by Jodi Picoult
Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.
The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. What if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?
Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?
*
Campbell calls my father at the station when we're having lunch, and says that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid way to put it, since we all know he's talking about my mother. He says we have to meet at three o'clock in his office, no matter that it's Sunday.
I sit on the floor with Judge's head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he doesn't even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and (since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She's put on some makeup. But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone else, once. I suppose we all were.
"Hello," she says quietly.
"Ms. Fitzgerald," Campbell replies. Ice.
My mother's eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the floor. "Hi," she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to hug me, but she stops.
"You called this meeting, Counselor," Campbell prompts.
My mother sits down. "I know. I was . . . well, I'm hoping that we can clear this up. I want us to make a decision, together."
Campbell raps his fingers on the table. "Are you offering us a deal?"
He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him. "Yes, I guess I am." She turns her chair toward me, as if only the two of us are in the room. "Anna, I know how much you've done for Kate. I also know she doesn't have many chances left . . . but she might have this one."
"My client doesn't need coercing--"
"It's okay, Campbell," I say. "Let her talk."
"If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn't work, if things don't wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate--well, I will never ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last thing?"
By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither of us has moved.
I glance at my father, but he's gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead of getting involved.
"Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be necessary in the future to prolong Kate's life?" Campbell clarifies.
My mother takes a deep breath. "Yes."
"We need, of course, to discuss it."
When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn't stupid enough to believe in Santa. It's Mom and Dad, he explained, and I fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary's mailbox. And I steadfastly did not tell my parents, although I dropped other hints about toys I hoped for that year.
On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because she didn't know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa, nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be.
Maybe Campbell thinks this is about the law, but really, it's about my mother. I get up from the floor and fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit. It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I've been saving come out of their hiding place. "Oh, Anna," she cries into my hair. "Thank God. Thank God."
I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn't. "I can't."
My mother's body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches the crown of my head. That's it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and walks out of the office.
Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever seen him look. "Anna," he says. "Is this really what you want?"
I open my mouth. And find an answer.
JULIA
"DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he's an asshole," I ask my sister, "or in spite of it?"
Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a movie she's seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing. "If you make me miss the end, Julia, I'll kill you."
"'See ya, Katie,'" I quote for her. "'See ya, Hubbell.'"
She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music swells. "Barbra Streisand," Izzy says, "is the bomb."
"I thought that was a gay men's stereotype." I look up over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow's hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in Anna Fitzgerald's best interests. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether I side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.
"I thought we were talking about Campbell," Izzy says.
"No, I was talking about Campbell. You were swooning." I rub my temples. "I thought you might be sympathetic."
"About Campbell Alexander? I'm not sympathetic. I'm apathetic."
"You're right. That is what kind of pathetic you are."
"Look, Julia. Maybe it's hereditary," Izzy says. She gets up and starts rubbing the muscles of my neck. "Maybe you have a gene that attracts you to absolute jerks."
"Then you have it, too."
"Well." She laughs. "Case in point."
"I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record."
Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I'm drinking and finishes it off. "What happened to this being strictly professional?"
"It is. There's just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind wishing otherwise."
Izzy sits back down on the couch. "The problem, you know, is that you never forget your first one. And even if your brain's smart about it, your body's got the IQ of a fruit fly."
"It's just so easy with him, Iz. It's like we're picking up where we left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows everything he needs to about me." I look at her. "Can you fall for someone because you're lazy?"
"Why don't you just screw him and get it out of your system?"
"Because," I say, "as soon as it's over, that's one more piece of the past I won't be able to get rid of."
"I can fix you up with one of my friends," Izzy suggests.
"They all have vaginas."
"See, you're looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he's like marzipan frosting on a sardine."
"You
think he's gorgeous?"
Izzy rolls her eyes. "You," she says, "are doomed."
When the doorbell rings, Izzy goes to look through the peephole. "Speak of the devil."
"It's Campbell?" I whisper. "Tell him I'm not here."
