The sudden motion stopped her. A flicker of movement, beyond the glass. Hazel rubbed the sleep from her eyes, blinked hard to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.
It was Ansel, clear in the moonlight. He stood beneath the maple tree in her parents’ backyard, flannel pajama pants tucked into winter boots. He leaned on the shovel from the garage, his jacket revealing his wrists as he scooped clumps of snow and wet dirt. A scoop, a whack. Hazel watched, bemused, as Ansel dug a hole. It was maybe a foot deep—he dug until his forearm disappeared into the depth of it. By the time he clapped the dirt from his hands, Gertie had gone quiet, and Hazel slipped back into bed, listening to the whoosh of the sliding glass door, to Ansel’s footsteps shuffling up the stairs.
Her clock read 4:16 a.m.—surely, Jenny was asleep, unaware. Sleep would be impossible, Hazel’s brain frenetic with the strangeness of what she had seen. Five o’clock passed, then six. By six thirty, the sky out the window had blanched to a sweet, unfettered blue, and a new sound revealed itself down the hall. So subtle at first, Hazel strained to listen.
Whispers. Rustling.
This time, Hazel reached through the dim for her crutches. Her bedroom door made no sound as it opened—she took soft steps across the carpet, her heart alert and listless. She knew before she reached the guest room exactly what she would find.
They were naked on top of the comforter, the door cracked slightly open. Exposed in the rising light, their eyes were closed—Jenny’s back was pressed to Ansel’s chest, and Ansel’s massive hand cupped Jenny’s breast as he pulsed into her, the shaft of him glinting wet. His hands had been washed, a pristine white, no sign now of the dirt or the shovel. Hazel wondered if she had dreamed the scene, imagined it altogether. Jenny’s legs were spread, her head thrown back; her neck was so delicate in the winter dawn, unprotected. In the reticent strip of light, Jenny’s body was not necessarily Jenny’s. She could have been Hazel, covered in this sheen of sweat, so loose and gasping. Hazel, lost to the kind of motion that made you wiser, the kind that made you separate, the kind that made you real.
Ansel opened his eyes.
Hazel did not have time to move from the door or to conceal herself. In that gut-dropping millisecond before the shock exploded and she stumbled back on her crutches, Ansel’s gaze bore right into her. There was something new in him, something savage, like the damp, infested soil beneath an overturned rock. She had witnessed a secret in the yard, something meant to stay hidden. And now Hazel was watching Ansel’s return, his transformation from single to double, his insertion back into Jenny. It was scary, his body’s forceful wanting. Stark, what it told her.
The universe did not care how you loved. You could love like this—urgent and slippery, like a girlfriend, or a wife. You could love like a sister, or even a twin. It didn’t matter.
Two connected things must always come apart.
7 Hours
Gravy, for lunch. The soggy mass slides into your cell, a gelatinous lump atop a meager portion of turkey, accompanied by half a cup of green beans, floating in water. No coffee today—a collective groan echoes down the row. A-Pod is organized so you cannot see anyone, but you know the distinctive sounds of each inmate. Today, they are hungry. As you spoon the formless substance into your mouth, you imagine you are eating a cheeseburger instead, biting into a patty of rare, simmering pink.
Joy is a cousin of love, you read once. If you cannot feel love, there is at least this weaker relative, tantalizing in memory: the relish of meat, perfectly cooked, melting on the tongue. You know how to swallow, to close your eyes and delight.
*
You recognize Shawna by her footsteps.
Shawna shuffles when she walks, so unlike the hefty stomping of the men. A limping drag, constantly unsure of herself. The baby’s screaming has passed, and you sit on the edge of your cot, taking steady breaths. The baby is dead, you tell yourself. The baby is dead. You remember the social worker who sat you down as a child, her knuckles thick and gnarled: Your brother is in a better place now, she said, too busy or too pained to look you in the eye.
Shawna walks by, sent on some other errand, peering anxiously through your window. The inmates are constantly harassing her, masturbating against the glass as she walks by—gunning her down, they call it. But to Shawna, you are different. There is fear in her glance. Excitement. Before you ever saw her face, you heard the tentative scratch of her boots on the concrete and you knew: Shawna is a woman made up of other people’s perceptions. The most malleable type. She shops at Costco, she bites her nails. She never learned how to properly apply makeup, so it runs in blue streaks beneath her eyes. Shawna is the kind of woman who likes to be told exactly who she is.