I will read ashes for you, if you ask me.
I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
I will tell how fire comes
And how fire runs as far as the sea.
—CARL SANDBURG, "Fire Pages"
WE ARE ALL, I SUPPOSE, beholden to our parents—the question is, how much? This is what runs through my mind while my mother jabbers on about my father's latest affair. Not for the first time, I wish for siblings—if only so that I would receive sunrise phone calls like this only once or twice a week, instead of seven.
"Mother," I interrupt, "I doubt that she's actually sixteen."
"You underestimate your father, Campbell."
Maybe, but I also know that he's a federal judge. He may leer after schoolgirls, but he'd never do anything illegal. "Mom, I'm late for court. I'll check back in with you later," I say, and I hang up before she can protest.
I am not going to court, but still. Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
I walk into the kitchen as I am knotting my tie. My apartment, it is a work of art. Sleek and minimalist, but what is there is the best that money can buy—a one-of-a-kind black leather couch; a flat screen television hanging on the wall; a locked glass case filled with signed first editions from authors like Hemingway and Hawthorne. My coffeemaker comes imported from Italy; my refrigerator is subzero. I open it and find a single onion, a bottle of ketchup, and three rolls of black-and-white film.
This, too, is no surprise—I rarely eat at home. Judge is so used to restaurant food he wouldn't recognize kibble if it slid its way down his throat. "What do you think?" I ask him. "Rosie's sound good?"
He barks as I fasten his service-dog harness. Judge and I have been together for seven years. I bought him from a breeder of police dogs, but he was specially trained with me in mind. As for his name, well, what attorney wouldn't want to be able to put a Judge in a crate every now and then?
Rosie's is what Starbucks wishes it was: eclectic and funky, crammed with patrons who at any time might be reading Russian lit in its original tongue or balancing a company's budget on a laptop or writing a screenplay while mainlining caffeine. Judge and I usually walk there and sit at our usual table, in the back. We order a double espresso and two chocolate croissants, and we flirt shamelessly with Ophelia, the twenty-year-old waitress. But today, when we walk inside, Ophelia is nowhere to be found and there is a woman sitting at our table, feeding a toddler in a stroller a bagel. This throws me for such a loop that Judge needs to tug me to the only spot that's free, a stool at the counter that looks out on the street.
Seven-thirty A.M., and already this day is a bust.
A heroin-thin boy with enough rings in his eyebrows to resemble a shower curtain rod approaches with a pad. He sees Judge at my feet. "Sorry, dude. No dogs allowed."
"This is a service dog," I explain. "Where's Ophelia?"
"She's gone, man. Eloped, last night."
Eloped? People still do that? "With whom?" I ask, though it's none of my business.
"Some performance artist who sculpts dog crap into busts of world leaders. It's supposed to be a statement."
I feel a momentary pang for poor Ophelia. Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow—beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.
The waiter reaches into his back pocket and hands me a plastic card. "Here's the Braille menu."
"I want a double espresso and two croissants, and I'm not blind."
"Then what's Fido for?"
"I have SARS," I say. "He's tallying the people I infect."
The waiter can't seem to figure out if I am joking. He backs away, unsure, to get my coffee.
Unlike my normal table, this one has a view of the street. I watch an elderly lady narrowly avoid the swipe of a taxi; a boy dances past with a radio three times the size of his head balanced on his shoulder. Twins in parochial school uniforms giggle behind the pages of a teen magazine. And a woman with a running river of black hair spills coffee on her skirt, dropping the paper cup on the pavement.
Inside me, everything stops. I wait for her to lift her face—to see if this could possibly be who I think it is—but she turns away from me, blotting the fabric with a napkin. A bus cuts the world in half, and my cell phone begins to ring.
I glance down at the incoming number: no surprise there. Turning off the power button without bothering to take my mother's call, I glance back at the woman outside the window, but by then the bus is gone and so is she.
I open the door of the office, already barking orders for Kerri. "Call Osterlitz and ask him whether he's available to testify during the Weiland trial; get a list of other complainants who've gone up against New England Power in the past five years; make me a copy of the Melbourne deposition; and phone Jerry at the court and ask who the judge is going to be for the Fitzgerald kid's hearing."
She glances up at me as the phone begins to ring. "Speaking of." She jerks her head in the direction of the door to my inner sanctum. Anna Fitzgerald stands on the threshold with a spray can of industrial cleaner and a chamois cloth, polishing the doorknob.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"What you told me to." She looks down at the dog. "Hey, Judge."
"Line two for you," Kerri interrupts. I give her a measured look—why she even let this kid in here is beyond me—and try to get into my office, but whatever Anna has put on the hardware makes it too greasy to turn. I struggle for a moment, until she grips the knob with the cloth and opens the door for me.
Judge circles the floor, finding the most comfortable spot. I punch the blinking light on the call row. "Campbell Alexander."
"Mr. Alexander, this is Sara Fitzgerald. Anna Fitzgerald's mother." I let this information settle. I stare at her daughter, polishing a mere five feet away.
"Mrs. Fitzgerald," I answer, and as expected, Anna stops in her tracks.
"I'm calling because… well, you see, this is all a misunderstanding."
"Have you filed a response to the petition?"
"That isn't going to be necessary. I spoke to Anna last night, and she isn't going to continue with her case. She wants to do anything she can to help Kate."
"Is that so." My voice falls flat. "Unfortunately, if my client is planning to call off her lawsuit, I'll need to hear it directly from her." I raise a brow, catch Anna's gaze. "You wouldn't happen to know where she is?"
"She went out for a run," Sara Fitzgerald says. "But we're going to come down to the courthouse this afternoon. We'll talk to the judge, and get this straightened out."
"I suppose I'll see you then." I hang up the phone and cross my arms, look at Anna. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"
She shrugs. "Not really."
"That's not what your mother seems to think. Then again, she's also under the impression that you're out playing Flo Jo."
Anna glances out into the reception area, where Kerri, naturally, is hanging on our words like a cat on a rope. She closes the door and walks up to my desk. "I couldn't tell her I was coming here, not after last night."
"What happened last night?" When Anna goes mute, I lose my patience. "Listen. If you're not going to go through with a lawsuit… if this is a colossal waste of my time… then I'd appreciate it if you had the honesty to tell me now, rather than later. Because I'm not a family therapist or your best buddy; I'm your attorney. And for me to be your attorney there actually has to be a case. So I will ask you one more time: have you changed your mind about this lawsuit?"
I expect this tirade to put an end to the litigation, to reduce Anna to a wavering puddle of indecision. But to my surprise, she looks right at me, cool and collected. "Are you still willing to represent me?" she asks.
Against my better judgment, I say yes.
"Then no," she says, "I haven't changed my mind."
The first time I sailed in a yacht club race with my father I was fourteen, and he was dead set against it. I wasn't old enough; I wasn't mature enough; the weather was too iffy. What he really was saying was that having me crew for him was more likely to lose him the cup than to win it. In my father's eyes, if you weren't perfect, you simply weren't.
His boat was a USA-1 class, a marvel of mahogany and teak, one he'd bought from the keyboard player J. Geils up in Marblehead. In other words: a dream, a status symbol, and a rite of passage, all wrapped up in a gleaming white sail and a honey-colored hull.
We hit the start dead-on, crossing the line at full sail just as the cannon shot off. I did my best to be a step ahead of where my father needed me to be—guiding the rudder before he even gave the order, jibing and tacking until my muscles burned with effort. And maybe this even would have had a happy ending, but then a storm blew in from the north, bringing sheets of rain and swells that stretched ten feet high, pitching us from height to gulley.
I watched my father move in his yellow slicker. He didn't seem to notice it was raining; he certainly didn't want to crawl into a hole and clutch his sick stomach and die, like I did. "Campbell," he bellowed, "come about."
But to turn into the wind meant to ride another roller coaster up and down. "Campbell," my father repeated, "now."
A trough opened up in front of us; the boat dipped so sharply I lost my footing. My father lunged past me, grabbing for the rudder. For one blessed moment, the sails went still. Then the boom whipped across, and the boat tacked along an opposite course.
"I need coordinates," my father ordered.
Navigating meant going down into the hull where the charts were, and doing the math to figure out what heading we had to be on to reach the next race buoy. But being below, away from the fresh air, only made it worse. I opened a map just in time to throw up all over it.
My father found me by default, because I hadn't returned with an answer. He poked his head down and saw me sitting in a puddle of my own vomit. "For Christ's sake," he muttered, and left me.
It took all the strength I had to pull myself up after him. He jerked the wheel and yanked at the rudder. He pretended I was not there. And when he jibed, he did not call it. The sail whizzed across the boat, ripping the seam of the sky. The boom flew, clipped me on the back of the head and knocked me out.
I came to just as my father was stealing the wind of another boat, mere feet from the finish line. The rain had mellowed to a mist, and as he put our craft between the airstream and our closest competitor, the other boat fell back. We won by seconds.
I was told to clean up my mess and take the taxi in, while my father sailed the dory to the yacht club to celebrate. It was an hour later when I finally arrived, and by then he was in high spirits, drinking scotch from the crystal cup he had won. "Here comes your crew, Cam," a friend called out. My father lifted the victory cup in salute, drank deeply, and then slammed it down so hard on the bar that its handle shattered.
"Oh," said another sailor. "That's a shame."
My father never took his eyes off me. "Isn't it, though," he said.
On the rear bumper of practically every third car in Rhode Island you'll find a red-and-white sticker celebrating the victims of some of the bigger criminal cases in the state: My Friend Katie DeCubellis Was Killed by a Drunk Driver. My Friend John Sisson Was Killed by a Drunk Driver. These are given out at school fairs and fund-raisers and hair salons, and it doesn't matter if you never knew the kid who got killed; you put them on your vehicle out of solidarity and secret joy that this tragedy did not happen to you.
Last year, there were red-and-white stickers with a new victim's name: Dena DeSalvo. Unlike the other victims, this was one I knew marginally. She was the twelve-year-old daughter of a judge, who reportedly broke down during a custody trial held shortly after the funeral and took a three-month leave of absence to deal with his grief. The same judge, incidentally, who has been assigned to Anna Fitzgerald's case.
As I make my way into the Garrahy Complex, where the family court is housed, I wonder if a man carrying around so much baggage will be able to try a case where a winning outcome for my client will precipitate the death of her teenage sister.
There is a new bailiff at the entrance, a man with a neck as thick as a redwood and most likely the brainpower to match. "Sorry," he says. "No pets."
"This is a service dog."
Confused, the bailiff leans forward and peers into my eyes. I do the same, right back at him. "I'm nearsighted. He helps me read the road signs." Stepping around the guy, Judge and I head down the hall to the courtroom.
Inside, the clerk is being taken down a peg by Anna Fitzgerald's mother. That's my assumption, at least, because in actuality the woman looks nothing like her daughter, who stands beside her. "I'm quite sure that in this case, the judge would understand," Sara Fitzgerald argues. Her husband waits a few feet behind her, apart.
When Anna notices me, a wash of relief rushes over her features. I turn to the clerk of the court. "I'm Campbell Alexander," I say. "Is there a problem?"
"I've been trying to explain to Mrs. Fitzgerald, here, that we only allow attorneys into chambers."
"Well, I'm here on behalf on Anna," I reply.
The clerk turns to Sara Fitzgerald. "Who's representing your party?"
Anna's mother is stricken for a moment. She turns to her husband. "It's like riding a bicycle," she says quietly.
Her husband shakes his head. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I don't want to do this. I have to do this."
