The Jodi Picoult Collection #4

by Jodi Picoult

  This time, Sean phoned me. “Opening someone else’s mailbox is a felony, you know,” he said.

  “So arrest me,” I answered.

  That day, I left work—trailed by the rest of the staff, who had come to view our courtship as a spectator sport—and found my car completely wrapped in butcher paper. Painted in letters as tall as me was Sean’s message: I’M ON A DIET.

  Sure enough, I baked him poppy scones, and they were still in the mailbox the next day when I went to leave off ginger cookies. And the next day, with those two items untouched, I couldn’t even fit the strawberry tart. I carried it up to his house instead, and rang the doorbell. His blond hair was backlit; his white tee stretched across his chest. “How come you’re not eating what I made for you?” I asked.

  He gave me a lazy smile. “How come you won’t say it back?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  Sean crossed his arms. “Tell what?”

  “That I love you?”

  He opened the screen door, grabbed me, and kissed me hard. “It’s about time,” he said, with a grin. “I’m freaking starving.”

  • • •

  You and I didn’t just cook waffles that morning. We made cinnamon bread and oatmeal cookies and blondies. I let you lick the spoon, the spatula, the bowl. Around eleven, Amelia loped into the kitchen, freshly showered. “What army’s coming for lunch?” she asked, but then she took a corn muffin, broke it open, and breathed in the steam. “Can I help?”

  We made a raspberry velvet cake and a plum tarte Tatin, apple turnovers and pinwheel cookies and macaroons. We baked until there was hardly anything left in my pantry, until I had forgotten what you’d said to me at the pond, until we had run out of brown sugar, until we did not notice your father being gone the whole day, until we could not eat another bite.

  “Now what?” Amelia asked, when every inch of counter space was covered with something we’d made.

  It had been so long that, once I started, I hadn’t been able to stop. And I suppose a part of me still functioned cooking for a restaurant crowd and not an individual family—much less one that was absent one member. “We could give it to our neighbors,” you suggested.

  “No way,” Amelia said. “Let them buy it.”

  “We’re not running a bakery,” I pointed out.

  “Why not? It could be like a vegetable stand, at the end of the driveway. Willow and me, we can make a big sign that says Sweets by Charlotte, and you can wrap everything in Saran Wrap . . .”

  “We could cover up a shoe box,” you said, “and put a slit in the top for the money, and charge ten dollars each.”

  “Ten dollars?” Amelia said. “Try a buck, peabrain.”

  “Mom! She called me peabrain . . .”

  I was imagining whitewashed walls, a glass display case, wrought-iron tables with marble tops. I was picturing rows of pistachio muffins in an industrial stove, meringues that melted in your mouth, the angel-wing ring of the cash register. “Syllabub,” I interrupted, and both you girls turned to me. “That’s what the name on the sign should be.”

  • • •

  That night, by the time Sean came home, I was fast asleep, and he was gone by the time I woke up, too. The only way I even knew he’d stopped in was a used mug sitting lonely in the bowl of the sink.

  My stomach knotted; I pretended it was hunger, not regret. In the kitchen I made a piece of toast and took out a crisp white coffee filter for the machine.

  When Sean and I were first married, he would make coffee for me every morning. He didn’t drink coffee himself, but he was up early for his shift and would program the Krups machine so that a fresh pot would be waiting by the time I got out of the shower. I would come downstairs to find a mug waiting, with two spoonfuls of sugar already inside. Sometimes, it would be sitting on a note: SEE YOU LATER or I MISS YOU ALREADY.

  This morning the kitchen was cold, the coffeemaker silent and empty.

  I measured out the water and the coffee grounds, pushed a button so that the liquid would stream into the carafe. I reached for a mug in the cabinet and then, on second thought, took the one Sean had used out of the sink. I rinsed it clean and poured myself a cup of coffee. It tasted too strong, bitter. I wondered if Sean’s lips had touched the mug in the same place as mine.

  I had always been suspicious of women who described the dissolution of their marriages as something that happened overnight. How could you not know? I’d thought. How could you miss all those signs? Well, let me tell you how: you were so busy putting out a fire directly in front of you that you were completely oblivious to the inferno raging at your back. I could not remember the last time Sean and I had laughed about something together. I could not remember the last time I’d gone and kissed him, just because. I had been so focused on protecting you that I’d left myself completely vulnerable.

  Sometimes you and Amelia played board games, and when you rolled the dice, they got stuck in a crease of the couch or rolled onto the floor. Do-over, you’d say, and it was that easy to get a second chance. That’s what I wanted now: a do-over. Except, if I was being honest with myself, I wouldn’t know where to start.

  I dumped the coffee into the sink and watched it swirl down the drain.

  I didn’t need caffeine. And I didn’t need someone to make me coffee in the morning, either. Leaving the kitchen, I grabbed a jacket (Sean’s, it smelled like him) and headed outside to get the newspaper.

  The green box that held the local paper was empty; Sean must have taken it on the way out to wherever he’d gone. Frustrated, I turned and noticed the wheelbarrow full of baked goods that we had set out yesterday at the end of the driveway.

