by Jodi Picoult
You’d think that someone like Luke—someone virile enough to literally tear a carcass to shreds with his teeth when wolves were on either side of him—might have a problem with a gay son, but that’s not something I ever anticipated. He was a firm believer that nothing trumped family. Just like wolves could maintain individuality within the pack and not have to prove themselves on a daily basis, to Luke, if you were family, you were respected for your differences, and your role was secure. He’d even told me once of same-sex wolves mounting each other during mating season, something that had more to do with dominance and subordinance than with sexuality. Which is why I was so shocked when Edward came out to Luke, and Luke said . . .
Well. The truth is, I have no idea what Luke said.
All I know is that Edward went up to Redmond’s to talk to his father, and when he came home, he wouldn’t speak to me or Cara or anyone else. When I asked Luke what had happened, his face turned red. “A mistake,” he said.
Two days later, Edward was gone.
No matter how often I asked him over the next six years, he would never tell me what his father had said that was so offensive. And in the way that imagination sometimes works, what I didn’t know turned out to be more devastating than what I did. I would lie in bed imagining the foulest remarks Luke might have made, the demeaning expressions, the reactionary response. There was Edward offering his heart on a silver platter. But what was the reply? Did Luke tell Edward he could change, if he really wanted to? Did he say that he’d always known there was something wrong with his son? Because I didn’t know the truth, and neither party would tell me what had happened, I pictured the worst.
You do not know what failure feels like until your eighteen-year-old son quits your family. That’s the way I’ve always thought of it, because Edward was too smart to hop on a bus to Boston or even California. Instead, he took his passport from the filing cabinet in Luke’s office, and with the money he’d reaped from tutoring over the summers (money he was going to put toward college), he bought a plane ticket to a place he knew we couldn’t easily follow. Edward had always been impulsive—right back to when he was in nursery school and threw a jar of paint at a boy who’d been making fun of his artwork; or later, yelling at an unfair teacher without thinking through the consequences. But this was behavior I just couldn’t understand. The farthest Edward had ever traveled alone was to a mock trial conference in Washington, DC; what could he possibly know about foreign countries and finding housing and making his own way in the world? I tried involving the police, but at eighteen, he was legally an adult. I tried calling Edward’s cell phone, but the number had been disconnected. At home, I would wake up in the middle of the night and for two glorious seconds forget that my son was gone. And then, when the truth crept under the covers, clinging to me like a jealous lover, I would start sobbing.
One night I drove to Redmond’s, leaving Cara alone and asleep in an empty house—more evidence of my bad parenting. Luke wasn’t in the trailer, but his research assistant was. A college girl named Wren who had a giant wolf tattoo on her right shoulder blade, she split the time with Walter to make sure someone could be present overnight with the animals when Luke wasn’t living with one of his packs—which was most of the time, these days. Wren was wrapped in a blanket and half asleep when I knocked. She looked terrified to see me—not surprising, since I was wild and furious—and pointed me toward the enclosures. This being nighttime, Luke was wide awake in the company of his wolf family, wrestling with a big gray wolf when I came to stand like an apparition against the fence. It was enough to make him do something he never did: break character, and be human. “Georgie?” he said, guarded. “What’s wrong?”
I almost laughed at that; what wasn’t wrong? Luke’s way of dealing with his son’s absence had been to gather his family closer—not Cara and me but his brotherhood of wolves. He hadn’t been home long enough to see me set a place at the table for Edward and burst into tears; he didn’t sit on his son’s bed and hold the pillow, which still smelled like Edward. “I need to know what you said to him, Luke,” I replied. “I need to know why he left.”
Luke came through the double gates of the pen until he was standing, like me, on the outside.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I just stared at him in disbelief. “Do you actually think less of your son because he’s gay? Because he doesn’t care about wild animals or like being outside all the time? Because he didn’t turn out like you?”
Anger flashed across Luke’s face, quickly held in check. “You really think that’s what I’m like?”
“I think Luke Warren is all about Luke Warren. I don’t know, maybe you’re afraid that Edward doesn’t fit your TV persona.” By now I was screaming at him.
“How dare you. I love my son. I love him.”
“Then why is he gone?”
Luke hesitated. I can’t even remember what he said after that brief caesura, but it didn’t matter nearly as much as the hiccup of space, that infinitesimal delay. Because that one faltering moment was a canvas, and I could paint upon it all of my greatest fears.
Three weeks after Edward left he sent me a postcard from Thailand. He included a new mobile phone number. He said that he had gotten a job teaching English, and an apartment, and that he loved me and Cara. He did not mention his father.
I told Luke I wanted to see him. Even though there was no return address on the postcard, even though Thailand was a big country—how hard could it be to find an eighteen-year-old Caucasian teacher? I called the travel agent to book a flight, planning to use money we kept in an emergency fund.
Then one of Luke’s precious wolves got sick and needed surgery. And suddenly that money no longer existed.
The next week, I filed for divorce.
These were my irreconcilable differences: My son was gone. My husband was to blame. And I couldn’t forgive him for that, ever.
