by Jodi Picoult
Lacy nudged Alex. “I always wanted to get along with my in-laws.”
Peter stood at a wooden stove, mixing imaginary food in a plastic pot. Josie put on an oversize lab coat. “Time to go to work. I’ll be home for dinner.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “We’re having meatballs.”
“What’s your job?” Alex asked Josie.
“I’m a judge. I send people to jail all day long and then I come home and eat pisghetti.” She walked around the perimeter of the block house and reentered through the front door.
“Sit down,” Peter said. “You’re late again.”
Lacy closed her eyes. “Is it just me, or is this like looking into a really unflattering mirror?”
They watched Josie and Peter put aside their plates and then move to another part of their block house, a smaller square within the square. They lay down inside it. “This is the bed,” Josie explained.
The teacher came up behind Alex and Lacy. “They play house all the time,” she said. “Isn’t it sweet?”
Alex watched Peter curl up on his side. Josie spooned against him, wrapping her arm around his waist. She wondered how her daughter had ever formed an image of a couple like this in her mind, given that she’d never even seen her mother go out on a date.
She watched Lacy lean against the block cubby and write, on her small slip of paper, TENDER. That did describe Peter—he was tender, almost to the point of being raw. It took someone like Josie—curled around him like a shell—to protect him.
Alex reached for a pencil and smoothed out the piece of paper. Adjectives tumbled through her mind—there were so many for her daughter: dynamic, loyal, bright, breathtaking—but she found herself forming different letters.
Mine, she wrote.
* * *
This time when the lunch box hit the pavement, it broke wide across its hinges and the car behind the school bus ran right over his tuna fish sandwich and his bag of Doritos. The bus driver, as usual, didn’t notice. The fifth-grade boys were so good at doing this by now that the window was opened and closed before you could even yell for them to stop. Peter felt his eyes welling with tears as the boys high-fived each other. He could hear his mother’s voice in his head—this was the moment where he was supposed to stick up for himself!—but his mother did not realize that would only make it worse.
“Oh, Peter,” Josie sighed as he sat down again beside her.
He stared down at his mittens. “I don’t think I can go to your house on Friday.”
“How come?”
“Because my mom said she’ll punish me if I lose my lunch box again.”
“That’s not fair,” Josie said.
Peter shrugged. “Nothing is.”
* * *
No one was more surprised than Alex when the governor of New Hampshire officially picked her from a short list of three candidates for a district court judicial position. Although it made sense that Jeanne Shaheen—a young, Democratic female governor—would want to appoint a young, Democratic female judge, Alex was still a little light-headed over the news when she went for her interview.
The governor was younger than Alex had expected, and prettier. Which is exactly what most people will think about me if I’m on the bench, she thought. She sat down and slipped her hands under her thighs to keep them from shaking.
“If I nominate you,” the governor said, “is there anything I should know?”
“You mean skeletons in my closet?”
Shaheen nodded. What it really came down to, for a gubernatorial appointee, was whether or not that nominee would in some way reflect poorly on the governor herself. Shaheen was trying to cross her t’s and dot her i’s before making an official decision, and for that, Alex could only admire her. “Is anyone going to come to your Executive Council hearing and oppose your nomination?” the governor asked.
“That depends. Are you giving out furloughs at the state prison?”
Shaheen laughed. “I take it that’s where your disgruntled clients have ended up.”
“That’s exactly why they’re disgruntled.”
The governor stood up and shook Alex’s hand. “I think we’ll get along well,” she said.
* * *
Maine and New Hampshire were the only two states left in the country with an Executive Council—a group that acted as a direct check on the governor’s power. For Alex, this meant that in the month between her nomination and her confirmation hearing, she had to do whatever she could to placate five Republican men before they put her through the wringer.
She called them weekly, asking if they had any questions they needed answered. She also had to arrange for witnesses to appear on her behalf at the confirmation hearing. After years in the public defender’s office, this should have been simple, but the Executive Council did not want to hear from lawyers. They wanted to hear from the community where Alex worked and lived—from her first-grade teacher to a state trooper who liked her in spite of her allegiance to the Dark Side. The tricky part was that Alex had to call in all her favors to get these people to prepare and testify, but she also had to make it clear that if she did get confirmed as a judge, she could give them nothing in return.
And then, finally, it was Alex’s turn to take the hot seat. She sat in the Executive Council office in the State House, fielding questions that ranged from What was the last book you read? to Who has the burden of proof in abuse and neglect cases? Most of the questions were substantive and academic, until she was thrown a curve.
Ms. Cormier, who has the right to judge someone else?
“Well,” she said. “That depends on whether you’re judging in a moral sense or a legal sense. Morally, no one has the right to judge anyone else. But legally, it’s not a right—it’s a responsibility.”
Following up on that, what is your position on firearms?
Alex hesitated. She was not a fan of guns. She didn’t let Josie watch anything on television that showed violence. She knew what happened when you put a gun in the hand of a troubled kid, or an angry husband, or a battered wife—she’d defended those clients too many times to dismiss that kind of catalytic reaction.
