by Jodi Picoult
When I’m brave enough to look at Cara, it feels like I’ve been run through with a sword. Her eyes are swimming, her shoulders are shaking with the effort to hold herself together. “I’m sorry, Cara,” I say directly to her. “I love him, too. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. And I wish I could tell you he’ll get better, but he won’t. He’d tell you that it’s his time. That for the family to move on, he has to go.”
“That’s not true,” Cara bites out. “None of it. He wouldn’t leave me behind. And you don’t love him. You never did.”
“Ms. Notch, control your client,” the judge says.
“Cara,” her lawyer murmurs, “we’ll have our turn.”
Joe faces me. “Your sister clearly has a different opinion. Why is that?”
“Because she feels guilty. She was in the accident, too. She’s better, and he’s not. I’m not saying it’s her fault—just that she’s too close to the situation to be able to make a decision.”
“Some might say you were too far away to make a decision,” Joe counters.
I nod. “I know. But there’s one thing I’ve realized since I’ve been here. You think, when you leave, that everything stops. That the world is frozen and waiting for you. But nothing stands still. Buildings get torn down. People get into accidents. Little girls grow up.” I turn to Cara. “When you were little, you used to go to the town pool in the summer and do belly flops off the diving board. You wanted me to grade you, like they did at the Olympics. Half the time I was busy reading and I’d just make up a number, and if it was too low, you’d beg me for an instant replay. The thing is, when you get older, there are no instant replays. You either get it right or you screw it up and you have to live with what you’ve done. I hadn’t seen my father in six years and I always thought that, eventually, we’d talk. I thought he’d say he was sorry or maybe I would, but it would be like those Hallmark movies where everything gets tied up nice and neat in the end. I can’t get back those six years, yet at any moment I could have been the one to pick up the phone and call my father and say, Hi, it’s me.” I reach into my pocket, feel that slip of fortune. “He trusted me once, when I was fifteen. I want him to know that, no matter what, even though I left, he can still trust me. I want him to know I’m sorry things worked out the way they did between us. I may never get a chance to tell him that to his face. This is the only way I know how.”
Suddenly I remember what happened afterward in his office, when I signed the contract. The pen rolled out of my hand as if it had burned my fingers. My father picked up the whisky I’d left in my glass and drained it. You, he said, are an old soul. You’ll do better at this than I ever did.
I held on to that compliment, that treasure, the way an oyster cradles a pearl, completely forgetting the pain that made it possible.
“Make no mistake,” Joe says to me, before the cross-examination begins. “Zirconia Notch may look like she grows ganja in her herb garden and weaves sweaters out of her own hair, but she’s a piranha. She used to work for Danny Boyle, and he picks his attorneys based on how fast they can draw blood.”
So as Cara’s attorney walks closer to me with a smile, I grip the seat of the witness chair, preparing for battle.
“Isn’t it true,” she says, “that you’re trying to convince this court that, at age fifteen, you were mature enough to be appointed by your father to make a decision about his health? Yet now you’re arguing that your sister—who is seventeen and three-quarters—shouldn’t be allowed to do the same thing?”
“My dad was the one who made that choice. I didn’t ask for it,” I reply.
“Are you aware that Cara manages all your father’s finances and pays his bills?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I say. “That’s what I did when I was her age.”
“You haven’t seen your father in six years, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it possible that he did execute another document—perhaps naming Cara as the guardian for his health care decisions—and you’re not aware of it? Or perhaps you did find one . . . and threw it away?”
Joe stands up. “Objection! No foundation . . .”
“Withdrawn,” Zirconia Notch says, but it gets me wondering. What if my father did appoint Cara, or someone else, and we just haven’t found that piece of paper yet? What if he changed his mind—and I was too far away to know? I don’t believe it’s murder if you turn off life support in accordance with someone’s wishes. But what if it turns out that’s not what he wanted?
“Would you describe yourself as impulsive, Edward?”
“No.”
“Really? You leave home after a heated argument? That’s not normal behavior.”
Joe spreads his hands. “Your Honor? Was there a question somewhere in that value judgment?”
“Sustained,” the judge says.
Zirconia doesn’t miss a beat. “Would you describe yourself as someone who likes to be in control of things?”
“Just my own destiny,” I reply.
“What about your father’s destiny?” she drills. “You’re trying to take control of that right now, aren’t you?”
“He asked me to,” I say, my voice tightening. “And he made his wishes pretty public: he signed up to be an organ donor.”
“You know this how?”
“It says so on his driver’s license.”
“Are you aware that in New Hampshire, in order to be an organ donor, you don’t just need a little sticker on your license? That you need to sign up with an online registry as well?”
“Well—”
“And did you know that your father did not sign up on that online registry?”
“No.”
“Do you think that’s because maybe he changed his mind?”
“Objection,” Joe calls. “Speculative.”
The judge frowns. “I’ll allow it. Mr. Warren, answer the question.”
