Authors: Jodi Picoult
She would have found it incredibly ironic that I had turned out to be her cosmetic guardian angel, since I had been running away from her mascara wand since I could walk. Whereas other little girls liked to sit on their mothers’ bathroom counters and watch them transform themselves into works of art, I couldn’t stand the feel of anything other than soap on my face. The one time I let my mother come near me with eyeliner, it was to pencil in a Gomez Addams mustache on my upper lip for a school play.
I mention all this to duly underscore the fact that at 7:00
A.M
. I am poking my eye out with Zoe’s eyeliner applicator. I am grimacing in the mirror so that I can roll Hot Tamale lipstick over my mouth. If Wade Preston and Judge O’Neill want to see the traditional woman who stays at home and does her nails and cooks roasts for dinner, I’ll become one for the next eight hours.
(Unless I have to wear a skirt. That is
just not happening.)
I lean back with spots dancing before my eyes (it is really hard to not go cross-eyed while you’re putting on liquid liner) and scrutinize my handiwork in the mirror. Just then, Zoe stumbles into the bathroom, still half asleep. She sits down on the closed toilet seat and blinks up at me.
Then she gasps, horrified. “Why do you look like a scary clown?”
“Really?” I say, rubbing my hands over my cheeks. “Too much blush?” I frown into the mirror again. “I was going for that nineteen fifties pinup look. Like Katy Perry.”
“Well, you got Frank-N-Furter from
Rocky Horror,”
Zoe says. She stands and pushes me down on the seat instead. Then she takes makeup remover, squirts it on a cotton ball, and wipes my face clean. “You want to tell me why you’ve suddenly decided to use makeup?”
“Just trying to look more . . . feminine,” I answer.
“You mean less like a dyke,” Zoe corrects. She puts her hands on her hips. “You know you look fine without a drop of anything on your face, Ness.”
“See, this is why I’m married to you instead of Wade Preston.”
She leans forward, sweeping blush along my cheekbone. “And here I thought it was because I had—”
“An eyelash curler,” I interrupt, grinning. “I married you for your Shu Uemura.”
“Stop,” Zoe says. “You’re making me feel so cheap.” She tilts up my chin. “Close your eyes.”
She brushes and dabs at me. I even let her use the eyelash curler, although I nearly wind up blind in the process. She finishes by telling me to let my mouth hang open, and she swipes it over with lipstick.
“Ta da,” Zoe says.
I am expecting a drag queen. Instead, I see something entirely different. “Oh, my God. I’ve turned into my mother.”
Zoe peers over my shoulder, so that we are both looking at our reflections. “From what I hear,” she says, “it happens to the best of us.”
Angela pays a janitor twenty bucks to let us into the courthouse through the delivery door in the back. We walk in spy-novel silence past the boiler room and a supply closet stocked with paper towels and toilet tissue before he leads us into a rickety, grimy service elevator that will take us up to the main floor. He turns the key and pushes a button and then looks at me. “I got a cousin who’s gay,” he says, this man who hasn’t spoken more than four words to us the whole time he’s been with us.
Because I don’t know what he thinks of that cousin, I don’t say anything.
“How did you know who we are?” Zoe asks.
He shrugs. “I’m the custodian. I know everything.”
The elevator belches us out into a corridor near the clerk’s office. Angela winds her way through the maze of hallways until we are at the door of our courtroom. There is literally a wall of human media facing away from us, toward the door, waiting for our entrance up the front steps of the courthouse.
While we’re actually standing right behind the morons.
I think I have more respect for Angela at that moment than I ever had before.
“Go get a granola bar or something in the snack room,” she advises. “That way you’ll be outta sight, outta mind while Preston’s coming into court, and the reporters won’t come after you.” Because I’m still sequestered—at least for the first few minutes of today’s court session—this makes sense. I watch her safely tuck Zoe inside the courtroom and then slip down the hallway unnoticed while the rest of the counsel arrives.
I eat a pack of Nutter Butters, but they make me queasy. The truth is, I’m not good when it comes to public speaking. It’s why I’m a school counselor and not up in front of a classroom. The fact that Zoe can sit on a stool and sing her heart to shreds in front of an audience leaves me in awe.
