Doubt thou that the stars are fire;
Doubt thou that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt that I love.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
THE MINUTE I WALK INTO THE HOSPITAL with Judge at my side, I know I'm in trouble. A security officer—think Hitler in drag with a very bad perm—crosses her arms and blocks my entry at the elevator bank. "No dogs," she orders.
"This is a service dog."
"You're not blind."
"I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified."
I head up to the office of Dr. Peter Bergen, a psychiatrist who happens to be the chairman of the medical ethics board at Providence Hospital. I'm here by default: I can't seem to find my client, who may or may not still be pursuing her lawsuit. Frankly, after the hearing yesterday I was pissed off—I wanted her to come to me. When she didn't, I went so far as to sit on her doorstep last night for an hour, but no one showed up at her home; this morning, assuming Anna was with her sister, I came to the hospital—only to be told I couldn't go in to see Kate. I can't find Julia, either, although I fully expected to see her still waiting yesterday on the other side of the door when Judge and I left after the incident at the courthouse. I asked her sister for a cell number, at least, but something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL is out of service.
So, because I have nothing better to do, I'm going to work on my case on the off chance that it still exists.
Bergen's secretary looks like the kind of woman whose bra size ranks higher than her IQ. "Ooh, a puppy!" she squeals. She reaches out to pat Judge.
"Please. Don't." I start to come up with one of my ready replies, but why waste it on her? Then I head for the door in the back.
There I find a small, squat man with a stars-and-stripes bandanna over his graying curls, wearing yoga gear and doing Tai Chi. "Busy," Bergen grunts.
"Something we have in common, Doctor. I'm Campbell Alexander, the attorney who asked for the charts on the Fitzgerald girl."
Arms extended forward, the psychiatrist exhales. "I sent them over."
"You sent Kate Fitzgerald's records. I need Anna Fitzgerald's."
"You know," he replies, "now is not a very good time for me …"
"Don't let me interrupt your workout." I sit down, and Judge lies at my feet. "As I was saying—Anna Fitzgerald? Do you have any notes from the ethics committee about her?"
"The ethics committee has never convened on Anna Fitzgerald's behalf. It's her sister who's the patient."
I watch him arch his back, then hunch forward. "Do you have any idea how many times Anna's been both an outpatient and an inpatient in this hospital?"
"No," Bergen says.
"I'm counting eight."
"But those procedures wouldn't necessarily come before the ethics committee. When the physicians agree with what the patients want, and vice versa, there's no conflict. No reason for us to even hear about it." Dr. Bergen lowers the foot he has raised in the air and reaches for a towel to mop under his arms. "We all have full-time jobs, Mr. Alexander. We're psychiatrists and nurses and doctors and scientists and chaplains. We don't go looking for problems."
Julia and I leaned against my locker, having an argument about the Virgin Mary, I had been fingering her miraculous medal—well, actually, it was her collarbone I was after, and the medal had gotten in the way. "What if," I said, ''she was just some kid who got herself in trouble, and came up with an ingenious way out of it?"
Julia nearly choked, "I think they can even throw you out of the Episcopal Church for that one, Campbell."
"Think about it—you're thirteen, or however old they were back then when they were shacking up—and you have a nice little roll in the hay with Joseph, and before you know it your EPT is coming up positive. You can either face your father's wrath, or you can spin a good story. Who's going to contradict you if you say God's the one who knocked you up? Don't you think Mary's dad was thinking, 'I could ground her… but what if that causes a plague?' "
Just then I jacked open my locker and a hundred condoms spilled out. A bunch of guys from the sailing team morphed out of their hiding spots, laughing like hyenas. "Figured you could use a new supply," one of them said.
Well, what was I supposed to do? I smiled.
Before I knew it Julia had taken off. For a girl, she ran goddamn fast. I didn't catch up to her until the school was a distant smudge behind us. "Jewel," I said, although I didn't know what should come after that. It was not the first time I had made a girl cry, but it was the first time it hurt me to do it. "Should I have decked them all? Is that what you want?"
She rounded on me. "What do you tell them about us when you're in the locker room?"
"I don't tell them anything."
"What do you tell your parents about us?"
"I don't," I admitted.
"Fuck you," she said, and she started running again.
The elevator doors open on the third floor, and there's Julia Romano. We stare at each other for a moment, and then Judge gets up and starts wagging his tail. "Going down?"
She steps inside and pushes the button for the lobby, already lit.
But it makes her lean across me, so that I can smell her hair—vanilla and cinnamon. "What are you doing here?" she asks.
"Becoming supremely disappointed in the state of American health care. How about you?"
"Meeting with Kate's oncologist, Dr. Chance."
"I assume that means we still have a lawsuit?"
Julia shakes her head. "I don't know. No one in that family's returning my calls, except for Jesse, and that's strictly hormonal."
"Did you go up to—"
"Kate's room? Yeah. They wouldn't let me in. Something about dialysis."
"They said the same thing to me," I tell her.
"Well, if you talk to her—"
"Look," I interrupt. "I have to assume we still have a hearing in three days until Anna tells me otherwise. If that's the case, you and I really need to sit down and figure out what the hell is going on in this kid's life. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?"
"No," Julia says, and she starts to leave.
"Stop." When I grasp her arm, she freezes. "I know this is uncomfortable for you. It's uncomfortable for me, too. But just because you and I can't seem to grow up doesn't mean Anna shouldn't have a chance to." This is accompanied by a particularly hangdog look.
Julia folds her arms. "Did you want to write that one down, so you can use it again?"
I burst out laughing. "Jesus, you're tough—"
"Oh, stuff it, Campbell. You're so glib you probably oil your lips every morning."
That conjures all sorts of images for me, but they involve her body parts.
"You're right," she says then.
"Now that I want to write down …" When she starts walking away this time, Judge and I follow.
She heads out of the hospital and down a side street, an alley, and past a tenement before we break into the sunshine again on Mineral Spring Avenue in North Providence. By that time, I'm grateful that my left hand is wrapped tight to the leash of a dog with an excessive amount of teeth. "Chance told me that there's nothing left to do for Kate," Julia tells me.
"You mean other than the kidney transplant."
"No. Here's the incredible thing." She stops walking, plants herself in front of me. "Dr. Chance doesn't think Kate's strong enough."