  The wheelbarrow was empty, except for the shoe box Amelia had fashioned into an honor-system cash register, and the cardboard sign you’d painted with glitter to read SYLLABUB.

  I grabbed the shoe box and ran back to the house, into your bedroom. “Girls,” I said, “look!”

  You both rolled over, still cocooned in sleep. “God,” Amelia groaned, glancing at the clock.

  I sat down on your bed and opened the shoe box. “Where did you get all the money?” you asked, and that was enough to make Amelia sit up in bed.

  “What money?” she asked.

  “From the stuff we baked,” I said.

  “Give me that.” Amelia grabbed the box and started organizing the money into piles. There were bills and coins, in all denominations. “There’s like a hundred dollars here!”

  You crawled out of your bed and onto Amelia’s. “We’re rich,” you said, and you took a fistful of dollars and tossed them overhead.

  “What are we going to do with it?” Amelia asked.

  “I think we should buy a monkey,” you said.

  “Monkeys cost way more than a hundred dollars,” Amelia scoffed. “I think we should get a TV for our bedroom.”

  And I thought we should pay down the debt on our MasterCard, but I doubted you girls would agree.

  “We already have a TV downstairs,” you said.

  “Well, we don’t need a stupid monkey!”

  “Girls,” I interrupted. “There’s only one way to get what we all want. We bake enough to make more money.” I looked at each of you in turn. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  You and Amelia rushed to the adjacent bathroom, and then I heard running water and the methodic scrub of your toothbrushes. I pulled up the sheets on your bed and tucked in the blankets. On Amelia’s bed, I did the same thing, but this time when I smoothed the quilt under the mattress, my fingers swept free dozens of candy wrappers, the plastic bag from a loaf of bread, crumbling packets of graham crackers. Teenagers, I thought, sweeping them all into the trash can.

  In the bathroom, I could hear you two arguing about who had left the cap off the toothpaste. I reached into the shoe box and tossed another handful of cash into the air, listening instead to the hail of silver coins, the song of possibility.

  Sean

  I probably shouldn’t have tak
en the newspaper. That’s what I thought to myself as I sat in a booth at a diner two towns over from Bankton, nursing my glass of orange juice and waiting for the short-order cook to fry up my eggs. After all, it was the first thing Charlotte did every morning: sip a cup of coffee as she perused the headlines. Sometimes she’d even read the letters to the editor out loud, especially the ones that sounded as if they’d been written by nutcases one step away from a Ruby Ridge standoff. When I sneaked out at six a.m., pausing before I grabbed the paper, I realized that this was going to piss her off. And, okay, maybe that was enough incentive for me to drive off with it. But now that I’d unfolded it and scanned the front page, I categorically knew I should have left it where it was, in its box.

  Because right there, above the fold, was a story about me and my family.

  LOCAL COP FILES WRONGFUL BIRTH SUIT

  Willow O’Keefe is—in many ways—a normal five-year-old girl. She goes to full-day kindergarten at Bankton Elementary School, where she studies reading and math and music. She plays with her peers during recess. She buys lunch in the school cafeteria. But in one respect, Willow is not like other five-year-olds. Sometimes Willow uses a wheelchair, sometimes a walker, and sometimes, leg braces. That’s because, during the course of her short life, she’s suffered over sixty-two broken bones, due to a disease called osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that Willow’s had since birth and that—her parents allege—should have been diagnosed by the obstetrician early enough to allow for an abortion. Although the O’Keefes love their daughter dearly, her medical bills have spiraled past routine insurance coverage, and now her parents—Lieutenant Sean O’Keefe of the Bankton Police Department and Charlotte O’Keefe—are among a growing number of patients suing their obstetrician-gynecologists for not providing them with information about fetal abnormalities that, they say, would have led them to terminate the pregnancies.

  More than half of the states in America recognize wrongful birth lawsuits, and many of these cases settle out of court for less money than a jury might award because medical malpractice insurance companies don’t want a child like Willow presented to a jury. But lawsuits like this often open a can of worms in terms of ethical complications: what do such lawsuits suggest about the value society places on disabled people? Who can judge parents, who see their disabled children suffering daily? Who—if anyone—has the right to choose what sorts of disabilities should determine abortion? And what is the effect on a child like Willow, who is old enough to hear her parents’ testimony?

  Lou St. Pierre, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Association of People with Disabilities, says he understands why parents like the O’Keefes choose to file a lawsuit. “It can help with the incredible financial burden that a severely disabled child puts on a family,” says St. Pierre, who was born with spina bifida and is wheelchair-bound. “But the caveat is the message that’s being sent to that child: that disabled people can’t live rich, full lives; that if you aren’t perfect, you shouldn’t be here.”

  Most recently, in 2006, a $3.2 million settlement in a 2004 wrongful birth case was overturned by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

  There was even a picture of the four of us—one that had been taken for a Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Cop circular put out by the Bankton PD two years ago. Amelia didn’t have her braces yet.

  Your arm was in a cast.

