The Jodi Picoult Collection #4
Page 42
A: When I write a book in multiple narratives, there are always one or two that are easier than others. In Change of Heart, Maggie was by far the most fun to write—she has a terrific, easy, funny voice. June was the most painful, and the one that caught me most unawares. When I as a writer thought I knew how I felt about capital punishment, I’d write one of June’s sections and flip-flop. Lucius was enjoyable, too, because he’s not your typical prisoner, and because he’s an instrument through which we get to hear and see Shay. Michael was the hardest for me—probably because he was the least openminded at first!
Q: Why did you decide not to write from Shay’s point of view?
A: Maggie, Michael, Lucius, and June correspond with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Shay, as the messianic character, does not have his own voice in a “gospel”—and neither does Jesus in the New Testament.
Q: A lot of work and research has been done recently on “restorative justice,” a mutual healing process where victims and offenders meet face-to-face. Do you think that this is a credible way of dealing with serious criminals?
A: I think in many cases, what a victim wants more than anything is to hear that the perpetrator is sorry. And also, in many cases, the perpetrator needs to be able to say that to the victim and his or her family in order to move on. It certainly won’t work in all situations—as you see in Change of Heart—but I wish it was more prevalent in prison settings. To me, a successful restorative justice meeting is a better indicator of a change of heart for an inmate, and fosters more healing, than a life sentence where no reconciliation ever occurs.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: Handle with Care, which is about a wrongful birth suit. These cases are pretty fascinating—it involves a parent suing her OB for not being told earlier that a child was going to be severely impaired. Most parents who sue love their kids very much . . . but want to give them the best lives possible, which is very expensive given the level of physical impairment, so they sue. However, it means getting up in front of a jury and saying that if you’d known your child was going to be this handicapped, you would never have had the baby. Not only is that emotionally devastating, but it usually creates a lawsuit that circles back to questions of abortion rights, and who gets to decide what sort of life is or isn’t worth living. At what point should an OB counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How handicapped is too handicapped? As you can see, there are lots of thorny moral and ethical questions in this one—which is why I love it! In Handle with Care the stakes are a bit higher, because the OB—Piper Reece—and the mom—Charlotte O’Keefe—are best friends . . . until Charlotte’s daughter is born with osteogenesis imperfecta type III, a very severe form of brittle bone disease. These are children who, literally, will have hundreds of breaks over the course of a lifetime; you can lift up your infant and break her back; she can roll over and break her ribs. Thematically, the book explores the things that break apart in times of stress: bones, friendships, families.
TIPS TO ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. Go to deathpenaltyinfo.org/state to see what your state laws are regarding capital punishment. Discuss the statistics you find there.
2. You can write letters to inmates on death row by contacting Death Row Support Project, PO Box 600, Liberty Mills, IN 46946.
3. Save the money you’d normally spend on wine or food at your next book club meeting. Instead, help sick kids like Claire by donating to a children’s hospital or research fund.
4. Watch a video and listen to Jodi Picoult talk about Change of Heart at www.jodipicoult.com/heartvideo.
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Jodi Picoult
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Washington Square Press trade paperback edition November 2008
ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Jaime Putorti
ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9674-2
ISBN-10: 0-7434-9674-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9675-9 (pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-7434-9675-2 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6560-4 (eBook)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part I
Amelia
Sean
Charlotte
Sean
Marin
Piper
Charlotte
Part II
Charlotte
Piper
Amelia
Marin
Sean
Charlotte
Sean
Amelia
Marin
Piper
Sean
Amelia
Piper
Charlotte
Marin
Amelia
Charlotte
Amelia
Part III
Charlotte
Sean
Marin
Sean
Amelia
Piper
Marin
Charlotte
Sean
Amelia
Charlotte
Marin
Sean
Amelia
Charlotte
Amelia
Piper
Marin
Charlotte
Part IV
Marin
Charlotte
Piper
Marin
Sean
Charlotte
Amelia
Sean
Marin
Piper
Charlotte
Amelia
Sean
Charlotte
Amelia
Charlotte
Amelia
Piper
Sean
Amelia
Charlotte
Piper
Charlotte
Marin
Amelia
Sean
Amelia
Marin
Amelia
Charlotte
Piper
Charlotte
Willow
Author’s Note
A Readers Club Guide
For Marjorie Rose,
Who makes flowers bloom onstage,
Provides me with goss half a world away,
And knows you’re never fully dressed without a green bag.