The words fall into place like cogs. "Hang on," I say. "You're a lawyer?"
Sara turns. "Well, yes."
I glance down at Anna, incredulous. "And you neglected to mention this?"
"You never asked," she whispers.
The clerk gives us each an Entry of Appearance form, and summons the sheriff.
"Vern." Sara smiles. "Good to see you again."
Oh, this just keeps getting better.
"Hey!" The sheriff kisses her cheek, shakes hands with the husband. "Brian."
So not only is she an attorney; she also has all the public servants in the palm of her hand. "Are we finished with Old Home Day?" I ask, and Sara Fitzgerald rolls her eyes at the sheriff: The guy's a jerk, but what are you gonna do? "Stay here," I tell Anna, and I follow her mother back toward chambers.
Judge DeSalvo is a short man with a monobrow and a fondness for coffee milk. "Good morning," he says, waving us toward our seats. "What's with the dog?"
"He's a service dog, Your Honor." Before he can say anything else, I leap into the genial conversation that heralds every meeting in chambers in Rhode Island. We are a small state, smaller still in the legal community. It is not only conceivable that your paralegal is the niece or sister-in-law of the judge with whom you're meeting; it's downright likely. As we chat, I glance over at Sara, who needs to understand which of us is part of this game, and which of us isn't. Maybe she was an attorney, but not in the ten years I've been one.
She is nervous, pleating the bottom of her blouse. Judge DeSalvo notices. "I didn't know you were practicing law again."
"I wasn't planning to, Your Honor, but the complainant is my daughter."
At that, the judge turns to me. "Well, what's this all about, Counselor?"
"Mrs. Fitzgerald's youngest daughter is seeking medical emancipation from her parents."
Sara shakes her head. "That's not true, Judge." Hearing his name, my dog glances up. "I spoke to Anna, and she assured me she really doesn't want to do this. She had a bad day, and wanted a little extra attention." Sara lifts a shoulder. "You know how thirteen-year-olds can be."
The room grows so quiet, I can hear my own pulse. Judge DeSalvo doesn't know how thirteen-year-olds can be. His daughter died when she was twelve.
Sara's face flames red. Like the rest of this state, she knows about Dena DeSalvo. For all I know, she's got one of the bumper stickers on her minivan. "Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
The judge looks away. "Mr. Alexander, when was the last time you spoke with your client?"
"Yesterday morning, Your Honor. She was in my office when her mother called me to say it was a misunderstanding."
Predictably, Sara's jaw drops. "She couldn't have been. She was jogging."
I look at her. "You sure about that?"
"She was supposed to be jogging …"
"Your Honor," I say, "this is precisely my point, and the reason Anna Fitzgerald's petition has merit. Her own mother isn't aware of where she is on any given morning; medical decisions regarding Anna are made with the same haphazard—"
"Counselor, can it." The judge turns to Sara. "Your daughter told you she wanted to call off the lawsuit?"
"Yes."
He glances at me. "And she told you that she wanted to continue?"
"That's right."
"Then I'd better talk directly to Anna."
When the judge gets up and walks out of chambers, we follow. Anna is sitting on a bench in the hall with her father. One of her sneakers is untied. "I spy something green," I hear her say, and then she looks up.
"Anna," I say, at the exact same moment as Sara Fitzgerald.
It is my responsibility to explain to Anna that Judge DeSalvo wants a few minutes in private. I need to coach her, so that she says the right things, so that the judge doesn't throw the case out before she gets what she wants. She is my client; by definition, she is supposed to follow my counsel.
But when I call her name, she turns toward her mother.
I DON'T THINK ANYONE WOULD COME, to my funeral. My parents, I guess, and Aunt Zanne and maybe Mr. Ollincott, the social studies teacher. I picture the same cemetery we went to for my grandmother's funeral, although that was in Chicago so it doesn't really make any sense. There would be rolling hills that look like green velvet, and statues of gods and lesser angels, and that big brown hole in the ground like a split seam, waiting to swallow the body that used to be me.
I imagine my mom in a black-veiled Jackie O hat, sobbing. My dad holding on to her. Kate and Jesse staring at the shine of the coffin and trying to plea-bargain with God for all the times they did something mean to me. It is possible that some of the guys from my hockey team would come, clutching lilies and their composure. "That Anna," they'd say, and they wouldn't cry but they'd want to.
There would be an obituary on page twenty-four of the paper, and maybe Kyle McFee would see it and come to the funeral, his beautiful face twisted up with the what-ifs of the girlfriend he never got to have. I think there would be flowers, sweet peas and snapdragons and blue balls of hydrangea. I hope someone would sing "Amazing Grace," not just the famous first verse but all of them. And afterward, when the leaves turned and the snow came, every now and then I would rise in everyone's minds like a tide.
At Kate's funeral, everyone will come. There will be nurses from the hospital who've gotten to be our friends, and other cancer patients still counting their lucky stars, and townspeople who helped raise money for her treatments. They will have to turn mourners away at the cemetery gates. There will be so many lush funeral baskets that some will be donated to charity. The newspaper will run a story of her short and tragic life. Mark my words, it will be on the front page.
Judge DeSalvo's wearing flip-flops, the kind soccer players wear when they take off their cleats. I don't know why, but this makes me feel a little better. I mean, it's bad enough I'm here in this courthouse, being led toward his private room in the back; there's something nice about knowing that I'm not the only one who doesn't quite fit the part.
He takes a can from a dwarf fridge and asks me what I'd like to drink. "Coke would be great," I say.
The judge opens the can. "Did you know that if you leave a baby tooth in a glass of Coke, in a few weeks it'll completely disappear? Carbonic acid." He smiles at me. "My brother is a dentist in Warwick. Does that trick every year for the kindergartners."
I take a sip of the Coke, and imagine my insides dissolving. Judge DeSalvo doesn't sit down behind his desk, but instead takes a chair right next to me. "Here's the problem, Anna," he says. "Your mom is telling me you want to do one thing. And your lawyer is telling me you want to do another. Now, under normal circumstances, I'd expect your mother to know you better than some guy you met two days ago. But you never would have met this guy if you hadn't sought him out for his services. And that makes me think that I need to hear what you think about all this."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," he says.
"Does there have to be a trial?"
"Well… your parents can just agree to medical emancipation, and that would be that," the judge says.
Like that would ever happen.
"On the other hand, once someone files a petition—like you have—then the respondent—your parents—have to go to court. If your parents really believe you're not ready to make these kinds of decisions by yourself, they have to present their reasons to me, or else risk having me find in your favor by default."
I nod. I have told myself that no matter what, I'm going to keep cool. If I fall apart at the seams, there's no way this judge will think I'm capable of deciding anything. I have all these brilliant intentions, but I get sidetracked by the sight of the judge, lifting his can of apple juice.
Not too long ago, when Kate was in the hospital to get her kidneys checked out, a new nurse handed her a cup and asked for a urine sample. "It better be ready when I come back for it," she said. Kate—who isn't a fan of snotty demands—decided the nurse needed to be taken down a peg. She sent me out on a mission to the vending machines, to get the very juice that the judge is drinking now. She poured this into the specimen cup, and when the nurse came back, held it up to the light. "Huh," Kate said. "Looks a little cloudy. Better filter it through again." And then she lifted it to her lips and drank it down.
The nurse turned white and flew out of the room. Kate and I, we laughed until our stomachs cramped. For the rest of that day, all we had to do was catch each other's eye and we'd dissolve.
Like a tooth, and then there's nothing left.
"Anna?" Judge DeSalvo prompts, and then he sets that stupid can of Mott's down on the table between us and I burst into tears.
"I can't give a kidney to my sister. I just can't."
Without a word, Judge DeSalvo hands me a box of Kleenex. I wad some into a ball, wipe at my eyes and my nose. For a while, he's quiet, letting me catch my breath. When I look up I find him waiting. "Anna, no hospital in this country will take an organ from an unwilling donor."
"Who do you think signs off on it?" I ask. "Not the little kid getting wheeled into the OR—her parents."
"You're not a little kid; you could certainly make your objections known," he says.
"Oh, right," I say, tearing up again. "When you complain because someone's sticking a needle into you for the tenth time, it's considered standard operating procedure. All the adults look around with fake smiles and tell each other that no one voluntarily asks for more needles." I blow my nose into a Kleenex. "The kidney—that's just today. Tomorrow it'll be something else. It's always something else."
"Your mother told me you want to drop the lawsuit," he says. "Did she lie to me?"
"No." I swallow hard.
"Then… why did you lie to her?"
There are a thousand answers for that; I choose the easy one. "Because I love her," I say, and the tears come all over again. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
He stares at me hard. "You know what, Anna? I'm going to appoint someone who's going to help your lawyer tell me what's best for you. How does that sound?"
My hair's fallen all over the place; I tuck it behind my ear. My face is so red it feels swollen. "Okay," I answer.
"Okay." He presses an intercom button, and asks to have everyone else sent back.
My mother comes into the room first and starts to make her way over to me, until Campbell and his dog cut her off. He raises his brows and gives me a thumbs-up sign, but it's a question. "I'm not sure what's going on," Judge DeSalvo says, "so I'm appointing a guardian ad litem to spend two weeks with her. Needless to say, I expect full cooperation on both of your parts. I want the guardian ad litem's report back, and then we'll have a hearing. If there's anything more I need to know at that time, bring it with you."
"Two weeks…" my mother says. I know what she's thinking. "Your Honor, with all due respect, two weeks is a very long time, given the severity of my other daughter's illness."
She looks like someone I do not recognize. I have seen her before be a tiger, fighting a medical system that isn't moving fast enough for her. I have seen her be a rock, giving the rest of us something to cling to. I have seen her be a boxer, coming up swinging before the next punch can be thrown by Fate. But I have never seen her be a lawyer before.
Judge DeSalvo nods. "All right. We'll have a hearing next Monday, then. In the meantime I want Kate's medical records brought to—"
"Your Honor," Campbell Alexander interrupts. "As you're well aware, due to the strange circumstances of this case, my client is living with opposing counsel. That's a flagrant breach of justice."
My mother sucks in her breath. "You are not suggesting my child be taken away from me."
Taken away? Where would I go?
"I can't be sure that opposing counsel won't try to use her living arrangements to her best advantage, Your Honor, and possibly pressure my client." Campbell stares right at the judge, unblinking.
"Mr. Alexander, there is no way I am pulling this child out of her home," Judge DeSalvo says, but then he turns to my mother. "However, Mrs. Fitzgerald, you cannot talk about this case with your daughter unless her attorney is present. If you can't agree to that, or if I hear of any breach in that domestic Chinese wall, I may have to take more drastic action."
"Understood, Your Honor," my mother says.
"Well." Judge DeSalvo stands up. "I'll see you all next week." He walks out of the room, his flip-flops making small sucking slaps on the tile floor.
The minute he is gone, I turn to my mother. / can explain, I want to say, but it never makes its way out loud. Suddenly a wet nose pokes into my hand. Judge. It makes my heart, that runaway train, slow down.
"I need to speak to my client," Campbell says.
"Right now she's my daughter," my mother says, and she takes my hand and yanks me out of my chair. At the threshold of the door, I manage to look back. Campbell's fuming. I could have told him it would wind up like this. Daughter trumps everything, no matter what the game.
World War III begins immediately, not with an assassinated archduke or a crazy dictator but with a missed left turn. "Brian," my mother says, craning her neck. "That was North Park Street."
My father blinks out of his fog. "You could have told me before I passed it."
"I did."
