Authors: Jodi Picoult
I sneak into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and see her sitting at the kitchen table like a ghost. Liddy’s white cotton nightgown swirls around her ankles like sea foam as she stands up to face me. “Thank God,” she says. “Where have you been?”
“I went surfing. I needed to clear my head.”
“I tried to call you. I was worried.”
I saw her messages on my cell. I deleted them, without listening. I had to, although I can’t explain why.
“I haven’t been drinking, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I say.
“I wasn’t. I was just . . . I wanted to call the hospital, but Reid said you were a big boy and could take care of yourself.”
I see the phone book, open on the table, and feel a pang of remorse. “I didn’t mean to keep you up. You have a big day tomorrow.”
“Can’t sleep anyway. Reid took some Ambien, and he’s snoring to beat the band.”
Liddy sits down on the floor, her back aligned against the wall. When she pats the spot beside her, I sit, too. For a minute we are quiet, listening to the house settle around us. “Remember
The Time Machine?”
“Sure.” It was a movie we saw a few years back, a particularly cheesy one, that was about a time traveler who gets lost in space and stuck 800,000 years in the future.
“Would you want to see the future, even if you knew you couldn’t change it?” she asks.
I consider this. “I don’t know. I think it might hurt too much.”
When she leans her head against my shoulder, I swear I stop breathing. “I used to read these mystery books when I was a little girl, where you could choose a different path at the end of every chapter. And depending on what you picked, the outcome changed.”
I can smell her soap—mango and mint—and the shampoo she uses, which sometimes I steal out of her bathroom and use myself.
“I used to skip to the back of the book and read all the endings and pick the one I liked the best . . . and then I’d try to figure it out backward.” She laughs a little. “It never worked. I could never make things happen the way I wanted.”
The first time Liddy saw snow, the time I was with her to witness it, she held out her hand to catch a snowflake on her palm.
Look at the pattern,
she said, and she held it out to me so I could see. By then, though, it was already gone.
“Reid told me what he said today in court.”
I look down at the floor. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
“I know that Reid can be—well, a bully sometimes. I know he acts like he owns the whole wide world. I know it better than anyone else, except maybe you. I also know that you’re wondering why you’re doing this, Max.” Liddy comes up on her knees and leans closer, so that her hair falls forward. She puts her hand on my cheek. Then, slowly, she kisses me. “You’re doing it for me,” she whispers.
I am waiting to wake up from this hellish, wonderful dream; certain that at any minute I will find a doctor peering over me and telling me that last wipeout left me with a massive concussion. I grab Liddy’s wrist before she can pull it away from my face. Her skin is warm, buttery.
I kiss her back. God, yes, I kiss her back. I cradle her face in my hands and I try to pour into her everything I’ve never been allowed to say. I wait for her to pull away, to slap me, but in this alternate world there is enough room for both of us. I grab the hem of her nightgown and inch it up, so that her legs can wrap around mine; I yank my shirt over my head so that she can kiss the salt from my shoulder blades. I lay her down. I love her.
Afterward, when reality settles in and I can feel the hard tile under my hip and the heaviness of her draped across me, I find myself in a total fucking panic.
All my life, I’ve dreamed of being like my brother, and now I
am.
Like Reid, I want something that doesn’t belong to me.
When I wake up on the kitchen floor, I am alone and wearing my boxers and Reid is standing over me. “Look at what the cat dragged in,” he says. “I told Liddy you had nine lives.” He’s dressed impeccably, and he’s holding a mug of coffee. “Better hop in the shower, or you’re going to be late for court.”
“Where is she?”
“Sick as a dog,” Reid says. “Running a fever, apparently. She wanted to stay home, but I told her she’s the next witness.”
I grab my clothes and hurry upstairs. I should get ready, like Reid said, but instead I knock on the closed door of Liddy and Reid’s bedroom. “Liddy?” I whisper. “Liddy, you okay?”
The door opens a crack. Liddy is wearing a bathrobe. She pulls it tight at the collar, as if I haven’t already seen everything underneath anyway. Her cheeks are flushed. “I can’t talk to you.”
I wedge my foot in the door so she can’t close it on me. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Last night, you were—”
“A sinner,” Liddy interrupts, her eyes filling with tears. “Last night I was married. I’m
still
married, Max. And I want a baby.”
