by Jodi Picoult
I slam the door shut and count to ten. But when Izzy moves toward the gas oven and starts looking for the cleaning controls, I lose my cool. “Sylvia doesn’t need cleaning.”
“That’s another thing: Sylvia the oven. Smilla the Fridge. Do we really need to name our kitchen appliances?”
My kitchen appliances. Mine, not ours, goddammit. “I’m totally getting why Janet broke up with you,” I mutter.
At that, Izzy looks up, stricken. “You are horrible,” she says. “You are horrible and after I was born I should have sewed Mom shut.” She runs to the bathroom in tears.
Isobel is three minutes older than me, but I’ve always been the one who takes care of her. I’m her nuclear bomb: when there’s something upsetting her, I go in and lay waste to it, whether that’s one of our six older brothers teasing her or the evil Janet, who decided she wasn’t gay after seven years into a committed relationship with Izzy. Growing up, Izzy was the Goody Two-shoes and I was the one who came up fighting—swinging my fists or shaving my head to get a rise out of our parents or wearing combat boots with my high school uniform. Yet now that we’re thirty-two, I’m a card-carrying member of the Rat Race; while Izzy is a lesbian who builds jewelry out of paper clips and bolts. Go figure.
The door to the bathroom doesn’t lock, but Izzy doesn’t know that yet. So I walk in and wait till she finishes splashing cold water on her face, and I hand her a towel. “Iz. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.” She looks at me in the mirror. Most people can’t tell us apart now that I have a real job that requires conventional hair and conventional clothes. “At least you had a relationship,” I point out. “The last time I had a date was when I bought that yogurt.”
Izzy’s lips curve, and she turns to me. “Does the toilet have a name?”
“I was thinking of Janet,” I say, and my sister cracks up.
The telephone rings, and I go into the living room to answer it. “Julia? This is Judge DeSalvo calling. I’ve got a case that needs a guardian ad litem, and I’m hoping you might be able to help me out.”
I became a guardian ad litem a year ago, when I realized that nonprofit work wasn’t covering my rent. A GAL is appointed by a court to be a child’s advocate during legal proceedings that involve a minor. You don’t have to be a lawyer to be trained as a GAL, but you do have to have a moral compass and a heart. Which, actually, probably renders most lawyers unqualified for the job.
“Julia? Are you there?”
I would turn cartwheels for Judge DeSalvo; he pulled strings to get me a job when I first became a GAL. “Whatever you need,” I promise. “What’s going on?”
He gives me background information—phrases like medical emancipation and thirteen and mother with legal background float by me. Only two items stick fast: the word urgent, and the name of the attorney.
God, I can’t do this.
“I can be there in an hour,” I say.
“Good. Because I think this kid needs someone in her corner.”
“Who was that?” Izzy asks. She is unpacking the box that holds her work supplies: tools and wire and little containers of metal bits that sound like teeth gnashing when she sets them down.
“A judge,” I reply. “There’s a girl who needs help.”
What I don’t tell my sister is that I’m talking about me.
• • •
Nobody’s home at the Fitzgerald house. I ring the doorbell twice, certain this must be a mistake. From what Judge DeSalvo’s led me to believe, this is a family in crisis. But I find myself standing in front of a well-kept Cape, with carefully tended flower gardens lining the walk.
When I turn around to go back to my car, I see the girl. She still has that knobby, calf-like look of preteens; she jumps over every sidewalk crack. “Hi,” I say, when she is close enough to hear me. “Are you Anna?”
Her chin snaps up. “Maybe.”
“I’m Julia Romano. Judge DeSalvo asked me to be your guardian ad litem. Did he explain to you what that is?”
Anna narrows her eyes. “There was a girl in Brockton who got kidnapped by someone who said they’d been asked by her mom to pick her up and drive her to the place where her mom worked.”
I rummage in my purse and pull out my driver’s license, and a stack of papers. “Here,” I say. “Be my guest.” She glances at me, and then at the god-awful picture on my license; she reads through the copy of the emancipation petition I picked up at the family court before I came here. If I am a psychotic killer, then I have done my homework well. But there is a part of me already giving Anna credit for being wary: this is not a child who rushes headlong into situations. If she’s thinking long and hard about going off with me, presumably she must have thought long and hard about untangling herself from the net of her family.
She hands back everything I’ve given her. “Where is everyone?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I thought you could tell me.”
Anna’s gaze slides to the front door, nervous. “I hope nothing happened to Kate.”
I tilt my head, considering this girl, who has already managed to surprise me. “Do you have time to talk?” I ask.
• • •
The zebras are the first stop in the Roger Williams Zoo. Of all the animals in the Africa section, these have always been my favorite. I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah—but the zebras captivate me. They’d be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that’s black or white.
We pass blue duikers, bongos, and something called a naked mole rat that doesn’t come out of its cave. I often take kids to the zoo when I’m assigned to their cases. Unlike when we sit down face-to-face in the courthouse, or even at Dunkin’ Donuts, at the zoo they are more likely to open up to me. They’ll watch the gibbons swinging around like Olympic gymnasts and just start talking about what happens at home, without even realizing what they are doing.
