by Jodi Picoult
I suddenly saw the truck that had been behind me on the highway, swerving and beeping; the other cars that had parted around mine, a stone in a river. I smelled the hot, rippling asphalt that sank beneath my heels as I tiptoed, shaky, across the highway. I was not one to believe in fate, but this had been too close a call, too sure a sign; as if I literally needed to be stopped short before I realized that I’d been running in the wrong direction. After my car had broken down I had called the state police and several service stations, but I had never thought to call Stephen. Somehow, I had known that if I needed to be rescued, I was going to have to do it myself.
The telephone began to ring again. “Good news,” Stephen said before I’d even given a greeting. “The Big Guys are willing to see you today at six o’clock.”
That was the moment I knew I would be leaving.
* * *
Stephen helped me load my things into the back of my car. “I completely understand,” he said, although he didn’t. “You want to take some time off before choosing your next big case.”
I wanted to take some time off before choosing whether I ever wanted to take another case, period, but that was beyond Stephen’s realm of belief. You didn’t go to law school and make Law Review and work in the trenches to land the trial of a lifetime, only to question your own career choice. But on another level, Stephen couldn’t accept that I might be moving away for good. I knew this because I felt the same way. In our eight years together we had not married, but we hadn’t separated, either.
“You’ll call me when you get there?” Stephen asked, but before I could answer, he kissed me. Our lips separated like a seam being ripped, and then I got into the car and drove away.
* * *
I suppose other women in my position—by this I mean heartbroken, at odds, and recently given a large sum of money—might have chosen a different destination. Grand Cayman, Paris, even a soul-searching hike through the Rockies. For me, there was never any question that if I wanted to lick my wounds, I would wind up in Paradise, Pennsylvania. As a child, I’d spent a week there every summer. My great-uncle had a farm there and progressively sold off lots and parcels of land until he died, at which point his son Frank moved into the big house, planted grass where the field corn had been, and opened a woodworking shop. Frank was my father’s age, and had been married to Leda long before I was ever born.
I couldn’t begin to tell you what I did during those summers in Paradise, but what stayed with me all those years was the calm that pervaded their home, and the smooth efficiency with which things were accomplished. At first, I’d thought it was because Leda and Frank had never had children of their own. Later, I came to understand it was something in Leda herself, something tied to the fact that she had grown up Amish.
You could not summer in Paradise and not come in contact with the Old Order Amish, who were such an intrinsic part of the Lancaster area. The Plain people, as they called themselves, clipped along in their buggies in the thick of automobile traffic; they stood in line at the grocery store in their old-fashioned clothing; they smiled shyly from behind their farm stands where we went to buy fresh vegetables. That was, in fact, how I learned about Leda’s past. We were waiting to buy armfuls of sweet corn when Leda struck up a conversation—in Pennsylvania Dutch!—with the woman who was making the sale. I was eleven, and hearing Leda—as American as me—slip into the Germanic dialect was enough to astound me. But then Leda handed me a ten-dollar bill. “Give this to the lady, Ellie,” she said, even though she was standing right there and could have done it herself.
On the drive home, Leda explained that she had been Plain until she married Frank—who wasn’t Plain. By the rules of her religion, she was put under the bann—restricted from certain social contact with people who were still Amish. She could talk to Amish friends and family, but couldn’t eat at the same table with them. She could sit beside them on the bus, but not offer them a ride in her car. She could buy from them, but needed a third party—me—to transact the sale.
Her parents, her sisters and brothers—they lived less than ten miles away.
“Are you allowed to go see them?” I’d asked.
“Yes, but I hardly ever do,” Leda told me. “You’ll understand one day, Ellie. I’m not keeping my distance because it’s uncomfortable for me. I’m keeping my distance because it’s uncomfortable for them.”
* * *
Leda was waiting when the train pulled into the Strasburg railroad station. As I stepped off, carrying my two bags, she held out her arms. “Ellie, Ellie,” she sang. She smelled of oranges and Windex; her wide shoulder was the perfect place to rest my head. I was thirty-nine years old, but in Leda’s embrace, I was eleven again.
