by Jodi Picoult
“I knew, once I had that hysterectomy, I’d never have a baby,” I say.
“Did your relationship with Vanessa change?”
“Yes. She took care of me, after the surgery. We spent a lot of time together—hanging out, running errands, cooking, whatever—and I started to realize that when I wasn’t with her, I really wanted to be. That I liked her as more than an ordinary friend.”
“Zoe, had you ever had a same-sex relationship before?”
“No,” I say, carefully picking my words. “I know it seems strange, but when you are attracted to people, it’s because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. Their smile. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most. I felt all those things for Vanessa. The fact that she was a woman—well, it was unexpected, but it was really the least important part of the equation.”
“That seems hard to understand, given the fact that you were married to a man . . .”
I nod. “I think that’s why it took me a while to realize I was in love with Vanessa. I just didn’t get it. I’d had female friends before and never felt like I wanted a physical relationship with them. But once our relationship did take that turn, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if not having her in my life would be like asking me to stop breathing air and start breathing water instead.”
“Do you call yourself a lesbian now?”
“I call myself Vanessa’s spouse. But if I have to wear someone else’s label in order to be with her forever, then I will.”
“What happened after you fell in love?” Angela asks.
“I moved into her house. This April, we got married in Fall River.”
“At some point did you two talk about having a family?”
“On our honeymoon,” I say. “I had assumed, after my hysterectomy, that I’d never have children. But I had three frozen embryos with my own genetic material in them . . . and, now, a partner with a uterus who could carry those babies to term.”
“Did Vanessa want to gestate the embryos?”
“She was the one who suggested it,” I say.
“What happened next?”
“I called the clinic and asked to use the embryos. I was told that my spouse had to sign off on it. But they didn’t mean Vanessa—they meant Max. So I went to him and asked for his permission to use the embryos. I knew that he didn’t want a baby—that was why he’d asked for a divorce. I honestly believed he would understand.”
“Did he?”
“He said that he’d think about it.”
Angela folds her arms. “Did Max seem different to you at that meeting from the man you used to know?”
I look at him. “Max used to be a surfer dude. A laid-back guy who didn’t wear a watch and didn’t have an agenda and was always a half hour late. He’d get his hair cut only because I reminded him to do it; he never remembered to wear a belt. But when I went to talk to Max about the embryos, he was at work. And even though he was doing manual labor—landscaping—he was wearing a tie. On a Saturday.”
“Did Max get back to you regarding the embryos?”
“Yes,” I say bitterly. “He had papers served, suing me for the right to use them.”
“How did that make you feel?” Angela asks.
“I was angry. And confused. He didn’t want to be a father; he’d told me so himself. He didn’t even have a relationship with anyone, as far as I knew. He didn’t want the embryos. He just didn’t want me to have them.”
“When you were married to Max, did he have a problem with homosexuality?”
“We didn’t really talk about it. But I never knew him to be judgmental before.”
“During your marriage,” Angela asks, “did you often see his brother?”
“Not very often at all.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Reid?”
“Contentious.”
“And with Liddy?” Angela asks.
I shake my head. “I just don’t get that woman.”
“Did you know that Reid had paid for your fifth cycle of IVF?”
“I had no idea, until I heard him testify. It was a huge stress for us, because we didn’t know how we could afford it—and then one day Max came home and said he had it all figured out, that he had found a credit card with zero interest, and I believed him.” I hesitate, correct myself. “I was stupid enough to believe him.”
“Did Max at any point tell you that he wanted the embryos to go to his brother and sister-in-law?”
“No. I learned about that when a motion was filed.”
“And what was your reaction?”
“I couldn’t believe he’d do that to me,” I say. “I’m forty-one. Even if my eggs were still worth anything, insurance won’t cover fertility treatments for me to harvest them again. This is literally my only chance to have my own biological child with someone I love.”
“Zoe,” Angela says, “have you and Vanessa talked about what Max’s relationship to these embryos might be if you receive the court’s permission to gain custody, and you have children?”
“Whatever Max wants. Whatever he’s ready for. If he wants to be a part of the babies’ lives, we’d understand; and if he doesn’t want to, we will respect that.”
“So . . . you’re willing to let the children know that Max is the biological father?”
“Of course.”
“And be involved in their lives, as much as Max is comfortable doing so?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Do you think you’d be given the same courtesy, if the court awards the embryos to Max?”
I look at Max; I look at Wade Preston. “I’ve spent two days hearing how deviant my lifestyle is, how vile I am for choosing it,” I reply. “They won’t let those kids within five miles of me.”
Angela looks up at the judge. “Nothing further,” she says.
Angela and I go to get a cup of coffee during the recess. She won’t let me travel through the courthouse alone, for fear I’ll be ambushed by one of Wade’s special interest groups. “Zoe,” she says, pushing the buttons on the vending machine, “you did great.”
“You were the easy part,” I tell her.
