Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

suddenly want to start eating platefuls of hot tuna? I stopped answering the door. I did not return their calls. Eventually, Sean and Jenny got the hint and let up. But they sent me an invitation to the shower for their first baby, two years ago. Then they sent me a picture of the little one.
    Now, from the looks of the card in my trashcan, there’s another baby on the way. Priscilla looks at me. She misses Sean and Jenny’s pooch, a big mutt named Lefty. “Sorry,” I tell Priscilla. There are some things I’m just not interested in seeing, and Sean and Jenny’s cheery family is one of them. “They’ll probably serve casserole,” I tell Priscilla.
    But back to the package. Both pieces of the bikini are in separate plastic bags. The magenta is even brighter than it was on the girl in the catalog. J. Crew has also included a pamphlet of new items and a coupon for five dollars off my next purchase. Priscilla has taken my spot on the couch, and she moves grumpily to the side when I sit back down. I open the pamphlet and sink into the lives in front of me: there I am, frolicking on a New England island, eating corn and crab, sitting on some lanky boy’s lap, my feet in the sand.
    Why not do a Texas catalog? Sweaty teens making out by Barton Springs, adorable blondes drinking margaritas and eating nachos, snotty teachers microwaving Hot Pocket sandwiches in the teachers’ lounge? I think about what my personal J. Crew catalog would look like: lonely young woman talking to her dog while modeling madras culottes, librarian shelving books in an eggplant-colored tankini and wedge heels. I start to laugh, and Priscilla looks at me with pity. Maureen would not be pleased with this scenario.
    I go into the bedroom to try on the bikini. Under my robe, I am wearing one of Henry’s Grateful Dead T-shirts. It was one of his greatest unhappinesses that he never took me to a Dead show. We planned on driving out to California or Kentucky, but work always got in the way, and then Henry was gone, and Jerry, too. I still play Henry’s bootleg tapes. His favorite show was in Oregon, in August of 1988. He would play the last song, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” on the stereo. He would lie down on the floor and close his eyes. The dog would lie beside him, and sometimes I would, too.
    The bikini fits pretty damn well. I’ve lost weight in the last five years, which I tell my mother is one plus side of having your husband gunned down. Eating together had been a big thing for us, and I haven’t gotten the hang of liking food again since Henry’s death. I eat because I don’t like the dizzy feeling I get when I forget to eat. I have a cabinet of vitamins and energy shakes, which are easier than dealing with a fork and knife.
    I am modeling the bikini for Priscilla when the phone rings. It’s been a while since reporters have called me, so I have started to answer the phone again. If it isn’t my mother, it is my mother-in-law. “What are you doing, sweetie?” It is my mother.
    “Trying on my new bikini,” I say.
    “Oh!” she says, thrilled. “The J. Crew?”
    “Yup.”
    “Does it look fabulous?” I look at myself in the mirror, bones and old muscles and circles carved underneath my eyes. My skin is the color of chalk. Priscilla looks at me, her head cocked.
    “Yes,” I say, “it does.”
    “Good,” says my mother. “Sweetie?” she says. “Have you read the paper today?”
    “No, why?”
    “Oh, honey, I hate to have to tell you.”
    “What?” My stomach doesn’t even sink anymore when people say things like this to me. It is as if my stomach is already sunk down as far as it will go, all of the time.
    “They’re executing one of them. Jackie something?”
    “Ford,” I say.
    “Yes. I hope…” She pauses. “I hope this doesn’t stir things up for you,” says my mother. I don’t say anything. “When is Henry’s…when is Karen…um,” says my mother.
    “August twenty-fifth,” I say. The execution