by Jodi Picoult
The fact that Batman the Robin had survived inside I-tier for several weeks on crusts of toast and bits of oatmeal was a wonder in its own right, not to mention the fact that he’d cheated death once before.
“Give him CPR,” Joey Kunz suggested.
“You can’t do fucking CPR on a bird,” Calloway snapped. “They got beaks.”
I put down the makeshift brush I was using to paint—a rolled wad of toilet paper—and angled my mirror-shank out my door so that I could see. In his enormous palm, Calloway cradled the bird, which lay on its side, unmoving.
“Shay,” he begged, “please.”
There was no response from Shay’s cell. “Fish him to me,” I said, and crouched down with my line. I was worried that the bird had grown too big to make it through the little slit at the bottom, but Calloway wrapped him in a handkerchief, roped the top, and sent the slight weight in a wide arc across the floor of the catwalk. I knotted my string with Calloway’s and gently drew the bird toward me.
I couldn’t resist unwrapping the kerchief to peek. Batman’s eyelid was purple and creased, his tail feathers spread like a fan. The tiny hooks on the ends of his claws were as sharp as pins. When I touched them, the bird did not even twitch. I placed my forefinger beneath the wing—did birds have hearts where we did?—and felt nothing.
“Shay,” I said quietly. “I know you’re tired. And I know you’ve got your own stuff going on. But please. Just take a look.”
Five whole minutes passed, long enough for me to give up. I wrapped the bird in the cloth again and tied him to the end of my fishing line, cast him onto the catwalk for Calloway to retrieve. But before his line could tangle with mine, another whizzed out, and Shay intercepted the bird.
In my mirror, I watched Shay take Batman from the kerchief, hold him in his hand. He stroked the head with his finger; he gingerly covered the body with his other hand, as if he had caught a star between his palms. I held my breath, watching for that flutter or feather or the faintest cheep, but after a few moments Shay just wrapped the bird up again.
“Hey!” Calloway had been watching, too. “You didn’t do anything!”
“Leave me alone,” Shay repeated. The air had gone bitter as almonds; I could barely stand to breathe it. I watched him fish back that dead bird, and all of our hopes along with it.
Maggie
When Gordon Greenleaf stood up, his knees creaked. “You’ve studied comparative world religions in the course of your research?” he asked Fletcher.
“Yes.”
“Do different religions take a stand on organ donation?”
“Yes,” Fletcher said. “Catholics believe only in transplants done after death—you can’t risk killing the donor, for example, during the donation. They fully support organ donation, as do Jews and Muslims. Buddhists and Hindus believe organ donation is a matter of individual conscience, and they put high value on acts of compassion.”
“Do any of those religions require you to donate organs as a means to salvation?”
“No,” Fletcher said.
“Are there Gnostic Christians practicing today?”
“No,” Fletcher said. “The religion died out.”
“How come?”
“When you have a belief system that says you shouldn’t listen to the clergy, and that you should continually ask questions, instead of accepting doctrine, it’s hard to form a community. On the other hand, the Orthodox Christians were delineating the steps to being card-carrying members of the group—confess the creed, accept baptism, worship, obey the priests. Plus, their Jesus was someone the average Joe could relate to—someone who’d been born, had an overprotective mom, suffered, and died. That was a much easier sell than the Gnostic Jesus—who was never even human. The rest of the Gnostics’ decline,” Fletcher said, “was political. In A.D. 312, Constantine, the Roman emperor, saw a crucifix in the sky and converted to Christianity. The Catholic Church became part of the Holy Roman Empire . . . and having Gnostic texts and beliefs were punishable by death.”
“So, it’s fair to say no one’s practiced Gnostic Christianity for fifteen hundred years?” Greenleaf said.
