And inadequate, Eliza thought. What had she expected? To her, Walter’s attempts to communicate had been a continuation of his long-ago crimes, not a refutation. He held her captive again, violated her again. Despite his letter, she had not really expected an apology, yet he had made one today, clear and unambiguous. What did he expect in return? What did he deserve?
When Iso was small, she had quickly learned to lisp “I sorry,” even as she continued to do the very thing for which she was apologizing. Albie, by contrast, was almost too remorseful, brooding over his misdeeds long after he had been forgiven. A decade or so ago, Peter had written a piece about the nature of modern apologies, stringing together a spate of real and not-so-real ones—the official government acknowledgment of the Tuskegee experiment, a baseball player’s belabored rationale for spitting at an umpire, the ongoing discussion about reparations for slavery. This would have been, in fact, about the same time that Iso was careering through their little bungalow in Houston, throwing out “I sorry” as if it were confetti, her private little parade of destruction rolling past, leaving Eliza to clean up all of the mess. They had tried hard to teach their children the importance of genuine remorse, what it was to say and mean “I’m sorry.”
They had spent less time, Eliza realized now, on the nature of forgiveness. She told her children that when someone was sincerely sorry for a misdeed, he or she must be forgiven. And in the context of a family, that was true. Family members must forgive one another. (Although—another stellar example from children’s literature—Jo did not need to forgive Amy for burning up her manuscript, and Eliza always thought Amy’s near-death experience was a bit heavy-handed on Louisa May Alcott’s part.) But then again—if one doesn’t forgive someone, doesn’t one, in a sense, lose that person forever? And what could be better than to lose Walter in that sense? She was under no obligation to forgive him. Was she?
“I appreciate that. I appreciate that you said it straight out, without any of those weasel words that politicians use.”
“Weasel words. I love that. You always did have a great way of talking.”
She did? No, Eliza wanted to say, that was Vonnie, the writer and star debater. She had been proficient with words, even tidy with them. But creative? She was not one to fish for compliments, and she would never, under any circumstances, invite Walter to praise her, yet she found herself saying wistfully, “I never saw myself that way.”
“Well, you weren’t talky. Thank god. But you used words in an interesting way. I wasn’t a big reader when I met you, but I’ve become one here and words are real to me now. They have, like, shapes. And colors. Some of them are so right for what they are. Dignity, for example. Dignity is like…an older cat on a window-sill, his paws folded beneath him.”
She wanted to disagree. She didn’t want to have any common ground with Walter. But she thought of words in this way, too, and he was onto something.
“That’s a good image,” she said. “Cats are dignified, whereas dogs—”
She stopped herself. Everything she knew about dogs had been gleaned from Reba, who was not at all typical of her species. Besides, she would no more invoke Reba with Walter than she would speak of her children, or her day-to-day life. It was Elizabeth who spoke to Walter, a grown-up version, but Elizabeth nonetheless.
“I never cared for dogs.”
“I remember.” All dogs barked at Walter.
“You know another word I like? Serendipity. I was thinking about that very word when I saw your photo. The magazine used it to describe what people might find at local farmers’ markets. But that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no serendipity in what the earth produces. There’s bad luck, sometimes—droughts and pests. But there’s no serendipity to it. Then I turned the page. Me finding you—that was serendipity.”
“And what does serendipity look like to you?” she asked, keen to change the subject, to move him away from the moment he had found her. She wasn’t sure, in fact, if he was referring to this past summer or a summer long ago.
“I…well…I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, I shouldn’t have secrets from you. I think of serendipity as a woman. A green woman, with stripes.”
“Oh.”
“I know, I sound nuts. I’m sorry. The thing about dignity—I’ve thought a lot about that. How to die with dignity.”
“Really?”
“We have a choice here. Lethal injection or the electric chair. I almost chose the electric chair. I didn’t want to…fade away. Although there are those who say even lethal injection might be cruel and unusual. It takes twenty minutes. Did you know that? Twenty minutes from the dose until they pronounce a man dead.”
“Hmmmmmm.”
“One thing I know for sure—I’m not going to let the media know what my last meal will be. I’m allowed to keep that private, and I will.” A pause. “You have some choices, too, you know.”
Another noncommittal noise, only this one ended up, to imply a question. “Hmmmmmmm?”
“You can be a witness. In private, they don’t have to let the media know.”
“I don’t think that’s of interest to me, Walter.”
“Why?”
“I don’t feel that’s something I have to explain to anyone. It’s just not what I want to do.”
“Because you’re against the death penalty.” Fishing, probing.
“It’s just not something I choose to do.”
“I am going to go with lethal injection, if that makes a difference.”
“No thank you, Walter.” He did manage to bring out one’s good manners. She remembered Holly in the pickup truck. Please, mister, please.
“Then how about coming to see me? Alive, I mean, here at Sussex I?”
“I don’t think that would be possible.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be easy. Almost no one gets on the visiting list for a death row inmate, unless it’s a lawyer, maybe a journalist. But they would make an exception for you, I’m pretty sure.”
“Maybe,” she said, meaning to say only that she might be an exception, not that she would consider it seriously. In fact, that might be the best way to go: have Peter approach prison officials and make the request, all wink-wink, nudge-nudge, we’ll understand perfectly if you have to say no. Make them the bad guys, instead of her.
She reminded herself that Walter was the bad guy.
“I would really like,” he said, “to say I’m sorry in person. I don’t think it means as much over the phone. I don’t think you believed me.”
“You did a fine job,” she assured him. “It was a great apology.”
“But you didn’t forgive me.”
“I don’t think I’m the person who can forgive you, not really.”
“You’re the only one I care about.” There was a buzz of conversation in the background, a quick exchange, and Walter came back on the line. “That’s it for today. I gotta run. I’ll call you later.”
She hung up the phone and lay back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. You’re the only one I care about.
Stop, she prayed to the lighting fixture, one of the old-fashioned touches in the house that had never been updated. Eliza loved it, but Peter had recently held some sort of gauge to it, discovered that it generated heat to some obscene temperature within minutes. He wanted to rewire the overhead lamp, or at least replace its regular bulb with a fluorescent one. But Eliza loved this rose-colored globe of cut glass, couldn’t bear to see it replaced or fitted with a bulb that would cast a colder light. Please stop, she prayed, remembering a book where a boy thought God had lived in the kitchen light, because his mother was always addressing it, shaking a wooden spoon. Eliza wasn’t the kind who would shake a spoon at God or demand anything. She wasn’t even sure she believed in God, but she still couldn’t resist asking him this favor. Please make him leave me alone.