The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

  I know how terrible addiction can be. I had a patient in hospice who had come home from the hospital with a fentanyl patch on his body, which his grandson peeled off and boiled in alcohol, so that he could use the drug. Even now, if a client dies and there are opioids in the house, I destroy them by mixing them with cat litter or bleach.

  “I begged Arlo to go to rehab. He went and relapsed. He died of an overdose six days before he turned sixteen.” Win buries her face in her hands. “And it’s all my fault because my body couldn’t hold on to him—not before he was born, and not long enough, after.”

  “No, Win. You can’t blame yourself because he was in the NICU, and you can’t prove that was the source of his anger. And you certainly can’t blame yourself for not being able to save him.”

  “I prayed that Arlo would be put out of his misery,” she says flatly. “And he was.”

  Suddenly she gets up, weaving a little. “I want to show you something.”

  I jump to my feet, steadying her. Win walks up the stairs, stopping at an antique desk to pull from a drawer an old-fashioned key on a yellow ribbon. She leads me to a locked door at the end of the hallway.

  The room is small and octagonal, part of the turret of the Victorian house. Heavy velvet curtains cloak it in darkness until Win walks toward a window and yanks it open. Dust swirls in the stale air like magic. She goes to the other two windows and pulls back their drapes as well, and light fills the bowl of the room.

  The only furniture is a stool and a squat table spattered with paint. An empty easel.

  Lining the hitched walls are dozens of canvases, stacked and balanced. Some face away, with a handprint of color smudged onto the wood stretchers offering a backward glance. Others boldly stare me in the eye.

  I crouch down to examine one painting. It features a brown boy with an explosive halo of white hair, holding a dandelion with a matching crown. The technique makes me think of the Impressionists we saw at the MFA—slurry, drugged, color hinting at an object but no defined edges. Win’s lines are wavy and rippled and in some places the paint is caked thick enough to stand away from the canvas. It reminds me of the way the world looks when you sink to the bottom of a pool and try to find the sun. To really see this picture, you can’t be close to it. You have to step away and let your mind fill in the rest.

  It isn’t just a painting of Arlo. It is a picture of a wish, the moment before you make it. The moment before you risk being disappointed.

  I sort through the canvases, seeing more pictures of this boy—clearly her favorite subject—but also a study of hands that might belong to Felix and a landscape that looks like Maine. I’m filled with grief—not just for Win’s loss of Arlo, but for the forfeit of her art. For all these beautiful moments of a life, which are rotting away in a locked room.

  “I would love to bring some of these downstairs,” I say.

  “I wouldn’t,” Win replies, and that’s that.

  She brushes her hand over a palette, her thumbnail picking at a splotch of black that looks like an eye passing judgment. “Did you know that the origin of art is a love story?” she asks. “Pliny the Elder says that the daughter of Butades was upset her boyfriend was leaving town, so she traced the outline of his silhouette on a wall while he slept, and that was the first line drawing. The thing is, when she drew him, he was already gone. You can’t look at your subject and at what you’re drawing at the same time. She was only sketching his shadow.” Win looks at me. “Art isn’t what you see. It’s what you remember.”

  She sinks down to the floor, touching her fingers to one of the paintings. Arlo is older in this one, floating in an inner tube at the horizon, as if he could sail off the edge of the world.

  “I want the blanket from Arlo’s bed with me when I die,” Win says.

  “I’ll make sure you have it,” I promise.

  I make a mental note to ask Felix where to find the blanket. While Win steeps in her memories, I riffle through a stack of canvases on the other side of the room.

  One looks nothing like the others.

  For one thing, it’s classically rendered, a nude. It’s so real that I can see the indentation of the teeth where they bite into the lower lip; I can feel the heat of the sun pressing its cheek to the window in the far corner of the piece. One hand is flung across the subject’s eyes, the other moves between her own legs. The pose reminds me of Manet’s Olympia, but with such excruciating detail that it may as well be a photograph. The artist’s rendering is so accurate that I can hear the hitch in the woman’s breath.

  It is Win. Back when she had hips and breasts instead of hollows and angles; back when she was whole and healthy and in love. In spite of what she has just told me, I can almost feel the tickle of the brush on her skin as the artist brought her to life, and not just her memory.

  “Who painted this?” I ask.

  For a moment, Win doesn’t answer. She gets to her feet and pulls the canvas out of my hands. Her face flushes. “That shouldn’t be here.” She turns it away from sight, jamming it into the back of a stack of art.

  My watch vibrates against my wrist; an alarm I’ve set. “It’s time for your medicine,” I tell Win, and she looks so relieved that I feel guilty. She locks the door behind us, and instead of slipping the key back into the desk, she puts it inside her bra.

  It isn’t until after I bring her the dose of medication that Felix measured out and left in the kitchen that Win speaks again. “Do you think Arlo will be…wherever I’m going?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “I’d like that. Seeing everyone I’ve lost.”

  It isn’t until much later that I consider the word she used. Lost.

