There is no fire without some smoke
—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs
DON'T DENY IT—you've driven by a bulldozer or front-end loader on the side of a highway, after hours, and wondered why the road crews leave the equipment out there where anyone, meaning me, could steal it. My first truck jacking was years ago; I put a cement mixer out of gear on a slope and watched it roll into a construction company's base trailer. Right now there's a dump truck a mile away from my house; I've seen it sleeping like a baby elephant next to a pile of Jersey barriers on 1-195. Not my first choice of wheels, but beggars can't be choosers; in the wake of my little run-in with the law, my father's taken my car into custody, and is keeping it at the fire station.
Driving a dump truck turns out to be a hell of a lot different than driving my car. First, you fill up the whole freaking road. Second, it handles like a tank, or at least like what I suppose a tank would handle like if you didn't have to join an army full of uptight, power-crazy assholes to drive one. Third—and least palatable—people see you coming. When I roll up to the underpass where Duracell Dan makes his cardboard home, he cowers behind his line of thirty-three-gallon drums. "Hey," I say, swinging out of the cab of the truck. "It's just me."
It still takes Dan a minute to peek between his hands, make sure I'm telling him the truth. "Like my rig?" I ask.
He gets up gingerly and touches the streaked side of the truck. Then he laughs. "Your Jeep been taking steroids, boy."
I load up the rear of the cab with the materials I need. How cool would it be if I just backed the truck up to a window, dumped in several bottles of my Arsonist's Special, and drove away with the place bursting into flames? Dan stands by the driver's-side door. Wash Me, he writes across the grit.
"Hey," I say, and for no reason except the fact that I've never done it before, I ask him if he wants to come.
"For real?"
"Yeah. But there's a rule. Whatever you see and whatever we do, you can't tell anyone about it."
He pretends to lock up his lips and toss the key. Five minutes later, we're on our way to an old shed that used to be a boathouse for one of the colleges. Dan fiddles with the controls, raising and lowering the truck bed while we're tooling along. I tell myself that I've invited him along to add to the thrill—one more person who knows only makes it more exciting. But it's really because there are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world.
When I was eleven years old I got a skateboard. I never asked for one; it was a guilt gift. Over the years I got quite a few of these big ticket items, usually in conjunction with one of Kate's episodes. My parents would shower her with all kinds of cool shit whenever she had to have something done to her; and since Anna was usually involved, she got some amazing presents, too, and then a week later my parents would feel bad about the inequality and would buy me some toy to make sure I didn't feel left out.
Anyway, I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing that skateboard was. It had a skull on the bottom that glowed in the dark, and from the teeth dripped green blood. The wheels were neon yellow and the gritty surface, when you stepped on it in your sneakers, made the sound of a rock star clearing his throat. I skimmed it up and down the driveway, around the sidewalks, learning how to pop wheelies and kickflips and ollies. There was only one rule: I wasn't supposed to take it into the street, because cars could come around at any minute; kids could get hit in an instant.
Well, I don't need to tell you that eleven-year-old budding derelicts and house rules are like oil and water. By the end of my first week with this board I thought I'd rather slide down a razor blade into alcohol than tool up and down the sidewalk yet one more time with all the toddlers on their Big Wheels.
I begged my father to take me to the Kmart parking lot, or the school basketball court, or anywhere, really, where I could play around a little. He promised me that on Friday, after Kate had a routine bone marrow aspiration, we could all go out to the school. I could bring my skateboard, Anna could bring her bike, and if Kate felt up to it, she could Rollerblade.
God, was I looking forward to that. I greased the wheels and polished up the bottom of the skateboard and practiced a double helix on the driveway ramp I'd made of old scrap plywood and a fat log. The minute I saw the car—my mom and Kate returning from the hematologist—I ran out to the porch so we wouldn't waste any time.
My mother, it turned out, was in a huge hurry, too. Because the door to the van slid open and there was Kate, covered with blood. "Get your father," my mother ordered, holding a wad of tissues up to Kate's face.
It wasn't like she hadn't had nosebleeds before. And my mom was always telling me, when it freaked me out, that the bleeding looked way worse than it actually was. But I got my father, and the two of them hustled Kate into the bathroom and tried to keep her from crying, because it only made everything harder.
"Dad," I said. "When are we going?"
But he was busy wadding up toilet paper, bunching it up under Kate's nose.
"Dad?" I repeated.
My father looked right at me, but he didn't answer. And his eyes were dazed and staring through me, like I was made out of smoke.
That was the first time I thought that maybe I was.
The thing about flame is that it's insidious—it sneaks, it licks, it looks over its shoulder and laughs. And fuck, it's beautiful. Like a sunset eating everything in its path. For the first time, I have someone to admire my handiwork. Beside me, Dan makes a small sound at the back of his throat—respect, no doubt. But when I look at him, proud, I see that he's got his head ducked into the greasy collar of his army-surplus coat. He's got tears running down his face.
"Dan, man, what's going on?" Granted, the guy is nuts, but still. I put my hand on his shoulder and you'd think, from his reaction, that a scorpion just landed there. "You scared of the fire, Danny? You don't have to be. We're far enough away. We're safe." I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile. What if he freaks out and starts screaming, calls down some wandering cop?
"That shed," Dan says.
"Yeah. No one's gonna miss it."
"That's where the rat lives."
"Not anymore," I answer.
"But the rat…"
"Animals make their own way out of a fire. I'm telling you. The rat will be totally cool. Chill."
"But what about the newspapers? He has one with President Kennedy's assassination…"
It occurs to me that the rat is most likely not a rodent, but another homeless guy. One using this shed as a shelter. "Dan, are you saying someone lives in there?"
He looks at the crowning flames and his eyes fill. Then he repeats my own words. "Not anymore," he says.
Like I said, I was eleven, so even to this day I can't tell you how I made my way from our house in Upper Darby to the middle of downtown Providence. I suppose it took me a few hours; I suppose I believed that with my new superhero's cloak of invisibility, maybe I could just disappear and reappear somewhere else entirely.
I tested myself. I walked through the business district, and sure enough, people passed right by me, their eyes on the cracks of the pavement or staring straight ahead like corporate zombies. I walked by a long wall of mirrored glass on the side of a building, where I could see myself. But no matter how many faces I made, no matter how long I stood there, none of the people funneling around me had anything to say.
I wound up that day at the middle of an intersection, smack under the traffic light, with taxis honking and a car swerving off to the left and a pair of cops running to keep me from getting killed. At the police station, when my dad came to get me, he asked what the hell I'd been thinking.