Before I can even weigh the costs and benefits of entering someone else's battle again, I say, "/ didn't hear you."
My mother's head whips around. "Anna, right now, you are the last person whose input I need or want."
"I just—"
She holds up her hand like the privacy partition in a cab. She shakes her head.
On the backseat, I slide sideways and curl my feet up, facing to the rear, so that all I see is black.
"Brian," my mother says. "You missed it again."
When we walk in, my mother steams past Kate, who opened the door for us, and past Jesse, who is watching what looks like the scrambled Playboy channel on TV. In the kitchen, she opens cabinets and bangs them shut. She takes food from the refrigerator and smacks it onto the table.
"Hey," my father says to Kate. "How're you feeling?"
She ignores him, pushing into the kitchen. "What happened?"
"What happened. Well." My mother pins me with a gaze. "Why don't you ask your sister what happened?"
Kate turns to me, all eyes.
"Amazing how quiet you are now, when a judge isn't listening," my mother says.
Jesse turns off the television. "She made you talk to a judge? Damn, Anna."
My mother closes her eyes. "Jesse, you know, now would be a good time for you to leave."
"You don't have to ask me twice," he says, his voice full of broken glass. We hear the front door open and shut, a whole story.
"Sara." My father steps into the room. "We all need to cool off a little."
"I have one child who's just signed her sister's death sentence, and I'm supposed to cool off?"
The kitchen gets so silent we can hear the refrigerator whispering. My mother's words hang like too-ripe fruit, and when they fall on the floor and burst, she shudders into motion. "Kate," she says, hurrying toward my sister, her arms already outstretched. "Kate, I shouldn't have said that. It's not what I meant."
In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do. Kate covers her mouth with her hand. She backs out of the kitchen door, bumping into my father, who fumbles but cannot catch her as she scrambles upstairs. I hear the door to our room slam shut. My mother, of course, goes after her.
So I do what I do best. I move in the opposite direction.
Is there any place on earth that smells better than a Laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed—comfort food for your nose. When I was little my mom would take hot clothes out of the dryer and dump them on top of me where I was sitting on the couch. I used to pretend they were a single skin, that I was curled tight beneath them like one large heart.
The other thing I like is that Laundromats draw lonely people like metal to magnets. There's a guy passed out on a bank of chairs in the back, with army boots and a T-shirt that says Nostradamus Was an Optimist. A woman at the folding table sifts through a heap of men's button-down shirts, sniffing back tears. Put ten people together in a Laundromat and chances are you won't be the one who's worst off.
I sit down across from a bank of washers and try to match up the clothes with the people waiting. The pink panties and lace nightgown belong to the girl who is reading a romance novel. The woolly red socks and checkered shirt are the skanky sleeping student. The soccer jerseys and kiddie overalls come from the toddler who keeps handing filmy white dryer sheets to her mom, oblivious on a cell phone. What kind of person can afford a cell phone, but not her own washer and dryer?
I play a game with myself, sometimes, and try to imagine what it would be like to be the person whose clothes are spinning in front of me. If I were washing those carpenter jeans, maybe I'd be a roofer in Phoenix, my arms strong and my back tan. If I had those flowered sheets, I might be on break from Harvard, studying criminal profiling. If I owned that satin cape, I might have season tickets to the ballet. And then I try to picture myself doing any of these things and I can't. All I can ever see is me, being a donor for Kate, each time stretching to the next.
Kate and I are Siamese twins; you just can't see the spot where we're connected. Which makes separation that much more difficult.
When I look up the girl who works the Laundromat is standing over me, with her lip ring and blue streaked dreadlocks. "You need change?" she asks.
To tell you the truth, I'm afraid to hear my own answer.
I AM THE KID WHO PLAYED with matches. I used to steal them from the shelf above the refrigerator, take them into my parents' bathroom. Jean Nate Bath Splash ignites, did you know that? Spill it, strike, and you can set fire to the floor. It burns blue, and when the alcohol is gone, it stops.
Once, Anna walked in on me when I was in the bathroom. "Hey," I said. "Check this out." I dribbled some Jean Nate on the floor, her initials. Then I torched them. I figured she'd run screaming like a tattle-tale, but instead she sat right down on the edge of the bathtub. She reached for the bottle of Jean Nate, made some loopy design on the tiles, and told me to do it again.
Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family, instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie and Clyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.
Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. Usually I am in transit, speeding in my Jeep until my lungs give out. Today, I'm driving ninety-five down 95.1 weave in and out of traffic, sewing up a scar. People yell at me behind their closed windows. I give them the finger.
It would solve a thousand problems if I rolled the Jeep over an embankment. It's not like I haven't thought about it, you know. On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive—the sum of the parts equals more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.
To my dismay, though, I get all the way to the exit without a scratch. I peel off the ramp and tool along Aliens Avenue. There's an underpass there where I know I'll find Duracell Dan. He's a homeless dude, Vietnam vet, who spends most of his time collecting batteries that people toss into the trash. What the hell he does with them, I don't know. He opens them up, I know that much. He says the CIA hides messages for all its operatives in Energizer double-As, that the FBI sticks to Evereadys.
Dan and I have a deal: I bring him a McDonald's Value Meal a few times a week, and in return, he watches over my stuff. I find him huddled over the astrology book that he considers his manifesto. "Dan," I say, getting out of the car and handing him his Big Mac. "What's up?"
He squints at me. "The moon's in freaking Aquarius." He stuffs a fry into his mouth. "I never should have gotten out of bed."
If Dan has a bed, it's news to me. "Sorry about that," I say. "Got my stuff?"
He jerks his head to the barrels behind the concrete pylon where he keeps my things. The perchloric acid filched from the chemistry lab at the high school is intact; in another barrel is the sawdust. I hike the stuffed pillowcase under my arm and haul it to the car. I find him waiting at the door. "Thanks."
He leans against the car, won't let me get inside. "They gave me a message for you."
Even though everything that comes out of Dan's mouth is total bullshit, my stomach rolls over. "Who did?"
He looks down the road, then back at me. "You know." Leaning closer, he whispers, "Think twice."
"That was the message?"
Dan nods. "Yeah. It was that, or Drink twice. I can't be sure."
"That advice I might actually listen to." I shove him a little, so that I can get into the car. He is lighter than you'd think, like whatever was inside him was used up long ago. With that reasoning, it's a wonder I don't float off into the sky. "Later," I tell him, and then I drive toward the warehouse I've been watching.
I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by most everyone. This one's in the Olneyville area. At one time, it was used as a storage facility for an export business. Now, it's pretty much just home to an extended family of rats. I park far enough away that no one would think twice about my car. I stuff the pillowcase of sawdust under my jacket and take off.
It turns out that I learned something from my dear old dad after all: firemen are experts at getting into places they shouldn't be. It doesn't take much to pick the lock, and then it's just a matter of figuring out where I want to start. I cut a hole in the bottom of the pillowcase and let the sawdust draw three fat initials, JBF. Then I take the acid and dribble it over the letters.
This is the first time I've done it in the middle of the day.
I take a pack of Merits out of my pocket and tamp them down, then stick one into my mouth. My Zippo's almost out of lighter fluid; I need to remember to get some. When I'm finished, I get to my feet, take one last drag, and toss the cigarette into the sawdust. I know this one's going to move fast, so I'm already running when the wall of fire rises behind me. Like all the others, they will look for clues. But this cigarette and my initials will have long been gone. The whole floor underneath them will melt. The walls will buckle and give.
The first engine reaches the scene just as I get back to my car and Pull the binoculars out of my trunk. By then, the fire's done what it wants to—escape. Glass has blown out of windows; smoke rises black, an eclipse.
The first time I saw my mother cry I was five. She was standing at the kitchen window, pretending that she wasn't. The sun was just coming up, a swollen knot. "What are you doing?" I asked. It was not until years later that I realized I had heard her answer all wrong. That when she said mourning, she had not been talking about the time of day.
The sky, now, is thick and dark with smoke. Sparks shower as the roof falls in. A second crew of firefighters arrives, the ones who have been called in from their dinner tables and showers and living rooms. With the binoculars, I can make out his name, winking on the back of his turnout coat like it's spelled in diamonds. Fitzgerald. My father lays hands on a charged line, and I get into my car and drive away.
At home, my mother is having a nervous breakdown. She flies out the door as soon as I pull into my parking spot. "Thank God," she says. "I need your help."
She doesn't even look back to see if I'm following her inside, and that is how I know it's Kate. The door to my sisters' room has been kicked in, the wooden frame around it splintered. My sister lies still on her bed. Then all of a sudden she bursts to life, jerking up like a tire jack and puking blood. A stain spreads over her shirt and onto her flowered comforter, red poppies where there weren't any before.
My mother gets down beside her, holding back her hair and pressing a towel up to her mouth when Kate vomits again, another gush of blood. "Jesse," she says matter-of-factly, "your father's out on a call, and I can't reach him. I need you to drive us to the hospital, so that I can sit in the back with Kate."
Kate's lips are slick as cherries. I pick her up in my arms. She's nothing but bones, poking sharp through the skin of her T-shirt.
"When Anna ran off, Kate wouldn't let me into her room," my mother says, hurrying beside me. "I gave her a little while to calm down. And then I heard her coughing. I had to get in there."
So you kicked it down, I think, and it doesn't surprise me. We reach the car, and she opens the door so that I can slide Kate inside. I pull out of the driveway and speed even faster than normal through town, onto the highway, toward the hospital.
Today, when my parents were at court with Anna, Kate and I watched TV. She wanted to put on her soap and I told her fuck off and put on the scrambled Playboy channel instead. Now, as I run through red lights, I'm wishing that I'd let her watch that retarded soap. I'm trying not to look at her little white coin of a face in the rearview mirror. You'd think, with all the time I've had to get used to it, that moments like this wouldn't come as such a shock. The question we cannot ask pushes through my veins with each beat: Is this it? Is this it? Is this it?
The minute we hit the ER driveway, my mother's out of the car, hurrying me to get Kate. We are quite a picture walking through the automatic doors, me with Kate bleeding in my arms, and my mother grabbing the first nurse who walks by. "She needs platelets," my mother orders.
They take her away from me, and for a few moments, even after the ER team and my mother have disappeared with Kate behind closed curtains, I stand with my arms buoyed, trying to get used to the fact that there's no longer anything in them.
Dr. Chance, the oncologist I know, and Dr. Nguyen, some expert I don't, tell us what we've already figured out: these are the death throes of end-stage kidney disease. My mother stands next to the bed, her hand tight around Kate's IV pole. "Can you still do a transplant?" she asks, as if Anna never started her lawsuit, as if it means absolutely nothing.
"Kate's in a pretty grave clinical state," Dr. Chance tells her. "I told you before I didn't know if she was strong enough to survive that level of surgery; the odds are even slighter now."
"But if there was a donor," she says, "would you do it?”
“Wait." You'd think my throat had just been paved with straw. "Would mine work?"
Dr. Chance shakes his head. "A kidney donor doesn't have to be a perfect match, in an ordinary case. But your sister isn't an ordinary case."
When the doctors leave, I can feel my mother staring at me. "Jesse," she says.
"It wasn't like I was volunteering. I just wanted to, you know, know." But inside, I'm burning just as hot as I was when that fire caught at the warehouse. What made me believe I might be worth something, even now? What made me think I could save my sister, when I can't even save myself?
Kate's eyes open, so that she's staring right at me. She licks her lips—they're still caked with blood—and it makes her look like a vampire. The undead. If only.
