by Jodi Picoult
But lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
What if I wasn’t just everyone’s substitute mother during the hours of eight and three but an actual one? What if there was an open school night I got to attend as an audience member instead of a speaker? What if I found myself on the other side of the school counselor’s desk one day, advocating for my daughter, who was desperate to be placed in an English class that was already overcrowded?
I have not experienced that butterfly beat of life inside me, not yet. But I bet it’s a little like hope. Once you feel it, you know the absence of it as well.
Zoe and I haven’t had our baby, but we’ve allowed ourselves to wish. And I’ll tell you—from that moment, I was a goner.
It has been a hellish morning. A sophomore was suspended for robotripping, drinking Robitussin cough syrup in order to get high. But right now, everything’s quiet. I would call Zoe, but I know she’s in the weeds. Taking time off to visit the GLAD offices meant missing a day at the hospital for her; because of that, she’s postponed her music therapy lesson with Lucy so that she can spend a few hours on the pediatric burn unit. It is May, and I have no shortage of work I could do, but instead of doing my job, I turn on my computer and Google “Pregnancy.”
I click on the first website. Weeks 3 and 4, I read. Your baby is the size of a poppy seed.
Week 7. Your baby is the size of a blueberry.
Week 9. Your baby is the size of a green olive.
Week 19. Your baby is the size of a mango.
Week 26. Your baby is the size of an eggplant.
Delivery: Your baby is the size of a watermelon.
I press my hand against my abdomen. It seems inconceivable (pun intended) that this might be a home to someone, soon. Someone the size of a green olive, nonetheless. Why do they describe everything in terms of food? No wonder pregnant women are always starving.
Suddenly Lucy bursts into my office. “What the fuck?” she says.
“Language,” I reply.
She rolls her eyes. “You know, if I’m taking the time from my day to meet with her, she could at least have the courtesy to show up.”
I can easily translate Lucy’s anger—what she really means is that she’s disappointed her session’s been postponed. That—even if she’d rather die than admit it—she likes meeting with Zoe.
“I left a note on your locker,” I say. “Didn’t you get it?” It is the way we communicate in this school—by taping onto lockers notes for school counselor appointments and academic counseling sessions and even notices of field hockey championships.
“I don’t go near my locker. Last year someone put a dead mouse inside just to see what I’d do.”
That’s pretty appalling, but not surprising. Teenagers never fail to amaze me with the ingenuity of their cruelty. “Zoe’s work schedule was a little crazy this week, and she had to reschedule. She’ll be here for your next appointment.”
Lucy doesn’t ask me how I know this. She doesn’t know that I’m married to her music therapist. But hearing that Zoe hasn’t left for good seems to mollify her. “So she’s coming back,” Lucy repeats.
I tilt my head. “Is that what you want?”
“Well, if she ditches me, it sure as hell would fit the pattern of my life. Depend on someone, and they fuck you over.” Lucy looks up at me. “Language,” she says, at the exact same moment that I do.
“Your drumming session was pretty interesting,” I say, remembering the impromptu rock concert in the cafeteria. I had spent an hour in a closed session with my principal after that fiasco, trying to explain the merits of music therapy with suicidal kids, and why having to sterilize the pots and pans and soup ladles once more was a small trade-off for mental health.
“I’ve never had anyone do that for me before,” Lucy admits.
“What do you mean?”
“She knew she was going to get in trouble. But she didn’t care. Instead of making me do what I’m supposed to do, or be what everyone wants me to be, she did something totally crazy. It was . . .” Lucy stumbles, trying to find her words. “It was fucking brave, is what it was.”
“Maybe Zoe’s getting you to feel more comfortable being yourself.”
“Maybe you’re using the hour I would have spent in music therapy to play Freud.”
I grin. “You know all my tricks.”
“You’re about as hard to read as Elmo.”
“You know, Lucy,” I say. “School’s out in less than two months.”
“Tell me about it—I’m counting the days.”
“Well—if you have any plans to continue music therapy over the summer, it’s something we’ll need to arrange in advance.”
Lucy’s gaze flies up to meet mine. I can tell she hasn’t considered this—when school breaks in June, so do all school activities, including school-based counseling sessions.
“I’m sure Zoe would agree to meet with you over the summer,” I say smoothly. “And I’m happy to use my key to let you guys into the school for your sessions.”
She jerks her chin up. “We’ll see. It’s not like I really care one way or the other.”
But she does, desperately. She just won’t say so out loud. “You have to admit, Lucy,” I tell her, “you’ve already come a long way. You couldn’t wait to get out of the room during that first session with Zoe, and, well, look at you now. You’re angry because she had to reschedule.”
Lucy’s eyes flash, and I think she’s going to tell me to go do something anatomically impossible, but then she shrugs. “She kind of crept up on me. But . . . not like in a bad way. Like when you’re standing on the beach right down by the ocean, and you think you’ve got a handle on it, and then when you look down again you’ve sunk so far that the water’s up to your hips. And before you can get freaked out, you realize you actually don’t mind going swimming.”