I hadn't been thinking, actually. I was just trying to get to a place where I'd be noticed.
First I take off my shirt and dunk it into a puddle on the side of the road; then wrap it around my head and face. The smoke is already billowing, angry black clouds. In the hollow of my ear Is the sound of sirens. But I have made a promise to Dan.
What hits me first is the heat, a wall that's way more solid than it looks. The frame of the shed stands out, an orange X ray. Inside, I can't see a foot in front of me.
"Rat," I yell out, already regretting the smoke that leaves me raw-throated and hoarse. "Rat!"
No answer. But the shed isn't all that big. I get down on my hands and knees and begin to feel my way around.
I only have one really bad moment, when I put my hand down by accident on something that was made of metal before it became a searing brand. My skin sticks to it, blisters immediately. By the time I fall over a booted foot I'm sobbing, sure I will never get out. I feel my way up Rat, haul his limp body over my shoulder, stagger back the way I came.
Through some little joke of God, we make it outside. By now, the engines are pulling up, charging their lines. Maybe my father is even here. I stay under the screen of smoke; I dump Rat on the ground. With my heart racing, I run in the other direction; leaving the rest of this rescue to people who actually want to be heroes.
Did you ever wonder how we all got here? On Earth, I mean. Forget the song and dance about Adam and Eve, which I know is a load of crap. My father likes the myth of the Pawnee Indians, who say that the star deities populated the world: Evening Star and Morning Star hooked up and gave birth to the first female. The first boy came from the Sun and the Moon. Humans rode in on the back of a tornado.
Mr. Hume, my science teacher, taught us about this primordial soup full of natural gases and muddy slop and carbon matter that somehow solidified into one-celled organisms called choanoflagellates . . . which sound a lot more like a sexually transmitted disease than the start of the evolutionary chain, in my opinion. But even once you get there, it's a huge leap from an amoeba to a monkey to a whole thinking person.
The really amazing thing about all this is no matter what you believe, it took some doing to get from a point where there was nothing, to a point where all the right neurons fire and pop so that we can make decisions.
More amazing is how even though that's become second nature, we all still manage to screw it up.
On Saturday morning, I am at the hospital with Kate and my mother, all of us doing our best to pretend that two days from now, my trial won't begin. You'd think this is hard, but actually, it's much easier than the alternative. My family is famous for lying to ourselves by omission: if we don't talk about it, then—presto!—there's no more lawsuit, no more kidney failure, no worries at all.
I'm watching Happy Days on the TVLand channel. Those Cunninghams, they're not so different from us. All they ever seem to worry about is whether Richie's band will be hired at Al's place, or if Fonzie will win the kissing contest, when even I know that in the '50s Joanie should have been having air raid drills at school and Marion was probably popping Valium and Howard would have been freaking out about commie attacks. Maybe if you spend your life pretending you're on a movie set, you don't ever have to admit that the walls are made out of paper and the food is plastic and the words in your mouth aren't really yours.
Kate is trying to do a crossword puzzle. "What's a four-letter word for vessel?" she asks.
Today is a good day. By this I mean she feels up to yelling at me for borrowing two of her CDs without asking (for God's sake, she was practically comatose; it isn't like she would have been able to give her permission); she feels up to trying this crossword.
"Vat," I suggest. "Urn."
"Four letters."
"Ship," my mother offers. "Maybe they're thinking of that kind."
"Blood," Dr. Chance says, coming into the room.
"That's five letters," Kate replies, in a tone that's much more pleasant than the one she used with me, I might add.
We all like Dr. Chance; by now, he might as well be the sixth member of our family.
"Give me a number." He means on the pain scale. "Five?"
"Three."
Dr. Chance sits down on the edge of her bed. "It may be a five in an hour," he cautions. "It may be a nine."
My mother's face has gone the color of an eggplant. "But Kate's feeling great right now!" she cheerleads.
"I know. But the lucid moments, they're going to get briefer and further apart," Dr. Chance explains. "This isn't the APL. This is renal failure."
"But after a transplant—" my mother says.
All the air in the room, I swear, turns into a sponge. You'd be able to hear a hummingbird's wings, that's how quiet it gets. I want to slink out of the room like mist; I don't want this to be my fault.
Dr. Chance is the only one brave enough to look at me. "As I understand it, Sara, the availability of an organ is under debate."
"But—"
"Mom," Kate interrupts. She turns to Dr. Chance. "How long are we talking about?"
"A week, maybe."
"Wow," she says softly. "Wow." She touches the edge of the newspaper, rubs her thumb over the point at its edge. "Will it hurt?"
"No," Dr. Chance promises. "I will make sure of that."
Kate lays the paper in her lap and touches his arm. "Thanks. For the truth, I mean."
When Dr. Chance looks up, his eyes are red-rimmed. "Don't thank me." He gets up so heavily that I think he must be made of stone, and leaves the room without speaking another word.
My mother, she folds into herself, that's the only way to explain it. Like paper, when you put it deep into the fireplace, and instead of burning, it simply seems to vanish.
Kate looks at me, and then down at all the tubes that anchor her to the bed. So I get up and walk toward my mother. I put a hand on her shoulder. "Mom," I say. "Stop."
She lifts her head and looks at me with haunted eyes. "No, Anna. You stop."
It takes me a little while, but I break away. "Anna," I murmur.
My mother turns. "What?"
"A four-letter word for vessel," I say, and I walk out of Kate's room.
Later that afternoon, I'm turning in circles on the swivel chair in my dad's office at the fire station, with Julia sitting across from me. On the desk are a half-dozen pictures of my family. There's one with Kate as a baby, wearing a knit hat that looks like a strawberry. Another with Jesse and me, grinning just as wide as the bluefish balanced between our hands. I used to wonder about the fake pictures that came in frames you buy at the store—ladies with smooth brown hair and show-me smiles, grapefruit-headed babies on their sibling's knees—people who in real life probably were strangers brought together by a talent scout to be a phony family.
Maybe it's not so different from real photos, after all.
I pick up one picture that shows my mother and father looking tanned and younger than I can ever remember them being. "Do you have a boyfriend?" I ask Julia.
"No!" she says, way too fast. When I glance up, she just sort of shrugs. "Do you?"
"There's this one guy, Kyle McFee, that I thought I liked but now I'm not sure." I pick up a pen and start to unscrew the whole thing, pull out the skinny little tube of blue ink. It would be so cool to have one of these built inside you, like a squid; you could point your finger and leave your mark on anything you wanted.