"And Sara Fitzgerald's pushing for it," I say. "When you think about it, Campbell, you can't blame her logic. If Kate's going to die without the transplant anyway, why not go for it?" We step delicately around a homeless man and his collection of bottles. "Because the transplant involves major surgery for her other daughter," I point out. "And putting Anna's health at risk for a procedure that's not necessary for her seems a little cavalier."
Suddenly Julia comes to a halt in front of a small shack with a hand-painted sign, Luigi Ravioli. It looks like the sort of place they keep dark, so that you don't notice the rats. "Isn't there a Starbucks nearby?" I ask, just as an enormous bald man in a white apron opens the door and nearly knocks Julia over.
"Isobella!" he cries, kissing her on both cheeks. "No, Uncle Luigi, it's Julia."
"Julia?" He pulls back and frowns. "You sure? You ought to cut your hair or something, give us a break."
"You used to get on my case about my hair when it was short."
"We got on your case about your hair because it was pink." He looks at me. "You hungry?"
"We were hoping for some coffee, and a quiet table." He grins. "A quiet table?" Julia sighs. "Not that kind of quiet table."
"Right, right, everything's a big secret. Come in, I'll give you the room in the back." He glances down at Judge. "Dog stays here."
"Dog comes," I respond.
"Not in my restaurant," Luigi insists. "He's a service dog, he can't stay outside."
Luigi leans close, a couple of inches away from my face. "You're blind?"
"Color-blind," I reply. "He tells me when the traffic lights change." Julia's uncle's mouth turns down at the corners. "Everyone's a wiseass today," he says, and then he leads the way.
For weeks, my mother tried to guess the identity of my girlfriend. "It's Bitsy, right?—the one we met on the Vineyard? Or no, wait, it's not Sheila's daughter, the redhead, is it?" I told her over and over it was no one she knew, when what I really meant was that Julia was no one she would recognize.
"I know what's right for Anna," Julia tells me, "but I'm not sure she's mature enough to make her own decisions."
I pick up another piece of antipasto. "If you think she's justified in filing the petition, then what's the conflict?"
"Commitment," Julia says dryly. "Would you like me to define that for you?"
"You know, it's impolite to unsheathe your claws at the dinner table."
"Right now, every time Anna's mom confronts her, she backs off. Every time something happens with Kate, she backs off. And in spite of what she thinks she's capable of, she hasn't made a decision of this magnitude before—considering what the consequences are going to be to her sister."
"What if I told you that by the time we have our hearing, she'll be able to make that decision?"
Julia glances up. "Why are you so sure that'll happen?"
"I'm always sure of myself."
She plucks an olive out of the tray between us. "Yeah," she says quietly. "I remember that."
Although Julia must have had her suspicions, I didn't tell her about my parents, my house. As we drove into Newport in my Jeep, I pulled into the driveway of a huge brick mansion. "Campbell," Julia said. "You're kidding."
I circled the loop of the driveway and turned out the other side. "Yeah, l am."
That way, when I pulled into the house two driveways down, the sprawling Georgian with its rows of beech trees and its slope to the Bay, it wasn't quite as imposing. At the very least, it was smaller than the first place.
Julia shook her head. "Your parents are going to take one look at me and pull us apart with a crowbar,"
"They're gonna love you," I told her, the first time I lied to Julia, but not the last.
Julia ducks beneath the table with a plateful of pasta. "Here you go, Judge," she says. "So what's with the dog?"
"He translates for my Spanish-speaking clients."
"Really."
I grin at her. "Really."
She leans forward, narrowing her eyes. "You know, I have six brothers. I know how you guys work."
"Do tell."
"And give away my trade secrets? I don't think so." She shakes her head. "Maybe Anna hired you because you're just as evasive as she is."
"She hired me because she saw my name in the paper," I say. "Nothing more to it than that."
"But why'd you take her on? This isn't your usual case."
"How would you know what my usual case is?"
It is said lightly, a joke, but Julia goes mute, and there's my answer: all these years, she's been following my career.
Sort of like I've been following hers.
I clear my throat, uncomfortable, and point to her face. "You've got sauce… over there."
She lifts her napkin and wipes the side of her mouth, but misses completely. "Did I get it off?" she asks.
Leaning forward with my own napkin, I clean the small spot—but then I don't move away. My hand rests on her cheek. Our eyes lock, and in that instance, we are young again and learning the shape of each other.
"Campbell," Julia says, "don't do this to me."
"Do what?"
"Push me off the same cliff twice."
When the cell phone in my coat pocket rings, we both jump. Julia inadvertently knocks over her glass of Chianti while I answer. "No, calm down. Calm down. Where are you? Okay, I'm on my way." Julia stops mopping the table as I hang up. "I have to go."
"Is everything all right?"
"That was Anna," I say. "She's at the Upper Darby Police Station."
On the way back to Providence, I tried to come up with at least one awful death per mile for my parents. Bludgeoning, scalping. Skinning alive and sprinkling with salt. Pickling in gin, although I don't know whether that would be considered torture or simply Nirvana.
It was possible they saw me sneaking into the guest room, bringing Julia down the servants' stairs to the rear door of the house. It is possible they could make out our silhouettes as we stripped off our clothes and waded into the Bay. Maybe they watched her legs wrap around me, watched me lay her down on a bed made of sweatshirts and flannel.
Their excuse, given the next morning over eggs Benedict, was an invitation to a party at the Club that night—black-tie, family only. An invitation that, of course, didn't include Julia.
It was so hot out by the time we pulled up to her house that some enterprising boy had pried open the fire hydrant, and kids bounced like popcorn through the stream. "Julia, I never should have dragged you home to meet my parents."
"There's a lot of stuff you shouldn't do," she admitted. "And most of it involves me."
"I'll call you before graduation," I said, as she kissed me and got out of the jeep.
But I didn't call. And I didn't meet up with her at graduation. And she thinks she knows why, but she doesn't.
The curious thing about Rhode Island is that it has absolutely no feng shui. By this I mean that there's a Little Compton, but no Big Compton. There's an Upper Darby but no Lower Darby. There are all sorts of places denned in terms of something else that doesn't actually exist.
Julia follows me in her own car. Judge and I must break a land-speed record, because it seems less than five minutes have passed since the phone call and the moment we walk into the station to find Anna hysterical beside the desk sergeant. She flies toward me, frantic. "You've got to help," she cries. "Jesse got arrested."
