At 11 a.m. she and her two matrons were driven, from the Women’s Institute to the chamber. She took several steps from the sedan to the massive metal door with her head back, face to the sky. She was drinking in the natural light.
Once past the preparation room, the business side of which was also draped to save her the sight of the deep sinks and the valves, she was led into the ready room and locked into one of the two holding cells. She and the matrons looked around the room like three girlfriends moving into a cheap apartment in the wrong end of town. The cells were too tiny, the mattress on the floor was soiled. There was not even a seat on the stupid john. The folding metal table attached to the bars of the cell represented the entire furnishings.
Fortunately, the radio and phonograph worked and there was a supply of records. In a little alcove was a coffeepot and the makings.
All three shrugged and sighed when they were finally left alone, resigning themselves to the inadequacies of their temporary quarters.
“If they had the sense to give us some cleaning gear,” said Ginny, “we’d have it spic ‘n’ span in no time, right, girls?”
They smiled and the older one said, “Why don’t you just rest your feet, Ginny?”
“Might as well,” she said, easing herself to the mattress. “Can’t dance.”
At noon she had a BLT on toast with a small green salad. She wiped her mouth and hands with the napkin and said, “Girls, has anyone heard from Gordie?”
“Not yet, Ginny,” said the older one.
“He’s working for Miss Ryan now, in Denver. He’s the best investigator they ever had. Right now they’re trying to get another judge to intercede. Don’t worry, this thing isn’t over yet. Not with Gordie on the job.”
“You must be very proud of him,” the younger one said.
She nodded distractedly. “I wish he hadn’t quit school. That’s the one thing that bothers me. Tell him to go back to school, do me that favor.”
The younger one was embarrassed. The older one asked, “Can I turn on some music for you, Ginny?”
“Turn on the news,” she answered.
At fifteen minutes before one, the chaplain came into the holding cell area.
“Good morning, Virginia.”
“Good morning, Father.”
“How’s the food?”
“All right.”
“Anything you care to talk about?”
“Like God?”
“That too,” said the chaplain. “Anything you like.”
“Have you heard from my son?”
“No, I haven’t, Virginia.”
She looked at the clock. “Well, it’s still not too late.”
“Virginia, it is the destiny of every man and every woman. Have you any letters or messages I can convey?”
Somehow she had expected to see Gordie, and there was no one else to write to.
“Did you hear that Mrs. Lister died yesterday?” asked the chaplain.
“Who?”
“Mrs. Lister, your friend.”
“Oh, yes. Well, she was due.”
At ten minutes before one she heard a clanging sound and jumped. She waited a moment and heard it again. She asked, “What’s that?”
The chaplain tucked his chin against his shoulder like a bird and mumbled, “They’re testing the door.”
“What door?”
“The door, my dear.”
Somehow it seemed all right, however, to forgo certain other elements of the ritual, since a woman was involved. For example, she was allowed to wear her black pumps, street clothes, and underwear.
The staff psychiatrist entered the holding cell area and said, as an official question, “Virginia Ann Wynn?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“How do you feel?”
“Has Gordie called?”
“Could you evaluate your current attitude?”
“Pardon?”
“Can you make an assessment of your state of mind, in relation to your deeds and your punishment?”
“Is this part of the routine, or what?”
“You don’t have to answer thy question, of course.”
“Then I think maybe I won’t.”
“Naturally I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, son.”
The warden entered, wished her good afternoon, and said, “Mrs. Wynn, there are members of the press present. They always ask if there are last words.”
She thought for a moment and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“In the past, others have chosen this time to confess their crimes,” said the warden.
“Have they?” said Ginny, but she would say no more.
He shook her hand, said good-bye, and he and the psychiatrist left. Immediately, the doctor caine into the area with two guards, who turned their backs as he went into the holding cell to tape a stethoscope detector to her heart.
He took her pulse and said, “Normal, Mrs. Wynn.”
She was pleased to hear it.
The doctor opened a small plastic bag and said, “Better drop your dentures in here, Mrs. Wynn.”
“Do I have to?”
“It’s better that you do.”
“But what’s the difference, for goodness’ sake?”
“They might fly out, Mrs. Wynn, if you struggle. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
“I’m not going to struggle.”
“Yes, but one loses control over his body. The body acts on its own.”
Ginny could picture it. “Oh,” she said. She removed her teeth and dropped them into the bag.