“We can figure it out. We can tell the court—”
“Tell the court what? That the baby should go to the couple with the wife who’s cheating on her husband? The wife that loves her husband’s brother? That’s not quite anyone’s definition of a traditional family, Max.”
But I barely hear the last sentence. “You love me?”
She ducks her head. “The guy I fell for was willing to give the most important thing ever—his
child
—to me for safekeeping. The guy I fell for loves God, like me. The guy I fell for would never think of hurting his brother. Last night didn’t happen, Max. Because if it did—then you’re not that guy anymore.”
She closes the door, but I just stand there, unable to move. Reid’s footsteps echo down the hallway as he approaches. When he sees me in front of his bedroom door, he frowns and looks at his watch. “You aren’t ready yet?”
I swallow. “No,” I tell him. “I guess not.”
On the witness stand, Liddy can’t stop shaking. She tucks her hands underneath her legs, but even then, I can see shudders going through her. “I always talked about being a mother,” she says. “In high school, my girlfriends and I would make up names for the babies we’d have. I had it all planned out even before I got married.”
When she says the word
married,
her voice breaks.
“I have the perfect life. Reid and I have this beautiful home, and he makes a good living as a portfolio manager. And according to the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children.”
“Have you and your husband tried to conceive?” Wade asks.
“Yes. For years.” She looks down at her lap. “We were just going to look into Snowflakes Adoption. But then Max . . . Max came to us with another idea.”
“Do you have a strong relationship with your brother-in-law?”
Liddy’s face drains of color. “Yes.”
“How did you react when he told you he wanted to give his pre-born children to you and your husband?”
“I thought that God had answered my prayers.”
“Did you ask him why he didn’t want to raise the children himself? Maybe at a later date?”
“Reid did,” she admits. “Max told us that he didn’t think he’d be good at it. He had made too many mistakes. He wanted his children to grow up with a mother and a father who . . . who loved each other.”
“Have you had much interaction with children?”
For the first time since she’s gotten into that chair, she brightens. “I run the Sunday School program at our church. And I organize a youth ministry camp during the summers. I love kids.”
“If the court saw fit to give you these pre-born children,” Wade asks, “how would you raise them?”
“To be good Christians,” Liddy says. “To do the right thing.” As soon as she says it, her face crumples. “I’m sorry,” she sobs.
Across from me, Zoe shifts. Today she is dressed in black, like she’s in mourning. She stares at Liddy as if she’s the Antichrist.
Wade pulls a crimson silk handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and hands it to Liddy to wipe her eyes. “Your witness,” he says, and he turns to Zoe’s lawyer.
Angela Moretti stands and tugs on the hem of her suit jacket to straighten it. “What can you give these embryos that their biological mother can’t?”
“Opportunities,” Liddy says. “A stable Christian home.”
“So you think that money is all it takes to raise children?”
“Of course not. They would live in a loving household.”
“When was the last time you spent a few hours with Zoe and Vanessa?”
“I . . . I haven’t . . .”
“So you don’t really know what kind of love their household is filled with, do you?”
“I know it’s immoral,” Liddy says.
“So it’s Zoe’s sexual orientation that makes her an unfit mother? Is that your testimony?”
Liddy hesitates. “I didn’t say that. I just think that Reid and I—we’re the better option for these children.”
“What kind of contraception do you use?” Angela asks.
Liddy blushes. “I don’t use any.”
I have a sudden flash of last night, her head turned so that her throat was exposed, her back arched beneath me. “How often do you and your husband have sex?”
“Objection!”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge says.
Dirty old man.
“Answer the question, Mrs. Baxter.”
“Thursdays,” Liddy says.
Thursdays?
Once a week? Like clockwork? If Liddy were my wife, I’d be in the shower with her every morning. I’d grab her when she walked by me at the dinner table and pull her onto my lap—
“Do you time intercourse so that you might be able to get pregnant?”
“Yes—”
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
“Yes . . . several times . . . but I’ve miscarried.”
“Do you even know if you
can
carry a baby to term?”
“Does anyone?” Liddy asks.
Atta girl.
