Authors: Jodi Picoult
“You’re crushing the pillows,” my mother said. “And I
did
tell you. I called you at work, and you were typing, like you always do when I call even though you think I can’t hear it in the background. And I told you I had to postpone lunch till Thursday, and you yessed me and said you were really busy, and did I have to call you at work?”
My face flushed. “I don’t type while I’m on the phone with you.”
Okay, I do. But it’s my mother. And she calls for the most ridiculous reasons: Is it okay if she makes Chanukah dinner on Saturday, December 16, never mind that it’s currently March? Do I remember the name of the librarian in my elementary school, because she thinks she ran into her at the grocery store? In other words, my mother phones for reasons that are completely trivial compared to writing up a brief to save the life of a man who’s going to be executed.
“You know, Maggie, I realize that nothing I do here could possibly be as important as what
you
do, but it does hurt me to know that you don’t even listen when I talk to you.” Her eyes were tearing up. “I can’t believe you came here to upset me before I have to sit down with Alicia Goldman-Hirsch.”
“I didn’t come here to upset you! I came here because I always come here the second Tuesday of every month! You can’t blame me because of a stupid phone conversation we probably had six months ago!”
“A stupid phone conversation,” my mother said quietly. “Well, it’s good to know what you really think of our relationship, Maggie.”
I held up my hands. “I can’t win here,” I said. “I hope your meeting goes well.” Then I stormed out of her office, past the white secretary’s desk with the white computer and the nearly albino receptionist, all the way to my car in the parking lot, where I tried to tell myself that the reason I was crying had nothing to do with the fact that even when I wasn’t trying, all I did was let people down.
I found my father in his office—a rental space in a strip mall, since he was a rabbi without a temple—writing his sermon for Shabbat. As soon as I walked in, he smiled, then lifted a finger to beg a moment’s time to finish whatever brilliant thought he was scribbling down. I wandered around, trailing my fingers over the spines of books written in Hebrew and Greek, Old Testaments and New Testaments, books on theurgy and theology and philosophy. I palmed an old paperweight I’d made him in nursery school—a rock painted to look like a crab, although now it seemed to more closely resemble an amoeba, and then took down one of my baby photos, tucked in an acrylic frame.
I had fat cheeks, even then.
My father closed his laptop. “To what do I owe this surprise?”
I set the photo back on the mahogany shelf. “Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?”
He laughed. “That’s the eternal question, isn’t it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?” He stood up and came around his desk, kissed my cheek. “Did you come here to argue philosophy with your old man?”
“No, I came here because … I don’t know why I came here.” That was the truth; my car had sort of pointed itself in the direction of his office, and even when I realized where it was
headed I didn’t correct my course. Everyone else came to my father when they were troubled or wanted counseling, why shouldn’t I? I sank down onto the old leather couch that he’d had for as long as I could remember. “Do you think God forgives murderers?”
My father sat down next to me. “Isn’t your client Catholic?”
“I was talking about me.”
“Well, gosh, Mags. I hope you got rid of the weapon.”
I sighed. “Daddy, I don’t know what to do. Shay Bourne doesn’t want to become the poster child against capital punishment, he
wants
to die. And yeah, I can tell myself a dozen times that we can both have our cake and eat it, too—Shay gets to die on his own terms; I get the death penalty put under a micro scope and maybe even repealed by the Supreme Court—but it doesn’t cancel out the fact that at the end of the day, Shay will be dead, and I’ll be just as responsible as the state that signed the warrant in the first place. Maybe I should be trying to convince Shay to get his conviction overturned, to fight for his life, instead of his death.”
“I don’t think he’d want that,” my father said. “You’re not murdering him, Maggie. You’re fulfilling his last wishes—to help him make amends for what he’s done wrong.”
“Repentance through organ donation?”
“More like
teshuvah
.”
I stared at him.