"What?" I stare at Anna, who tore me away from a very good meal, not to mention a conversation I really would rather have followed to its conclusion. "Why is this my problem?"
"Because I need you to get him out," Anna explains slowly, as if I am a moron. "You're a lawyer."
"I'm not his lawyer."
"But can't you be?"
"Why don't you call your mother," I suggest. "I hear she's taking new clients."
Julia whacks me on the arm. "Shut up." She turns to Anna.
"What happened?"
"Jesse stole a car and he got nailed."
"Give me more details," I say, already regretting this. "It was a Humvee, I think. A big, yellow one." There's one big yellow Humvee in this entire state, and it belongs to Judge Newbell. A headache begins between my eyes. "Your brother stole a judge's car, and you want me to get him out?" Anna blinks at me. "Well, yeah,"
Jesus. "Let me go talk to the officer." Leaving Anna in Julia's care, I walk to the desk sergeant, who—I swear it—is already laughing at me. "I'm representing Jesse Fitzgerald," I sigh. "Sorry to hear that."
"It was Judge Newbell's, wasn't it?" The officer smiles. "Yup."
I take a deep breath. "The kid doesn't have a record.”
“That's because he just turned eighteen. He's got a juvy record a mile long."
"Look," I say. "His family's going through a lot right now. One sister's dying; the other one is suing her parents. Can you cut me a break here?"
The officer looks over at Anna. "I'll talk to the AG for you, but you'd better plead the kid, because I'm quite sure Judge Newbell doesn't want to come testify."
After a little more negotiation I walk back toward Anna, who leaps up the minute she sees me. "Did you fix it?"
"Yeah. But I'm never doing this again, and I'm not done with you." I stalk toward the rear of the station, where the holding cells are.
Jesse Fitzgerald lies on his back on the metal bunk, one arm thrown over his eyes. For a moment I stand outside his cell. "You know, you are the best argument I've ever seen for natural selection."
He sits up. "Who the hell are you?"
"Your fairy godmother. You dumb little shit—do you realize you stole a judge's Humvee?"
"Well, how was I supposed to know whose car it was?"
"Maybe because of the judicial vanity plate that says ALLRISE?"
I say. "I'm a lawyer. Your sister asked me to represent you. Against my better judgment, I've agreed."
"No kidding? So can you get me out?"
"They're going to let you go on PR bail. You need to give them your license and agree to live at home, which you already do, so that shouldn't be a problem."
Jesse considers this. "Do I have to give them my car?"
"No."
You can actually see the gears churning. A kid like Jesse couldn't care less about a piece of paper that permits him to drive, just so long as he has wheels. "That's cool, then," he says.
I motion to an officer waiting nearby, who unlocks the cell so that Jesse can leave. We walk side by side to the waiting area. He is as tall as I am, but unfinished around the edges. His face lights up as we turn the corner, and for a moment I think he is capable of redemption, that maybe he feels enough for Anna to be an ally for her.
But he ignores his sister, and instead approaches Julia. "Hey," he says. "Were you worried about me?"
I want, in that moment, to lock him back up. After I kill him.
"Get away," Julia sighs. "Come on, Anna. Let's go find something to eat."
Jesse looks up. "Excellent. I'm starving."
"Not you," I say. "We're going to court."
On the day I graduated from Wheeler, the locusts came. They arrived like a thick summer storm, tangling in the branches of trees and thudding hard on the ground. The meteorologists had a field day, trying to explain the phenomenon. They mentioned biblical plagues and El Nino and our prolonged drought. They recommended umbrellas, broad-brimmed hats, staying indoors. The graduation ceremony, however, was held outside under a large white canvas tent. As the salutatorian spoke, his message was punctuated by the suicide leap of bugs. Locusts rolled off the sloped roof, falling into the laps of spectators.
I hadn't wanted to come, but my parents forced me to go. Julia found me while I was putting on my cap. She wrapped her arms around my waist. She tried to kiss me. "Hey," she said. "Which side of the earth did you drop off?"
I remember thinking that in our white gowns, we looked like ghosts. I pushed her away from me. "Don't. Okay P Just don't."
In every graduation photo my parents took, I was smiling as if this new world were a place I actually wanted to live in, while all around me insects fell, big as fists.
What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world. In fact, we have a written code—the Rules of Professional Responsibility—which we have to read, be tested on, and follow in order to maintain a practice. But these very standards require us to do things that most people consider immoral. For example, if you walk into my office and say, "I killed the Lindbergh baby," I might ask you where the body is. "Under my bedroom floor," you tell me, "three feet down below the foundation of the house." If I am to do my job correctly, I can't tell a soul where that baby is. I could be disbarred, in fact, if I do.
All this means is that I'm actually educated to think that morals and ethics do not necessarily go hand in hand.
"Bruce," I say to the prosecutor, "my client will waive information. And if you get rid of some of these traffic misdemeanors, I swear he'll never come within fifty feet of the judge or his car again."
I wonder how much the general population of this country knows that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.
Bruce is an all right guy. Plus, I happen to know he's just been assigned to a double murder; he doesn't want to waste his time with Jesse Fitzgerald's conviction.
"You know, we're talking about Judge Newbell's Humvee, Campbell," he says.
"Yes. I am aware of that," I answer gravely, when what I'm thinking is that anyone vain enough to drive a Humvee is practically asking to have it ripped off.
"Let me talk to the judge," Bruce sighs. "I'm probably going to get eviscerated for suggesting it, but I'll tell him that the cops don't mind if we give the kid a break."
Twenty minutes later, we have signed all the forms, and Jesse stands beside me in the front of the court. Twenty-five minutes later he is on probation, officially, and we walk out onto the courthouse steps.
It is one of those summer days that feel like a memory welling up in your throat. On days like this, I would have been sailing with my father.
Jesse tips his head back. "We used to fish for tadpoles," he says out of nowhere. "Catch them up in a bucket, and then watch their tails turn into legs. Not a single one, I swear it, ever made it to frog." He turns to me and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.
"Want one?"
I haven't smoked since I was in law school. But I find myself taking a cigarette and lighting up. Judge watches life happen, lolling his tongue. Beside me, Jesse strikes a match. "Thanks," he says. "For what you're doing for Anna."
