Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  I opened the letter and started to read.

  In the Matter of Sean P. O'Keefe and Charlotte A. O'Keefe; Case Number 2008-R-0056

  Dear Ms. Charlotte A. O'Keefe,

  Please be advised that we have received in this office a Petition for Divorce in the above named matter. If you wish, you or your attorney may come to Rockingham County Family Court within ten days and accept service.

  Until further order of the court, each party is restrained from selling, transferring, encumbering, hypothecating, concealing, or in any manner whatsoever disposing of any property, real or personal, belonging to either or both parties except (1) by written agreement of both parties or (2) for reasonable and necessary living expenses or (3) in the ordinary and usual course of business.

  If you do not accept service within the ten days, the Petitioner may elect to have you served by alternate means.

  Very truly yours,

  Micah Healey, Coordinator I did not realize I'd cried out until Amelia skidded into the kitchen. 'What's the matter?'

  I shook my head. I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak.

  Amelia snatched the letter out of my hand before I could recover. 'Dad wants a divorce?'

  'I'm sure this is some kind of mistake,' I said, getting to my feet and retrieving the letter. Of course I had known it was coming, hadn't I? When your husband moves out of the house for months, you cannot fool yourself into thinking all is normal. But still . . . I folded the letter in half, then folded it again. A magic trick, I thought desperately. And when I unfold it, all the writing will have disappeared.

  'Where's the mistake?' Amelia snapped. 'Wake up, Mom. That's a pretty clear way of saying he doesn't feel like having you in his life anymore.' She hugged her arms tight across her middle. 'Come to think of it, there's a lot of that going around lately.'

  She whirled around to storm upstairs, but I grabbed her arm. 'Don't tell Willow,' I begged.

  'She's not nearly as dumb as you think. She can tell what's going on, even when you try to hide it.'

  'That's exactly why I don't want her to know. Please, Amelia.'

  Amelia yanked free. 'I don't owe you anything,' she muttered, and she fled.

  I sank into a kitchen chair. Huge patches of my body seemed to have gone numb. Was that what Sean had felt? That I'd lost all sense - both literally and figuratively?

  Oh, God. He'd get my voice message on his cell phone, which - in light of this document - turned me into the world's biggest fool.

  I had no idea how divorces worked. Could he get one if I said I didn't want to? Once the complaint was filed with the court, could you change your mind? Could I change Sean's?

  With shaking hands, I reached for the telephone and called Marin Gates's private line. 'Charlotte,' she said. 'How was the convention?'

  'Sean's suing for divorce.'

  The line went silent.

  'I'm sorry,' Marin finally said, and I think she really was. But a moment later, she was all business. 'You need a lawyer.'

  'You are a lawyer.'

  'Not the kind who can help you with this. Call Sutton Roarke - she's listed in the yellow pages. She's the best divorce attorney I know.'

  I drew in my breath. 'I feel . . . like such a loser. Like a statistic.'

  'Well,' Marin said quietly. 'No one likes to hear they're not wanted.'

  Her words made me think of Amelia's, and felt like the snap of a whip. And they made me think of my testimony in court, which Marin and I had been practicing. But before I could respond, she spoke again. 'I truly wish it hadn't come to this, Charlotte.'

  I had so many questions: How did I tell you without hurting you? How could I possibly keep forging ahead with this lawsuit, knowing another one was pending? When I heard my voice, though, I was asking something entirely different. 'What happens next?' I said, but Marin had already hung up the phone.

  I made an appointment with Sutton Roarke, and then went through the motions of cooking and feeding you girls dinner. 'Can I call Daddy?' you asked as soon as we sat down. 'I want to tell him about this weekend.'

  My head was throbbing, my throat felt like it had been beaten from the inside with fists. Amelia looked at me and then down at her peas. 'I'm not hungry,' she said. Moments later, she asked to be excused, and I didn't even try to keep her at the table. What was the point, when I didn't feel like being there, either?

  I set the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. I wiped down the table. I put up a load of laundry, all with the motions of an automaton. I kept thinking that, if I did these ordinary things, maybe my life would bounce back into normal.

