For almost two decades, I was an investigator working for a public defenders firm that appealed Death Row cases in Oklahoma. I was tired. So one day I asked a young man on Death Row whose case we had managed to "win," meaning we got him Life Without Parole when he never killed anyone, he was just a stupid kid who held up a convenience store with his smarter friend (more money, better attorneys, no Death conviction) who shot the clerk while our client was in the backroom waving his gun at a witness, someone he went to high school with and since our client wasn't wearing a mask because it was all so last-minute, at least for him anyway, ID'ed our client who, when he heard the gunshot, ran out of the store. So I asked this young man with a borderline IQ, whose elementary school teacher said he worked so hard he managed to achieve above what he was actually capable of, in her opinion anyway, I asked was it worth it, to him, to end up with a new sentence where he would never in his lifetime leave prison.
“Kathy would say, ‘I bet I can eat this faster than you can and every time Janie would fall for it. She’d unwrap that Hershey bar and eat it as fast as she could.’”
Mom always stops here to laugh. I always feel dumb. Duped. No matter how old I am or the circumstances of the telling.
“Then, once Janie had nothing left, Kathy would slowly unwrap her Hershey bar and take small bites, chewing them so deliberately.” Mom imitates my sister delicately peeling the silver foil wrapper from the chocolate bar, taking little nibbles.
I picture myself: chocolate smeared mouth and fingers.
“And then Janie who had nothing left would just cry and cry.”
Tear-stained sticky face.
My sister was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes when she was six, so in this story because Kath is freely eating Hershey bars, not shoving them into her mouth to boost her blood sugar, we are probably five and three. I’m not sure I understand how Mom hears this story. She tells it most often with a drink in hand, a few neighbors or her husband’s family in the room—people who did not know me or my sister as children growing up in another state. She also tells it to my children, who are not especially fond of their Aunt Kathleen.
By the time my oldest son is a teenager and has heard this story too many times, he says, “And still Mom gave Aunt Kathleen one of her kidneys.”
“Ken and I are splitting up.” There, she’d said it. She’d been working up to this phone call for two weeks. Having to tell her church-going, choir-singing, married-to-a-doctor sister that she’d once again failed at something tasted exactly like the cod-liver oil their mother had lined them up to take.
Silence greeted her announcement.
Then, a small, “oh,” the clang of a pot in the background, muffled voices and a “hang on just a minute.”
A few seconds later she heard the pick-up of another telephone and the click of the first being hung up. Patricia was obviously somewhere else now – probably her bedroom, door closed to the interruptions of her four kids.
“Hi. I’m back.” A pause. “Diane, I’m so sorry. I’m shocked. Why?”
Diane had known this question was coming but still she struggled to answer. Where to start? His distance over the past year, while she dealt with the cancer scare, lying awake at night, heart beating wildly as she went over the possibilities, wondering how her little daughter would cope if she lost her mother at such a young age? The way he seemed so uninterested in what she had to say? The fact that their life seemed to be more about the travel and the things they were accumulating on his lucrative salary than about the time they spent together? Or that other thing, so long ago, that had led her into the safety of his arms, even though the love she felt for him didn’t feel quite the way she thought it should?
“I’m...” She looked around at her bedroom walls, at the closet stretching across the width of the room. Suddenly, her fingers itched for a cigarette. Odd. She hadn’t smoked since getting pregnant with Sadie. “It’s complicated.”
She heard Patricia draw a breath. “Well. Marriage is complicated. Jack and I have definitely had our problems. But we keep working at it.”
Diane gritted her teeth. “I’ve been working at it. For quite a while.”
We were in our younger brother Jack’s bachelor apartment, staring down at the blue shag carpet in the living room where Steve had found Jack lying face down a week earlier. He’d been dead for three days. He was 51.
"A massive heart attack," Steve said. “The death certificate didn’t mention the drink.”
Before leaving the apartment, we picked up the birdcage from the glass coffee table. Wharf, the canary, was Jack’s only roommate. A neighbor girl had offered to take the bird. “Jack used to leave him with me when he went on holiday,” she told us.