A car passes by, its radio playing one of those songs that stations never play in winter. A blue stream of smoke flares out from Jesse's mouth. I wonder if he's ever been sailing. If there's a memory he's held on to all these years—sitting on the front lawn and feeling the grass cool down after sunset, holding a sparkler on the Fourth of July until it burned his fingers. We all have something.
She left the note underneath the windshield wiper of my Jeep seventeen days after graduation. Before I even opened it I wondered how she got to Newport, how she made her way back. I carried it out to the Bay to read on the rocks; and after I was done I held it up and miffed at it, in case it smelled like her.
I was not technically allowed to drive, but that hardly mattered. We met, as per that note, at the cemetery.
Julia sat in front of the headstone, her arms clasped around her knees. She looked up when she saw me. "I wanted you to be different."
"Julia, it's not you."
"No?" She got to her feet. "I don't have a trust fund, Campbell. My father doesn't own a yacht. If you were crossing your fingers, expecting me to turn into Cinderella one of these days, you got it all wrong."
"I don't care about any of that."
"Bullshit you don't." Her eyes narrowed. "What did you think, that it would be fun to go slumming? Did you do it to piss off your parents? And now you can scrape me off your shoe like I'm something you stepped in by accident?" She struck out at me, clipping me across the chest. "I don't need you. I never needed you."
"Well, I fucking needed you!" I shouted back at her. When she turned I grabbed her shoulders and I kissed her. I took the things I couldn't bring myself to say, and poured them into her.
There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.
I pushed Julia away from me. Walked down that cemetery hill. Didn't look back.
Anna sits in the passenger seat, which doesn't go over well with Judge. He hangs his sorry face into the front, right between us, panting up a storm. "Today wasn't a very good harbinger of what's to come," I tell her.
"What are you talking about?"
"If you want the right to make major decisions, Anna, then you need to start making them now. Not relying on the rest of the world to clean up the messes."
She scowls at me. "This is all because I called you to help my brother? I thought you were my friend."
"I already told you once I'm not your friend; I'm your attorney. There's a seminal difference."
"Fine." She fumbles with the lock. "I'll go back to the police and tell them to rearrest Jesse." She nearly succeeds in pushing the passenger door open, although we are traveling on a highway. I grab the handle and slam it shut. "Are you crazy?”
“I don't know," she answers. "I'd ask you what you think, but it's probably not in the job description."
With a yank of the wheel, I pull the car to the shoulder of the road. "You know what I think? The reason no one ever asks you for your opinion about anything important is because you change your mind so often they don't know what to believe. Take me, for example. I don't even know if we're still petitioning a judge for medical emancipation."
"Why wouldn't we be?"
"Ask your mother. Ask Julia. Every time I turn around someone informs me that you don't want to go through with this." I look down at the armrest, where her hand sits—purple sparkle polish, nails bitten to the quick. "If you want to be treated like an adult by the court, you need to start acting like one. The only way I can fight for you, Anna, is if you can prove to everyone that you can fight for yourself when I walk away."
I pull the car back onto the road, and glance at her sidelong, but Anna sits with her hands wedged between her thighs, her face set mutinously ahead. "We're almost at your house," I say dryly. "Then you can get out and give the door a good slam in my face."
"We're not going to my house. I need to go to the fire station. My dad and I are staying there for a while."
"Is it my imagination, or did I not spend a couple of hours at the family court yesterday arguing this very point? And I thought you told Julia that you didn't want to be separated from your mother? This is exactly what I'm talking about, Anna," I say, banging my hand on the steering wheel. "What the hell do you really want?"
When she blows, it is remarkable. "You want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick of nobody asking me how I feel about all this. I'm sick, but I'm never fucking sick enough for this family." She opens the car door while it is still moving, and takes off at a dead run to the firehouse, a few hundred feet in the distance.
Well. Deep in the recesses of my little client is the potential to make other people listen. It means that on the stand, she'll hold up better than I imagined.
And on the heels of that thought: Anna might be able to testify, but what she's said makes her seem unsympathetic. Immature, even. Or in other words, highly unlikely to convince the judge to rule in her favor.
FIRE AND HOPE ARE CONNECTED, just so you know. The way the Greeks told it, Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth. Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strength and fur and wings. By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire.
Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But Prometheus saw his pride and joy shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man again. To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open.
Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped. It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others.
Ask any fireman; he'll tell you it's true. Hell. Ask any father.
"Come on up," I say to Campbell Alexander, when he arrives with Anna. "There's fresh coffee." He follows me up the stairs, his German shepherd trailing. I pour two cups. "What's the dog for?"
"He's a chick magnet," the lawyer says. "Got any milk?"
I pass him the carton from the fridge, then sit down with my own mug. It's quiet up here; the boys are downstairs washing the engines and doing their daily maintenance.
"So." Alexander takes a sip of his coffee. "Anna tells me that you've both moved out."
'Yeah. I sort of figured you might want to ask me about that."
"You do realize that your wife is opposing counsel," he says carefully.
I meet his eye. "I suppose by that you mean do I realize that I shouldn't be sitting here talking to you."
"That only becomes an issue if your wife is still representing you."
"I never asked Sara to represent me."
Alexander frowns. "I'm not sure she's aware of that."
"Look, with all due respect, this may seem like an incredibly big deal, and it is, but we have another incredibly big deal going on at the same time. Our older daughter's been hospitalized and… well, Sara's fighting on two fronts."
"I know. And I'm sorry about Kate, Mr. Fitzgerald," he says.
"Call me Brian." I cup my hands around my mug. "And I would like to speak to you… without Sara around."
He leans back in the folding chair. "How about right now?"
It's not a good time, but it will never be a good time for this. "Okay." I take a deep breath. "I think Anna's right."
At first I'm not sure Campbell Alexander's even heard me. Then he asks, "Are you willing to tell that to the judge at a hearing?"
I look down at my coffee. "I think I have to."
By the time Paulie and I responded to this morning's ambulance call, the boyfriend already had the girl in a shower. She sat on the bottom, her legs splayed around the drain, fully dressed. Her hair was matted to the front of her face, but even if it wasn't, I'd have known that she was unconscious.
Paulie got right inside and started to drag her out. "Her name's Magda," the boyfriend said. "She's gonna be okay, right?"
"Is she diabetic?"
"What does that matter?"
For Christ's sake. "Tell me what you were using," I demanded.