Then again, watching Zoe load the dishwasher pretty much takes my breath away, too.
“You can do this,” I say under my breath, and by the time I come back to the double doors of the courtroom, a bailiff is waiting to bring me inside.
I do the whole rigmarole—the swearing on the Bible, the name and age and address. Angela walks toward me, looking much more poised and intense than she does when she’s not in front of a judge. To my surprise, she drops her pad of notes about a foot in front of me. “You know how Wade Preston sleeps?” she whispers quickly. “He lies on one side and then he lies on the other.” When she sees me smother a laugh, she winks, and I realize she didn’t fumble that pad at all.
“Where do you live, Ms. Shaw?”
“In Wilmington.”
“Are you presently employed?” Angela asks.
“I work as a school counselor at Wilmington High School.”
“What does that entail?”
“Counseling students in grades nine through twelve. I make sure they’re academically on track, I see if there are problems at home, keep an eye out for depression or substance abuse, and I help guide kids through the college application process.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling. “To Zoe Baxter.”
“Do you have any children?”
“Not yet, but I hope that will be the outcome of this litigation. Our intent is to have me gestate to term the embryos that are biologically Zoe’s.”
“Have you had any experience with small children?”
“To a limited degree,” I say. “I’ve taken care of our neighbor’s kids for a weekend here and there. But from what I hear from friends, parenthood is trial by fire no matter how many books you’ve read by Dr. Brazelton.”
“How would you and Zoe be able to support this child financially?”
“We both work, and we’d both continue to work. Luckily our schedules allow for flexibility. We plan to raise the children equally, and Zoe’s mother lives ten minutes away and is delighted at the thought of helping us out.”
“What, if any, is your relationship to Max Baxter?”
I think of the argument Zoe and I had last night. My relationship to this man is that, forever, we will be linked together through her. That there will be parts of her heart she’s already given to someone else.
“He’s my spouse’s ex-husband,” I say evenly. “He’s biologically related to the embryos. I don’t really know him; I only know what Zoe’s told me about him.”
“Are you willing to allow him to have contact with any child that might result?”
“If he wants to.”
Angela faces me directly. “Vanessa,” she says, “is there anything that prevents you from being considered a fit and proper person to have custody of a child?”
“Absolutely not,” I reply.
“Your witness,” Angela says, turning toward Wade Preston.
Today he is wearing an outfit that shouldn’t work—and believe me, if
I’m
making a fashion commentary, it must be truly hideous. His shirt is checkered, purple and white. His tie is striped, lilac and black. His black suit jacket is flecked with bits of gray and silver and purple. And yet what should look like a nasty eighties anachronism somehow looks, with his spray-on tan and his bling, like a
GQ
spread. “Ms. Shaw,” he begins. I actually look down to see if he’s left a trail of oil as he comes closer. “Does your employer know you’re a lesbian?”
I square my shoulders. If he wants to play hard, I’m ready.
After all—I’m wearing my lipstick.
“It’s nothing I’ve volunteered. Teachers don’t normally sit around the break room talking about their sex lives. But it’s nothing I hide, either.”
“Don’t you think parents have a right to know what sort of guidance their children are getting?” He absolutely sneers the word
guidance.
“They don’t seem to be complaining.”
“Do you ever talk about sex with these teens?”
“If they bring it up. Some kids come to me because of relationship problems. Some of them have even disclosed to me that they might be gay.”
“So you’re recruiting these innocent teenagers to your lifestyle?” Preston says.
“Not at all. But I am offering them a safe place where they can talk when other people”—I pause for effect—“are not being particularly tolerant.”
“Ms. Shaw, you testified on direct examination that you believe you’re a fit and proper parent for a child, is that right?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re saying there’s nothing about you that suggests, for example, an inability to cope?”
“I don’t believe so . . .”
“I’d like to remind you that you’re under oath,” the lawyer says.
What the hell is he getting at?
“Isn’t it a fact that you were hospitalized for a week in 2003 in the Blackstone Hospital psychiatric ward?”
I go very still. “A relationship had ended. I voluntarily checked myself in for a week to deal with the stress. I was put on medication and have not had another episode like that.”