“You realize that if you get these embryos and they’re transferred to you, you may still not have a live birth.”
“Or,” Liddy points out, “I could have triplets.”
“You said that, in the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children?”
“Yes.”
“So if God wanted you to have children, wouldn’t you have had them already?”
“I . . . I think He has a different plan for us,” Liddy says.
The lawyer nods. “Of course. God wants you to become a substitute mother by depriving a biological mother of the same right.”
“Objection!” Wade says.
“Let me rephrase,” Angela says. “Do you agree that what you want most in the world is to have and raise a child?”
Liddy’s eyes, which have been trained so carefully on Angela Moretti, slide toward me. My mouth feels like it’s full of broken glass. “Yes,” she says.
“Do you agree that not being able to have a biological child is devastating? Heartbreaking?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, isn’t that exactly the fate to which you consign Zoe Baxter, if you take her embryos?”
Liddy turns toward Zoe, her eyes full of tears. “I would raise these babies like they’re my own,” she whispers.
The words pull Zoe out of her seat. “They’re not yours,” she replies, quietly at first, and then more forcefully. “They’re
mine!”
The judge bangs his gavel. “Ms. Moretti, control your client!”
“Leave her alone!” I cry, standing up. “Can’t you see she’s upset!”
For a moment, the whole world stops spinning. Zoe turns with a ghost of a smile on her lips—grateful because she thinks that my words are meant for her.
And then she realizes they’re not.
You cannot be married to a person for nearly a decade and not be able to read the Morse code of a relationship: Eyes that meet at a dinner party, telegraphing that it’s time to make up an excuse and go home. A silent apology when you reach for her hand under the covers. An
I love you
smile, tossed at her feet.
She knows. I can tell by the way she is looking at me that she understands what I’ve done. That she’s lost me, and potentially her embryos, to a woman she detests.
Then the freeze-frame releases and Zoe lunges toward the witness stand. A sheriff grabs her and forces her to her knees. Someone screams. “I will have order in this court,
right now,”
Judge O’Neill roars.
By now, Liddy is a blubbering mess. Wade grabs at my arm. “Shut
up
before you ruin everything.”
“Zoe,” Angela Moretti says, trying to push the sheriff off her client. “You need to calm down—”
“This court is in recess,” the judge shouts, and he storms off the bench.
Wade waits until Angela has dragged Zoe out of the courtroom, until the bulk of the gallery has filed into the hallway to gossip about what they’ve seen. “What the hell was that?” he accuses.
I don’t know what to say to him. I can barely understand it myself.
“It just happened,” I manage.
“Well, you better make sure it doesn’t happen again, if you feel like winning this trial. If your ex wants to stand up and look like a crazy nutcase, that’s fantastic for us. You think a judge is going to watch that and think she’d be a good parent? If she does it again, and I pray she will, you sit with your hands folded and you make yourself the picture of calm. You
don’t
stand up and defend her, for the love of God!”
I bend my head, so that he can’t see the relief flooding my face.
I have no idea where Wade found Genevieve Newkirk. A licensed clinical psychologist, she’s got a Ph.D. from UCLA and has published repeatedly on issues central to marriage, sexuality, and parenting. She’s been on radio and TV—local and national—and has been interviewed for web and print media. She’s consulted on over seventy-five legal cases and has testified in over forty of them. “Dr. Newkirk,” Wade begins, once he’s gotten her admitted as an expert witness, “in your work, have you had the opportunity to explore whether homosexuality is genetically inherited?”
“I have. Frankly, there have not been many studies done, so it’s very easy to review all the research.”
“Are you familiar with the Bailey-Pillard studies?” Wade asks.
“Yes.” Dr. Newkirk turns to the gallery. “In 1991 and 1993 J. M. Bailey and R. C. Pillard set out to study homosexuality in twins. They found that fifty-two percent of identical male twins of homosexual men were also homosexual, that twenty-two percent of fraternal twins of homosexual men were also homosexual, and that eleven percent of adoptive brothers of homosexual men were likewise homosexual. Among women they found that forty-eight percent of identical female twins of lesbians were also lesbian, sixteen percent of fraternal twins of lesbians were also lesbian, and six percent of adoptive sisters of lesbians were likewise lesbian.”