by Jodi Picoult
“You will,” I insist, but he shakes his head.
My heart beats a little faster. “A punch bowl, that’s what you can buy. A picture frame. You can make a toast.”
“Sara,” Dr. Chance says, “you need to say good-bye.”
• • •
Jesse spends fifteen minutes in Kate’s closed room, and comes out looking for all the world like a bomb about to explode. He runs through the halls of the pediatric ICU ward. “I’ll go,” Brian says. He heads down the corridor in Jesse’s direction.
Anna sits with her back to the wall. She is angry, too. “I’m not doing this.”
I crouch down next to her. “There is nothing, believe me, I’d rather make you do less. But if you don’t, Anna, then one day, you’re going to wish you had.”
Belligerent, Anna walks into Kate’s room, climbs onto a chair. Kate’s chest rises and falls, the work of the respirator. All the fight goes out of Anna as she reaches out to touch her sister’s cheek. “Can she hear me?”
“Absolutely,” I answer, more for myself than for her.
“I won’t go to Minnesota,” Anna whispers. “I won’t ever go anywhere.” She leans close. “Wake up, Kate.”
We both hold our breath, but nothing happens.
• • •
I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don’t necessarily want them to be there.
Brian and Kate and I are a circuit. We sit on each side of the bed and hold each other’s hands, and one of hers. “You were right,” I tell him. “We should have taken her home.”
Brian shakes his head. “If we hadn’t tried the arsenic, we’d spend the rest of our lives asking why not.” He brushes back the pale hair that surrounds Kate’s face. “She’s such a good girl. She’s always done what you ask her to do.” I nod, unable to speak. “That’s why she’s hanging on, you know. She wants your permission to leave.”
He bends down to Kate, crying so hard he cannot catch his breath. I put my hand on his head. We are not the first parents to lose a child. But we are the first parents to lose our child. And that makes all the difference.
• • •
When Brian falls asleep, draped over the foot of the bed, I take Kate’s scarred hand between both of mine. I trace the ovals of her nails and remember the first time I painted them, when Brian couldn’t believe I’d do that to a one-year-old. Now, twelve years later, I turn over her palm and wish I knew how to read it, or better yet, how to edit that lifeline.
I pull my chair closer to the hospital bed. “Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you’d changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so that when it pulled away, you’d be able to look back and see me there, waiting for you.” I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. “You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you.”
I bury my face in the blankets and tell this daughter of mine how much I love her. I squeeze her hand one last time.
Only to feel the slightest pulse, the tiniest grasp, the smallest clutch of Kate’s fingers, as she claws her way back to this world.
ANNA
HERE’S MY QUESTION: What age are you when you’re in Heaven? I mean, if it’s Heaven, you should be at your beauty-queen best, and I doubt that all the people who die of old age are wandering around toothless and bald. It opens up a whole additional realm of questions, too. If you hang yourself, do you walk around all gross and blue, with your tongue spitting out of your mouth? If you are killed in a war, do you spend eternity minus the leg that got blown up by a mine?
I figure that maybe you get a choice. You fill out the application form that asks you if you want a star view or a cloud view, if you like chicken or fish or manna for dinner, what age you’d like to be seen as by everyone else. Like me, for example, I might pick seventeen, in the hopes I grow boobs by then, and even if I’m a pruny centegenarian by the time I die, in Heaven I’d be young and pretty.
Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.
The problem, I suppose, is that everyone’s different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. What if you’re picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?
Or what if you’re Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?
• • •
Campbell calls my father at the station when we’re having lunch, and says that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid way to put it, since we all know he’s talking about my mother. He says we have to meet at three o’clock in his office, no matter that it’s Sunday.
I sit on the floor with Judge’s head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he doesn’t even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and (since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She’s put on some makeup. But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone else, once. I suppose we all were.
“Hello,” she says quietly.
“Ms. Fitzgerald,” Campbell replies. Ice.
