Izzy comes up beside me and fiddles with the system. “Is she under
warranty?”
“I don't know. I don't care. All I know is when you pay for something
that's supposed to give you a cup of coffee, you deserve to get your fucking
cup of coffee.” I slam down the empty glass carafe so hard it breaks in
the sink. Then I slide down against the cabinets and start to cry.
Izzy kneels down next to me. “What did he do?”
“The same exact thing, Iz,” I sob. “I am so damn
stupid.”
She puts her arms around me. “Boiling oil?” she suggests.
“Botulism? Castration? You pick.”
That makes me smile a little. “You'd do it, too.”
“Only because you'd do it right back for me.”
I lean against my sister's shoulder. “I thought lightning wasn't
supposed to strike in the same place twice.”
“Sure it does,” Izzy tells me. “But only if you're too dumb
to move.”
The first person to greet me at court the next morning isn't a person at
all, but Judge the dog. He comes slinking around a corner with his ears
flattened, no doubt running away from the sound of his owner's raised voice.
“Hey,” I say, soothing, but Judge wants none of it. He latches on to
the bottom of my suit jacket—Campbell's paying the dry cleaning bill, I swear
it—and starts to drag me toward the fray.
I can hear Campbell before I turn the corner. “I wasted time, and
manpower, and you know what, that's not the worst of it. I wasted my own good
judgment about a client.”
“Yeah, well, you aren't the only one who judged wrong,” Anna
argues back. “I hired you because I thought you had a
spine.” She pushes past me. “Asshole,” she mutters under her
breath.
In that moment, I remember the way I felt when I woke up alone on that boat:
Disappointed. Drifting. Angry at myself, for getting into this situation.
Why the hell wasn't I angry at Campbell?
Judge leaps up on Campbell, scraping at his chest with his paws. “Get
down!” he orders, and then he turns around and sees me. “You weren't
supposed to hear all that.”
“I'll bet.”
He sits heavily on a bridge chair in the conference room and passes his hand
over his face. “She refuses to take the stand.”
“Well, for God's sake, Campbell. She can't confront her mother in her
own living room, much less in a cross-exam. What did you expect?”
He looks up at me, piercing. “What are you going to tell DeSalvo?”
“Are you asking because of Anna, or because you're afraid of losing
this trial?”
“Thanks, but I gave my conscience up for Lent.”
“Aren't you going to ask yourself why a thirteen-year-old girl's gotten
under your skin?”
He grimaces. “Why don't you just butt out, Julia, and ruin my case like
you were planning to do in the first place?”
“This isn't your case, it's Anna's. Although I can certainly see why
you'd think otherwise.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You're cowards. You're both hell-bent on running away from
yourself,” I say. “I know what consequences Anna's afraid of. What
about you?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“No? Where's the one-liner? Or is it too hard to joke about something
that hits so close to the bone? You back away every time someone gets close to
you. It's okay if Anna's just a client, but the minute she becomes someone you
care about, you're in trouble. Me, well, a quick fuck's just fine, but making
an emotional attachment, that's out of the question. The only relationship you
have is with your dog, and even that's some enormous State secret.”
"You are way out of line, Julia—
“No, actually, I'm probably the only person who's qualified to let you
know exactly what a jerk you are. But that's okay, right? Because if everyone
thinks you're a jerk, no one will bother getting too close.” I stare at
him a beat longer. “It's disappointing to know that someone can see right
through you, isn't it, Campbell.”
He gets up, stone-faced. “I have a case to try.”
“You do that,” I say. “Just make sure you separate justice
from the client who needs it. Otherwise, God forbid, you may actually find out
that you have a working heart.”
I walk off before I can embarrass myself any further, and hear Campbell's
voice reach out to me. “Julia. It's not true.”
I close my eyes, and against my better judgment, turn around.
He hesitates. "The dog. I—
But whatever he is about to admit is interrupted by Vern's appearance in the
doorway. “Judge DeSalvo's on the warpath,” he interrupts.
“You're late, and the mini-mart was sold out of coffee milk.”
I meet Campbell's gaze. I wait for him to finish his sentence. “You're
my next witness,” he says evenly, and the moment is gone before I can even
remember it existed.
CAMPBELL
IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER to be a bastard.
