by Jodi Picoult
“I don’t bake pies or cookies,” I say. “And with all due respect, I don’t need to get religion.”
Pastor Clive smiles and sits back, his fingers strumming on the armrest of the couch. “That’s the other funny thing about Jesus,” he says. “He’s got a way of showing you you’re wrong.”
The storm comes out of nowhere. It’s not completely unexpected, in late November, but it is not the light dusting that the weathermen have forecast. Instead, when I open the bar door and slip on the ice that’s built up on the threshold, the snow is falling like a white curtain.
I duck back inside and tell the bartender to give me another beer. There’s no point in heading out now; I might as well ride out the storm.
There’s no one else at the bar tonight; on a Tuesday when the roads are slick, most people choose to stay in. The bartender gives me the television remote, and I find a basketball game on ESPN. We cheer on the Celtics, and they go into overtime, and eventually choke. “Boston teams,” the bartender says, “they’ll break your heart every time.”
“Think I’m gonna pack it in early tonight,” the bartender says. By now, there’s nearly eight inches on the ground. “You all right getting home?”
“I’m the plow guy,” I say. “So I’d better be.”
My Dodge Ram’s got an Access plow, and thanks to flyers I’ve printed up on Reid’s Mac, I have a handful of clients who expect me to come and make the driveway passable before it’s time to leave for work in the morning. During a good storm, like this one, I won’t sleep at night—I’ll just plow till it’s over. This is the first big nor’easter of the season, and I could use the influx of cash it will bring.
My breath fogs the windshield of the truck when I get inside. I turn up the defroster and see the red devil lights of the bartender’s Prius skidding out of the parking lot. Then I put the truck into gear and head in the direction of my first client.
It’s slippery, but it’s nothing I haven’t driven in before. I turn on the radio—the voice of John freaking Tesh fills the truck cab. Did you know that it takes twenty minutes for your stomach to relay the message to your brain that you’re full?
“No, I didn’t,” I say out loud.
I can’t use my high beams because of the volume of snow, so I almost miss the bend in the road. My back wheels start to spin, and I turn in to the skid. With my heart still pounding, I take my foot off the accelerator and move slower, my tires cutting into the accumulation and packing it down beneath the truck.
After a few minutes, the world looks different. Whitewashed, with humps and towers that look like sleeping giants. The landmarks are missing. I’m not sure I’m in the right place. I’m not sure I really know where I am, actually.
I blink and rub my eyes, flick on my high beams . . . but nothing changes.
Now, I’m starting to panic. I reach for my phone, which has a GPS application on it somewhere, to see where I’ve taken a wrong turn. But while I’m fumbling around in the console, the truck hits a patch of black ice and starts to do a 360.
There’s someone standing in the road.
Her dark hair is flying around her face, and she’s hunched over against the cold. I manage to jam my foot on the brake and steer hard to the right, desperately trying to turn the truck before it hits her. But the tires aren’t responding on the ice, and I look up, panicked, at the same time she makes eye contact with me.
It’s Zoe.
“Nooooo,” I scream. I lift up my arm as if I can brace myself for the inevitable crash, and then there is a sickening shriek of metal and the wallop of the air bag as the truck somersaults through the very spot where she was standing.
When I come to, I’m covered in the diamond dust of crushed glass, I’m hanging upside down, and I can’t move my legs.
God help me. Please, God. Help. Me.
It is perfectly silent, except for the soft strike of snow against the upholstery. I don’t know how long I’ve been knocked out, but it doesn’t look like dawn’s coming anytime soon. I could freeze to death, trapped here. I could become another one of those snowy white mounds, an accident no one even knows happened until it’s too late.
Oh, God, I think. I’m going to die.
And right after that: No one will miss me.
The truth hurts, more than the burning in my left leg and the throb of my skull and the metal digging into my shoulder. I could disappear from this world, and it would probably be a better place.
I hear the crunch of tires, and see a beam of headlights illuminating the road above me. “Hey!” I yell, as loud as I can. “Hey, I’m here! Help!”