Anna, though, is older than all of the kids I’ve worked with, and less than thrilled to be here. In retrospect, I realize this was a bad choice. I should have taken her to a mall, to a movie.
We walk through the winding trails of the zoo, Anna talking only when forced to respond. She answers me politely when I ask her questions about her sister’s health. She says that her mother is, indeed, the opposing attorney. She thanks me when I buy her an ice cream.
“Tell me what you like to do,” I say. “For fun.”
“Play hockey,” Anna says. “I used to be a goaltender.”
“Used to be?”
“The older you get, the less the coach forgives you if you miss a game.” She shrugs. “I don’t like letting a whole team down.”
Interesting way to put it, I think. “Do your friends still play hockey?”
“Friends?” She shakes her head. “You can’t really have anyone over to your house when your sister needs to be resting. You don’t get invited back for sleepovers when your mom comes to pick you up at two in the morning to go to the hospital. It’s probably been a while since you’ve been in middle school, but most people think freakhood is contagious.”
“So who do you talk to?”
She looks at me. “Kate,” she says. Then she asks if I have a cell phone.
I take one out of my pocketbook and watch her dial the hospital’s number by heart. “I’m looking for a patient,” Anna says to the operator. “Kate Fitzgerald?” She glances up at me. “Thanks anyway.” Punching the buttons, she hands the phone back to me. “Kate isn’t registered.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It could just mean that the paperwork hasn’t caught up to the operator yet. Sometimes it takes a few hours.”
I lean against a railing near the elephants. “You seem pretty worried about your sister right now,” I point out. “Are you sure you’re ready to face what’s going to happen if you stop being a donor?”
“I know what’s going to happen.” Anna’s voice is low. “I never said I liked it.�
� She raises her face to mine, challenging me to find fault with her.
For a minute I look at her. What would I do, if I found out that Izzy needed a kidney, or part of my liver, or marrow? The answer isn’t even questionable—I would ask how quickly we could go to the hospital and have it done.
But then, it would have been my choice, my decision.
“Have your parents ever asked you if you want to be a donor for your sister?”
Anna shrugs. “Kind of. The way parents ask questions that they already have answered in their heads. You weren’t the reason that the whole second grade stayed in for recess, were you? Or, You want some broccoli, right?”
“Did you ever tell your parents that you weren’t comfortable with the choice they’d made for you?”
Anna pushes away from the elephants and begins to trudge up the hill. “I might have complained a couple of times. But they’re Kate’s parents, too.”
Small tumblers in this puzzle begin to hitch for me. Traditionally, parents make decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down. And somewhere, underneath all the rubble, are casualties like Anna.
The question is, did she instigate this lawsuit because she truly feels that she can make better choices about her own medical care than her parents can, or because she wants her parents to hear her for once when she cries?
We wind up in front of the polar bears, Trixie and Norton. For the first time since we’ve gotten here, Anna’s face lights up. She watches Kobe, Trixie’s cub—the newest addition to the zoo. He swats at his mother as she lies on the rocks, trying to get her to play. “The last time there was a polar bear baby,” Anna says, “they gave it to another zoo.”
She is right; memories of the articles in the ProJo swim into my mind. It was a big public relations move for Rhode Island.
“Do you think he wonders what he did to get himself sent away?”
We are trained, as guardians ad litem, to see the signs of depression. We know how to read body language, and flat affect, and mood swings. Anna’s hands are clenched around the metal railing. Her eyes go dull as old gold.
Either this girl loses her sister, I think, or she’s going to lose herself.
“Julia,” she asks, “would it be okay if we went home?”
• • •
The closer we get to her house, Anna distances herself from me. A pretty nifty trick, given that the physical space between us remains unaltered. She shrinks against the window of my car, staring at the streets that bleed by. “What happens next?”
“I’m going to talk to everyone else. Your mom and dad, your brother and sister. Your lawyer.”
Now a dilapidated Jeep is parked in the driveway, and the front door of the house is open. I turn off the ignition, but Anna makes no move to release her seat belt. “Will you walk me in?”
“Why?”
“Because my mother’s going to kill me.”
This Anna—genuinely skittish—bears little resemblance to the one I’ve spent the past hour with. I wonder how a girl might be both brave enough to instigate a lawsuit, and afraid to face her own mother. “How come?”
“I sort of left today without telling her where I was going.”
“You do that a lot?”
Anna shakes her head. “Usually I do whatever I’m told.”
Well, I am going to have to speak to Sara Fitzgerald sooner or later. I get out of the car, and wait for Anna to do the same. We walk up the front path, past the groomed flower beds, and through the front door.
She is not the foe I’ve built her up to be. For one thing, Anna’s mother is shorter than I am, and slighter. She has dark hair and haunted eyes and is pacing. The moment it creaks open, she runs to Anna. “For God’s sake,” she cries, shaking her daughter by the shoulders, “where have you been? Do you have any idea—”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Fitzgerald. I’d like to introduce myself.” I step forward, extending my hand. “I’m Julia Romano, the guardian ad litem appointed by the court.”
