Notes on an Execution(45)

Lavender still missed men, sometimes. The gruff of them. Their unruliness. Occasionally, Juniper allowed a man to stay for a while, a brother or a son or a husband, as long as it was clear the mountain still belonged to women. During these periods, the energy shifted, tensed. Lavender thought sometimes about that question—so what’s your deal, exactly?—and she loved Gentle Valley for the fact that here, it didn’t matter.

On that day twenty-three years ago, Lavender had stepped off the whining bus and onto the gravel road that led into the valley. When she saw the Sequoia building for the first time, glistening statuesque with its solar-paneled roof, Lavender burned with weariness, and awe at the natural perfection of the place. The trees, gigantic and swaying, like soldier guardians. The smell, like fresh grass and wildflowers. In one hand, she clutched the small duffel of her belongings, and in the other, she clutched her stomach. Her body had never gelled back into its own shape—it wrinkled and folded in ways that reminded her constantly of where she’d been. What she’d left behind. Lavender grabbed a fistful of skin from her belly, clutching the flesh, proof of a past life, as she walked into the dust.

*

Now, Lavender buckled herself into the front seat of the van. The women from therapy were lined up at the edge of the valley path—one by one, they approached, whispering lines of poetry through the open window. Rilke from Lemon, Yeats from Brooke, and some Joni Mitchell lyrics from Pony. Faced with the prospect of the outside world, Lavender considered how strange they looked, lined up in their homemade clothing, hair shorn identically to reveal sturdy, stubbled scalps (Juniper encouraged them to embrace the unfeminine). When it was Sunshine’s turn, she uncurled Lavender’s fingers to place a figurine in the center: the lucky Buddha that sat on Sunshine’s nightstand.

The day was bright, crisp, cloudless. A perfect California autumn. As Harmony maneuvered the van down the long dirt road, Lavender examined the translucent jade Buddha. It looked graceless in her palm, hokey and small. She tucked the figurine into the pocket of her shirt, then took a quavering breath as she traced the edges of the manila folder.

She did not need to open it. She’d memorized most of the pages. They were comforting, in the van’s distinct claustrophobia—reports Lavender knew by heart, phone numbers she’d copied mindlessly, printed emails she’d labored over in the back office of the Sequoia building. It all culminated now in a nauseous sense of understanding, as Lavender fiddled with the folder in her lap: she had lost control. She didn’t want this. She had let the women’s kindness obscure everything, and now she was careening into her own nightmare.

Still, there was the name. Once she heard that name, Lavender knew she would never forget it.

Ellis Harrison.

*

What’s the worst that could happen? Harmony had asked, as she convinced Lavender to hire the private investigator. What’s the worst thing you could find?

Lavender liked to imagine that her children were happy. That her boys had found their own ways to exist in the world, that they were soft and satisfied. This was as far as she would go. This was the reason she’d swaddled herself so forcefully in the isolation of Gentle Valley—here, she did not have to look. She did not have to wonder about the long tentacles of a choice she’d made when she was a different person, practically still a child. She did not have to see how the arms of that choice had reached into the world, the infinite number of realities they might have sculpted.

*

The private investigator found Baby Packer first.

It was easy, from the records. He had been adopted back in 1977, after only a few days in the hospital. A two-month-old baby with a case of malnutrition. When Lavender closed her eyes, she could still remember how he had looked, that last day on the farmhouse floor, his infant limbs squirming spastic.

Cheryl and Denny Harrison had filled out the proper paperwork, still available in the state records. They had given Baby Packer a starchy new name. Ellis. According to the investigator, Ellis Harrison no longer lived in New York City, but he’d grown up there. When Lavender tried to picture that skinny infant as a twenty-four-year-old man, her heart beat so slowly, so exaggeratedly, she wondered if it had liquified.

What about Ansel? Lavender had asked, tentative.

Ansel would be twenty-nine years old now. According to the investigator, he lived in a small town in Vermont—he had studied philosophy in college and now worked at a furniture store. At this, Lavender beamed with pride. College. Of course. He’d been such a smart little boy. Harmony had printed Ansel’s address on a folded sheet of paper, which Lavender had purposefully let slip through the dusty crack behind her dresser.

The women had spent the following weeks in therapy discussing Lavender’s options. Harmony urged Lavender to write Ansel a letter—wasn’t she always writing letters in her head? But even the remote prospect felt impossible. The thought of meeting her children again made Lavender so queasy, they often had to end their sessions early so she could lie down.

Ansel, especially. Ansel would remember.

Eventually, they settled on a compromise. She would start with the furthest point of contact, a level of interaction distant enough that Lavender could gather some information without crushing herself entirely.

Dear Lavender, Cheryl Harrison had written, in response to the letter she and Harmony had crafted. I’m glad you reached out. I have a photography show opening in San Francisco next month—would you like to meet then? I don’t know what you’re hoping for, and I’m not sure I can help, but I’m happy to talk. If you want to come to the gallery, my assistant can arrange it. With warmth, Cheryl.