I look at the lawyer. “I think it’s because he didn’t know he had to take that step.”
“And you’d know how he thinks because, for the past six years, you two have been so close,” Zirconia says. “Why, I bet you had long conversations into the night about all sorts of heartfelt matters. Oh, wait, that’s right. You weren’t here.”
“I’m here now,” I say.
“Right. Which is why, after talking to the doctors, you were ready to take whatever measures were necessary to end your father’s life?”
“I was told by the doctors and the social worker that I should stop thinking about what I want, and think instead about what my dad would want.”
“Why didn’t you discuss that with your sister?”
“I tried, but she got hysterical every time I brought up our father’s condition.”
“How many times did you try to discuss this with Cara?”
“A couple.”
Zirconia Notch raises a brow. “How many?”
“Once,” I admit.
“You realize Cara was in a massive motor vehicle accident?” she says.
“Of course.”
“You know she was seriously injured?”
“Yes.”
“You know that she’d just had major surgery?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
“And that she was on painkillers and very fragile when you spoke with her?”
“She told me she couldn’t do this anymore,” I argue. “That she wanted it to be over.”
“And by this you assumed she meant your father’s life? Even though she’d been vehemently opposed to turning off life support minutes before?”
“I assumed she meant the whole situation. It was too hard for her to hear, to process, all of it. That’s why I told her I’d take care of everything.”
“And by ‘taking care of everything’ you meant making a unilateral decision to terminate your father’s life.”
“It’s what he would want,” I insist.
“But be honest, Edward, this is really about what you w
ant, isn’t it?” Zirconia hammers.
“No.” I can feel a headache starting in my temples.
“Really? Because you scheduled a termination of life support for your father without telling your sister that you’d scheduled it. Moments before it happened, you still hadn’t told your sister. And even when the hospital administration realized what you were up to and shut down the procedure,” she says, “and even in spite of the fact that Cara was right there begging you to stop, you pushed people out of the way and did what you wanted to do all along: kill your father.”
“That’s not true,” I say, getting flustered.
“Were you or were you not indicted for second-degree murder, Mr. Warren?”
“Objection!” Joe says.
The judge nods. “Sustained.”
“Is it your testimony today that you have no pecuniary interest in your father’s death because you’re not a beneficiary of his life insurance policy?”
“I only learned about his life insurance policy ten days ago,” I reply.
“Plenty of time to concoct a murder because you’re angry that he left you off the insurance policy—” Zirconia muses.
Joe gets to his feet. “Objection!”
“Sustained,” the judge murmurs.
Undeterred, the lawyer moves closer, her arms folded. “Your father also has no will, which means, if he died intestate today, you’d be an heir to his estate and entitled to half of everything he owns.”
This is news to me. “Really?”
“So theoretically, you do benefit from your father’s demise,” she points out.
“I doubt there will be much left of my father’s estate after we pay the hospital bills.”
“So you’re saying that the sooner he dies, the more money there will be?”
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t even know until two seconds ago that I would receive anything from his estate . . .”
“That’s right. Your father’s been dead to you for years, after all. So why not make it legitimate?”
Joe had warned me that Zirconia Notch would try to get me riled, would try to make me look like someone who might be able to commit murder. I take a deep breath, trying to keep so much heat from rushing to my face. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my father.”
“On the contrary, Edward. I know that your actions here are motivated by anger and resentment—”
“No . . .”
“I know that you’re angry that you were cut out of his life insurance policy. I know you’re angry because your father never came after you when you left. You’re angry because your sister had the relationship with your father you still secretly wish you had—”
A vein starts throbbing in my neck. “You’re wrong.”
“Admit it: you’re not doing this out of love, Edward—you’re doing this out of hate.”
I shake my head.
“You hate your father for turning you away when you told him you were gay. You hated him so much for that you tore apart your family—”
“He tore it apart first,” I burst out. “Fine. I did hate my father. But I never even told him I was gay. I never had the chance.” I look around the gallery, until I find one frozen face. “Because when I got to the trailer that night, I found him cheating on my mother.”
During the recess, Joe sequesters me in a conference room. He goes off to find me a glass of water I won’t be able to drink because my hands are still shaking so badly. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
The door opens, and to my surprise, it’s not Joe returning—but my mother. She sits down across from me. “Edward,” she says, and that one word is a canvas for me upon which to paint a missing history.
She looks small and shaken, but I guess that’s what happens when you learn that the story you’ve told yourself all these years isn’t true. And for that, at least, I owe her an explanation. “I went to Redmond’s to come out to him, but he didn’t answer when I knocked. The trailer door was open, so I went inside. The lights were on, there was a radio playing. Dad wasn’t in the main room, so I headed toward the bedroom.”
