Authors: Jodi Picoult
I follow Preston down the hallway, drawing into shadows as he glad-hands congregants and gives sound bites to reporters. He whistles, too full of himself to even notice that he’s got a shadow. He turns a corner and pushes open the door to the men’s room.
I go in right after him.
“Mr. Preston,” I say.
He raises his brows. “Why, Ms. Shaw. I would think a person with your sort of lifestyle would be the last one to make the mistake of walking into the facility with the picture of a man on it.”
“You know, I’m an educator. And you, Mr. Preston, are sorely in need of an education.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“I do.” I quickly glance under the stall doors, but, fortunately, we are the only ones in the room. “First, homosexuality? It’s not a lifestyle. It’s who I happen to be. Second, I didn’t choose to be attracted to women. I just am. Did
you
make a choice to be attracted to women? Was it during puberty? When you graduated from high school? Was it a question on the SATs? No. Homosexuality isn’t a choice any more than heterosexuality is. And I know this because why on earth would anyone choose to be gay? Why would I want to put myself through all the bullying and name-calling and physical abuse I’ve faced? Why would I want to constantly be looked down at and stereotyped by people like you? Why would I willingly pick a
lifestyle,
as you call it, that’s such an uphill battle? I honestly cannot believe someone who has traveled the world as much as you have, Mr. Preston, could have his eyes so tightly shut.”
“Ms. Shaw.” He sighs. “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”
“That’s touching. But since I’m an atheist, it’s also irrelevant. In fact, I’d hope that you might consider reading up on homosexuality with a text that’s a little more current than the one you’ve been using—the Bible. There’s been a lot more literature written on the subject since five hundred A.D.”
“Are you finished yet? Because I came in here for a reason . . .”
“Not yet. There are a lot of things I’m not, Mr. Preston. I’m not a pedophile. I’m not a softball coach or a biker chick, any more than gay men are always hairstylists or florists or interior decorators. I’m not immoral. But you know what I
am
? Intelligent. Tolerant. Capable of parenting. Different from you, but not lesser,” I say. “People like me, we don’t need to be fixed. We need people like
you
to broaden your horizons.”
When I finish, I am sweating. Wade Preston is blissfullly, utterly silent.
“What’s the matter, Wade?” I ask. “Not used to getting beat up by a girl?”
He shrugs. “Say what you want, Ms. Shaw. You can even pee standing up if you like. But your balls, mark my words, are never gonna be bigger than mine.”
I hear him unzip his fly.
I cross my arms.
A standoff.
“Are you going to leave, Ms. Shaw?”
I shrug. “You won’t be the first dick I’ve run across in my life, Mr. Preston.”
With a quick indrawn breath, Wade Preston zips his pants again and storms out of the bathroom. I smile so wide it hurts, and then I turn on the faucet.
When a bailiff I’ve never seen before comes into the men’s room, he sees a strange, tall woman washing off her makeup in the sink, patting her face dry with cheap paper towels. “What?” I accuse when he stares at me, and I saunter out the door. After all, who’s he to say what’s normal?
Before Zoe’s mom testifies, she wants to talk to her glass of water.
“Ms. Weeks,” the judge says, “this isn’t a performance space. Can we please just get along with the trial?”
Dara faces him, still holding the glass in one hand. The pitcher that sits beside the witness stand is half full. “Don’t you know, Your Honor, that water can feel positive and negative energy?”
“I wasn’t aware that water could feel anything except wet,” he mutters.
“Dr. Masaru Emoto has done scientific experiments,” she says, huffy. “If human thoughts are directed at water before it’s frozen, the crystals will be either beautiful or ugly depending on whether the thoughts were positive or negative. So if you expose water to positive stimuli—like beautiful music, or pictures of people in love, or words of gratitude—and then freeze it and look under a microscope, you get ice crystals that are symmetrical. On the other hand, if you play a Hitler speech to your water or show pictures of murder victims or say
I hate you
and then freeze it, the crystals are jagged and distorted.” She looks up at him. “Our bodies are made up of more than sixty percent water. If positive thoughts can impact an eight-ounce glass of water, imagine the effect they might have on all of us.”
The judge rubs his hand down his face. “Ms. Moretti, I assume since this is your witness you don’t mind if she praises her water?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Preston?”
He shakes his head, dumbfounded. “Frankly, I don’t even
know
what to say.”
Dara sniffs. “All in all, that’s probably a real blessing from the water’s point of view.”
“You may proceed, Ms. Weeks,” the judge says.
Dara raises the glass. “Strength,” she says, her voice rich and full. “Wisdom. Tolerance. Justice.”
It should seem precious, wacky, New Age. Instead, it’s riveting. Who among us, no matter what we believe personally, would stand against those principles?
She tilts the glass and drinks every last drop. Then Dara glances at Judge O’Neill. “There. Was that really so bad?”
Angela walks toward the witness stand. She refills Dara’s glass—not out of habit but because she knows it will keep everyone thinking what words are being said in front of that water that might alter it, much the way having a toddler in the room acts as a deterrent for lewd conversation. “Can you state your name and address for the record?”
“Dara Weeks. I live at 5901 Renfrew Heights, Wilmington.”
“How old are you?”
Blanching, she looks at Angela. “I really have to tell you that?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Sixty-five. But I
feel
fifty.”
“How far away do you live from your daughter and Vanessa Shaw?”
“Ten minutes,” Dara says.
“Do you have any grandchildren?”
“Not yet. But . . .” She knocks the wood of the witness stand.
“I take it you’re looking forward to the prospect, then?”
“Are you kidding me? I’m going to be the best grandmother who ever lived.”