The headlights pass by me, and then I hear a car door slam. The policeman’s boots kick up snow as he runs down the embankment toward the overturned truck. “I’ve called for an ambulance,” he says.
“The girl,” I rasp. “Where is she?”
“Was there another passenger in this truck?”
“Not . . . inside. Truck hit her . . .”
He runs up the embankment, and I watch him shine a floodlight. I want to speak. But I am wicked dizzy, and when I try to talk, I throw up.
Maybe it’s hours and maybe it’s minutes, but a fireman is sawing through the seat belt that’s kept me alive, and another one is using the Jaws of Life to cut the truck into pieces. There are voices all around me:
Get him onto a backboard . . .
Compound fracture ...
... tachycardic ...
The policeman is suddenly in front of me again. “We looked all over. The truck didn’t hit anyone,” he says. “Just a tree. And if you hadn’t turned where you did and gone off the road, you’d be at the bottom of a cliff right now. You’re a lucky guy.”
The rush of relief I feel comes in sobs. I start crying so hard that I cannot breathe; I cannot stop. Did I hallucinate Zoe because I was drunk? Or was I drunk because I keep hallucinating Zoe?
The snow strikes me in the face, a thousand tiny needles, as I am moved from the wreckage to an ambulance. My nose is running and there is blood in my eyes.
Suddenly, I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to pretend I’m fooling the world when I’m not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I’m not doing a very good job myself.
The ambulance grumbles to life as the EMT hooks me up to another monitor and then starts an IV. My leg feels like it is on fire every time the driver brakes.
“My leg . . .”
“Is probably broken, Mr. Baxter,” the EMT says. I wonder how she knows my name, and then realize she is reading it off my license. “We’re taking you to the hospital. Is there someone you want me to call?”
Not Zoe, not anymore. Reid will need to know, but right now, I don’t want to think about the look in his eyes when he realizes I’ve been drinking and driving. And I probably need a lawyer, too.
“My pastor,” I say. “Clive Lincoln.”
I am nervous, but Liddy and Reid stand on either side of me with smiles so wide on their faces that you’d think I’d cured cancer, or figured out world peace, instead of just coming to the Eternal Glory Church to give my testimony about finding Jesus.
It couldn’t have been more transparent for me if the answers had been tattooed on my face: the lowest of lows for me was that crash. Zoe’s apparition had been Jesus’s way of coming into my life. If I hadn’t seen her there, I’d be dead now. But instead I swerved. I swerved right into His open arms.
When Clive had come to me at the hospital, I was drugged with painkillers and had a brand-new cast on my left leg and stitches in my scalp and my shoulder. I hadn’t stopped crying since they’d loaded me into that ambulance. The pastor sat down on the edge of my bed and reached for my hand. “Let the Devil out, son,” Clive said. “Make room for Christ.”
I don’t think I can explain what happened after that. It was simply as if someone flipped a switch in me, and there wasn’t any hurt anymore. I felt like I was floating off the bed, and would have, if that cotton blanket hadn
’t been holding me down. When I looked at my body—at the spaces between my fingers and the edges of my fingernails, I swear I could see light shining out.
For anyone who hasn’t accepted Jesus into his heart, this is what it feels like: as if you’ve resisted the fact that your vision’s gone blurry, and you need glasses. But eventually you can’t see a foot in front of you without knocking things over and bumping into dead ends, so you go to the optometrist. You walk out of that office with a new pair of glasses, and the world looks sharper, brighter, more colorful. Crisp. You can’t understand why you waited so long to make the appointment.
When Jesus is with you, nothing seems particularly scary. Not the thought of never having another drink; not the moment you sit in court during your DUI charge. And not right now, when I will be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
After leaving the hospital, I started attending the Eternal Glory Church. I met with Pastor Clive, who sent out a prayer chain letter so that all these people I didn’t even know were praying for me. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before—strangers who didn’t judge me for the mistakes I’d made but just seemed happy I’d showed up. I didn’t have to be embarrassed about dropping out of college or getting divorced or drinking myself into a ditch. I didn’t have to measure up at all, actually. The fact that Jesus had placed me in their lives meant I was already worthy.
