by Jodi Picoult
She walks into the kitchen, but instead of letting her go, I follow her. I watch her movements, efficient and graceful, as she takes the kettle off the burner. When she turns to me, her features are smooth, expressionless. “Good night.”
She walks past me, but just as she reaches the kitchen doorway, I speak. “I’m afraid.”
Zoe hesitates, her hands framing the door, as if she is caught between two moments.
“I’m afraid that you’re going to get sick of me,” I admit. “That you’re going to get tired of living a life that still isn’t a hundred percent accepted by society. I’m afraid that, if I let myself feel ecstatic about being with you, then when you leave me, I won’t be able to pull myself back together.”
In one move, Zoe is across the kitchen again, facing me. “Why do you think I’d leave?”
“My track record,” I say. “That, and the fact that you have no idea how hard it is. I still worry every day that some parent is going to out me, and convince the school board I should lose my job. I listen to the news and hear politicians who know nothing about me making decisions about what I should and shouldn’t be allowed to do. I don’t understand why the most intriguing thing about my identity is always that I’m gay—not that I’m a Leo or know how to tap dance or that I majored in zoology.”
“You can tap dance?” Zoe asks.
“The point is,” I say, “you spent forty years straight. Why wouldn’t you return to the path of least resistance?”
Zoe looks at me as if I am incredibly thick-headed. “Because, Vanessa. You’re not a guy.”
That night, we don’t make love. We drink the tea Zoe brews, and we talk about the first time I was called a dyke, how I came home and cried. We talk about how I hate when the mechanic always assumes that I know what he’s talking about when he works on my car, just because I’m a lesbian. I even do a little tap routine for her: step-ball-change, step-ball-change. We spoon on the couch.
The last thing I remember thinking before I fall asleep in her arms is This is good, too.
In spite of my disappointment over the X-ray vision glasses from the Bazooka comics prize cache, I wound up saving up for one more item that I simply had to have. It was a whale’s tooth good-luck charm, on a key chain. What intrigued me was the description of the item:
Guaranteed to bring the owner a lifetime of good fortune.
I knew better, after my X-ray glasses, than to expect the whale’s tooth to be either real whale or real tooth. Probably it would be plastic, with a hole punched through the top for the metal key ring attached to it. But I still found myself saving up my allowance again to buy Bazooka gum. I hunted on the floor of my mother’s car for spare change, so that I could gather the $1.10 for shipping and handling.
Three months later, I had my sixty-five Bazooka comics and sent off my envelope for my prize. When the charm arrived, I was a little surprised to see that the tooth seemed to be legitimate (although I couldn’t really tell you if it came from a whale) and that the silver key ring attached to it was heavy, shiny. I slipped it into the front pocket of my backpack and started wishing.
The next day was Valentine’s Day in school. We had each made little “mailboxes” out of shoe boxes and construction paper. This was in the era of transactional analysis, when no one was allowed to feel left out, so the teacher had a foolproof plan: every girl in the class would send a card to every boy, and vice versa. I was guaranteed, this way, to receive fourteen Valentines in return for the fourteen Tweety and Sylvester cards I had addressed to the boys in class—even Luke, unfortunately, who picked his nose and ate it. At the end of the school day, I carried home my shoe box and sat on my bed and sorted the cards. To my surprise, there was one extra. Yes, every boy had given me a Valentine, as expected. But the fifteenth came from Eileen Connelly, who had sparkly blue eyes and hair as black as night and who once, in gym class, had put her arms around me to show me how to properly hold a bat. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, the card said, FROM, EILEEN. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t signed with “Love.” It didn’t matter that she might have given a card to every girl in the class in addition to me. All I knew at that moment—all I cared about—was that she had been thinking of me, however briefly. I was convinced that the only reason I’d gotten this bonus Valentine was that whale’s tooth charm—which was fast acting indeed.