I lean closer, because she doesn't have enough in her right now to make the words creep across the air between us. Tell, she mouths, so that my mother won't look up.
I answer, just as silent. Tell? l want to make sure I've got it right.
Tell Anna.
But the door to the room bursts open and my father fills the room with smoke. His hair and clothes and skin reek of it, so much so that I look up, expecting the sprinklers to go off. "What happened?" he asks, going right to the bed.
I slip out of the room, because nobody needs me there anymore. In the elevator, in front of the NO SMOKING sign, I light a cigarette.
Tell Anna what?
-1991
BY PURE CHANCE, or maybe karmic distribution, all three clients at the hair salon are pregnant. We sit under the dryers, hands folded over our bellies like a row of Buddhas. "My top choices are Freedom, Low, and Jack," says the girl next to me, who is getting her hair dyed pink.
"What if it's not a boy?" asks the woman sitting on my other side.
"Oh, those are meant to be for either."
I hide a smile. "I vote for Jack."
The girl squints, looking out the window at the rotten weather. "Sleet is nice," she says absently, and then tries it on for size. "Sleet, pick up your toys. Sleet, honey, come on, or we're gonna be late for the Uncle Tupelo concert." She digs a piece of paper and a pencil stub out of her maternity overalls and scribbles down the name.
The woman on my left grins at me. "Is this your first?"
"My third."
"Mine too. I have two boys. I'm keeping my fingers crossed."
"I have a boy and a girl," I tell her. "Five and three."
"Do you know what you're having this time?"
I know everything about this baby, from her sex to the very placement of her chromosomes, including the ones that make her a perfect match for Kate. I know exactly what I am having: a miracle. "It's a girl," I answer.
"Ooh, I'm so jealous! My husband and I, we didn't find out at the ultrasound. I thought if I heard it was another boy, I might never finish out the last five months." She shuts off her hair dryer and pushes it back. "You have any names picked?"
It strikes me that I don't. Although I am nine months pregnant, although I have had plenty of time to dream, I have not really considered the specifics of this child. I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be able to do for the daughter I already have. I haven't admitted this even to Brian, who lies at night with his head on my considerable belly, waiting for the twitches that herald—he thinks—the first female placekicker for the Patriots. Then again, my dreams for her are no less exalted; I plan for her to save her sister's life.
"We're waiting," I tell the woman.
Sometimes I think it is all we ever do.
There was a moment, after Kate's three months of chemotherapy last year, that I was stupid enough to believe we had beaten the odds. Dr. Chance said that she seemed to be in remission, and that we would just keep an eye on what came next. And for a little while, my life even got back to normal: chauffeuring Jesse to soccer practice and helping out in Kate's preschool class and even taking a hot bath to relax.
And yet, there was a part of me that knew the other shoe was bound to drop. This part scoured Kate's pillow every morning, even after her hair started to grow back with its frizzy, burned ends, just in case it started falling out again. This part went to the geneticist recommended by Dr. Chance. Engineered an embryo given the thumbs-up by scientists to be a perfect match for Kate. Took the hormones for FVF and conceived that embryo, just in case.
It was during a routine bone marrow aspiration that we learned Kate was in molecular relapse. On the outside, she looked like any other three-year-old girl. On the inside, the cancer had surged through her system again, steamrolling the progress that had been made with chemo.
Now, in the backseat with Jesse, Kate's kicking her feet and playing with a toy phone. Jesse sits next to her, staring out the window. "Mom? Do buses ever fall on people?"
"Like out of trees?"
"No. Like… just over." He makes a flipping motion with his hand.
"Only if the weather's really bad, or if the driver's going too fast."
He nods, accepting my explanation for his safety in this universe. Then: "Mom? Do you have a favorite number?"
"Thirty-one," I tell him. This is my due date. "How about you?"
"Nine. Because it can be a number, or how old you are, or a six standing on its head." He pauses only long enough to take a breath. "Mom? Do we have special scissors to cut meat?"
"We do." I take a right and drive past a cemetery, headstones canted forward and back like a set of yellowed teeth.
"Mom?" Jesse asks, "is that where Kate will go?"
The question, just as innocent as any of the others Jesse would ask, makes my legs go weak. I pull the car over and put on my hazard lights. Then I unbuckle my seat belt and turn around. "No, Jess," I tell him. "She's staying with us."
"Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald?" the producer says. "This is where we'll put you."
We sit down on the set at the TV studio. We've been invited here because of our baby's unorthodox conception. Somehow, in an effort to keep Kate healthy, we've unwittingly become the poster children for scientific debate.
Brian reaches for my hand as we are approached by Nadya Carter, the reporter for the newsmagazine. "We're just about ready. I've already taped an intro about Kate. All I'm going to do is ask you a few questions, and we'll be finished before you know it." Just before the camera starts rolling, Brian wipes his cheeks on the sleeve of his shirt. The makeup artist, standing behind the lights, moans. "Well, for God's sake," he whispers to me. "I'm not going on national TV wearing blush."
The camera comes to life with far less ceremony than I've expected, just a little hum that runs up my arms and legs.
"Mr. Fitzgerald," Nadya says, "can you explain to us why you chose to visit a geneticist in the first place?"
Brian looks at me. "Our three-year-old daughter has a very aggressive form of leukemia. Her oncologist suggested we find a bone marrow donor—but our oldest son wasn't a genetic match. There's a national registry, but by the time the right donor comes along for Kate, she might not… be around. So we thought it might be a good idea to see if another sibling of Kate's matched up.”
“A sibling," Nadya says, "who doesn't exist."
"Not yet," Brian replies.
"What made you turn to a geneticist?"
"Time constraints," I say bluntly. "We couldn't keep having babies year after year until one was a match for Kate. The doctor was able to screen several embryos to see which one, if any, would be the ideal donor for Kate. We were lucky enough to have one out of four—and it was implanted through IVF."
Nadya looks down at her notes. "You've received hate mail, haven't you?"
Brian nods. "People seem to think that we're trying to make a designer baby."
"Aren't you?"
"We didn't ask for a baby with blue eyes, or one that would grow to be six feet tall, or one that would have an IQ of two hundred. Sure, we asked for specific characteristics—but they're not anything anyone would ever consider to be model human traits. They’re just Kate's traits. We don't want a superbaby; we just want to save our daughter's life."
I squeeze Brian's hand. God, I love him.
"Mrs. Fitzgerald, what will you tell this baby when she grows up?" Nadya asks.
"With any luck," I say, "I'll be able to tell her to stop bugging her sister."
I go into labor on New Year's Eve. The nurse taking care of me tries to distract me from my contractions by talking about the signs of the sun. "This one, she's gonna be a Capricorn," Emelda says as she rubs my shoulders.
"Is that good?"
"Oh, Capricorns, they get the job done."
Inhale, exhale. "Good… to… know," I tell her.
There are two other babies being born. One woman, Emelda says, has her legs crossed. She's trying to make it to 1991. The New Year's Baby is entitled to packs of free diapers and a $100 savings bond from Citizens Bank for that distant college education.
When Emelda goes out to the nurse's desk, leaving us alone, Brian reaches for my hand. "You okay?"
I grimace my way through another contraction. "I'd be better if this was over."
He smiles at me. To a paramedic/firefighter, a routine hospital delivery is something to shrug at. If my water had broken during a train wreck, or if I was laboring in the back of a taxi—
"I know what you're thinking," he interrupts, although I haven't said a word out loud, "and you're wrong." He lifts my hand, kisses the knuckles.
Suddenly an anchor unspools inside me. The chain, thick as a fist, twists in my abdomen. "Brian," I gasp, "get the doctor."
My OB comes in and holds his hand between my legs. He glances up at the clock. "If you can hold on a minute, this kid's gonna be born famous," he says, but I shake my head.
"Get it out," I tell him. "Now."
The doctor looks at Brian. "Tax deduction?" he guesses.
I am thinking of saving, but it has nothing to do with the IRS. The baby's head slips through the seal of my skin. The doctor's hand holds her, slides that gorgeous cord free of her neck, delivers her shoulder by shoulder.
I struggle to my elbows to watch what is going on below. "The umbilical cord," I remind him. "Be careful." He cuts it, beautiful blood, and hurries it out of the room to a place where it will be cryogenically preserved until Kate is ready for it.
Day Zero of Kate's pre-transplant regimen starts the morning after Anna is born. I come down from the maternity ward and meet Kate in Radiology. We are both wearing yellow isolation gowns, and this makes her laugh. "Mommy," she says, "we match."
She has been given a pediatric cocktail for sedation, and under any other circumstance, this would be funny. Kate can't find her own feet. Every time she stands up, she collapses. It strikes me that this is how Kate will look when she gets drunk on peach schnapps for the first time in high school or college; and then I quickly remind myself that Kate might never be that old.
When the therapist comes to take her into the RT suite, Kate latches on to my leg. "Honey," Brian says, "it's gonna be fine."
She shakes her head and burrows closer. When I crouch down, she throws herself into my arms. "I won't take my eyes off you," I promise.
The room is large, with jungle murals painted on the walls. The linear accelerators are built into the ceiling and a pit below the treatment table, which is little more than a canvas cot covered with a sheet. The radiation therapist places thick lead pieces shaped like beans onto Kate's chest and tells her not to move. She promises that when it's all over, Kate can have a sticker.
I stare at Kate through the protective glass wall. Gamma rays, leukemia, parenthood. It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you.
There is a Murphy's Law to oncology, one which is not written anywhere but held in widespread belief: if you don't get sick, you won't get well. Therefore, if your chemo makes you violently ill, if radiation sears your skin—it's all good. On the other hand, if you sail through therapy quickly with only negligible nausea or pain, chances are the drugs have somehow been excreted by your body and aren't doing their job.
By this criterion, Kate should surely be cured by now. Unlike last year's chemo, this course of treatment has taken a little girl who didn't even have a runny nose and has turned her into a physical wreck. Three days of radiation has caused constant diarrhea, and put her back into a diaper. At first, this embarrassed her; now she is so sick she doesn't care. The following five days of chemo have lined her throat with mucus, which keeps her clutching at a suction tube as if it is a life preserver. When she is awake, all she does is cry.
Since Day Six, when Kate's white blood cell and neutrophil counts began to plummet, she has been in reverse isolation. Any germ in the world might kill her now; for this reason, the world is made to keep its distance. Visitors to her room are restricted, and those who are allowed in look like spacemen, gowned and masked. Kate has to read picture books while wearing rubber gloves. No plants or flowers are permitted, because they carry bacteria that could kill her. Any toy given to her must be scrubbed down with antiseptic solution first. She sleeps with her teddy bear, sealed in a Ziploc bag, which rustles all night and sometimes wakes her up.
Brian and I sit outside the anteroom, waiting. While Kate sleeps, I practice giving injections to an orange. After the transplant Kate will need growth factor shots, and the chore will fall to me. I prick the syringe under the thick skin of the fruit, until I feel the soft give of tissue underneath. The drug I will be giving is subcutaneous, injected just under the skin. I need to make sure the angle is right and that I am giving the proper amount of pressure. The speed with which you push the needle down can cause more or less pain. The orange, of course, doesn't cry when I make a mistake. But the nurses still tell me that injecting Kate won't feel much different.
Brian picks up a second orange and begins to peel it. "Put that down!"
"I'm hungry." He nods at the fruit in my hands. "And you've already got a patient."
"For all you know that was someone else's. God knows what it's doped up with."