The Eternal Glory Church hasn’t got its own building, so it rents out the auditorium from a local school. We are standing in the back, waiting for Pastor Clive to give us the signal. Clive’s wife is playing the piano, and his three little daughters are singing. “They sound like angels,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” Reid agrees. “There’s a fourth kid, too, who doesn’t perform.”
“Like the Bonus Jonas,” I say.
The hymn ends, and Pastor Clive stands on the stage, his hands clasped. “Today,” he bellows, “is all about Jesus.”
There is a chorus of agreement from the congregation.
“Which is why, today, our newest brother in Christ is going to tell us his story. Max, can you come on up here?”
With Reid’s and Liddy’s help, I make my way down the aisle on crutches. I don’t like being the center of attention, usually, but this is different. Today, I’ll tell them the story of how I came to Christ. I will publicly announce my faith, so that all these people can hold me accountable.
Welcome, I hear.
Hello, Brother Max.
Clive leads me to a chair on the stage. It must come from a classroom; there are tennis balls on the feet of the chair to keep it from scratching up the linoleum. Beside it is what looks like a meat freezer, filled with water, with a set of steps leading up to it. I sit down on the chair, and Clive steps between Liddy and Reid, holding their hands. “Jesus, help Max grow closer to You. Let Max know God, love God, and spend quality time with His word.”
As he prays over me, I close my eyes. The lights from the stage are warm on my face; it makes me think of when I was little, and would ride my bike with my face turned up to the sun and my eyes closed, knowing that I was invincible and couldn’t crash, couldn’t get hurt.
Voices join Pastor Clive’s. It feels like a thousand kisses, like being filled to bursting with all the good in the world, so that there isn’t any room for the bad. It’s love, and it is unconditional acceptance, and not only haven’t I failed Jesus but He says I never will. His love pours into me, until I can’t keep it inside anymore. It spills out of my open throat—syllables that aren’t really any language, but still, I get the message. It’s crystal clear, to me.
“There is audio content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”
Refugee (3:06)
VANESSA
I haven’t given much thought to Zoe Baxter until I find her drowning at the bottom of the YMCA pool.
I don’t know who it is, at first. I am swimming my laps at 6:30 A.M.—just about the only exercise I can drag myself out of bed for—and am midstroke doing the crawl when I see a woman slowly floating down to the bottom, with her hair fanning out around her head. Her arms are outstretched, and she doesn’t look like she is sinking as much as just letting go.
I jackknife and dive, grab her hand, and yank her through the water. She starts fighting me as we approach the surface, but by then the adrenaline has kicked in and I haul her out of the pool and kneel over her, dripping on her face as she coughs and rolls to her side. “What the hell,” she gasps, “are you doing?”
“What the hell were you doing?” I reply, and as she sits up, I realize whom I’ve saved. “Zoe?”
It is quiet at the Y. Pre-Christmas, the lap lane occupants have dwindled down to me, a few elderly swimmers, and the occasional physical therapy/rehab patient. Zoe and I are playing out this little scene on the tile edge of the pool without anyone really paying attention.
“I was staring up at the lights,” Zoe says.
“Here’s a news flash: you don’t have to drown to do that.” Now that we’re both out of the water, I’m shivering. I grab my towel and wrap it around my shoulders.
I heard, of course, about the baby. It was horrible, to say the least, to have the guest of honor at a baby shower rushed to the hospital to deliver a stillborn. I wasn’t even planning on going to the shower, but I’d felt bad for her—what kind of woman has so few friends that she has to invite people who’ve contracted her music therapy services? Afterward, naturally, I felt even worse for her. I’d helped her bookkeeper clean up the restaurant, after the ambulance screamed away. There had been little baby-bottle bubble wands at each place setting; and I’d collected them on the way out, figuring that I’d give them back to Zoe at some point in the future. They were still somewhere in my trunk.
I don’t know what to say to her. How are you? seems superfluous. I’m sorry seems even worse.
“You should try it,” Zoe says.
“Suicide?”