Over the years, every time I moved—from my home to my college dorm, from my college dorm to my apartment in the city, from my apartment to this house—I have gone through my belongings and sorted the wheat from the chaff. And every time, in my nightstand, I have come across that whale’s tooth good-luck charm. I can never quite bear the thought of getting rid of it.
Apparently, it’s still working.
MAX
There are four white marble disks at the far eastern corner of my brother’s backyard. Too small to be stepping-stones, some are even covered with a tangle of brush—rosebushes that, as far as I can tell, have never been pruned. They are memorials, one for each baby that Reid and Liddy have lost.
Today, I’m putting down a fifth stone.
Liddy wasn’t very far along this time, but the house is full of crying. I’d like to tell you I came out here so that my brother and his wife could grieve in private, but the truth is it brings back too many memories for me. So instead, I went to the plant nursery and found the matching marble disk. And I’m thinking that—as a thank-you for all Reid’s done for me—I’m going to fix up this little area of the lawn into a garden, when the ground thaws. I’m thinking about adding a flowering quince and some pussy willows, some variegated weigela. I’ll put a small granite bench in the center, with the stones in a half-moon shape around it—a place Liddy could come out to just sit and think and pray. And I’ll stagger the flowers so that there is always something in bloom—purples and blues, like grape hyacinth and cornflowers, heliotrope and purple verbena; and the whitest of whites: star magnolias, Callery pear, Queen Anne’s lace.
I have just started making a sketch of this angels’ garden when I hear footsteps behind me. Reid stands with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Hey,” he says.
I turn around and squint into the sun. “How is she?”
Reid shrugs. “You know.”
I do. I’ve never felt so lost as the times when Zoe miscarried. In this, all prospective parents have something in common with the Eternal Glory Church: to them, a life is a life, no matter how small. These aren’t cells, they’re your future.
“Pastor Clive’s in there with her now,” Reid adds.
“I’m really sorry, Reid,” I say. “For whatever that’s worth.” Zoe and I had both gone to the clinic to be tested for infertility problems. I can’t remember much about the condition that caused my sperm count to be low, and made the ones that did show up for the party less motile, but I do remember that it was genetic. Which means Reid’s probably in the same boat.
He suddenly bends down and picks up the marble disk I’ve bought. I haven’t been able to chip at the frozen ground enough to set it in place. I watch him turn it over in his hands, and then he cradles it like a discus and sends it flying into the brick wall of the built-in barbecue. The marble breaks in half and falls to the ground. Reid kneels, burying his face in his hands.
You’ve got to understand—my big brother is one of the most unflappable people I’ve ever met. In my life history, when I’m falling apart at the seams, he is the constant I can count on to hold me together. Seeing him losing control like this paralyzes me.
I grab his shoulders. “Reid, man, you gotta calm down.”
He looks up at me, his breath hanging in the frigid air. “Pastor Clive’s in there talking about God, praying to God, but you know what I think, Max? I think God checked out a long time ago. I don’t think God gives a rat’s ass about my wife wanting a baby.”
In the months since my baptism, I have come to believe that God has a reason for everything. It makes sense when the bad guys get their due, then, but it’s ha
rder to understand why a savior who loves us would make awful things happen to good people. I’ve prayed long and hard about this stuff, trying to figure it all out, and it seems to me that most of the time, if God gives us something bad, it’s supposed to be a wake-up call—a way to let us know not so subtly that we’re messing up our lives. Maybe it’s because we’re with the wrong girl, or because we’ve grown too big in our own heads, or maybe it is just because we’ve gotten so greedy about the here and now we’ve forgotten that what matters the most isn’t self but selflessness. Just think of those folks you meet who have survived an incurable disease—how many of them start thanking Jesus right and left? Well, all I’m saying is: maybe the reason they got sick in the first place was because that illness was the only way He could get their attention.
I can tell you—although it hurts me to say this—I see now that I am the reason why Zoe and I couldn’t have a baby. That was Jesus, hitting me in the head with a two-by-four over and over until I understood that I wasn’t worthy enough to be a father until I welcomed the Son. But Reid and Liddy—they are another story. They’ve been doing everything right, for so long. They don’t deserve this kind of heartbreak.