BFFAA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It may be a cliché to say I didn’t do this alone, but it’s also true. First and foremost, I want to thank the parents of kids with OI who invited me into their lives for a little while—and the kids themselves, who made me laugh and reminded me daily that strength is far more than a physical measure of stamina: Laurie Blaisdell and Rachel, Taryn Macliver and Matthew, Tony and Stacey Moss and Hope, Amy Phelps and Jonathan. Thanks to my crackerjack medical team: Mark Brezinski, David Toub, John Femino, E. Rebecca Pschirrer, Emily Baker, Michele Lauria, Karen George, Steve Sargent; and my legal eagles: Jen Sternick, Lise Iwon, Chris Keating, Jennifer Sargent. I owe Debbie Bernstein for sharing her story about being adopted (and letting me steal huge parts of it). I am likewise indebted to Donna Branca, for revisiting memories that are painful and for being gracious and honest when I asked questions. Thanks to Jeff Fleury, Nick Giaccone, and Frank Moran for helping me create Sean’s life as a police officer. For other expertise in their fields, thanks to Michael Goldman (who also let me use his
fantastic T-shirt slogan), Steve Alspach, Stefanie Ryan, Kathy Hemenway, Jan Scheiner, Fonsaca Malyan, Kevin Lavigne, Ellen Wilber, Sindy Buzzell, and Fred Clow. It would be a gross oversight not to highlight the involvement that Atria Books has in making my books such successes; I am grateful to Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, David Brown, Kathleen Schmidt, Mellony Torres, Sarah Branham, Laura Stern, Gary Urda, Lisa Keim, Christine Duplessis, Michael Selleck, the whole of the fabulous sales force, and everyone else who has worked so hard to make my books leap off the shelves into the arms and hearts of readers. A special thanks goes to Camille McDuffie, my secret weapon/publicist extraordinaire. Thanks to Emily Bestler, who always makes me feel like a star (and makes sure everyone else seems to think I’m one, too). Thanks to Laura Gross, with whom I celebrated my twentieth anniversary this year—and who is the other half of a partnership I rank right up there with my marriage. And to Jane Picoult, my mom, thanks for believing I could do this long before anyone else did, and for laughing and crying in all the right places.
In the interests of accuracy, I should state that although there was an OI convention in Omaha, I’ve changed the date. Also, I’ve slightly amended the way juries are picked in New Hampshire—it’s not by individual, as I’ve written, but it’s a lot more interesting to read that way!
I have two special thank-yous. The first is to Katie Desmond, the sister I never had, who created the recipes I’ve attributed here to Charlotte O’Keefe. If you’re ever lucky enough to be invited to her house for dinner: don’t walk, run. The second is to Kara Sheridan, who is one of the most inspirational women I’ve ever met: she’s a scholar studying body image and self-esteem for disabled teens. She’s an athlete—a swimmer who’s broken records. She’s about to get married to a wonderful, adorable guy. And oh, by the way, she also has Type III osteogenesis imperfecta. Thanks, Kara, for showing the world that barriers were meant to be broken, that no one can be defined by a disability, and that nothing’s ever impossible.
Finally, I have to thank once again Kyle, Jake, and Sammy, for giving me something wonderful to come home to; and Tim, who is my happy ending.
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
—RAYMOND CARVER, “LATE FRAGMENT”
PROLOGUE
Charlotte
February 14, 2002
Things break all the time. Glass, and dishes, and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever.
For the last two months of my pregnancy, I made lists of these things, in the hopes that it would make your birth easier.
Promises break.
Hearts break.
On the night before you were born, I sat up in bed with something to add to my list. I rummaged in my nightstand for a pencil and paper, but Sean put his warm hand on my leg. Charlotte? he asked. Is everything okay?
Before I could answer, he pulled me into his arms, flush against him, and I fell asleep feeling safe, forgetting to write down what I had dreamed.
It wasn’t until weeks later, when you were here, that I remembered what had awakened me that night: fault lines. These are the places where the earth breaks apart. These are the spots where earthquakes originate, where volcanoes are born. Or in other words: the world is crumbling under us; it’s the solid ground beneath our feet that’s an illusion.
• • •
You arrived during a storm that nobody had predicted. A nor’easter, the weathermen said later, a blizzard that was supposed to blow north into Canada instead of working its way into a frenzy and battering the coast of New England. The news broadcasts tossed aside their features on high school sweethearts who met up again in a nursing home and got remarried, on the celebrated history behind the candy heart, and instead began to run constant weather bulletins about the strength of the storm and the communities where ice had knocked out the power. Amelia was sitting at the kitchen table, cutting folded paper into valentines as I watched the snow blow in six-foot drifts against the glass slider. The television showed footage of cars sliding off the roads.
I squinted at the screen, at the flashing blues of the police cruiser that had pulled in behind the overturned vehicle, trying to see whether the officer in the driver’s seat was Sean.
A sharp rap on the slider made me jump. “Mommy!” Amelia cried, startled, too.
I turned just in time to see a volley of hail strike a second time, creating a crack in the plate glass no bigger than my fingernail. As we watched, it spread into a web of splintered glass as big as my fist. “Daddy will fix it later,” I said.
