Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  It struck me, now, as I sat on the floor of Aubuchon Hardware, with a flamenco fan of color chips in my hand, that I had never been back to Newburyport since then. Charlotte and I had talked about it, but she hadn't wanted to commit to renting a house not knowing if you'd be in a cast that following summer. Maybe Emma and Rob and I would go down there next summer.

  But I wouldn't go, I knew that. I really didn't want to, without Charlotte.

  I took a quart of paint off the shelf and walked to the mixing station at the end of the aisle. 'Newburyport Blue, please,' I said, although I did not have a particular wall in mind to paint it on yet. I'd keep it in the basement, just in case.

  It was dark by the time I left Aubuchon Hardware, and when I got back home, Rob was washing plates and putting them into the dishwasher. He didn't even look at me when I walked into the kitchen, which is why I knew he was furious. 'Just say it,' I said.

  He turned off the faucet and slammed the door of the dishwasher into place. 'Where the hell have you been?'

  'I . . . I lost track of time. I was at the hardware store.'

  'Again? What could you possibly need there?'

  I sank down into a chair. 'I don't know, Rob. It's just the place that makes me feel good right now.'

  'You know what would make me feel good?' he said. 'A wife.'

  'Wow, Rob, I didn't think you'd ever go all Ricky Ricardo on me--'

  'Did you forget something today?'

  I stared at him. 'Not that I know of.'

  'Emma was waiting for you to drive her to the rink.'

  I closed my eyes. Skating. The new session had started; I was supposed to sign her up for private lessons so that she could compete this spring - something her last coach finally felt she was ready for. It was first come, first served; this might have blown her chance for the season. 'I'll make it up to her--'

  'You don't have to, because she called, hysterical, and I left the office to get her down there in time.' He sat down across from me, tilting his head. 'What do you do all day, Piper?'

  I wanted to point out to him the new tile floor in the mudroom, the fixture I'd rewired over this very table. But instead I looked down at my hands. 'I don't know,' I whispered. 'I really don't know.'

  'You have to get your life back. If you don't, she's already won.'

  'You don't know what this is like--'

  'I don't? I'm not a doctor, too? I don't carry malpractice insurance?'

  'That's not what I mean and you--'

  'I saw Amelia today.'

  I stared at him. 'Amelia?'

  'She came to the office to get her braces off.'

  'There's no way Charlotte would have--'

  'Hell hath no fury like a teenager who wants her orthodontia removed,' Rob said. 'I'm ninety-nine percent sure Charlotte had no idea she was there.'

  I felt heat rise to my face. 'Don't you think people might wonder why you're treating the daughter of the woman who's suing us?'

  'You,' he corrected. 'She's suing you.'

  I reeled backward. 'I can't believe you just said that.'

  'And I can't believe you'd expect me to throw Amelia out of the office.'

  'Well, you know what, Rob? You should have. You're my husband.'

  Rob got to his feet. 'And she's a patient. And that's my job. Something, unlike you, that I give a damn about.'

  He stalked out of the kitchen, and I rubbed my temples. I felt like a plane in a holding pattern, making the turns with the airport in view and no clearance to land. In that moment, I resented Charlotte so much that it felt like a river stone in my belly, solid and cold. Rob was right - everything I was, everything I'd been - had been put on a shelf because of what Charlotte had done to me.

  And in that instant I realized that Charlotte and I still had something in common: she felt exactly the same way about what I'd done to her.

  The next morning, I was determined to change. I set my alarm, and instead of sleeping past the school bus pickup, I made Emma French toast and bacon for breakfast. I told a wary Rob to have a nice day. Instead of renovating the house, I cleaned it. I went grocery shopping - although I drove to a town thirty miles away, where I wouldn't run into anyone familiar. I met Emma at school with her skating bag. 'You're taking me to the rink?' she said when she saw me.

  'Is that a problem?'

  'I guess not,' Emma said, and after a moment's hesitation, she launched into a diatribe about how unfair it was for the teacher to give an algebra test when he knew he was going to be absent that day and couldn't answer last-minute questions.