Izzy opens the door just a few inches. "Julia says she's not here."
"I'm going to kill you," I mutter, and walk up behind her. Pushing her out of the way, I undo the chain and let Campbell and his dog inside.
"The reception here just keeps getting warmer and fuzzier," he says.
I cross my arms. "What do you want? I'm working."
"Good. Sara Fitzgerald just offered us a plea bargain. Come out to dinner with me and I'll tell you all about it."
"I am not going out to dinner with you," I tell him.
"Actually, you are." He shrugs. "I know you, and eventually you're going to give in because even more than you don't want to be with me, you want to know what Anna's mother said. Can't we just cut to the chase?"
Izzy starts laughing. "He does know you, Julia."
"If you don't go willingly," Campbell adds, "I have no problem using brute force. Although it's going to be considerably more difficult for you to cut your filet mignon if your hands are tied together."
I turn to my sister. "Do something. Please."
She waves at me. "See ya, Katie."
"See ya, Hubbell," Campbell replies. "Great movie."
Izzy looks at him, considering. "Maybe there's hope," she says.
*
"Rule number one," I tell him. "We talk about the trial, and nothing but the trial."
"So help me God," Campbell adds. "And may I just say you look beautiful?"
"See, you've already broken the rule."
He pulls into a parking lot near the water and cuts the engine. Then he gets out of the car and comes around to my side to help me out. I look around, but I don't see anything resembling a restaurant. We are at a marina filled with sailboats and yachts, their honey-colored decks tanning in the late sun. "Take off your sneakers," Campbell says.
"No."
"For God's sake, Julia. This isn't the Victorian age; I'm not going to attack you because I see your ankle. Just do it, will you?"
"Why?"
"Because right now you've got an enormous pole up your ass and this is the only G-rated way I can think of to make you relax." He pulls off his own deck shoes and sinks his feet into the grass growing along the edge of the parking lot. "Ahhh," he says, and he spreads his arms wide. "Come on, Jewel. Carpe diem. Summer's almost over; better enjoy it while you can."
"What about the plea bargain--"
"What Sara said is going to remain the same whether or not you go barefoot."
I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna. I want to believe the latter, idiot that I am. Campbell waits patiently, the dog at his side. Finally I untie my sneakers and peel off my socks. I step out onto the strip of lawn.
Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction. Campbell sits down on the grass. "What's rule number two?"
"That I get to make up all the rules," I say.
When he smiles at me, I'm lost.
*
Last night, Seven the Bartender slipped a martini into my waiting hand and asked me what I was hiding from.
I took a sip before I answered, and reminded myself why I hate martinis--they're straight bitter alcohol, which of course is the point, but they also taste that way, which is always somehow disappointing. "I'm not hiding," I told him. "I'm here, aren't I?"
It was early at the bar, just dinnertime. I stopped in on my way back from the fire station, where I'd been with Anna. Two guys were making out in a booth in the corner, one lone man was sitting at the other end of the bar. "Can we change the channel?" He gestured toward the TV, which was broadcasting the evening news. "Jennings is so much hotter than Brokaw."
Seven flicked the remote, then turned back to me. "You're not hiding, but you're sitting in a gay bar at dinnertime. You're not hiding, but you're wearing that suit like it's armor."
"Well, I'd definitely take fashion advice from a guy with a pierced tongue."
Seven lifted a brow. "One more martini, and I could convince you to go see my man Johnston and get your own done. You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots."
I took another sip of the martini. "You don't know me."
At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled.
"Maybe," Seven said, "but neither do you."
*
Dinner turns out to be bread and cheese--well, a baguette and Gruyere--on board a thirty-foot sailboat. Campbell rolls up his pants like a castaway and sets the rigging and hauls line and catches the wind until we are so far away from the shore of Providence that it is only a line of color, a distant, jeweled necklace.
