The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (32 page)

I’
VE HEARD THAT IT
’
S A CURSE TO BE TOLD THE DATE OF YOUR
death. I’ve heard that, in some societies, precognition of that moment has sent people into a fury of mania so corrupt that it has been used both for political gain and territorial acquisition. It has inspired heartbreak, and derailed it moments later. It has been used in lieu of flailing and waterboarding, the coffin torture or the rack.

For most of these phantom blame-seekers with whom I’ve shared an address for upwards of a decade, it is just that. A punishment far worse than the three-drug cocktail itself. To me, though, it’s a gift. The opportunity we are granted is unlike any other. What a blessing—to be able to plan year after year for your death. The food you want, the words you get to bequeath, the attention you will receive. The legacy. Think about it. People have accidents without knowing the time and date of the car that will cut them off on the freeway halfway to a business meeting. They don’t know that they won’t make it through surgery when there’s a power outage during a triple bypass. Heads of state may suspect, but haven’t the certainty, if that one assassin really will be stopped. Nobody can properly plan for that date—even if they know it—but us.

It isn’t just because of the date that I’m starting to ponder my last words again or my last request for sustenance. I suspect none of them will matter in the long run to anyone of merit. All I have is the knowledge of November 7 at sometime around 7 in the evening. If I
had been given that date on New Year’s Eve, perhaps things would have turned out differently. I tried to give it to myself on more than one occasion, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? Gifts are something that must be given by another.

I hadn’t heard from my father since I left Bar Dive less than twenty-four hours earlier. Nor had I heard from Sarah. Or the police. I read the newspaper and read online almost hourly to try and see if any news had been posted about a twenty-four-year-old Penn grad found dead or a Main Line daughter reporting an assault. Everywhere I walked—from the grocery store, to the pharmacy, to the bathroom—I looked twice, three times even. Someone was there. Somebody was always there.

The streets were starting to fill with revelers wearing masks and glasses boasting the inauguration of 2003. Girls draped themselves in miniskirts without covering their legs or shoulders with a touch of wool to stave off the winter chill.

I couldn’t call Bobby about what happened with my father and Sarah and get him involved. I couldn’t call Marlene and tell her that it was because of her desperation, her senselessness, her goddamned stupidity that she put a deadly weapon in the form of a little white pill in the hands of my father. All I could do was watch the ball drop in Times Square on my fourteen-inch TV and hear my neighbors screwing as I waited for the night to end.

For a brief moment, I thought about visiting my mother in California and about visiting my brother back in Encino, or perhaps even tracking down Paramedic One to find out why he left my mother. I spent all of five minutes stuffing my overused shirts and pants and skirts and dresses into an old-fashioned suitcase—the same one I took from my mother when I went to college all those years ago. (It was baby blue and held together by a frayed navy striped belt around the corner. There were no wheels, and the handle was reinforced with packing tape.) But nothing fit.

I took everything out and stuffed a few contents into my backpack, including the Smith & Wesson handgun from my father, from that indignant evening that seemed like years earlier. It was silver and it slipped in the external zipper just like a hairdryer or an extra pair of sandals. The bullets were still packed tightly in their case. I opened it and poured them over my wallet, my cell phone, an empty notepad and pen, into the old canvas pack, which was flayed at the bottom, its edges spread like the blades of a flamenco fan. Charcoal bullets rained, face-first, thundering quietly between everything I’d touched in the last few years.

I picked the gun up again and ran my fingers over its back, on its sides, and its belly. There was something almost exotic in the glossy silkiness, in the way it massaged the backs of my fingers when they slipped inside, in the way it made me feel as helpless and crippled as Sarah at Bar Dive with her wings spread open and limp. It took no more than a mere inspection, drunken with exhaustion and insomnia, when I turned it over and discovered that the serial numbers had been scratched off. I shouldn’t even have been surprised.

Because they were sitting so close to the gun, I next picked up one of the bullets. My palm dropped a centimeter or two with the mediocre weight of both the bullet and gun in one hand. First, I put on the safety and dropped the bullet in the barrel. Then I picked up another bullet and loaded it, too. And another, and another and another until all six bullets were safely tucked away in their proper beds.

When I finished loading the gun, I boiled some water on the stove and sat down until the teakettle whistled its A-minor tune. (I timed it on numerous occasions, and it took no less than two minutes and no more than two minutes and fifteen seconds, to be precise, depending on the temperature outside. This time, it took just a hair under two and a quarter.) The teakettle nearly slipped from my hands when I poured the water into two coffee cups. As if my father would show up and explain to me what had just happened.

As if my mother would arrive and talk me out of it.

As if Persephone would return to me and say …

 … and say …

I walked to the kitchen and opened the cabinet that contained my spices, rice, and pasta. Miasmas of chutney and saffron sat in the air as cumulous white smoke. My fingers went to my box of tea, and I plucked the final bag of Lemon Zinger, tearing open the top of the packet in a single stab. I used the same tea bag for both cups, submerging its tender skin, from mug to mug, back and forth, leaving a trail of lemon-scented water between them like forensic clues nobody could decipher.

Pathways of citrus aroma found their way to my nose. My fingers selected a single mug, safe and unconsciously pure. The water felt so warm and soothing on its way down, like honey dripping from a cone. Like ice cream from a scoop. Like thick hot chocolate, gooey with melted marshmallows on its veneer. Sweet and idyllic.

The only thing that could make the night bearable would be a bottle of sleeping pills, but sadly my medicine cabinet was empty. My prescription had long since expired. So instead, I propped two acetaminophen and two ibuprofen on my tongue and massaged the pills as they wormed down my esophagus. And without thinking through the consequences, I walked casually to my bag and picked up the gun. It wouldn’t be as clean as pills, but still.

At first, I tried my left hand and held it out before my face so that I could look directly into the barrel. But my hand was too shaky. I could barely hold the gun in front of my face long enough to pull a trigger, let alone align it properly to the space between my eyes. I had never really inherited my father’s great gift of violent conservation, no matter how much I believed. No, I wasn’t him. I wasn’t him at all. He could probably pull the trigger if he wanted to. I knew that if I pulled the trigger, I’d fail and wind up disfiguring or paralyzing myself. But still, I tried it again with my right hand, and when I lifted the gun, my shoulder ached as if it had already been shot. The hand weight shifted something in my joints, driving my memory, forcing it back to the table. I couldn’t hold the gun straight. I couldn’t lift it without searing arrows puncturing everything beneath the skin, reminding
me that I was twelve years old again. That I was ten months old. It was as if the moment my fingers slipped into place, I felt dropped from the stairway of my mother’s house again.

I put the gun back on the table. It was practically midnight. I turned on the television to watch the countdown. The tea was cold and my arms were tired. I can’t even remember falling asleep at the kitchen table. I suppose looking back on that night, part of me knew it might be the last I’d sleep in my own home.

I
T HAPPENED ON
N
EW
Y
EAR
’
S
D
AY
.

I woke up in my kitchen with my right cheek shellacked to the cheap wooden lining of my dinette table. Two coffee mugs were digging tangerine rings on either side. Resting on its back between them, almost like a scared puppy during a thunderstorm, was the gun—my gun by congenital defect—just where I left it when the seconds ticked down to the new year.

I sat up, stretched, yawned, and walked over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Then, just like any other day, I strolled to my window, placed the back of my palm on its smooth glass surface to test the weather. It was cold, quite cold, but not as cold as I’d grown used to for a January in the Northeast. Frost residue was peeling from the sill in doilies, but no new patterns had collected overnight.