"What happened?"
"I went to a movie with him, like on a date, and when it was over and we stood up he was—" I turn bright red. "Well, you know." I wave in the general vicinity of my lap.
"Ah," Julia says.
"He asked me whether I'd ever taken wood shop at school—I mean, God, wood shop?—and I go to tell him no and bam, I'm staring right there." I put the decapitated pen down on my dad's blotter. "When I see him now around town it's all I can think about." I stare up at her, a thought coming at me. "Am I a pervert?"
"No, you're thirteen. And for the record, so is Kyle. He couldn't help it happening any more than you can help thinking about it when you see him. My brother Anthony used to say there were only two times a guy could get excited: during the day, and during the night."
"Your brother used to talk to you about stuff like that?"
She laughs. "I guess so. Why, wouldn't Jesse?"
I snort. "If I asked Jesse a question about sex, he'd laugh so hard he'd bust a rib, and then he'd give me a stash of Playboys and tell me to do research."
"How about your parents?"
I shake my head. My dad is out of the question—because he's my dad. My mom's too distracted. And Kate is in the same clueless boat I'm in. "Did you and your sister ever fight over the same guy?"
"Actually, we don't go for the same type."
“What's your type?"
She thinks about it. "I don't know. Tall. Dark-haired. Breathing."
"Do you think Campbell's cute?"
Julia nearly falls out of her chair. "What?"
"Well, I mean, for an older guy."
"I could see where some women… might find him attractive," she says.
"He looks like a character on one of the soaps that Kate likes." I run my thumbnail into the groove of wood on the desk. "It's weird. That I get to grow up and kiss someone and get married."
And Kate doesn't.
Julia leans forward. "What's going to happen if your sister dies, Anna?"
One of the pictures on the desk is of me and Kate. We are little—maybe five and two. It is before her first relapse, but after her hair grew back. We're standing on the edge of a beach, wearing matching bathing suits, playing patty-cake. You could fold this picture in half and think it was a mirror image—Kate small for her age and me tall; Kate's hair a different color but with the same natural part and flip at the bottom; Kate's hands pressed up against mine. Until now, I don't think I've really realized how much alike we are.
The phone rings just before ten o'clock that night, and to my surprise it's my name that's paged throughout the firehouse. I pick up the extension in the kitchen area, which has been cleaned and mopped for the night. "Hello?"
"Anna," my mother says.
Immediately, I assume she's calling about Kate. There isn't much else for her to say to me, given the way we left things earlier at the hospital. "Is everything okay?"
"Kate's asleep."
"That's good," I reply, and then wonder if it really is.
"I called for two reasons. The first is to say that I'm sorry about this morning."
I feel very small. "Me too," I admit. In that minute, I remember how she used to tuck me in at night. She'd go to Kate's bed first, and lean down, and announce that she was kissing Anna. And then she'd come to my bed and say she'd come to hug Kate. Every time, it cracked us up. She'd turn off the light, and for long moments after she left, the room still smelled of the lotion she used on her skin to keep it as soft as the inside of a flannel pillowcase.
"The second reason I called," my mother says, "was just to say good night."
"That's all?"
In her voice, I can hear a smile. "Isn't that enough?"
"Sure," I tell her, although it isn't.
Because I can't fall asleep, I slip out of my bed at the fire station, past my father, who's snoring. I steal the Guinness Book of World Records from the men's room and lie down on the roof of the station to read by moonlight. An eighteen-month-old baby named Alejandro fell 65 feet 7 inches from the window of his parents' apartment in Murcia, Spain, and became the infant to survive the longest fall. Roy Sullivan, of Virginia, survived seven lightning strikes, only to commit suicide after being spurned by a lover. A cat was found in rubble eighty days after a Taiwanese earthquake that killed 2,000, and made a full recovery. I find myself reading and rereading the section called "Survivors and Lifesavers," adding listings in my head. Longest surviving APL patient, it would read. Most ecstatic sister.
My father finds me when I have put the book aside and started searching for Vega. "Can't see much tonight, huh?" he asks, taking a seat beside me. It is a night wrapped in clouds; even the moon seems covered with cotton.
"Nope," I say. "Everything's fuzzy."
"You try the telescope?"
I watch him fiddle with the scope for a while, and then decide that it's just not worth it tonight. I suddenly remember being about seven, riding beside him in the car, and asking him how grown-ups found their way to places. After all, I had never seen him pull out a map.
"I guess we just get used to taking the same turns," he said, but I wasn't satisfied.
"Then what about the first time you go somewhere?"
"Well," he said, "we get directions."
But what I want to know is who got them the very first time? What if no one's ever been where you're going? "Dad?" I ask, "is it true that you can use stars like a map?"
"Yeah, if you understand celestial navigation."
"Is it hard?" I'm thinking maybe I should learn. A backup plan, for all those times I feel like I'm just wandering in circles.
"It's pretty jazzy math—you have to measure the altitude of a star, figure out its position using a nautical almanac, figure out what you think the altitude should be and what direction the star should be in based on where you think you are, and compare the altitude you measured with the one you calculated. Then you plot this on a chart, as a (line of position. You get several lines of position to cross, and that's where you go." My father takes one look at my face and smiles. "Exactly," he laughs. "Never leave home without your GPS."
But I bet I could figure it out; it isn't really all that confusing. You head toward the place where all those different positions cross, and you hope for the best.
If there was a religion of Annaism, and I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: in the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.
Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.
The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she had left.
JUST BEFORE SEVEN A.M. on Sunday, an octopus walks into the station. Well, it is actually a woman dressed like an octopus, but when you see something like that, distinctions hardly matter. She has tears running down her face and holds a Pekingese dog in her multiple arms. "You have to help me," she says, and that's when I remember: this is Mrs. Zegna, whose house was gutted by a kitchen fire a few days ago.
She plucks at her tentacles. 'This is the only clothing I have left. A Halloween costume. Ursula. It's been rotting in a U-Store-lt locker in Taunton with my Peter Paul and Mary album collection."
I gently sit her down in the chair across from my desk. "Mrs. Zegna, I know your house is uninhabitable—"
"Uninhabitable? It's wrecked!"
"I can put you in touch with a shelter. And if you like, I can speak to your insurance company to expedite things."
She lifts one arm to wipe her eyes, and eight others, drawn by strings, rise in unison. "I don't have home insurance. I don't believe in living my life expecting the worst."
I stare at her for a moment. I try to remember what it is like to be taken aback by the very possibility of disaster.