“That’s true,” she says. “Wade is going to come after you like Bill Clinton on an intern. But you sounded calm, and smart, and very sympathetic.” She hands me the first cup and is about to put coins in for the second cup when Wade Preston walks up and puts in fifty cents.
“I hear you’re not getting paid for this one, Counselor,” he says. “Consider this my contribution.”
Angela ignores him. “Hey, Zoe? You know the difference between Wade Preston and God?” She waits a beat. “God doesn’t think he’s Wade Preston.”
I laugh, like I always do at her jokes. But the laughter jams in my throat this time. Because two feet away from Reid, staring at me, is Liddy Baxter. She’s come down here with Max’s lawyer, presumably for the same reason I have.
“Zoe,” she says, taking a step forward.
Angela speaks on my behalf. “My client has nothing to say to you.” She steps between us.
In a completely uncharacteristic move, Liddy says, “But I have something to say to her.”
I don’t really know Liddy well. I never wanted to. Max always told me I was missing out—that she was funny and smart and knew all the dialogue to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! for whatever that was worth—but I couldn’t see past a woman who, in this day and age, actually waited for her husband to come home from work so that she could ask him about his day and feed him a meal. Max used to say we should go out shopping, or to lunch, get to know each other—but I figured we’d run out of things to talk about before we’d backed out of her driveway.
She seems, though, to have developed a little bit of a spine. It’s amazing what taking away someone else’s embryos can do for one’s self-esteem, I guess.
“Thanks, but I’ve reached my prayer quota for the day,” I tell her.
“No prayers. Just . . .
well . . .” She looks up at me. “Max isn’t trying to hurt you.”
“Yeah, I’m only collateral damage. I get it.”
“I know how you must be feeling.”
I am amazed at her nerve. “You have no idea how I’m feeling. You and I,” I spit out, “have absolutely nothing in common.”
I shove past Liddy, Angela hurrying beside me.
“You giving your clients lessons in charm, Counselor?” Wade calls out.
Liddy’s voice rings down the hallway after me. “We do have something in common, Zoe,” she says. “We both already love these babies.”
That stops me in my tracks. I turn around again.
“For what it’s worth,” Liddy says quietly, “I always thought you’d make a great mother.”
Angela loops her arm through mine and drags me down the hallway.
“Ignore them both,” she says. “You know the difference between a porcupine and Wade Preston driving in his car? The prick’s on the outside.”
But this time, I can’t even crack a smile.
I do not remember my mother going on many dates when I was growing up, but one sticks out in my mind. A man had come to the door bathed in more perfume than my own mother had on and took her out to dinner. I fell asleep on the couch watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and woke up sometime during Saturday Night Live to find her in her stocking feet, with mascara smudged under her eyes and her hair tumbling out of its updo. “Was he nice?” I remember asking, and my mother just snorted.
“Never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring,” she said.
I didn’t understand, back then. But now I agree: the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a Super Bowl ring. Anything else is a clue that it isn’t going to work out: a high school ring says he never grew up; a cocktail ring says he’s gay and doesn’t know it yet. A pinkie ring says he’s too polished for his own good; a Truman Capote wannabe concerned more with how he looks than with how you do.
Wade Preston wears a pinkie ring.
“You certainly have had your fair share of health complications, Ms. Baxter,” he says. “One might say it’s almost Job-like.”
“Objection,” Angela says. “One might not say that.”
“Sustained. Counsel will refrain from personal commentary,” Judge O’Neill says.
“Many have been life-threatening, isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” I say.
“So there’s a chance that, if this court awards you the pre-born children, you might not even be around to see them grow up, right?”
“Right now, I am completely cancer-free. My chance of recurrence is less than two percent.” I smile at him. “I’m healthy as a horse, Mr. Preston.”
“You do understand that, if the court somehow awards you and your lesbian lover these pre-born children, there’s no guarantee a pregnancy will occur?”
“I understand that better than anyone,” I say. “But I also understand that this is my last chance to have a biological child.”
“You now live with Vanessa Shaw in her home, is that correct?”
“Yes. We’re married.”
“Not in the state of Rhode Island,” Wade Preston says.
I fix my gaze on him. “All I know is that the state of Massachusetts gave me a marriage certificate.”
“How long have you been together?”
“About five months.”
He raises his brows. “That’s not very long.”
“I guess I knew something good as soon as I saw it.” I shrug. “And I wanted to be with her forever.”
“You felt the same way when you married Max Baxter, didn’t you?”
First blood. “I wasn’t the one who wanted a divorce. Max left me.”
“Just like Vanessa could leave you?”
“I don’t think that will happen,” I say.
“But you don’t know, do you?”
“Anything’s possible. Reid and Liddy could get a divorce.” As I say the words, I glance at Liddy in the gallery. Her face drains of color.
I don’t know what the story is between her and Max, but there is one. I could feel threads between them, invisible as they were, during her testimony, as if I’d walked through a spiderweb stretched across an open doorway. And then her words downstairs in the snack room: Max isn’t trying to hurt you. As if she’d discussed this with him.
