Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  On the back of it, I had painted a pink heart and the words HANDLE WITH CARE. I pushed you out to the car and lifted you into your car seat, then folded the wheelchair into the back of the van. When I slid into the driver's seat and checked you in the rearview mirror, you were cradling your sore arm. 'Daddy,' you said, 'I don't want to go back there.'

  'I know, baby.'

  Suddenly I knew what I would do. I drove past our exit on the highway, to the Comfort Inn in Dover, and paid sixty-nine dollars for a room I had no plans to use. Strapped in your wheelchair, I pushed you to the indoor pool.

  It was empty on a Tuesday morning. The room smelled heavily of chlorine, and there were six chaise lounges in various states of disrepair scattered around. A skylight was responsible for the dance of diamonds on the surface of the water. A stack of green and white striped towels sat on a bench beneath a sign: SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  'Wills,' I said, 'you and I are going swimming.'

  You looked at me. 'Mom said I can't, until my shoulder--'

  'Mom isn't here to find out, is she?'

  A smile bloomed on your face. 'What about our bathing suits?'

  'Well, that's part of the plan. If we stop off home to get our suits, Mom'll know something's up, won't she?' I stripped off my T-shirt and sneakers, and stood before you in a pair of faded cargo shorts. 'I'm good to go.'

  You laughed and tried to get your shirt over your head, but you couldn't lift your arm high enough. I helped, and then shimmied your shorts down your legs so that you were sitting in the wheelchair in your underpants. They said THURSDAY on the front, although it was Tuesday. On the butt was a yellow smiley face.

  After four months in the spica cast, your legs were thin and white, too reedy to support you. But I held you under the armpits as you walked toward the water and then sat you down on the steps. From a supply bin against the far wall, I took a kid's life jacket and zipped it onto you. I carried you in my arms to the middle of the pool.

  'Fish can swim at sixty-eight miles an hour,' you said, clutching at my shoulders.

  'Impressive.'

  'The most common name for a goldfish is Jaws.' You wrapped your arm around my neck in a death grip. 'A can of Diet Coke floats in a pool. Regular Coke sinks . . .'

  'Willow?' I said. 'I know you're nervous. But if you don't close your mouth, a lot of water's going to go into it.' And I let go.

  Predictably, you panicked. Your arms and legs started pinwheeling, and the combined force flipped you onto your back, where you splashed and stared up at the ceiling. 'Daddy! Daddy! I'm drowning!'

  'You're not drowning.' I lifted you upright. 'It's all about those stomach muscles. The ones you didn't want to work on today at therapy. Think about moving slowly and staying upright.' More gently this time, I released you.

  You bobbled, your mouth sinking under the water. Immediately, I lunged for you, but you righted yourself. 'I can do it,' you said, maybe to me and maybe to yourself. You moved one arm through the water, and then the other, compensating for the shoulder that was still healing. You bicycled your legs. And incrementally, you came closer to me. 'Daddy!' you shouted, although I was only two feet away. 'Daddy! Look at me!'

  I watched you moving forward, inch by inch. 'Look at you,' I said, as you paddled under the weight of your own conviction. 'Look at you.'

  'Sean,' Charlotte said that night, when I thought she might have already fallen asleep beside me, 'Marin Gates called today.'

  I was on my side, staring at the wall. I knew why the lawyer had phoned Charlotte: because I hadn't answered the six messages she'd left on my cell, asking me whether I had returned the signed papers agreeing to file a wrongful birth lawsuit - or if they'd somehow gotten lost in the mail.

  I knew exactly where those papers were: inside the glove compartment of my car, where I'd shoved them after Charlotte handed them to me a month ago. 'I'll get around to it,' I said.

  Her hand lighted on my shoulder. 'Sean--'

  I rolled onto my back. 'You remember Ed Gatwick?' I asked.

  'Ed?'

  'Yeah. Guy I graduated from the academy with? He was on the job in Nashua. Responded to a call last week about suspicious activity at a residence, made by a neighbor. He told his partner he had a bad feeling about it, but he went inside, just in time for the meth lab in the kitchen to blow up in his face.'