Beneath the barrier of my desk, my hand steals to my belly again. Our baby will be the size of a plum, a nectarine, a tangelo. A harvest of the sweetest things. Suddenly I want to hear Zoe’s voice asking me for the thousandth time whether or not yogurt containers can be recycled, or whether I wore her blue silk blouse last week and took it to the cleaners. I want ten thousand ordinary days with her; and I want this baby as proof that we loved each other so fiercely that magic happened. “Yes,” I agree. “That’s exactly what she’s like.”
Angela Moretti had said she’d call us when she had more news, but we didn’t expect it to be just days after our first meeting. This time, she said, she was willing to drive to us, so Zoe and I made a vegetable lasagna and started drinking the wine before Angela even arrived, out of sheer nervousness. “What if she doesn’t like lasagna?” Zoe asks, as she’s tossing the salad.
“With a name like Moretti?”
“That doesn’t mean anything . . .”
“Well, who doesn’t like lasagna?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Lots of people.”
“Zo. Whether or not she likes pasta is not going to make or break this case.”
She turns, her arms crossed. “I don’t like this. If it was something simple, she would have just told us over the phone.”
“Or maybe she’s heard you make a hell of a lasagna.”
Zoe drops the salad tongs. “I’m a wreck,” she says. “I can’t handle this.”
“It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
She moves into my arms, and, for a moment, we just hold each other in the kitchen. “Today at the nursing home during group session we were playing the handbells and Mrs. Greaves got up and went to the bathroom and forgot to come back,” Zoe says. “She was my F. Do you have any idea how hard it is to play ‘Amazing Grace’ without an F?”
“Where did she go?”
“The staff found her in the garage, sitting in the van that takes the residents to the grocery store on Thursdays. They found the bell in the oven about an hour later.”
“Was it on?”
“The van?” Zoe
asks.
“The oven.”
“No. Thank goodness.”
“And the moral of this story is that you and I might have a massive lawsuit to fight, but we haven’t lost our handbells.”
I can feel her smile against my collarbone. “I knew you’d help me find that silver lining,” Zoe says.
There’s a knock at the front door. Angela’s already talking by the time I open it. “You know what Wade Preston and a sperm have in common? A one in three million chance of becoming human.” She hands me a thick sheaf of papers. “Mystery solved. Now we know what Max wants to do with the embryos—give them to his brother.”
“What?” It’s Zoe’s voice, but it sounds like a punch.
“I don’t get it.” I skim through the papers, but they are written in legalese. “He can’t give them away like they’re a Yankee swap.”
“Well, he’s sure as hell gonna try,” Angela says. “Today I received a motion from Ben Benjamin, the local lawyer who’s working with Wade Preston. He wants to implead Reid and Liddy Baxter as third-party plaintiffs. Max joins them in the petition and says his brother and sister-in-law are the intended recipients of the embryos.” She snorts. “Ten guesses who’s paying Wade’s fat bill.”
“So they’re buying the embryos?”
“They’ll never call it that, but, in effect, that’s exactly what’s happening. Reid and Liddy fund the lawsuit; they position themselves as the recipient potential parents, and suddenly Wade’s got his retainer and a traditional Christian couple to wave like a banner in front of Judge O’Neill.”
Very slowly, I’m piecing this together. “You mean Liddy’s going to have Zoe’s baby?”
“That,” Angela says, “is their plan.”
I’m so angry I am literally shaking. “I’m having Zoe’s baby.”
But Angela isn’t listening. She’s looking at Zoe, who seems to be paralyzed. “Zoe? You okay?”
I know this much about my spouse: when she yells, it will blow over quickly. It’s when her voice is just above a whisper that she’s furious; and right now, Zoe’s words are virtually inaudible. “You’re telling me that my child, the one I want my wife to carry and that I want to raise myself . . . is going to be carried and raised by someone I cannot stand? That I have no say in this?”
Angela takes my glass of wine out of my hand and drains it in one swallow. “They’re going to ask the judge to give the embryos to Max. Then he’ll be able to do whatever he wants with them—but they’re telling the judge that he plans to give them to Reid and Liddy, because they know damn well it will sway the court’s decision.”
“Why can’t Reid and Liddy have their own freaking children?” I ask.
Zoe turns. “Because Reid’s got the same infertility issues that Max did. It’s genetic. We went to a clinic for answers—and they went to Clive Lincoln.”
“The embryos were created during Max and Zoe’s marriage. If she still wants them, how could any judge give them away to a stranger?”
“From their viewpoint, Max believes that the best future for these potential children is a two-parent, heterosexual, rich Christian family. And Reid and Liddy aren’t strangers. They’re genetically related to those embryos. Too related, if you ask me. Reid is the embryos’ uncle, and his wife is going to give birth to his niece or nephew. Sounds like the Deliverance family reunion.”
“But Reid and Liddy could use a sperm donor. Or go through in vitro, like Max and Zoe did. This is Zoe’s last set of viable eggs. It’s the last chance we have to both be biologically connected to a child,” I say.