"We were just getting drunk," the boyfriend said. 'Tequila."
He was no more than seventeen. Old enough to have heard the myth that a shower will bring someone out of a heroin overdose. "Let me explain this to you. My buddy and I want to help Magda, to save her life. But if you tell me that she's got alcohol in her system and it turns out that it's a drug instead, whatever we give her could backfire and make her even worse. You get that?"
By then, just outside the shower stall, Paulie had wrestled Magda out of her shirt. There were tracks up and down her arms. "If it's tequila, then they've been shooting it up. Coma cocktail?"
I took the Narcan out of the paramedic bag and handed Paulie the equipment for a microdrip. "So, urn," the boy said, "you're not going to tell the cops, are you?"
In one quick move, I grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and pushed him up against the wall. "Are you that fucking stupid?"
"It's just that my parents will kill me."
"You didn't seem to care much if you killed yourself. Or her." I jerked his head toward the girl, who by then was vomiting all over the floor. "You think life is something you can throw out like a piece of trash? You think you OD, and get a second chance?"
I was yelling hard into his face. I felt a hand on my shoulder—Paulie. "Step down, Cap," he said under his breath.
Slowly I realized that the kid was trembling in front of me, that he really had nothing to do with the reason I was yelling. I walked away to clear my head. Paulie finished up with the patient and then came back to me. "You know, if it's too much, we can cover for you," he offered. "The chief'll give you as much time off as you want."
"I need to work." Over his shoulder I could see the girl pinking up; the boy sobbing into his hands beside her. I looked Paulie in the eye. "When I'm not here," I explained, "I have to be there."
The lawyer and I finish up our coffee. "Second cup?" I offer.
"I'd better not. I have to get back to the office."
We nod at each other, but there is really nothing left to say. "Don't worry about Anna," I add. "I'll make sure she gets whatever she needs."
'You might want to check in at home, too," Alexander says. "I just got your son released on PR bail for stealing a judge's Humvee."
He puts his coffee cup in the sink and leaves me holding this information, knowing sooner or later, it will force me to my knees.
No MATTER HOW MANY TIMES you drive to the emergency room, it never becomes routine. Brian carries our daughter in his arms, blood running down her face. The triage nurse waves us inside, shepherds the other kids to the bank of plastic chairs where they can wait. A resident comes into the cubicle, all business. "What happened?"
"She went over the handlebars of her bike," I said. "She landed on concrete. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of concussion, but there's a scalp lac at the hairline of about an inch and a half."
The doctor lays her down gently on the table, snaps on gloves, and peers at her forehead. "Are you a doctor or a nurse?"
I try to smile. "Just used to this."
It takes eighty-two stitches to sew up the gash. Afterward, with a bright white patch of gauze taped to her head, and a hefty dose of pediatric Tylenol swimming through her veins, we walk out to the waiting area, hand in hand.
Jesse asks her how many stitches she needed. Brian tells her she was just as brave as a firefighter. Kate glances at Anna's fresh bandage. "I like it better when I get to sit out here," she says.
It starts when Kate screams in the bathroom. I race upstairs and jimmy the lock to find my nine-year-old standing in front of a toilet spattered with blood. Blood runs down her legs, too, and has soaked through her underpants. This is the calling card for APL—hemorrhage in all sorts of masks and disguises. Kate's had rectal bleeding before, but she was a toddler; she would not remember. "It's all right," I say calmly.
I get a warm washcloth to clean her up, and find a sanitary napkin for her underwear. I watch her try to position the bulk of the pad between her legs. This is the moment I would have had with her when she got her period; will she live long enough for that?
"Mom," Kate says. "It's back."
"Clinical relapse." Dr. Chance takes off his glasses and presses his thumbs to the corners of his eyes. "I think a bone marrow transplant's the way to go."
My mind jumps to a memory of an inflatable Bozo punching bag I had when I was Anna's age; filled with sand at the bottom, I'd whack it only to have it pop back up.
"But a few months ago," Brian says, "you told us they were dangerous."
"They are. Fifty percent of patients who receive BMTs are cured. The other half don't survive the chemo and the radiation leading up to the transplant. Some are killed by the complications they develop after the transplant's done."
Brian looks at me, and then speaks the fear that ripples between us. "Then why would we even put Kate at risk?"
"Because if you don't," Dr. Chance explains, "she will die."
The first time I call the insurance company, they hang up on me by mistake. The second time, I wait through Muzak for twenty-two minutes before reaching a customer service representative. "Can I have your policy number?"
I give her the one all municipal employees get, and Brian's Social Security number. "How can I help you?"
"I spoke to someone there a week ago," I explain. "My daughter has leukemia, and needs a bone marrow transplant. The hospital explained that our insurance company needs to sign off on coverage."
A bone marrow transplant costs from $100,000 upward. Needless to say, we don't have that kind of cash lying around. But just because a doctor has recommended the transplant doesn't mean that our insurance company will agree.
"That sort of procedure needs a special review—"
"Yes, I know. That's where we were a week ago. I'm calling because I haven't heard back from you yet."
She puts me on hold, so that she can look up my file. I hear a subtle click, and then the tinny voice of a recorded operator. If you'd like to make a call…
"Shit!" I slam down the phone.
Anna, vigilant, pokes her head around the doorway. "You said a bad word."
"I know." I pick up the receiver and hit the redial button. I wind my way through the touch-tone menu. Finally, I reach a living person. "I was just disconnected. Again."
It takes this rep five more minutes to take down all the same numbers and names and history I have already given her predecessors. "We actually have reviewed your daughter's case," the woman says. "Unfortunately, at this time, we don't think that procedure is in her best interests."
I feel heat rush to my face. "Is dying?"
In preparation for the bone marrow harvest, I have to give Anna ongoing growth factor shots, just like I once gave Kate after her initial cord blood transplant. The intent is to hyper-pack Anna's marrow, so that when it is time to withdraw the cells, there will be plenty for Kate.
Anna has been told this, too, but all she knows is that twice a day, her mother has to give her a shot.
We use EMLA cream, a topical anesthetic. The cream is supposed to keep her from feeling the prick of the needle, but she still yells. I wonder if it hurts as much as having your six-year-old stare you in the eye and say she hates you.
"Mrs. Fitzgerald," the insurance company's customer service supervisor says, "we appreciate where you're coming from. Truly.”
