The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

  What I did not realize at the time is that every step she took toward him was one further away from me.

  Do not get me wrong—I would not erase the bond Meret and Brian have, not for the world. But I have made a career out of being with people who, by definition, are going to leave me. Sometimes I wonder if I am destined for that in all my relationships.

  She looks at me suspiciously. “You want to take a walk.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been sitting for hours. And you’ve been at camp, so we haven’t spent a lot of time together.” I hesitate. “I miss you.”

  “I don’t see how. I’m pretty big to overlook.”

  Her words fall like an ax. “Meret—”

  “We could go to a movie. Or start a mother-daughter book club. There’s a lot we could do that doesn’t involve me exercising so you don’t have to look at your disgusting, fat pig of a daughter—”

  “Meret!” Hearing her break her own heart is breaking mine. “Stop it!”

  When I was pregnant with Meret, she would kick so fiercely that sometimes I had to lean against a wall or take deep breaths. I used to tell Brian she clearly wasn’t comfortable in my skin. She still isn’t, in her own.

  “I love you,” I tell her fiercely, and I hope it’s every bit as loud as she’s screaming, silently, that she hates herself. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  For a second, I feel her soften. I feel her on that threshold, deciding what would happen if we weren’t squaring off, but side by side. Then she turns away, her attention focused on the vial in her hand. “Why don’t you tell me?” Meret says. “You’re so good at it.”

  * * *

  —

  THERE IS A guest bedroom in our house that doubles as my home office. I keep my laptop there, and files on my clients, and a futon couch. When I am with someone who’s very close to the end of life, and my hours are round-the-clock or inconsistent, I move into the guest room so that I don’t wake Brian up by crawling into bed in the middle of the night.

  Tonight, though, I take my pillows and some extra bedding and settle myself in there just because.

  I’m not sure what my endgame is here. Getting rid of Gita won’t erase her; it’s like the way the television burns like a phantom behind your lids even after you turn it off. It’s possible, too, that Brian is telling the truth—he was on the committee to choose postdocs, but he may not have the individual power to remove one.

  Or maybe this isn’t about Gita and Brian at all.

  Maybe this is about me and Brian.

  Meret stomps her way through a silent dinner, where she picks at her food but doesn’t seem to eat any of it—which makes me wonder if she’ll sneak down to binge in the middle of the night, which makes me embarrassed to admit I was wondering. Brian doesn’t come home and doesn’t text. The house is quiet as a tomb.

  In four years Meret will be at college and Brian and I will be rattling around here, forced to have conversations when there is nothing left to say.

  Once I had a client whose husband had had an affair, yet they’d stayed married for thirty-five years afterward. She was ready to leave him but he swore if she stayed, he would do anything she asked. She thought it over and told him she needed to be able to ask him, at any time of the day, Where are you? and to have him answer. That was the only way she could get reassurance, and without that bridge, she couldn’t reach the far shore of forgiveness. There were some days she asked him twenty times. There were other weeks where she didn’t ask at all.

  Although I am so tired I expect to fall asleep right away, I find myself staring at my watch as it ticks past midnight, 1:00, 2:00 A.M. At 2:30, when I hear the front door click open softly, I get out of bed and stand like an avenging angel at the top of the stairs. Brian looks up at me, purple shadows beneath his eyes. He hesitates, and then starts to climb, as if daring me to block him.

  I don’t. I fall away, like mist.

  “Where have you been?” I hear myself say.

  He doesn’t turn around. “Does it matter? Aren’t you going to believe what you want anyway?”

  He sees the light on in the spare bedroom and his step falters almost imperceptibly. When he reaches our room, he closes the door.

  I lean against it, palms pressed flat. I try to pretend that on the other side, Brian is doing the same.

  * * *

  —

  MERET IS WAITING for me in the kitchen the next morning. She doesn’t meet my gaze but bashfully asks, “Do you want to go for a quick walk?”

  She needs to get ready for camp. I have a pounding headache from lack of sleep. But I turn in to her enthusiasm like a flower finding sunlight. “Yes,” I say. “Yes! Just let me get my sneakers.”

  As we start along the reservoir, I hold up my end of the conversation, wondering what precipitated her change of heart. We talk about what we’d do if we won a million dollars in the lottery. Meret chatters about Sarah, about how their STEM contraption meant to shield an egg from a two-story fall won a competition, about a rumor that one of the counselors was related to Princess Kate. I tell her the story of Marina Abramović and the Great Wall.

  “So what happened?” she asks.

  I shrug. “They hugged. And that was that.”

  “That is so sad. I mean, you go all that way for nothing.”

  I look at her. “Do you think she should have taken him back?”

  “No,” Meret scoffs. “He cheated on her.”

  “You believe it’s that black and white?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Apparently, I do, because I’m still not speaking to Brian.

  “I wouldn’t walk three thousand kilometers for a guy,” Meret says.

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  When she turns back to me, her cheeks are flushed, her chestnut hair is unraveling from its braid. Her eyes are gray, nearly silver, sometimes blue, storming along with her moods. “Mom,” she says, biting her lower lip. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch.”

