by Jodi Picoult
Kelly had taken a step backward. “That’s you?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I can’t believe any parent would think that way,” Kelly said. “We all have to scrape the bottoms of our bank accounts to make things work. But I never, ever would wish I hadn’t had my son.”
I felt myself shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to be a mother, like Kelly, who took her son’s disability in stride. I wanted you to grow up like this other woman, forthright and confident. I just also wanted the resources for you to be able to do it.
“Do you know what I’ve spent the past six months doing?” the woman with OI said. “Training for the Paralympics. I’m on the swim team. If your daughter came home with a gold medal one day, would that convince you her life wasn’t a waste?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Actually,” Kelly said, “you don’t.”
She turned on her heel, walking out of the restroom with the other woman trailing behind. I turned the water on full blast and splashed some onto my face, which felt as if it had gone up in flames. Then, with my heart still hammering, I stepped into the hallway.
The nine o’clock sessions were filling. My cover had been blown; I could feel the needles of a hundred eyes on me, and every whisper held my name. I kept my gaze trained on the patterned carpet as I pushed past a knot of wrestling boys and a toddler being carried by a girl with OI not much bigger than himself. A hundred steps to the elevators . . . fifty . . . twenty.
The elevator doors opened, and I slipped inside and punched a button. Just as the doors were closing, a crutch jammed between them. The man who had signed us in yesterday was standing on the threshold, but instead of smiling at me in welcome, like he had twelve hours earlier, his eyes were dark as pitch. “Just so you know—it’s not my disability that makes my life a constant struggle,” he said. “It’s people like you.” Then, with a rasping of metal, he stepped back and let the elevator doors close.
I made it to the room and slid the key card inside, only to remember that Amelia was probably still sleeping. But—thank God—she was gone, downstairs eating breakfast or AWOL, and right now I didn’t care which. I lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over my head. Then, finally, I let myself burst into tears.
This was worse than being judged by a jury of my peers. This was being judged by a jury of your peers.
I was, pure and simple, a failure. My husband had left me; my mothering skills had been warped to include the American legal system. I cried until my eyes had swollen and my cheeks hurt. I cried until there was nothing left inside me. Then I sat up and walked to the small desk near the window.
It held a phone, a blotter, and a binder listing the services offered by the hotel. Inside this were two postcards and two blank fax cover sheets. I took them out and reached for the pen beside the telephone.
Sean, I wrote. I miss you.
Until he moved out, Sean and I had never spent any time apart from each other, unless you counted the week before our wedding. Although he’d moved into the house where Amelia and I lived, I had wanted to create at least the semblance of excitement, so he’d bunked on the couch of another police officer in the days leading up to the ceremony. He’d hated it. I’d find him driving by in his cruiser while I was at work at the restaurant, and we’d sneak into the cold room in the kitchen and kiss intensely. Or he’d stop by to tuck Amelia in at night and then pretend to fall asleep on the couch watching TV. I’m onto you, I told him. And this isn’t going to work. At the ceremony, Sean surprised me with vows he’d written himself: I’ll give you my heart and my soul, he said. I’ll protect you and serve you. I’ll give you a home, and I won’t let you kick me out of it ever again. Everyone laughed, including me—imagine, mousy little Charlotte being the kind of sultry seductress who’d have that much control over a man! But Sean made me feel like I could fell a giant with a single word or a gentle touch. It was powerful, and it was a me I had never imagined.
Somewhere, in the deep creases of my mind—the folds where hope gets caught—I believed that whatever was wrong between Sean and me was reparable. It had to be, because when you love someone—when you create a child with him—you don’t just suddenly lose that bond. Like any other energy, it can’t be destroyed, just channeled into something else. And maybe right now I’d turned the full spotlight of my attention on you. But that was normal; the levels of love within a family shifted and flowed all the time. Next week, it could be Amelia; next month, Sean. Once this lawsuit was over, he’d move back home. We’d go back to the way we used to be.
We had to, because I couldn’t really swallow the alternative: that I would be forced to choose between your future and my own.
The second letter I had to write was harder. Dear Willow, I wrote.
I don’t know when you’ll be reading this, or what will have happened by then. But I have to write it, because I owe you an explanation more than anyone else. You are the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to me, and the most painful. Not because of your illness, but because I can’t fix it, and I hate seeing those moments when you realize that you might not be able to do what other kids do.
I love you, and I always will. Maybe more than I should. That’s the only reason I can give for all this. I thought that if I loved you hard enough, I could move mountains for you; I could make you fly. It didn’t matter to me how that happened—just as long as it did. I wasn’t thinking of who I might hurt, only who I could rescue.
The first time you broke in my arms, I couldn’t stop crying. I think I’ve spent all these years trying to make up for that moment. That’s why I can’t stop now, even though there are times I want to. I can’t stop, but there isn’t a moment I don’t worry about what you’ll remember in the long run. Will it be the arguments I had with your father? The way your sister turned into someone we didn’t recognize? Or will you remember the way you and I once spent an hour watching a snail cross our porch? Or how I cut your lunch-box sandwiches into your initials? Will you remember how, when I wrapped you in a towel after your bath, I held you a moment longer than it took to dry you?
