Life Penalty (5 page)

Someone, she wasn’t sure who, led her back to the sofa and sat her down, lifting her legs up and propping a pillow behind her head. Someone else covered her with a blanket. Yet someone else gave her a drink of water. She heard the front door open and dose and knew that some of the people in the room had left, but her eyes were shutting and it took too great an effort to open them to see who had gone. As she closed her eyes and allowed the monster fatigue that had been hanging onto her muscles for the last several days to envelop her, swallowing her whole, the last image she had was of her father, his tanned and lean body doubled over against itself, at least a decade older than when she had seen him the year before.

She opened her eyes to the sound of new voices.

“Hi,” her friend Laura said gently, trying to smile.

“How are you feeling?”

Gail swung her feet off the couch and pushed the blanket away from her. “What time is it?” she asked, looking around, aware that it was dark outside and that her parents, sister and daughter were no longer in the room. Neither was the police lieutenant. Had they been there at all or had she dreamt them?

“It’s eight o’clock,” Jack told her, coming to her side. “Lieutenant Cole left some time ago. I sent everyone else out for dinner.”

“The flowers are from Nancy?” Gail asked, seeing the enormous arrangement of roses and carnations which sat on the glass coffee table. Jack nodded.

“Are you all right?” Laura asked.

Gail let out a long, deep breath. “I don’t know how I am. I feel so numb. I guess it’s all the drugs they’ve been giving me.”

“And the shock,” Laura added.

Gail nodded silently, her eyes drifting in a desultory fashion around the room, coming to a stop at the red and pink flowers. “Pink was Cindy’s favorite color.”

Laura lowered her head to the floor. “It used to be my favorite color too when I was a little girl.”

“Really? Mine too,” Gail confided, a small smile reaching the corners of her mouth. “I guess it’s every little girl’s favorite color.”

The conversation stalled; the small smile disappeared.

“Has Nancy been here?” Gail asked, her mind back on the flowers.

Jack shook his head.

“Don’t expect too much from Nancy,” Laura advised gently.

Gail almost laughed. “I never have,” she said.

“Nancy is Nancy. We all have our own way of handling grief.”

Laura’s face turned serious. “How are you handling it?”

“I don’t know.” Gail shook her head from side to side, first slowly and then with increasing speed. Suddenly, she felt Laura’s arms around her, her hand at the base of her neck, gently stopping the movement, bringing her forehead down against the soft cotton of Laura’s blouse.

“Let it out,” Laura whispered. “Don’t keep it bottled up inside.”

“I can’t,” Gail said, panic creeping into her voice. “I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’m feeling so many things.”

“What are they?”

Gail’s eyes searched the room as if looking for suitable adjectives. “I don’t know,” she repeated helplessly. “Anger, I guess.”

“Good,” Laura told her. “You should feel anger.

You have every right to feel anger. That’s healthy. Feel as angry as you damn well please.”

“And I’m angry at myself—”

Laura cut her off abruptly. “No,” she said forcefully. “That’s not anger. That’s guilt. Don’t you dare feel guilty. Do you hear me? You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Look at me,” she commanded gently, and Gail found her eyes being drawn directly to Laura’s. “Guilt is a totally useless emotion. It accomplishes nothing. And you have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“You don’t understand,” Gail stammered. “You see, it was partly my fault.”

“It was no way your fault.”

“Listen to me,” Gail pleaded, and Laura was silent.

“I went out. With Nancy. I wasn’t home and I should have been.”

“Gail, for God’s sake, even mothers are allowed out of the house on occasion. It wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d been home.”

“Yes, it would have,” Gail answered, vigorously nodding. “You see, if I hadn’t gone out, I would have been
home when Mrs. Hewitt’s nanny called to say she’d brought Linda home from school early. I would have been there to pick Cindy up from school. We would have walked home together. She’d be safe. She’d be alive if only I had stayed at home. But I didn’t. Oh God, it’s all my fault.”