  I've missed this, I thought. I've missed Emma. I reached across the seat and smoothed my hand over her hair.

  'What's up with that?'

  'I just really love you. That's all.'

  Emma raised a brow. 'Okay, now you're skeeving me out. You aren't going to tell me you have cancer or something, are you?'

  'No, I just know I haven't exactly been . . . present . . . lately. And I'm sorry.'

  We were at a red light, and she faced me. 'Charlotte's a bitch,' she said, and I didn't even tell her to watch her language. 'Everybody knows the whole Willow thing isn't your fault.'

  'Everybody?'

  'Well,' she said. 'Me.'

  That's good enough, I realized.

  A few minutes later, we arrived at the skating rink. Red-cheeked boys dribbled out of the main glass doors, their enormous hockey bags turtled onto their backs. It always had seemed so funny to me, the dichotomy between the coltish figure skaters and the lupine hockey players.

  The minute I walked inside I realized what I'd forgotten - no, not forgotten, just blocked entirely from my mind: Amelia would be here, too.

  She looked so different from the last time I'd seen her - dressed in black, with fingerless gloves and tattered jeans and combat boots - and that blue hair. And she was arguing heatedly with Charlotte. 'I don't care who hears,' she said. 'I told you I don't want to skate anymore.'

  Emma grabbed my arm. 'Just go,' she said under her breath.

  But it was too late. We were a small town and this was a big story; the entire room, girls and their mothers, was waiting to see what would happen. And you, sitting on the bench beside Amelia's bag, noticed me, too.

  You had a cast on your right arm. How had you broken it this time? Four months ago, I would have known all the details.

  Well, unlike Charlotte, I had no intention of airing my dirty laundry in public. I drew in my breath and pulled Emma closer, dragging her into the locker room. 'Okay,' I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes. 'So, you do this private lesson thing for how long? An hour?'

  'Mom.'

  'I may just run out and pick up the dry cleaning, instead of hanging around to watch--'

  'Mom.' Emma reached for my hand, as if she were still little. 'You weren't the one who started this.'

  I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else. Here is what I had expected from my best friend: honesty. If she had spent the past six years of your life harboring the belief that I'd done something grievously wrong during her pregnancy, why didn't she ever bring it up? Why didn't she ever say, Hey, how come you didn't . . .? Maybe I was naive to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything. But I did. Like, for starters, an explanation.

  Emma finished lacing up her skates and hurried onto the ice. I waited a moment, then pushed out the locker room door and stood in front of the curved Plexiglas barrier. At one end of the rink was a tangle of beginners - a centipede of children in their snow pants and bicycle helmets, their legs widening triangles. When one went down, so did the others: dominoes. It wasn't so long ago that this had been Emma, and yet here she was on the other end of the rink, executing a sit-spin as her teacher skated around her, calling out corrections.

  I couldn't see Amelia - or you or Charlotte for that matter - anywhere.

  My pulse was almost back to normal by the time I reached my car. I slid into th
e driver's seat, turned on the engine. When I heard a sharp rap on the window, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  Charlotte stood there, a scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth, her eyes watering in the bite of the wind. I hesitated, then unrolled the window partway.

  She looked as miserable as I felt. 'I . . . I just had to tell you something,' she said, halting. 'This was never about you and me.'

  The effort of not speaking hurt; I was grinding my back teeth together.

  'I was offered a chance to give Willow everything she'll ever need.' Her breath formed a wreath around her face in the cold air. 'I don't blame you for hating me. But you can't judge me, Piper. Because if Willow had been your child . . . I know you would have done the same thing.'

  I let the words hang between us, caught on the guillotine of the window's edge. 'You don't know me as well as you think you do, Charlotte,' I said coldly, and I pulled out of the parking spot and away from the rink without looking back.

  Ten minutes later I burst into Rob's office during a consultation. 'Piper,' he said evenly, glancing down at the parents and preteen daughter, who were staring at my wild hair, my runny nose, the tears still streaking my face. 'I'm in the middle of something.'