She slides her arm around Anna, a stiff show of tenderness. “Thank you for bringing Anna home. I’m sure you have lots to discuss with her, but right now—”
“Actually, I was hoping I could speak to you. I’ve been asked by the court to present my findings in less than a week, so if you’ve got a few minutes—”
“I don’t,” Sara says abruptly. “Now isn’t really a good time. My other daughter has just been readmitted to the hospital.” She looks at Anna, still standing in the doorway of the kitchen: I hope you’re happy.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I am too.” Sara clears her throat. “I appreciate you coming by to talk to Anna. And I know you’re just doing your job. But this is all going to work itself out, really. It’s a misunderstanding. I’m sure Judge DeSalvo will be telling you that in a day or so.”
She takes a step backward, challenging me—and Anna—to say otherwise. I glance at Anna, who catches my eye and shakes her head almost imperceptibly, a plea to just let this go for now.
Who is she protecting—her mother, or herself?
A red flag unravels across my mind: Anna is thirteen. Anna lives with her mother. Anna’s mother is opposing counsel. How can Anna possibly live in the same home and not be swayed by Sara Fitzgerald?
“Anna, I’ll call you tomorrow.” Then without saying good-bye to Sara Fitzgerald, I leave her house, headed for the one place on earth I never wanted to go.
• • •
The law offices of Campbell Alexander look exactly the way I’ve pictured them: at the top of a building cast in black glass, at the end of a hallway lined with a Persian runner, through two heavy mahogany doors that keep out the riffraff. Sitting at the massive receptionist’s desk is a girl with porcelain features and a telephone earpiece hidden under the mane of her hair. I ignore her and walk toward the only closed door. “Hey!” she yells. “You can’t go in there!”
“He’ll be expecting me,” I say.
Campbell doesn’t look up from whatever he’s writing with great fury. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to the elbow. He needs a haircut. “Kerri,” he says, “see if you can find some Jenny Jones transcript about identical twins who don’t know that they—”
“Hello, Campbell.”
First, he stops writing. Then he lifts his head. “Julia.” He gets to his feet, a schoolboy caught in an indecent act.
I step inside and close the door behind me. “I’m the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna Fitzgerald’s case.”
A dog that I haven’t noticed till now takes its place by Campbell’s side. “I’d heard that you went to law school.”
Harvard. On full scholarship.
“Providence is a pretty tight place . . . I kept expecting . . .” His voice trails off, and he shakes his head. “Well, I thought for sure we’d run into each other before now.”
He smiles at me, and I suddenly am seventeen again—the year I realized love doesn’t follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable. “It’s not all that hard to avoid someone, when you want to,” I answer coolly. “You of all people should know.”
CAMPBELL
I’M REMARKABLY CALM, really, until the principal of Ponaganset High School starts to give me a telephone lecture on political correctness. “For God’s sake,” he sputters. “What kind of message does it send when a group of Native American students names their intramural basketball league ‘The Whiteys’?”
“I imagine it sends the same message that you did when you picked the Chieftains as your school mascot.”
“We’ve been the Ponaganset Chieftains since 1970,” the principal argues.
“Yes, and they’ve been members of the Narragansett tribe since they were born.”
“It’s derogatory. And politically incorrect.”
“Unfortunately,�
�� I point out, “you can’t sue a person for political incorrectness, or clearly you would have been handed a summons years ago. However, on the flip side, the Constitution does protect various individual rights to Americans, including Native Americans—one for assembly, and one for free speech, which suggest that the Whiteys would be granted permission to convene even if your ridiculous threat of a lawsuit managed to make its way to court. For that matter, you may want to consider a class action against humanity in general, since surely you’d also like to stifle the inherent racism implicit in the White House, the White Mountains, and the White Pages.” There is dead silence on the other end of the phone. “Shall I assume, then, that I can tell my client you don’t plan to litigate after all?”
After he hangs up on me, I push the intercom button. “Kerri, call Ernie Fishkiller, and tell him he’s got nothing to worry about.”
As I settle down to the mountain of work on my desk, Judge lets out a sigh. He’s asleep, curled like a braided rug to the left of my desk. His paw twitches.
That’s the life, she said to me, as we watched a puppy chase its own tail. That’s what I want to be next.
I had laughed. You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don’t need anyone else.
I need you, she replied.
Well, I said. Maybe I’ll come back as catnip.
I press my thumbs into the balls of my eyes. Clearly I am not getting enough sleep; first there was that moment at the coffee shop, now this. I scowl at Judge, as if it is his fault, and then focus my attention on some notes I’ve made on a legal pad. New client—a drug dealer caught by the prosecution on videotape. There’s no way out of a conviction on this one, unless the guy has an identical twin his mother kept secret.
Which, come to think of it . . .
The door opens, and without glancing up I fire a directive at Kerri. “See if you can find some Jenny Jones transcript about identical twins who don’t know that they—”