I shouldn’t be fixated on Nell.
She isn’t who I thought she was.
And anyway, she was a time filler,
a way to keep my mind off Ed.
I used her to tread water.
Isn’t that all it was?
EVA
Angela plays Eva Cassidy through a Bluetooth speaker,
again and again,
‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Over the Rainbow’,
songs so sad I can barely listen.
‘Cassidy died when she was thirty-three,’
Angela informs me.
‘Tried to fight her cancer but couldn’t.
Her last performance was “What a Wonderful World”
for family and friends.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ she says.
‘Just makes you think.’
‘About death.’
‘About life. How little we’re promised,’ she says,
and turns up the music.
A HOLDING BAY
The night before her first prison visit Angela asks,
‘What’s it like?’
‘Like limbo,
a place where nothing lives,
a holding bay,’ I say.
She twirls her hair around her fingers
tirelessly.
ANGELA’S FIRST VISIT
Instead of running a metal detector
down my body and
waving me through
as they usually do,
a guard gestures for me to follow and a
female guard accompanies Angela.
I’m taken to an office. The guard closes the door.
‘I need you to strip.’
‘Sorry?’ I don’t know the guard.
Maybe he’s new and
doesn’t understand Section A regulations.
‘I need to search you before the contact visit.’
I flatten my back against the door.
I know what a strip search means,
how much of myself I’ll have to expose.
‘Did the warden approve this?’ I ask.
He snaps a latex glove against his wrist
like he’s in a goddamn movie.
Another guard comes in yawning –
a chaperone.
I glance at the wall clock.
It’s already two minutes after two.
Ed will be waiting.
I can’t make him wait.
REAL
It’s a different room,
an ordinary room like a place you might meet
a school counsellor,
and no Plexiglas –
nothing to divide us.
Angela is already there with Ed,
arms around him,
hanging on as though he might
float away
like a helium balloon.
When they hear the door,
they look up,
see me standing next to the guard.
‘My little brother,’ Ed says,
and I rush to him.
I hold on to him too.
He’s real.
THE LAVENDER ROOM
Angela is definitely not a contender for
America’s Got Talent.
She sings for Ed anyway,
getting the words to the songs wrong,
laughing when the melody is
too high
for her to reach.
She sings stuff by Adele,
songs Ed doesn’t know all that well.
Yet he grins the whole time.
And so do I.
Because being in this lavender room
with bars on its windows,
guards on both sides of the door,
we are on the verge
of being a family again.
‘I missed you guys,’ Ed says.
‘You aren’t ticked off that we didn’t come
to Texas before all this?’ I ask.
Ed claps me on the back.
‘Life’s too short for that crap, man.
Nah.
We’re together now.’
MAJOR-GENERAL
Ed was Major-General Stanley in his school
production of The Pirates of Penzance.
We had a video recording of it at home
we watched sometimes,
laughing so hard
at Ed singing
and at the haircut he had when he was thirteen.
Mom would come in
to investigate the noise.
‘Oh, you’re watching that again.
Haven’t you seen it enough?’
‘It’s the Ed show,’ I told her.
‘Yeah. And I’m sort of wondering
when it’ll be over.’
OUTSIDE THE PRISON
Nell’s leaning against the car,
earphones in, head down.
She kicks at the dirt.
‘What do you want?’ I snap,
when all I want is to kiss her,
tell her I forgive her,
beg her to see me later –
somewhere we can be alone.
But a stupid part of me wants to make her suffer,
see if she’ll fight for me.
Am I worth an argument?
‘I came to see my dad and saw your car,’ she says.
‘I decided to say sorry. Again.
Like it’ll help.’
Angela wanders off without a word,
pokes at her phone.
‘Your sister looks like you,’ Nell says.
‘She’s pretty. But she needs some of Sue’s
high calorie apple pie. You do too.’
She tries for a laugh.
‘Come on …
At least tell me to go to hell.’