My mother’s eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the floor. “Hi,” she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to hug me, but she stops.
“You called this meeting, Counselor,” Campbell prompts.
My mother sits down. “I know. I was . . . well, I’m hoping that we can clear this up. I want us to make a decision, together.”
Campbell raps his fingers on the table. “Are you offering us a deal?”
He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him. “Yes, I guess I am.” She turns her chair toward me, as if only the two of us are in the room. “Anna, I know how much you’ve done for Kate. I also know she doesn’t have many chances left . . . but she might have this one.”
“My client doesn’t need coercing—”
“It’s okay, Campbell,” I say. “Let her talk.”
“If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn’t work, if things don’t wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate—well, I will never ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last thing?”
By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither of us has moved.
I glance at my father, but he’s gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead of getting involved.
“Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be necessary in the future to prolong Kate’s life?” Campbell clarifies.
My mother takes a deep breath. “Yes.”
“We need, of course, to discuss it.”
When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn’t stupid enough to believe in Santa. It’s Mom and Dad, he explained, and I fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary’s mailbox. And I steadfastly did not tell my parents,
although I dropped other hints about toys I hoped for that year.
On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because she didn’t know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa, nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be.
Maybe Campbell thinks this is about the law, but really, it’s about my mother. I get up from the floor and fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit. It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I’ve been saving come out of their hiding place. “Oh, Anna,” she cries into my hair. “Thank God. Thank God.”
I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn’t. “I can’t.”
My mother’s body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches the crown of my head. That’s it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and walks out of the office.
Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever seen him look. “Anna,” he says. “Is this really what you want?”
I open my mouth. And find an answer.
JULIA
“DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he’s an asshole,” I ask my sister, “or in spite of it?”
Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a movie she’s seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing. “If you make me miss the end, Julia, I’ll kill you.”
“‘See ya, Katie,’” I quote for her. “‘See ya, Hubbell.’”
She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music swells. “Barbra Streisand,” Izzy says, “is the bomb.”
“I thought that was a gay men’s stereotype.” I look up over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow’s hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in Anna Fitzgerald’s best interests. The problem is, it doesn’t matter whether I side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.
“I thought we were talking about Campbell,” Izzy says.
“No, I was talking about Campbell. You were swooning.” I rub my temples. “I thought you might be sympathetic.”
“About Campbell Alexander? I’m not sympathetic. I’m apathetic.”
“You’re right. That is what kind of pathetic you are.”
“Look, Julia. Maybe it’s hereditary,” Izzy says. She gets up and starts rubbing the muscles of my neck. “Maybe you have a gene that attracts you to absolute jerks.”
“Then you have it, too.”
“Well.” She laughs. “Case in point.”
“I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record.”
Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I’m drinking and finishes it off. “What happened to this being strictly professional?”
“It is. There’s just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind wishing otherwise.”
Izzy sits back down on the couch. “The problem, you know, is that you never forget your first one. And even if your brain’s smart about it, your body’s got the IQ of a fruit fly.”
“It’s just so easy with him, Iz. It’s like we’re picking up where we left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows everything he needs to about me.” I look at her. “Can you fall for someone because you’re lazy?”
“Why don’t you just screw him and get it out of your system?”
“Because,” I say, “as soon as it’s over, that’s one more piece of the past I won’t be able to get rid of.”
“I can fix you up with one of my friends,” Izzy suggests.
“They all have vaginas.”
“See, you’re looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be attracted to someone for what they’ve got inside them, not for the package it’s presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he’s like marzipan frosting on a sardine.”
“You think he’s gorgeous?”
Izzy rolls her eyes. “You,” she says, “are doomed.”
When the doorbell rings, Izzy goes to look through the peephole. “Speak of the devil.”
“It’s Campbell?” I whisper. “Tell him I’m not here.”