It is still as vivid, six years later, as it was back then—the silver limbs in a Gordian knot, the puddles of clothing on the linoleum floor, the few seconds it took for me to realize what I was actually seeing. “He was fucking this college intern named Sparrow or Wren or something—a girl who was two goddamned years older than me.” I look up at my mother. “I couldn’t tell you. So when you assumed that the reason I came home upset was because the conversation between us hadn’t gone well, I just let you keep assuming it.”
She crosses her arms tightly, still silent.
“He owed us those two years he was gone,” I say. “He was supposed to come back and be a father. A husband. Instead he came back thinking and acting like one of the stupid wolves he lived with. He was the alpha and we were his pack, and wolves always put family first—how many times did he tell us that? But the whole time, he was lying through his teeth. He didn’t give a shit about our family. He was screwing around behind your back; he was ignoring his own kids. He wasn’t a wolf. He was just a hypocrite.”
My mother’s jaw looks like it is made of glass. As if turning her head, even incrementally, might make her shatter. “Then why did you leave?”
“He begged me not to say anything to you. He said it was a onetime thing, a mistake.” I look into my lap. “I didn’t want you or Cara to get hurt. After all, you waited two years for him, like Penelope and Odysseus. And Cara—well, she always saw him as a hero, and I didn’t want to be the one to rip off the rose-colored glasses. But I knew I couldn’t lie for him. Eventually I’d slip up, and it would break apart our whole family.” I bury my face in my hands. “So instead of risking that, I left.”
“I knew,” my mother murmurs.
I suck in my breath. “What?”
“I couldn’t have told you which girl it was, but I assumed.” She squeezes my hand. “Things deteriorated between us, after your father came back from Canada. He moved out, staying in the trailer or with his wolves. And then he started hiring these young girls, zoology grad students, who treated him as if he was Jesus Christ. Your father, he never said anything specific, but he didn’t have to. After a while, these girls stopped looking me in the eye if I happened to show up at Redmond’s. I’d sit in the trailer to wait for Luke, and I’d find an extra toothbrush. A pink sweatshirt.” My mother looks up at me. “If I’d known that was the reason you went away, I would have swum to Thailand to get you myself,” she confesses. “I should have been the one protecting you, Edward. Not the other way around. I’m so sorry.”
There is a soft knock on the door, and Joe enters. When my mother sees him, she flies into his arms. “It’s okay, baby,” he says, stroking her back, her hair.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says against his shoulder. “It was forever ago.”
She isn’t crying, but I figure that’s only a matter of time. Scars are just a treasure map for pain you’ve buried too deep to remember.
My mother and Joe have a lovers’ shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.
“He never deserved you,” I tell my mother. “He never deserved any of us.”
She turns to me, still holding Joe’s hand. “Do you want him to die, Edward,” she asks, “or do you want him dead?”
There’s a difference, I realize. I can tell myself I’m here to disprove the theory of the prodigal son; I can say I want to carry out my father’s wishes until I am blue in the face. But you can call a horse a duck, yet it won’t sprout feathers and grow a bill. You can tell yourself your family is the picture of happiness, but that’s because loneliness and dissatisfaction don’t always show up on camera.
It turns out there’s a very fine line between mercy and revenge.
So fine, in fac
t, that I may have lost sight of it.
LUKE
The anchor I had to the human world—my family—was different. My little girl, the one who had still been afraid of the dark when I left, was now wearing braces and hugging me around the neck and showing me her new goldfish, her favorite chapter book, a picture of herself at a swim meet. She acted as if two minutes had passed, instead of two years. My wife was more reserved. She would follow me around, certain if she took her eyes off me I might disappear again. Her mouth was always pressed tightly shut, because of all the things I knew she wanted to say to me but was afraid to let loose. After our first encounter at the police station in Canada, she had been afraid to come too close, physically. Instead, she smothered me with creature comfort: the softest sweatpants in my new, reduced size; simple home-cooked foods that my stomach had to relearn; a down comforter to keep me warm. I couldn’t turn around without Georgie trying to do something for me.
My son, on the other hand, was outwardly unmoved by my return. He greeted me with a handshake and few words, and sometimes I’d find him warily watching me from a doorway or a window. He was cautious and tentative and unwilling to place his trust too quickly.
He had grown up, it seemed, to be much like me.
You would think that the creature comforts would have sent me diving headlong into the human world again, but it wasn’t that easy. At night, I was wide awake, and I’d roam through the house on patrol. Every noise became a threat: the first time I heard the coffeemaker spitting at the end of its cycle, I ran downstairs in my undershorts and flew into the kitchen with my teeth bared and my back arched defensively. I preferred to sit in the dark instead of beneath artificial light. The mattress was too soft beneath me; instead, I lay down on the floor beside the bed. Once, when Georgie noticed me shivering in my sleep and tried to cover me, I was up like a rocket before she even finished draping the quilt over my body, my hands wrapped around her wrists and her body rolled and pinned to the ground so that I had the physical advantage. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered out, but I was so caught up in instinct that I couldn’t even find the words to tell her, No, I am.
