“Oh, hey! I forgot!” Lindsey’s voice goes up, genuinely excited. “I’m doing this online certification so I can teach at the summer camp. And Miss Mirabelle says if I work full-time next year, the church has this thing where they can help pay for classes, you know, for like an actual degree.”
“Linds! That’s awesome! Are you going to do it?”
“Yeah. I think I want to.” She plays it off, keeping her eyes on a makeup display with a dramatically posed It Girl, but her voice sounds almost shy. “I think I want to study special education. There’re a couple kids at the daycare and, man, they’re… I mean, they have to work so hard, just to do the most basic stuff—telling you they want more juice or whatever. But when they do, when they get it—it’s like, huge. I just… I just love them.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s, that’s—you know, you never cease to amaze.” I reach over and squeeze Lindsey’s hand. “You’ll be so great at that.”
“Well, who knows?” she says. “I hope so!”
“Definitely,” I say. And she will. Though I can’t imagine why she would want to teach anyone, ever. I mean, you’d have to be a saint.
Saint Lindsey: ripped jeans, a flirty tee with a vintage Harley-Davidson logo, and a silver bracelet with a charm that reads QUEEN BITCH.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Lindsey says.
“If you had to decide,” I say, “I mean, if it were up to you, would you give Kyle the death penalty?”
“Well…” She pauses, pumps some Mango Magic lotion from a sampler into her palm and wipes it up her forearm, considering. “I honestly don’t know.” She sniffs her arm delicately. “I’m glad it’s not my decision to make.”
This World
As it turns out, the trial is still dragging on the following Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. It’s colder than it’s been all fall. A gray-mist day.
We get out of school early, just after noon. I don’t know how Charlie has been handling all his absences—if he got excused or is taking penalties for the skips. I don’t know, in fact, how Charlie has been handling anything.
Instead of going home, I drive to the greenway and hike back up the hill where Charlie took me on our first run. Where I asked him what he’d do on his last day on earth.
This could be Kyle’s last day, I think, as I make my way up the dirt path—even though I know the court doesn’t really work like that. If he gets death, it would take years—maybe decades—before he’s executed. I avoided sleep all week, so I’ve had lots of time for reading up on things like the death penalty. Not to mention the birthing habits of tiger sharks, Bigfoot sightings, the history of early sound recordings, top criminal justice programs, and the relative salaries of movie stars.
The air is chilled and brittle, and the mist makes a silvery wall that retreats as I climb, perpetually fifteen feet in front of me. I hike quickly, with only a few noisy birds for company. By the time I reach the top of the hill, I am gulping cold breaths, giving myself a sort of brain freeze in my lungs. I bend over, cupping my gloved fingers in front of my mouth to warm the incoming air.
Dizzy, I lean on the long log of the horse jump and gaze out at the mountains beyond. They seem to pose, wrapped in a shawl of mist, majestic and serene.
This world. This preposterously beautiful world. You’d think we could live in it without killing each other.
I spy two deer on the edge of the meadow; they hold my gaze, frozen for a moment, then bolt into the woods. Wind rips across the grass, gusts through bare branches, singing its surreal melody. Anthem for the lost.
This world. This world, so much more than we deserve.
Over
Charlie is sitting on the edge of my front stoop when I get home.
“Hey.” I cross the last few steps to the door. “My mom didn’t let you in?”
“I didn’t knock,” he says, standing. “Your car was gone.” He looks thinner than usual—his face pale, smudged by dark hollows. For whatever whacked reason, I find myself thinking of a worn gym sock turned wrong side out.
“It’s good to see you.” I smile, and the smile feels odd on my cheeks, I suppose because I haven’t been smiling much.
I lean in for a hug. Charlie’s arms encircle me, and even in the chilled air, even with his eyes blurred into another hemisphere, I feel warmer than I have for a long time.
“You want to come in?” I ask.
“I was hoping maybe we could go somewhere.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “Where?”
“I don’t know, for a walk or something,” he says.
He looks like he hasn’t eaten for days.
“You want a sandwich before we go? A muffin? My mom’s muffin production has been in overdrive. She’s probably in there baking pumpkinseed muffins as we speak.”
He tries to smile, and his smile looks as clumsy as mine felt. “No, thanks.”
I want to ask him about the trial. If it’s really over. What happened. But the time for all of that will come.
“How are you?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “You know.”
I don’t. But yeah, I can guess.
We walk under the bare limbs of trees. Wood fire from someone’s house scents the air like we’re in a cave, or one of those fancy hiking-gear stores. The fog from earlier has lifted now, and in comparison, the street has an exposed look.
“How about you?” Charlie asks. “Have you been okay? Sorry I couldn’t…”
“No,” I say, “I get it. You needed time. I just wish—”
“What?”
“I wish I could have been there for you.” I take his bare hand in my gloved one. “I wanted to be.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I know you did.”
We pad down street after street. When we come to the railroad tracks down near the river, instead of crossing, Charlie stands on the iron rail, balancing on the balls of his feet. He drops my hand and holds out his arms, like he’s testing the wind, then cranes his neck up. I stop in the gravel between the ties and look up at him, haloed by a stark November sun. His hood falls back and his dark hair flecks with red in the light.
