going to let Dr. Johnson do Mrs. Logan’s cervical and breast exam on her next visit. Get her started on the paperwork, and tell Betsy to bring the ultrasound machine in here so we can find out when this baby is due.”
“This baby’s a good thing,” Jack said before he left the exam room. “It’ll take Thomas’s mind off everything else.”