  'How awful--'

  'My point being,' I interrupted, 'that you should always listen to your gut.'

  'I am,' Charlotte said. 'I did. You heard what Marin said. Most of these cases settle out of court anyway. It's money. Money that we could put to good use for Willow.'

  'Yeah, and Piper becomes the sacrificial lamb.'

  Charlotte got quiet. 'She has malpractice insurance.'

  'I don't think that protects her against backstabbing by her best friend.'

  She drew the sheet around her, sitting up in bed. 'She would do it if it was her daughter.'

  I stared at her. 'I don't think she would. I don't think most people would.'

  'Well, I don't care what other people think. Willow's opinion is the only one that counts,' Charlotte said.

  That, I realized, was the reason that I hadn't signed those damn papers. Like Charlotte, I was only thinking of you. I was thinking of the moment you realized that I wasn't a knight in shining armor. I knew it would happen eventually - that's what growing up is all about. But I didn't want to rush it. I wanted to be your champion for as long as I could keep you believing in me.

  'If Willow's opinion is the only one that counts,' I said, 'how are you going to explain to her what you're doing? I mean, you want to lie on the witness stand - say you would have aborted her - that's up to you. But to Willow, it might sound a hell of a lot like the truth.'

  Tears sprang to Charlotte's eyes. 'She's smart. She'll understand that it doesn't matter what it looks like on the surface. She'll know deep down that I love her.'

  It was a catch-22. My refusal to sign those papers didn't mean Charlotte wouldn't try to proceed without me. If I refused to sign those papers, the rift between the two of us would hurt you, too. But what if Charlotte's prediction came true - that the money we'd get as a payout would go a long way toward justifying whatever wrong we'd done to get it? What if this lawsuit made it possible for you to have any adaptive aid you needed, any therapy not covered by insurance?

  If I really wanted what was best for you, how could I sign those papers?

  How could I not ?

  Suddenly, I wanted to make Charlotte see how this was tearing me up inside. I wanted her to feel the same sick knot that I felt every time I opened up my glove compartment and saw that envelope. It was like Pandora's box - she had opened it, and what had flown out but a solution to a problem we never imagined could be solved. Closing the lid now wouldn't change anything; we couldn't unlearn what we now knew to be possible.

  I guess, if I was being honest, I wanted to punish her for putting me into this situation, where there was no black and white but a thousand shades of gray.

  She was surprised when I grabbed her and kissed her. She backed away at first, looking at me, and then leaned into my body, trusting me to take her down a dizzy road where I'd taken her a thousand times before. 'I love you,' I said. 'Do you believe that?'

  Charlotte nodded, and as soon as she did, I tightened my fingers in her hair, forcing her head back and pinning her to the mattress. 'Sean, you're crushing me,' she whispered, and I covered her mouth with one hand and roughly ripped aside her pajama bottoms with the other. I forced my way inside her, even as she fought against me, even as I watched her back arch with surprise and maybe pain, even as her eyes filled with tears. 'Doesn't matter what it looks like on the surface,' I whispered, her own words striking her like a whip. 'You know deep down that I love you.'

  I had started this wanting to make Charlotte feel like crap, but somehow, I wound up feeling like crap myself. So I rolled off her, yanking up my boxers. Charlotte turned away, curling into a ball. 'You bastard,' she s
obbed. 'You fucking bastard.'

  She was right; I was one. I had to be, or I wouldn't have been able to do what I did next: walk out to the car and get those papers from the glove compartment. Sit in the dark in the kitchen the whole of the night, staring at them, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something more acceptable. Knock down a shot of whiskey for each of the lines where Marin Gates had placed a little yellow Post-it arrow, pointing to the space where my signature was supposed to be.

  I fell asleep at the kitchen table, waking before the sun did. When I tiptoed into the bedroom, Charlotte was still sleeping. She was on her side curled like a snail, the sheet and comforter balled at the bottom of the bed. I pulled them over her gently, the way I sometimes did for you when you'd kicked your blankets loose.

  I left the papers, signed in all the right places, on the pillow beside her. With a note paper-clipped to the top. I'm sorry, I had written. Forgive me.