Laura’s voice was suddenly strong and hard. Her hands around Gail’s arms were no longer comforting but demanding, her fingers pressing into Gail’s flesh. “Now you listen to me,” she said, “and you listen good, because I want you to remember every word I’m going to say and play each one back whenever you start having thoughts like those. What happened was not your fault. There was absolutely nothing you could have done. If, if, if, if. There isn’t a worse word in the English language. If only I hadn’t done this, if only I
had
done that. Well, you didn’t. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it now except make yourself crazy. Do you understand?”

Gail’s hand reached out and stroked her friend’s soft blond hair. “Yes,” she said, trying to reassure her. “Thank you. For everything.”

Laura’s husband, Mike, was suddenly at his wife’s side. Gail was startled. She hadn’t been aware he was present. “I think we should go now,” he said gently. “Let Gail get some rest.”

“I’ve been doing nothing but for the last few days,” Gail reminded him.

“Do you want us to stay?” Laura asked.

Gail shook her head. “No, you go. Mike’s right. I’m tired despite all the rest.”

Laura leaned over and kissed Gail, then she backed away as her husband approached Gail for the first time. Gail felt the warmness of his breath as it brushed against the side of her face, his lips grazing her hair. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a man behind a clump of bushes, his
obscene mouth rubbing against her small daughter’s cheek, and she pulled back sharply, an involuntary shudder traveling the length of her body. Mike ran a gentle hand across her cheek in a gesture that Gail knew was meant to comfort, but his fingers suddenly felt like razors against her skin, and when he withdrew his hand, she felt mauled and exposed. “Take care,” he said, then shook his head. “I just realized what an empty expression that is.”

The phone rang just as Jack was closing the front door behind them. Gail made a slight effort to raise herself up, but Jack was quicker, sprinting back into the room and picking the phone up on the fourth ring.

“It’s Nancy,” he said, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Are you up to talking to her?”

Gail nodded, pushing herself off the sofa and taking the receiver from Jack’s hand, suddenly looking forward to the sound of Nancy’s voice.

“How
are
you?” Nancy gushed. “Oh God, I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news. I felt so awful. Are you all right? You must be a mess, you poor thing. To think that we were out shopping when it happened. I feel so … responsible somehow, like it’s my fault …” she drifted off.

“Don’t be silly, Nancy,” Gail said gently, trying to comfort her friend in much the same way Laura had done for her just minutes before, “how could what happened possibly be your fault?”

“Well, I know it isn’t really,” Nancy concurred, and Gail marveled at how subtly Nancy had been able to shift the focus of the conversation to herself. There was no way that Nancy could relate to what she was going through, Gail realized. Nancy’s two children only rarely had anything to do with their mother. She had largely ignored them during their so-called formative years, only to dismiss them as ungrateful when they chose to live with their father after the divorce. Whenever Gail made the
mistake of glowing over her own offspring, Nancy’s mouth would curl into a knowing smile and she would say, “Just wait till they get a little older and they start dumping all over you. You’ll see.” How could Nancy possibly understand what Gail was going through? For that matter, how could anyone?

“Thank you for the flowers,” Gail said sincerely.

“It was very thoughtful of you to send such beautiful arrangements.”

“Are they all right?” Nancy asked, suddenly unsure. “I didn’t know what to do, whether you’d consider flowers appropriate …”

“Pink was Cindy’s favorite color.” Gail repeated her earlier statement, wanting to share something of her child with her friend.

There was an uncomfortable silence. “I better go and let you get some rest,” Nancy said finally. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Or listen, maybe
you
should phone
me.
I don’t want to disturb you or interrupt anything, so why don’t you phone me. Will you do that? Gail?”

“What?”

“Will you phone me tomorrow when you get the chance?”

“Oh sure,” Gail agreed flatly.

“Do you promise?”

Mommy, when we die, can we die together? Can we die holding hands? Do you promise?

“I promise,” Gail said, and hung up the receiver.