She led me toward the small parking lot. “You going to tell me what’s the matter now?”
“Nothing’s the matter. I just wanted to visit you.”
Leda snorted. “The only time you come to visit is when you’re about to have a nervous breakdown. Did something happen with Stephen?” When I didn’t answer, she narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe nothing happened with Stephen—and that’s the problem?”
I sighed. “It’s not Stephen. I finished a very trying case, and. . .well, I needed to relax.”
“But you won the case. I saw it on the news.”
“Yeah, well, winning isn’t everything.”
To my surprise, she didn’t say anything in response. I fell asleep as soon as Leda pulled onto the highway, and woke with a start when she pulled into her driveway. “I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to conk out like that.”
Leda smiled and patted my hand. “You spend as much time as you need to relaxing here.”
“Oh, it won’t be for long.” I took my bags from the backseat and hurried up the porch steps behind Leda.
“Well, we’re glad to have you, for two nights or two dozen.” She cocked her head. “Phone’s ringing,” she said, pushing open the door and rushing in to pick up the receiver. “Hello?”
I set down my suitcases and stretched to work out the kinks in my back. Leda’s kitchen was neat as a pin, just like always, and looked exactly the way I had remembered: the stitched sampler on the wall, the cookie jar in the shape of a pig, the black and white squares of linoleum. Closing my eyes, it was easy to pretend I’d never left here, to believe that the most difficult choice I’d have to make that day was whether to curl up in an Adirondack chair out back or on the creaky swing on the screened porch. Across the kitchen, Leda was clearly surprised to hear the voice of whoever it was that had called. “Sarah, Sarah, sssh,” she soothed. “Was ist letz?” I could only make out small snippets of unfamiliar words: an Kind . . . er hat an Kind gfuna . . . es Kind va dodt. Sinking down on a counter stool, I waited for Leda to finish the call.
When she hung up, her hand remained on the receiver for a long moment. Then she turned to me, pale and shaken. “Ellie, I am so sorry, but I have to go somewhere.”
“Do you need me—”
“You stay here,” Leda insisted. “You’re here to rest.”
I watched her pull away in her car. Whatever the problem was, Leda would fix it. She always did. Putting my feet up on a second stool, I smiled. I’d been in Paradise for fifteen minutes, and I felt better already.
THREE
“Neh!” Katie screamed, kicking out at the paramedic who was trying to load her into the ambulance. “Ich will net gay!”
Lizzie watched the girl fight. The bottom of her dress, a rich green, was by now stained black with blood. In a tight, shocked semicircle stood the Fishers, Samuel, and Levi. The big blond man stepped forward, his jaw set. “Let her down,” he said in clear English.
The paramedic turned. “Buddy, I’m only trying to help her.” He managed to haul Katie into the rear of the ambulance. “Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, you’re welcome to ride along.”
Sarah Fisher sobbed, clutching at her husband’s shirt and pleading with him in a language Lizzie could not understand. He shook his
head, then turned and walked away, calling for the men to join him. Sarah gingerly climbed into the ambulance and held her daughter’s hand, whispering until Katie calmed. The paramedics closed the double doors; the ambulance began to rumble down the long driveway, kicking up pebbles and clouds of dust.
Lizzie knew she had to get to the hospital and speak to the doctors who would examine Katie, but she didn’t move just yet. Instead she watched Samuel—who had not followed Aaron Fisher, but remained rooted to the spot, watching the ambulance disappear from his sight.
* * *
The world was rushing by. Overhead, the line of fluorescent lights looked like the dashes in the middle of a paved road, running quick as they did when seen from the back of a buggy. The stretcher she was on came to an abrupt stop and a voice at her head called, “On my count—one, two, three!” Then Katie was being spirited through the air, floating down to a cold, shining table.
