Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  Today, Sean O'Keefe was being deposed, and it scared me to death.

  He was tall, strong, handsome - and a wild card. Of all the face-to-face meetings I'd had with Charlotte to prepare, he'd come to only one. 'Lieutenant O'Keefe,' I had asked, 'are you committed to this lawsuit?'

  He had glanced at Charlotte, and an entire conversation had unraveled between them in utter silence. 'I'm here, aren't I?' he had said.

  It was my belief that Sean O'Keefe would rather be drawn and quartered than led to a witness stand for this trial, which should not really have been my problem - except it was. Because he was Willow's father, and if he screwed up on the stand, my case would be ruined. For this suit to succeed, the malpractice lawyers needed to believe that, when it came to wrongful birth, the O'Keefes presented a united front.

  Charlotte, Sean, and I rode up in the elevator together. I had specifically scheduled the deposition during the hours you were in school, so child care wasn't an issue. 'Whatever you do,' I said, last-minute quarterbacking, 'don't relax. They're going to lead you down the path to hell. They'll twist your words.'

  He grinned. 'Go ahead, make my day.'

  'You can't play Dirty Harry with these guys,' I said, panicking. 'They've seen it before, and they'll trap you with your own bravado. Just remember to keep calm, and to count to ten before you answer anything. And--'

  The elevator doors opened before I could finish my sentence. We stepped into the luxurious offices, where a paralegal in a fitted blue suit was already waiting. 'Marin Gates?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Mr Booker's expecting you.' She led us down the hall to the conference room, a panorama of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out toward the golden dome of the Statehouse. Tucked into one corner was the stenographer. Guy Booker was deep in conversation, his silver head bent. He stood up as we approached, revealing his client.

  Piper Reece was prettier than I expected. She was blond, lanky, with dark circles underneath her eyes. She wasn't smiling; she stared at Charlotte as if she'd just been run through with a sword.

  Charlotte, on the other hand, was doing everything possible not to look at her.

  'How could you?' Piper accused. 'How could you do this?'

  Sean narrowed his eyes. 'You'd better stop right there, Piper--'

  I stepped between them. 'Let's just get this over with, all right?'

  'You have nothing to say?' Piper continued, as Charlotte settled herself at the table. 'You don't even have the decency to look me in the eye and tell me off to my face?'

  'Piper,' Guy Booker said, putting a hand on her arm.

  'If your client is going to be verbally abusive to mine,' I announced, 'we'll walk out of here right now.'

  'She wants abusive?' Sean muttered. 'I'll show her abusive . . .'

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a chair. 'Shut up,' I whispered.

  It was perhaps the first and only time in my life that I would ever have anything in common with Guy Booker - neither one of us relished being present at this deposition. 'I'm quite sure my client can restrain herself,' he said, facing Piper as he stressed the last two words. He turned to the stenographer. 'Claudia, you ready to get started?'

  I looked at Sean and mouthed the word calm. He nodded and cracked his neck on each side, like a prizefighter readying to head into the ring.

  That snap, that audible pop: it made me think of you, breaking a bone.

  Guy Booker opened a leather folder. It was buttery, most likely Italian. Part of the reason Booker, Hood & Coates won so many cases was the intimidation factor - they looked like winners, from their opulent offices to their Armani suits and their Waterman pens. They probably even had their legal pads hand-made and watermarked with their corporate seal. Was it any wonder that half the opponents threw in the towel after a single glance?

  'Lieutenant O'Keefe,' he said. His voice was smooth, no friction between the words. I'm your pal, I'm your buddy, his tone suggested. 'You believe in justice, don't you?'

  'It's why I'm a police officer,' Sean answered proudly.

  'Do you think lawsuits can bring about justice?'

  'Sure,' Sean said. 'It's the way this country works.'

  'Would you consider yourself particularly litigious?'

  'No.'

  'I guess you must have had good reason, then, to sue Ford Motor Company in 2003?'

  Shocked, I turned toward Sean. 'You sued Ford?'

  He was scowling. 'What does that have to do with my daughter?'