“Somehow, I find that very hard to believe," I say. "Somehow I doubt that you have a daughter in a life-or-death situation, and that your advisory board isn't looking solely at the bottom line cost of a transplant." I have told myself that I will not lose my temper, and already thirty seconds into this phone call with the insurance company, I have ceded the battle.
"AmeriLife will pay ninety percent of what's considered reasonable and customary for a donor lymphocyte infusion. However, should you still choose to do a bone marrow transplant, we are willing to cover ten percent of the costs."
I take a deep breath. "The doctors on your board who recommended this—what's their specialty?"
"I don't—"
"It’s not acute promyelocytic leukemia, though, is it? Because even an oncologist who graduated last in his class from some hack medical school in Guam could probably tell you that a DLI isn't going to work as a cure. That three months from now, we'll be having this same discussion again. Plus, if you'd asked a doctor who had any familiarity with my daughter's particular disease burden, he'd tell you that repeating a treatment that's already been tried is highly unlikely to produce results in an APL patient, because they develop a resistance. Which means that AmeriLife is basically agreeing to throw money down a toilet, but not to spend it on the one thing that might actually have a chance of saving my child's life."
There is a pregnant bubble of silence on the other end of the phone. "Mrs. Fitzgerald," the supervisor suggests, "it is my understanding that if you follow this protocol, the insurance company would have no problems then paying for the transplant."
"Except that my daughter might not be alive by then to get it. We aren't talking about a car, where we can try a used part first and if it doesn't work, get a new one shipped in. We're talking about a human being. A human being. Do you automatons there even know what the hell that is?"
This time, I'm expecting the click when I am disconnected.
Zanne shows up the night before we are due to go to the hospital to begin Kate's preparatory transplant regimen. She lets Jesse help her set up her portable office, takes a phone call from Australia, and then comes into the kitchen so that Brian and I can catch her up on daily routines. "Anna's got gymnastics on Tuesday," I tell her. "Three o'clock. And I expect the oil truck to come sometime this week."
"The trash goes out on Wednesday," Brian adds.
"Don't walk Jesse into school. Apparently, that's anathema for sixth-graders."
She nods and listens and even takes notes, and then says she has a couple of questions. "The fish…"
"Gets fed twice a day. Jesse can do it, if you remind him."
"Is there an official bedtime?" Zanne asks.
"Yeah," I reply. "Do you want me to give you the real one, or the one you can use if you're going to tack on an extra hour as a special treat?"
"Anna's eight o'clock," Brian says. "Jesse's ten. Anything else?"
"Yes." Zanne reaches into her pocket and takes out a check made out to us, for $100,000.
"Suzanne," I say, stunned. "We can't take that."
"I know how much it costs. You can't cover it. I can. Let me."
Brian picks up the check and hands it back to her. "Thank you," he says. "But actually, we've got the transplant covered."
This is news to me. "We do?"
"The guys at the station sent out a call to arms, nationwide, and got a bunch of donations from other firefighters." Brian looks at me. "I just found out today."
"Really?" Inside me a weight lifts.
He shrugs. "They're my brothers," he explains.
I turn to Zanne and hug her. "Thank you. For even offering."
"It's here if you need it," she answers.
But we don't. We are able to do this, at least.
"Kate!" I call the next morning. "It's time to go!"
Anna is curled on Zanne's lap on the couch. She pulls her thumb out of her mouth but she doesn't say good-bye.
"Kate!" I yell again. "We're leaving!"
Jesse smirks over his Nintendo controls. "Like you'd really take off without her."
"She doesn't know that. Kate!" Sighing, I swing up the stairs toward her bedroom.
The door is closed. With a soft knock, I push it open, and find Kate in the final throes of making her bed. The quilt is pulled tight enough to bounce a dime off its middle; the pillows have been fluffed and centered. Her stuffed animals, relics at this point, sit on the window seat in gradated succession, tallest to smallest. Even her shoes have been neatly arranged in her closet, and the mess on her desk has vanished.
"Okay." I haven't even asked her to clean up. "Clearly, I'm in the wrong bedroom."
She turns. "It's in case I don't come back," she says.
When I first became a parent I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the most horrible succession of maladies: the bite of a jellyfish, the taste of a poisonous berry, the smile of a dangerous stranger, the dive into a shallow pool. There are so many ways a child can be harmed that it seems nearly impossible one person alone could succeed at keeping him safe. As my children got older, the hazards only changed: inhaling glue, playing with matches, small pink pills sold behind the bleachers of the middle school. You can stay up all night and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.
It seems to me, now that this is more than just a hypothetical, that a parent falls one of two ways when told a child has a fatal disease. Either you dissolve into a puddle, or you take the blow on the cheek and force yourself to lift your face again for more. In this, we probably look a lot like the patients.
Kate is semi-conscious on her bed, her central line tubes blooming like a fountain from her chest. The chemo has made her throw up thirty-two times, and has given her mouth sores and such bad mucositis that she sounds like a cystic fibrosis patient. She turns to me and tries to speak, but coughs up phlegm instead. "Drown," she chokes out.
Raising the suction tube she's clutching in her hands, I clear out her mouth and throat. "I'll do it while you rest," I promise, and that is how I come to breathe for her.
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they've left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasoned sergeants—the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor kitchens might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter’s stuffed walrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
You get to know them as they know you, because they take the place of friends you once had in a previous life, the one before diagnosis. Donna’s daughter, for example, is studying to be a vet. Ludmilla, on the graveyard shift, wears laminated pictures of Sanibel Island clipped like charms to her stethoscope, because it’s where she wants to retire. Willie, the male nurse, has a weakness for chocolate and a wife expecting triplets.
One night during Kate’s induction, which I have been awake for so long that my body has forgotten how to segue into sleep, I turn on the TV while she sleeps. I mute it, so that the volume won’t disturb her. Robin Leach is walking through the palatial home of someone Rich and Famous. There are gold-plated bidets and hand-carved teak beds, a pool in the shape of a butterfly. There are ten-car garages and red clay tennis courts and eleven roaming peacocks. It’s a world I can’t even wrap my head around—a life I would never imagine for myself.
Sort of like this one used to be.
I can't even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby born with congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: half sympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
I don't realize I'm crying until Donna kneels down in front of me and takes the TV remote out of my hand. "Sara," the nurse says, "can I get you something?"