The doctor turned to leave, but she stopped him. “Doctor,” she said, awkwardly without teeth, “what do you think would be the effect of someone taking ten to twelve Seconals a night, grain and a half, for about ten years or so?”
“That’s a lot of medication.”
“Do you think it could cause brain damage?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
When the doctor left, three inches of tubing extended from Ginny’s bodice like a dart.
At one o’clock the warden signaled the guards. They opened the cell and walked on either side of Ginny, ready to support her should she need it. She did not. She was poised and dignified and, as the reporters who jammed the witness area would write, proud.
Inside the chamber itself, she looked through the glass at the roomful of spectators and said, “Where’s Gordie?”
Gordon at that minute was getting into his car with Sally Ryan at a parking lot in Denver. They had just lost their last-minute appeal to another federal judge. He looked at the time stamped on the back of his parking ticket. 1:01. His mother, he knew, was in her moment of death.
The guards helped Ginny into the seat marked “B,” since this one required less hose to hook up the stethoscope. The metal seat was cool to her skin like a freshly made bed. Her feet dangled just above the floor. As they strapped fast her waist, chest, legs, and forearms, she had a second’s amazement and sorrow that all those people she had confided in had told on her. Mrs. Lister, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Barrajas. Everyone. Not one of them would lie to save her life. They would stand by and allow it to happen. They were all accomplices in her execution.
One guard attached the length of rubber tubing through which the doctor would ascertain the exact moment of death to the detector already taped to her chest. He whispered to her, “Breathe deep as soon as you hear it, Ginny Mom. Good-bye.”
She heard the phone ring! No one was rushing to answer it. “The phone,” she moaned. “Gordie’s on the phone. We’ll be together again.”
The guard patted her shoulder twice and said, “Easy, Ginny Mom, take it easy.”
She no longer heard the ringing.
Before the warden gave the signal Ginny turned her head to the witnesses and said, “I loved a son.”
The witnesses did not know if this was the long-awaited confession of crimes or a listing of virt
ues.
She did not fight it. With her first breath of gas, her head rolled to her right shoulder and then forward. Her mouth opened, her face grew pale, and her arms fluttered violently. She gasped for air and her body shook and jerked against the straps.. Her head went back. Her eyes, half closed, flared wide open in a death stare at the ceiling. The executed always drools.
NINE
For two months after his mother’s execution Gordon Wynn continued to work for Miss Ryan, who grew to resent his presence in her offices. It seemed no one in the country wanted to pay for his story, and she had lost a fortune defending his mother. Even the publicity did her no good. For several weeks after the trial and again as the date of execution approached, clients were drawn to the firm, but most of them were sight-seeing phonies.
A few secretaries quit, claiming that Gordon Wynn got on their nerves. The other lawyers and investigators felt peculiar around him and felt guilty for feeling peculiar. Miss Ryan eventually had to fire him, releasing him from his debt.
Beef tried to get in touch with him. He had disappeared. He would probably change his name, Beef thought, and move to a distant city. Good luck, Gordie.
Beef got a job at St. Francis, where Maria’s path first crossed Ginny’s, and became their best orderly. The duties of an orderly can in time make a man coarse and unfeeling, but he accepted every assignment cheerfully. He often worked overtime and never refused to take the duty for some other orderly who had a date or something better to do. The hospital staff respected and admired him, the patients adored him. He made a game of sweeping up an old bedridden man or woman in his arms and walking the patient through the wards, just for the ride.
When Maria’s old apartment on Hancock Avenue, Number 9, became vacant, he moved in. He touched all the walls and doors and cabinets with his fingertips, as though looking for a pulse. He sat with a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter scraping her stolen barrette across it, scratching rhythmically for hours at the stillness of her apartment which would not yield. He put the barrette in his hair.
Mornings, he goes from bed to bathroom and empties his stomach of a kind of morning sickness.
Nights, lying and waiting for the pilfered Demerol to catch hold, he hears the footfalls of Montalvo, coming up the stairs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darryl Ponicsánwas born in the coal-mining town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, in 1938, and educated at Muhlenberg College, later taking an M.A. degree at Cornell University. He joined the U.S. Navy after a stint as a teacher, and eventually went to California to work for a time as a social worker during the Watts riots, then as a teacher once again. However, writing was what he wanted to do most, and when he published his first novel, The Last Detail, and sold it to the movies, he was able to write full time. Both The Last Detail and his forth novel Cinderella Liberty became major motion pictures. Darryl Ponicsán’s other books include Goldengrove and Andoshen, PA.
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