I have always had a dream of you living on your own. I see you as a doctor, and I wonder if that’s because I’ve seen you with so many. I imagine a man who will love you like crazy, maybe even a baby. I bet you’ll fight for her as fiercely as I tried to fight for you.
What I could never puzzle out, however, was how you’d get from where you are to where you might one day be—until I was given the materials to make a bridge. Too late I learned that that bridge was made of thorns, that it might not be strong enough to hold us all.
When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance. I am not sure how I came to measure your life by the moments when it’s fallen apart—surgeries, breaks, emergencies—instead of the moments in between. Maybe that makes me a pessimist, maybe it makes me a realist. Or maybe it just makes me a mother.
You will hear people saying things about me. Some are lies, some are truth. There’s only one fact that matters: I don’t want you to ever suffer another break.
Especially one between you and me, because that might never set properly.
Sean
I was hemorrhaging money.
Not only was my paycheck being stretched to cover the mortgage and the car payment and the credit card finance charges but now any cash I might have been able to sock away was being poured, forty-nine dollars per night, into the Sleep Inn motel, where I’d been living since the day Charlotte came to ream me out at the highway construction detail.
This is why, when Charlotte told me she was leaving one Friday to take the girls to an OI convention for the weekend, I checked out of the Sleep Inn and let myself into my own house.
It’s a weird thing, coming back home as a stranger. You know how, when you go into someone else’s house, it smells—sometimes like fresh laundry, sometimes like pine needles, but distinct from any other? You don’t notice it where you live until you haven’t bee
n there for a while. The first night, I’d walked around soaking in the familiar: the newel post on the banister that still popped off because I’d never gotten around to fixing it; the herd of stuffed animals on your bed; the baseball I’d caught while on a trip to Fenway with a bunch of other cops back in ’90, a Tom Brunansky homer to center field in a game that put the Sox in first place over Toronto for the season.
I went into my bedroom, too, and sat down on Charlotte’s side of the bed. That night, I slept on her pillow.
The next morning, as I packed up my toiletries, I wondered if Charlotte would go to wash her face and be able to smell the scent of me on the towels. If she’d notice that I’d finished off the loaf of bread and the roast beef. If she’d care.
It was my day off, and I knew what I had to do.
The church was quiet at this time on a Saturday morning. I sat down in a pew, looking up at a stained-glass window that reached long, blue fingers down the aisle.
Forgive me, Charlotte, for I have sinned.
Father Grady, who was close to the altar, noticed me. “Sean,” he said. “Is Willow all right?”
He probably thought the only time I’d willingly set foot in a church was if I had to pray hard for my daughter’s failing health. “She’s doing okay, Father. I actually was hoping I could talk to you for a minute.”
“Sure.” He sank down into the pew in front of me, turning sideways.
“It’s about Charlotte,” I said slowly. “We’re having some problems seeing eye to eye.”
“I’m happy to talk to both of you,” the priest said.
“It’s been months. I think we’re past that point.”
“I hope you’re not talking about divorce, Sean. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church. It’s a mortal sin. God made your marriage, not some piece of paper.” He smiled at me. “Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God onboard.”
“God’s got to make exceptions every now and then.”
“No way. If He did, people would go into marriage thinking there was a way out when the going got tough.”
“My wife,” I said flatly, “plans to swear on a Bible in court and then say she wishes she’d aborted Willow. Do you think God would want me married to someone like that?”
“Yes,” the priest said immediately. “The biggest purpose of marriage, after having children, is to support and help your spouse. You might be the one who manages to make Charlotte see she’s wrong.”
“I tried. I can’t.”
“A sacrament—like marriage—means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you’re modeling God. And God never gives up.”
That, I thought to myself, wasn’t entirely true. There were plenty of places in the Bible where God backed Himself into a corner and, instead of toughing it out, simply started over. Look at the great flood, at Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Jesus didn’t get to drop that Cross,” Father Grady said. “He carried it all the way uphill.”
Well, in one respect the priest was right. If I stayed in this marriage, either Charlotte or I was going to wind up being crucified.
“How about you and Charlotte come see me together sometime next week?” Father Grady said. “We’ll figure this out.”
I nodded, and he patted my hand and headed toward the altar again.
Lying to a priest was a sin, too, but that was the least of my worries.
• • •
Adina Nettle’s office was nothing like Guy Booker’s, although they apparently had gone to law school together. Adina, Guy said, was the one you wanted if you were getting a divorce. He’d used her twice now himself.
She had overstuffed couches with those lacy things that look like they belong on valentines draped over the backs. She served tea but not coffee. And she looked like everybody’s grandmother.
Maybe that’s why she got what she wanted in settlements.