I shake my head, embarrassed to have broken down, even more ashamed to be caught. "I'm fine," I insist.
"Yeah, and I'm Hillary Clinton," she says. She reaches for my hand and tugs me upright, drags me toward the door.
"Kate—"
"—will not even miss you," Donna finishes.
In the small kitchenette where there is coffee brewing twenty-four hours a day, she fixes a cup for each of us. "I'm sorry," I say.
"For what? Not being made of granite?"
I shake my head. "It just doesn't end." Donna nods, and because she completely understands, I find myself talking. And talking. And when I have spilled all my secrets, I take a deep breath and realize that I have been talking for an hour straight. "Oh my God," I say. "I can't believe I've wasted so much of your time."
"It wasn't a waste," Donna replies. "And besides, my shift ended a half hour ago."
My cheeks flame. "You ought to go. I'm sure you have somewhere else you'd much rather be."
But instead of leaving, Donna folds me into her ample arms. "Honey," she says, "don't we all?"
The door to the ambulatory operating suite yawns open into a small room packed with gleaming silver instruments—a mouth gilded with braces. The doctors and nurses she has met are masked and gowned, only recognizable by their eyes. Anna tugs at me until I kneel down beside her. "What if I changed my mind?" she says.
I put my hands on her shoulders. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but I know that Kate is counting on you. And Daddy and me."
She nods once, then slips her hand into mine. "Don't let go," she tells me.
A nurse shepherds her in the right direction, onto the table. "Wait'll you see what we've got for you, Anna." She draws a heated blanket over her.
The anesthesiologist wipes a red-tinged gauze pad around an oxygen mask. "Have you ever gone to sleep in a strawberry field?" They work their way down Anna's body, applying gelled pads that will be hooked to monitors to track her heart and her breathing. They administer to her while she's lying on her back, although I know they will flip her over to draw marrow from her hipbones.
The anesthesiologist shows Anna the accordion mechanism on his equipment. "Can you blow up that balloon?" he asks, and places the mask over Anna's face.
All this time, she doesn't let go of my hand. Finally, her grip slackens. She fights at the last minute, her body already asleep but straining forward at the shoulders. One nurse holds Anna down; the other restrains me. "It's just the way the medicine affects the body," she explains. "You can give her a kiss now."
So I do, through my mask. I whisper a thank-you, too. I walk out of the swinging door and peel off my paper hat and booties. I watch through the postage-stamp window as Anna is rolled to her side and an impossibly long needle is lifted from a sterile tray. Then I go upstairs to wait with Kate.
Brian sticks his head into Kate's room. "Sara," he says, exhausted, "Anna's asking for you."
But I cannot be in two places at one time. I hold the pink erne-sis basin up to Kate's mouth as she vomits again. Beside me, Donna helps lower Kate back onto her pillow. "I'm a little busy right now," I say.
"Anna's asking for you," Brian repeats, that's all. Donna looks from him to me. "We'll be fine till you get back," she promises, and after a moment, I nod.
Anna is on the pediatric floor, one that doesn't have the hermetically sealed rooms necessary for protective isolation. I hear her crying before I even enter the room. "Mommy," she sobs. "It hurts." I sit down on the side of the bed and fold her into my arms. "I know, sweetie."
"Can you stay here?"
I shake my head. "Kate's sick. I'm going to have to go back."
Anna pulls away. "But I'm in the hospital," she says. "I'm in the hospital!"
Over her head, I glance at Brian. "What are they giving her for pain?"
"Very little. The nurse said they don't like to overmedicate kids."
"That's ridiculous." When I stand, Anna whimpers and grabs for me. "Be right back, honey."
I accost the first nurse I can find. Unlike the staff in oncology, these RNs are unfamiliar. "She was given Tylenol an hour ago," the woman explains. "I know she's a little uncomfortable—"
"Roxicet. Tylenol with codeine. Naproxen. And if it's not on the doctor's orders call and ask whether it can be put on there."
The nurse bristles. "With all due respect, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I do this every day, and—"
"So do I."
When I go back to Anna's room, I am carrying a pediatric dose of Roxicet, which will either relieve her aches or knock her out so that she no longer feels them. I walk in to find Brian's big hands fumbling a Lilliputian clasp on the back of a necklace, as he hangs a locket around Anna's neck. "I thought you deserved your own gift, since you were giving one to your sister," he says.
Of course Anna should be honored for donating her bone marrow. Of course she deserves recognition. But the thought of rewarding someone for their suffering, frankly, never entered my mind. We've all been doing it for so long.
They both glance up when I come through the doorway. "Look at what Daddy got me!" Anna says.
I hold out the plastic dosage cup, a poor second-best.
Shortly after ten o'clock, Brian brings Anna to Kate's room. She moves slowly, like an old woman, leaning on Brian for support. The nurses help her into a mask and gown and gloves and booties so that she can be allowed in—a compassionate breach of protocol, as children are not usually allowed to visit protective isolation.
Dr. Chance stands beside the IV pole, holding up the bag of marrow. I turn Anna so that she can see it. "That," I tell her, "is what you gave us."
Anna makes a face. "It's gross. You can have it."
"Sounds like a plan," Dr. Chance says, and the rich ruby marrow begins to feed into Kate's central line.
I place Anna on the bed. There is room for both of them, shoulder to shoulder. "Did it hurt?" Kate asks.
"Kind of." Anna points to the blood running through the plastic tubes into the slit in Kate's chest. "Does that?"
"Not really." She sits up a little. "Hey, Anna?”
“Yeah?"
"I'm glad it came from you." Kate reaches for Anna's hand and places it just below the central line's catheter, a spot that falls precariously near her heart.
Twenty-one days after the bone marrow transplant, Kate's white cell counts begin to rise, proof of engraftment. To celebrate, Brian insists that he is taking me out to dinner. He arranges for a private-duty nurse for Kate, makes reservations at XO Cafe, and even brings me a black dress from my closet. He forgets pumps, so I wind up wearing my scruffy hiking clogs with it.
The restaurant is nearly full. Almost immediately after we are seated, the sommelier comes to ask if we want wine. Brian orders a Cabernet Sauvignon.
"Do you even know whether that's red or white?" I do not think, in all these years, I have seen Brian drink anything but beer.
"I know it's got alcohol in it, and I know we're celebrating." He lifts his glass after the sommelier pours it. "To our family," he toasts.