Suddenly Dr. Chance turns the corner and approaches us. Donna, an oncology nurse, walks behind him, brandishing an IV bag filled with crimson liquid. "Drum roll," she says.
I put down my orange, follow them into the anteroom, and suit up so that I can come within ten feet of my daughter. Within minutes Donna attaches the bag to a pole, and connects the drip to Kate's central line. It is so anticlimactic that Kate doesn't even wake up. I stand on one side, as Brian goes to the other. I hold my breath. I stare down at Kate's hips, the iliac crest, where bone marrow is made. Through some miracle, these stem cells of Anna's will go into Kate's bloodstream in her chest, but will find their way to the right spot.
"Well," Dr. Chance says, and we all watch the cord blood slowly slide through the tubing, a Crazy Straw of possibility.
AFTER TWO HOURS OF LIVING with my sister again, I'm finding it hard to believe we ever comfortably shared a womb. Isobel has already organized my CDs by year of release, swept under the couch, and tossed out half the food in my refrigerator. "Dates are our friend, Julia." She sighs. "You have yogurt in here from when Democrats ruled the White House."
I slam the door shut and count to ten. But when Izzy moves toward the gas oven and starts looking for the cleaning controls, I lose my cool. "Sylvia doesn't need cleaning."
"That's another thing: Sylvia the oven. Smilla the Fridge. Do we really need to name our kitchen appliances?"
My kitchen appliances. Mine, not ours, goddammit. "I'm totally getting why Janet broke up with you," I mutter.
At that, Izzy looks up, stricken. "You are horrible," she says. "You are horrible and after I was born I should have sewed Mom shut." She runs to the bathroom in tears.
Isobel is three minutes older than me, but I've always been the one who takes care of her. I'm her nuclear bomb: when there's something upsetting her, I go in and lay waste to it, whether that's one of our six older brothers teasing her or the evil Janet, who decided she wasn't gay after seven years into a committed relationship with Izzy. Growing up, Izzy was the Goody Two-shoes and I was the one who came up fighting—swinging my fists or shaving my head to get a rise out of our parents or wearing combat boots with my high school uniform. Yet now that we're thirty-two, I'm a card-carrying member of the Rat Race; while Izzy is a lesbian who builds jewelry out of paper clips and bolts. Go figure.
The door to the bathroom doesn't lock, but Izzy doesn't know that yet. So I walk in and wait till she finishes splashing cold water on her face, and I hand her a towel. "Iz. I didn't mean it."
"I know." She looks at me in the mirror. Most people can't tell us apart now that I have a real job that requires conventional hair and conventional clothes. "At least you had a relationship," I point out. "The last time I had a date was when I bought that yogurt."
Izzy's lips curve, and she turns to me. "Does the toilet have a name?"
"I was thinking of Janet," I say, and my sister cracks up. The telephone rings, and I go into the living room to answer it. "Julia? This is Judge DeSalvo calling. I've got a case that needs a guardian ad litem, and I'm hoping you might be able to help me out." I became a guardian ad litem a year ago, when I realized that nonprofit work wasn't covering my rent. A GAL is appointed by a court to be a child's advocate during legal proceedings that involve a minor. You don't have to be a lawyer to be trained as a GAL, but you do have to have a moral compass and a heart. Which, actually, probably renders most lawyers unqualified for the job. "Julia? Are you there?"
I would turn cartwheels for Judge DeSalvo; he pulled strings to get me a job when I first became a GAL. "Whatever you need," I promise. "What's going on?"
He gives me background information—phrases like medical emancipation and thirteen and mother with legal background float by me. Only two items stick fast: the word urgent, and the name of the attorney.
God, I can't do this.
"I can be there in an hour," I say.
"Good. Because I think this kid needs someone in her corner.”
“Who was that?" Izzy asks. She is unpacking the box that holds her work supplies: tools and wire and little containers of metal bits that sound like teeth gnashing when she sets them down. "A judge," I reply. "There's a girl who needs help." What I don't tell my sister is that I'm talking about me.
Nobody's home at the Fitzgerald house. I ring the doorbell twice, certain this must be a mistake. From what Judge DeSalvo's led me to believe, this is a family in crisis. But I find myself standing in front of a well-kept Cape, with carefully tended flower gardens lining the walk.
When I turn around to go back to my car, I see the girl. She still has that knobby, calf-like look of preteens; she jumps over every sidewalk crack. "Hi," I say, when she is close enough to hear me. "Are you Anna?"
Her chin snaps up. "Maybe."
"I'm Julia Romano. Judge DeSalvo asked me to be your guardian ad litem. Did he explain to you what that is?"
Anna narrows her eyes. "There was a girl in Brockton who got kidnapped by someone who said they'd been asked by her mom to pick her up and drive her to the place where her mom worked."
I rummage in my purse and pull out my drivers license, and a stack of papers. "Here," I say. "Be my guest." She glances at me, and then at the god-awful picture on my license; she reads through the copy of the emancipation petition I picked up at the family court before I came here. If I am a psychotic killer, then I have done my homework well. But there is a part of me already giving Anna credit for being wary: this is not a child who rushes headlong into situations. If she's thinking long and hard about going off with me, presumably she must have thought long and hard about untangling herself from the net of her family.
She hands back everything I've given her. "Where is everyone?" she asks.
"I don't know. I thought you could tell me." Anna's gaze slides to the front door, nervous. "I hope nothing happened to Kate."
I tilt my head, considering this girl, who has already managed to surprise me. "Do you have time to talk?" I ask.
The zebras are the first stop in the Roger Williams Zoo. Of all the animals in the Africa section, these have always been my favorite. I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah—but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white.
We pass blue duikers, bongos, and something called a naked mole rat that doesn't come out of its cave. I often take kids to the zoo when I'm assigned to their cases. Unlike when we sit down face-to-face in the courthouse, or even at Dunkin' Donuts, at the zoo they are more likely to open up to me. They'll watch the gibbons swinging around like Olympic gymnasts and just start talking about what happens at home, without even realizing what they are doing.
Anna, though, is older than all of the kids I've worked with, and less than thrilled to be here. In retrospect, I realize this was a bad choice. I should have taken her to a mall, to a movie.
We walk through the winding trails of the zoo, Anna talking only when forced to respond. She answers me politely when I ask her questions about her sisters health. She says that her mother is, indeed, the opposing attorney. She thanks me when I buy her an ice cream.
"Tell me what you like to do," I say. "For fun."
"Play hockey," Anna says. "I used to be a goaltender."
"Used to be?"
"The older you get, the less the coach forgives you if you miss a game." She shrugs. "I don't like letting a whole team down."
Interesting way to put it, I think. "Do your friends still play hockey?"
"Friends?" She shakes her head. "You can't really have anyone over to your house when your sister needs to be resting. You don't get invited back for sleepovers when your mom comes to pick you up at two in the morning to go to the hospital. It's probably been a while since you've been in middle school, but most people think freakhood is contagious."
"So who do you talk to?"
She looks at me. "Kate," she says. Then she asks if I have a cell phone.
I take one out of my pocketbook and watch her dial the hospital's number by heart. "I'm looking for a patient," Anna says to the operator. "Kate Fitzgerald?" She glances up at me. "Thanks anyway." Punching the buttons, she hands the phone back to me. "Kate isn't registered."
"That's good, right?"
"It could just mean that the paperwork hasn't caught up to the operator yet. Sometimes it takes a few hours."
I lean against a railing near the elephants. "You seem pretty worried about your sister right now," I point out. "Are you sure you're ready to face what's going to happen if you stop being a donor?"
"I know what's going to happen." Anna's voice is low. "I never said I liked it." She raises her face to mine, challenging me to find fault with her.
For a minute I look at her. What would I do, if I found out that Izzy needed a kidney, or part of my liver, or marrow? The answer isn't even questionable—I would ask how quickly we could go to the hospital and have it done.
But then, it would have been my choice, my decision.
"Have your parents ever asked you if you want to be a donor for your sister?"
Anna shrugs. "Kind of. The way parents ask questions that they already have answered in their heads. You weren't the reason that the whole second grade stayed in for recess, were you? Or, You want some broccoli, right?"
"Did you ever tell your parents that you weren't comfortable with the choice they'd made for you?"
Anna pushes away from the elephants and begins to trudge up the hill. "I might have complained a couple of times. But they're Kate's parents, too."
Small tumblers in this puzzle begin to hitch for me. Traditionally, parents make decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down. And somewhere, underneath all the rubble, are casualties like Anna.
The question is, did she instigate this lawsuit because she truly feels that she can make better choices about her own medical care than her parents can, or because she wants her parents to hear her for once when she cries?
We wind up in front of the polar bears, Trixie and Norton. For the first time since we've gotten here, Anna's face lights up. She watches Kobe, Trixie's cub—the newest addition to the zoo. He swats at his mother as she lies on the rocks, trying to get her to play. "The last time there was a polar bear baby," Anna says, "they gave it to another zoo."
She is right; memories of the articles in the ProJo swim into my mind. It was a big public relations move for Rhode Island.
"Do you think he wonders what he did to get himself sent away?"
We are trained, as guardians ad litem, to see the signs of depression. We know how to read body language, and flat affect, and mood swings. Anna's hands are clenched around the metal railing. Her eyes go dull as old gold.
Either this girl loses her sister, I think, or she's going to lose herself.
"Julia," she asks, "would it be okay if we went home?"
The closer we get to her house, Anna distances herself from me. A pretty nifty trick, given that the physical space between us remains unaltered. She shrinks against the window of my car, staring at the streets that bleed by. "What happens next?"
"I'm going to talk to everyone else. Your mom and dad, your brother and sister. Your lawyer."
Now a dilapidated Jeep is parked in the driveway, and the front door of the house is open. I turn off the ignition, but Anna makes no move to release her seat belt. "Will you walk me in?"
"Why?"
"Because my mother's going to kill me."
This Anna—genuinely skittish—bears little resemblance to the one I've spent the past hour with. I wonder how a girl might be both brave enough to instigate a lawsuit, and afraid to face her own mother. "How come?"
"I sort of left today without telling her where I was going."
"You do that a lot?"
Anna shakes her head. "Usually I do whatever I'm told."
Well, I am going to have to speak to Sara Fitzgerald sooner or later. I get out of the car, and wait for Anna to do the same. We walk up the front path, past the groomed flower beds, and through the front door.
She is not the foe I've built her up to be. For one thing, Anna's mother is shorter than I am, and slighter. She has dark hair and haunted eyes and is pacing. The moment it creaks open, she runs to Anna. "For God's sake," she cries, shaking her daughter by the shoulders, "where have you been? Do you have any idea—"
"Excuse me, Mrs. Fitzgerald. I'd like to introduce myself." I step forward, extending my hand. "I'm Julia Romano, the guardian ad litem appointed by the court."
She slides her arm around Anna, a stiff show of tenderness. "Thank you for bringing Anna home. I'm sure you have lots to discuss with her, but right now—"
"Actually, I was hoping I could speak to you. I've been asked by the court to present my findings in less than a week, so if you've got a few minutes—"
"I don't," Sara says abruptly. "Now isn't really a good time. My other daughter has just been readmitted to the hospital." She looks at Anna, still standing in the doorway of the kitchen: / hope you're happy.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"I am too." Sara clears her throat. "I appreciate you coming by to talk to Anna. And I know you're just doing your job. But this is all going to work itself out, really. It's a misunderstanding. I'm sure Judge DeSalvo will be telling you that in a day or so."
