Dear Julie, Lavender thought, as she boarded the first of many buses. The shaking fear in her chest was tinged with something else now. A pulsing in the glands beneath her teeth. It was not freedom—too wrecked for that—but it was close.
Dear Julie.
Wait up. I’m coming for you.
*
When Lavender finally reached the ocean, it smelled exactly how she’d hoped.
It had taken her weeks to get to San Diego. She’d hitchhiked, stolen wallets, begged on corners for bus fare. When she came across a hunting knife, lost in a sewer outside Minneapolis, Lavender recalled how Johnny used to gut a deer, anus to diaphragm. She spent four days in the passenger seat of a beer delivery truck, her hand never leaving the hilt of that knife, tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
Now, Lavender kicked off her shoes, let the boardwalk warm her blistered feet. It smelled like hot dogs, seaweed, car exhaust. The beach was crowded with families, lounging and playing, running through the surf. Lavender left behind the plastic bag of things she’d acquired （toothbrush, comb, cigarettes） and stumbled onto the burning sand.
The water was frigid, delicious. Lavender splashed it on her face, let the salty cold trickle into her mouth. She stripped off her clothes right there on the bustling beach and stood in her bra and underwear, ankle-deep.
The guilt was with her, always. Sometimes it suffocated, like a pillow held over her face in the night, and sometimes it stabbed. She’d been having the same nightmare for weeks—Ansel was digging in the yard beneath the spruce where they’d buried Johnny’s grandfather, though it wasn’t Johnny’s grandfather beneath the soil. It was Lavender herself. Look, Mama, he’d say, holding her own stiff gray hand up from the dirt. Look what I found.
When Lavender was awake, the guilt mostly simmered, a low boil, steady discomfort. Her breasts were a constant reminder, still heavy with milk. But she couldn’t deny it: there was also a clean, gulping relief. The joy of her own solitude, the long hours alone in her chest. The fear, ebbing bit by bit from her bloodstream.
Lavender did not know where she would go next. It didn’t matter. She closed her eyes to the sun, as the water took her knees, thighs, hips, ribs—then sucked in a lungful of air. Before she surrendered to the freezing tug, Lavender thought of her children.
She had created two living beings. Eventually, they would be people. Lavender hoped that the mystery of their futures held exactly this: gritty sand, goose-bumped arms, waves breaking over their freckled shoulders. She remembered the bedroom window in the farmhouse, that tease of a breeze. They had it now. If nothing else, Lavender had given them the gift of possibility. Her boys could touch it with their hands, the wide expanse of the world.
Someday, Lavender hoped, her children would wade into the ocean. When they did, they would taste her.
Lavender’s love, in a mouthful of salt.
10 Hours
You have seen rivers, and you have seen lakes, but you have seen the ocean only once.
The Massachusetts coast, years ago. You were driving to visit Jenny’s grandparents, and she insisted you travel the extra miles—you were twenty-five years old and not yet married.
I can’t believe you’ve never seen the water, Jenny said, bouncing in her seat. You pulled into an inlet at the first ocean view, and she coaxed you knee-high into the surf. Her hair thrashed in the wind. Her mouth opened wide in a gaping laugh, an obscene red that yawned to the hollow of her throat—you could see the crowns that lined Jenny’s molars.
If you focus hard enough now, you can almost replace the concrete wall of your cell with that giant, roaring blue. The gulls screeching, the car engine grumbling, the sand shifting beneath your bare feet. Despite it all, you are thankful for the memory—for the sight of the sea, tumbling in the distance.
It is possible, looking at the ocean, to believe it never ends.
*
The note from Shawna is in the front of your shoe, balled up against your big toe. A limping pressure when you walk. A bomb, blasting everything gloriously open.
*
You are rinsing your paintbrushes in the sink when two officers appear. They gesture for your hands, which you reach through the slats in the door. To be handcuffed, you have to turn your back to the entrance, hunch in half, and sink to your knees with your arms twisted behind. You are strip-searched every time.
A visitor, they say.
The visitation room is a long row of white concrete booths. You rub your wrists as you take your seat. On the other side of the glass, your lawyer looks how she always does.
Tina Nakamura sits with her hands clasped firmly atop a manila folder. Inmates are not usually allowed to see a lawyer in person today, but the warden has always liked you. Special approval. Tina’s mauve lipstick is expertly applied, severe around the edges of her thin mouth, and her lashes have been tastefully lengthened with the kind of makeup meant to trick men into believing she isn’t wearing any. You are not fooled. Tina is around your age, you would guess—mid-forties—and her hair is pulled into its usual clean ponytail, high and silky on the crown of her head. Today’s pantsuit is navy, crisp, tailored. When she leaves, you will peek at her shoes. Tina’s shoes always betray her; you suspect she has knee problems, or maybe bunions, because they are not the glossy heels you would expect, but instead those foamy flats with ergonomic soles, made for elderly diner waitresses.