By the time I get into the courtroom, my hands are trembling. Part of it, of
course, is the same old same old. But part of it involves the fact that my
client is about as responsive as a boulder beside me; and the woman I'm crazy
about is the one I am about to put on the witness stand. I glance once at Julia
as the judge enters; she makes a point of looking away.
My pen rolls off the table. “Anna, can you get that for me?”
“I don't know. I'd be wasting time and manpower, wouldn't I?” she
says, and the goddamn pen stays on the floor.
“Are you ready to call your next witness, Mr. Alexander?” Judge
DeSalvo asks, but before I can even say Julia's name Sara Fitzgerald asks to
approach the bench.
I gear up for yet another complication, and sure enough, opposing counsel
doesn't disappoint. “The psychiatrist that I've asked to call as a witness
has an appointment at the hospital this afternoon. Would it be all right with
the Court if we took her testimony out of order?”
“Mr. Alexander?”
I shrug. It's just a stay of execution for me, when you get right down to
it. So I sit down beside Anna and watch a small, dark woman with a bun twisted
ten degrees too tight for her face take the stand. “Please state your name
and address for the record,” Sara begins.
“Dr. Beata Neaux,” the psychiatrist says. “1250 Orrick Way,
Woonsocket.”
Dr. No. I look around the courtroom, but apparently I'm the only
James Bond fan. I take out a legal pad and write a note to Anna: If she
married Dr. Chance, she'd be Dr. Neaux-Chance.
A smile twitches at the corner of Anna's mouth. She picks up the pen that
dropped and writes back: If she got a divorce and then married Mr. Buster,
she'd be Dr. Neaux-Chance-Buster.
We both start to laugh, and Judge DeSalvo clears his throat and looks at us.
“Sorry, Your Honor,” I say.
Anna passes me another note: I'm still mad at you.
Sara walks toward her witness. “Can you tell us, Doctor, the nature of
your practice?”
“I'm a child psychiatrist.”
“How did you first meet my children?”
Dr. Neaux glances at Anna. “About seven years ago, you brought in your
son, Jesse, because of some behavioral problems. Since then I've met with all
the children, over various occasions, to talk about different issues that have
come up.”
“Doctor, I called you last week and asked you to prepare a report
giving your expert opinion about psychological harm Anna might suffer if her
sister dies.”
“Yes. In fact, I did a little research. There was a similar case in
Maryland in which a girl was asked to be a donor for her twin. The psychiatrist
who examined the twins found they had such a strong identification with each
other that if the expected successful results were achieved, it would be of
immense benefit to the donor.” She looks at Anna. “In my opinion,
you're looking at a very similar set of circumstances here. Anna and Kate are
very close, and not just genetically. They live together. They hang out together.
They have literally spent their entire lives together. If Anna donates a kidney
that saves her sister's life, it's a tremendous gift—and not just to Kate.
Because Anna herself will continue to be part of the intact family by which she
defines herself, rather than a family that's lost one of its members.”
This is such a load of psychobabble bullshit I can barely see to swim
through it, but to my shock, the judge seems to be taking this with great
sincerity. Julia, too, has her head tilted and a tiny frown line between her
brows. Am I the only person in the room with a functioning brain?
“Moreover,” Dr. Neaux continues, “there are several studies
that indicate children who serve as donors have higher self-esteem, and feel
more important within the family structure. They consider themselves
superheroes, because they can do the one thing no one else can.”
That's the most off-the-mark description of Anna Fitzgerald I have ever
heard.
“Do you think that Anna is capable of making her own medical
decisions?” Sara asks.
“Absolutely not.”
Big surprise.
“Whatever decision she makes is going to have overtones for this entire
family,” Dr. Neaux says. “She's going to be thinking of that while
making her decision, and therefore, it will never truly be independent. Plus,
she's only thirteen years old. Developmentally her brain isn't wired yet to
look that far ahead, so any decision will be made based on her immediate
future, rather than the long term.”
“Dr. Neaux,” the judge interrupts, “what would you recommend,
in this case?”
“Anna needs the guidance of someone with more life experience… someone
who has her best interests in mind. I'm happy to work with the family, but the
parents need to be the parents, here—because the children can't be.”
When Sara turns the witness over to me, I go in for the kill. “You're
asking us to believe that donating a kidney will net Anna all these fabulous
psychological perks.”
“That's correct,” Dr. Neaux says.
“Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that if she donates that same
kidney—and her sister dies as a result of the operation—then Anna will suffer
significant psychological trauma?”