The paramedic was telling everyone her name and, for goodness sake, that she’d been bleeding down there. A woman’s face loomed over hers, assessing. “Katie? Do you speak English?”
“Ja,” she murmured.
“Katie, are you pregnant?”
“No!”
“Can you tell us when your last period was?”
Katie’s cheeks went scarlet, and she turned away in silence.
She could not help but notice the lights and the noises of this strange hospital. Bright screens were filled with undulating waves; beeps and whirrs framed her on all sides; scattered voices called out in an odd synchronicity that reminded her of church hymns sung in the round. “BP is eighty over forty,” a nurse said.
“Heart rate one-thirty.”
“Respiratory rate?”
“It’s twenty-eight.”
The doctor turned to Katie’s mother. “Mrs. Fisher? Was your daughter pregnant?” Stunned by the commotion, Sarah stared mutely at the man. “Christ,” the doctor muttered. “Just get the skirt off her.”
Katie felt their hands tugging at her clothes, pulling at her privacy. “It’s part of a dress, and I can’t find the buttons,” a nurse complained.
“There are none. It’s pinned. What the—”
“Cut it off, if you have to. I want a BSU, a urine hCG, a CBC, and send a type and screen to the blood bank, all stat.” The doctor’s face floated before Katie again. “Katie, I’m going to examine your uterus now. Do you understand? Just relax, I’m going to be touching you between your legs—”
At the first gentle probe, Katie lashed out with her foot. “Hold her,” the doctor commanded, and two nurses secured her ankles in the stirrups. “Just relax, now. I won’t hurt you.” Tears began to roll down Katie’s cheeks as the doctor dictated to a nurse with a clipboard. “In addition to what might be lochia rubia, we’ve got a boggy, uncontracted uterus, about twenty-four weeks’ size. Looks like an open cervical os. Let’s get an ultrasound now to see what we’re dealing with. How’s the bleeding?”
“Still a steady flow.”
“Get an OB/GYN down here now.”
A nurse wrapped a wad of ice in cotton and placed it between Katie’s legs. “This’ll make it feel better, honey,” she whispered.
Katie tried to focus on the nurse’s face, but by now her vision was shaking as badly as her jellied arms and legs. The nurse, noticing, draped her with another blanket. Katie wished she had the words to thank her, wished she had the words to tell her that what she really needed was someone to hold her together before she broke apart right there on the table, but her thoughts were coming in the language with which she’d grown up.
“You’re gonna be okay,” the nurse soothed.
After one sidelong glance at her mother, Katie closed her eyes and blacked out, believing that this might be so.
* * *
On the train platform, her mother pressed five twenty-dollar bills into her hand. “You remember what station you change at?” Katie nodded. “And if he isn’t there to meet you, you call him.” Her mother touched Katie’s cheek. “This time, it’s okay to use the telephone if you have to.”
It went without saying that using a telephone would be the least of her sins. For the first time since her brother Jacob had moved out, Katie—only twelve years old—was going to visit him. All the way in State College, where he was going to university.
Her mother looked nervously around at the other passengers waiting to board, hoping to keep out of the sight of other Plain people, who might report back to Aaron that his wife and his daughter had lied to him.
The long, sleek Amtrak ribboned into the station, and Katie hugged her mother tightly. “You could come with me,” she whispered fiercely.
“You don’t need me. You’re a big girl.”
It wasn’t what Katie meant, and they both knew it. If Sarah went with her daughter to State College, she’d be disobeying her husband, and that wasn’t done. As it was, sending Katie as an envoy of her love was walking the very fine tightrope of insubordination. Plus, Katie hadn’t been baptized yet in the church. By the rules of the Ordnung, Sarah would not be able to ride in a car with her excommunicated son; would not be allowed to eat at the same table. “You go,” she said, smiling hard at her daughter. “You come back and tell me all about him.”
On the train Katie sat by herself, closing her eyes against the curious looks and the people who pointed at her clothing and head covering. She folded her hands in her lap and thought of the last time she had seen Jacob, the sun bright as a halo on his copper hair, when he walked out of their house for good.