  'You received a settlement, didn't you? Of twenty thousand dollars?' He leafed through his leather folder. 'Can you explain the nature of the complaint?'

  'I slipped a disk in my back, sitting in the cruiser seat the whole day. Those things are designed for crash test dummies, not real humans doing their jobs.'

  I closed my eyes. It would have been really nice, I thought, if either of my clients had been honest with me.

  'About Willow,' Guy said. 'How many hours per day would you say you spend with her?'

  'Maybe twelve,' he said.

  'Of those twelve hours, how many is she asleep?'

  'I don't know, eight, if it's a good night.'

  'If it's not a good night, how many times would you say you have to get up with her?'

  'It depends,' Sean said. 'Once or twice.'

  'So the amount of time you're with her, and not trying to get her back to sleep - that's probably about four or five hours a day?'

  'Sounds fair.'

  'During those hours, what do you and Willow do?'

  'We play Nintendo. She beats the pants off me at Super Mario. And we play cards . . .' He blushed a little. 'She's a natural at Five-Card Stud.'

  'What's her favorite TV show?' Guy asked.

  'Lizzie McGuire, this week.'

  'Favorite color?'

  'Magenta.'

  'What kind of music does she listen to?'

  'Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers,' Sean said.

  I could remember sitting on the couch with my mother and watching The Cosby Show. We'd make a bowl of microwave popcorn and eat the entire thing. It had never been the same after Keshia Knight Pulliam had gotten too old and had been supplanted by Raven-Symone. If I had been raised by my birth mother, would my childhood have been colored differently? Would we have been hooked on soap operas, PBS documentaries, Dynasty?

  'I hear Willow goes to kindergarten now.'

  'Yeah, she just started two months ago,' Sean said.

  'Does Willow have a good time in school?'

  'It's hard for her sometimes, but I'd say she enjoys it.'

  'No one's denying that Willow is a child with disabilities,' Guy said, 'but those disabilities don't prevent her from having a positive educational experience, do they?'

  'No.'

  'And they don't prevent her from sharing good times with your family, do they?'

  'Absolutely not.'

  'In fact, would you say as Willow's father that you've done a good job making sure she has a good, rich life?'

  Oh, no, I thought.

  Sean sat up a little straighter, proud. 'Damn right I have.'

  'Then why,' Guy asked, going in for the kill, 'are you saying that she should never have been born?'

  The words went through Sean like a bullet. He jerked forward, flattening his hands on the table. 'Don't you put words in my mouth. I never said that.'

  'Actually, you did.' Guy took a copy of the complaint from his folder and slid it across the table toward Sean. 'Right here.'

  'No.' Sean set his jaw.

  'Your signature on this document represents the truth, Lieutenant.'

  'Hey, listen, I love my daughter.'

  'You love her,' Guy repeated. 'So much that you think she'd be better off dead.'

  Sean reached for the complaint and crumpled it in his hand. 'I'm not doing this,' he said. 'I don't want this; I never wanted this.'

  'Sean . . .' Charlotte stood up and grabbed his arm, and he rounded on her.

&n
bsp; 'How can you say this won't hurt Willow?' he said, the words torn from his throat.

  'She knows these are only words, Sean, words that don't mean anything. She knows we love her. She knows that's why we're here.'

  'Guess what, Charlotte,' he said. 'Those are only words, too.' And with that, he strode out of the conference room.

  Charlotte stared after him, and then at me. 'I-I have to go,' she said. I stood up, not sure if I was supposed to follow her out or stay and try to patch up the damage with Guy Booker. Piper Reece was red-faced, staring into her lap. Charlotte's low heels sounded like gunshots as she hurried down the hallway.

  'Marin,' Guy said, leaning back in his chair. 'You can't possibly think you've got a viable case here.'

  I could feel a bead of sweat running between my shoulder blades. 'Here's what I know,' I said, with much more conviction than I actually possessed. 'You just saw firsthand how this illness has ripped their family apart. Seems to me a jury will see that, too.'

