Notes on an Execution(53)
*
The change had happened slowly, almost imperceptibly. Hazel could trace the start of it back to Jenny’s wedding day.
Their parents had rented a tent on a golf course, with a partially obscured view of Lake Champlain. There were only thirty guests, mostly aunts, cousins, and Jenny’s high school friends. Hazel had only been dating Luis a few months by then, and it was the sort of new and giggling love that could be fractured by the politics of an event like this. She had not invited him. Standing behind Jenny as she pinned up loose tendrils of hair, Hazel ached for Luis’s presence—Luis was the kind of man who could not handle sad movies, or scary ones either. He cooked his mother’s tamale recipe on Sunday nights, kneading the dough with his knuckles.
Luis was the only person Hazel had told about Jenny’s secret.
Ansel hadn’t graduated from college. He didn’t show up for any of his finals, that last semester—Jenny mentioned a fellowship he didn’t get, a professor who had written a bad recommendation. He’s too smart for them, she told Hazel, Ansel’s voice layered beneath the words. Jenny lied at the graduation ceremony, told their parents the philosophy program did something separate, while Ansel sulked in his dorm room. Ansel had worked at a furniture store ever since, where he polished handmade chairs and artisan tables and delivered them to wealthy families across Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. He was writing a book, Jenny said proudly. That part was true. Hazel had seen the pages, stacked on a makeshift desk in the garage when she’d gone to visit. She found it difficult to picture him sitting there, committing his thoughts to paper—it seemed more like a show than a genuine endeavor, a way for Ansel to remind himself of his own middling intellectualism. And there were other things she’d noticed, in that small rental house. The recycling bin, filled with empty wine bottles, a cheap chardonnay Ansel would never touch.
In the bridal tent before the wedding, Hazel tried to talk to Jenny. But she had waited too long. Jenny’s breath was sour with champagne, her eyes glassy as Hazel handed over a tube of lipstick.
Hey, Hazel had said. Are you sure this is what you want?
Don’t be stupid, Jenny had answered. She cupped a condescending hand to Hazel’s cheek, that purple ring glinting from her finger. I know what I’m doing.
At the reception, Ansel was perfectly charming. He complimented her aunt’s jewelry, joked with her dad as they cut the cake. But Hazel caught him so many times that night, looking dead-eyed over Jenny’s shoulder. His smile melted instantaneously off his face the second he did not need it—he held Jenny with a rigid back and a shallow happiness, impermanent as wet paint. After the ceremony, Hazel escaped to the bathroom, where she stared herself down in the mirror. She remembered that night on her twin bed, the question she had posed to Jenny. If he doesn’t feel anything at all, then how do you know he loves you? In her ugly silk bridesmaid dress, Hazel pressed a finger to the mole beneath her eye. With a jolt of surprise, she felt thankful for it. One day, she would wear a white dress, too. She would stand across from a very different man, a good man who felt everything in vivid color—and she would know exactly how he loved her. For the first time, Hazel felt bigger than her sister. The feeling was so sick, so addictive, she knew she could never let it go.
*
Hazel parked behind the studio, in the spot reserved by the dumpsters. Luis had come home early to take the kids—he’d been working the Arts and Entertainment desk the last few weeks, and the news was slower, his schedule easier. Hazel had left a box of mac and cheese on the counter, which Luis would let them eat with ketchup squirted over it.
Through the sheer studio curtains, the Level 4s marked a jump sequence across the floor, a wave of forest green leotards. Hazel kept her head down as she pushed through the horde of parents in the lobby, chattering and sewing ribbons as they waited. At the reception desk, Sara bent over a pile of paperwork. When the students didn’t pass their quarterly assessments, when the costume fees came in and the cast lists were posted, Sara took the shiny-haired complaints, the weightless threats. I swear we will pull her from this studio, a glossy mother would say, and Sara would serve her easy, blameless smile. As if to say: Go right ahead.
“I need a favor,” Hazel said. “It’s an emergency.”
“Your sister?” Sara squinted up. “Did she finally leave the psychopath?”
A wince, at the word. It felt suddenly like something private. Jenny’s darkest heart, not a thing to be gossiped about.
“She got the nursing job in Texas. She has a flight on Wednesday,” Hazel said. “Can you hold down the fort until then? Log your overtime, of course.”
Always, the studio was busy. But at a certain point—once classes were scheduled, tuition bills paid, directors hired for the seasonal showcases—the studio moved like choreography. Hazel’s anxiety was something more. She’d miss her Tuesday night. Tuesdays, Luis did baths and bedtime. Tuesdays, Hazel sent Sara home early and locked the front door. Alone, she queued up her favorite Bach CD, reveling in the high studio ceilings as she led herself through a barre warm-up. She let her body say the rest. She stretched, she leapt. She hurled herself against the floor. For that hour every Tuesday, Hazel did not have children, or medical bills, or debt from the business degree she probably didn’t need, no tummy-aches or broccoli on the floor or screaming for dessert. She only had her joints, rapt and unbetraying. Her muscles, exalted.