She takes a step backward, challenging me—and Anna—to say otherwise. I glance at Anna, who catches my eye and shakes her head almost imperceptibly, a plea to just let this go for now. Who is she protecting—her mother, or herself? A red flag unravels across my mind: Anna is thirteen. Anna lives with her mother. Anna's mother is opposing counsel. How can Anna possibly live in the same home and not be swayed by Sara Fitzgerald?
"Anna, I'll call you tomorrow." Then without saying good-bye to Sara Fitzgerald, I leave her house, headed for the one place on earth I never wanted to go.
The law offices of Campbell Alexander look exactly the way I've pictured them: at the top of a building cast in black glass, at the end of a hallway lined with a Persian runner, through two heavy mahogany doors that keep out the riffraff. Sitting at the massive receptionist's desk is a girl with porcelain features and a telephone earpiece hidden under the mane of her hair. I ignore her and walk toward the only closed door. "Hey!" she yells. "You can't go in there!"
"He'll be expecting me," I say.
Campbell doesn't look up from whatever he's writing with great fury. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to the elbow. He needs a haircut. "Kerri," he says, "see if you can find some Jenny Jones transcript about identical twins who don't know that they—"
"Hello, Campbell."
First, he stops writing. Then he lifts his head. "Julia." He gets to his feet, a schoolboy caught in an indecent act.
I step inside and close the door behind me. "I'm the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna Fitzgerald's case."
A dog that I haven't noticed till now takes its place by Campbell's side. "I'd heard that you went to law school."
Harvard. On full scholarship.
"Providence is a pretty tight place… I kept expecting…" His voice trails off, and he shakes his head. "Well, I thought for sure we'd run into each other before now."
He smiles at me, and I suddenly am seventeen again—the year I realized love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable. "It's not all that hard to avoid someone, when you want to," I answer coolly. "You of all people should know."
I'M REMARKABLY CALM, really, until the principal of Ponaganset High School starts to give me a telephone lecture on political correctness. "For God's sake," he sputters. "What kind of message does it send when a group of Native American students names their intramural basketball league The Whiteys?"
"I imagine it sends the same message that you did when you picked the Chieftains as your school mascot."
"We've been the Ponaganset Chieftains since 1970," the principal argues.
"Yes, and they've been members of the Narragansett tribe since they were born."
"It's derogatory. And politically incorrect."
"Unfortunately," I point out, "you can't sue a person for political incorrectness, or clearly you would have been handed a summons years ago. However, on the flip side, the Constitution does protect various individual rights to Americans, including Native Americans—one for assembly, and one for free speech, which suggest that the Whiteys would be granted permission to convene even if your ridiculous threat of a lawsuit managed to make its way to court. For that matter, you may want to consider a class action against humanity in general, since surely you'd also like to stifle the inherent racism implicit in the White House, the White Mountains, and the White Pages." There is dead silence on the other end of the phone. "Shall I assume, then, that I can tell my client you don't plan to litigate afterall'"
After he hangs up on me, I push the intercom button. "Kerri, call Ernie Fishkiller, and tell him he's got nothing to worry about."
As I settle down to the mountain of work on my desk, Judge lets out a sigh. He's asleep, curled like a braided rug to the left of my desk. His paw twitches.
That's the life, she said to me, as we watched a puppy chase its own tail. That's what I want to be next.
I had laughed. You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else.
I need you, she replied.
Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.
I press my thumbs into the balls of my eyes. Clearly I am not getting enough sleep; first there was that moment at the coffee shop, now this. I scowl at Judge, as if it is his fault, and then focus my attention on some notes I've made on a legal pad. New client—a drug dealer caught by the prosecution on videotape. There's no way out of a conviction on this one, unless the guy has an identical twin his mother kept secret.
Which, come to think of it…
The door opens, and without glancing up I fire a directive at Kerri. "See if you can find some Jenny Jones transcript about identical twins who don't know that they—"Hello, Campbell."
I am going crazy; I am definitely going crazy. Because not five feet away from me is Julia Romano, whom I have not seen in fifteen years. Her hair is longer now, and fine lines bracket her mouth, parentheses around a lifetime of words I was not around to hear. "Julia," I manage.
She closes the door, and at the sound, Judge jumps to his feet. "I'm the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna Fitzgerald's case," she says.
"Providence is a pretty tight place … I kept expecting… Well, I thought for sure we'd run into each other before now."
"It's not all that hard to avoid someone, when you want to," she answers. "You of all people should know." Then, all of a sudden, the anger seems to steam out of her. "I'm sorry. That was totally uncalled for."
"It's been a long time," I reply, when what I really want to do is ask her what she's been doing for the past fifteen years. If she still drinks tea with milk and lemon. If she's happy. "Your hair isn't pink anymore," I say, because I am an idiot.
"No, it's not," she replies. "Is that a problem?"
I shrug. "It's just. Well…" Where are words, when you need them? "I liked the pink," I confess.
"It tends to take away from my authority in a courtroom," Julia admits.
This makes me smile. "Since when do you care what people think of you?"
She doesn't respond, but something changes. The temperature of the room, or maybe the wall that comes up in her eyes. "Maybe instead of dragging up the past, we should talk about Anna," she suggests diplomatically.
I nod. But it feels like we are sitting on the tight bench of a bus with a stranger between us, one that neither of us is willing to admit to or mention, and so we find ourselves talking around him and through him and sneaking glances when the other one isn't looking. How am I supposed to think about Anna Fitzgerald when I'm wondering whether Julia has ever woken up in someone's arms and for just a moment, before the sleep cleared from her mind, thought maybe it was me?
Sensing tension, Judge gets up and stands beside me. Julia seems to notice for the first time that we are not alone in the room. "Your partner?"
"Only an associate," I say. "But he made Law Review." Her fingers scratch Judge behind the ear—goddamn lucky bastard—and grimacing, I ask her to stop. "He's a service dog. He isn't supposed to be petted."
Julia looks up, surprised. But before she can ask, I turn the conversation. "So. Anna." Judge pushes his nose into my palm.
She folds her arms. "I went to see her."
"And?"
"Thirteen-year-olds are heavily influenced by their parents. And Anna's mother seems convinced that this trial isn't going to happen. I have a feeling she might be trying to convince Anna of that, too."
"I can take care of that," I say.
She looks up, suspicious. "How?"
"I'll get Sara Fitzgerald removed from the house."
Her jaw drops. "You're kidding, right?"
By now, Judge has started pulling my clothes in earnest. When I don't respond, he barks twice. "Well, I certainly don't think my client ought to be the one to move out. She hasn't violated the judge's orders. I'll get a temporary restraining order keeping Sara Fitzgerald from having any contact with her."
"Campbell, that's her mother!"
"This week, she's opposing counsel, and if she's prejudicing my client in any way she needs to be ordered not to do so."
"Your client has a name, and an age, and a world that's falling apart—the last thing she needs is more instability in her life. Have you even bothered to get to know her?"
"Of course I have," I lie, as Judge begins to whine at my feet.
Julia glances down at him. "Is something wrong with your dog?"
"He's fine. Look. My job is to protect Anna's legal rights and win the case, and that's exactly what I'm going to do."
"Of course you are. Not necessarily because it's in Anna's best interests… but because it's in yours. How ironic is it that a kid who wants to stop being used for another person's benefit winds up picking your name out of the Yellow Pages?"
"You don't know anything about me," I say, my jaw tightening.
"Well, whose fault is that?"
So much for not bringing up the past. A shudder runs the length of me, and I grab Judge by the collar. "Excuse me," I say, and I walk out the office door, leaving Julia for the second time in my life.
When you get right down to it, The Wheeler School was a factory, pumping out debutantes and future investment bankers. We all looked alike and talked alike. To us, summer was a verb.
There were students, of course, who broke that mold. Like the scholarship kids, who wore their collars up and learned to row, never realizing that all along we were well aware they weren't one of us. There were the stars, like Tommy Boudreaux, who was drafted by the Detroit Redwings in his junior year. Or the head cases, who tried to slit their wrists or mix booze and Valium and then left campus just as silently as they had once wandered around it.
I was a sixth-former the year that Julia Romano came to Wheeler. She wore army boots and a Cheap Trick T-shirt under her school blazer; she was able to memorize entire sonnets without breaking a sweat. During free periods, while the rest of us were copping smokes behind the headmaster's back, she climbed the stairs to the ceiling of the gymnasium and sat with her back against a heating duct, reading books by Henry Miller and Nietzsche. Unlike the other girls in school, with their smooth waterfalls of yellow hair caught up in a headband like ribbon candy, hers was an absolute tornado of black curls, and she never wore makeup—just those sharp features, take it or leave it. She had the thinnest hoop I'd ever seen, a silver filament, through her left eyebrow. She smelled like fresh dough rising.
There were rumors about her. that she'd been booted out of a girl's reform school; that she was some whiz kid with a perfect PS AT score; that she was two years younger than everyone else in our grade; that she had a tattoo. Nobody quite knew what to make of her. They called her Freak, because she wasn't one of us.
One day Julia Romano arrived at school with short pink hair. We all assumed she'd be suspended, but it turned out that in the litany of rules about what one had to wear at Wheeler, coiffure was conspicuously absent. It made me wonder why there wasn't a single guy in the school with dreadlocks, and I realized it wasn't because we couldn't stand out; it's because we didn't want to. At lunch that day she passed the table where I was sitting with a bunch of guys on the sailing team and some of their girlfriends. "Hey," one girl said, "did it hurt?"
Julia slowed down. "Did what hurt?"
"Falling into the cotton candy machine?"
She didn't even blink. "Sorry, I can't afford to get my hair done at Wash, Cut and Blow Jobs 'R' Us." Then she walked off to the corner of the cafeteria where she always ate by herself, playing solitaire with a deck of cards that had pictures of patron saints on the backs.
"Shit," one of my friends said, "that's one girl I wouldn't mess with." I laughed, because everyone else did. But I also watched her sit down, push the tray of food away from her, and begin to lay out her cards. I wondered what it would be like to not give a damn about what people thought of you.
One afternoon, / went AWQL from the sailing team where I was captain, and followed her. I made sure to stay far enough behind that she wouldn't realize I was there. She headed down Blackstone Boulevard, turned into Swan Point Cemetery, and climbed to the highest point. She opened her knapsack, took out her textbooks and binder, and spread herself in front of a grave. "You might as well come out," she said then, and I nearly swallowed my tongue, expecting a ghost, until I realized she was talking to me. "If you pay an extra quarter, you can even stare up close."
I stepped out from behind a big oak, my hands dug into my pockets. Now . that I was there, I had no idea why I'd come. I nodded toward the grave. "That a relative?"
She looked over her shoulder. "Yeah. My grandma had the seat right next to him on the Mayflower." She stared at me, all right angles and edges. "Don't you have some cricket match to go to?"
"Polo," I said, breaking a smile. "I'm just waiting for my horse to get here."
She didn't get the joke… or maybe she didn't find it funny. "What do you want?"
I couldn't admit that I was following her. "Help," I said. "Homework."
In truth I had not looked over our English assignment. I grabbed a paper on top of her binder and read aloud: You come across a horrible four-car accident. There are people moaning in pain, and bodies strewn all over the place. Do you have an obligation to stop?
"Why should I help?" she said.
"Well, legally, you shouldn't. If you pull someone out and hurt them more, you could get sued."
"I meant why should I help you."
The paper floated to the ground. "You don't think very much of me, do you?"
"I don't think about any of you, period. You're a bunch of superficial idiots who wouldn't be caught dead with someone who's different from you."