As the train pulled into State College, Katie pressed her face to the window, searching the sea of English faces for her brother. She was used to folks who were not Plain, of course, but even on the most busy thoroughfares in East Paradise she would see at least one or two others dressed like her, speaking her language. The people waiting on the platform were dressed in a dizzying splash of colors. Some of the women were wearing tiny tops and shorts that left almost all of their bodies bare. With horror, she noticed one young man with a ring in his nose and one in his ear and a chain connecting the two.
She did not see Jacob.
When she stepped off the train, she pivoted in a slow circle, frightened of being swallowed up by so much movement. Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Katie?”
She turned to see her brother, and flushed with surprise. Of course she had overlooked him. She’d been expecting Jacob in his wide-brimmed straw hat, his black trousers with suspenders. This Jacob was clean-shaven, wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt and khaki pants.
Then she was in his arms, hugging him so tightly that she only now realized how lonely she had been at home without him. “Mam misses you,” Katie said breathlessly. “She says I have to tell her every last thing.”
“I miss her too.” Jacob draped his arm around her shoulders and steered Katie through the crowd. “I think you’ve grown a foot.” He led his sister to a parking lot, to a small blue car. Katie stopped behind it and stared. “It’s mine,” Jacob said softly. “Katie, what did you expect?”
The truth is, she hadn’t expected anything. Except that the brother she had loved, the one who had turned his back on his religion so that he could study at college, might be living the same life he’d left . . . only somewhere other than East Paradise. This—the strange clothing, the tiny vehicle—made her wonder if her father had not been right all along to believe that Jacob could not continue his schooling and still be Plain in his heart.
Jacob opened the door for her and then got into the car himself. “Where does Dat think you are today?”
The day that Jacob had been excommunicated by the Amish church was the same day he’d died, in his father’s unforgiving eyes. Aaron Fisher would not countenance Katie visiting Jacob any more than he would approve of the letters her mother wrote Jacob and had Katie secretly post. “Aunt Leda’s.”
“Very smart. There’s no way he’ll stomach talking to her long enough to find out it’s a lie.” Jacob smil
ed wryly. “We shunned have to stick together, I guess.”
Katie folded her hands in her lap. “Is it worth it?” she asked quietly. “Is college everything you wanted?”
Jacob studied her for a long moment. “It’s not everything, because you all aren’t here.”
“You could come back, you know. You could come back anytime and make a confession.”
“I could, but I won’t.” At Katie’s frown, Jacob reached across the console and tugged at the long strings of her kapp. “Hey. I’m still the guy who pushed you into the pond when we went fishing. Who put a frog in your bed.”
Katie smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if you changed, come to think of it.”
“That’s my girl,” Jacob laughed. “I have something for you.” He reached into the backseat and withdrew a bundle wrapped in butcher paper and tied with red ribbon. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but when you come here, I want it to be a holiday for you. An escape. So that maybe you don’t have to make the same all-or-nothing choice that I did.” He watched her fingers pick at the bow and open the package to reveal a pair of soft leggings, a bright yellow T-shirt, and a cotton cardigan embroidered with a festival of flowers.
“Oh,” Katie said, drawn in spite of herself. Her fingers traced the fine needlework on the collar of the sweater. “But I—”
“For while you’re here. Walking around in your regular clothes is only going to make it harder on you. Wearing these—well, no one’s ever gonna know, Katie. I thought maybe you could pretend for a while, when you visit. Be like me. Here.” He flipped down the visor in front of Katie to reveal a small mirror, then held the cardigan up so that she could see the reflection.
She blushed. “Jacob, it’s beautiful.”
Even Jacob was astounded at how that one awed admission seemed to make his sister look like someone else, like the kind of person he had grown up keeping at a distance. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”
* * *
Lizzie called the county attorney’s office on her car phone, en route to the hospital. “George Callahan,” the voice on the other end announced brusquely.