“So you had a nervous breakdown.”
I lick my lips and taste the wax of the cosmetics. “That’s an exaggeration. I was diagnosed with exhaustion.”
“Really? That’s all?”
I lift my chin. “Yes.”
“So it’s your testimony that you did not try to kill yourself?”
Zoe’s hand is pressed to her mouth.
Hypocrite,
she must be thinking, after last night.
Turning to Wade Preston, I meet his gaze. “Absolutely not.”
He holds out his hand, and Ben Benjamin leaps up from the plaintiff’s table to give him a file. “I’d like to have these marked for identification only,” Preston says, handing them to the clerk for a stamp and then giving a copy to Angela and another to me.
They are my medical records from Blackstone.
“Objection,” Angela says. “I’ve never seen this evidence before. I don’t even know how Mr. Preston could have legally obtained them, since they’re protected by HIPAA—”
“Ms. Moretti is welcome to follow along with her own copy,” Preston says.
“Your Honor, under our confidentiality statute, I should have received three weeks notice of this prior to the records being subpoenaed. Ms. Shaw is not even a party to this action. There’s no way these records should be admissible in this courtroom.”
“I’m not entering these records as evidence,” Preston says. “I’m just using them to impeach the witness who has testified falsely under oath. Since we are talking about a potential custodial parent, I think it’s critical to know this woman is not just a lesbian—she’s also a liar.”
“Objection!” Angela roars.
“If Ms. Moretti needs a brief recess to review the records, we’re perfectly willing to give her a few minutes—”
“I don’t need a recess, you windbag. I have no question in my mind that not only are these records irrelevant but that Mr. Preston obtained them through an illegal missive. He comes into this courtroom with unclean hands. I don’t know what they do in Louisiana, but here in Rhode Island we have laws to protect our citizens, and Ms. Shaw’s rights are being violated at this very moment.”
“Your Honor, if the witness would like to recant her testimony and admit that she did attempt suicide, I am happy to dismiss the records entirely,” Preston says.
“Enough.” The judge sighs. “I will allow the records in for identification purposes only. However, I’d like counsel to explain how he obtained them before we go any further.”
“They were pushed under the door of my hotel room,” he says. “God works in mysterious ways.”
I highly doubt that God was the one running the Xerox machine at Blackstone.
“Ms. Shaw, I’m going to ask you again. Did your suicide attempt lead to your stay at Blackstone Hospital in 2003?”
My face is flushed; I can feel my pulse hammering. “No.”
“So you accidentally swallowed a bottle of Tylenol?”
“I was depressed. I didn’t have a plan to kill myself. It was a long time ago, and I’m in a very different place now than I was back then. Frankly, I don’t understand why you’re even on this witch hunt.”
“Is it fair to say that you were upset eight years ago? In crisis?”
“Yes.”
“Something unexpected happened that rattled you to the point where you ended up hospitalized?”
I look down. “I guess.”
“Zoe Baxter has testified that she had cancer. Are you aware of that?”
“Yes, I am. But she’s healthy now.”
“Cancer has a nasty way of recurring, doesn’t it? Ms. Baxter could get cancer again, couldn’t she?”
“So could you,” I say.
Preferably in the next three minutes.
“This is a terrible thought,” Preston says, “but we do need to press through all possibilities here. Let’s say Ms. Baxter got cancer again. You’d be upset, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d be devastated.”
“To the point of another breakdown, Ms. Shaw? Another bottle of Tylenol?”
Angela stands again, objecting.
Wade Preston shakes his head and tsks. “In that case, Ms. Shaw,” he says, “who’s gonna take care of those poor children?”
As soon as I step down from the witness stand, the judge calls a recess. Zoe turns to the seat I’ve taken behind her in the gallery. We both stand; she wraps her arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
I know she is thinking of Lucy, how I went above and beyond the call of a school counselor’s duty to find that girl something that would keep her tethered to this world instead of checking out of it. I know she’s wondering if I saw myself in her.
From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of purple. Wade Preston heads up the aisle. Gently I disengage myself from Zoe’s embrace. “I’ll be back.”