"Isn't that what you're doing, too?"
She stared at me for a long second. Then she started stuffing her backpack. "You've got a trust fund, right? If you need help, go pay a tutor."
I put my foot down on top of a textbook. "Would you do it?"
"Tutor you? No way."
"Stop. At the car accident."
Her hands quieted. "Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do."
I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. "You really believe that?"
She looked down at her lap. "Yeah."
"Then how," I asked, "can you walk away from me?"
Afterward, I wipe my face with paper towels from the dispenser and fix my tie. Judge pads in tight circles beside me, the way he always does. "You did good," I tell him, patting the thick ruff of his neck.
When I get back into my office, Julia is gone. Kerri sits at the computer in a rare moment of productivity, typing. "She said that if you needed her, you could damn well come find her. Her words, not mine. And she asked for all the medical records." Kerri glances over her shoulder at me. "You look like shit."
"Thanks." An orange Post-it on her desk catches my attention. "Is this where she wants the records sent?"
"Yeah."
I slip the address into my pocket. "I'll take care of it," I say.
A week later, in front of the same grave, I unlaced Julia Romano's combat boots. I peeled away her camouflage jacket. Her feet were narrow and as pink as the inside of a tulip. Her collarbone was a mystery. "I knew you were beautiful under there," I said, and this was the first spot on her that I kissed.
The Fitzgeralds live in Upper Darby, in a house that could belong to any typical American family. Two-car garage; aluminum siding; Totfmder stickers in the windows for the fire department. By the time I get there, the sun is setting behind the roofline.
The whole drive over, I've tried to convince myself that what Julia said has absolutely no bearing on why I've decided to visit my client. That I was always planning to take this little detour before I headed home for the night.
But the truth is, in all the years I've been practicing, this is the first time I've paid a house call.
Anna opens the door when I ring the bell. "What are you doing here?"
"Checking up on you."
"Does that cost extra?"
"No," I say dryly. "It's part of a special promotion I'm doing this month."
"Oh." She crosses her arms. "Have you talked to my mother?"
"I'm trying my best not to. I assume she's not home?"
Anna shakes her head. "She's at the hospital. Kate got admitted again. I thought you might have gone over there."
"Kate's not my client."
This actually seems to disappoint her. She tucks her hair behind her ears. "Did you, like, want to come in?"
I follow her into the living room and sit down on the couch, a palette of cheery blue stripes. Judge sniffs the edges of the furniture. "I heard you met the guardian ad litem."
"Julia. She took me to the zoo. She seems all right." Her eyes dart to mine. "Did she say something about me?"
"She's worried that your mother might be talking to you about this case."
"Other than Kate," Anna says, "what else is there to talk about?"
We stare at each other for a moment. Beyond a client-attorney relationship, I am at a loss.
I could ask to see her room, except that there's no way in hell any male defense attorney would ever go upstairs alone with a thirteen-year-old girl. I could take her out to dinner, but I doubt she'd appreciate Cafe Nuovo, one of my favorite haunts, and I don't think I could stomach a Whopper. I could ask her about school, but it isn't in session.
"Do you have kids?" Anna asks.
I laugh. "What do you think?"
"It's probably a good thing," she admits. "No offense, but you don't exactly look like a parent."
That fascinates me. "What do parents look like?"
She seems to think about this. "You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that." She glances at me. "You can relax, you know. I'm not going to tie you up and make you listen to gangsta rap."
"Oh, well," I joke. "In that case." I loosen my tie and sit back on the pillows.
It makes a smile dart briefly across her face. "You don't have to pretend to be my friend or anything."
"I don't want to pretend." I run my hand through my hair. "The thing is, this is new to me."
"What is?"
I gesture around the living room. "Visiting a client. Shooting the breeze. Not leaving a case at the office at the end of the day."
"Well, this is new to me, too," Anna confesses.
"What is?"
She twists a strand of hair around her pinky. "Hoping," she says.
The part of town where Julia's apartment is located is an upscale area with a reputation for divorced bachelors, a point that irritates me the whole time I am trying to find a parking spot. Then the doorman takes one look at Judge and bars my path. "No dogs allowed," he says. "Sorry."
"This is a service dog." When that doesn't seem to ring a bell, I spell it out for him. "You know. Like Seeing Eye."
"You don't look blind."
"I'm a recovering alcoholic," I tell him. "The dog gets between me and a beer."
Julia's apartment is on the seventh floor. I knock on her door and then see an eye checking me out through the peephole. She opens it a crack, but leaves the chain in place. She has a kerchief wrapped around her head, and she looks like she's been crying.
"Hi," I say. "Can we start over?"
She wipes her nose. "Who the hell are you?"
"Okay. Maybe I deserve that." I glance at the chain. "Let me in, will you?"
She gives me a look, like I'm crazy or something. "Are you on crack?"
There is a scuffle, and another voice, and then the door opens wide and stupidly I think: There are two of her. "Campbell," the real Julia says, "what are you doing here?"
I hold up the medical records, still getting over the shock. How the hell is it that she never managed to mention, that entire year at Wheeler, having a twin?
"Izzy, this is Campbell Alexander. Campbell, this is my sister."
"Campbell…" I watch Izzy turn my name over on her tongue. At second glance, she really looks nothing like Julia at all. Her nose is a bit longer, her complexion not nearly the same shade of gold. Not to mention the fact that watching her mouth move doesn't make me hard. "Not the Campbell?" she says, turning to Julia. "From…"
"Yeah," she sighs.
Izzy's gaze narrows. "I knew I shouldn't let him in."
"It's fine," Julia insists, and she takes the files from me. "Thanks for bringing these."
Izzy waggles her fingers. "You can leave now."
"Stop." Julia swats her sister's arm. "Campbell is the attorney I'm working with this week."
"But wasn't he the guy who—"
"Yes, thanks, I have a fully functioning memory."
"So!" I interrupt. "I stopped off at Anna's house." Julia turns to me. "And?"
"Earth to Julia," Izzy says. "This is self-destructive behavior."
"Not when it involves a paycheck, Izzy. We have a case together, that's it. Okay? And I really don't feel like being lectured by you about self-destructive behavior. Who called Janet for a mercy fuck the night after she dumped you?"
"Hey." I turn to Judge. "How about those Red Sox?" Izzy stamps down the hall. "It's your suicide," she yells, and then I hear a door slam.
"I think she really likes me," I say, but Julia doesn't crack as mile.
"Thanks for the medical records. Bye."
"Julia—"
"Hey, I'm just saving you the trouble. It must've been hard training a dog to drag you out of a room when you need rescuing from some emotionally volatile situation, like an old girlfriend who's telling the truth. How does it work, Campbell? Hand signals? Word commands? A high-pitched whistle?"
I look wistfully down the empty hallway. "Can I have Izzy back instead?"
Julia tries to push me out the door.
"All right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off today in the office. But… it was an emergency."
She stares at me. "What did you say the dog's for?"
"I didn't." When she turns, Judge and I follow her deeper into the apartment, closing the door behind us. "So I went to see Anna Fitzgerald. You were right—before I took out a restraining order against her mother, I needed to talk to her."
"And?"
I think back to the two of us, sitting on that striped couch, stretching a web of trust between us. "I think we're on the same page." Julia doesn't respond, just picks up a glass of white wine on the kitchen counter. "Why yes, I'd love some," I say.
She shrugs. "It's in Smilla."
The fridge, of course. For its sense of snow. When I walk there and take out the bottle, I can feel her trying not to smile. "You forget that I know you."
"Knew," she corrects.
"Then educate me. What have you been doing for fifteen years?" I nod down the hallway toward Izzy's room. "I mean, other than cloning yourself." A thought occurs to me, and before I can even voice it Julia answers.
"My brothers all became builders and chefs and plumbers. My parents wanted their girls to go to college, and figured attending Wheeler senior year might stack the odds. I had good enough grades to get a partial scholarship there; Izzy didn't. My parents could only afford to send one of us to private school."
"Did she go to college?"
"RISD," Julia says. "She's a jewelry designer.”
“A hostile jewelry designer—"
"Having your heart broken can do that." Our eyes meet, and Julia realizes what she's said. "She just moved in today."
My eyes canvass the apartment, looking for a hockey stick, a Sports Illustrated magazine, a La-Z-Boy chair, anything telltale and male. "Is it hard getting used to a roommate?"
"I was living alone before, Campbell, if that's what you're asking." She looks at me over the edge of her wine glass. "How about you?"
"I have six wives, fifteen children, and an assortment of sheep." Her lips curve. "People like you always make me feel like I'm underachieving."
"Oh yeah, you're a real waste of space on the planet. Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law, a bleeding heart guardian ad litem__"
"How'd you know where I went to law school?”
“Judge DeSalvo," I lie, and she buys it.
I wonder if Julia feels like it has been moments, not years, since we've been together. If sitting at this counter with me feels as effortless for her as it does for me. It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music and starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.
"I didn't think you'd become a guardian ad litem," I admit.
"Neither did I." Julia smiles. "I still have moments where I fantasize about standing on a soapbox in Boston Common, railing against a patriarchal society. Unfortunately, you can't pay a landlord in dogma." She glances at me. "Of course, I also mistakenly believed you'd be President of the United States by now."
"I inhaled," I confess. "Had to set my sights a little lower. And you—well, actually, I figured you'd be living in the suburbs, doing the soccer mom thing with a bunch of kids and some lucky guy."
Julia shakes her head. "I think you're confusing me with Muffy or Bitsie or Toto or whatever the hell the names of the girls in Wheeler were."
"No. I just thought that… that I might be the guy."
There is a thick, viscous silence. "You didn't want to be that guy," Julia says finally. "You made that pretty clear."
That's not true, I want to argue. But how else would it look to her, when afterward, I wanted nothing to do with her. When, afterward, I acted just like everyone else. "Do you remember—" I begin.
"I remember everything, Campbell," she interrupts. "If I didn't, this wouldn't be so hard."
My pulse jumps so high that Judge gets to his feet and pushes his snout into my hip, alarmed. I had believed back then that nothing could hurt Julia, who seemed to be so free. I had hoped that I could be as lucky.
I was mistaken on both counts.
IN OUR LIVING ROOM we have a whole shelf devoted to the visual history of our family. Everyone's baby pictures are there, and some school head shots, and then various photos from vacations and birthdays and holidays. They make me think of notches on a belt or scratches on a prison wall—proof that time's passed, that we haven't all just been swimming in limbo.
There are double frames, singles, 8 x 10s, 4 x 6s. They are made of blond wood and inlaid wood and one very fancy glass mosaic. I pick up one of Jesse—he's about two, in a cowboy costume. Looking at it, you'd never know what was coming down the pike.
There is Kate with hair and Kate all bald; one of Kate as a baby sitting on Jesse's lap; one of my mother holding each of them on the edge of a pool. There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop.
Maybe it's because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of life. Maybe it's because they forgot.
It's nobody's fault, and it's not a big deal, but it's a little depressing all the same. A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.
My father calls at eleven o'clock to ask if I want him to come get me. "Mom's going to stay at the hospital," he explains. "But if you don't want to be alone in the house, you can sleep at the station."
"No, it's okay," I tell him. "I can always get Jesse if I need something."
"Right," my father says. "Jesse." We both pretend that this is a reliable backup plan.
"How's Kate?" I ask.
"Still pretty out of it. They've got her drugged up." I hear him drag in a breath. "You know, Anna," he begins, but then there is a shrill bell in the background. "Honey, I've got to go." He leaves me with an earful of dead air.