We both look up as Pastor Clive comes out of the house. He stands in front of Reid, casting a shadow. “She threw you out, too,” Reid guesses.
“Liddy just needs a little time,” the pastor says. “I’ll come check on her tonight, Reid.”
As Pastor Clive lets himself out the gate, Reid rubs his hand over his face. “She won’t talk to me. She won’t eat anything. She won’t take the pills the doctor gave us. She won’t even pray.” He looks at me, his eyes bloodshot. “Is it a sin to say that, sure, I loved that baby, but I love my wife more?”
I shake my head. After all the times I found myself boxed into a corner and couldn’t find a way out, only to notice my brother’s hand reaching out for me, I can finally be the one to reach out to him. “Reid,” I tell him, “I think I know what to do.”
It takes me ten hours to drive round-trip to Jersey and back. When I pull into Reid’s driveway, the light in their bedroom is off. I find my brother in the kitchen washing dishes. He’s wearing Liddy’s pink apron, the one that says I’M THE COOK, THAT’S WHY, and has a frill of ruffles around the edge. “Hey,” I say, and he turns around. “How is she?”
“Same,” Reid replies. He looks dubiously at the paper bag in my hands.
“Trust me.” I take out the box of Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theater Butter popcorn and stick one bag in the microwave. “Did Pastor Clive come back?”
“Yeah, but she still wouldn’t talk to him.”
That’s because she doesn’t want to talk, I think. Talking only brings her right back to this nightmare. Right now, she needs to escape.
“Liddy doesn’t eat microwave popcorn,” Reid says.
Actually, my brother doesn’t let Liddy eat microwave popcorn. He’s a big fan of organic stuff, although I’m not sure if it’s because there’s a health benefit or because he just likes having the priciest items, no matter what the category. “There’s a first time for everything,” I answer. The microwave dings, and I take out the bloated bag, rip it open into a big blue ceramic bowl.
The bedroom is pitch dark and smells like lavender. Liddy is lying on her side under the covers of her big four-poster bed, facing away from me. I’m not sure if she’s asleep, and then I hear her voice. “Go away,” she murmurs. The words sound like she’s at the bottom of a tunnel.
I ignore her and eat a handful of popcorn.
The sound, and the smell of the butter, make her roll over. She squints at me. “Max,” she says. “I’m not really in the mood for company.”
“That’s cool,” I tell her. “I’m just here to borrow your DVD player.” I reach into the paper bag and pull out the movie. Then I load it and turn on the TV.
Bullets won’t kill it! the promo promises.
Flames can’t hurt it!
Nothing can stop it!
The SPIDER . . . will eat you alive!
Liddy sits up against her pillows. Her eyes drift to the screen, to the incredibly fake giant tarantula that is terrorizing a bunch of teens. “Where did you get this?”
“Just a place I know.” It’s a head shop in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that has a mail-order cult B-movie business. I’ve ordered online from them. But because I couldn’t wait long enough for a DVD to be shipped to me, and because this was Liddy we were talking about, I drove to the store instead.
“This is a good one,” I tell Liddy. “1958.”
“I don’t want to watch a movie right now,” Liddy says.
“Okay.” I shrug. “I’ll turn the sound down low.”
So I pretend to watch the television, where the teenage girl and her boyfriend go looking for her missing dad and find instead a massive web from a giant spider. But in reality, I’m stealing glances at Liddy. In spite of herself, she can’t help but watch, too. After a few minutes, she reaches for the popcorn in my lap, and I give her the whole bowl.
Just about the time the teenagers drag the lifeless body of the spider back to the high school gym to study it—only to learn it’s actually still alive—Reid pokes his head into the bedroom. By then, I’m lounging back on his side of the bed. I give Reid a thumbs-up, and I can see the relief on his face when he sees Liddy sitting up, engaged in the world of the living again. He backs out and closes the door behind him.
