Notes on an Execution(70)

*

There was no big event. No life-changing reveal. When you think about the Blue House now, the simplicity brings a sort of devastation: there was only comfort.

There was only you, in the tall grass with Blue. She asked you questions about work, about school, about your favorite food as a child. She told you stories about her father, a man you came to know during those short bright weeks, a series of recounted memories. You could not believe that this girl was a result of the infant on the farmhouse floor, of the tragedy that had dogged you all these years. In her face, you found absolution.

It was easy, at the Blue House. You sat at the bar while Rachel and Blue closed up, telling stories about foster care, about Jenny, about the book you were writing. Your Theory. Blue fixed you a plate of homemade pie—the apple melted sweet on your tongue.

The truth feels stupid, in the shadow of tonight. Heartbreakingly simple. You had not known, until the Blue House, what you were capable of becoming. It was fleeting, ethereal. It was tragically uncomplicated.

At the Blue House, you were free.

*

Now, your last meal arrives.

You sit on the floor with your back resting against the bedframe, holding the tray in your lap: a slippery hunk of pork chop, a lump of mashed potato, a cube of neon green Jell-O. You cut into the meat with the side of your fork—it is the same meat they serve to the low-security prisoners at the rest of the Walls Unit. Nothing special. The infamous Last Meal is no longer a thing, banished years ago when requests got too outlandish and a new warden took charge. The meat splits easily. You stab a chunk, bring it to your mouth. It tastes rubbery, salty, unreal—you swallow, imagining how it will travel down your throat then into your intestines, how it will dissolve slowly along with the photograph. Whatever you eat now will not have the time to pass through you. It will decompose along with your skin and your internal organs, in a cheap cedar box paid for by the state, four and a half feet below the ground in an unmarked plot at the graveyard down the road.

You heave. That was it, you realize. It’s already over.

You missed your own last bite.

*

The chaplain returns. He sits outside your cell, his chair flipped backward, like a teacher trying to be cool. He holds a leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible, and his thumb circles the cover in repetitive strokes.

I can pass a message along to Blue, the chaplain says. Is there anything you’d like to say?

You have nothing more to tell her. Blue has seen it already—the stickiest proof of your own humanity. Your Theory, compounded. There exists inside you a galaxy of possibility, a universe of promise.

How can they do it? you ask.

The chaplain grimaces, sheepish.

How can they go through with this, Chaplain?

I don’t know.

That girl out there, you say. Blue. She is living proof. I can be normal. I can be good.

Of course you can be good, the chaplain says. Everyone can be good. That’s not the question.

The chaplain looks unbearably paunchy. Fleshy, weak. You want to reach through the bars, take fistfuls of his potato face in your hands. There are practiced ways you could still gain control: You could embarrass him. You could outwit him. You could hurl yourself against the bars, intimidate him with pure physical force. But these options require too much inertia. You have forty-four minutes left, and the game feels pointless.

The question is how we face what you have done, the chaplain continues. The question is how we ask forgiveness.

Forgiveness is flimsy. Forgiveness is like a square of warm sun on the carpet. You’d like to curl up in it, feel its temporary comfort—but forgiveness will not change you. Forgiveness will not bring you back.

*

Jenny comes to you then. A ghost, an accusation. The softest thing.

She exists now in pure distillation—in minuscule details, daily routines, mundane remembrances of a life before this place. An ache, for that old house. The flannel bedsheets Jenny chose at the department store, the curtains over the sink, embroidered with lace. The beige carpet, which never seemed to look clean, the TV sitting dusty on its stand. You can picture her there, still. Jenny, coming through the front door in her nurse’s scrubs, stomping the salt from her winter boots.

Love? she calls. I’m home.

The texture of Jenny. Fruit shampoo, hangover breath. You remember how she used to tease you, hands on your cheeks. It’s okay to feel things, she liked to say with a laugh, and this always irritated you. But if you could go back now, you would clap your hands over hers, relish in the knobby warmth of Jenny’s fingers—the only person who dared to stand between the world and yourself.

Please, you would beg. I’ll feel anything.

Just show me how.

*

You can see the line now, in the spotlight of retrospect. The direct link, from the Blue House to Jenny.

The Harrisons sent you away on a Sunday morning. Blue and Rachel stood in the restaurant parking lot, their arms crossed, a palpable unease in their eyes. Don’t come back, they said. We don’t want you here anymore. You’d heard those words many times over the course of your life, but they felt different, coming from the Harrisons. The Blue House had brightened you, softened you, proven so much—finally, you were a part of something. A family.

But Rachel’s voice was determined. You did not know what they’d learned or how they’d learned it, only that it was too much.

As you climbed into your truck and pulled out of the parking lot, a furious itch rose in your fingertips. Everything fuzzed, slanted. You watched Blue and Rachel disappear in the rearview, their gazes searing permanent: they were afraid of you.