For a second I just hold the phone, picturing my dad stepping into his boots and pulling up the puddle of pants by their suspenders. I imagine the door of the station yawning like Aladdin's cave, and the engine screaming out, my father in the front passenger seat. Every time he goes to work, he has to put out fires.
It's just the encouragement I need. Grabbing a sweater, I leave the house and head for the garage.
There was this kid in my school, Jimmy Stredboe, who used to be a total loser. He got zits on top of his zits; he had a pet rat named Orphan Annie; and once in science class he puked into the fish tank. No one ever talked to him, in case dorkhood was contagious. But then one summer he was diagnosed with MS. After that, no one was mean to Jimmy anymore. If you passed him in the hall, you smiled. If he sat next to you at the lunch table, you nodded hello. It was as if being a walking tragedy canceled out ever having been a geek.
From the moment I was born, I have been the girl with the sick sister. All my life bank tellers have given me extra lollipops; principals have known me by name. No one is ever outright mean to me.
It makes me wonder how I'd be treated if I were like everyone else.
Maybe I'm a pretty rotten person, not that anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I'm rude or ugly or stupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.
It makes me wonder if what I'm doing now is just my true nature.
The headlights of another car bounce off the rearview mirror, lighting up like green goggles around Jesse's eyes. He drives with one wrist on the wheel, lazy. He needs a haircut, in a big way. "Your car smells like smoke," I say.
"Yeah. But it covers the aroma of spilled whiskey." His teeth flash in the dark. "Why? Is it bothering you?"
"Kind of."
Jesse reaches across my body to the glove compartment. He takes out a pack of Merits and a Zippo, lights up, and blows smoke in my direction. "Sorry," he says, though he isn't.
"Can I have one?"
"One what?"
"A cigarette." They are so white they seem to glow.
"You want a cigarette?" Jesse cracks up.
"I'm not joking," I say.
Jesse raises one brow, and then turns the wheel so sharply I think he might roll the Jeep. We wind up in a huff of road dust on the shoulder. Jesse turns on the interior lights and shakes the pack so that one cigarette shimmies out.
It feels too delicate between my fingers, like the fine bone of a bird. I hold it the way I think a drama queen ought to, between the vise of my second and middle fingers. I put it up to my lips.
"You have to light it first." Jesse laughs, and he sparks up the Zippo.
There is no freaking way I'm leaning into a flame; chances are I'll set my hair on fire instead of the cigarette. "You do it for me," I say.
"Nope. If you're gonna learn, you're gonna learn it all." He flicks the lighter again.
I touch the cigarette to the burn, suck in hard the way I have seen Jesse do. It makes my chest explode, and I cough so forcefully that for a minute I actually believe I can taste my lung at the base of my throat, pink and spongy. Jesse goes to pieces and plucks the cigarette out of my hand before I drop it. He takes two long drags and then tosses it out the window.
"Nice try," he says.
My voice is a sandpit. "It's like licking a barbecue."
While I work on remembering how to breathe, Jesse pulls into the road again. "What made you want to?"
I shrug. "I figured I might as well."
"If you'd like a checklist of depravity, I can make one up for you." When I don't reply, he glances over at me. "Anna," he says, "you're not doing the wrong thing."
By now he's pulled into the hospital's parking lot. "I'm not doing the right thing, either," I point out.
He turns off the ignition but doesn't make an attempt to leave the car. "Have you thought about the dragon guarding the cave?"
I narrow my eyes. "Speak English."
"Well, I'm guessing Mom's asleep about five feet away from Kate."
Oh, shit. It is not that I think my mother would throw me out, but she certainly won't leave me alone with Kate, and right now that's what I want more than anything. Jesse looks at me. "Seeing Kate isn't going to make you feel better."
There's really no way to explain why I need to know that she's okay, at least now, even though I have taken steps that will put an end to that.
For once, though, someone seems to understand. Jesse stares out the window of the car. "Leave it to me," he says.
We were eleven and fourteen, and we were training for the Guinness Book of World Records. Surely there had never been two sisters who did simultaneous headstands for so long that their cheeks went hard as plums and their eyes saw nothing but red. Kate had the shape of a pixie, all noodle arms and legs; and when she bent to the ground and kicked up her feet, it looked as delicate as a spider walking a wall. Me, I sort of defied gravity with a thud.
We balanced in silence for a few seconds. "I wish my head was flatter," I said, as I felt my eyebrows scrunch down. "Do you think there's a man who'll come to the house to time us? Or do we just mail a videotape?"
"I guess they'll let us know." Kate folded her arms along the carpet.
"Do you think we'll be famous?"
"We might get on the Today show. They had that eleven-year-old kid who could play the piano with his feet." She thought for a second. "Mom knew someone who got killed by a piano falling out a window."
"That's not true. Why would anyone push a piano out a window?"
"It is true. You ask her. And they weren't taking it out, they were putting it in." She crossed her legs against the wall, so that it looked like she was just sitting upside down. "What do you think is the best way to die?"
"I don't want to talk about this," I said.
"Why? I'm dying. You're dying." When I frowned, she said, "Well, you are." Then she grinned. "I just happen to be more gifted at it than you are."
"This is a stupid conversation." Already, it was making my skin itch in places I knew I would never be able to scratch.
"Maybe an airplane crash," Kate mused. "It would suck, you know, when you realized you were going down… but then it happens and you're just powder. How come people get vaporized, but they still manage to find clothes in trees, and those black boxes?"
By now my head was starting to pound. "Shut up, Kate."
She crawled down the wall and sat up, flushed. "There's just sleeping through it as you croak, but that's kind of boring."
"Shut up," I repeated, angry that we had only lasted about twenty-two seconds, angry that now we were going to have to try for a record all over again. I tipped myself sunny-side up again and tried to clear the knot of hair out of my face. "You know, normal people don't sit around thinking about dying."
"Liar. Everyone thinks about dying."
"Everyone thinks about you dying," I said.
The room went so still that I wondered if we ought to go for a different record—how long can two sisters hold their breath?
Then a twitchy smile crossed her face. "Well," Kate said. "At least now you're telling the truth."
Jesse gives me a twenty-dollar bill for cab fare home; because that's the only hitch in his plan—once we go through with this, he isn't going to be driving back. We take the stairs up to the eighth floor instead of the elevator, because they let us out behind the nurse's station, not in front of it. Then he tucks me inside a linen closet filled with plastic pillows and sheets stamped with the hospital's name. "Wait," I blurt out, when he's about to leave me. "How am I going to know when it's time?" He starts to laugh. "You'll know, trust me."
He takes a silver flask out of his pocket—it's one my father got from the chief and thinks he lost three years ago—screws off the cap, and pours whiskey all over the front of his shirt. Then he starts to walk down the hall. Well, walk would be a loose approximation—Jesse slams like a billiard ball into the walls and knocks over an entire cleaning cart. "Ma?" he yells out. "Ma, where are you?"
He isn't drunk, but he sure as hell can do a great imitation. It makes me wonder about the times I have looked out my bedroom window in the middle of the night and seen him puking into the rhododendrons—maybe that was all for show, too.
The nurses swarm out from their hive of a desk, trying to subdue a boy half their age and three times as strong, who at that very moment grabs the uppermost tier of a linen rack and pulls it forward, making a crash so loud it rings in my ears. Call buttons start ringing like an operator's switchboard behind the nurse's desk, but all three of the night-duty ladies are doing their best to hold Jesse down while he kicks and flails.
The door to Kate's room opens, and bleary-eyed, my mother steps out. She takes a look at Jesse, and for a second her whole face is frozen with the realization that, in fact, things can get worse. Jesse swings his head toward her, a great big bull, and his features melt. "Hiya, Mom," he greets, and he smiles loosely up at her.
"I am so sorry," my mother says to the nurses. She closes her eyes as Jesse stumbles upright and throws his sloppy arms around her.
"There's coffee in the cafeteria," one nurse suggests, and my mother is too embarrassed to even answer her. She just moves toward the elevator banks with Jesse attached to her like a mussel on a crusty hull, and pushes the down button over and over in the fruitless hope that it will actually make the doors open faster.
When they leave, it is almost too easy. Some of the nurses hurry off to check on the patients who've rung in; others settle back behind their desk, trading hushed commentary about Jesse and my poor mother like it's some card game. They never look my way as I sneak out of the linen closet, tiptoe down the hall, and let myself into my sister's hospital room.
One Thanksgiving when Kate was not in the hospital, we actually pretended to be a regular family. We watched the parade on TV, where a giant balloon fell prey to a freak wind and wound up wrapped around a NYC traffic light. We made our own gravy. My mother brought the turkey's wishbone out to the table, and we fought over who would be granted the right to snap it. Kate and I were given the honors. Before I got a good grip, my mother leaned close and whispered into my ear, "You know what to wish for." So I shut my eyes tight and thought hard of remission for Kate, even though I had been planning to ask for a personal CD player, and got a nasty satisfaction out of the fact that I did not win the tug-of-war.
After we ate, my father took us outside for a game of two-on-two touch football while my mother was washing the dishes. She came outside when Jesse and I had already scored twice. "Tell me," she said, "that I am hallucinating." She didn't have to say anything else—we'd all seen Kate tumble like an ordinary kid and wind up bleeding uncontrollably like a sick one.
"Aw, Sara." My dad turned up the wattage on his smile. "Kate's on my team. I won't let her get sacked."
He swaggered over to my mother, and kissed her so long and slow that my own cheeks started to burn, because I was sure the neighbors would see. When he lifted his head, my mother's eyes were a color I had never seen before and don't think I have ever seen again. "Trust me," he said, and then he threw the football to Kate.
What I remember about that day was the way the ground bit back when you sat on it—the first hint of winter. I remember being tackled by my father, who always braced himself in a push-up so that I got none of the weight and all of his heat. I remember my mother, cheering equally for both teams.
And I remember throwing the ball to Jesse, but Kate getting in the way—an expression of absolute shock on her face as it landed in the cradle of her arms and Dad yelled her on to the touchdown. She sprinted, and nearly had it, but then Jesse took a running leap and slammed her to the ground, crushing her underneath him.
In that moment everything stopped. Kate lay with her arms and legs splayed, unmoving. My father was there in a breath, shoving at Jesse. "What the hell is the matter with you!"
"I forgot!"
My mother: "Where does it hurt? Can you sit up?"
But when Kate rolled over, she was smiling. "It doesn't hurt. It feels great."
My parents looked at each other. Neither of them understood like I did, like Jesse did—that no matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else—and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it's a miracle. "He forgot," Kate said to nobody, and she lay on her back, beaming up at the cold hawkeye sun.
Hospital rooms never get completely dark; there is always some glowing panel behind the bed in the case of catastrophe, a runway strip so that the nurses and doctors can find their way. I have seen Kate a hundred times in beds like this one, although the tubes and wires change. She always looks smaller than I remember.
I sit down as gently as I can. The veins on Kate's neck and chest are a road map, highways that don't go anywhere. I trick myself into believing that I can see those rogue leukemia cells moving like a rumor through her system.
When she opens her eyes, I nearly fall off the bed; it's an Exorcist moment. "Anna?" she says, staring right at me. I have not seen her look this scared since we were little, and Jesse convinced us that an old Indian ghost had come back to claim the bones buried by mistake under our house.
If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?
I crawl onto the bed, which is narrow, but still big enough for both of us. I rest my head on her chest, so close to her central line that I can see the liquid dripping into her. Jesse is wrong—I didn't come to see Kate because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard to remember who I am