“Oh, right,” he smirked. “I forgot about the post–Hebrew School amnesia. For Jews, repentance is about conduct—you realize you’ve done something wrong, you resolve to change it in the future. But
teshuvah
means
return
. Inside each of us is some spark of God—the real us. It’s there whether you’re the most pious Jew or the most marginal. Sin, evil, murder—all those
things have the ability to cover up our true selves.
Teshuvah
means turning back to the part of God that’s gotten concealed. When you repent, usually, you feel sad—because of the regret that led you there. But when you talk about
teshuvah,
about making that connection with God again—well, it makes you happy,” my father said. “Happier even than you were before, because your sins separated you from God … and distance always makes the heart grow fonder, right?”
He walked toward the baby picture I’d put back on the shelf. “I know Shay’s not Jewish, but maybe that’s what’s at the root of this desire to die, and to give up his heart.
Teshuvah
is all about reaching for something divine—something beyond the limitations of a body.” He glanced at me. “That’s the answer to your question about the photo, by the way. You’re a different person on the outside than you were when this picture was snapped, but not on the inside. Not at the
core
. And not only is that part of you the same as it was when you were six months old … it’s also the same as me and your mother and Shay Bourne and everyone else in this world. It’s the part of us that’s connected to God, and at that level, we’re all identical.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but that didn’t really make me feel any better. I want to save him, Daddy, and he—he doesn’t want that at all.”
“Restitution is one of the steps a person has to take for
teshuvah,
” my father said. “Shay has apparently taken a very literal interpretation of this—he took a child’s life; therefore he owes that mother the life of a child.”
“It’s not a perfect equation,” I said. “He’d have to bring Elizabeth Nealon back for that.”
My father nodded. “That’s something rabbis have talked about for years since the Holocaust—if the victim is dead, does
the family really have the power to forgive the killer? The victims are the ones with whom he has to make amends. And those victims—they’re ashes.”
I sat up, rubbing my temples. “It’s really complicated.”
“Then ask yourself what’s the right thing to do.”
“I can’t even answer that much.”
“Well,” my father said, “then maybe you should ask Shay.”
I blinked up at him. It was that simple. I hadn’t seen my client since that first meeting in the prison; the work I’d been doing to set up a restorative justice meeting had been on the phone. Maybe what I really needed was to find out why Shay Bourne was so sure he’d come to the right decision, so that I could start explaining it to myself.
I leaned over and gave him a hug. “Thanks, Daddy.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Still, you’re a better conversationalist than Oliver.”
“Don’t tell the rabbit that,” he said. “He’d scratch me twice as hard as he already does.”
I stood up, heading for the door. “I’ll call you later. Oh, and by the way,” I said, “Mom’s mad at me again.”
I was sitting under the harsh fluorescent lights of the attorney-client conference room when Shay Bourne was brought in to meet with me. He backed up to the trap so that his handcuffs could be removed, and he sat down across the table. His hands were small, I realized, maybe even smaller than mine.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Fine. How’s it going with you?”
“No, I meant my lawsuit. My heart.”
“Well, we’re waiting until after you speak to June Nealon tomorrow.” I hesitated. “Shay, I need to ask you a question, as
your lawyer.” I waited until he looked me in the eye. “Do you really believe that the only way to atone for what you’ve done is to die?”
“I just want to give her my heart—”
“I get that. But in order to do that, you’ve basically agreed to your own execution.”
He smiled faintly. “And here I thought my vote didn’t count.”
“I think you know what I mean,” I said. “Your case is going to shine a beacon on the issue of capital punishment, Shay—but you’ll be the sacrificial lamb.”
His head snapped up. “Who do you think I am?”
I hesitated, not quite sure what he was asking.
“Do you believe what they all believe?” he asked. “Or what Lucius believes? Do you think I can make miracles happen?”
“I don’t believe anything I haven’t seen,” I said firmly.
“Most people just want to believe what someone else tells them,” Shay said.