And yet.
She was in New Hampshire, a conservative state, in front of a group of Republicans who were terrified she would turn out to be a left-wing loose cannon. She would be presiding over communities where hunting was not only revered but necessary.
Alex took a sip of water. “Legally,” she said, “I am pro-firearms.”
* * *
“It’s crazy,” Alex said as she stood in Lacy’s kitchen. “You go to these robe sites online, and the models are all linebackers with breasts. The public perception of a female judge is one that looks like Bea Arthur.” She leaned into the hallway and yelled up the stairs. “Josie! I’m counting to ten and then we’re leaving!”
“Are there choices?”
“Yeah, black . . . or black.” Alex folded her arms. “You can get cotton and polyester or just polyester. You can get bell sleeves or gathered sleeves. They’re all hideous. What I really want is something with a waist.”
“Guess Vera Wang doesn’t do judicial,” Lacy said.
“Not quite.” She stuck her head into the hallway again. “Josie! Now!”
Lacy put down the dish towel she had been using to dry a pan and followed Alex into the hall. “Peter! Josie’s mother has to get home!” When there was no response from the children, Lacy headed upstairs. “They’re probably hiding.”
Alex followed her into Peter’s bedroom, where Lacy threw open the closet doors and checked beneath the bed. From there, they checked the bathroom, Joey’s room, and the master bedroom. It wasn’t until they went downstairs again that they heard voices coming from the basement. “It’s heavy,” Josie said.
Then Peter: “Here. Like this.”
Alex wound down the wooden stairway. Lacy’s basement was a one-hundred-year-old root cellar with a dirt floor and cobwebs strung like Christmas decorations. She homed in on th
e whispers coming from a corner of the basement, and there, behind a stack of boxes and a shelf full of home-canned jelly, was Josie, holding a rifle.
“Oh my God,” Alex breathed, and Josie swung around, pointing the barrel at her.
Lacy grabbed the gun and pulled it away. “Where did you get this?” she demanded, and only then did Peter and Josie seem to realize that something was wrong.
“Peter,” Josie said. “He had a key.”
“A key?” Alex cried. “To what?”
“The safe,” Lacy murmured. “He must have seen Lewis taking out a rifle when he went hunting last weekend.”
“My daughter has been coming over to your house for how long now, and you’ve got guns lying around?”
“They’re not lying around,” Lacy said. “They’re in a locked gun safe.”
“Which your five-year-old can open!”
“Lewis keeps the bullets—”
“Where?” Alex demanded. “Or should I just ask Peter?”
Lacy turned to Peter. “You know better. What on earth made you do this?”
“I just wanted to show it to her, Mom. She asked.”
Josie lifted a frightened face. “I did not.”
Alex turned. “So now your son’s blaming Josie—”
“Or your daughter’s lying,” Lacy countered.
They stared at each other, two friends who had separated along the fault lines of their children. Alex’s face was flushed. What if, she kept thinking. What if they’d been five minutes later? What if Josie had been hurt, killed? On the edges of this thought, another one ignited—the answers she’d given the Executive Council weeks before. Who has the right to judge someone else?
No one, she had said.
And yet, here she was doing it.
I am pro-firearms, she had told them.
Did that make her a hypocrite? Or was she only being a good mother?
Alex watched Lacy kneel beside her son and that was all it took to trip the switch: Josie’s steadfast loyalty to Peter suddenly seemed to only be a weight dragging her down. Maybe it was best for Josie if she started making other friends. Friends who did not get her called to the principal’s office and who placed rifles in her hand.
Alex anchored Josie to her side. “I think we ought to leave.”
“Yes,” Lacy agreed, her voice cool. “I think that would be best.”
* * *
They were in the frozen-food aisle when Josie began her tantrum. “I don’t like peas,” she whined.
“You don’t have to eat them.” Alex opened up the freezer door, letting the cold air kiss her cheek as she reached for the Green Giant vegetables.
“I want Oreos.”
“You’re not getting Oreos. You already had animal crackers.” Josie had been contentious for a week now, ever since the fiasco at Lacy’s house. Alex knew she couldn’t keep Josie from being with Peter at school during the day, but that didn’t mean she had to cultivate the relationship by allowing Josie to invite him over to play afterward.
Alex hauled a vat of Poland Spring water into her cart, then a bottle of wine. On second thought, she reached for another. “Do you want chicken or hamburger for dinner?”
“I want tofurkey.”
Alex started laughing. “Where did you hear about tofurkey?”
“Lacy made it for us for lunch. They’re like hot dogs but they’re better for you.”
Alex stepped forward as her number was called at the meat counter. “Can I have a half pound of boneless chicken breasts?”
“How come you get what you want, but I never get what I want?” Josie accused.
“Believe me, you’re not as deprived a child as you’d like to think you are.”
“I want an apple,” Josie announced.
Alex sighed. “Can we just please get through the grocery store without you saying I want again?”
Before Alex realized what her daughter was doing, Josie kicked out from the seat of the shopping cart, catching Alex hard in the middle. “I hate you!” Josie screamed. “You’re the worst mom in the whole world!”
