Notes on an Execution(22)

Now, the mole beneath Hazel’s left eye felt the same as it always had, a raised and fleshy bump shaped vaguely like a teardrop. People loved to point it out. Hazel, they would say, tapping their own cheeks, distinguishing her, like Hazel needed a reminder of her own imperfection.

*

There Jenny was, at the bottom of the stairs. When Hazel looked up from the complicated math of her crutches, Jenny was grinning, soft and expectant, those same sister eyes, that same sister mouth, Jenny’s whole sister self, waiting. She wore a pair of oversized combat boots, an army parka Hazel had never seen before, and a big studded belt like Courtney Love. As Jenny engulfed Hazel in a hug, the hall filled with her smell, hidden beneath something foreign. A new brand of soap, or maybe shampoo, fruity and sugared. Hazel itched for a sneeze.

“It’s so good to be home,” Jenny marveled, as she bent to soothe the dog, Gertie’s fat little paws tugging at her jeans.

She turned to the boy behind her.

Jenny’s new boyfriend was not what Hazel had expected. Hazel had known her sister to drift toward bulky shoulders and taut corded necks, boys who looked like tree trunks. By the end of high school, Jenny and Hazel had split the world evenly: Hazel had ballet, a rotating series of pointe shoes and wrap skirts and intricate rehearsal schedules to be negotiated with the car they shared. In turn, Jenny claimed school. Jenny had the test scores, the report cards, the Honor Society. Hazel could usually find her sister laughing near the trophy cases, Jenny’s body propped naturally against the chest of a hockey player, a linebacker, the statewide shot-put champion. Hazel knew these boys only from the stories Jenny told as she drove Hazel to the studio—she listened intently, both enthralled and repulsed.

The boy standing in the foyer was definitely not an athlete. He was lean and rigid, a pair of oversized glasses resting loose on the bridge of his nose. His pants were slightly too short at the ankle, a few wiry leg hairs curled beneath the cuffs.

“You must be Hazel,” he said. “I’m Ansel.”

When Ansel smiled, the grin spread across his face, like a runny egg cracked open. Of course, Hazel thought—of course Jenny would choose a person like this. A human magnet. Hazel blushed with the attention, conscious of her context in the frame of this moment. Her existence, simplified. She was Jenny’s body double.

“Ansel,” Hazel said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

This was not true, and Hazel regretted saying it. When Ansel stretched out his hand confidently, Hazel gathered the muscles in her abdomen—the entire body revolves around the core. She lifted one sweaty arm from the metal of her crutch and shook.

*

Jenny had not called after that night onstage.

After the three-hour surgery, after the cards and flowers had flooded Hazel’s bedside, after her arms had bulked from pushing the wheelchair down the hospital halls—no word from Jenny. Even after Hazel had been deposited onto her parents’ couch, where she sat for the next six weeks, only dragging herself occasionally upstairs for a shower—nothing. Hazel tried the dorm phone twice, left messages with the perky RA. Jenny did not call her back.

She’s thinking of you, Hazel’s mother said, unconvincing, as she delivered another bowl of soup.

While she wasted away on the couch, Gertie’s jowls slobbering into her lap, Hazel tried to conjure her sister. In the hydrocodone haze, she imagined that Jenny would be at a Friday night party, wearing the denim skirt they’d picked up at the thrift store that summer. On a Wednesday morning, Jenny would be in the dining hall picking the cantaloupe out of a wilting fruit salad or playing Pearl Jam on her Walkman as she ambled to class. Hazel couldn’t picture Jenny’s classes—she’d never been on a real college campus, her schedule already packed with rehearsals when Jenny and their dad drove out for the tour. She imagined tweed jackets, button-up shirts, her sister’s fingers scrunched around a pencil. Those images felt manufactured to Hazel, less like a Summoning and instead a fantasy that likely had nothing to do with Jenny’s reality. The effort only made her angry. Where are you? Hazel would beg, pathetic, her knee pounding like a gavel beneath her skin.

*

Hazel’s father hefted the suitcases up the porch, frigid December air blowing into the house from the frosted cul-de-sac. For a long, tense instant, Hazel faced her sister, who looked undefinably different. As Jenny’s eyes flicked down to Hazel’s knee brace, then back up again, she said nothing—but Hazel saw the glint. There was something satisfied in Jenny’s gaze. Shining and wise. Like Jenny knew what it meant, to be the sister standing.

*

While everyone prepared for dinner, Hazel sat at the table. Usually, she and Jenny would have set the place mats together, bickering over which napkins to use. But Hazel’s crutches leaned against the sliding glass door, exempting her.

Their mother served the chicken as Jenny gestured with an open bottle of wine. Hazel shook her head no. She had never liked the taste of alcohol or the way it made her head swim, and besides, she still had a few painkillers left. Her mother had been counting them out every morning, as she insisted Hazel wean slowly off. You have to be careful, her mother had said. Addiction runs in your blood. Just look at your grandfather. Hazel chewed her chicken tepidly, the half capsule flooding her system, dulling the throb in her knee. Everyone’s teeth had purpled with wine—her mother patted her hair anxiously as she asked Ansel questions about school, which he answered dutifully. He was a philosophy major, he said, aiming for graduate school. I want to be an academic writer. Thought is the purest thing you can leave behind. His voice was soft, lilting, seeping inky into Hazel’s core. His skin was milky pale, the interior of his forearm like a blank sheet of paper. He really was handsome—the kind of handsome that solidified the longer you looked.