  In elementary school, when Meret was throwing tantrums at home, Brian and I went to a parent-teacher conference. We expected the worst, but we were told that Meret was the model of good behavior; never a problem in class. Well, Brian said, if she has to have a meltdown, I’d rather it be with us.

  There’s something to be said for being someone’s safety zone. Even if, sometimes, it means a kick or a punch or a rush of angry words.

  I slip my arm around Meret’s shoulders. “Bitch away,” I say lightly. “I can take it.”

  She starts walking again and looks at me from under her lashes. “I want to ask you something but I’m scared to say it out loud.”

  “You can ask me anything, baby.”

  “Are you and Dad going to get divorced?”

  Well. That answers the question of how much she has overheard. I realize how silly I was to assume that, under this roof, she might not know that Brian and I have been fighting. I wonder if this is the reason Meret has been pushing me away, and then pulling me back, as if she can’t decide between the two extremes. Is she so scared of losing me that she thinks letting go would be less painful?

  I want to ask her how much she knows. But I can’t do that without throwing Brian under a bus, and that wouldn’t be fair.

  I stop walking and put my hands on her shoulders. “Meret. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But you left.”

  You knew? I think.

  “Your father and I had a fight,” I tell her. “But everything’s going to be fine.”

  She scrutinizes me, as if to divine whether or not I’m telling the truth.

  “Was it about me?”

  “No!” I blurt out. “Never.”

  “Then what?”

  I hesitate. “Money,” I lie. “Married couples argue. And they get over it. You’ll see, one day.”

>   She ducks her head. “I doubt it.”

  “In the near future there are going to be suitors lined up around the block for you,” I tell her. “I know these things because I’m your mother.”

  Meret stifles a smile. “You may be slightly subjective.”

  “Then remind me to say I told you so.”

  We walk back home in silence. Our arms swing at our sides, back and forth. On one of those pumping motions, I brush Meret’s hand accidentally, but she catches my fingers.

  She holds on tight.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN WE GET back home, Meret goes upstairs to shower and get ready for camp.

  I am at the counter, cutting strawberries, when Brian walks into the kitchen. “I’m sorry about last night,” he says. “I wasn’t with her.”

  “I didn’t ask,” I reply.

  He nods. “I know.”

  There was a time when Brian and I had so much to say to each other—we would talk through dinner and over the television set at night and we’d lie in the dark with our legs tangled, recounting the bits of our day that the other had not been privileged to witness firsthand. I wonder if this new unsettling silence is a result of everything becoming a minefield, or if we have just, after all these years, run out of things to say.

  The knife slips and I jump, startled, as a gash opens up on my thumb.

  “Goddammit,” I say, tears springing to my eyes. I suck at the wound, then hold it at a distance, watching the welling blood.

  “Shit!” Brian says, reaching for a dish towel and wrapping my hand in it. “Hold your hand over your head.”

  I lift my hand obediently.

  “Stay here,” he orders, and he runs upstairs. It is a deep cut; I can feel my heartbeat in my thumb. I peek under the dish towel but blood wells fresh. I press my other hand against it.

  Brian clatters down the stairs holding a box of Band-Aids, gauze, Neosporin, bandage scissors, Bactine, Ace bandages—armfuls of equipment. “What, no tampons?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Well, you brought down everything else we have in the bathroom,” I say. “Brian, it’s just a cut.”

  He reaches for the dish towel and unwraps it. We both watch the blood rise again. I press the cotton down harder, feeling a little queasy, and he covers my hand with his own to slow the bleeding. “Maybe I need stitches,” I suggest.

  “It’s messy, but I don’t think so.” He smiles crookedly. “And I’m a doctor.”

  “You have a doctorate,” I clarify, a grin pulling at my lips. “Not the same thing.”

  “Dawn.” He meets my eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

  We’re not talking about a knife accident anymore.

  With all the attention of a surgeon, he spreads Neosporin on my cut and then wraps it with gauze. This he covers with a length of self-adhesive tape. When he is finished, my thumb looks like a snowball is perched on its tip.

  I do trust him, I realize. I trust him to take care of me. I always have.

  He positions my elbow on the kitchen table, higher than my heart, and gently holds my wrist so that it stays in that position. Which is how Meret finds us.

  “Are you guys…arm wrestling?” she asks.

  “No,” Brian replies, as if this is ridiculous. “We’re holding hands.”

  Which is equally ridiculous.

  All three of us start laughing, and even though I am still bleeding and my thumb is throbbing, I can’t remember the last time I have felt this good.