  Someone does not have to die for you to miss them.

  * * *

  —

  WE ARE WATCHING a terrible Hallmark movie when the CBD gummies finally kick in, and Win drifts off to sleep. I sit with her for a while until I hear Felix’s car pull into the driveway. I watch him for a moment from the front door: checking his rearview mirror, putting on his parking brake, collecting his belongings from the passenger seat. I wonder what it would be like to be cared for by someone whose profession was all about safety.

  When he sees me waiting, he walks faster. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine.” Well, as fine as it can be when your wife is dying. “She’s sleeping.”

  His shoulders relax as he realizes that he is not about to hear the news he dreads most. “Oh. Oh, good.”

  I follow him into the kitchen and give him a quick rundown of the medications Win has taken, of her food intake and her urinary and bowel movements. This is the caregiver passing of the baton. “Win showed me her paintings today,” I say.

  He pauses in the act of getting a pitcher of water from the refrigerator. Then he pours a glass, drinks it, and sets it down empty on the counter. “Did she?”

  “We talked about Arlo,” I tell him. “She wants his blanket with her when she dies.”

  Felix flinches when I say the word dies.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “In the attic,” Felix says, waving his hand toward the ceiling. “Somewhere. All his stuff is there. At first Win made me promise not to change anything in his room, and then I came home one day and found her tearing apart the sheets and ripping his clothes up and smashing his computer—” His voice falls from a cliff. “I boxed everything up. Just in case she needed it one day.”

  I meet his gaze. “I know this is hard—losing Win, when you lost your son not so long ago.”

  Felix blinks. “Arlo wasn’t my son,” he says. Then, chagrined, he ducks his head. “I mean, he was, in the way I loved him. But he was already six when I met Win.”

  I think about the portrait of her in ecstasy. “She didn’t mention that,” I reply.

  * * *

  —

&
nbsp; WHEN I GET home, Brian is pacing in the kitchen. “You’re here. Thank Albert.”

  He doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in Einstein.

  For a moment I panic, wondering what appointment I almost missed. And then I remember: Meret is going to a dance at camp, and we are having dinner at the home of the dean of the faculty.

  Normally it’s hard to make social commitments, due to the nature of my work, but this means a lot to Brian. A promotion to chair might be riding on it. I promised him I would be there. He promised me that Gita would not.

  “I just need to throw on a dress,” I tell him. “Is Meret ready to go?”

  “She’s changed her mind.”

  I stop on the stairwell. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Brian looks at his watch. “She’s old enough to stay by herself. And we can’t be late.”

  She may be capable of staying home, but that doesn’t mean she should. If Meret gives in to her social anxiety, it only feeds the beast. Her friends will have fun without her, will not call, will not text. She will sit here all night and think: See, I was right not to go. No one missed me anyway.

  I run up the stairs and rap on Meret’s door. There is music pulsing; it sounds like the inside of a headache. When she doesn’t answer, I turn the knob and find her lying on her bed reading in sweatpants and a T-shirt, oblivious to the noise. The bass thumps so strong my pulse adjusts, a new moon and its tide. “Hey,” I say, deciding to play dumb. “What time are Sarah’s moms picking you up?”

  “I’m not going,” she snaps.

  “To the dance?” I cross to her laptop and hit the volume key, bringing down the decibel level. There’s no melody, just a beat and freestyling. I wonder if every generation is destined to find a style of music that is completely incomprehensible to the previous one.

  Meret doesn’t answer. She lifts the spine of her book so that she breaks our line of sight.

  “I don’t understand. You were looking forward to this.”

  She was, a few days ago. Sarah had come home from STEM camp with her and there were whispers and hidden notes and at least once I caught a name: Todd. I wonder who he is. If he said something, did something, to hurt her.

  Primally, I want to hurt him back.

  “It’s not even a dance. It’s a bunch of kids grinding against each other.”

  “Well,” I say lightly. “Friction is STEM.”

  She puts down the book. “You did not just say that.”

  I squeeze her arm. “Maybe it will be better than you think. Besides, what’s the alternative? Dad and I have a work thing.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Meret,” I say softly, “if you won’t even try—”

  “Then no one will think I’m a loser,” she explodes. She turns onto her side, away from me. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  I get up and open her closet, pulling a dress from a hanger. “How about this?”

  “I wore that to a funeral.”

  “Jeans?” I suggest.

  “Mom. It’s a dance.”

  I pull her up from the bed. “Come on. We’re going to find something.”

  Reluctantly, she lets herself be dragged into the master bedroom, the walk-in closet. I remember vividly how, as a little girl, she would sneak in here and try on my dresses and jewelry and come downstairs to give us a fashion show. I pull out a sequined blouse she used to love that was way too expensive for her to be playing in. “Here,” I say.

  Meret’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

  “As long as you don’t grind in it.”

  She smirks and yanks her shirt over her head, turning her back to me. I help her unzip my blouse and settle it over her head. As she pulls it down, the stitches strain under the armpits.