Alex was uncomfortably aware of the other shoppers looking at her—the old woman feeling melons, the grocery employee with his fists full of fresh broccoli. Why did kids always fall apart in venues where you would be duly measured for your actions? “Josie,” she said, smiling through her teeth, “calm down.”
“I wish you were like Peter’s mother! I wish I could just go live with them.”
Alex grasped her shoulders, hard enough to make Josie burst into tears. “You listen to me,” she said in a heated undertone, and then she caught a distant whisper, and the word judge.
There had been an article in the local paper about her recent appointment to the district court; it ran with a photo. Alex had felt the spark of recognition when she passed people in the baking aisle and the cereal aisle: Oh, that’s her. But right now, she also felt the checks and balances of their stares as they watched her with Josie, waiting for her to act—well—judiciously.
She relaxed her grasp. “I know you’re tired,” Alex said, loud enough for the rest of the entire store to hear. “I know you want to go home. But you have to behave when we’re out in public.”
Josie blinked through her tears, listening to the Voice of Reason and wondering what this alien creature had done with her real mother, who would have yelled right back at her and told her to cut it out.
A judge, Alex suddenly realized, doesn’t get to be a judge only on the bench. She’s still a judge when she goes out to a restaurant or dances at a party or wants to throttle her child in the middle of the produce aisle. Alex had been given a mantle to wear, without realizing that there was a catch: she would never be allowed to take it off.
If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask . . . with nothing beneath it?
Alex pushed the cart toward the checkout lines. By now, her raging child had turned into a contrite little girl again. She listened to Josie’s diminishing hiccups. “There,” she said, to comfort herself as much as her daughter. “Isn’t that better?”
* * *
Alex’s first day on the bench was spent in Keene. No one but her clerk would know officially that it was her first day—attorneys had heard she was new, but weren’t sure when she quite started—and yet, she was terrified. She changed her outfit three times, even though no one would see it underneath her robe. She threw up twice before she left for the courthouse.
She knew how to get to chambers—after all, she’d tried cases here on the other side of the bench a hundred times. The clerk was a thin man named Ishmael who remembered Alex from their previous meetings and hadn’t particularly liked her—she’d cracked up after he introduced himself (“Call me Ishmael”). Today, however, he practically fell at her high-heeled feet. “Welcome, Your Honor,” he said. “Here’s your docket. I’ll take you to your chambers, and we’ll send a court officer in to get you when we’re ready. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No,” Alex said. “I’m all set.”
He left her in chambers, which were freezing cold. She adjusted the thermostat and pulled her robe out of her briefcase to dress. There was an adjoining bathroom; Alex stepped inside to scrutinize herself. She looked fair. Commanding.
And maybe a little like a choirgirl.
She sat down at the desk and immediately thought of her father. Look at me, Daddy, she thought, although by now he was in a place where he couldn’t hear her. She could remember dozens of cases he’d tried; he’d come home and tell her about them over dinner. What she couldn’t remember were the moments when he wasn’t a judge and was just her father.
Alex scanned the files she needed for that morning’s run of arraignments. Then she looked at her watch. She still had forty-five minutes before court went into session; it was her own damn fault for being so nervous that she’d gotten here too early.
She stood up, stretched. She could do cartwheels in this room, it was that big.
But she wouldn’t, because judges didn’t do that.
Tentatively, she opened the door to the hall, and immediately Ishmael materialized. “Your Honor? What can I do for you?”
“Coffee,” Alex said. “That would be nice.”
Ishmael jumped on this request so fast that Alex realized if she asked him to go out and buy a gift for Josie’s birthday, he would have it wrapped and on her desk by noon. She followed him into the lounge, one shared by attorneys and other judges, and walked toward the coffeemaker. Immediately, a young attorney fell back. “You go right ahead, Your Honor,” she said, giving up her place in line.
Alex reached for a paper cup. She’d have to remember to bring a mug to leave in chambers. Then again, since her position was a rotating one that would take her through Laconia, Concord, Keene, Nashua, Rochester, Milford, Jaffrey, Peterborough, Grafton, and Coos, depending on what day of the week it was, she’d have to find a lot of coffee mugs. She pushed down on the thermal coffee dispenser, only to have it whistle and hiss—empty. Without even thinking about it, she reached for a filter to make a fresh pot.
“Your Honor, you don’t have to do that,” the attorney said, clearly embarrassed on Alex’s behalf. She took the filter out of her hand and started to make the coffee.
Alex stared at the lawyer. She wondered if anyone would ever call her Alex again, or if she should just have her name officially changed to Your Honor. She wondered if anyone would have the guts to tell her if she had toilet paper hanging off her shoe as she walked down the hall, or if she had spinach in her teeth. It was a strange feeling to be scrutinized so carefully and to know all the same that no one would ever dare to tell her to her face that something was wrong.
The lawyer brought her the maiden cup of fresh coffee. “I wasn’t sure how you liked it, Your Honor,” she said, offering sugar and creamer cups.