When I get to the hospital, Kate is lying on her back, holding tight to a stuffed bear she's had since she was seven. She's hooked up to one of those patient-managed morphine drips, and her thumb pushes down on the button every now and then, although she is fast asleep.
One of the chairs in the room folds out into a cot with a mattress thin as a wafer; this is where Sara is curled. "Hey," she says, pushing her hair out of her eyes. "Where's Anna?"
"Still sleeping like only a kid can. How was Kate's night?"
"Not bad. She was in a little pain between two and four."
I sit down on the edge of her cot. "It meant a lot to Anna, you calling last night."
When I look into Sara's eyes, I see Jesse-they have the same coloring, the same features. I wonder if Sara looks at me and thinks of Kate. I wonder if that hurts.
It is hard to believe that once, this woman and I sat in a car and drove the entire length of Route 66, and never ran out of things to say. Our conversations now are an economy of facts, full of blue chip details and insider information.
"Do you remember that fortune-teller?" I ask. When she looks at me blankly, I keep talking. "We were out in the middle of Nevada, and the Chevy ran out of gas… and you wouldn't let me leave you in the car while I looked for a service station?"
Ten days from now, when you're still walking in circles, they're going to find me with vultures eating out my insides, Sara had said, and she'd fallen into step beside me. We hiked back four miles to the shanty we'd passed, a gas station. It was run by an old guy and his sister, who advertised herself as a psychic. Let's do it, Sara begged, but a reading cost five bucks and I only had ten. Then we'll get half the gas, and ask the psychic when we can expect to run out the next time, Sara said, and like always, she convinced me. Madame Agnes was the kind of blind that scares children, with cataract eyes that looked like an empty blue sky. She put her knobby hands on Sara's face to read her bones, and said that she saw three babies and a long life, but that it wouldn't be good enough. What's that supposed to mean? Sara asked, incensed, and Madame Agnes explained that fortunes were like clay, and could be reshaped at any time. But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.
She put her hands on my face and said only one thing: Save yourself.
She told us we would run out of gas again just over the Colorado border, and we did.
Now, in the hospital room, Sara looks at me blankly. "When did we go to Nevada?" she asks. Then she shakes her head. "We need to talk. If Anna is really going through with this hearing on Monday, then I need to review your testimony."
"Actually." I look down at my hands. "I'm going to speak on Anna's behalf."
"What?"
With a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Kate is still sleeping, I do my best to explain. "Sara, believe me, I've thought long and hard about this one. And if Anna's through being a donor for Kate, we've got to respect that."
"If you testify for Anna, the judge is going to say that at least one of her parents is capable of supporting this petition, and he's going to rule in her favor."
"I know that," I say. "Why else would I do it?"
We stare at each other, speechless, unwilling to admit what lies at the end of each of these roads.
"Sara," I ask finally, "what do you want from me?"
"I want to look at you and remember what it used to be like," she says thickly. "I want to go back, Brian. I want you to take me back."
But she is not the woman I used to know, the woman who traveled a countryside counting prairie dog holes, who read aloud the classifieds of lonely cowboys seeking women and told me, in the darkest crease of the night, that she would love me until the moon lost its footing in the sky.
To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.
BRIAN AND I ARE SITTING ON THE COUCH, sharing sections of the newspaper, when Anna walks into the living room. "If I mow the lawn, like, until I get married," she asks, "can I have $614.96 right now?"
"Why?" we say simultaneously.
She rubs her sneaker into the carpet. "I need a little cash."
Brian folds the national news section. "I didn't think Gap jeans had gotten quite that expensive."
"I knew you'd be like this," she says, ready to huff away.
"Hang on." I sit up, rest my elbows on my knees. "What is it you want to buy?"
"What difference does it make?"
"Anna," Brian responds, "we're not forking over six hundred bucks without knowing what it's for."
She weighs this for a minute. "It's something on eBay."
My ten-year-old surfs eBay?
"Okay," she sighs. "It's goaltender leg pads."
I look at Brian, but he doesn't seem to understand, either. "For hockey?" he says.
"Well, duh."
"Anna, you don't play hockey," I point out, and when she blushes, I realize this may not be the case at all.
Brian presses her into an explanation. "A couple of months ago, the chain fell off my bike right in front of the hockey rink. A bunch of guys were practicing, but their goalie had mono, and the coach said he'd pay me five bucks to stand in net and block shots. I borrowed the sick kid's equipment, and the thing is… I wasn't that bad at it. I liked it. So I kept coming back." Anna smiles shyly. "The coach asked me to join the team for real, before the tournament. I'm the first girl on it, ever. But I have to have my own equipment."
"Which costs $614?"
"And ninety-six cents. That's just the leg pads, though. I still need a chest protector and catcher and a glove and a mask." She stares at us expectantly.
"We have to talk about it," I tell her.
Anna mutters something that sounds like Figures, and walks out of the room.
"Did you know she was playing hockey?" Brian asks me, and I shake my head. I wonder what else my daughter has been hiding from us.
We are about to leave the house to watch Anna playing hockey for the first time when Kate announces she isn't going. "Please Mom," she begs. "Not when I look like this."
She has an angry red rash all over her cheeks, palms, soles, and chest, and a moon face, courtesy of the steroids she takes to treat it. Her skin is rough and thickened.
These are the calling cards of graft-versus-host disease, which Kate developed after her bone marrow transplant. For the past four years, it's come and gone, flaring up when we least expect it. Bone marrow is an organ, and like a heart or a liver, a body can reject it. But sometimes, instead, the transplanted marrow begins to reject the body it's been put in.
The good news is that if that happens, all the cancer cells are under siege, too—something Dr. Chance calls graft-versus-leukemia disease. The bad news is the symptomology: the chronic diarrhea, the jaundice, the loss of range of motion in her joints. The scarring and sclerosis wherever there's connective tissue. I am so accustomed to this that it doesn't phase me, but when the graft-versus-host disease flares up this badly, I let Kate stay home from school. She is thirteen, and appearance is paramount. I respect her vanity, because there is so little of it.
But I cannot leave her alone in the house, and we have promised Anna we'll come watch her play. "This is really important to your sister."
In response, Kate flops onto the couch and pulls a throw pillow over her face.
Without saying another word I walk to the hall closet and pull a variety of items from drawers. I hand the gloves to Kate, then jam the hat on her head and wind the scarf around her nose and mouth so that only her eyes are visible. "It'll be cold in the rink," I say, in a voice that leaves no room for anything but acceptance.