  Then I drove to work, wondering the whole time whether that message had been intended for Charlotte, for you, or for myself.

  Amelia

  Late August 2007

  L

  et's just say right off the bat that we lived in the sticks, and although my parents seemed to think this was going to be a huge benefit to me later in life (Why? Because I'd know what green grass smelled like firsthand? Because we didn't have to lock our front door?), I for one wished I'd had a vote when it came to settling down. Do you have any idea what it's like not to be able to get a cable modem when even Eskimos have them? Or to go shopping for school clothes at Wal-Mart because the nearest mall is an hour and a half away? Last year in social studies, when we were studying cruel and unusual punishment, I wrote a whole essay about living where the retail opportunities were somewhere between zero and nil, and although everyone in my class totally agreed with me, I only got a B, because my teacher was the kind of Birkenstock-granola hippie who thought Bankton, New Hampshire, was the best place on earth.

  Today, though, all the planets must have aligned, because my mother had agreed to road-trip to Target with you and Piper and Emma.

  It had been Piper's idea - right before the school year started she occasionally decided to do a mother-daughter shopping extravaganza. My mother usually had to be persuaded to come along, because we never seemed to have enough cash. Inevitably, Piper would wind up buying things for me, and my mother would feel guilty and swear she was never going shopping with Piper again. What's the big deal? Piper would say. I like making the girls happy. What's the big deal indeed? If Piper wanted to pad my wardrobe, I wasn't about to deny her that one small joy.

  When Piper called this morning, though, I thought my mother would jump at the opportunity. You had once again managed to outgrow a pair of shoes without ever wearing them. Usually it was just one or the other - the left one got used while the right foot was stuck in a cast for a few months - but with the spica you'd worn this spring, both your feet had managed to grow a whole size, and the soles of your old shoes were barely even scuffed. Now - six months later, when you were officially learning to walk again - it had taken my mother a week to figure out that the reason you winced every time she made you use the walker to get to the bathroom by yourself had nothing to do with pain in your legs but actually with your feet being stuffed into too-tight sneakers.

  To my surprise, my mother didn't want to go. She had been in a really weird mood; she had practically leapt out of her skin when I came up behind her while she was drinking a cup of coffee and reading some legal papers that looked totally boring and full of words like IN RE and WHOSOEVER. And when Piper called and I handed her the phone, Mom dropped it twice. 'I can't,' I heard her tell Piper. 'I've got some really important errands to run.'

  'Please, Mom?' I said, dancing around in front of her. 'I promise, I won't even take a stick of gum from Piper. Not like last time.'

  Something I said must have struck a chord, because she looked down at those papers and then up at me. 'Last time,' she repeated absently, and the next thing I knew, we were on our way to Concord, to go shopping. My mother was still a little out of it, but I didn't notice. Piper's van had a DVD system, and you and Emma and I had wireless headphones on so that we could listen to 13 Going on 30, which is the best movie ever. The last time I'd watched it had been at our house, and Piper had done the whole 'Thriller' dance along with Jennifer Garner, leading Emma to proclaim that she just wanted to die of embarrassment on the spot, even though I secretly thought it was really cool that Piper could remember all the steps.

  Two hours later, Emma and I were running through the juniors' section. Even though most of the styles seemed to have been made by Skanky Ho Enterprises, with V-necks that reached down to the belly button and pants so low-rise they could have been kneesocks, it was exciting to shop in an area that wasn't the kids' section. Across the aisle, Piper was pushing your wheelchair, navigating aisles that were completely not made for disabled people. Meanwhile, my mother - whose mood had deteriorated, if possible - kept kneeling down to try shoes on your feet. 'Did you know those plastic thingies on the ends of the shoelaces are called aglets?' you asked.

  'As a matter of fact I did,' she said, exasperated, 'because you told me the last time we did this.'

  I watched Emma reach up on her tiptoes to take down a blouse that would, as my mother would say, show the entire world your business. 'Emma!' I said. 'You've got to be kidding!'

  'You wear it with a camisole,' she said, and I pretended I had known that all along. The truth is that Emma could probably put that on and look like she was sixteen, because she was already five-five, and tall and thin like her mother. I didn't wear camisoles. It was just too depressing to know that the roll at my belly stuck out farther than my boobs.