“Not formally. But there are elements of Gnostic belief in other religions that have survived. For example, Gnostics recognized the difference between the reality of God, which was impossible to describe with language, and the image of God as we knew it. This sounds a lot like Jewish mysticism, where you find God being described as streams of energy, male and female, which pool together into a divine source; or God as the source of all sounds at once. And Buddhist enlightenment is very much like the Gnostic idea that we live in a land of oblivion, but can waken spiritually right here while we’re still part of this world.”
“But Shay Bourne can’t be a follower of a religion that no longer exists, isn’t that true?”
He hesitated. “From what I understand, donating his heart is Shay Bourne’s attempt to learn who he is, who he wants to be, how he is connected to others. And in that very basic sense, the Gnostics would agree that he’s found the part of him that comes closest to being divine.” Fletcher looked up. “A Gnostic Christian would tell you that a man on death row is more like us than unlike us. And that—as Mr. Bourne seems to be trying to suggest—he still has something to offer the world.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” Greenleaf raised a brow. “Have you ever even met Shay Bourne?”
“Actually,” Fletcher said, “no.”
“So for all you know, he doesn’t have any religious beliefs at all. This could all be some grand plan to delay his execution, couldn’t it?”
“I’ve spoken with his spiritual advisor.”
The lawyer scoffed. “You’ve got a guy practicing a religion by himself that seems to hearken back to a religious sect that died out thousands of years ago. Isn’t it possible that this is a bit too . . . easy? That Shay Bourne could just be making it all up as he goes along?”
Fletcher smiled. “A lot of people thought that about Jesus.”
“Dr. Fletcher,” Greenleaf said, “are you telling this court that Shay Bourne is a messiah?”
Fletcher shook his head. “Your words, not mine.”
“Then how about your stepdaughter’s words?” Greenleaf asked. “Or is this some kind of family trait you all have, running into God in state prisons and elementary schools and Laundromats?”
“Objection,” I said. “My witness isn’t on trial here.”
Greenleaf shrugged. “His ability to discuss the history of Christianity is—”
“Overruled,” Judge Haig said.
Fletcher narrowed his eyes. “What my daughter did or didn’t see has no bearing on Shay Bourne’s request to donate his heart.”
“Did you believe she was a fake when you first met her?”
“The more I spoke with her, the more I—”
“When you first met her,” Greenleaf interrupted, “did you believe she was a fake?”
“Yes,” Fletcher admitted.
“And yet, with no personal contact, you were willing to testify in a court of law that Mr. Bourne’s request to donate his organs could be massaged to fit your loose definition of a religion.” Greenleaf glanced at him. “I guess, in your case, old habits die fairly easy.”
“Objection!”
“Withdrawn.” Greenleaf started back to his seat, but then turned. “Just one more question, Dr. Fletcher—this daughter of yours. She was seven years old when she found herself at the center of a religious media circus not unlike this one, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware that’s the same age of the little girl Shay Bourne murdered?”
A muscle in Fletcher’s jaw twitched. “No. I wasn’t.”
“How do you think you’d feel about God if your stepdaughter was the one who’d been killed?”
I shot to my feet. “Objection!”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge answered.
Fletcher paused. “I think that kind of tragedy would test anyone’s faith.”
<
br /> Gordon Greenleaf folded his arms. “Then it’s not faith,” he said. “It’s being a chameleon.”
MICHAEL
During the lunch recess, I went to see Shay in his holding cell. He was sitting on the floor, near the bars, while a U.S. marshal sat outside on a stool. Shay held a pencil and scrap of paper, as if he were conducting an interview.
“H,” the marshal said, and Shay shook his head. “M?”
Shay scribbled something on the paper. “I’m down to your last toe, dude.”
The marshal sucked in his breath. “K.”
Shay grinned. “I win.” He scrawled something else on the page and passed it through the bars—only then did I notice that it had been a game of hangman, and that this time around, Shay was the executioner.
Scowling, the marshal stared down at the paper. “Szygszyg isn’t a real word.”
“You didn’t say that it had to be real when we started playing,” Shay replied, and then he noticed me standing at the threshold of the door.