“I believe her parents will help her reason through that.”
“What about the fact that Anna's saying she doesn't want to be
a donor anymore,” I point out. “Isn't that important?”
“Absolutely. But like I said, Anna's current state of mind is driven by
the short-term consequences. She doesn't understand how this decision is really
going to play out.”
“Who does?” I ask. “Mrs. Fitzgerald may not be thirteen, but
she lives each day waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of Kate's
health, don't you think?”
Grudgingly, the psychiatrist nods.
“You might say she defines her own ability to be a good mother by
keeping Kate healthy. In fact, if her actions keep Kate alive, she herself
benefits psychologically.”
“Of course.”
“Mrs. Fitzgerald would be much better off in a family that included
Kate. Why, I'd even go as far as to say that the choices she makes in her life
are not at all independent, but rather colored by issues concerning Kate's
health care.”
“Probably.”
“Then by your own reasoning,” I finish, “isn't it true that
Sara Fitzgerald looks, feels, and acts like a donor for Kate?”
“Well—”
“Except she's not offering her own bone marrow and blood. Just
Anna's.”
“Mr. Alexander,” the judge warns.
“And if Sara fits the psychological profile of a closely related donor
personality who can't make independent decisions, then why is she any more
capable of making this choice than Anna?”
From the corner of my eye, I can see Sara's stunned face. I can hear the
judge banging his gavel. “You're right, Dr. Neaux—parents need to be
parents,” I say. “But sometimes that isn't good enough.”
JULIA
JUDGE DESALVO CALLS for a ten-minute break. I put down my knapsack, a
Guatemalan weave, and start washing my hands when the door to one of the
bathroom stalls opens. Anna comes out, hesitating for just a moment. Then she
turns on the tap beside me.
“Hey,” I say.
Anna goes to dry her hands under the blower. The air doesn't feed out, not
reading the sensor of her palm for some reason. She waves her fingers beneath
the machine again, then stares at them, as if trying to make sure that she's
not invisible. She bangs on the metal.
When I lean over and wave a hand beneath it, hot air breathes into my palm.
We share this small warmth, hobos around a kettle-bellied fire. “Campbell
tells me you don't want to testify.”
“I don't really want to talk about it,” Anna says.
“Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you
want the least.”
She leans against the bathroom wall and crosses her arms. “Who died and
made you Confucius?” Anna turns away, then reaches down to pick up my
knapsack for me. “I like this. All the colors.”
I take it and slip it over my shoulder. “I saw old women weaving them,
when I was in South America. It takes twenty spools of thread to make this
pattern.”
“Truth's like that,” Anna says, or it's what I think she says, but
by then she has left the room.
I am watching Campbell's hands. They move around a lot while he is talking;
he almost seems to use them to punctuate whatever he's saying. But they're
trembling a little, too, and I attribute this to the fact that he doesn't know
what I'm going to say. “As the guardian ad litem,” he asks,
“what are your recommendations in this case?”
I take a deep breath and look at Anna. “What I see here is a young
woman who has spent her life feeling an enormous responsibility for her
sister's well-being. In fact, she knows she was brought into this world to
carry that responsibility.” I glance at Sara, sitting at her table.
“I think that this family, when they conceived Anna, had the best of
intentions. They wanted to save their older daughter; they believed Anna would
be a welcome addition to the family—not just because of what she would provide
genetically, but also because they wanted to love her and watch her grow up
well.”
Then I turn to Campbell. “I also understand completely how, in this
family, it became critical to do anything that was humanly possible to save
Kate. When you love someone, you'll do anything you can to keep them with
you.”
As a little girl, I used to wake up in the middle of the night remembering
my wildest dreams—I was flying; I was locked in a chocolate factory; I was
queen of a Caribbean isle. I would wake with the smell of frangipani in my hair
or clouds caught in the hem of my nightgown until I realized that I was
somewhere different. And no matter how hard I tried, I might fall asleep again
but I could not will myself back into the fabric of that dream I'd been having.
Once, during the night Campbell and I spent together, I woke up in his arms
to find him still sleeping. I traced the geography of his face: from the cliff
of his cheekbone to the whirlpool of his ear to the laugh lines ravined beside
his mouth. Then I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life fell right
back into the dream, in the very spot where I'd left it.
“Unfortunately,” I say to the Court, “there is also a point
when you have to step back and say that it's time to let go.”