He was right. It was why, in my father’s office, I’d had a breakdown: because even as a confirmed atheist, I sometimes found it just too frightening to think that there might not be a God who was watching out for our greater good. It was why a country as enlightened as the United States could still have a death penalty statute in place: it was just too frightening to think about what justice—or lack of it—would prevail if we didn’t. There was comfort in facts, so much so that we stopped questioning where those facts had come from.
Was I trying to figure out who Shay Bourne was for myself? Probably. I didn’t buy the fact that he was the Son of God, but if it was getting him media attention, then I thought he was brilliant for encouraging that line of thought. “If you can get June to forgive you at this meeting, Shay, maybe you don’t have
to give up your heart. Maybe you’ll feel good about connecting with her again, and then we can get her to talk to the governor on your behalf to commute your sentence to life in prison—”
“If you do that,” Shay interrupted, “I will kill myself.”
My jaw dropped. “Why?”
“Because,” he said, “I have to get out of here.”
At first I thought that he was talking about the prison, but then I saw he was clutching his own arms, as if the penitentiary he was referring to was his own body. And that, of course, made me think of my father and
teshuvah
. Could I truly be helping him by letting him die on his own terms?
“Let’s take it one step at a time,” I conceded. “If you can get June Nealon to understand why you want to do this, then I’ll work on making a court understand it, too.”
But Shay was suddenly lost in his thoughts, wherever they happened to be taking him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Shay,” I said, and I went to touch his shoulder to let him know I was leaving. As soon as I stretched out my arm, though, I found myself flat on the floor. Shay stood over me, just as shocked by the blow he’d dealt me as I was.
An officer bolted into the room, driving Shay down to the floor with a knee in the small of his back so that he could be handcuffed. “You all right?” he called out to me.
“I’m fine … I just slipped,” I lied. I could feel a welt rising on my left cheekbone, one that I was sure the officer would see as well. I swallowed the knot of fear in my throat. “Could you just give us a couple more minutes?”
I did not tell the officer to remove Shay’s handcuffs; I wasn’t quite that brave. But I struggled to my feet and waited until we were alone in the room again. “I’m sorry,” Shay blurted out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I sometimes, when you …”
“Shay,” I ordered. “Sit down.”
“I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t see you coming. I thought you were—would—” He broke off, choking on the words. “I’m sorry.”
I was the one who’d made the mistake. A man who had been locked up alone for a decade, whose only human contact was having his handcuffs chained and removed, would be completely unprepared for a small act of kindness. He would have instinctively seen it as a threat to his personal space, which was how I’d wound up sprawled on the floor.
“It won’t happen again,” I said.
He shook his head fiercely. “No.”
“See you tomorrow, Shay.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“You are. I can tell.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Then will you do something for me?”
I had been warned about this by other attorneys who worked with inmates: they will bleed you dry. Beg you for stamps, for money, for food. For phone calls, made by you to their family, on their behalf. They are the ultimate con artists; no matter how much sympathy you feel for them, you have to remind yourself that they will take whatever they can get, because they have nothing.
“Next time, will you tell me what it feels like to walk barefoot on grass?” he asked. “I used to know, but I can’t remember anymore.” He shook his head. “I just want to … I want to know what that’s like again.”
I folded my notebook beneath my arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Shay,” I repeated, and I motioned to the officer who would set me free.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shay Bourne was pacing in his cell. Every fifth turn, he pivoted and started circling the other way. “Shay,” I said, to calm myself down as much as him, “it’s going to be all right.”
We were awaiting his transportation down to the room where our restorative justice meeting with June Nealon would take place, and we were both nervous.
“Talk to me,” Shay said.
“All right,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“What I’m going to say. What
she’s
going to say … the words won’t come out right, I just know it.” He looked up at me. “I’m going to fuck this up.”
“Just say what you need to, Shay. Words are hard for everyone.”
“Well, it’s worse when you know the person you’re talking to thinks you’re full of shit.”