Miracle Creek(24)
When she reached Henry, she crouched behind him. Although she couldn’t see them, she could feel the adults’ stares, coming from all directions and converging on her back like sunlight through a magnifying glass, the heat rising up to her cheeks and ears, making her eyes water. She steadied her hands, placed them on Henry’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Henry,” she said as gently as she could manage. “Let’s stop.”
He seemed not to hear her, not to feel her hand. He kept rocking. Back and forth. Same rhythm. Same pace. Like a malfunctioning machine stuck in one mode.
She wanted to scream in his ear, to grab and shake him hard and fast and break him out of the world he was trapped in, make him look at her. Her face felt hot. Her fingers tingled.
“Henry, you need to stop. Right. Now,” she said in a whispered yell, then moved to shield her hand from everyone’s view and squeezed his shoulders. Hard. He paused, but only for a micro-beat, and when he resumed rocking, she squeezed harder, forcing the soft flesh between his neck and shoulder into a thin strip and pinching, harder and harder, wanting, needing it to hurt, for him to scream or hit her or run away, something to indicate that he was alive, in the same world as hers.
The shame and fear would come later, over and over in waves that choked her. When she saw the moms whispering as they left, making her wonder if they’d seen. At bathtime, when she took off Henry’s shirt and saw the crescent-shaped break in his skin, the splotch of red under the surface. When she tucked him in and kissed his head, praying she hadn’t harmed his psyche irreparably.
But before all that, in that moment, as Elizabeth pressed her fingers together, all she felt was a release. Not the sudden release of slamming a door or hurling a plate, but a slow, gradual dissipation of her fury, giving way to pleasure, the sensuous delight of squeezing something soft, like kneading dough. When Henry finally stopped rocking and twisted away, his mouth scrunched in pain, his eyes looking directly into hers—the first deep, sustained eye contact he’d made with her in weeks, maybe months—she felt power coursing through her and exploding into elation, her pain and hatred shattered into tiny shards she could no longer feel.
* * *
THE COURTHOUSE PARKING LOT was almost empty, which wasn’t surprising given that court had adjourned hours ago. Since then, her lawyer had kept her waiting in a side room, citing “urgent business” (probably hiding away her murderess-client until everyone was gone). Not that it mattered; it wasn’t like she had places to be or things to do. The terms of her house arrest allowed her to go only to the courthouse or Shannon’s offices, to be driven only by Shannon.
Shannon’s car, a black Mercedes, had been sitting in the sun all day, and when Shannon started the car, the fan blasted out on maximum and struck Elizabeth’s right jawline. The air was torch hot, the AC not having had time to cool. Elizabeth touched her jaw and remembered Matt’s testimony, the eruption of fire hitting Henry in that exact spot. The pictures, the skin and muscle from Henry’s right jaw scorched away. She opened her mouth and threw up onto her lap.
“Oh, shit.” Elizabeth opened the car door and stumbled out, getting vomit all over the leather seat, door, floor, everything. “Oh God, I’m making a mess. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, half sitting, half falling down onto the concrete. She tried to say she was fine, just needed water, but Shannon fussed over her, doing mother-y/doctor-y things—pulse-checking, forehead-feeling—before leaving, saying she’d be right back. After a while—two minutes? ten?—Elizabeth saw security cameras pointed her way, and she pictured herself, sprawled on the ground in her suit and heels, covered in vomit, and she started laughing. Violently. Hysterically. By the time Shannon returned with paper towels, Elizabeth realized she was crying, which was surprising; she didn’t remember transitioning from one to the other. Shannon, bless her, said nothing, just cleaned up methodically while Elizabeth sat, laughing and crying alternately, sometimes together.
On the drive back, as Elizabeth sat in the empty state of hypercalmness that follows a violent purge, Shannon said, “Where was all that emotion earlier today?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer. Just shrugged slightly and looked out at the cows—must’ve been twenty—crowding around a skinny lone tree in a field.
“You do realize the entire jury thinks you don’t give a damn what happened to your son, right? They’d love to send you to death row right now. Is that what you were going for there?”
Elizabeth wondered if the mostly white cows with black spots—Jersey cows? Holsteins?—were cooler than the dark brown ones. “I was just doing what you wanted,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t let them get to you, you said. Calm and collected.”
“I meant, don’t act crazy. Don’t yell or throw shit. I didn’t mean become a robot. I’ve never seen anyone so stoic, and definitely not through evidence about their own child’s death. It was downright creepy. It’s okay to show people you’re hurting.”
“Why? What difference would that make? You’ve seen the evidence. I don’t stand a chance.”
Shannon looked at Elizabeth, bit her lip, and swerved off the road and slammed on the brakes. “If you think that, why are we doing this? I mean, why hire me and plead not guilty and put on a defense at all?”
Elizabeth looked down. The truth was, it all stemmed from the research she’d started the day after Henry’s funeral. There were so many methods—hanging, drowning, carbon-monoxide inhaling, wrist-slitting, and on and on. She’d made a pro/con list and was wavering between sleeping pills (pro: painless; con: death uncertain—discovery/resuscitation risk) and gun (pro: death certain; con: waiting period to buy?) when the police cleared the protesters and arrested her. When the prosecutor announced he’d be seeking the death penalty, that’s when she realized: going through the trial would be the best atonement for her sin—the irrevocable, unforgivable action she took that day during one moment of anger and hatred, the moment that played over and over in her mind, morning and night, awake and asleep, and tore away at her sanity. To publicly and officially be blamed for Henry’s death, to be forced to sit through the details of his suffering, then to be killed by poisons injected directly into her blood. The exquisite torture of it all—wouldn’t that be better than some easy, blink-and-it’s-over death?