  As I sat on the lip of the tub, helping you with your bath, you talked enough for both of us. 'Niamh and me, we've both got Gmail accounts,' you chattered. 'And every morning at six forty-five, when we wake up before school, we're going to get online and talk to each other.' You twisted around to look at me. 'Can we invite her over sometime?'

  'Hmm?'

  'Mom, you're not even listening. I asked about Niamh--'

  'What about her?'

  You rolled your eyes. 'Just forget it.'

  We dressed you in your pajamas, and I tucked you in, kissed you good night. An hour later, when I went to check on Amelia, she was already under the covers, but then I heard her whispering and pulled back the sheets to find her on the telephone. 'What!' she said, as if I'd accused her of something, and she curled the receiver into her chest like a second heart. I backed out of the room, too emotionally wrecked to wonder what she was hiding, distantly aware that she'd most likely learned that skill from me.

  When I went downstairs, a shadow moved in the living room, nearly scaring me to death. Sean stepped forward. 'Charlotte--'

  'Don't. Just . . . don't, okay?' I said, my hand still covering my hammering heart. 'The girls are already in bed, if you've come to see them.'

  'Do they know?'

  'Do you even care?'

  'Of course I do. Why do you think I'm doing this?'

  A small, desperate sound rose in my throat. 'I honestly don't know, Sean,' I said. 'I realize things haven't been great between us--'

  'That's the understatement of the century--'

  'But this is like having a hangnail and getting your arm amputated as treatment, isn't it?'

  He followed me into the kitchen, where I poured powder into the dishwasher and stabbed at the buttons. 'It's more than a hangnail. We've been bleeding out. You can tell yourself what you want to about our marriage, but that doesn't mean it's the truth.'

  'So the only answer is a divorce?' I said, shocked.

  'I really didn't see any other way.'

  'Did you even try? I know it's been hard. I know you're not used to me sticking up for something I want instead of what you want. But, my God, Sean. You accuse me of being litigious, and then you go file for divorce? You don't even talk about it with me? You don't try marriage counseling or going to Father Grady?'

  'What good would that have done, Charlotte? You haven't listened to anyone but yourself for a long time. This isn't overnight, like you think. This has been a year. A year of me waiting for you to wake up and see what you've done to this family. A year of wishing you'd put as much effort into our marriage as you do into taking care of Willow.'

  I stared at him. 'You did this because I've been too busy to have sex?'

  'No, see, that's exactly what I mean. You take everything I say, and you twist it. I'm not the bad guy here, Charlotte. I'm just the one who never wanted anything to change.'

  'Right. So instead we're just supposed to sit in a rut, trying to keep afloat for how many more years? At what point do we face foreclosure on the house or declare bankruptcy--'

  'Stop making this about money--'

  'It is about money,' I cried. 'I just spent a weekend with hundreds of people who have rich, happy, productive lives, and who also have OI. Is it a crime to want the same opportunities for Willow?'

  'How many of their parents sued for wrongful birth?' Sean accused.

  I saw,
for a blink of an eye, the faces of the women in the restroom who'd judged me just as harshly. But I wasn't about to tell Sean about them. 'Catholics don't get divorced,' I said.

  'They don't think about aborting babies, either,' Sean said. 'You're conveniently Catholic, when it suits you. That's not fair.'

  'And you've always seen the world in black and white, when what I'm trying to prove - what I'm certain of - is that it's really just a thousand shades of gray.'

  'That,' Sean said softly, 'is why I went to a lawyer. That's why I didn't ask you to go to counseling, or to the priest. That world of yours, it's so gray you can't see the landmarks anymore. You don't know where you're headed. If you want to get lost in there, go ahead. But I'm not letting you take the girls down with you.'

  I could feel tears streaking down my face; I wiped them away with my sleeve. 'So that's it? Just like that? You don't love me anymore?'

  'I love the woman I married,' he said. 'And she's gone.'

  That was when I broke down. After a moment of hesitation, I felt Sean's arms come around me. 'Just leave me alone,' I cried, but my hands clenched his shirt even more tightly.

