Sleep Toward Heaven (24 page)

Priscilla lies next to me on the grass, and we think of things to tell Henry. I tell him about my new job at the hospital library. I let him know where we have been swimming and hiking that week and what I’ve tried to cook for dinner.

I talk and talk to Henry, but he never comes to me again, not since that last night at the Gatestown Motor Inn Lounge. It’s as if I did what he asked of me, and he was able to leave. His lightning became a pale glow that I can still see if I concentrate on the night sky.

I think it bothered him that so many people were going to watch Karen die. The moment we die is a private time, and Henry is the kind of person who would understand that. He came to me, in that crappy little bar in Gatestown, Texas. When the doctor went to the ladies’ room, leaving her purse on the table, Henry slid into her seat. His hair was a mess, and he looked as if he needed to shave. He told me to find the red notebook in her bag, to write down the code to the morphine machine. I did as he asked, wrote it in lipstick on a bar napkin and memorized it later. I didn’t know, of course, that the last time I would ever see Henry was on an orange barstool.

And I didn’t quite know how it was all going to fall into place until I went to visit Karen. It’s not that Karen said she was sorry, and I don’t think I would have believed her if she had. But something changed in me, and I realized that forgiving Karen was something I had to do for myself. It had nothing to do with her, in the end.

She had clutched the receiver in the visiting room, and told me about watching Henry die. Her face was thin and wasted. I felt Henry’s hands on my hair, his fingers touching my scalp, readying me the way he had done when he first took me hiking on a steep trail. “You can do it,” he had told me, and he had been right.

He stroked my hair, and Karen looked at me, and I had something to give her. It wasn’t anything that I had use for, but to her, it was everything. “Karen,” I said.

“Yes?” Her voice, small in the receiver. Her hand, pressing on the glass.

You can do it. I heard him, my beloved one.

I pressed my own hand to the glass. The numbers to the machine lined up in my head. I opened my mouth.

F
irst and foremost, I would like to thank the women on both sides of prison walls who shared their stories with me. Sleep Toward Heaven was written to honor and illuminate their lives. Unending gratitude goes to my mentors, Joan Beattie, Bill Hagen, Jim Shepard, Chris Offutt, Kevin Canty, and Dierdre McNamer. Thank you, Debra Magpie Earling, for reaching to your bookshelf and finding William Stafford. William Kittredge, you showed me by example how to live as a writer. For my fellow writers Ann McGlinn, Joni Wallace, Clay Smith, Jill Marquis, Andrew Sean Greer, Aaron Q. Long, Ed Skoog, Stephen Morison, Woody Kipp, Dennis Hockman, Erica Olsen, Stephen Meyer, Maria Hong, Annie Hartnett, Rhian Ellis, J. Robert Lennon, Sheila Black, Emily Hovland, Dao Strom, Brett Hershey, Laurie Duncan, Andrew Spear, and Martin Wilson, as well as my friends Beth Howells, Jessica Goepfert, Cyndi Bohlin, Sage MacLeod, Dave Ruder, Ariel Anderson, Sarah Knight, Molly Rauch, Juli Berwald, Jaye Joseph, and Mary Maltbie, I am forever grateful. For supporting me during the winter spent writing this novel, I would like to thank the warm community of Ouray, Colorado, especially the Fairchilds, Muellers, Harts, Tisdales, and Williamses. Thank you, Barbara J. Zitwer. For publishing my short stories, I would like to thank Lee Klein of Eyeshot, Whitney Pastorek and Jeff Boison of Pindeldyboz, and M. M. M. Hayes of StoryQuarterly. I am lucky to work with Michelle Tessler, with whom I hope to share many sangrias, and the offices of Carlisle and Company. I am proud to be published by David Poindexter and the MacAdam/Cage team, who care so much about creating beautiful books. I am blessed to have as my friend and editor Anika Streitfeld, who possesses the rare skill of being both an exacting critic and a firecracker of enthusiasm. Thank you to my family; the Toans (and their stolen television); Bret, Laura, Trey, Rachael, Kit, Barbara, and Larry Meckel (and the Oak Street Writers’ Fellowship); Andrea, Gary, and the lovely Lorraine Ward; Isabelle Omeler; the Shaber family: Janice Doherty; Mary and Mark Liu; Peter and Brendan Westley. To my sisters and best friends, Sarah McKay and Liza Ward, thank you for always believing. My heart is for my husband, Tip, who makes every day a celebration. And my greatest thanks goes to my mother and my inspiration, the radiant Mary-Anne Westley.