Izzy opens the door just a few inches. “Julia says she’s not here.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I mutter, and walk up behind her. Pushing her out of the way, I undo the chain and let Campbell and his dog inside.
“The reception here just keeps getting warmer and fuzzier,” he says.
I cross my arms. “What do you want? I’m working.”
“Good. Sara Fitzgerald just offered us a plea bargain. Come out to dinner with me and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I am not going out to dinner with you,” I tell him.
“Actually, you are.” He shrugs. “I know you, and eventually you’re going to give in because even more than you don’t want to be with me, you want to know what Anna’s mother said. Can’t we just cut to the chase?”
Izzy starts laughing. “He does know you, Julia.”
“If you don’t go willingly,” Campbell adds, “I have no problem using brute force. Although it’s going to be considerably more difficult for you to cut your filet mignon if your hands are tied together.”
I turn to my sister. “Do something. Please.”
She waves at me. “See ya, Katie.”
“See ya, Hubbell,” Campbell replies. “Great movie.”
Izzy looks at him, considering. “Maybe there’s hope,” she says.
• • •
“Rule number one,” I tell him. “We talk about the trial, and nothing but the trial.”
“So help me God,” Campbell adds. “And may I just say you look beautiful?”
“See, you’ve already broken the rule.”
He pulls into a parking lot near the water and cuts the engine. Then he gets out of the car and comes around to my side to help me out. I look around, but I don’t see anything resembling a restaurant. We are at a marina filled with sailboats and yachts, their honey-colored decks tanning in the late sun. “Take off your sneakers,” Campbell says.
“No.”
“For God’s sake, Julia. This isn’t the Victorian age; I’m not going to attack you because I see your ankle. Just do it, will you?”
“Why?”
“Because right now you’ve got an enormous pole up your ass and this is the only G-rated way I can think of to make you relax.” He pulls off his own deck shoes and sinks his feet into the grass growing along the edge of the parking lot. “Ahhh,” he says, and he spreads his arms wide. “Come on, Jewel. Carpe diem. Summer’s almost over; better enjoy it while you can.”
“What about the plea bargain—”
“What Sara said is going to remain the same whether or not you go barefoot.”
I still do not know if he’s taken on this case because he’s a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna. I want to believe the latter, idiot that I am. Campbell waits patiently, the dog at his side. Finally I untie my sneakers and peel off my socks. I step out onto the strip of lawn.
Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that’s heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fac
t it’s all going in the other direction. Campbell sits down on the grass. “What’s rule number two?”
“That I get to make up all the rules,” I say.
When he smiles at me, I’m lost.
• • •
Last night, Seven the Bartender slipped a martini into my waiting hand and asked me what I was hiding from.
I took a sip before I answered, and reminded myself why I hate martinis—they’re straight bitter alcohol, which of course is the point, but they also taste that way, which is always somehow disappointing. “I’m not hiding,” I told him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
It was early at the bar, just dinnertime. I stopped in on my way back from the fire station, where I’d been with Anna. Two guys were making out in a booth in the corner, one lone man was sitting at the other end of the bar. “Can we change the channel?” He gestured toward the TV, which was broadcasting the evening news. “Jennings is so much hotter than Brokaw.”
Seven flicked the remote, then turned back to me. “You’re not hiding, but you’re sitting in a gay bar at dinnertime. You’re not hiding, but you’re wearing that suit like it’s armor.”
“Well, I’d definitely take fashion advice from a guy with a pierced tongue.”
Seven lifted a brow. “One more martini, and I could convince you to go see my man Johnston and get your own done. You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots.”
I took another sip of the martini. “You don’t know me.”
At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled.
“Maybe,” Seven said, “but neither do you.”
• • •
Dinner turns out to be bread and cheese—well, a baguette and Gruyère—on board a thirty-foot sailboat. Campbell rolls up his pants like a castaway and sets the rigging and hauls line and catches the wind until we are so far away from the shore of Providence that it is only a line of color, a distant, jeweled necklace.