For a month after Campbell dumped me, I did not get out of bed except when
forced to go to Mass or to sit at the dinner table. I stopped washing my hair.
Under my eyes were dark circles. Izzy and I, at very first glance, looked
completely different.
On the day that I mustered the courage to get out of bed of my own volition,
I went to Wheeler and trolled around the boathouse, carefully staying hidden
until I found a boy on the sailing team—a summer session student—who was taking
out one of the school's skiffs. He had blond hair, instead of Campbell's black.
He was stocky, not tall and lean. I pretended I needed a ride home.
Within an hour I had fucked him in the backseat of his Honda.
I did it because if there was, someone else, then I wouldn't smell Campbell
on my skin and taste him on the inside of my lips. I did it because I had been
feeling so hollow inside that I feared floating away, like a helium balloon
that rose so high you couldn't even see the faintest splash of color.
I felt this boy whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember grunting and
heaving inside me; I was that empty and that far away. And suddenly I knew what
became of all those lost balloons: they were the loves that slipped out of our
fists; the blank eyes that rose in every night sky.
“When I first was given this assignment two weeks ago,” I tell the
judge, “and I started to look at the dynamics of this family, it seemed to
me that medical emancipation was in Anna's best interests. But then I realized
I was guilty of making judgments the way everyone else in this family
does—based solely on physiological effects, instead of psychological ones. The
easy part of this decision is to figure out what's medically right for Anna.
Bottom line: it is not in her best interests to donate organs and blood that
has no medical benefit for Anna herself but prolongs her sister's life.”
I see Campbell's eyes spark; this endorsement has surprised him. “It's
harder to come up with a solution, though—because although it may not be in
Anna's best interests to be a donor for her sister, her own family is incapable
of making informed decisions about that. If Kate's illness is a runaway train,
then everyone reacts from crisis to crisis without figuring out the best way to
bring this into the station. And using the same analogy, her parents' pressure
is a switch on the track—Anna isn't mentally or physically strong enough to
guide her own decisions, knowing what their wishes are.”
Campbell's dog gets up and begins to whine. Distracted, I turn to the noise.
Campbell pushes away Judge's snout, never taking his eyes off me.
“I see no one in the Fitzgerald family who can make unbiased decisions
about Anna's health care,” I admit. “Not her parents, and not Anna
herself.”
Judge DeSalvo frowns down at me. “Then Ms. Romano,” he asks,
“what's your recommendation to the court?”
CAMPBELL
SHE'S NOT GOING TO VETO the petition.
That's my first incredible thought—that my case isn't going down in flames
yet, even after Julia's testimony. My second thought is that Julia is as ripped
up about this case and what it's done to Anna as I am, except she's put it out
there on display for everyone to see.
Judge has chosen this moment to become a colossal pain in the ass. He sinks
his teeth into my coat and starts tugging, but I'll be damned if I'm going to
break before I hear Julia finish.
“Ms. Romano,” DeSalvo asks, “what's your recommendation to
the court?”
“I don't know,” she says softly. “I'm sorry. This is the
first time I've ever served as a guardian ad litem and been unable to reach a
recommendation, and I know that's not acceptable. But on one hand I have Brian
and Sara Fitzgerald, who have done nothing but make choices throughout the
course of both their daughters' lives out of love. Put that way, they certainly
don't seem like the wrong decisions—even if they aren't the right decisions for
both of those daughters anymore.”
She turns to Anna, and beside me I can feel her sit a little straighter,
prouder. “On the other hand, I have Anna, who after thirteen years is
standing up for herself—even though it may mean losing the sister she
loves.” Julia shakes her head. “It's a Solomon's choice, Your Honor.
But you're not asking me to split a baby in half. You're asking me to split a
family.”
When I feel a tug on my other arm I start to slap the dog away again, but then
realize that this time, it's Anna. “Okay,” she whispers.
Judge DeSalvo excuses Julia from the stand. “Okay what?” I whisper
back.
“Okay I'll talk,” Anna says.
I stare at her in disbelief. Judge is whining now, and batting his nose
against my thigh, but I can't risk a recess. All it will take for Anna to
change her mind is a split second. “You sure?”
But she doesn't answer me. She stands up, drawing all attention in the
courtroom to herself. “Judge DeSalvo?” Anna takes a deep breath.
“I have something to say.”