I barely recognize Anna, stuffed and trussed and tied into equipment that, eventually, we wound up borrowing from the coach's nephew. You cannot tell, for example, that she is the only girl on the ice. You cannot tell that she is two years younger than every other player out there.
I wonder if Anna can hear the cheering through her helmet, or if she's so focused on what's coming toward her that she blocks it all out, concentrating instead on the scrape of the puck and the smack of the sticks.
Jesse and Brian sit on the edge of their seats; even Kate—so reluctant to come—is getting into the game. The opposing goalie, compared to Anna, moves in slow motion. The action switches like a current, the play moving from the far goal toward Anna's. The center passes to the right wing, who skates for broke, his blades slicing through the roar of the cheering crowd. Anna steps forward, sure of where the puck is going a moment before it arrives, her knees bent in, her elbows pointed out.
"Unbelievable," Brian says to me after the second period. "She's got natural talent as a goalie."
That much, I could have told him. Anna saves, every time.
That night Kate wakes up with blood streaming out of her nose, her rectum, and the sockets of her eyes. I have never seen so much blood, and even as I try to stanch the flow I wonder how much of it she can stand to lose. By the time we reach the hospital, she is disoriented and agitated, finally slipping into unconsciousness. The staff pump her full of plasma, blood, and platelets to replace the lost blood, which seems to leak out of her just as quickly. They give her IV fluids to prevent hypovolemic shock, and intubate her. They take CT scans of her brain and her lungs to see how far the bleeding has spread.
In spite of all the times we have run to the ER in the middle of the night, all the times Kate's relapsed with sudden symptoms, Brian and I know it has never been quite this bad. A nosebleed is one thing; system failure is another. Twice now, she's had cardiac arrhythmias. The hemorrhaging keeps her brain, heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys from receiving the flow they need to work.
Dr. Chance takes us into the little lounge at the end of the pediatric ICU floor. It is painted with smiley-face daisies. On one wall is a growth chart, a four-foot-tall inchworm: How Big Can I Grow?
Brian and I sit very still, as if we will be rewarded for good behavior. "Arsenic?" Brian repeats. "Poison?"
"It's a very new therapy," Dr. Chance explains. "You get it intravenously, for twenty-five to sixty days. To date, we haven't effected a cure with it. That's not to say it might not happen in the future, but at the moment, we don't even have five-year survival curves—that's how new the drug is. As it is, Kate's exhausted cord blood, allogeneic transplant, radiation, chemo, and ATRA. She's lived ten years past what any of us would have expected."
I find myself nodding already. "Do it," I say, and Brian looks down at his boots.
"We can try it. But in all likelihood, the hemorrhaging will still beat out the arsenic," Dr. Chance tells us.
I stare at the growth chart on the wall. Did I tell Kate I loved her before I put her to bed last night? I cannot remember. I cannot remember at all.
Shortly after two A.M., I lose Brian. He slips out when I am falling asleep beside Kate's bed and doesn't come back for over an hour. I ask for him at the nurse's desk; I search the cafeteria and the men's room, all empty. Finally I locate him at the end of the hallway, in a tiny atrium that was named in some poor dead child's honor, a room of light and air and plastic plants that a neutropenic patient could enjoy. He sits on an ugly brown corduroy couch, writing furiously with a blue crayon on a piece of scrap paper.
"Hey," I say quietly, remembering how the kids would color together on the floor of the kitchen, crayons spilled like wildflowers between them. "Trade you a yellow for your blue." Brian glances up, startled. "Is—"
"Kate's fine. Well, she's the same." Steph, the nurse, has already given her the first induction of arsenic. She has also given her two blood transfusions, to make up for what she's losing. "Maybe we should bring Kate home," Brian says. "Well, of course we—"
"I mean now." He steeples his hands. "I think she'd want to die in her own bed."
That word, between us, explodes like a grenade. "She isn't going to—"
"Yes, she is." He looks at me, his face carved by pain. "She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming."
My eyes fill up with tears. "But I love her," I say, because that is reason enough.
"So do I. Too much to keep doing this." The paper he has been scribbling on falls out of his hands and lands at my feet; before he can reach it I pick it up. It is full of tearstains, of cross-outs. She loved the way it smelled in Spring, I read. She could beat anyone at gin rummy. She could dance even if there wasn't music playing. There are notes on the side, too: Favorite color: pink. Favorite time of day: twilight. Used to read Where the Wild Things Are, over and over, and still knows it by heart.
All the hair stands up on the back of my neck. "Is this… a eulogy?"
By now, Brian is crying, too. "If I don't do it now, I won't be able to when it's really time."
I shake my head. "It's not time."
I call my sister at three-thirty in the morning. "I woke you," I say, realizing the minute Zanne gets on the phone that for her, for everyone normal, it is the middle of the night.
"Is it Kate?"
I nod, even though she cannot hear that. "Zanne?"
"Yeah?"
I close my eyes, feel the tears squeeze out.
"Sara, what's the matter? Do you want me to come down there?"
It is hard to speak around the enormous pressure in my throat; truth expands until it can choke you. As kids, Zanne's bedroom and mine shared a hallway, and we used to fight about leaving the light on through the night. I wanted it burning; she didn't. Put a pillow over your head, I used to tell her. You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.
"Yes," I say, sobbing freely now. "Please."
Against all odds, Kate survives for ten days on intense transfusions and arsenic therapy. On the eleventh day of her hospitalization, she slips into a coma. I decide I will keep a bedside vigil until she wakes up. And I do this for exactly forty-five minutes, until I receive a phone call from the principal of Jesse's school.
Apparently, the metal sodium is stored in the high school science laboratory in small containers of oil, because of its volatile reaction with air. Apparently, it is water-reactive, too, creating hydrogen and heat. Apparently, my ninth-grader was bright enough to realize this, which is why he stole the sample, flushed it down the toilet, and exploded the school's septic tank.
After he is expelled for three weeks by the principal, a man who has the decency to ask after Kate while basically telling me that my eldest is destined for the State Penitentiary, Jesse and I drive back to the hospital. "Needless to say, you're grounded."
"Whatever."
"Until you're forty."
Jesse slouches, and if it is possible, his brows knit even more closely together. I wonder when, exactly, I gave up on him. I wonder why, when Jesse's history is not by any stretch as disappointing as his sister's.
"The principal's a dick."
"You know what, Jess? The world's full of them. You will always be up against someone. Something."