  I hated him, and at the same time, he was the one I had turned to for comfort for the past eight years. Old habits, they died hard.

  How long until I forgot the temperature of his hands on my skin? Until I didn't remember the smell of his shampoo? How long until I could not hear the sound of his voice, even when he wasn't speaking? I tried to store up every sensation, like grain for the winter.

  The moment cooled, until I stood uncomfortably in the circle of his embrace, awkwardly aware that he didn't want me there. Bravely, I took a step backward, putting inches between us. 'So what do we do now?'

  'I think,' Sean said, 'we have to be adults. No fighting in front of the girls. And maybe - if you're okay with it - I could move back in. Not into the bedroom,' he added quickly. 'Just the couch. Neither of us can afford to take care of two places, and the girls. The lawyer told me most people who are in the middle of a divorce stay in the same house. We just, you know, figure out a way so that if you're here, I'm not. And vice versa. But we both get to be with the kids.'

  'Amelia knows. She read the letter from the court,' I said. 'But not Willow.'

  Sean rubbed his chin. 'I'll tell her we're working some things out between us.'

  'That's a lie,' I said. 'That suggests there's still a chance.'

  Sean was quiet. He didn't say there was a chance. But he didn't say there wasn't, either.

  'I'll get you an extra blanket,' I said.

  That night in bed I lay awake, trying to list what I really knew about divorce.

  1. It took a long time.

  2. Very few couples did it gracefully.

  3. You were required to divide everything that belonged to both of you, which included cars and houses and DVDs and children and friends.

  4. It was expensive to surgically excise someone you loved from your life. The losses were not just financial but emotional.

  Naturally, I knew people who had been divorced. For some reason, it always seemed to happen when their kids were in fourth grade - all of a sudden, that year in the school phone directory, the parents would be listed individually instead of linked with ampersands. I wondered what it was about fourth grade that was so stressful on a marriage, or maybe it was just hitting that ten-to fifteen-year mark. If that was the case, Sean and I were precocious for our marital age.

  I had been a single mother for five years before I met and married Sean. Although I truly considered Amelia the one good element of a disastrous relationship, and never would have married her father, I also knew what it was like to have other women scan your left hand for an absent ring, or never to have another adult in the house to talk to after the kids were asleep. Part of what I loved about being married to Sean was the ease of it - letting him see me when my hair was Medusa-wild in the mornings and kiss me when my teeth weren't brushed yet, knowing which television show to click on when we sat down with a mutual sigh on the couch, instinctively recognizing which drawer housed his underwear or Tshirts or jeans. So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I'd forgotten to communicate?

  Divorced. I whispered the word out loud. It sounded like a snake's hiss. Divorced mothers seemed to have evolved into their own breed. Some went to the gym incessantly, hell-bent on getting remarried as soon as possible. Others just looked exhausted all the time. I remembered Piper once having a dinner party and not knowing whether to invite a woman who had recently been divorced because she didn't know whether it would be uncomfortable to be the only single in a room full of doubles. 'Thank God that's not us. Can you imagine having to date again?' Piper had shuddered. 'It's like being a teenager twice.'

  I knew there were couples who mutually decided that relationships were past repair, but it was still always one partner who brought up the solution of divorce. And even if the other spouse went along with it, she'd secretly be stunned at how quickly someone who claimed to care about you could imagine a life that didn't include you.

  My God.

  What Sean had done to me was exactly what I'd done to Piper.

  I reached for the telephone receiver on my nightstand and, although it was 2:46 in the morning, dialed Piper's number. The phone was next to her side of the bed, too, although she slept on the left and I slept on the right. 'Hello?' Piper said, her voice thick and unfamiliar.

  I covered the base of the receiver. 'Sean wants a divorce,' I whispered.

  'Hello?' Piper repeated. 'Hello!' There was an angry, muffled sigh, and the sound of something being knocked over. 'Whoever the hell this is, you shouldn't be calling this late.'

  Piper used to be accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night; as an OB, she was on call most of the time. Much in her life must have changed if this was her reaction, instead of the assumption that someone was in labor.

  Much in everyone's life had changed, and I had been the catalyst.