  I gathered my notes and my briefcase and walked down the hall with my head high, as if I actually believed what I'd said. And only when I was in the elevator alone, and the doors had shut behind me, did I close my eyes and admit that Guy Booker was right.

  My cell phone started to ring.

  'Shit,' I muttered, wiping my eyes, digging in my briefcase to answer it. Not that I wanted to: it was either Charlotte, apologizing for what had to be the biggest debacle of my career so far, or Robert Ramirez, firing me because bad news travels fast. But no number flashed on the screen; it was a private caller. I cleared my throat. 'Hello?'

  'Is this Marin Gates?'

  'Speaking.'

  The elevator doors opened. On the far side of the lobby, I could see Charlotte pleading with Sean, who was shaking his head.

  For a moment I almost forgot I was still on the phone. 'This is Maisie Donovan,' a reedy voice said. 'I'm the clerk of--'

  'I know who you are,' I said quickly.

  'Ms. Gates,' she replied, 'I have your birth mother's current address.'

  Amelia

  I

  had been waiting for the bomb to drop. The best part of the stupid lawsuit was that it had been filed just as school was starting, when who was hooking up with whom was far more interesting than some random legal battle, so the news hadn't spread through the halls like electricity through a conductor. We'd been back for two months now, studying vocabulary and slogging through assemblies on boring topics by boring people and sitting for the NECAP tests, and every day when the last bell rang I marveled at the fact that I'd somehow gotten another reprieve.

  Needless to say, Emma and I hadn't been hanging out. On the first day of school, I'd cornered her when we were headed into the gym. 'I don't know what my parents are doing,' I'd said. 'I always said they were aliens, and this only proves it.' Normally that would have made Emma laugh, but instead she just shook her head. 'Yeah, that's really funny, Amelia,' she said. 'Remind me to crack jokes the next time someone you trust screws you over.'

  After that, I'd been too embarrassed to say anything to her. Even if I told her that I was on her side, and that I thought it was ridiculous my parents were suing her mother, why would she believe me? If I were in her shoes, I'd assume that I was spying, and that anything I said could be used against me. She didn't tell people what had gone wrong between us - after all, that would embarrass her, too - so I figured she just said that we'd had a huge fight. And here's what I learned when I kept my distance from Emma: that the people I had always assumed were my friends actually had been Emma's, and just suffering my presence. I can't say it surprised me to find this out, but that didn't mean I wasn't hurt when I was holding my lunch tray and walked by the table where they were all sitting, without anyone making room. Or when I took out my PB and J sandwich, which had as usual gotten crushed by my math textbook in my locker so that the jelly was oozing through like blood on a crime victim's clothing, and didn't have Emma to say, Here, have half of my tuna fish.

  After a few weeks, I had nearly gotten used to being invisible. In fact, I'd gotten quite skilled at it. I would sit in class so quiet and still that sometimes I could get flies to land on my hands; I slouched at the back of the bus so low that, one day, the driver headed back toward the school without even bothering to pull over at my stop. But one morning, I walked into homeroom and immediately knew something was different. Janet Efflingham's mother worked as a receptionist at a law firm and had told everyone about a big stinking fight my parents had had in a conference room there during a deposition. The whole school knew that my mother was suing Emma's.

  I would have thought this put Emma and me right back into the same sorry, pathetic lifeboat, but I had forgotten that the best defense is a good offense. I was sitting in math class, which was the hardest one for me, because my chair was behind Emma's and we used to pass notes back and forth (Doesn't Mr Funke look hotter now that he's getting divorced? Did Veronica Thomas get breast implants over the long Columbus Day weekend or what?), when Emma decided to go public - and take the collective sympathy of the school with her.

  Mr Funke had a transparency up on the screen. 'So if we're talking about twenty percent of Millionaire Marvin's earnings, and he's made six millon dollars this year, what's the amount of alimony he has to pay to Whining Wanda?'

  That's when Emma said, 'Ask Amelia. She knows all about being a gold digger.'

  Somehow, Mr Funke seemed oblivious to the comment - although everyone else started snickering, and I could feel my cheeks burning. 'Maybe it would help if your asshole mother learned how to do her stupid job,' I shot back.