He glares at me. "You could take a conversation about the frigging Red Sox and somehow turn it back to Kate."
We pull into the hospital parking lot, but I make no move to shut off the car. Rain pelts the windshield. "We're all pretty gifted at that. Or were you blowing up the septic tank for some other reason?"
"You don't know what it's like being the kid whose sister is dying of cancer."
"I have a fairly good idea. Since I'm the mother of the kid who is dying of cancer. You're absolutely right, it does suck. And sometimes I feel like blowing something up, too, just to get rid of that feeling that I'm going to explode any minute." I glance down and notice a bruise the size of a half-dollar, right in the crook of his arm. There's a matching one on the other side. It is telling, I suppose, that my mind immediately races to heroin, instead of leukemia, as it would with his sisters. "What's that?"
He folds his arms. "Nothing."
"What is it?"
"None of your business."
"It is my business." I pull down his forearm. "Is that from a needle?"
He lifts his head, eyes blazing. "Yeah, Ma. I shoot up every three days. Except I'm not doing smack, I'm getting blood taken out of me on the third floor here." He stares at me. "Didn't you wonder who else was keeping Kate in platelets?"
He gets out the car before I can stop him, leaving me staring out a windshield where nothing is clear anymore.
Two weeks after Kate is admitted to the hospital, the nurses convince me to take a day off. I come home and shower in my own bathroom, instead of the one used by the medical staff. I pay overdue bills. Zanne, who is still with us, makes me a cup of coffee; it is fresh and ready when I come down with my hair wet and combed. "Anyone call?"
"If by anyone you mean the hospital, then no." She flips the page of the cookbook she's reading. "This is such bullshit," Zanne says. "There is no joy in cooking."
The front door opens and slams shut. Anna comes racing into the kitchen and stops abruptly at the sight of me. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here," I say.
Zanne clears her throat. "Contrary to appearances."
But Anna doesn't hear her, or doesn't want to. She has a smile as wide as a canyon on her face, and brandishes a note in front of me. "It was sent to Coach Urlicht. Read it read it read it!"
Dear Anna Fitzgerald,
Congratulations on being accepted into the Girls in Goal Summer Hockey Camp. This year camp will be held in Minneapolis, from July 3-17. Please fill out the attached paperwork and medical history and return by 4/30/01. See you on the ice!
Coach Sarah Tenting
I finish scanning the letter. "You let Kate go to that sleep-away camp when she was my age, the one for kids with leukemia," Anna says. "Do you have any idea who Sarah Teuting is? The goalie on Team USA, and I don't just get to meet her, I get to have her tell me what I'm doing wrong. Coach got a full scholarship for me, so you don't even have to pay a dime. They’ll fly me out on a plane and give me a dorm room to stay in and everything and nobody gets a chance like this, ever—"
"Honey," I say carefully, "you can't do this."
She shakes her head, as if she's trying to make my words fit. "But it's not now, or anything. It's not till next summer."
And Kate might be dead by then.
It is the first time I can remember Anna ever indicating that she sees an end to this time line, a moment when she might finally be free of obligation to her sister. Until that point, going to Minnesota is not an option. Not because I am afraid of what might happen to Anna there, but because I am afraid of what might happen to Kate while her sister is gone. If Kate survives this latest relapse, who knows how long it will be before another crisis happens? And when it does, we will need Anna—her blood, her stem cells, her tissue—right here.
The facts hang between us like a filmy curtain. Zanne gets up and puts her arm around Anna. "You know what, bud? Maybe we should talk about this with your mom some other time—"
"No." Anna refuses to budge. "I want to know why I can't go." I run a hand down my face. "Anna, don't make me do this.”
“Do what, Mom," she says hotly. "I don't make you do anything." She crumples the letter and runs out of the kitchen. Zanne smiles weakly at me. "Welcome back," she says.
Outside, Anna picks up a hockey stick and starts to shoot against the wall of the garage. She keeps this up for nearly an hour, a rhythmic beat, until I forget she is out there and begin to think a home might have its own pulse.
Seventeen days after Kate is admitted to the hospital, she develops an infection. Her body spikes a fever. She is pancultured—blood, urine, stool, and sputum sent out to isolate the organism—but is put on a broad-spectrum antibiotic right away in the hopes that whatever is making her sick might respond.
Steph, our favorite nurse, stays late some nights just so that I don't have to face this by myself. She brings me People magazines filched from the day surgery waiting rooms, and holds sunny onesided conversations with my unconscious daughter. She is a model of resolve and optimism on the surface, but I have seen her eyes cloud with tears as she is sponge-bathing Kate, in the moments when she doesn't think I can see her.
One morning, Dr. Chance comes in to check on Kate. He wraps his stethoscope around his neck and sits down in a chair across from me. "I wanted to be invited to her wedding."
"You will," I insist, but he shakes his head.
My heart beats a little faster. "A punch bowl, that's what you can buy. A picture frame. You can make a toast."
"Sara," Dr. Chance says, "you need to say good-bye."
Jesse spends fifteen minutes in Kate's closed room, and comes out looking for all the world like a bomb about to explode. He runs through the halls of the pediatric ICU ward. "I'll go," Brian says. He heads down the corridor in Jesse's direction.
Anna sits with her back to the wall. She is angry, too. "I'm not doing this."
I crouch down next to her. "There is nothing, believe me, I'd rather make you do less. But if you don't, Anna, then one day, you're going to wish you had."
Belligerent, Anna walks into Kate's room, climbs onto a chair. Kate's chest rises and falls, the work of the respirator. All the fight goes out of Anna as she reaches out to touch her sister's cheek. "Can she hear me?"
"Absolutely," I answer, more for myself than for her.
"I won't go to Minnesota," Anna whispers. "I won't ever go anywhere." She leans close. "Wake up, Kate."
We both hold our breath, but nothing happens.
I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there.
Brian and Kate and I are a circuit. We sit on each side of the bed and hold each other's hands, and one of hers. "You were right," I tell him. "We should have taken her home."
Brian shakes his head. "If we hadn't tried the arsenic, we'd spend the rest of our lives asking why not." He brushes back the pale hair that surrounds Kate's face. "She's such a good girl. She's always done what you ask her to do." I nod, unable to speak. "That's why she's hanging on, you know. She wants your permission to leave."
He bends down to Kate, crying so hard he cannot catch his breath. I put my hand on his head. We are not the first parents to lose a child. But we are the first parents to lose our child. And that makes all the difference.