We click glasses and take sips. "What are you getting?" I ask.
"What do you want me to get?"
"The filet. That way I can taste it if I get the sole." I fold my menu. "Did you hear the results of the last CBC?"
Brian looks down at the table. "I was sort of hoping that we could come here to get away from all that. You know. Just talk."
"I'd like to talk," I admit. But when I look at Brian, the information that leaps to my lips is about Kate, not us. I have no call to ask him about his day—he has taken three weeks off from the station. We are connected by and through sickness.
We fall back into silence. I look around XO Cafe and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?
When the waiter arrives to take our order, we both turn eagerly, grateful for someone who keeps us from having to recognize the strangers we have become.
We leave the hospital with a child who is different from the one we brought in. Kate moves cautiously, checking the drawers of the nightstand for anything she might have left behind. She has lost so much weight that the jeans I brought do not fit; we have to use two bandannas knotted together as a makeshift belt.
Brian has gone down ahead of us to bring the car around. I zip the last Tiger Beat and CD into Kate's duffel bag. She pulls a fleece cap on over her smooth, bare scalp and winds a scarf tight around her neck. She puts on a mask and gloves; now that we are venturing out of the hospital, she is the one who will need protection.
We walk out the door to the applause of the nurses we have come to know so well. "Whatever you do, don't come back and see us, all right?" Willie jokes.
One by one, they walk up to say their good-byes. When they have all dispersed, I smile at Kate. "Ready?"
Kate nods, but she doesn't step forward. She stands rigid, fully aware that once she sets foot outside this doorway, everything changes. "Mom?"
I fold her hand into mine. "We'll do it together," I promise, and side by side, we take the first step.
The mail is full of hospital bills. We have learned that the insurance company will not talk to the hospital billing department, and vice versa, but neither one thinks that the charges are accurate—which leads them to charge us for procedures we shouldn't have to cover, in the hopes that we are stupid enough to pay them. Managing the monetary aspect of Kate's care is a full-time job that neither Brian nor I can do.
I leaf through a grocery store flyer, an AAA magazine, and a long-distance rate announcement before I open the letter from the mutual fund. It's not something I really pay attention to; Brian usually manages finances that require more than basic checkbook balancing. Besides, the three funds we have are all earmarked for the kids' education. We are not the sort of family that has enough spare change to play the stock market.
Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:
This is to confirm your recent redemption from fund #323456, Brian D. Fitzgerald Custodian for Katherine S. Fitzgerald, in the amount of $8,369.56. This disbursement effectively closes the account.
As banking errors go, this is a pretty major one. We've been off by pennies in our checking account, but at least I've never lost eight thousand dollars. I walk out of the kitchen and into the yard, where Brian is rolling an extra garden hose. "Well, either someone at the mutual fund screwed up," I say, handing the letter to him, "or the second wife you're supporting is no longer a secret."
It takes him one moment too long to read it, the same moment that I realize that this is not a mistake after all. Brian wipes his forehead with the back of one wrist. "I took that money out," he says.
"Without telling me?" I cannot imagine Brian doing such a thing. There have been times, in the past, where we dipped into the children's accounts, but only because we were having a month too tight to swing the cost of groceries and the mortgage, or because we needed the down payment for a new car when our old one had finally been put to rest. We'd lie awake in bed feeling guilt press down like an extra quilt, promising each other that we would put that money right back where it belonged as soon as humanly possible.
"The guys at the station, they tried to raise some money, like I told you. They got ten thousand dollars. With this added to it, the hospital's willing to work out some kind of payment plan for us."
"But you said—"
"I know what I said, Sara."
I shake my head, stunned. "You lied to me?"
"I didn't—"
"Zanne offered—"
"I won't let your sister take care of Kate," Brian says. "I'm supposed to take care of Kate." The hose falls to the ground, dribbles and spits at our feet. "Sara, she's not going to live long enough to use that money for college."
The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows. It is far too beautiful a day for words like these. I turn and run into the house. I lock myself in the bathroom.
A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. "Sara? Sara, I'm sorry."
I pretend I can't hear him. I pretend I haven't heard anything he's said.
At home, we all wear masks so that Kate doesn't have to. I find myself checking her fingernails while she brushes her teeth or pours cereal, to see if the dark ridges made by the chemo have disappeared—a sure sign of the bone marrow transplant's success. Twice a day I give Kate growth factor shots in the thigh, a necessity until her neutrophil count tops one thousand. At that point, the marrow will be reseeding itself.
She can't go back to school yet, so we get her lessons sent home. Once or twice she has come with me to pick Anna up from kindergarten, but refuses to get out of the car. She will troop to the hospital for her routine CBC, but if I suggest a side trip to the video store or Dunkin' Donuts afterward, she begs off.
One Saturday morning, the door to the girls' bedroom is ajar; I knock gently. "Want to go to the mall?" Kate shrugs. "Not now."
I lean against the doorframe. "It'll be good to get out of the house."
"I don't want to." Although I am sure she does not even realize she is doing it, she skims her palm over her head before tucking her hand into her back pocket.
"Kate," I begin.
"Don't say it. Don't tell me that nobody’s going to stare at me, because they will. Don't tell me it doesn’t matter, because it does. And don't tell me I look fine because that's a lie." Her eyes, lash-bare, fill with tears. "I'm a freak, Mom, Look at me."
I do, and I see the spots where her brows have gone missing, and the slope of her endless brow and the small divots and bumps that are usually hidden under the cover of hair. "Well," I say evenly. "We can fix this."
Without another word, l walk out of her room, knowing Kate will follow. I pass Anna, who abandons her coloring book to trail behind her sister. In the basement I pull out a pair of ancient electric grooming clippers we found when we bought the house, and plug them in. Then I cut a swath right down the middle of my scalp.
"Mom!" Kate gasps.
"What?" A tumble of brown waves falls onto Anna's shoulder; she picks them up delicately "It’s only hair."
With another swipe of the razor, Kate starts to smile. She points out a spot that I’ve missed, where a small thatch stands like a forest. I sit down on an overturned milk crate and let her shave the other side of my head herself. Anna crawls onto my lap. "Me next," she begs.
An hour later, we walk through the mall holding hands, a trio of bald girls. We stay for hours. Everywhere we go, heads turn and voices whisper. We are beautiful, times three.