After a while, when it becomes clear to me that any information Campbell feels like providing me with won't be doled out until after dessert, I give in. I lie on my back with my arm draped over the sleeping dog. I watch the sail, loose now, flap like the great white wing of a pelican. Campbell comes up from belowdecks, where he's been hunting down a corkscrew, and holds out two glasses of red wine. He sits down on the other side of Judge and scratches behind the German shepherd's ears. "You ever think about being an animal?"
"Figuratively? Or literally?"
"Rhetorically," he says. "If you hadn't drawn that human card."
I think about this for a while. "Is this a trick question? Like, if I say killer whale you're going to tell me that means I'm a ruthless, cold-blooded, bottom-feeder fish?"
"They're mammals," Campbell says. "And no. It's just a simple, making-polite-conversation inquiry."
I turn my head. "What would you be?"
"I asked you first."
Well, a bird is out of the question; I'm too scared of heights. I don't think I have the right attitude to be a cat. And I am too much of a loner to function in a pack, like a wolf or a dog. I think of saying something like tarsier just to show off, but then he'll ask what the hell that is and I can't remember if it is a rodent or a lizard. "A goose," I decide.
Campbell bursts out laughing. "As in Mother? Or Silly?"
It is because they mate for life, but I would rather fall overboard than tell him this. "What about you?"
But he doesn't answer me directly. "When I asked Anna the same question, she told me she'd be a phoenix."
The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist."
Campbell strokes the dog's head. "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them." Then he looks up at me. "How do you see her, Julia?"
The wine I have been drinking suddenly tastes bitter. Was all this--the charm, the picnic, the sunset sail--engineered to tip my hand in his favor at tomorrow's trial? Whatever I recommend as guardian ad litem will weigh heavily in Judge DeSalvo's decision, and Campbell knows it.
Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.
"I'm not going to tell you what my decision is," I say stiffly. "You can wait to hear it when you call me as a witness." I grab for the anchor and try to reel it in. "I'd like to go back now, please."
Campbell yanks the line out of my hand. "You already told me that you don't think it's in Anna's best interests to be a kidney donor for her sister."
"I also told you she's incapable of making that decision by herself."
"
Her father moved her out of the house. He can be her moral compass."
"And how long is that going to last? What about the next time?" I am furious at myself for falling for this. For agreeing to go out to dinner, for letting myself believe that Campbell might want to be with me, rather than use me. Everything--from his compliments on my looks to the wine sitting on the deck between us--has been coldly calculated to help him win his case.
"Sara Fitzgerald offered us a deal," Campbell says. "She said if Anna donates the kidney, she will never ask her to do anything for her sister again. Anna turned it down."
"You know, I could have the judge throw you in jail for this. It's completely unethical to try to seduce me into changing my mind."
"Seduce you? All I did was lay the cards on the table for you. I made your job easier."
"Oh, right. Forgive me," I say sarcastically. "This isn't about you. This isn't about me writing my report with a definite slant toward your client's petition. If you were an animal, Campbell, you know what you'd be? A toad. No, actually, you'd be a parasite on the belly of a toad. Something that takes what it needs without giving a single thing back."
A vein throbs blue in his temple. "Are you finished?"
"Actually, I'm not. Is anything that comes out of your mouth ever honest?"
"I did not lie to you."
"No? What's the dog for, Campbell?"
"Jesus Christ, will you shut up already?" Campbell says, and he pulls me into his arms and kisses me.
His mouth moves like a silent story; he tastes like salt and wine. There is no moment of relearning, of adjusting the patterns of the past fifteen years; our bodies remember where to go. He licks my name along the course of my throat. He presses himself so close to me that any hurt left on the surface between us spreads thin, becomes a binding instead of a boundary.
When we break away to breathe again, Campbell stares at me. "I'm still right," I whisper.
It is the most natural thing in the world when Campbell pulls my old sweatshirt up over my head, works at the clasp of my bra. When he kneels before me with his head over my heart, when I feel the water rocking the hull of the boat, I think that maybe this is the place for us. Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.