The sight of him—such a raw, beautiful mess—feeds a hunger I didn’t even know I had. He closes his eyes, then opens them and steps down.
“It’s over,” he says. “It’ll never be over. But it’s over.”
“Over?”
“They gave him life,” he says.
Whoa.
And that’s—I don’t know what that is. My eyes open wider and my throat clamps shut. The street behind Charlie goes blurred, too bright, unreal.
I feel, for a second, like I’m hovering an inch over my body, not quite in it.
Here I’ve been reading and thinking and talking—like I had to prepare for some looming moment when The World would ask me where I stood on the death penalty in general and the death of Kyle Paxson in particular. I had to be ready.
But it turns out I’m not ready for this. Because it’s not Kyle’s death that I have to resign myself to. It’s his life.
“Three life sentences,” Charlie says as he crosses the tracks, heading toward Low Water Bridge. “One after the other.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, following Charlie onto the bridge’s curb, which people use as a walkway, though it’s just wide enough for single file.
“It means there’s no fucking justice. That’s what it means.”
“But—”
“It means he’ll live to be an old man in a little cell, safe and sound, while she—while she—” He pounds his fist on his leg as he walks. “That son of a bitch!”
“But three? Why?” I ask. “Do they expect him to live—”
“No. God.” Charlie lets out a frustrated huff. “It just means he’s never getting out.” We’re halfway across the bridge now. He stops short and grips the railing, staring out over the water. Below us, the river rushes on its endless pilgrimage to somewhere else.
&
nbsp; “He’s not getting out,” he says. “But he’s not paying for what he did either. Not really. Not enough.”
I don’t know what to say, so I stand beside him and watch the water’s glassy, urgent flow.
“The things he did to her. You wouldn’t believe. I swear I wish I had a gun. I would have taken care of him myself.”
“Holy shit! Charlie. What are you saying?”
He hurls the words over the bridge, a message in a clouded, cracked bottle. “I should have fucking killed him when I had the chance.”
A Jeep slows as it passes, blasting country music through closed windows, cowboy wailing, bass line thumping.
I search Charlie’s face for some sign that he’s still there. Still the Charlie I know. His eyes are drained—but the glossy trail of a tear snails down his cheek.
I slip off my glove and wipe his cheek dry, then guide his face so he’s looking fully at me.
“Who are you?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, and my hand drifts from his face. “Seriously. Who are you, Charlie?”
What I Mean
If someone slaps you, turn the other cheek.
That’s what I remember from Sunday mornings in the stale basement classroom of the First United Methodist Church. Turn the other cheek. Our Father, who art in heaven. The meek shall inherit the earth.
The meek, who I imagined as a family of meerkats. Our father, a golden-robed Santa Claus. And slapping, which was something I saw two bikini-clad girls on TV do.
It makes about as much sense now as it did in elementary school. If someone slaps you, give them more places to slap? I think you missed a spot.
Kyle’s sentence does feel like turning the other cheek, though. Sort of. I’ve watched enough Netflix to know that prison isn’t a stroll in the daisies. It’s horrible and scary. You’re basically kept in a little metal cage. But what Kyle did was so much more than slapping. When he was done with Jamie, there was no cheek left for her to turn.
So yeah, Charlie’s angry. But his whole I should have killed Kyle myself thing is… well, horrible and scary, too.
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“Don’t tell me what I mean.” He slants his head away, staring back at the water.
“Come on, Charlie.” I put my hand on his shoulder.
He shakes my hand off. “Go! Just go.” He turns his back and walks away.
I stand, stunned, as he slouches across the other half of the bridge and down the sidewalk, farther and farther, turning from a boy into a blurred gray silhouette.
After a minute, my hand begins to sting with the cold, and I slip my glove back on.
Then I follow him. Because I know he’s hurting. Because I’m afraid of what may happen if he’s alone. Because, God help me, there’s a pit in my stomach, a dense swirl of wanting, that vibrates with his voice, even when that voice says go.
When I catch up to him, he’s halfway down the second block, passing little frame houses that look like they were painted with a kindergartner’s watercolor set—yellow, then green, then yellow, more yellow, then pink, purple, blue.
“Charlie,” I say, and when he doesn’t respond, “CHARLIE!” Like shouting his name in the middle of the sidewalk will make him remember who I am.
A woman unloading grocery bags from her carport across the street shuts her hatchback and yells, “You okay, hon?”
I’m not sure if she’s talking to Charlie or me, but I answer, “Sorry! Yeah, we’re fine!” I smile and wave to show, Look, normal, see!
“All right, then! Y’all be good!” She waves us on. “Enjoy your Turkey Day tomorrow!”
“You, too!” I answer, my voice falsely bright.
Charlie pauses, waits for me to catch up. Not necessarily because he wants to, but what else are you supposed to do after a middle-aged woman yells at you in the street?
