Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward Read Free Book Online

day off to babysit Franny on her parents’ anniversary. Uncle Jack is making hamburgers for dinner, and Franny can have a Coke and a popsicle too if she stays quiet.
    Dust in the driveway, Sheriff Donald. His car is white and blue. His boots are dirty, don’t walk on the rug with dirty boots. Through the screen door his face is sad and strange. Franny, where is your Uncle Jack? Sheriff Donald and his boots on her puzzle. Franny sips lemonade. The ice is melted.
    Donald shuts the door to the living room, but Franny can hear: car crash, drunk driver, both of them dead.
    Uncle Jack’s voice is tight: I’ll handle it. Thanks.
    Franny decides to put all the red pieces together, and then the blue. The puzzle will be a stop sign, she can see on the box. The door opens and Sheriff Donald steps on her puzzle again. What are you making, sweetheart? Franny does not answer. Dust in the driveway, and Franny is alone with Uncle Jack.
    His hands are strong on her shoulders. God took your Mommy and Daddy, he says, and his voice is like an electric wire, shivering and stay away. He says, Don’t cry, Franny, they’re watching you from heaven. Don’t let them see you cry. The lemonade tastes sour, and Franny drops the glass. Uncle Jack slaps her, and the slap is hard and good. He slaps her and then leans down and grabs her fiercely in his arms.

celia
    T he bikini arrives on Saturday in a fat brown package addressed to Mrs. Henry Mills, 2805 South First Street, Austin, TX 78701. I am sitting in my bathrobe in the front room, drinking coffee, when I see the mail truck pull up. The mailwoman’s navy shorts are tight, and I can’t help but think of the uncomfortable day she has ahead, what with polyester shorts and the temperature near a hundred. I make a mental note to tell Maureen that I am having positive thoughts. “I recognized at that point,” I will tell Maureen, “that I would rather be me, sitting in my air-conditioned house, than that fat mailwoman in her tight shorts.” Then it occurs to me that the mailwoman might have a fabulous husband at home, a husband who quite likes her shorts, and who is just waiting to jump her the minute she gets home from delivering bikinis to people like me.
    I wait for the woman to head across my lawn to the house next door before I rise from the couch. Although I originally hated Henry’s soft couch (I think I may have, in fact, called it “a piece of shit”), after his death I decided to keep it. It smells like Henry, for one thing, and Priscilla likes it. My mother has suggested I clean house, has even offered to buy me a snazzy living room set with her new husband’s money, but I have decided that I like things the way they are. I would not tell my mother or Maureen, but there are still times that I press my face into the fabric of the couch, thinking of Henry in college, doing bong hits, even having sex with girls on the couch, playing poker, Henry in grad school, studying sheet music, Henry asleep on the ugly couch, his baby face smooth, his mouth. Sometimes I still pretend he is just away, on a trip, that he is coming home.
    In the mailbox, I find an invitation from Jenny and Sean, and the bikini package. I throw away the invitation. Jenny and Sean were our best friends when Henry was alive. We met them at the dog park: when Priscilla wouldn’t stop playing with their dog, Henry invited them back to our house, letting both dogs jump in the back of our truck for the ride. After that, we’d make dinner together at least once a week, drink beer in the backyard, let our dogs run each other tired. We talked about our jobs—Jenny is a programmer and Sean a history teacher—and movies we liked. We went to their wedding at the Guadalupe River Ranch, and they were the first people we called as husband and wife, from a pay phone at the Elvis Chapel.
    After Henry’s death, they stopped by all the time, bringing casseroles. Casseroles? We never ate them when Henry was alive. Why would I