  I slipped my hand into the pocket of my sweatshirt. Inside was a plastic Ziploc bag. I'd been carrying them around for the past week. Twice now I'd made myself sick in places that weren't bathrooms - once behind the gym at school, once in Emma's kitchen, when she was upstairs looking for a CD. I'd do it when it got to the point where it was all I could think about - Would I be found out? Would it stop the ache in my belly? - and the only way to make it go away was to just give in and do it already, except after it happened, I hated myself for not holding out.

  'This would look good on you,' Emma said, holding up a pair of sweatpants big enough for an elephant.

  'I don't like yellow,' I said, and I wandered across the aisle.

  Piper and my mother were in the middle of a conversation. Well, that's not really accurate. Piper was in the middle of a conversation and my mother was physically present in the same general space. She was zoned out, nodding at the right times but not really listening. She thought she could fool people, but she wasn't that great an actress. Take you, for example. How many fights had she had with Dad about whether or not to hire a lawyer, while you were sitting in the next room? And then, when you asked why they were arguing, she'd insist they weren't. Did she really think you were so incredibly involved in Drake & Josh episodes that you weren't hanging on every word?

  I wished she'd listen. I wished she could hear the things you asked me when we were lying in bed at night, before we fell asleep: Amelia, will we all live here forever? Amelia, will you help me brush my teeth, so I don't have to ask Mom to do it? Amelia, can your parents ever send you back to the place you came from?

  Was it any wonder that I found myself staring in the mirror at my disgusting face and even more disgusting body? My mother was going to a lawyer to sue over a kid who had turned out less than perfect.

  'Where's Emma?' Piper asked.

  'In the juniors' section, scoping out tops.'

  'Decent ones, or the tight kind that look like ads for porn?' Piper asked. 'Some of the clothing they make for kids your age must be illegal.'

  I laughed. 'Emma could always hire a lawyer. We know a good one.'

  'Amelia!' my mother cried out. 'Look what you made me do!' But she said this before she managed to knock over the entire displ
ay of blouses.

  'Oh, shoot,' Piper said, hurrying to fix the racks. Over her head, my mother gave me a tight-lipped shake of her head.

  She was angry at me, and I didn't even know why. I slipped through the forest of girls' clothing, my hands spread to brush against the vines of pant legs and sleeves. I ducked my head as I passed by Emma again. What had I done wrong?

  Then again, what didn't I do wrong?

  It was almost like she was mad I had brought up the lawyer in front of Piper. But Piper was her best friend. This legal thing was front and center in our house, like a dinosaur at the dinner table that we all pretended wasn't sticking its big, slimy face into the mashed potatoes. She couldn't have forgotten to mention it to Piper, could she?

  Unless . . . she very intentionally hadn't.

  Was this why she hadn't wanted to go shopping with Piper? Why we hadn't recently dropped by Piper's house when we were in the neighborhood, the way we used to? When my mother talked about damages and getting enough money to really take care of you the way that would help you the most, I hadn't really given much thought to the person who'd be on the receiving end of the lawsuit.

  If it was the doctor she had been seeing when she was pregnant . . . well, that was Piper.

  Suddenly I wasn't the only person in my mother's life who had turned out to be a disappointment. But instead of feeling let off the hook, I just felt sick.

  I stood up, turning corners blindly, until I found myself standing in the lingerie section. I was crying by then, and just my luck, the only Target employee who was on the floor instead of the cash registers happened to be standing right in front of me. 'Hon?' she asked. 'Are you okay? Are you lost?'

  As if I were five years old and had been separated from my mother. Which, actually, was not all that far off the mark.

  'I'm fine,' I said, ducking my head. 'Thanks.' I pushed past her, heading through the bras, even as one got caught on my sleeve. It was pink and silky, with brown polka dots. It looked like the kind of thing Emma would wear.

  Instead of putting it back on its hanger, I stuffed it into my pocket, next to my Ziploc bags. I curled my fingers around it and checked to see whether the employee had been watching. The satin was cold between my fingers. I could swear it was pulsing, a secret heartbeat.