But here’s the dirty little secret I still hide: I was the one who told Edward to go to Redmond’s that day, who urged him to come out to his own father the way he had to me. If I hadn’t made that suggestion—if I’d been with Edward when he told his father—would Luke have still reacted as badly? Would Edward never have left?
If you look at it from this angle, it’s my fault I lost my son for six years.
Which is why, now, I won’t make the same mistake twice.
I would be the first to tell you I’m not perfect. I only floss before dentist appointments. I sometimes eat food that I’ve dropped on the floor. Once, I even spanked one of the twins when she ran into the middle of the road.
And I know how it must look when I do not stay with my daughter, who is wrapped and bandaged and wounded more than bone-deep, but instead choose to follow the son who has tried to pull the plug from his father’s ventilator. I know that people are talking as I walk behind the security guards and the hospital lawyer, calling out to Edward, so he understands he isn’t alone.
I look like a bad mother.
But if I didn’t run after Edward—if I didn’t try to explain to the hospital and the police that he didn’t mean it—well, wouldn’t that make me a worse mother?
I don’t deal well with stress. I never have—it’s why you never saw me on any of Luke’s TV episodes; it’s why, when he went to Quebec to live in the wild, I started taking Prozac. Over the past week I have done my best to hold myself together for Cara, even though being in this hospital at night feels like wandering through a ghost town, even though walking into Luke’s room and seeing him with his head shaved and the stitches bisecting his scalp makes me want to turn tail and run. I stayed calm when the police came asking questions to which I did not want to know the answers. But now, I willingly throw myself into the fray. “I’m sure that Edward can explain,” I tell the hospital lawyer.
“He’ll have a chance to do that,” she says. “Down at the police station.”
On cue, the sliding doors of the hospital entrance open and two officers walk i
n. “We’ll need the nurse’s statement, too,” one of the cops says, while the other one handcuffs my son. “Edward Warren, you’re being arrested for simple assault. You have the right to remain silent—”
“Assault?” I gasp. “He didn’t hurt anyone!”
The hospital lawyer looks at me. “He shoved a nurse. And you and I both know that’s not all he did.”
“Mom,” Edward says, “it’s okay.”
Sometimes I think I have spent my entire life being torn in two directions: I wanted a career, but I also wanted a family. I loved the way Luke’s wildness could barely be contained inside his skin, but that didn’t necessarily make him the best husband, the best father. I want to be a good parent to Cara, but I have two little children now who demand my complete attention.
I love my daughter. But I also love my son.
I stand rooted to the floor as the security guards and the hospital lawyer leave, as the police lead Edward into a day so bright I have to squint, and even then I lose sight of him too fast.
The automatic doors whisper like gossip as they close. I rummage in my purse and find my phone, so that I can call my husband. “Joe,” I say when he answers. “I need your help.”
LUKE
An alpha female can choose a specific prey animal from a herd of hundreds by the smell it leaves behind. A moose with a scratch on its foreleg will leave behind the scent of pus with every footstep. The alpha reads this as vulnerability, and she can track it as if each footfall were a visible bread crumb. She can sniff at the tufts of grass the moose has fed upon and know, from the scent of its teeth, how old the animal is. Long before she ever comes into contact with this moose, she already knows volumes about it.
Eventually she stops focusing on the ground and instead breathes deeply into the air. The dust coming off the moose’s coat leaves particles in the wind, so even from miles away, she will know this is still the same animal. She will start to run, her hunters keeping stride, and when she reaches the herd, she will hold herself back—she’s far too valuable to put herself in danger—and signal a plan of attack to the others. There is a gland on a wolf’s spinal area near the tail. To get a hunter to move right, the alpha will lift her tail up to the left, letting out a directional scent that her hunter can read. If she wants the hunter to speed up, she’ll circle her tail. If she wants her hunter to slow down, she’ll drop her tail. Through these tail postures, and her scent, she communicates with her team, directing them. Even if another moose is closer, the hunters will not strike until their leader gives them the signal, and even then, they will only take the animal she’s pointed out.
An alpha will put two wolves in front of the moose’s shoulders, and then listen for its heart rate. The moose may stamp or snort or throw its rack around to show how mighty a foe it is, but it can’t affect its own adrenal system. When the alpha cues a third hunter to the back of the moose, and its heart skips a beat, she may instruct her team to terrorize it. This may take hours; it may take weeks.
It’s not that wolves are cruel. It’s that the alpha also knows, for example, that to the east is a rival pack that’s bigger and stronger than her own. If this moose gets frightened, adrenaline will saturate its system—it’s the emotional price of death. If her pack can then feed off that moose, those rivals to the east will smell the adrenaline in the urine and scat her pack leaves to mark the boundaries of the territory. And suddenly, her pack is less vulnerable. The wolves to the east would never come steal the food or kill the offspring of a pack whose scent is redolent with emotion, power, dominance.
In other words, what looks cruel and heartless from one angle might, from another, actually be the only way to protect your family.
