by Jodi Picoult
“Who, it turns out,” Zoe adds, “runs a meth lab in his basement.”
“Totally. Why else would he have known what drug to give her in the first place?” I loop my scarf around my neck as we brace ourselves to walk into the cold.
“Now what?” Zoe asks. “You think it’s too late to grab dinner some . . .” Her voice trails off as we step outside. In the three hours we have been in the theater, the storm has thickened into a blizzard. I cannot see even a foot in front of me, the snow is whirling that fiercely. I start to step into the street, and my shoe sinks into nearly eight inches of accumulation.
“Wow,” I say. “This sort of sucks.”
“Maybe we should wait it out before driving home,” Zoe replies.
A limo driver who’s leaning against his vehicle glances over at us. “Settle in for a nice long wait, then, ladies,” he says. “AccuWeather says we’re getting two feet before this is all over.”
“Sleepover,” Zoe announces. “There are plenty of hotels around—”
“Which cost a fortune—”
“Not if we split the cost of a room.” She shrugs. “Besides. That’s what credit cards are for.” She links her arm through mine and drags me into the wild breath of the storm. On the other side of the street is a CVS. “Toothbrushes, toothpaste, and I need to get some tampons,” she says, as the sliding doors close behind us. “We can get nail polish, too, and curlers, and make each other up and stay up late and talk about boys . . .”
Not gonna happen, I think. But she is right—to drive home in this would be stupid, reckless.
“I have two words for you,” she says, cajoling. “Room service.”
I hesitate. “I pick the pay-per-view movie?”
“Deal.” Zoe holds out her hand to shake.
There is no real reason for me to fight an impromptu hotel stay. I can afford the luxury of a room for one night, or at least justify it to myself. But all the same, as we check in and carry our CVS bags upstairs, my heart is racing. It’s not that I’ve been dishonest to Zoe by not talking about my sexual orientation, but it hasn’t exactly been a topic of discussion, either. Had she asked, I would have told her the truth. And just because I am a lesbian doesn’t mean that I will ravish any female in close proximity, in spite of what homophobes think. Yet there’s an extra wrinkle here: it would be ludicrous to think that a straight woman would not be able to maintain a platonic friendship with a man . . . and yet, if she found herself in this situation, she probably wouldn’t be sharing a room with that male buddy.
When I told my mother, finally, that I was gay, the first thing she said was “But you’re so pretty!” as if the two were mutually exclusive. Then she got quiet and went into the kitchen. A few minutes later she came back into the living room and sat down across from me. “When you go to the Y,” she asked, “do you still use the ladies’ locker room?”
“Of course I do,” I said, exasperated. “I’m not a transsexual, Ma.”
“But Vanessa,” she asked, “when you’re in there . . . do you peek?”
The answer, by the way, is no. I change in a stall, and I spend most of my time in there staring down at the floor. In fact, I probably am more uncomfortable and hyperaware being in there than anyone else would be if she knew the woman in the purple Tyr suit was gay.
But it’s just one more thing I have to worry about that most people never do.
“Oooh,” Zoe says, when she steps into the room. “Swank-o-la!”
It is one of those hotels that is being redone to accommodate the metrosexual businessman, who apparently likes tweedy black comforters, chrome lighting, and margarita mix on the minibar. Zoe opens the curtains and looks down on the Boston Common. Then she takes off her boots and jumps on one of the beds. Finally, she reaches for the CVS bag. “Well,” she says, “I guess I’ll unpack.” She holds out two toothbrushes, one blue and one purple. “Got a preference?”
“Zoe . . . you know I’m a lesbian, right?”
“I was talking about the toothbrushes,” she says.
“I know.” I run my hand through my ridiculous, spiky hair. “I just . . . I don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything.”
She sits down across from me on her own bed. “I’m a Pisces.”
“What difference does that make?”
“What difference does it make to me if you’re gay?” Zoe says.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I have been holding. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For . . . I don’t know. Being who you are, I guess.”
