Notes on an Execution(25)

Hazel understood it, then. A glimmer of the intrigue that had sucked Jenny in and was slowly stealing her away. Hazel herself was breathless, all stuttering adrenaline and stunned curiosity. Tragedy had a texture. A knot, begging to be unraveled. The things Hazel wanted were unspeakable, intangible, too blurry to touch—the things she wanted already belonged to her sister.

*

The bathroom was a cool black cave. Hazel stumbled in, her crutches clattering to the floor. She did not bother to turn on the lights—she did not want to see the beige paint, the crooked landscape on the wall, the little bowl of seashells her mother dusted every week. She hunched over the toilet and stuck her face right into the bowl, inches from the putrid water. Hazel gagged as the sound of clinking forks and polite voices came muffled through the door.

She hated Jenny. Actual hatred, stinging and aware. Hazel vomited, wishing she could expel everything from her body, all the grief and terror of such a bitter, selfish thing. But she knew it would linger regardless, dissipating until it transformed back into the boundless love she had always known. The love between sisters was not the sort of thing she’d read about in books or swooned over in movies. It embodied a category all in itself, a quiet knowing that swam in her veins, even when Jenny was miles away. Sister love was like food, or air, or memory itself. It was molecular. The very stuff of her. But it was not a love she chose, and for this, Hazel would always resent the part of herself that feared—maybe hoped—that she would never love anyone quite the way she loved Jenny.

*

A knock on the door.

Hazel lay flat on her twin bed, her Discman playing an old Springsteen CD she’d found at the record store downtown.

In the dim glow from the hall, Jenny was a shadow. She wore a pair of pajama pants and a faded, oversized T-shirt she’d left behind. Hazel was very familiar with this shirt. When she bored of her own clothes, she’d sometimes limp over to Jenny’s dresser and rifle through the drawers, slipping Jenny’s forgotten Nirvana concert tee over her own skinny ribs, wriggling her hips into the outdated jeans Jenny hadn’t loved enough to take to school.

Now, Jenny climbed onto Hazel’s bed, hugging her legs to her chest. Hazel pulled off her foamy headphones. Across the room, Jenny’s mattress sat naked—their mother had stripped the bed, though she’d left Jenny’s posters lined up along the wall.

“Are you feeling better?” Jenny asked, in the soft lamplight. “Mom wanted me to check.”

“I’m fine,” Hazel said, though the words came out serrated.

“You’re mad,” Jenny said.

“I’m not mad,” Hazel told her, and this was true. She was tired. Lost and withering. Hazel almost wished she were angry—that would be easier than this wide and lonely nothing.

“I saw,” Jenny said. “I saw how you looked at me at dinner.”

“Oh, you noticed? You haven’t looked me in the eye since you came home.”

A long, tense pause.

“I’m sorry about your knee, Hazel,” Jenny said finally.

The admission felt impossibly small. This was the first time Jenny had addressed the accident. Hazel understood, with a shock of clarity, why Jenny had been ignoring her knee. It was not because Jenny didn’t care. No, Jenny knew exactly what Hazel’s knee meant—what her failure meant—for both of them. It was easier not to look.

“Hard things will change you,” Jenny said. “Ansel taught me that. I don’t know real struggle, and neither do you.”

Hazel was about to protest, to defend her own suffering, but Jenny continued.

“We’ve had everything handed to us, Hazel. This boring little house, three bedrooms, cream carpet. We have parents who love us.”

Jenny paused, bit her lip.

“Ansel is different. He lived in four separate foster homes. And his little brother, the one he mentioned at dinner? I’ve never heard him say it aloud, before tonight. That his brother died. Ansel has never told me the story, but he screams in his sleep. The baby, he says. The baby.”

Jenny had always seemed older than Hazel—as kids, she reminded Hazel constantly of those three minutes. Sitting now in her childhood bed, a stuffed giraffe squashed beneath Hazel’s thigh, the disparity felt stark. Drastic.

“Ansel is not like everyone else,” Jenny said. “He doesn’t feel things like other people. Sometimes I wonder if he feels anything at all.”

“If he doesn’t feel anything at all,” Hazel asked slowly, “then how do you know he loves you?”

Jenny only shrugged.

“I guess I don’t,” she said.

The differences between them were loud, nearly deafening. Jenny, with her whiskey breath and smudged eyeliner, had been touched by someone else, shaped and formed by him. She was no longer the other half of Hazel’s whole—instead, her own throbbing and vibrant thing. Come back, Hazel wanted to beg, though she knew it was fruitless. She was no longer the closest thing to her sister. They were no longer an us, but rather two separate people, growing at two separate paces, one awake and blazing, the other formless and grasping.

When Jenny stood, the imprint of the wall had mussed her hair. It stuck out straight in a static puff. She stopped at the door, melting back into silhouette.

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. “About your knee. I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”