  I threw the paper across the booth so that it landed in the far seat. Fucking journalists. What did they do, wait at the courthouse to see what was coming up on the docket? Anyone who read this article—and who wouldn’t? It was the local paper—would think I was in this for the cash.

  I wasn’t, and just to prove it, I took out my wallet and left twenty bucks on the table for a two-dollar meal I hadn’t even been served.

  Fifteen minutes later, after a quick stop at the precinct to look up Marin Gates’s address, I showed up at her house. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. There were gnome garden statues, and the mailbox was a pig whose snout opened. The clapboards were painted purple. It looked like the kind of place Hansel and Gretel would live, not a no-nonsense attorney.

  When I rang the bell, Marin answered the door. She was wearing a Beatles Revolver T-shirt and sweatpants that said UNH down the leg. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “You should have called.” She looked around, trying to find Charlotte.

  “I’m here alone,” I said.

  Marin folded her arms across her chest. “I’m unlisted. How did you find out where I live?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a cop.”

  “That’s an invasion of privacy—”

  “Good. You can sue me when you finish suing Piper Reece.” I held up the morning paper. “Did you read this crap?”

  “Yes. There’s very little we can do about the press, except keep saying ‘No comment.’”

  “I’m out,” I said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I quit. I want out of this lawsuit.” Simply saying those words made me feel like I’d passed the weight of the world to some other sucker. “I’ll sign anything you want me to, I just want to make it official.”

  Marin hesitated. “Come inside so we can talk,” she said.

  If I’d been surprised by the outside of her house, I was stunned by the interior. There was one entire wall covered with Hummel figurines on shelves, and the other walls were spotted with needlepoint. Doilies bloomed like algae on the surface of the sofa. “Nice place,” I lied.

  She just stared at me, impassive. “I rent it fully furnished,” she explained. “The woman who owns the house lives in Fort Lauderdale.”

  On the dining room table was a stack of files, and a legal pad. All around the floor were crumpled pieces of paper; whatever it was she was writing wasn’t coming smoothly.

  “Look, Lieutenant O’Keefe, I know you and I haven’t gotten off to the best start, and I know the deposition was . . . challenging for you. But we’ll take another stab at that, and things are going to be different once we’re in court. I really do feel confident that the damages the jury will be willing to award—”

  “I don’t want your blood money,” I said. “She can have it all.”

  “I think I see the problem here,” Marin answered. “But this isn’t about you and your wife. This is about Willow. And if you really want to give her the kind of life she deserves, you need to win a lawsuit like this. If you pull out now, it just gives the defense one more hook to hang their hat on—”

  Too late, she realized that this might actually be something I’d want.

  “My daughter,” I said tightly, “reads at a sixth-grade level. She’s going to see that newspaper article, and a dozen others like it, I’m guessing. She’s going to hear her mother tell the whole wide world she wasn’t wanted. You tell me, Ms. Gates. Is it better that I sit in that courtroom actively undermining your chance of winning your case or that I step aside so there’s somewhere for Willow to turn when she needs to know that someone loves her, no matter what she’s like?”

  “Are you so sure you’ll be doing the right thing for your daughter?”

  “Are you?” I asked. “I’m not leaving here until you give me paperwork to sign.”

  “You can’t expect me to draft something on a Sunday morning when I’m not at the office—”

  “Twenty minutes. I’ll meet you there.” I had just opened the door to walk outside when I was stopped by Marin’s voice.

  “Your wife,” she asked. “What does she think about you doing this?”

  I turned slowly. “She doesn’t think about me,” I said.

  • • •

  I didn’t see Charlotte that night, or the next morning. I assumed it would take that long for Marin to tell my wife that I’d dropped out of the lawsuit. However, even a guy who’s strong in his convictions understands self-preservation; there was no way I was headed home to talk to your mother until I had a few fortifying drinks under my belt�
�and, being a cop, had left enough time to let the alcohol pass safely through my system before I drove.

  Maybe then I’d be lucky enough to find her asleep.

  “Tommy,” I said, motioning to the bartender, and I pushed my empty beer glass toward him. I had come to O’Boys with some of the patrol officers after our shift, but they’d all left to go home to their wives and kids for supper by now. It was too late for a predinner drink and too early for the nighttime party crowd; other than Tommy and me, the only person in the bar was an old man who started drinking at three and stopped when his daughter came to pick him up at last call.

  The bell over the door jingled, and a woman walked in. She peeled off a tight leopard-print coat only to reveal an even tighter hot pink dress. It was outfits like this that always fucked up rape cases for the prosecution.

  “Cold out there,” she said, sliding onto a stool beside me. I stared resolutely down at my empty beer glass. Try wearing some clothes, I thought.

  Tommy passed me a fresh beer and turned to the woman. “What can I get you?”

  “A dirty martini,” she said, and then she turned to me and smiled. “You ever have one of those?”

  I took a sip of beer. “I don’t like olives.”

  “I like to suck the pimientos out,” she admitted. She unclipped her hair—blond, curly—so that it fell like a river to the middle of her back. “Beer tastes like Kitty Litter, if you ask me.”

  I laughed at that. “When was the last time you tasted Kitty Litter?”