“You’re not too cold, Sean? I can turn down the air-conditioning . . .”
“I’m fine,” I said. For the past half hour, I’d drunk three cups of Earl Grey and told Adina about our family. “We go back and forth to different hospitals, depending on what the problem is,” I said. “Omaha, for orthopedics. Boston, for pamidronate. Local hospitals for most breaks.”
“It must be very difficult, not knowing what’s going to happen.”
“No one knows what’s going to happen,” I said soberly. “We just have emergencies more often than most folks.”
“Your wife must not be able to work, then,” Adina said.
“No. We’ve been trying to make ends meet ever since Willow was born.” I hesitated. “And I can’t say it’s any easier with me living in a motel.”
Adina made a note on her legal pad. “Sean, divorce is financially devastating to most people, and it’s going to be even more so for you, because you and Charlotte are living from paycheck to paycheck—plus you’ve got the added stressor of your daughter’s illness. And there’s a strange catch-22 here, too—if you want custody, that means you’re going to be working less, making even less money. When you’re not working, your children are with you. You won’t have any free time anymore.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said.
Adina nodded. “Does Charlotte have job skills?”
“She used to be a pastry chef,” I said. “She hasn’t worked since Willow was born, but last winter she started a little stand at the end of the driveway.”
“A stand?”
“Like a vegetable stand. But with cupcakes.”
“If you cut back on your hours to be with the children, will you be able to afford to keep the house? Or will it have to be sold so that you can have two smaller households?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” Our savings were shot to hell, that much was clear.
“Based on what you’ve told me, with all of Willow’s adaptive equipment and her schedule, it seems that keeping her in one location would be easier for everyone involved . . . even when it comes to visitation . . .” Adina glanced up at me. “There is one other option. You could live at the house until the divorce is finalized.”
“Wouldn’t that be—a little uncomfortable?”
“Yes. It’s also cheaper, which is why a majority of couples who are in the process of divorcing choose to do it. And it’s easier on the children.”
“I don’t get it—”
“It’s very simple. We draw up a negotiated plan, so that you’re in the house when your wife isn’t and vice versa. That way you each have time with the girls while the divorce is pending, and the household expenses are no greater than they are right now.”
I looked down at the floor. I didn’t know if I could be that generous. I didn’t know if I could stand to see Charlotte in the thick of this lawsuit and not want to kill her for the things she said. But then again, I would be right there, a call away, if you needed someone to hold you in the middle of the night. If you needed reinforcement to believe that the world would not be anywhere near as bright without you in it.
“There’s only one catch,” Adina said. “It’s not ordinary in New Hampshire for a father to get physical possession of a child, especially in a case where the child has special needs and the mother has been a stay-at-home caretaker the child’s whole life. So how are you going to convince a judge that you’re the better parent?”
I met the lawyer’s eye. “I’m not the one who started a wrongful birth lawsuit,” I said.
• • •
After I walked out of the attorney’s office, the world seemed different. The road looked too clear, the colors too jarring. It was like getting a pair of glasses that were overcorrected, and I felt myself moving more carefully.
At a stoplight, I looked out the window and saw a young woman crossing the street with a cup of coffee in her hand. She caught my eye and smiled. In the past, I would have looked away, embarrassed—but now? Were you allowed to smile back, to look, to acknowledge other women, if you’d taken the firs
t steps to ending your marriage?
I had two hours before my shift started, and I headed toward Aubuchon Hardware. The irony didn’t escape me—I was shopping at a home improvement mecca, although I didn’t currently have a home. But while staying in the house this weekend, I’d noticed that the ramp I’d built for your wheelchair three years ago was rotting out in one spot where we had some standing water this spring. My plan was to build you a new one today, so you’d see it when you returned from your conference.
The way I figured it, I’d need three or four sheets of three-quarter-inch pressure-treated plywood, plus a stretch of indoor-outdoor carpeting to give traction under the wheels of your chair. I headed for the service desk to try to estimate the cost. “You’re talking about $34.10 a sheet,” the employee said, and I found myself backpedaling through the math. If the wood alone cost over a hundred bucks, I’d have to work more overtime, and that wasn’t even counting the cost of the carpet material. The more hours I spent at work, the less I would have with you girls. The more money I spent on the ramp, the less I’d have for another night’s motel room.
“Sean?”
Piper Reece was standing three feet away.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, but before I could answer, she held up her hands, revealing a packet of wire connectors and a GFCI receptacle. “I’m replacing one. I’ve been pretty handy lately, but this is the first time I’ve fooled around with electricity.” She laughed nervously. “I keep seeing the headline: ‘Woman Found Electrocuted in Her Own Kitchen. Counter was not clean at the time of death.’ It’s supposed to be easy, right? Like, the chances of being zapped during a do-it-yourself project can’t be nearly as high as the chances of getting into a car accident on your way to the hardware store, right?” She shook her head and blushed. “I’m babbling.”