“I’m Shay’s spiritual advisor,” I told the marshal. “Can we have a minute?”
“No problem. I have to take a whiz.” He stood up, offering me the stool he was vacating, and headed out of the room.
“How are you doing?” I said quietly.
Shay walked to the back of the cell, where he lay down on the metal bunk and faced the wall.
“I want to talk to you, Shay.”
“Just because you want to talk doesn’t mean I want to listen.”
I sank down on the stool. “I was the last one on your jury to vote for the death penalty,” I said. “I was the reason we deliberated so long. And even after I’d been convinced by the rest of the jury that this was the best sentence, I didn’t feel good about it. I kept having panic attacks. One day, during one, I stumbled into a cathedral and started to pray. The more I did it, the fewer panic attacks I had.” I clasped my hands between my knees. “I thought that was a sign from God.”
Still with his back to me, Shay snorted.
“I still think it’s a sign from God, because it’s brought me back into your life.”
Shay rolled onto his back and flung one arm over his eyes. “Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “It’s brought you back into my death.”
* * *
Ian Fletcher was already standing at a urinal when I ran into the men’s room. I had been hoping it would be empty. Shay’s comment—the bald truth—had made me so sick to my stomach that I’d rushed out of the holding cell without explanation. I pushed into a stall, fell to my knees, and got violently ill.
No matter how much I wanted to fool myself—no matter what I said about atoning for my past sins—the bottom line was that for the second time in my life, my actions were going to result in the death of Shay Bourne.
Fletcher pushed the door of the stall open and put his hand on my shoulder. “Father? You all right?”
I wiped my mouth, slowly got to my feet. “I’m fine,” I said, then shook my head. “No, actually, I’m awful.”
I walked to the sink, turned on the faucet, and splashed water on my face as Fletcher watched. “Do you need to sit down or something?”
I dried my face with a paper towel he passed me. And suddenly, I wanted someone else to bear this burden. Ian Fletcher was a man who’d unraveled secrets from two thousand years ago; surely he could keep one of mine. “I was on his jury,” I murmured into the recycled brown paper.
“I’m sorry?”
No, I am, I thought. I met Fletcher’s gaze. “I was on the jury that sentenced Shay Bourne to death. Before I joined the priesthood.”
Fletcher let out a long, low whistle. “Does he know?”
“I told him a few days ago.”
“And his lawyer?”
I shook my head. “I keep thinking that this must be how Judas felt after turning Jesus in.”
Fletcher’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Actually, there’s a recently discovered Gnostic gospel—the Gospel of Judas—and there’s very little in there about betrayal. In fact, this gospel paints Judas as Jesus’s confidant—the only one he trusted to make what needed to happen, happen.”
“Even if it was an assisted suicide,” I said, “I’m sure Judas felt like crap about it afterward. I mean, he killed himself.”
“Well,” Fletcher said, “there was that.”
“What would you do if you were me?” I asked. “Would you carry through with this? Help Shay donate his heart?”
“I guess that depends on why you’re helping him,” Fletcher said slowly. “Is it to save him, like you said on the stand? Or are you really just trying to save yourself?” He shook his head. “If man had the answers for questions like those, there wouldn’t be a need for religion. Good luck, Father.”
I went back into the stall and closed the lid of the toilet, sat down. I slipped my rosary out of my pocket and whispered the familiar words of the prayers, sweet in my mouth like sucking candies. Finding God’s grace wasn’t like locating missing keys or the forgotten name of a 1940s pinup girl—it was more of a feeling: the sun breaking through an overcast morning, the softest bed sinking under your weight. And, of course, you couldn’t find God’s grace unless you admitted you were lost.
A bathroom stall at the federal courthouse might not be the most likely spot to find God’s grace, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.
Find God’s grace.
Find Grace.
If Shay was willing to give up his heart, then the least I could do was make sure he’d be remembered in someone else’s. Someone who—unlike me—had never condemned him.