That night in bed, Gail dreamt that she and Cindy were boarding a crowded bus, which seemed to get more crowded as they pushed their way into the middle of it. There were no seats and she and Cindy were forced to stand, their bodies pressed tightly against those around them. After a few minutes, the air seemed to grow thinner
and one man collapsed next to her, but because of the number of others squeezed like sardines together, he remained standing. There was nowhere for him to fall, and Gail was forced to bear his weight, his chin pressed against the back of her neck. She could tell by the man’s absence of breath that he was dead. Suddenly, the doors sprang open and the crowd surged outside, tearing Cindy from her mother, propelling her out onto the street. Gail’s hands flailed vainly about, searching for her child, but she caught only air, abruptly finding herself at the entrance to Memorial Park, stunned in the realization that she was utterly alone. She began racing frantically through the park, seeing nothing, finding no one.

She turned a corner and suddenly she was in the Short Hills Mall, in Bloomingdale’s. The crowd from the bus had reappeared and was frantically buying up everything in sight.

Gail looked beyond the crowd and saw a small clump of bushes and the receding figure of a young man. He was carrying a plastic bag from Bloomingdale’s. The bag seemed to be moving. Gail gasped with the realization that Cindy was inside the bag. She started pushing her way through the crowd.

“Can I help you?” a saleslady asked, approaching and taking hold of Gail’s. arm.

Gail pushed the woman aside, hearing her voice pledging assistance, as Gail shoved her way past one person and then another.

The young man disappeared behind the clump of bushes just as Gail extricated herself from the mob. She raced toward the bushes, but there was no one there. She spun around. The crowd had disappeared.

She was, once again, alone.

She heard a sound and threw her body in its direction. But there was nothing there. And then she saw it lying on
the ground, half buried by the mud. She lunged to pick it up—the bag from Bloomingdale’s. She tore it open, hearing strange, masculine laughter emerging from the bushes which were now closing in around her. Frantically, her hands pulled at the contents of the package. She tossed the bag aside and stood staring at what she had found.

A child’s purple velvet dress.

She woke up screaming.

“It’s all right,” she heard Jack telling her parents at the door of their bedroom. “She had a bad dream. She’s all right now.”

When Jack got back into bed beside her, he moved his body close against hers.
“Are
you all right?” he asked quietly.

Gail nodded without speaking, pulling Jack close to her, opening her eyes wide, as if her eyelids could force back the images of her nightmare and keep them from reappearing.

“Do you want a sleeping pill?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered, forcing out the words. “No more pills.” She felt the warmth of his body easing the shivers in her own. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“Maybe
you
should take a pill,” she suggested gently. “What time is it?”

Jack stretched his body to see the clock. “Three-thirty,” he said.

“Three-thirty,” Gail repeated, both silently acknowledging the significance of the hour. Cindy had died at approximately three-thirty.

Jack closed his eyes and Gail studied his thick lashes, thinking of the horror those eyes had been forced to endure when he’d had to identify their child’s lifeless body.

How did our baby look? Gail wanted to ask but didn’t because she couldn’t bear to hear the answer.

She burrowed her body in tighter against her husband’s as if to compensate for the newly imposed distance between them. They were essentially alone in this, she realized, despite all their years of closeness. Death demanded solitude.

From the spare bedroom she could hear her parents talking quietly, the worry in their voices audible even through the walls. She remembered, when she was young, lying in her bed listening to their soft chatter, trying to make out their words, understand the reasons for the laughter she heard sneaking out from underneath their closed door. There was no laughter now.

Still, she found the simple sound of their presence comforting. Taking her back as it did to her childhood, it made her feel secure.

S
he had grown up in a house full of music. Her father was always singing, and all Gail’s earliest and strongest memories were built around her father’s vibrant baritone raised in song. Opera had been Dave Harrington’s particular favorite. His record collection was the envy of all who knew him, consisting as it did, of at least three different versions of all the great classics. While most other small children were busy singing about Mary and her little lamb, Gail and Carol were stumbling their way through the complicated arias of
Aida
and
La Bohème.
While other children were weaned on the bedtimes stories of the Brothers Grimm, the small sisters went to bed with
The Tales of Hoffmann
and
La Traviata.

The Harrington household staged minioperas of its own, Gail’s father always assuming the lead role of the dashing suitor, with Carol as his tragic lover. Lila Harrington, who fancied herself something of a dancer, played a multitude of parts, most of them involving long, flowing chiffon scarves, of which she never seemed to run out. Gail provided the musical accompaniment on the piano.