“And that’s what I’m going to tell the judge,” Angela says. “Zoe, as the biological mom, has the clearest, strongest right to the embryos, and plans to raise the resulting child or children in a stable, strong family. Far from the future full of hell and brimstone that Wade Preston’s touting.”
“So what do we do?” Zoe asks.
“Tonight we’re going to sit down and you’re going to tell me everything you know about Reid and Liddy Baxter. I’m going to file a motion to try to keep them out of this case, but I have a sinking feeling that they’re going to worm themselves into it,” Angela says. “We’re still going to fight. The fight just got a little bit harder.”
At that moment, the timer on the oven goes off. We have lasagna with homemade sauce; we have fresh garlic bread and a salad topped with pear and Brie and candied walnuts. Five minutes ago, Zoe and I were trying to create a memorable meal, so that, in case there was any karmic holdover in the legal world, Angela Moretti would learn firsthand how nurturing this home was, and would subsequently throw a hundred and ten percent of her heart and soul into the battle. Five minutes ago, dinner smelled delicious.
Now, no one’s hungry.
MAX
Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall.
That’s what it feels like to want a drink.
And that’s how I feel when Zoe calls me, after she’s been served the legal papers.
Pastor Clive knew that she’d call—which is why he’d told Reid to stick by me like glue on the day the process server was headed to her house. Reid took the day off work, and we went out fishing for tautog on his boat. He’s got a sweet Boston Whaler and takes his clients out to catch blues or mackerel. Tautog, though, are different. They live in the places your line is bound to get snagged. And you can’t set the hook as soon as you feel a hit, either. You have to wait for the tog to swallow the whole green crab you’re using for bait, or you’re bound to reel in empty.
So far we’ve been out here for hours and we haven’t caught anything.
It’s warm enough in early May for us to strip off our sweatshirts and get sunburns—my face feels tight and uncomfortable, although that may have less to do with the sun than with me imagining what it’s like when Zoe opens that door.
Reid reaches into the cooler and takes out two cold Canada Dry ginger ales. “These fish sure don’t want to be caught,” he says.
“Guess not.”
“We may have to make up a story for Liddy,” Reid says. “To spare ourselves excessive male humiliation.”
I squint up at him. “I don’t think she cares if we bring home tog or not.”
“Still, who wants to admit he’s been outsmarted by a rock dweller?”
Reid reels in his line and baits another green crab. He is the one who taught me how to string a hook through a worm for the first time, even though, when I tried, I threw up. He was with me when I caught my first lake trout, and from the way he carried on, you would have thought I’d won the lottery.
He’ll be a really good dad.
As if he can read my mind, he looks up with a huge smile on his face. “Remember when I taught you how to cast? How you got your hook caught on Mom’s straw sunhat and sent it sailing into the middle of the lake?”
I haven’t thought of that in years. I shake my head. “Maybe you’ll do a better job teaching your son.”
“Or daughter,” Reid says. “No reason she can’t be a Bassmaster, too.” He is so excited about the possibility. All I have to do is look at his face, and I can practically see his future: a first ballet recital, a prom photo, a father-daughter dance at a wedding. I’ve underestimated him, all this time. I thought he only got jazzed up about his business deals, but now I think maybe the reason he threw himself into his work was because he wanted a family he couldn’t have, and it hurt too much to be reminded of that day in and day out.
“Hey, Max?” Reid asks, and I glance up. “You think my kid . . . you think he or she will like me?”
I’ve rarely seen Reid less than completely sure of himself. “What do you mean?” I say. “Of course.”
Reid ru
bs the nape of his neck. His vulnerability makes him, well, more human. “You say that,” he points out, “but we didn’t think so highly of our old man.”
“That was different,” I tell him. “Dad wasn’t you.”
“How so?”
I have to think about that for a second. “You never stop caring,” I say. “He never started.”
Reid lets the words sink in, and flashes me a smile. “Thanks,” he says. “It means a lot, knowing you trust me to do this.”
Well, of course I do. On paper, no one looks like a better set of parents than Reid and Liddy. I have a sudden flashback memory of sitting up in bed with a calculator, trying to figure out how far in debt Zoe and I would be if we not only used in vitro to conceive but then actually had to pay for the baby’s doctor’s visits and diapers and food and clothing. Zoe had crumpled my calculations. Just because it doesn’t work on paper, she had said, doesn’t mean we won’t find a way to make it work in real life.
“It’s normal, right? To be a little freaked out about becoming a father?”
“You don’t become someone’s role model because you’re smart enough to have all the right answers,” I say slowly. I’m thinking of Reid, and why I always looked up to him. “You become someone’s role model because you’re smart enough to keep asking the right questions.”
Reid looks at me. “You’re different, you know. The way you talk, the decisions you make. I mean it, Max. You’re not who you used to be.”
I have wanted Reid’s approval all my life. So why do I feel like I’m going to be sick?
When the phone rings, it’s bizarre. Not just because we’re floating off the shore of Rhode Island but because we both already know who it is. “Remember what Wade said,” Reid tells me, as I hold the ringing cell phone in my hand.
Zoe starts yelling before I even have it pressed to my ear. “I can’t talk to you,” I interrupt. “My lawyer told me not to—”