Free Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward

beer. Stars, sausage, ham sandwiches, lemonade, padded bras, sweaty pantyhose, hairspray, gum, condoms like slippery fish on her fingers.
    She was back in Texas, and felt as if she had never left.
    Evenings with Uncle Jack in front of the TV, chicken pot pies, fish sticks, ketchup, losing her virginity to Joey Ullins in the bed of his Toyota pickup. The night Sheriff Donald found her with Joey, sixteen years old and half-undressed under the starry sky. The Sheriff brought Franny home to Uncle Jack. She smelled of sex and was hot with shame.
    Uncle Jack sent her away to boarding school the following year. After that, Franny rarely came home. She spent the school years in Connecticut, going to sleep-away camp and then to Cape Cod in the summers. She had forgotten the stifling heat. She struggled for breath, and lifted her hand for a cab.
    “First visit to Texas?” said the driver, a dark man with bushy nose hair, as she collapsed into the cab.
    “Please,” said Franny, “turn on the air-conditioning.” The man laughed. He was covered with a thin sheen of sweat. He rolled up his window, and in a few minutes Franny could breathe. She gave the man the hospital’s address.
    As the ribbon of road unfolded before her, Franny tried to remember the last conversation she had had with Uncle Jack. For years, they spoke every Sunday evening, but after Franny moved in with Nat, the phone calls became less frequent.
    When Uncle Jack finally visited New York, things had not gone well. Franny winced when she remembered Nat’s expression, looking Uncle Jack over, from his hat to his boots. Nat had even pulled Franny aside and told her “the doc” might want to change if they were really going to go out to dinner. “I’m just looking out,” Nat had said. “And he’s my size, so if he wants to borrow something…”
    Franny had told Nat to go to hell, but then, as Uncle Jack pulled a jacket over his worn denim shirt and leaned over to wipe his boots (the good leather ones), she saw him suddenly through new eyes: a country bumpkin, a man out of a Wynonna Judd video. And she had looked up and met Nat’s gaze, realizing how Nat had seen Uncle Jack from the beginning, how he must see Franny at times. Franny could cry now thinking about it. She had asked Uncle Jack into the kitchen and had suggested that her proud uncle, a doctor, the man who had raised her, might want to change his clothes. Franny had half-hoped he’d laugh at her, something to bring her back to herself, but he just shook his head. He went into the bedroom and put on the suit Nat had laid out for him. Brooks Brothers.
    As soon as Franny walked inside the Waco hospital, the cold air on her skin like water, she felt that something was wrong. It was in the hollow sound of her footsteps, the nervous glance of the nurse when she asked for Uncle Jack’s room. Even as she walked down the gleaming hallway, she thought, he’s gone. She felt Uncle Jack’s absence from the world in the pit of her stomach. And she was right.
    “He tried to hold on for you, Fran. It was his heart gave out,” said the man standing next to the empty bed. Franny blinked. She recognized the man as a friend of Uncle Jack’s. His name was Ed. “You look great,” he added, lamely.
    “Thanks,” said Franny.
    “Do you want to see him?” asked a woman standing to Ed’s right. She was plump, with long reddish hair. She wore gray slacks and a pink cotton cardigan, and her eyes were teary. Franny nodded, and the woman reached into her pink purse and pulled out a business card. She gave it to Franny. Franny knew the address on the card; it was where her parents’ funeral had been. “I’m Deborah,” said the woman, pressing her fingers into Franny’s palm.
    Stay focused, Franny told herself. “What was the time of death?” she asked.
    Ed looked at her strangely, but said, “Early this morning, four or five.”
    She had been at the airport then, checking the bag she had frantically packed for