“Once a school counselor always a school counselor,” she answers. “I told you, I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Just the opposite, actually. You can feel your heart beat, all the way to your fingers, when you’re down there.”
She slips back into the pool like an otter and looks up at me. Waiting. With a sigh, I throw down my towel and dive back in. I open my eyes underwater and see Zoe sinking to the bottom again, so I mimic her. Twisting onto my back, I look up at the quivery Morse code dashes of the fluorescent lights, and exhale through my nose so that I sink.
My first instinct is to panic—I’ve run out of air, after all. But then my pulse starts beating under my fingernails, in my throat, between my legs. It’s as if my heart has swelled to fill up all the space beneath my skin.
I could see why, for someone who’s lost so much, feeling this full could be a comfort.
When I can’t stand it anymore, I kick to the surface. Zoe splashes up beside me and treads water. “When I was little, I wanted to be a mermaid when I grew up,” she says. “I used to practice by tying my ankles together and swimming in the town pool.”
“What happened?”
“Well, obviously I didn’t become a mermaid.”
“Classic underachiever . . .”
“It’s never too late, right?” Zoe pulls herself out of the pool and sits on the edge.
“I just don’t know what the job market’s like these days for sirens at sea,” I say. “Now, on the other hand, vampires are absolutely to die for. There’s a huge demand for the undead.”
“It figures.” Zoe sighs. “Just when I’ve rejoined the world of the living.”
I stand up, and hold out a hand to pull Zoe to her feet. “Welcome back,” I say.
Because it is a YMCA, there’s no fancy juice bar, so instead we get coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts, which are scattered so frequently through Wilmington that you can stand in the doorway of one and spit into the doorway of another. Zoe follows me in her car and parks in the spot be
side me. “Quite the license plate,” she says, as I get out of the car.
Mine reads VS-66. It’s a Rhode Island thing to have a low-numbered license plate. There are people who bequeath two- and three-digit plates to relatives in their wills; at one point a former governor made fighting plate-number corruption part of his electoral platform. If you have your initials and a low number—like me—you’re probably a mob boss. I’m not a mob boss, but I know how to get things done. The day I had to register my new car, I brought each of the clerks a six-pack and asked them what they could do for me.
“Friends in high places,” I reply, as we go into the coffee shop. We both order vanilla lattes and sit at a table in the back of the store.
“What time do you have to be at work?” Zoe asks.
“Eight. You?”
“Same.” She takes a sip of her drink. “I’m at the hospital today.”
The mention of that place feels like a net thrown over us, a memory of her being whisked away by ambulance from her own party. I fiddle with the lid of my cup. Even though I counsel kids every day, I am uncomfortable here with her. I’m not sure why I asked her to grab a cup of coffee, in fact. It’s not like we know each other very well.
I had hired Zoe to work with an autistic boy several months ago. He had been in our school district for six years and had never, as far as I knew, said a word to a single teacher. It was his mother who’d heard about music therapy, and asked me to try to find someone local who could work with her son. I am the first to admit I wasn’t expecting much when I met Zoe. She looked a little misplaced, a seventies child who’d been dropped into the new millennium. But within a month, Zoe had the boy playing improvised symphonies with her. The parents thought Zoe was a genius, and my principal thought I was brilliant for finding her.
“Look,” I begin, after a long, weird silence, “I don’t really know what to say about the baby.”
Zoe looks up at me. “No one does.” She traces the edge of her fingertip around the plastic lid of the coffee cup. I think that is just going to be that, and I’m about to look at my wristwatch and exclaim over the time when she speaks again. “There was a death coordinator at the hospital,” she says. “She came into the room—afterward—and asked Max and me about where we wanted the body to go. If we wanted an autopsy. If we knew what kind of coffin we wanted. If we were going with cremation instead. She said we could take him home, too. Bury him, I don’t know, in the backyard.” Zoe looks up at me. “Sometimes I still have nightmares about that. About burying him, and then the snow melting in March, and I’d walk outside and find bones sitting there.” She blots her eyes with a napkin. “I’m sorry. I don’t talk about this. I’ve never talked about this.”