When Brian falls asleep, draped over the foot of the bed, I take Kate's scarred hand between both of mine. I trace the ovals of her nails and remember the first time I painted them, when Brian couldn't believe I'd do that to a one-year-old. Now, twelve years later, I turn over her palm and wish I knew how to read it, or better yet, how to edit that lifeline.
I pull my chair closer to the hospital bed. "Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you'd changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so that when it pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there, waiting for you." I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. "You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you."
I bury my face in the blankets and tell this daughter of mine how much I love her. I squeeze her hand one last time.
Only to feel the slightest pulse, the tiniest grasp, the smallest clutch of Kate's fingers, as she claws her way back to this world.
HERE”S MY QUESTION: What age are you when you're in Heaven? I mean, if it's Heaven, you should be at your beauty-queen best, and I doubt that all the people who die of old age are wandering around toothless and bald. It opens up a whole additional realm of questions, too. If you hang yourself, do you walk around all gross and blue, with your tongue spitting out of your mouth? If you are killed in a war, do you spend eternity minus the leg that got blown up by a mine?
I figure that maybe you get a choice. You fill out the application form that asks you if you want a star view or a cloud view, if you like chicken or fish or manna for dinner, what age you'd like to be seen as by everyone else. Like me, for example, I might pick seventeen, in the hopes I grow boobs by then, and even if I'm a pruny centegenarian by the time I die, in Heaven I'd be young and pretty.
Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.
The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. What if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?
Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?
Campbell calls my father at the station when we're having lunch, and says that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid way to put it, since we all know he's talking about my mother. He says we have to meet at three o'clock in his office, no matter that it's Sunday.
I sit on the floor with Judge's head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he doesn't even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and (since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She's put on some makeup. But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone else, once. I suppose we all were. "Hello," she says quietly. "Ms. Fitzgerald," Campbell replies. Ice.
My mother's eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the floor. "Hi," she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to hug me, but she stops.
"You called this meeting, Counselor," Campbell prompts. My mother sits down. "I know. I was… well, I'm hoping that we can clear this up. I want us to make a decision, together."
Campbell raps his fingers on the table. "Are you offering us a deal?" He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him. "Yes, I guess I am." She turns her chair toward me, as if only the two of us are in the room. "Anna, I know how much you've done for Kate. I also know she doesn't have many chances left… but she might have this one."
"My client doesn't need coercing—"
"It's okay, Campbell," I say. "Let her talk."
"If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn't work, if things don't wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate—well, I will never ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last thing?"
By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither of us has moved.
I glance at my father, but he's gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead of getting involved.
"Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be necessary in the future to prolong Kate's life?" Campbell clarifies. My mother takes a deep breath. "Yes."
"We need, of course, to discuss it."
When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn't stupid enough to believe in Santa. It's Mom and Dad, he explained, and I fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary's mailbox. And I steadfastly did not tell my parents, although I dropped other hints about toys I hoped for that year.
On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because she didn't know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa, nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be. Maybe Campbell thinks this is about the law, but really, it's about my mother. I get up from the floor and fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit. It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I've been saving come out of their hiding place. "Oh, Anna," she cries into my hair. "Thank God. Thank God."
I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn't. "I can't."
My mother's body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches the crown of my head. That's it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and walks out of the office.
Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever seen him look. "Anna," he says. "Is this really what you want?"
I open my mouth. And find an answer.
"DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he's an asshole," I ask my sister, "or in spite of it?"
Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a movie she's seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing. "If you make me miss the end, Julia, I'll kill you."
"'See ya, Katie/ " I quote for her. " 'See ya, Hubbell.'"
She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music swells. "Barbra Streisand," Izzy says, "is the bomb."
"I thought that was a gay men's stereotype." I look up over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow's hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in Anna Fitzgerald's best interests. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether I side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.
"I thought we were talking about Campbell," Izzy says.
"No, / was talking about Campbell. You were swooning." I rub my temples. "I thought you might be sympathetic."
"About Campbell Alexander? I'm not sympathetic. I'm apathetic."
"You're right. That is what kind of pathetic you are."
"Look, Julia. Maybe it's hereditary," Izzy says. She gets up ands tarts rubbing the muscles of my neck. "Maybe you have a gene that attracts you to absolute jerks."
"Then you have it, too.”
“Well." She laughs. "Case in point."
"I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record." Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I'm drinking and finishes it off. "What happened to this being strictly professional?"
"It is. There's just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind wishing otherwise."
Izzy sits back down on the couch. "The problem, you know, is that you never forget your first one. And even if your brain's smart about it, your body's got the IQ of a fruit fly."
"It's just so easy with him, Iz. It's like we're picking up where we left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows everything he needs to about me." I look at her. "Can you fall for someone because you're lazy?"
"Why don't you just screw him and get it out of your system?”
“Because," I say, "as soon as it's over, that's one more piece of the past I won't be able to get rid of."
"I can fix you up with one of my friends," Izzy suggests. "They all have vaginas."
"See, you're looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he's like marzipan frosting on a sardine."
"You think he's gorgeous?"
Izzy rolls her eyes. "You," she says, "are doomed." When the doorbell rings, Izzy goes to look through the peephole. "Speak of the devil."
"It's Campbell?" I whisper. "Tell him I'm not here."
Izzy opens the door just a few inches. "Julia says she's not here."
"I'm going to kill you," I mutter, and walk up behind her.
Pushing her out of the way, I undo the chain and let Campbell and his dog inside.
"The reception here just keeps getting warmer and fuzzier," he says.
I cross my arms. "What do you want? I'm working."
"Good. Sara Fitzgerald just offered us a plea bargain. Come out to dinner with me and I'll tell you all about it."
"I am not going out to dinner with you," I tell him.
"Actually, you are." He shrugs. "I know you, and eventually you're going to give in because even more than you don't want to be with me, you want to know what Anna's mother said. Can't we just cut to the chase?"
Izzy starts laughing. "He does know you, Julia."
"If you don't go willingly," Campbell adds, "I have no problem using brute force. Although it's going to be considerably more difficult for you to cut your filet mignon if your hands are tied together."
I turn to my sister. "Do something. Please."
She waves at me. "See ya, Katie."
"See ya, Hubbell," Campbell replies. "Great movie."
Izzy looks at him, considering. "Maybe there's hope," she says.
"Rule number one," I tell him. "We talk about the trial, and nothing but the trial."
"So help me God," Campbell adds. "And may I just say you look beautiful?"
"See, you've already broken the rule."