  * * *

  —

  MY FIRST EXPERIENCE with death involved a dog, a black and white springer spaniel named Dudley my parents had before I was born. Dudley wasn’t happy unless he was pressed along the length of you, his nose burrowed into your elbow or neck or belly. He was my playmate when I didn’t have anyone else, and I would string ropes of plastic pearls around his neck and clip earrings onto his long ears, dressing him up for tea parties where I served him water in a tiny, tiny cup he struggled to lap with his long pink tongue. He slept at the foot of my bed and he waited for me at the front door, his entire body shimmying like a tractor trailer going sideways when he saw the school bus pull up to the curb. I made him birthday cakes out of peanut butter and rice every year. When my father was deployed, I sobbed into his fur, so that my mother wouldn’t have to hear me. He was the kind of dog whose heart was too big for his own body, and so he continuously offered it up to me.

  When I was eleven, I woke up one night to find Dudley standing in the dark on the carpet in front of the bed, just peeing. He knew better; I could see in his eyes that he didn’t even quite understand what was happening to him. I mopped up the mess and didn’t tell my mother. I knew, even then, that I probably wouldn’t like what she had to say.

  She found out on her own, by stepping into a wet patch when she was putting away my laundry. When I came home from school that day, she had already taken Dudley to the vet. I burst into tears. It’s okay to be scared, my mother told me.

  When we found out that he had bladder cancer and a massive tumor blocking his urethra, I asked my mother what would happen to him. I asked if I could come when she brought him back to the vet to be put to sleep. The vet did a double take when he saw me waiting in the car with Dudley. I sat in the backseat while Dudley snuggled close enough to get under my skin, and I fed him a cookie while the vet gave him a sedative. He fell asleep forever with my fingers combing through his fur.

  My mother didn’t try to rush me. For once, there were no superstitions to obey. She waited until I nodded at her, and then she let the vet carry Dudley’s body inside. Instead of getting into the front seat of the car, though, she slipped into the back with me. It’s okay, she said, to be sad.

  The thing about death is that we’re all terrified of it happening, and we’re devastated when it does, and we go out of our way to pretend that neither of these things is true.

  * * *

  —

  THAT DAY, WHEN I go to visit Win, she has a surprise for me. Sitting across her lap is a piece of framed Egyptian art on papyrus. “I’ve had this forever,” she says, “but I have no idea what it actually means. I just liked the guy with green skin.”

  Osiris. “It’s from the Book of the Dead,” I tell her. “The Egyptians called it the Book of Going Forth by Day, which makes much more sense. It’s all about how the deceased can get to the afterlife. This painting is a reproduction of one found in the tomb of Ani, in the New Kingdom.”

  The Book of Going Forth by Day contained two hundred spells, many illustrated, but tombs and papyri could curate selections, from only a few to as many as the tomb owner could afford. It was sort of like picking your favorite Bible verses to be buried with. They were written on the linen shrouds of mummies, on bandages, coffins, scarabs, shabti statuettes, tomb walls, and papyri. Some were straightforward. Some were specific—like Spell 100, which stated that the words were to be pronounced over a certain design to be drawn on a clean unused sheet of papyrus with a powder of green clays mixed with water. Only then could the deceased enter Re’s solar bark in the afterlife.

  “This scene is Spell 125, and it’s really famous,” I tell Win. “It’s where Ani’s heart is being weighed.”

  In the image, the deceased is being led into the Hall of Two Truths to have his heart balanced on a set of scales against the feather of Ma’at—truth. This scene—Judgment Day, really—was the one spell that was never found in the Book of Two Ways. There were definitely snippets of Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts that evolved into the New Kingdom’s Weighing of the Heart, but I hadn’t stayed in the field long enough to find that connective tissue.

  “Why is he green?” Win asks, tapping on Osiris’s white crown.

  “He has a whole mythological history of regeneration after his death—it’s a long story. His green skin represents fertility and re
birth. He’s got a divine beard—see that curve at the bottom?—and he’s mummiform. The lady behind him is Isis—you can tell by the throne on her head. She’s Osiris’s wife, and she resurrected him after he died, and protected his heir, Horus. She also helps the dead make that transition.”

  “So she’s like you.”

  I laugh a little. “Well, I mean, maybe. But I have no plans to weigh your heart.”

  “What happens after it’s weighed?”

  “Those who are true of voice—innocent—get eternal life.”

  I run my finger over the hieroglyphs, reading from right to left, the direction in which they face. The spell starts in red—it’s called a rubric—and the signs themselves are in cursive. “Spell for entering the Broad Hall…”

  Win looks stunned. “You can read those?”

  I touch each of the signs, translating as I go. “The red mouth is the letter r, and it means spell.”

  Suddenly I am back in a desert, grit on the nape of my neck as I carefully ink hieroglyphs onto a slippery curl of Mylar.

  “The bird plus hill plus walking legs is aq, which means to enter.”

  I imagine Harbi scrambling to set a ladder up for Dumphries, who is complaining about the heat like a baby. I see Wyatt standing on the other side of the tomb, his teeth flashing in a smile over the shared joke.

  “The quail chick, folded cloth, circle with lines, and loaf are—wesekhet—which means broad hall.”

  The ladder Harbi sets up comes crashing down, and as I block it from falling on me with my hand, a piece of wood slivers into my skin.

  “The two ostrich feathers, , are the two truths.”