Notes on an Execution(15)

*

The yard behind Miss Gemma’s was a wide slope, an acre of rolling field that led down to a creek. After breakfast, Saffy spread her scratchy pink blanket on the dewy grass; she’d inherited the blanket from a now-grown girl named Carol, who had been born with only one arm. Miss Gemma’s patch of land near the Adirondack mountain range was rich in the summer, a wet, ecstatic green, and Saffy sat with her gangly legs stretched out, her notes sprawled in her lap. She picked an aphid off her favorite polka-dot leggings and squinted down at the page.

Saffy was solving a mystery.

It had started with the mouse. Headless. Just a tiny pink body splayed on the kitchen floor. Lila had been the one to find it, and she’d screamed until everyone had come running—Saffy and Kristen had helped her bury it in the yard. They’d worn black and recited somber poems while Lila sobbed.

Then, there was the squirrel. Shoved beneath a bush near the driveway. Saffy caught Miss Gemma carrying it to the garbage with a shovel, her face scrunched in disgust. Coyotes, she said, as she deposited the pile of bones in the dumpster. A second squirrel, left in the same spot. Miss Gemma made one of the older boys clean it up, while she watched in her bathrobe from the lawn. Didn’t I tell you to stay inside? Miss Gemma barked at Saffy, when she poked her head out the sliding back door, curious.

Saffy knew a mystery when she saw it. She’d been reading the Nancy Drew books, one by one. She’d since spent every day outside, scouring the edges of the property, looking for clues. She did not know what exactly to look for, but she desperately wanted to be the one to solve the crime. So far, she’d scrawled down the dates of the murders. Described how the bodies had looked. (Horrific!) She wished she had a George or a Bess, someone to help her with her theories, but Kristen and Lila would rather gossip about Susan Dey’s haircut, lying upside down with their torsos hanging off Kristen’s top bunk.

She hoped maybe Ansel would help.

Ansel had spent his summer wandering along the marshy creek at the edge of Miss Gemma’s property. Saffy liked to watch from her blanket as he traversed the perimeter of the field, taking notes in the big yellow pad he kept tucked beneath his arm. She’d seen the books he took out from the library’s adult section, encyclopedias and biology textbooks. She’d heard Ansel was so smart, he skipped the first grade. She hoped that by watching, she could memorize his every motion: the slope of his shoulders as he picked through the cattails, ballpoint pen tucked behind his ear. Saffy wondered if she could see the facts on him, written in the tragic swoop of his neck.

She’d heard the story.

Everyone had.

Lila had whispered it excitedly one of the first nights after Saffy arrived at Miss Gemma’s, bouncing with the glorious drama. One of the older boys had stolen all the files from Miss Gemma’s den, and the details had spread around the house, changing shape as they expanded. Ansel had been abandoned by his parents at four years old, Lila said. They had lived on a farm, or maybe a ranch. When the police found Ansel, he was nearly starved. But the worst part—Lila’s eyes had bugged during the retelling, like this was the worst part but also maybe the best—there had been a baby. Only two months old. By the time the police arrived, Ansel had been trying to feed the baby for a whole day. But it was too late.

The baby had died.

Saffy would never forget the image. A real baby, no bigger than a doll. She’d since heard a half dozen other versions: the baby had been sent to a different foster home, Ansel had killed the baby on purpose, the baby had never existed at all. But that first image stayed with her, grounded itself as truth. A tiny, lolling neck. Saffy had never seen a dead person, not even her mother, and certainly not an infant.

She watched Ansel pick through the brambles, so studious and intent, and she thought how sad it was that a single bad thing could turn you into a story, a matter to be whispered about. Tragedy was undiscerning and totally unfair. Saffy certainly understood that.

*

That night, Saffy watched him all through dinner. Thirty-second intervals, so no one could accuse her of staring. If Ansel winked again, Saffy missed it, her gaze trained on her mashed potatoes as she counted down from twenty-nine.

When everyone gathered around the television for the eight o’clock episode of Family Ties, Saffy stole down to the basement. Her chest was heavy with disappointment, and the basement felt like the right place to be, all concrete and spiders and randomly strewn carpet squares. Miss Gemma kept a dusty record player down there, along with a cardboard box of albums. Saffy liked to sift through them, to study the photographs on the covers. Joni Mitchell had such an inviting gaze—Saffy had practiced that expression in the mirror, but it never looked the same.

“Hey.”

It was Ansel.

He stood at the base of the stairs, half in shadow. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his corduroys, shoulders hunched self-conscious.

“Can I take a look?” he asked.

Then Ansel was beside her, flipping through the box. Saffy studied his fingers as they flitted past ABBA, Elton John, Simon and Garfunkel. Ansel’s hands were too big for his body, the hands of a boy much older than eleven, like a puppy not yet grown into its paws.

“Have you heard this one?” Ansel asked, pulling a record from the stack. Nina Simone. Saffy let out a stupid, embarrassing squeak and shook her head no.

“Let’s sit,” Ansel said, gesturing to a clump of carpet squares on the floor. When he smiled, Saffy shivered. Once, Ansel had aimed this exact smile at Miss Gemma, who had blushed scarlet and pulled her bathrobe tighter—the girls made fun of Miss Gemma for days afterward.