He pulls into a parking lot near the water and cuts the engine. Then he gets out of the car and comes around to my side to help me out. I look around, but I don't see anything resembling a restaurant. We are at a marina filled with sailboats and yachts, their honey-colored decks tanning in the late sun. "Take off your sneakers," Campbell says.
"No."
"For God's sake, Julia. This isn't the Victorian age; I'm not going to attack you because I see your ankle. Just do it, will you?"
"Why?"
"Because right now you've got an enormous pole up your ass and this is the only G-rated way I can think of to make you relax." He pulls off his own deck shoes and sinks his feet into the grass growing along the edge of the parking lot. "Ahhh," he says, and he spreads his arms wide. "Come on, Jewel. Carpe diem. Summer's almost over; better enjoy it while you can."
"What about the plea bargain—"
"What Sara said is going to remain the same whether or not you go barefoot."
I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna. I want to believe the latter, idiot that I am. Campbell waits patiently, the dog at his side. Finally I untie my sneakers and peel off my socks. I step out onto the strip of lawn.
Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction. Campbell sits down on the grass. "What's rule number two?"
"That I get to make up all the rules," I say. When he smiles at me, I'm lost.
Last night, Seven the Bartender slipped a martini into my waiting hand and asked me what I was hiding from.
I took a sip before I answered, and reminded myself why I hate martinis—they're straight bitter alcohol, which of course is the point, but they also taste that way, which is always somehow disappointing. "I'm not hiding," I told him. "I'm here, aren't I?"
It was early at the bar, just dinnertime. I stopped in on my way back from the fire station, where I'd been with Anna. Two guys were making out in a booth in the corner, one lone man was sitting at the other end of the bar. "Can we change the channel?" He gestured toward the TV, which was broadcasting the evening news. "Jennings is so much hotter than Brokaw."
Seven flicked the remote, then turned back to me. "You're not hiding, but you're sitting in a gay bar at dinnertime. You're not hiding, but you're wearing that suit like it's armor."
"Well, I'd definitely take fashion advice from a guy with a pierced tongue."
Seven lifted a brow. "One more martini, and I could convince you to go see my man Johnston and get your own done. You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots."
I took another sip of the martini. "You don't know me."
At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled.
"Maybe," Seven said, "but neither do you."
Dinner turns out to be bread and cheese—well, a baguette and Gruyere—on board a thirty-foot sailboat. Campbell rolls up his pants like a castaway and sets the rigging and hauls line and catches the wind until we are so far away from the shore of Providence that it is only a line of color, a distant, jeweled necklace.
After a while, when it becomes clear to me that any information Campbell feels like providing me with won't be doled out until after dessert, I give in. I lie on my back with my arm draped over the sleeping dog. I watch the sail, loose now, flap like the great white wing of a pelican. Campbell comes up from belowdecks, where he's been hunting down a corkscrew, and holds out two glasses of red wine. He sits down on the other side of Judge and scratches behind the German shepherd's ears. "You ever think about being an animal?"
"Figuratively? Or literally?"
"Rhetorically," he says. "If you hadn't drawn that human card."
I think about this for a while. "Is this a trick question? Like, if I say killer whale you're going to tell me that means I'm a ruthless, cold-blooded, bottom-feeder fish?"
"They're mammals," Campbell says. "And no. It's just a simple, making-polite-conversation inquiry."
I turn my head. "What would you be?"
"I asked you first."
Well, a bird is out of the question; I'm too scared of heights. I don't think I have the right attitude to be a cat. And I am too much of a loner to function in a pack, like a wolf or a dog. I think of saying something like tarsier just to show off, but then he'll ask what the hell that is and I can't remember if it is a rodent or a lizard. "A goose," I decide.
Campbell bursts out laughing. "As in Mother? Or Silly?"
It is because they mate for life, but I would rather fall overboard than tell him this. "What about you?"
But he doesn't answer me directly. "When I asked Anna the same question, she told me she'd be a phoenix."
The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist."
Campbell strokes the dog's head. "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them." Then he looks up at me. "How do you see her, Julia?"
The wine I have been drinking suddenly tastes bitter. Was all this—the charm, the picnic, the sunset sail—engineered to tip my hand in his favor at tomorrows trial? Whatever I recommend as guardian ad litem will weigh heavily in Judge DeSalvo's decision, and Campbell knows it.
Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.
"I'm not going to tell you what my decision is," I say stiffly. "You can wait to hear it when you call me as a witness." I grab for the anchor and try to reel it in. "I'd like to go back now, please."
Campbell yanks the line out of my hand. "You already told me that you don't think it's in Anna's best interests to be a kidney donor for her sister."
"I also told you she's incapable of making that decision by herself."
"Her father moved her out of the house. He can be her moral compass."
"And how long is that going to last? What about the next time?" I am furious at myself for falling for this. For agreeing to go out to dinner, for letting myself believe that Campbell might want to be with me, rather than use me. Everything—from his compliments on my looks to the wine sitting on the deck between us—has been coldly calculated to help him win his case.
"Sara Fitzgerald offered us a deal," Campbell says. "She said if Anna donates the kidney, she will never ask her to do anything for her sister again. Anna turned it down."
"You know, I could have the judge throw you in jail for this. It's completely unethical to try to seduce me into changing my mind."
"Seduce you? All I did was lay the cards on the table for you. I made your job easier."
"Oh, right. Forgive me," I say sarcastically. "This isn't about you. This isn't about me writing my report with a definite slant toward your client's petition. If you were an animal, Campbell, you know what you'd be? A toad. No, actually, you'd be a parasite on the belly of a toad. Something that takes what it needs without giving a single thing back."
A vein throbs blue in his temple. "Are you finished?"
"Actually, I'm not. Is anything that comes out of your mouth ever honest?"
"I did not lie to you."
"No? What's the dog for, Campbell?"
"Jesus Christ, will you shut up already?" Campbell says, and he pulls me into his arms and kisses me.
His mouth moves like a silent story; he tastes like salt and wine. There is no moment of relearning, of adjusting the patterns of the past fifteen years; our bodies remember where to go. He licks my name along the course of my throat. He presses himself so close to me that any hurt left on the surface between us spreads thin, becomes a binding instead of a boundary.
When we break away to breathe again, Campbell stares at me. "I'm still right," I whisper.
It is the most natural thing in the world when Campbell pulls my old sweatshirt up over my head, works at the clasp of my bra. When he kneels before me with his head over my heart, when I feel the water rocking the hull of the boat, I think that maybe this is the place for us. Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.