  'Amelia,' Mr Funke said sharply. 'Go down to Ms. Greenhaus.'

  I stood up and grabbed my backpack - but the front pocket where I kept my pencils and my lunch money was still open, and a rain of pennies and quarters and dimes scattered over the floor in front of my desk. I almost knelt down to pick them up but then figured everyone would find that even more hilarious - a moneygrubber's daughter grubbing money? - and instead I just left all the coins behind and fled.

  I had no intention of going to the principal's office. Instead, I turned right when I should have turned left and walked toward the gym. During the day, the phys ed staff left the double doors open for ventilation. I panicked for only a moment about a teacher seeing me leave the school, then remembered that no one noticed me. I wasn't important enough.

  Outside, I slung my backpack over my shoulders and started running. I ran across the soccer field and through the trees that lined the neighborhood closest to the school. I ran until I came to the main road that cut through town, and then I finally let myself slow down.

  The CVS pharmacy was the last building you came to if you were heading out of town, and don't think I hadn't considered it. I wandered through the aisles. I slipped a Snickers bar into my pocket. And then I saw something even better.

  The only problem with being invisible in school was that, when I came home, I could still see myself. I could run hard and fast and never escape that.

  My parents, they didn't seem to want the kids they had. So maybe I'd just offer up one who was completely different.

  Charlotte

  'I

  Iwas on a website this morning,' I argued, 'and a girl with Type III broke her wrist trying to lift up a half gallon of milk, Sean. How can you say that Willow's not going to need some kind of special care or live-in help? And where's that money going to come from?'

  'So she buys two quarts of milk instead,' Sean said. 'We always said we weren't going to let her define herself by her disability - but here you are, doing just that.'

  'The ends justify the means.'

  Sean pulled into our driveway. 'Yeah. Tell that to Hitler.' He turned off the ignition; in the back, I could hear the soft sound of your snoring; whatever you'd done in school today had completely knocked you out. 'I don't know you,' he said quietly. 'I don't understand the person who's doing this.'

  I had tried to calm him down after the deposition at Pipe
r's lawyer's office - the deposition that never actually happened - but he was having none of it. 'You say you'd do anything for Willow, but if you can't do this, then you're lying to yourself,' I said.

  'I'm lying,' Sean repeated. 'I'm lying? You're lying. Or at least you say you are, and that Willow will understand that all those awful things you say in front of a judge, well, you never meant them. Or at least I hope to God you're lying, because otherwise you lied to me all those years ago about wanting to keep the baby.'

  We both got out of the car; I slammed the door harder than I had to. 'It's so damn convenient to be high and mighty when you're living in the past, isn't it? What about ten years from now? You're telling me that when Willow's got a state-of-the-art wheelchair, and she's enrolled in a summer camp for Little People, when she's got a pool in the backyard so she can build up her bone mass and muscles and a car adapted for her to drive like other kids her age, when it doesn't matter if the insurance company refuses to pay for another set of braces because we can always cover it ourselves without you having to work double shifts - you're telling me that she's going to remember what was said in a courtroom when she was just a baby?'

  Sean stared at me. 'Yeah. Actually, I am.'

  I took a step away from him. 'I love her too much to let this opportunity go.'

  'Then you and I,' Sean said, 'have very different ways of showing love.'

  He reached into the back and unbuckled your car seat. Your face was flushed; you slowly swam out of your dreams. 'I'm out, Charlotte,' Sean said simply as he carried you into the house. 'You do what you have to, but don't drag me down with you.'

  I thought, not for the first time, that, under any other circumstance, a fight like this would have led me directly to Piper. I would have called her and given her my side of the story and not Sean's. I would have felt better, knowing she'd listened.

  And I would have done what I learned directly from you: let time heal the break that had somehow come between your father and me, a fracture that hurt no matter which way we turned.

  'What the hell?' Sean asked, and I glanced up to find Amelia standing in the front hallway.

  She was eating an apple, and her hair had been dyed an unnatural electric blue. She smirked at me. 'Rock on,' she said.