ANNA
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT the first time I had to give an oral report in class:
it was third grade, and I was in charge of talking about the kangaroo. They're
pretty interesting, you know. I mean, not only are they found on Australia
alone, like some kind of mutant evolutionary strain—they have the eyes of deer
and the useless paws of a T. Rex. But the most fascinating thing about
them is the pouch, of course. This baby, when it gets born, is like the size of
a germ and manages to crawl under the flap and tuck itself inside, all while
its clueless mother is bouncing around the Outback. And that pouch isn't like
they make it out on Saturday morning cartoons—it's pink and wrinkled like
inside your lip, and full of important motherish plumbing. I'll bet you didn't
know kangaroos don't just carry one joey at a time. Every now and then there
will be a miniature sibling, tiny and jellied and stuck in the bottom while her
older sister scrapes around with enormous feet and makes herself comfortable.
As you can see, I clearly knew my stuff. But when it was nearly my turn,
just as Stephen Scarpinio was holding up a papier-mache model of a lemur, I
knew that I was going to be sick. I went up to Mrs. Cuthbert, and told her if I
stayed to do this assignment, no one was going to be happy.
“Anna,” she said, “if you tell yourself you feel fine, you
will.” So when Stephen finished, I got up. I took a deep breath.
“Kangaroos,” I said, “are marsupials that live only in
Australia.”
Then I projectile vomited over four kids who had the bad luck to be sitting
in the front row.
For the whole rest of the year, I was called KangaRalph. Every now and then
some kid would go on a plane on vacation, and I'd go to my cubby to find a barf
bag pinned to the front of my fleece pullover, a makeshift marsupial pouch. I
was the school's greatest embarrassment until Darren Hong went to capture the
flag in gym and accidentally pulled down Oriana Bertheim's skirt.
I'm telling you this to explain my general aversion to public speaking.
But now, on the witness stand, there's even more to be worried about. It's
not that I'm nervous, like Campbell thinks. I am not afraid of clamming up,
either. I'm afraid of saying too much.
I look out at the courtroom and see my mother, sitting at her lawyer table,
and at my father, who smiles at me just the tiniest bit. And suddenly I can't
believe I ever thought I might be able to go through with this. I get to the
edge of my seat, ready to apologize for wasting everyone's time and bolt—only
to realize that Campbell looks positively awful. He's sweating, and his pupils
are so big they look like quarters set deep in his face. “Anna,”
Campbell asks, “do you want a glass of water?”
I look at him and think, Do you?
What I want is to go home. I want to run away to a place where no one knows
my name and pretend to be a millionaire's adopted daughter, the heir to a
toothpaste manufacturing kingdom, a Japanese pop star.
Campbell turns to the judge. “May I confer for a moment with my
client?”
“Be my guest,” Judge DeSalvo says.
So Campbell walks up to the witness stand and leans so close that only I can
hear him. “When I was a kid I had a friend named Joseph Balz,” he
whispers. “Imagine if Dr. Neaux had married him.”
He backs away while I am still smiling, and thinking that maybe, just maybe,
I can last for another two or three minutes up here.
Campbell's dog is going crazy—he's the one who needs water or something,
from the looks of it. And I'm not the only one to notice. “Mr.
Alexander,” Judge DeSalvo says, “please control your animal.”
“No, Judge.”
“Excuse me?!”
Campbell goes tomato red. “I was speaking to the dog, Your Honor, like
you asked.” Then he turns to me. “Anna, why did you want to file this
petition?”
A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and
never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth
expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead. “She asked,”
I say, the first two words that will become an avalanche.
“Who asked what?”
“My mom,” I say, staring at Campbell's shoes. “For a
kidney.” I look down at my skirt, pick at a thread. Just maybe I will
unravel the whole thing.
About two months ago, Kate was diagnosed with kidney failure. She got tired
easily, and lost weight, and retained water, and threw up a lot. The blame was
pinned to a bunch of different things: genetic abnormalities,
granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor—growth hormone shots Kate had
once taken to boost marrow production, stress from other treatments. She was
put on dialysis to get rid of the toxins zipping around her bloodstream. And
then, the dialysis stopped working.
One night, my mother came into our room when Kate and I were just hanging
out. She had my father with her, which meant we were in for a more heavy discussion
than who-left-the-sink-running-by-accident. “I've been doing some reading
on the internet,” my mother said. “Transplants of typical organs
aren't nearly as difficult to recover from as bone marrow transplants.”