A half hour later, we’ve almost finished the popcorn. When the tarantula is finally electrocuted and falls, I turn to find tears running down Liddy’s face.
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know she’s crying.
“Max,” she asks. “Can we watch it again?”
There’s the obvious benefit to joining a church like Eternal Glory—being saved. But there’s another advantage, too, and that’s being rescued. Unlike finding Jesus, which is like a strike of lightning, this is much more subtle. It’s the elderly lady who shows up at Reid’s door the week after I go to church for the first time, with a banana bread to welcome me into the congregation. It’s my name on a prayer list when I have the flu. It’s putting up my plowing flyer on the church message board and finding all the little tags with my phone number ripped off within days by Eternal Glory folks who like to support their own. I wasn’t just born again, I was given a large, extended family.
Pastor Clive is the father I wish I’d had growing up—one who understands that I may have stumbled in the past but who sees endless possibility. Instead of focusing on everything I’ve done wrong in my life, he celebrates the things I’ve done right. He took me out to an Italian restaurant last week to celebrate my third month of sobriety; he has gradually given me more and more responsibility in the church—from being called on to do a reading during a Sunday service to this afternoon’s shopping adventure for our annual church chicken pie supper.
It is just past three-thirty, and Elkin and I are each manning a grocery cart at the Stop & Shop. This isn’t where I usually get my food, but the owner is a member of Eternal Glory and gives Pastor Clive a discount and, even more important, has agreed to donate the chicken for free.
We have loaded our carts with piecrust mix and frozen peas and carrots, and we are waiting in line at the butcher counter to get the chicken that’s been reserved for us when I hear a familiar voice. When I turn, I see Zoe reading the label on a jar of Caesar salad dressing. “I think there should be new nutrition guidelines,” she says to another woman. “No fat; low fat; reduced fat; and fat, but with a great personality.”
The woman she’s with plucks the Caesar dressing from Zoe’s hand. She puts it back on the shelf and picks up a vinaigrette instead. “And I think pudding should be its own food group,” she says, “but we can’t always get what we want.”
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Elkin, and I walk toward Zoe. Her back is to me, so I tap her on the shoulder. “Hey.”
She turns and breaks into a wide smile. She looks relaxed and happy, as if
she’s spent a lot of time laughing lately. “Max!” She gives me a hug.
I pat her awkwardly. I mean, are you supposed to hug back the woman you divorced? The woman she’s shopping with—who’s taller, a little younger, with a boyish haircut—has her lips pressed tightly together in what’s supposed to be a smile. I hold out my hand. “I’m Max Baxter.”
“Oh!” Zoe says. “Max, this is . . . Vanessa.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Look at you, all dressed up with nowhere to go.” Zoe playfully pulls on my black tie. “And you got rid of your cast.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Just a brace now.”
“What are you doing here?” Zoe asks, and then she rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously I know what you’re doing here . . . there’s only one reason to come to the grocery store . . .”
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Vanessa says. “She gets this way when she’s had too many cups of coffee in the morning . . .”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I know.”
Vanessa looks from Zoe to me and then back to Zoe again. I’m not sure why, but she looks a little pissed off. If she’s Zoe’s friend, surely she knows I’m her ex-husband; I can’t imagine why anything I’ve said might have upset her. “I’m just going to grab the produce,” Vanessa says, backing away. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Same here.” Zoe and I watch her walk away toward the organic section. “Remember the time you decided to go a hundred percent organic and our grocery bill quadrupled for the week?” I ask.
“Yeah. I stick to the organic grapes and lettuce now,” she replies. “Live and learn, right?”
It’s a weird thing, divorce. Zoe and I were together for almost a decade. I fell in love with her, I slept with her, I wanted a family with her. There was a time—albeit long ago—when she knew me better than anyone else in the world. I don’t want to talk to her about food. I want to ask her how we got from dancing at our own wedding to standing three feet apart from each other in a grocery aisle making small talk.