  The canned voice of the operator filled my ear. If you want to make a call, please hang up and try again.

  I pretended instead it was Piper. Oh, God, Charlotte, she would say. Are you all right? Tell me everything. Tell me every last little thing.

  The next morning I woke up with the panic of someone who knows she's overslept because the sun is too high and bright in the sky. 'Willow?' I called, leaping out of bed and running to your room. Every morning, you'd sing out to me, so that I could help you transition from bed to the bathroom and then back into your room to dress. Had I slept through it? Or had you?

  But your bedroom was empty, the sheets and comforters pulled tidy. Near Amelia's bed were your unpacked suitcases, zipped up and ready to be carried to the attic.

  As I went downstairs, I heard you laughing. Sean was standing at the stove with a dish towel wrapped around his head, flipping pancakes. 'It's supposed to be a penguin,' you said. 'Penguins don't have ears.'

  'Why couldn't you have just asked for something normal, like your sister did?' Sean said. 'She's got a perfect bear over there.'

  'Which would be cool,' Amelia said, 'if I hadn't asked for a lizard.' But she was smiling. When was the last time I'd seen Amelia smile before noon?

  'One penguin-slash-donkey, coming right up,' Sean said, sliding a pancake onto your plate.

  You both noticed me standing in the kitchen. 'Mom, look who woke me up today!' you said.

  'I think maybe you've got that backward, Wills,' Sean said. His smile did not quite reach his eyes as he met my gaze. 'I figured you could probably use a few extra hours of sleep.'

  I nodded and wrapped my robe tighter. Like origami, I thought. I could fold myself in half and then in half again, and so on, until I was someone else entirely. 'Thank you.'

  'Daddy!' you cried. 'The pancake's on fire!'

  Not on fire, exactly, but charred and smoking. 'Oh, shoot,' Sean said, whirling around to scrape it off the pan.

  'And here I thought you'd gone and lear
ned how to cook.'

  Sean looked up over the open trash can. 'It's amazing what desperation - and a box of Bisquick - can do for a guy,' he admitted. 'I thought, since I've got the day off, I'd hang out with the girls. Finish up the wheelchair ramp for Willow.'

  What he was telling me, I realized, was that this was the first step in our informal shared custody-shared household-split marriage situation. 'Oh,' I said, trying to sound nonchalant. 'I guess I'll just run some errands then.'

  'You should go out and have fun,' he suggested. 'See a movie. Visit a friend.'

  I didn't have any friends, anymore.

  'Right,' I said, forcing a smile. 'Sounds great.'

  There was a fine line, I thought an hour later as I pulled out of the driveway, between being kicked out of your house and not being welcome there, but from my vantage point, they looked pretty much the same. I drove to the gas station and filled up, and then just . . . well . . . began to aimlessly tool around in the car. For all of your life, I'd either been with you or been waiting for a phone call to tell me you had broken; this freedom was almost overwhelming. I didn't feel relieved, just untethered.

  Before I realized it, I had driven to Marin's office. This would have made me laugh if it wasn't so blatantly depressing. Grabbing my purse, I went inside and took the elevator upstairs. Briony, the receptionist, was on the phone when I entered, but she waved me back down the hallway.

  I knocked on Marin's door. 'Hi,' I said, peeking around the corner.

  She looked up. 'Charlotte! Come on in.' As I sat down in one of the leather chairs, she stood up and came around to lean against the desk. 'Did you talk to Sutton?'

  'Yes, it's . . . overwhelming.'

  'I can imagine.'

  'Sean's at my house now,' I blurted out. 'We're trying to work out a schedule, so that we're both taking care of the girls.'

  'That sounds awfully mature.'

  I glanced up at her. 'How can I miss him more when he's two feet away from me than when he's not around?'

  'You're not really missing him. You're missing the idea of what she could have been.'

  'He,' I corrected, and Marin blinked.

  'Right,' she said. 'Of course.'

  I hesitated. 'I know it's office hours and everything, but would you want to go grab a cup of coffee? I mean, we could pretend that it's an attorney-client thing . . .'