‘I don’t want you to go to hell, Nell.’
She leans towards me. ‘Tell me what I should do.
If you say you need me to leave you alone,
I’ll understand.
I won’t like it,
but I’ll understand.’
‘In a week, your dad will
stamp my brother off the face of the earth.’
‘It’s all he talks about, Joe.
He doesn’t believe Ed’s phony confession.
And he said there are a dozen scumbags who should’ve
got their dates before your brother.
But if Dad refuses to execute him, he’ll lose his job.’
‘And save Ed’s life.’
She looks down at her grubby sneakers.
‘For how long? An hour? A day?
You think they wouldn’t replace my father in a
heartbeat?
He isn’t the one keeping him here.’
‘He’s part of the crooked system.
He’s as much a murderer as any of
the guys on the row.’
‘So what does that make me?
Guilty by association?’
She reaches for a stone,
wipes it clean on her shirt,
polishes it between her thumb and forefinger.
‘Out of everyone, I thought you’d
understand how shitty that is.’
‘You wanna meet later?’ I ask.
She squints. ‘Yes. I really do.’
HEALING
Nell is beside me in a booth
drinking hot chocolate and chatting with Angela
like they’ve known one another
forever.
It’s no big deal.
Just sitting.
Talking and drinking.
But this helps me feel better.
Nell heals me.
And I’ve no idea how she does it.
PREPARATION
‘They weighed me and took my measurements,’
Ed says.
‘I mean, they fucking weighed me.’
Angela squeezes my knee
so I kno
w this must signify something.
I try to figure out what he means.
I don’t want him saying the bad stuff aloud.
Ed puffs out his cheeks.
‘They gotta know how much drug to use.
And every dead guy needs a coffin, right?’
‘They measured you for a coffin?’ I ask slowly.
He ignores me. ‘I don’t really get it.
Why not just use a truckload of poison
for everyone?
If we overdose, who cares?
Dead is dead.’
Angela pulls her chair next to Ed’s.
‘It’s not gonna happen,’ she tells him.
‘They moved me to the end cell,’ he murmurs.
‘That’s so I’m closer to the chamber.
And also so fewer people have to
walk by my cell every day.
You know the worst bit about it?’
I can’t even imagine.
And part of me doesn’t want to know.
‘They made me carry my own mattress and
blanket and stuff.
They watched me do it and didn’t help.
They watched me carry my bedding
to the last cell.’
My mind is mud:
nothing moves in it.
What can I say to this?
What possible comfort could any words have?
‘It isn’t fair,’ Angela says.
She holds his chin,
forces him to look at her.
‘It isn’t fair,’ she repeats.
NOT FAIR
It was a snow day.
Every school in the city closed
except mine.
‘It’s not fair!’ I screamed,
still in my pyjamas.
‘Oh, get over it! Life isn’t fair!’ Mom screamed back.
‘Now get dressed.’
Ed walked me to school.
We stomped fresh paths
of boot prints through snow,
watched kids playing,
adults shovelling sidewalks,
snowploughs pushing away their snow hoards
to God-knows-where.
Ed tied a knot in my scarf,
patted my head,
nudged me through the school gates.
‘I’ll collect you at two thirty,’ he said.
‘It’s not fair,’ I repeated.
‘I know it isn’t, little man,’ he said.
‘And I’m sorry.
But I promise I’ll be here to pick you up.’
THE GALLERY
It’s seven days until the scheduled execution
and Angela has Al Mitchell on speakerphone:
‘Ed can have a family member or friend
sit in the gallery as a witness.
But Angela’s the only one approved.
You have to be eighteen.
I get a seat and also Father Matthew.’
‘She’s invited to watch him die?’ I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
‘A member of the victim’s family has
requested a spot in the gallery.
The press would have places and
some of the prison staff.
My advice is don’t take the seat.’
‘Why would anyone watch?’ I ask.
‘I want to be there,’ Angela says.