As soon as I’m beside him, he takes off again, and this time I keep up. We walk fast—arms and legs pumping, like we’re in training for some sort of Angry Pairs Power Walk 5K. And then out of nowhere, he pulls to a full stop at the curb in front of an old fire station. “Look,” he thunders, “I don’t even know where we’re going!”
“Okay,” I say softly, wondering what I’m agreeing to—that we’re walking aimlessly or that he and I are through?
“Okay?” he asks.
Since he’s standing there in front of me, a stationary target, I take him by the wrist. I slip my gloved hands down to cover his bare ones, trying to warm him. “This is so messed up. I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through, Charlie. Hearing all that stuff. It makes me sick. It is sick. But what you said about Kyle. You can’t for real—I mean, what?”
Charlie lets out an exaggerated breath. “He just soaked it all in, like this is what he’s been waiting for, to get attention, all eyes finally on him. And they sit there in their suits, looking at pictures of Jamie’s body, mangled and—God! They hear what he did, and then it’s like—it’s like, don’t you think we should have a say in what happens? The people who knew her and loved her, shouldn’t we get to decide?”
He takes his hand out of mine and points to his own chest. “I knew her. I loved her. I—”
Then his face clenches like a fist and he’s sobbing, crumpling into my shoulder, and I’m hugging him fiercely. “I know,” I say, “I know,” but all I know is that I need him to get through this. Tears stream down my own face, brash and cold. I need him. I need him like my own worthless lungs.
Thanksgiving
“Well, I, for one,” Mom says, “am going to sit here sipping my sweet tea until I fall over in a sugar coma.”
“Good plan!” my dad agrees, rising from the table to clear our dirty dishes, still laden with half-eaten food. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know if you need me to dial nine-one-one.”
“You guys are weirdos,” I say, and with his free hand, my dad ruffles my head as he passes behind me on the way out of the dining room.
“Remember,” Mom says, “we weirdos made you, so keep that in mind.”
“First, yuck. And second, I need a nap.” I rub my full belly like an old man.
When I start to rise from the table, though, my mother touches my arm, pulling me back. “Hold up,” she says. “I want to talk with you.”
“We’ve been talking,” I say, sitting back down. For the past forty minutes, we’ve talked nonstop about just about every ingredient of every dish my parents cooked. The dill in her green beans, the horseradish in his mashed potatoes, how moist the butter rub made the turkey. (And can I take a moment here to express how gross I find the word moist—especially when my mom says it?)
“True, but I want to—well, you heard about the sentencing?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, keeping my voice I’m okay you’re okay neutral.
“So, how do you”—and here my mom has the good grace to look at her crumpled napkin instead of giving me one of her soul-searing stares—“feel about that?”
“Ugh,” I grumble. “It’s Thanksgiving. Could we not?”
“I want to know. How are you?”
“Good. Fine. I’m great,” I say.
And now she goes ahead and does the soul-thing with the eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” I say.
“It’s just you’ve seemed a little off these past few days.”
And this is a surprise? “I’m fine,” I say. “It’s been, you know, whatever.”
I sit there in her laser-vision for a half minute more. “So can I go?”
“Yes, go,” she says, then calls after me as I break for my room, “but I’m here if you feel like talking.”
“Thanks.”
And yeah, I guess that is something I should be thankful for. My parent’s Code Orange. Better than them not caring at all.
We used to do that when I was younger—go around the table on Thanksgiving and give our list of thank-you’s. As a kid, that pretty much meant Mom; Dad; Juniper, my baby doll; food; grandparents; my latest library book; going
to the park; and pie.
I stretch out on my bed, feeling full and sleepy, and wonder what would be on my list today.
I’d keep Mom and Dad, and, despite the fact I hardly see them due to living several states away, my grandparents. Pie still ranks up there, of course. And some obvious additions:
Lindsey.
Charlie.
The fact that I’m alive. Even when life is, to misquote Hamlet, a quintessence of crap.
The grace to forgive myself for being alive in the first place.
Open
Clack!
Clatter! Clack!
Reluctantly, I open my eyes, still half fogged by my turkey-induced snooze-fest. What—
Clack!
Definitely not a normal room-sound. I roll over and check my phone for the time. 1:38 AM. And five messages. All in the last ten minutes, all from Charlie.
Hey
U ok
Can we talk
Am outside
U there
Clack!
The clack, I realize, is something hitting my window. I haul myself out of bed and peer into the darkness of the backyard. There’s only a slice of moon and the neighbor’s deck light to see by. I squint. On the lawn, a rectangular glow lurches back and forth like a buoy.
Are you in my yard?
The glow stops waving.
Yea
Coming. Wait a min.
Barefoot, in fuzzy pajamas, I sneak down the steps. Crossing the house, I’m careful to be quiet. As I creak open the mudroom door, I can make out the figure of Charlie about ten feet away beside a hydrangea bush.
“Hey,” I call in a hushed voice.
He pockets his phone and jogs over. “Hey.” At the doorway, he pats my hair, tangled and frizzy from sleep. “You’re sooooo pretty.”
“Wow,” I say. “Thanks?”
Nestling his face in my neck, he sniffs. “Your hair smells like flowers.”
How She Died, How I Lived Page 23