That was the moment when my water broke.
Amelia glanced down between my feet. “You had an accident.”
I waddled to the phone, and when Sean didn’t answer his cell, I called Dispatch. “This is Sean O’Keefe’s wife,” I said. “I’m in labor.” The dispatcher said that he could send out an ambulance, but that it would probably take a while—they were maxed out with motor vehicle accidents.
“That’s okay,” I said, remembering the long labor I’d had with your sister. “I’ve probably got a while.”
Suddenly I doubled over with a contraction so strong that the phone fell out of my hand. I saw Amelia watching, her eyes wide. “I’m fine,” I lied, smiling until my cheeks hurt. “The phone slipped.” I reached for the receiver, and this time I called Piper, whom I trusted more than anyone in the world to rescue me.
“You can’t be in labor,” she said, even though she knew better—she was not only my best friend but also my initial obstetrician. “The C-section’s scheduled for Monday.”
“I don’t think the baby got the memo,” I gasped, and I gritted my teeth against another contraction.
She didn’t say what we were both thinking: that I could not have you naturally. “Where’s Sean?”
“I . . . don’t . . . kno—oh, Piper!”
“Breathe,” Piper said automatically, and I started to pant, ha-ha-hee-hee, the way she’d taught me. “I’ll call Gianna and tell her we’re on our way.”
Gianna was Dr. Del Sol, the maternal-fetal-medicine OB who had stepped in just eight weeks ago at Piper’s request. “We?”
“Were you planning on driving yourself?”
Fifteen minutes later, I had bribed away your sister’s questions by settling her on the couch and turning on Blue’s Clues. I sat next to her, wearing your father’s winter coat, the only one that fit me now.
The first time I had gone into labor, I’d had a bag packed and waiting at the door. I’d had a birthing plan and a mix tape of music to play in the delivery room. I knew it would hurt, but the reward was this incredible prize: the child I’d waited months to meet. The first time I had gone into labor, I’d been so excited.
This time, I was petrified. You were safer inside me than you would be once you were out.
Just then the door burst open and Piper filled all the space with her assured voice and her bright pink parka. Her husband, Rob, trailed behind, carrying Emma, who was carrying a snowball. “Blue’s Clues?” he said, settling down next to your sister. “You know, that’s my absolute favorite show . . . after Jerry Springer.”
Amelia. I hadn’t even thought about who would watch her while I was at the hospital having you.
“How far apart?” Piper asked.
My contractions were coming every seven minutes. As another one rolled over me like a riptide, I grabbed the arm of the couch and counted to twenty. I focused on that crack in the glass door.
Trails of frost spiraled outward from its point of origin. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Piper sat down beside me and held my hand. “Charlotte, it’s going to be ok
ay,” she promised, and because I was a fool, I believed her.
• • •
The emergency room was thick with people who’d been injured in motor vehicle accidents during the storm. Young men held bloody towels to their scalps; children mewed on stretchers. I was whisked past them all by Piper, up to the birthing center, where Dr. Del Sol was already pacing the corridor. Within ten minutes, I was being given an epidural and wheeled to the operating room for a C-section.
I played games with myself: if there are an even number of fluorescent lights on the ceiling of this corridor, then Sean will arrive in time. If there are more men than women in the elevator, everything the doctors told me will turn out to be a mistake. Without me even having to ask, Piper had put on scrubs, so that she could fill in for Sean as my labor coach. “He’ll be here,” she said, looking down at me.
The operating room was clinical, metallic. A nurse with green eyes—that was all I could see above her mask and below her cap—lifted my gown and swabbed my belly with Betadine. I started to panic as they hung the sterile drape in place. What if I didn’t have enough anesthesia running through the lower half of my body and I felt the scalpel slicing me? What if, in spite of all I’d hoped for, you were born and did not survive?
Suddenly the door flew open. Sean blew into the room on a cold streak of winter, holding a mask up to his face, his scrub shirt haphazardly tucked in. “Wait,” he cried. He came to the head of the stretcher and touched my cheek. “Baby,” he said. “I’m sorry. I came as soon as I heard—”
Piper patted Sean on the arm. “Three’s a crowd,” she said, backing away from me, but not before she squeezed my hand one last time.
And then, Sean was beside me, the heat of his palms on my shoulders, the hymn of his voice distracting me as Dr. Del Sol lifted the scalpel. “You scared the hell out of me,” he said. “What were you and Piper thinking, driving yourselves?”
“That we didn’t want to have the baby on the kitchen floor?”
Sean shook his head. “Something awful could have happened.”
I felt a tug below the white drape and sucked in my breath, turning my head to the side. That was when I saw it: the enlarged twenty-seven-week sonogram with your seven broken bones, your fiddlehead limbs bowed inward. Something awful already has happened, I thought.