EDWARD
Suffice it to say I was not the most popular kid in middle school. I was the quiet one, the brainiac who always got A’s, the boy you only struck up a conversation with if you needed the answer to number 4 on your homework. At recess, I was more likely to be found in the shade reading than dunking on the basketball court. That was long before I discovered the benefits of circuit training, so my biceps back then were about as thick as rigatoni noodles. And obviously, I didn’t stare after girls with skirts so short that their panties peeked out from behind—but every now and then, when no one was looking, I stared after the guys who were staring.
I had friends, but they were like me—kids who would far rather spend their days blending into the scenery than being noticed, because being noticed usually meant being the punch line to some popular kid’s joke. Which is why, on my thirteenth birthday, I know I did the right thing, even though it wound up netting me a week of detention and a month of being grounded.
We were lining up to head to the cafeteria for lunch, and had to wait for other classes to march out first. I had this part of the day down to an art; I was never at the front of the line (popular kid territory) or the back of the line (troublemaker territory), because either spot would make me an easy target. Instead I sandwiched myself in the middle, between a girl who wore a full-body brace for her scoliosis and another girl who’d recently transferred from Guatemala and hardly spoke English. In other words, I was very busy making myself invisible when something awful happened: my teacher, who was old and sweet and fairly deaf, decided to pass the time by drawing attention to the fact that it was my birthday.
“Did you all know that today is Edward’s thirteenth birthday?” Mrs. Stansbury said. “Let’s sing to him while we’re waiting. Happy birthday to you . . .”
I turned crimson. We weren’t five, after all. We were eighth graders. Having the class sing to you went out of vogue about the same time we stopped believing in the tooth fairy.
“Please stop,” I whispered.
“You going to do something special to celebrate?” my teacher continued.
“Yeah,” said one kid, loud enough for me to hear but not for the teacher to notice. “He’s going to have a gay old time, right, Eddie?”
Everyone laughed, except for the girl from Guatemala, who probably didn’t understand.
Mrs. Stansbury peered into the hallway to see if it was our turn yet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. “How old are you now,” she started singing. “How old are you now! How old are you, Ed-waaaaard . . .”
I balled my hands into fists, and shouted, “Shut up!”
That Mrs. Stansbury heard.
So did the principal, moments later. And my parents. I was punished for being rude to a teacher, who was only trying to be nice to me by making me feel special on my birthday.
A month after my dad grounded me (as he put it in wolf terms, a subordinate would never act that way to a pack leader), he asked me if I’d learned anything. I made sure not to answer. Because I’d have done exactly the same thing all over again.
This is just my way of pointing out that we people who leap without looking are not stupid. We know damn well we might be headed for a fall. But we also know that, sometimes, it’s the only way out.
The interrogation room is freezing cold. I’d cynically assume it’s a secret police tactic to get people talking, if not for the fact that the officers have been really kind—bringing me coffee and a slice of sponge cake from the staff room. Many of them are fans of my dad’s, from the TV show; I happily trade on his fame for food. I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate; this tastes like manna.
“So, Edward,” the detective says, sitting down across from me. “Why don’t you tell me what happened today.”
I open up my mouth to respond, and then snap it shut. Years of Law & Order reruns on Thai TV have taught me something after all. “I want my lawyer,” I announce.
The detective nods, and walks out of the room.
Never mind that I don’t actually have a lawyer.
But a moment later the door opens again and a man walks in. He’s small and wiry, with black hair that keeps falling into his eyes; he’s wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. It takes me a moment to place him, because I only met him once—two days a
go when he brought my mother’s twins to see her at the hospital.
“Joe,” I breathe. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see someone. I had forgotten that my mom’s new husband practiced law. I’ve done stupid, impulsive things before, but this is the first time I’ve been handcuffed for it.
“Your mother called me,” he says. “What the hell happened?”
“I didn’t shove the nurse, no matter what they say. She fell back when I . . .” I trail off.
“When you what?”
“When I pulled my father’s ventilator plug out of the wall,” I finish.
Joe sinks into a chair. “Do I even have to ask why . . . ?”
I shake my head. “I was going to donate my dad’s organs, which is what he wanted—he was a donor, according to his license. I just wanted to carry out his last wishes, you know? The doctors had barely started when Cara came in and made a huge scene. As if this was all about her, and not my dad.”
“From what Georgie’s told me, Cara wasn’t in favor of terminating life support. You had to know that.”
“She told me yesterday that she didn’t want to have to deal with all this stuff anymore; that she couldn’t talk to the doctors about my dad, much less make a decision about what to do. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I was trying to help—”
He holds up a hand, silencing me. “What happened, exactly?”
“I bent down and grabbed the cord of the ventilator. I didn’t push the nurse, she was just standing between me and the machine. All I did was pull the plug out of the wall to turn it off. Because that’s what was supposed to happen.”
Joe doesn’t ask me to explain myself. He just looks at the facts and accepts them at face value. “This is a bailable offense, a misdemeanor,” he says. “In this state, if you’ve got no criminal record and you’ve got family around, you can be released on your own recognizance. Granted, you haven’t been a resident for some time, but I think we can work around that.”