Our youngest brother, Jack became a bartender at our local pub when he was 18. He suited the job. He was handsome and friendly and funny. He spent the rest of his life in pubs—serving drinks, or, more often in later years when his health began to fail, straddling a bar stool alongside his fellow boozers, sharing his amusing stories, or opining incoherently on the state of the world.
At the post-funeral reception the day before, in the same pub where Jack had spent decades knocking back pints and enriching the owner, the tables were laden with free sandwiches and booze that was not free. Jack’s bar buddies took turns eulogizing him. “He was a fine lad,” they said. "A great storyteller. A dapper dresser. And the jokes. No one could tell them better. And wasn’t he in a better place now? You could almost envy him.”
It’s finally morning, had to be admitted to the hospital after coming to the ER because a cat bite got infected – occupational hazard. I needed IV antibiotics overnight. I slept with my purse underneath my body, I wasn’t supposed to bring anything with me but I didn’t know they were going to keep me here. Kept waking up and everything around me is beeping and people keep coming in and out of the room. The other patient sharing the room I’m in is extremely upset because she hasn’t eaten in over 24 hours and they are not giving her food because they need to do more tests.
“Good morning. That’s great. Any word on when I can get out of here?”
“Well we’re working on that, we need to figure out the antibiotics you will take home because you are allergic to the usual ones we give. And we need to see if you need any more IV antibiotics.”
I text my partner the vague news. He’s home very sick with the flu. I’m so creeped out by being in the hospital and my arm feels uncomfortable having the thing they plug the IV to in my arm.
My phone rings. A relative in California calling. I answer.
“Hey, how are you?”
“Oh I’m ok, something crazy to tell you though. How are you?”
“Oh I’m fine.” Got to get off this call before they hear the beeping and other people’s voices. “You know, I’m just running out to an appointment, so can I catch up with you later today or so? Would love to hear what’s going on.”
For almost two decades, I was an investigator working for a public defenders firm that appealed Death Row cases in Oklahoma. I was tired. So one day I asked a young man on Death Row whose case we had managed to "win," meaning we got him Life Without Parole when he never killed anyone, he was just a stupid kid who held up a convenience store with his smarter friend (more money, better attorneys, no Death conviction) who shot the clerk while our client was in the backroom waving his gun at a witness, someone he went to high school with and since our client wasn't wearing a mask because it was all so last-minute, at least for him anyway, ID'ed our client who, when he heard the gunshot, ran out of the store. So I asked this young man with a borderline IQ, whose elementary school teacher said he worked so hard he managed to achieve above what he was actually capable of, in her opinion anyway, I asked was it worth it, to him, to end up with a new sentence where he would never in his lifetime leave prison.
And he said, "Yes."
“Kathy would say, ‘I bet I can eat this faster than you can and every time Janie would fall for it. She’d unwrap that Hershey bar and eat it as fast as she could.’”
Mom always stops here to laugh. I always feel dumb. Duped. No matter how old I am or the circumstances of the telling.
“Then, once Janie had nothing left, Kathy would slowly unwrap her Hershey bar and take small bites, chewing them so deliberately.” Mom imitates my sister delicately peeling the silver foil wrapper from the chocolate bar, taking little nibbles.
I picture myself: chocolate smeared mouth and fingers.
“And then Janie who had nothing left would just cry and cry.”
Tear-stained sticky face.
My sister was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes when she was six, so in this story because Kath is freely eating Hershey bars, not shoving them into her mouth to boost her blood sugar, we are probably five and three. I’m not sure I understand how Mom hears this story. She tells it most often with a drink in hand, a few neighbors or her husband’s family in the room—people who did not know me or my sister as children growing up in another state. She also tells it to my children, who are not especially fond of their Aunt Kathleen.
By the time my oldest son is a teenager and has heard this story too many times, he says, “And still Mom gave Aunt Kathleen one of her kidneys.”