She grins. “Yeah. We Pisces, we’re a special breed.” Rummaging in the pharmacy bag again, she comes out with the box of tampons. “Be right back.”
“You all right?” I ask. “That’s the fifth time you’ve gone to the bathroom this hour.” I reach for the television remote while Zoe’s in the bathroom. There are forty movies playing. “Listen up,” I call out. “Here are our choices . . .” I recite each title while an Adam Sandler clip plays on endless loud repeat. “I need a comedy,” I say. “Did you ever see the Jennifer Aniston one in theaters?”
Zoe doesn’t answer. I can hear water running.
“Thoughts?” I yell. “Comments?” I flick through the titles again. “I’m going to make an executive decision . . .” I pause at the Purchase screen, because I don’t want Zoe to miss the beginning of the film. While I wait, I pore through the room service menu. I could practically buy a small car for the cost of a T-bone, and I don’t see why the ice cream is sold only in pints instead of scoops, but it looks decidedly more gourmet than what I might have cooked myself at home.
“Zoe! My stomach is starting to eat its own lining!” I glance at the clock. It’s been ten minutes since I paused the screen, fifteen since she went into the bathroom.
What if the things she said about me aren’t really what she feels? If she’s regretting staying over, if she’s worried I’m going to crawl into her bed in the middle of the night. Getting up, I knock on the bathroom door. “Zoe?” I call out. “Are you okay?”
No answer.
“Zoe?”
Now, I’m getting nervous.
I rattle the knob and yell her name again and then throw all my weight against the door so that the lock pops open.
The faucet is running. The tampon box is unopened. And Zoe is lying unconscious on the floor, her jeans around her ankles, her panties completely drenched in blood.
I ride with Zoe on the short ambulance trip to Brigham and Women’s Hospital. If there is a silver lining in any of this, it’s that being stranded in Boston has put us in spitting distance of some of the best medical facilities in the world. The EMT asks me questions: Is she usually this pale? Has this happened before?
I don’t really know the answer to either question.
By then Zoe has regained consciousness, even if she’s so weak she can’t sit up. “Don’t worry . . . ,” she murmurs. “Happens . . . a lot.”
Just like that I realize that, no matter how much I think I already know about Zoe Baxter, there is a great deal more I don’t.
While she is examined by a doctor and given a transfusion, I sit and wait. There’s a television playing a Friends rerun, and the hospital is deathly quiet, almost like a ghost town. I wonder if the doctors have all been stranded here by the storm, like us. Finally, a nurse calls for me, and I go into the room where Zoe is lying on the bed with her eyes closed.
“Hey,” I say softly. “How do you feel?”
She swivels her head toward me and glances up at the bag of blood hanging, the transfusion she’s being given. “Vampiric.”
“B positive,” I answer, trying to make a joke, but neither of us smiles. “What did the doctor say?”
“That I should have come to a hospital the last time this happened.”
My eyes widen. “You’ve passed out before from having your period?”
“It’s not really a period. I’m not ovulating, not regularly anyway. I never have. But s
ince the . . . baby . . . this is what a period looks like, for me. The doctor did an ultrasound. She said I have a fluffy endometrial stripe.”
I blink at her. “Is that good?”
“No. I need a D & C.” Zoe’s eyes fill with tears. “It’s like a bad flashback.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed. “It’s completely different,” I say, “and you’re going to be fine.”
It is different—not just because a stillborn isn’t involved. The last time Zoe had a health crisis her husband and her mother were at her side. Now, all she’s got nearby is me—and what do I know about taking care of someone other than myself? I don’t have a dog anymore. I don’t even have a goldfish. I killed the orchid my principal bought me for Christmas.
“Vanessa?” she asks. “Can you give me the phone so I can call my mom?”
I nod and take her cell phone out of her purse just as two nurses come in to prep Zoe for her surgery. “I’ll call her for you,” I promise as Zoe is wheeled down the hallway. After a moment I flip open her cell phone.