  'Um,' the mother said quickly. 'Maybe we should just let you two talk.'

  'Mrs Spifield--'

  'No, really,' she said, getting up and summoning the rest of the family. 'We can give you a minute.'

  They hurried out of the office, expecting me to self-destruct at any moment, and maybe they weren't that far off the mark. 'Are you happy?' Rob exploded. 'You probably just cost me a new patient.'

  'How about Piper, what happened? Tell me what I can do to help you?'

  'Well, pardon me if the sympathy card's been played so often that the face has worn straight off. Jesus, I'm trying to run a practice here.'

  'I just ran into Charlotte at the skating rink.'

  Rob blinked at me. 'So?'

  'Are you joking?'

  'You live in the same town. A small town. It's a miracle you haven't crossed paths before. What did she do? Come after you with a sword? Call you out on the playground? Grow up, Piper.'

  I felt like the bull must when he is let out of his pen. Freedom, relief . . . and then comes the picador, lancing him. 'I'm going to leave,' I said softly. 'I'm going to pick up Emma, and before you come home tonight, I hope you'll think about the way you treated me.'

  'The way I treated you?' Rob said. 'I have been nothing but supportive. I have not said a word, even though you've abandoned your whole OB practice and turned into some female Ty Pennington. We get a lumber bill for two thousand dollars? No problem. You forget Emma's chorus recital because you're talking plumbing at Aubuchon Hardware? Forgiven. I mean, how ironic is it that you've become the do-it-yourself queen? Because you don't want our help. You want to wallow in self-pity instead.'

  'It's not self-pity.' My cheeks were burning. Could the Spifields hear us arguing in the waiting room? Could the hygienists?

  'I know what you want from me, Piper. I'm just not sure I can do it anymore.' Rob walked to the window, looking out onto the parking lot. 'I've been thinking a lot about Steven,' he said after a moment.

  When Rob was twelve, his older brother had committed suicide. Rob had been the one to find him, hanging from the rod in his closet. I knew all this; I'd known it since before we were married. It had taken me a while to convince Rob to have children, because he worried that his brother's mental illness was printed in his genes. What I hadn't known was that, these past few months, being with me had dragged Rob back to that time in his childhood.

  'Back then no one knew the name for bipolar disorder, or how to take care of it. So for seventeen years my parents went through hell. My whole childhood was colored by how Steven was feeling: if it was a good day or a bad day. And,' he said, 'it's how I got so good at taking care of a person who is completely self-absorbed.'

  I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we are trying to protect. 'Ever since you got served, I've been thinking about it. What if my parents had known in advance?' Rob said. 'What if they had been told, before Steven was born, that he was going to kill himself before his eighteenth birthday?'

  I felt myself go very still.

  'Would they have taken those seventeen years to get to know him? To have those good times that came between the crises? Or would they have spared themselves - and me - that emotional roller coaster?'

  I imagined Rob, coming into his brother's room to get him for dinner, and finding the older boy slumped to the side of the closet. The whole time I'd known my motherin-law, I'd never seen a smile rise all the way to her eyes. Was this why?

  'That's not a fair comparison,' I said stiffly.

  'Why not?'

  'Bipolar illness can't be diagnosed in utero. You're missing the point.'

  Rob raised his gaze to meet mine. 'Am I?' he said.

  Marin

  February 2008

  'J

  ust be yourselves,' I coached. 'We don't want you to do anything special because of the camera. Pretend we're not here.'

  I gave a nervous little smile and glanced at the twenty-two moon faces staring up at me: Ms. Watkins's kindergarten class. 'Does anyone have any questions?'

  A little boy raised his hand. 'Do you know Simon Cowell?'

  'No,' I said, grinning. 'Anyone else?'

  'Is Willow a movie star?'

  I glanced at Charlotte, who was standing just behind me, with the videographer I'd hired to film A Day in the Life of Willow, to be aired for the jury. 'No,' I said. 'She's still just your friend.'