That was when I decided to find Shay’s sister.
June
It is not an easy thing to pick the clothes in which your child will be buried. I had been told by the funeral director, after the murders, to think about it. He suggested something that represented her, a beautiful girl—such as a nice little dress, one that opened up the back, preferably. He asked me to bring in a picture of her so that he could use makeup to match the blush of her cheek, the natural color of her skin, her hairstyle.
What I had wanted to say to him was: Elizabeth hated dresses. She would have worn pants without buttons, because they were frustrating, or possibly last year’s Halloween costume, or the tiny set of doctors’ scrubs she got for Christmas—I had, just days before, found her ‘’operating” on an overgrown zucchini that was the size of a newborn. I would have told him that Elizabeth did not have a hairstyle, because you could not ground her long enough to brush it, much less braid or curl. And that I did not want him putting makeup on her face, not when I would never have that bonding moment between a mother and daughter in a bathroom before an elegant night on the town, when I could let her try the eye shadow, a smudge of mascara, pink lipstick.
The funeral director told me that it might be nice to have a table of mementos that meant something to Elizabeth—stuffed animals or family vacation photos, chocolate chip cookies. To play her favorite music. To let her school friends write messages to her, which could be buried in a silk satchel inside the coffin.
What I wanted to say to him was: Don’t you realize that by telling me the same things you tell everyone else about how to make a meaningful funeral, you are making it meaningless? That Elizabeth deserved fireworks, an angel choir, the world turning backward on its axis.
In the end, I had dressed Elizabeth in a ballerina’s tutu, one she somehow always wanted to wear when we went grocery shopping, and that I always made her take off before we left. I let the funeral director put makeup on her face for the first time. I gave her a stuffed dog, her stepfather, and most of my heart to take with her.
It was not an open-casket funeral; but before we left for the graveside service, the funeral director lifted the cover to make final adjustments. At that moment, I pushed him out of the way. Let me, I had said.
Kurt was wearing his uniform, as befitted a police officer killed in the line of duty. He looked exactly like he did every day
, except for the fine white line around his finger where his wedding ring had been. That, I now wore on a chain around my neck.
Elizabeth looked delicate, angelic. Her hair was tied up in matching ribbons. Her arm was around her stepfather’s waist.
I reached into the coffin, and the moment my hand brushed my daughter’s cheek I shivered, because somehow I had still expected it to be warm—not this fake-flesh, this cool-to-the-touch skin. I tugged the ribbons out of her hair, gently lifted her head, fanned her hair on both sides of her face. I tugged the left leotard sleeve down a quarter inch, to match the one on the right.
I hope you’re pleased, the funeral director had said.
It didn’t look like Elizabeth, not one bit, because she was too perfect. My daughter would have been rumpled and untucked, her hands dirty from chasing frogs, her socks mismatched, her wrists ringed with bracelets she’d beaded herself.
But in a world where things happen that shouldn’t, you find yourself saying and doing things that are the complete opposite of what you mean. So I had nodded, and watched him seal away the two people I loved most in this world.
Now I found myself in the same position I’d been in eleven years ago, standing in the middle of my daughter’s bedroom and sifting through her clothes. I sorted through shirts and skirts and tights, jeans as soft as flannel and a sweatshirt that still smelled like the apple orchard where she last wore it. I chose a pair of flared black leggings and a long-sleeved tee that had Tinker Bell printed on it—clothes that I had seen Claire wear on the laziest of Sundays, when it was snowing and there was nothing to be done but read the Sunday paper and doze with your cheek pressed against the wall of heat thrown by the fireplace. I picked out a pair of underwear—SATURDAY, it read across the front, but I couldn’t find any other days of the week scattered in the drawer. It was when I was looking that I found, wrapped in a red bandanna, the photograph. In a tiny silver oval frame, I thought at first it was one of Claire’s baby pictures—and then I realized it was Elizabeth.