I can’t help it. It’s a little like being invited to someone’s home for dinner and you go to the bathroom and peek in the medicine cabinet—I scroll through her contacts to see if I can get a better picture of Zoe from the people she knows. Most of the people listed I have never heard of, predictably. Then there are the old staples: AAA, the local pizza place, the numbers of the hospitals and schools where she is contracted.
I find myself wondering, though. Who’s Jane? Alice? Are they friends of hers from college, or professional colleagues? Has she ever mentioned them to me?
Has she ever mentioned me to them?
Max is still listed. I wonder if I should call him. I wonder if Zoe would want me to.
Well, that’s not what she asked. Scrolling up, I find Dara listed, predictably, under MOM.
I dial, but it rolls right into voice mail, and I hang up. I just don’t think it’s right to leave an alarmist message on someone’s phone when she’s three thousand miles away and can’t really do anything to help Zoe right now. I’ll keep trying.
An hour and a half after Zoe is wheeled into surgery, she is brought back to the room. “She’ll be groggy for a while,” the nurse tells me. “But she’s going to be fine.”
I nod and watch the nurse close the door behind her. “Zoe?” I whisper.
She’s fast asleep, drugged, with her eyelashes casting blue shadows on her cheeks. Her hand lies uncurled on top of the cotton blanket, as if she is offering me something I cannot see. Another pint of blood hangs on an IV pole to her left, its contents snaking through the crazy straw tubing into the crook of her elbow.
The last time I was in a hospital, my mother was dying by degrees. Pancreatic cancer was the diagnosis, but it was no secret that her morphine doses grew higher and higher, until the sleep permanently outdistanced the pain. I know Zoe is not my mother, does not have the same illness, and yet there’s something about the way she is lying so still and silent in this bed that makes me feel like I’m living my life over again, reading a chapter that I wish had never been printed.
“Vanessa,” Zoe says, and I jump. She licks her lips, dry and white.
I reach for her hand. It’s the first time I’ve held Zoe’s hand, which feels small, birdlike. There are calluses on the tips of her fingers, from her guitar strings. “I tried your mother. I haven’t been able to reach her. I can leave a message, but I thought maybe—”
“I can’t . . . ,” Zoe murmurs, interrupting.
“You can’t what?” I whisper, leaning closer, straining to hear.
“I can’t believe . . .”
There are so many things I can’t believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I’ll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don’t have contingencies and conditions.
“I can’t believe,” Zoe repeats, her voice small enough to slip into my pocket, “that we wasted money on a hotel room . . .”
I look down at her, to see if she is kidding, but Zoe has already drifted back to sleep.
We’ve come a long way from the days when being gay and being an educator were incompatible, but there’s still a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in place at my high school. I don’t actively hide my sexual orientation from my colleagues, but I don’t go out of my way to broadcast it, either. I am one of the two adult advisers for the students’ Rainbow Alliance, but the other one—Jack Kumanis—is as straight as they come. He’s got five kids, competes in triathlons, is prone to quoting Fight Club—and he happened to be raised by two moms.
Still, I’m careful. Although most school counselors would think nothing of closing their office doors for a private session with a student, I never do. My door is always just the tiniest bit ajar, so that there can’t be any doubt that whatever is happening is completely legitimate and interruptible.
My job runs the gamut from listening to students who just need to be heard through networking with admissions counselors at colleges so that they put our school on their virtual maps and supporting the kid too shy to find her own voice to logistically juggling the schedules of three hundred students who all want their first-choice English electives. Today I have on my couch Michaela Berrywick’s mother—parent of a ninth grader who just received a B plus in her social studies class. “Mrs. Berrywick,” I say, “this isn’t the end of the world.”
“I don’t think you understand, Ms. Shaw. Michaela has been dying to go to Harvard since she was tiny.”
Somehow I doubt that. No child comes out of the womb planning her high school résumé; that comes courtesy of zealous parenting. When I was in school, the term helicopter parent didn’t even exist. Now parents hover so much that their kids forget how to be kids.