Max couldn’t be in love with her.
She’s as different from me as a person could possibly be.
At that thought, I have to smile a little. Max could clearly say the same thing about Vanessa.
Even if Max has a crush on his sister-in-law, I can’t imagine it going anyplace. Liddy is far too caught up in being the perfect wife, the ideal church lady. And as far as I can tell, there’s no wiggle room for a fall from grace.
“Ms. Baxter?” Wade Preston says impatiently, and I realize I have completely missed his question.
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
“I said that you resent Reid and Liddy for the life they lead, don’t you?”
“I don’t resent them. We just place importance on very different things.”
“So you’re not jealous of their wealth?”
“No. Money isn’t everything.”
“Then you resent the fact that they’re such good role models?”
I smother a laugh. “Actually, I don’t think they are. I think they buy what they want—including these embryos. I think they use their Bible to judge people like me. Neither of which are qualities I’d want to pass down to a child.”
“You don’t go to church on a regular basis, do you, Ms. Baxter?”
“Objection,” Angela says. “Perhaps we need a visual.” She takes two legal books and smacks one down in front of her. “Church.” She moves the second book to the opposite edge of the defense table. “State.” Then she looks up at the judge. “See all the nice room in between.”
“Cute, Counselor. Please answer the question, Ms. Baxter,” the judge says.
“No.”
“You don’t think much of people who go to church, do you?”
“I think everyone should be entitled to believe what they want. Which includes not believing at all,” I add.
Vanessa doesn’t believe in God. I think her mother’s attempts to pray away the gay in her closed the door on organized religion. We’ve talked about it, in the folds of the night. How she doesn’t really care much about an afterlife, as long as she gets what she needs in her present one; how there’s an evolutionary component to helping people that has nothing to do with a Golden Rule; how even though I can’t subscribe to an organized religion, I also can’t say with certainty that I don’t believe in some higher power. I’m not sure if this is because I actually still cling to the vestiges of religion, or because I’m too afraid to admit out loud that I might not believe in God.
Atheism, I realize, is the new gay. The thing you hope no one finds out about you—because of all the negative assumptions that are sure to follow.
“So you wouldn’t plan to raise these pre-born children with any religion?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I’m going to raise a child to be loved and to show love; to be self-respecting and open-minded and tolerant of everyone. If I can find the right religious group to support that, then maybe we will join it.”
“Ms. Baxter, are you familiar with the case of Burrows v. Brady?”
“Objection!” Angela says. “Counsel is referencing a custody case, and this is a property issue.”
“Overruled,” Judge O’Neill says. “Where are you going with this, Mr. Preston?”
“In Burrows v. Brady, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that, when parents are divorced, each parent who has custody has the right to raise the child in the faith they think is in the child’s best interests. Moreover, Pettinato v. Pettinato said that the moral character of each potential custodial parent must be considered—”
“Is counsel trying to tell the c
ourt how to do its job,” Angela asks, “or does he actually have a question for my client?”
“Yes,” Wade replies. “I do have a question. You testified, Ms. Baxter, that you went through several in vitro procedures, all of which resulted in disaster?”
“Objection—”
“I’ll rephrase. You did not actually carry a baby to term, did you?”
“No,” I say.
“In fact you had two miscarriages?”
“Yes.”
“And then a stillbirth?”
I look into my lap. “Yes.”
“It’s your testimony today that you’ve always wanted a child, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Your Honor.” Angela sighs. “All this has been asked and answered.”
“Why then, Ms. Baxter, did you murder your own child in 1989?”
“What?” I say, stunned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
But I do. And his next words confirm it: “Did you or did you not have a voluntary abortion when you were nineteen years old?”
“Objection!” Angela is out of her seat immediately. “This is irrelevant and occurred prior to my client’s marriage, and I move that it be stricken immediately from the record—”
“It’s completely relevant. It informs her desire to have a baby now. She’s trying to make up for past sins.”
“Objection!”
My hands have gone numb.
A woman stands up in the gallery. “Baby killer!” she yells, and that is the hairline crack it takes to break the dam. There is shouting—by the Westboro contingent and by the Eternal Glory congregants. The judge calls for order, and about twenty observers are hauled through the double doors of the courtroom. I imagine Vanessa watching on the other side. I wonder what she’s thinking.
“Mr. Preston, you may continue your line of questioning, but without the editorial comments,” Judge O’Neill says. “And as for the gallery, if there is one more disruption, I will turn this into a closed session.”
Yes, I tell him. I had an abortion. I was nineteen, in college. It wasn’t the right time to have a baby. I thought—stupidly—that I’d have many more chances.
When I finish, I am gutted. I have only spoken once of the procedure since it happened, and that was at the fertility clinic, when I had to be completely honest about my reproductive history or compromise my chances of conceiving. It has been twenty-two years, but suddenly I feel the same way I felt back then: Shaky. Embarrassed.