‘I won’t let him do it on his own
and there’s nothing you can do
to change my mind.’
THE RETURN
Nell and I are lying on the sofa.
Angela’s in the bedroom on the phone
but keeps calling out.
‘You guys better be behaving.’
She hoots like it’s the funniest joke ever,
goes back to whispering.
And the doorbell rings.
A jangle that makes Nell jump.
‘Is it your dad?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘I hope not.’
I peer through the peephole.
It’s not Philip Miller.
It’s someone I never expected to see in Texas:
it’s Aunt Karen.
A MISTAKE
I don’t tell Aunt Karen to leave or
slam the door in her face.
I don’t shout at her for making me live
in hell for so long
when she had money to help.
I don’t blame her for leaving
Ed here
for all these years
when he needed someone,
when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
I say, ‘You came,’
and she nods.
WHAT CAN WE FORGIVE?
Anything.
If that’s what we choose.
TOO LATE
Aunt Karen takes her coffee light
with a lot of sugar.
I make it to her liking but she doesn’t
even taste it.
She balances on the sofa,
absorbing her surroundings
and asking a hundred legal questions
We needed her to take an interest a month ago
or when Ed first got locked up.
It feels too late to fight now.
LAND OF THE FREE
Al Mitchell orders a cheesesteak sandwich from Sue,
opens his briefcase,
making a shield of one half,
ducking behind it,
shuffling through papers.
‘So,
we have the Supreme Court
in three days,’ he says loudly,
reappearing,
slamming it closed.
Angela sips at iced tea.
Aunt Karen frowns.
I listen.
‘We have a solid case.
Anyone with two brain cells can see Ed’s
a victim of circumstance.’
‘How’s that?’ Aunt Karen asks steadily.
She didn’t even order a water.
Al throws his shoulders back.
‘Ed was convicted on a false confession
he made when he was eighteen,
tired, hungry and threatened.
Nothing else links him to the crime apart from a
run-in with Frank Pheelan hours earlier.
They haven’t any witnesses,
no DNA.
It’s laughable.’
Al grins
but not like he’s encouraging anyone
to join him.
Angela exhales.
‘Someone else did it,’ she says.
Al narrows his eyes.
‘Prosecutors told the jury his DNA was found
in the cruiser.
Which it was.
But they weren’t told it was only found
on his driver’s licence,
which the cop had taken from him.’
Sue arrives with a steaming steak sandwich
and shuffles away again.
Al looks at it, grimaces,
taps his temples with his fingertips.
‘It’s reasonable doubt.’
‘Have you ever convinced the Supreme Court?’
I ask.
I want him to admit what we all know,
forget all the lawyer-speak
and tell us the truth.
He looks me straight in the eye.
‘The court ensures justice is done, Joe.’
And he wants me to believe it,
wants to believe it himself.
But how can he when he’s been
representing guys like Ed forever?
He knows the deal.
I slide out of the booth, the diner,
into the heat of the afternoon
hating with every inch of my bones
the so-called free country I live in,
the home of the brave.
HOW DO YOU SAY GOODBYE?
I count down our time together
as soon as I sit,
one eye on Ed,
the other on the clock,
sometimes wishing Angela wouldn’t sing
cos the songs take so long,
wishing Aunt Karen hadn’t turned up to share
this time and space
which I want to
myself
now.
And in those final five minutes
while I’m waiting for the guard to tap his watch,
I never know how to sew up our time together,
make it count,
dilute the sadness.
Anger rises in my throat
and I leave with a rock of molten rage
burning up my guts.
Angela, Karen and I don’t talk on the way out;
we walk side by side,
but I always feel totally alone
trying to figure out
how the hell I’ll ever say goodbye for good.
REMOVAL
Philip Miller sends a letter
reminding us to make arrangements
for the removal of Ed’s body
after execution.
He vouches for Vander & Sons
on Wakeling’s Main Street.