“She can’t let a history teacher with a grudge against her make a permanent blot on her record,” Mrs. Berrywick stresses. “Michaela is more than willing to do any extra credit necessary to get Mr. Levine to reconsider his grading policy . . .”
“Harvard doesn’t care if Michaela got a B plus in social studies. Harvard wants to know that she spent her freshman year learning more about who she really is. Finding something that she liked doing.”
“Exactly,” Mrs. Berrywick says. “Which is why she joined the SAT study prep class.”
Michaela will not be taking the SATs for another two years. I sigh. “I’ll talk to Mr. Levine,” I say, “but I can’t make any promises.”
Mrs. Berrywick opens her purse and takes out a fifty-dollar bill. “I appreciate you seeing my side of things.”
“I can’t take your money. You can’t buy a better grade for Michaela—”
“I’m not,” the woman interrupts, smiling tightly. “Michaela earned the grade. I’m just . . . offering my gratitude.”
“Thanks,” I say, pressing the bill back at her. “But I truly can’t accept this.”
She looks me up and down. “No offense,” she whispers, conspiratorial, “but you could use a little wardrobe update.”
I’m thinking of going to Alec Levine and asking him to lower Michaela Berrywick’s grade when I hear someone crying in the outer office. “Excuse me,” I say, certain that it’s the tenth grader I saw an hour ago who was twelve days late for her period, and whose boyfriend had dumped her after they had sex. I grab my box of tissues—school counselors ought to do product endorsements for Kleenex—and walk out.
It’s not the tenth grader, though. It’s Zoe.
“Hey,” she says, and she tries to smile but fails miserably.
It’s been three days since our disastrous trip to Boston. After Zoe’s D & C, I finally got in touch with her mother, who flew home from her conference and met me at Zoe’s place. I’d called Zoe multiple times since then to see how she was feeling, until she finally told me that if I called again and asked her how she was feeling she’d hang up on me. In fact, today she was supposed to go back to work.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, a
s I lead her into my office.
And close the door.
She wipes her eyes with a tissue. “I don’t get it. I’m not a bad person,” Zoe says, her mouth twisting. “I try to be nice and I compost and I give money to homeless people. I say please and thank you and I floss every day and I volunteer in a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. I work with people who have Alzheimer’s and depression and who are scarred and I try to give them something good in their day, one little thing to take with them.” She looks up at me. “And what do I get? Infertility. Miscarriages. A stillborn. A goddamned embolism. A divorce.”
“It’s not fair,” I say simply.
“Well, neither’s the phone call I got today. The doctor—the one from Brigham and Women’s? She said they did some tests.” Zoe shakes her head. “I have cancer. Endometrial cancer. And wait—I’m not finished yet—it’s a good thing. They caught it early enough, so I can have a little hysterectomy, and I’ll be just fine and dandy. Isn’t that just fabulous? Shouldn’t I be thanking my lucky stars? I mean, what’s next? An anvil falling on my head from the second story? My landlord evicting me?” She stands up, whirling in a circle. “You can come out now,” she shouts to the walls, the floor, the ceiling. “Whatever shitty version of Candid Camera this is; whoever decided I was this year’s Job—I’m done. I’m done. I’m—”
I stand up and hug her tight, cutting off whatever she was about to say. Zoe freezes for a moment, and then she starts sobbing against my silk blouse. “Zoe,” I say. “I’m—”
“Don’t you dare,” Zoe interrupts. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry.”
“I’m not,” I say, straight-faced. “I mean, if you look at sheer probability—the fact that all these things are happening to you means it’s much more likely I’m safe. I’m positively charmed, in fact. You’re good luck for me.”
Zoe blinks, stunned, and then a laugh barks out of her. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“I can’t believe I made you laugh, when you clearly ought to be railing against the heavens or renouncing God or something. Let me tell you, Zoe, you make a lousy cancer sufferer.”