Notes on an Execution(10)

Johnny stayed away until noon. Twigs in his hair. He’d slept in the forest. The look on his face made him so much smaller, like a completely different Johnny, slumped and ashamed. His entire body was a beg, curled desperate for forgiveness.

Lavender could not fathom forgiveness. But she would do this one thing—for the blue sunrise, that tantalizing beyond. For the world outside, which she was starting to fear her children would never see.

“Please,” Lavender said. She bared her teeth so Johnny could see the chip he’d left in her canine. “Take me for a drive.”

*

Lavender put on real clothes for the first time in months. She combed her hair, splashed water on her puffy cheeks, and tied a sweater around her waist, the soft wool knit she’d spent all winter making.

“Are we going to the barn?” Ansel asked, as Lavender slipped on her nicest shoes, penny loafers, untouched since her school days. Johnny was already waiting in the car. It had taken surprisingly little to convince him: a pointed gaze at the marks up her thighs, plus the reassurance that the boys would be fine for an hour or two. Lavender did not have a plan. But she could not see a way forward that was not also out.

“Daddy and I are going on a trip,” Lavender said. “We’ll be back soon.”

Ansel stretched his arms out from the floor, and she picked him up. He was getting too big to sit on her hip, but the weight was familiar, like she’d been carrying it a long time. The bump on his head bulged like a fist, and Lavender resisted the urge to touch it. She kissed the hair around it, then squatted over the baby. Wrapped in one of Johnny’s jackets by the fireplace, Baby Packer squirmed and babbled; they’d been playing with a set of old spoons, and his spastic palms were stained black from the polish. Lavender pressed her nose to the baby’s scalp, breathing in his sweet, tangy musk.

“Ansel,” Lavender said, pressing both her hands to his cheeks. “Can I trust you to take care of your brother?”

Ansel nodded.

“If he cries, where do we take him?”

“To the rocking chair.”

“Good,” Lavender said. Choking now. “Smart boy.”

It was time. Lavender’s decisions did not feel like decisions—more like flakes of ash, settled on her shoulders. The moment was not hers to judge. She could hear the grumble of the truck’s engine at the edge of the field, Johnny’s looming presence, constant and menacing.

Lavender could not bear even one more glance. Somewhere deep and full of denial, Lavender knew the last time she saw her children had already passed—she could not withstand their questioning eyes, their rosebud mouths, the little fingernails she’d grown from nothing. So she didn’t look. With her back turned, Lavender stepped into the day.

“Be good,” she said, and she shut the door.

*

Lavender had not left the farmhouse property in over five years. At first, the isolation had been a gift, the wilderness like an antidote to the chemical misery of her mother’s trailer—Lavender couldn’t pinpoint the turn, the moment the farmhouse had become her captor.

Now, the universe was unfolding through the windshield, both familiar and alien, gas stations bustling with energy, fast-food restaurants puffing the delirious scent of beef. With one arm stuck out the window, the wind chopping and whirling in her ears, Lavender almost forgot the wreck of her life. She had to count on her fingers to remember that she was twenty-one years old—her friends from school would have jobs by now, husbands, children. Lavender realized she did not know who the current president was; she had completely missed the election of ’76. Speeding at ten over the limit, Lavender was hungry. But also, she was free. She was away from her children, and it felt intoxicating; she was light-headed, giddy.

“South,” Lavender said, when Johnny asked where she wanted to go. Shame radiated off him, and he drove in silence. The steering wheel seemed so trivial, miniature in Johnny’s hands—they were going at least eighty miles an hour. She could have done it, veered them into oncoming traffic, or fast into the ditch on the side of the highway. Vaguely, this had been the idea. But the air smelled so fresh, the radio was humming, and it was a surprise when Lavender realized that she did not want to die.

They stopped for gas outside Albany, two hours from home and halfway down New York State. Lavender smiled as Johnny pulled the truck into the station, picturing the hundreds of miles between him and her boys.

“What’s so funny?” Johnny said, still sheepish.

“Nothing,” Lavender told him. “Bathroom.”

As Johnny clicked the door open, she studied the hair that trailed up the back of his neck. The knot of his spine, the breadth of his shoulders, the divot of tenderness between his ear and his skull. The difference, she thought, was as small as that. A patch of vulnerable skin. She wished that patch was the entirety of Johnny—it would have been so much easier, if he had just been good.

Lavender swiped quarters from the dashboard as Johnny pumped the gas. She walked toward the store, her heart jumping to a pattering beat. When the bell on the convenience store door dinged her entrance, Lavender realized that this was the most alone she’d been since she was sixteen years old.

The cashier, an older woman, eyed Lavender suspiciously. Rows of snack food lined the walls in bright colors. In the very back of the store, between the soda fountain and a freezer of ice cream, there was a pay phone.