“Ken and I are splitting up.” There, she’d said it. She’d been working up to this phone call for two weeks. Having to tell her church-going, choir-singing, married-to-a-doctor sister that she’d once again failed at something tasted exactly like the cod-liver oil their mother had lined them up to take.
Silence greeted her announcement.
Then, a small, “oh,” the clang of a pot in the background, muffled voices and a “hang on just a minute.”
A few seconds later she heard the pick-up of another telephone and the click of the first being hung up. Patricia was obviously somewhere else now – probably her bedroom, door closed to the interruptions of her four kids.
“Hi. I’m back.” A pause. “Diane, I’m so sorry. I’m shocked. Why?”
Diane had known this question was coming but still she struggled to answer. Where to start? His distance over the past year, while she dealt with the cancer scare, lying awake at night, heart beating wildly as she went over the possibilities, wondering how her little daughter would cope if she lost her mother at such a young age? The way he seemed so uninterested in what she had to say? The fact that their life seemed to be more about the travel and the things they were accumulating on his lucrative salary than about the time they spent together? Or that other thing, so long ago, that had led her into the safety of his arms, even though the love she felt for him didn’t feel quite the way she thought it should?
“I’m...” She looked around at her bedroom walls, at the closet stretching across the width of the room. Suddenly, her fingers itched for a cigarette. Odd. She hadn’t smoked since getting pregnant with Sadie. “It’s complicated.”
She heard Patricia draw a breath. “Well. Marriage is complicated. Jack and I have definitely had our problems. But we keep working at it.”
Diane gritted her teeth. “I’ve been working at it. For quite a while.”
“Was it his heart,” I asked my brother Steve
We were in our younger brother Jack’s bachelor apartment, staring down at the blue shag carpet in the living room where Steve had found Jack lying face down a week earlier. He’d been dead for three days. He was 51.
"A massive heart attack," Steve said. “The death certificate didn’t mention the drink.”
Before leaving the apartment, we picked up the birdcage from the glass coffee table. Wharf, the canary, was Jack’s only roommate. A neighbor girl had offered to take the bird. “Jack used to leave him with me when he went on holiday,” she told us.
Our youngest brother, Jack became a bartender at our local pub when he was 18. He suited the job. He was handsome and friendly and funny. He spent the rest of his life in pubs—serving drinks, or, more often in later years when his health began to fail, straddling a bar stool alongside his fellow boozers, sharing his amusing stories, or opining incoherently on the state of the world.
At the post-funeral reception the day before, in the same pub where Jack had spent decades knocking back pints and enriching the owner, the tables were laden with free sandwiches and booze that was not free. Jack’s bar buddies took turns eulogizing him. “He was a fine lad,” they said. "A great storyteller. A dapper dresser. And the jokes. No one could tell them better. And wasn’t he in a better place now? You could almost envy him.”
“Miss Hauser, I’m here to take your vitals.”
It’s finally morning, had to be admitted to the hospital after coming to the ER because a cat bite got infected – occupational hazard. I needed IV antibiotics overnight. I slept with my purse underneath my body, I wasn’t supposed to bring anything with me but I didn’t know they were going to keep me here. Kept waking up and everything around me is beeping and people keep coming in and out of the room. The other patient sharing the room I’m in is extremely upset because she hasn’t eaten in over 24 hours and they are not giving her food because they need to do more tests.
“Good morning. That’s great. Any word on when I can get out of here?”
“Well we’re working on that, we need to figure out the antibiotics you will take home because you are allergic to the usual ones we give. And we need to see if you need any more IV antibiotics.”
I text my partner the vague news. He’s home very sick with the flu. I’m so creeped out by being in the hospital and my arm feels uncomfortable having the thing they plug the IV to in my arm.
My phone rings. A relative in California calling. I answer.
“Hey, how are you?”
“Oh I’m ok, something crazy to tell you though. How are you?”
“Oh I’m fine.” Got to get off this call before they hear the beeping and other people’s voices. “You know, I’m just running out to an appointment, so can I catch up with you later today or so? Would love to hear what’s going on.”