  “You know,” I say, “this was always cut weird. Try this.” I yank out a boxy tunic, which floats over Meret’s shoulders with room to spare, and spin her in front of the mirror.

  “I’m wearing a tent.”

  “A designer tent,” I amend, but she is swimming in it.

  I go back into the closet, ripping through the hangers. I have a lot of black in my wardrobe, I realize, but then again, I go to a lot of funerals. I hesitate at a couple of dresses, but worry that the zippers might not close. “You know what?” I realize. “These are old-lady clothes.”

  Meret blinks up at me.

  “But I have killer shoes.”

  I reach down into the recesses of my closet. My hand brushes the seam of spackled wall. When I was growing up, my mother hid a baby shoe in the insulation, to ward off evil. I thought it was ridiculous, and then when I moved into Brian’s home, I did exactly the same thing. Still, even when you plaster over something, you know it’s there.

  I know we are both a shoe size eight. I hand Meret a pair of heels that are probably too high for her.

  She takes them, looking down at the shoes instead of at me. We both know that this is a concession. Don’t say it, she tells me in silence.

  I will take her shopping. I will buy her clothes that make her feel beautiful. I will show her what I see when I look at her. But none of that helps in this moment.

  “Maybe jeans are okay,” Meret says, and it breaks my heart. She turns to go back to her room, her shoulders rounded. Diminished. It seems impossible that someone so worried about her size can make herself so small.

  “Wait,” I say, and I take her hand. I draw her into the master bathroom and sit her down on the closed toilet seat. I pull out foundation and eyeliner, shadow and rouge. When Meret was little, she would watch me put on my makeup, and beg me to make her match. I’d lean into the mirror, swooping the mascara wand over my lashes, and then I’d cap it and pretend to do the same to her. Blush on her cheeks. Lipstick and gloss.

  This time I do not pretend. Meret is my canvas. Except I am not creating anything; I am only tracing art that already exists.

  I used to hold up a hand mirror when I was finished, and Meret would turn her little face left and right, as if she could truly see that invisible difference. Mommy, she would ask. Am I beautiful now?

  I would kiss her forehead. You already were, I said.

  * * *

  —

  THE DEAN OF the faculty, Horace Germaine, lives in a brownstone on Mass Ave that still has its Halloween decorations in spite of the fact that it is summer. Or maybe it’s because his wife, Kelsey Hobbs, is rumored to be descended from a family whose daughter was tried for witchcraft in Salem. Either way, I like her more than I like him. While Brian is sucking up to whoever it is that makes departmental chair appointments, I stand in a corner, nursing my third glass of white wine, feigning interest in a discussion about traffic in Cambridge.

  “So, Dawn,” says the husband of an economist. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a death doula,” I say.

  “A what?”

  “I’m contracted privately by people who need end-of-life care.”

  Another wife nods. “Like nursing?”

  “Everything but nursing,” I explain. I give a nutshell description.

  I can see it, the moment their demeanor changes. Tell someone you work with the dying, and you are suddenly a saint. “It was so hard when my mother passed,” another spouse offers, touching my arm. “You’re an angel.”

  Here is what I wish I could say: No, I’m not. It’s important work, but I am much less Mother Teresa than I am a pain in the ass. Just because I get close to something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m special. It just means I am willing to get close to the things that make people uncomfortable.

  Here’s what I do say: “Thanks.”

  The fact that I can still censor myself proves I’m not as drunk as I thought I was.

  The husband of the economist sways closer, lowering his voice
. “Anyone ever ask you to…speed up the process?”

  We’ve all heard the stories about so-called mercy killers, upping a morphine dose so that a patient never awakens. The closest I’ve ever come to that was a Catholic client on heart medication. If she stopped taking it, she asked, was it suicide? I told her I didn’t think so—there’s a difference between actively ending your life versus letting a disease progress in a way it would without treatment.

  She kept taking her heart medication, and died of a stroke two weeks later.

  “My grandmother was hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium,” a young woman says. “Dropped like a stone.”

  “That must have been incredibly difficult for you and your family,” I say.

  “I heard that on Mount Everest, there are bodies that have been frozen so long they’re used as trail markers—”

  If you are an expert on dying, people believe you are also an expert on death. Suddenly, Kelsey Hobbs slips her arm through mine, as if we are long-lost friends instead of spouses introduced only a half hour ago. “Dawn,” she says, “I must show you some memento mori I have in the library.”

  Death memorabilia. I wouldn’t have taken Kelsey for a collector. But her bright blue eyes widen, and I realize that she’s sending me a message. “Oh, of course,” I reply, letting her unravel me from the knot of people and pull me down a hallway.

  I do not expect there to actually be a trinket, but I am wrong. A photograph hangs on the wall across from a massive bookcase, and in it, a couple poses on either side of a young girl. The couple is hazy; the child crystal clear. I know that in Victorian times, photography was a popular way to commemorate the dead. The reason the girl’s parents are blurry is because of the long exposure time. The dead, on the other hand, don’t move.