  'Ooh! Ooh! Me!' A classically pretty destined-to-be-cheerleader girl pumped her hand like a piston until I pointed to her. 'If I pretend to be Willow's friend today, will I be on Entertainment Tonight ?'

  The teacher stepped forward. 'No, Sapphire. And you shouldn't have to pretend to be anyone's friend in here. We're all friends, right?'

  'Yes, Ms. Watkins,' the class intoned.

  Sapphire? That girl's name was really Sapphire? I'd looked at the masking tape above the wooden cubbies when we first came in - names like Flint and Frisco and Cassidy. Did no one name their kids Tommy or Elizabeth anymore?

  I wondered, not for the first time, if my birth mother had picked out names for me. If she'd called me Sarah or Abigail, a secret between the two of us that was overturned, like fresh earth, when my adoptive parents came and started my life over.

  You were using your wheelchair today, which meant kids had to move out of the way to accommodate you if you approached with your aide to work at the art table or use Cuisenaire rods. 'This is so strange,' Charlotte said softly. 'I never get to watch her during school. I feel like I've been admitted to the inner sanctum.'

  I had hired the camera crew to film one entire day with you. Although you were verbal enough to hold your own as a witness during this trial, putting you on the stand would not have been humane. I couldn't bring myself to have you in the courtroom when your mother was testifying out loud about wanting to terminate her pregnancy.

  We'd shown up on your doorstep at six a.m., in time to watch Charlotte come into your room to rouse you and Amelia. 'Oh, my God, this sucks,' Amelia had groaned when she opened her eyes and saw the videographer. 'The whole world's going to see my bed hair.'

  She had jumped up and run to the bathroom, but with you, it took more time. Every transition was careful - from the bed to the walker, from the walker to the bathroom, from the bathroom back to the bedroom to get dressed. Because mornings were the most painful for you - the curse of sleeping on a healing fracture - Charlotte had given you pain medication thirty minutes before we arrived, then let it start working to ease the soreness in your arm while you dozed for a while before she helped you get out of bed. Charlotte picked out a sweatshirt that zippered up the front so that you woul
dn't have to raise your arms to slip it over your head - your latest cast had been removed only a week ago and your upper arm was still stiff. 'Besides your arm, what hurts today?' Charlotte asked.

  You seemed to do a mental inventory. 'My hip,' you said.

  'Like yesterday, or worse?'

  'The same.'

  'Do you want to walk?' Charlotte asked, but you shook your head.

  'The walker makes my arm ache,' you said.

  'Then I'll get the chair.'

  'No! I don't want to use the chair--'

  'Willow, you don't have a choice. I'm not going to carry you around all day.'

  'But I hate the chair--'

  'Then you'll just have to work hard so you get out of it faster, right?'

  Charlotte explained, on camera, that you were caught between a rock and a hard place - the arm injury, an old wound, was still healing, but the hip pain was new. The adaptive equipment - a walker to help you stand with support - meant putting pressure on your arm, which you could do for only short periods of time, and which left instead only the dreaded folding manual wheelchair. You hadn't been fitted for a new one since you were two; at age six, you were nearly twice that size and complained of back and muscle pain after a full day's use - but insurance wouldn't upgrade your chair until you were seven.

  I had expected a flurry of morning activity, made even more overwhelming by all of your needs, but Charlotte moved methodically - letting Amelia run around trying to find lost homework while she brushed your hair and fixed it in two braids, cooked scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, and loaded you into the car along with the walker, the thirty-pound wheelchair, a standing table, and the braces to use during physical therapy. You couldn't take the bus - jarring over bumps could cause microfractures - so Charlotte drove you instead, dropping Amelia off at the middle school on the way.

  I followed you in my own van. 'What's the big deal?' the cameraman asked when we were alone in the car. 'She's just small and disabled, so what?'

  'She also can snap a bone if you hit the brakes,' I said. But there was a part of me that knew the cameraman was right. A jury watching Charlotte tie her daughter's shoes and strap her into a car seat like an infant would think your life was no worse than any baby's. What we needed was something more dramatic - a fall or, better yet, a fracture.