Angela crosses in front of the stand. “Ms. Weeks, do you know Vanessa Shaw?”
“I do. She’s married to my daughter.”
“What do you think of their relationship?”
“I think,” Dara says, “she makes my daughter very happy, and that’s what has always mattered most to me.”
“Has your daughter always been happy in her relationships?”
“No. She was miserable after the stillbirth, and during her divorce. Like a zombie. I’d go over to her place, and she’d still be wearing the same clothes I left her in the day before. She didn’t eat. She didn’t clean. She didn’t work. She didn’t play guitar. She just slept. Even when she was awake, she seemed to be sleeping.”
“When did that start to change for her?”
“She began to work with a student at Vanessa’s school. Gradually, she and Vanessa went to lunch, to movies, to art festivals and flea markets. I was just so glad Zoe had someone to talk to.”
“At some point did you learn that Zoe and Vanessa were more than just friends?”
Dara nods. “One day they came over and Zoe said she had something important to tell me. She was in love with Vanessa.”
“What was your reaction?”
“I was confused. I mean, I knew Vanessa had become her best friend—but now Zoe was telling me she wanted to move in with her and that she was a lesbian.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Like I’d been hit with a pickax.” Dara hesitates. “I don’t have anything against gay people, but I never thought of my daughter as gay. I thought about the grandchildren I wouldn’t have, about what my friends would say behind my back. But I realized that I wasn’t upset because of who Zoe fell in love with. I was upset because, as a mother, I would never have picked this path for her. No parent wants her child to have to struggle her whole life against people with small minds.”
“How do you feel now about your daughter’s relationship?”
“All I can see, whenever I’m with her, is how happy Vanessa makes her. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. But without Romeo,” Dara adds. “And with a much happier ending.”
“Do you have any qualms about them raising children?”
“I couldn’t imagine a better home for a child.”
Angela turns. “Ms. Weeks, if it were up to you, would you rather see Zoe’s children parented by Max or Vanessa?”
“Objection,” Wade Preston says. “Speculative.”
“Now, now, Mr. Preston,” the judge replies. “Not in front of the water. I’m going to allow it.”
Dara looks over at Max, sitting at the plaintiff’s table. “That’s not my question to answer. But I can tell you this: Max walked away from my daughter.” She turns to me. “Vanessa,” she says, “won’t let go.”
After her testimony, Dara sits down in the seat I’ve saved beside me. She grips my hand. “How did I do?” she whispers.
“You were a pro,” I tell her, and it’s true. Wade Preston had nothing of merit to use during his cross-examination. It felt like he was spinning his wheels, grasping at straws.
“I practiced. I was up all night aligning my chakras.”
“And it shows,” I reply, although I have no idea what she’s talking about. I look at Dara—her magnetic bracelet, her medicine-bag pouch necklace, her healing crystals. Sometimes I wonder how Zoe grew up the way she did.
Then again, you could say the same thing about me.
“I wish my mom could have met you,” I whisper back to her, when what I really mean is,
I wish my mother had had a heart even half as big as yours.
Dr. Anne Fourchette, the director of the fertility clinic, arrives with a milk crate full of files—Zoe’s and Max’s medical records, which have been copied for the lawyers and are handed out by the clerk of the court. Her silver hair brushes the collar of her black suit, and a pair of zebra-striped reading glasses hangs from a chain around her neck. “I’ve known the Baxters since 2005,” she says. “They began trying to have a baby back then.”
“Did your clinic assist them with that?” Angela asks.
“Yes,” Dr. Fourchette says, “we provided IVF services.”
“Can you describe the process for a couple that comes in for IVF treatments?”
“We begin by doing a medical workup—lots of testing to determine the causes for the infertility. Based on those causes, we chart a course of treatment. In the Baxters’ case, both Max and Zoe had fertility issues. For this reason we had to inject Max’s sperm individually into Zoe’s eggs. For her part, Zoe was on hormone therapy for weeks that allowed her to produce multiple eggs, which were harvested at a very precise time and fertilized with Max’s sperm. For example, during their first cycle, Zoe produced fifteen eggs, eight were successfully fertilized, and of those eight that were fertilized, two looked good enough to be transferred and another three looked good enough to be frozen for a future cycle.”
“What do you mean, ‘looked good enough’?”
“Some embryos just look a little more uniform, more regular than others.”
“Maybe someone’s playing them beautiful music or whispering words of gratitude,” Preston mutters. I glance over, but he’s poking through the medical file.
“Our policy is to only transfer two embryos per patient, three if she’s older, because we don’t want her winding up with multiples like the Octomom. If there are additional embryos that look good enough for future use, we freeze them.”
“What do you do with the ones that aren’t ‘good’?”
“They are discarded,” the doctor says.
“How?” Angela asks.
“Since they are medical waste, they’re incinerated.”
“What happened during Zoe’s last fresh cycle?”
Dr. Fourchette slides her glasses onto her nose. “She became pregnant at forty and carried the fetus to twenty-eight weeks, at which point it was delivered stillborn.”
“Were there embryos remaining after that procedure?”
“Yes, three. They were frozen.”
“Where are those embryos now?”
“They’re at my clinic,” the doctor says.
“Are they viable?”
“We won’t know until we thaw them,” she replies. “They could be.”
“Following that last procedure,” Angela asks, “when was the last time you saw Zoe?”
“She came to the clinic asking to use the embryos. I explained that, according to our policy, we could not release the embryos to her without her ex-husband’s signed consent.”
“Thank you, nothing further,” Angela says.
Wade Preston taps his finger on the plaintiff’s table, considering the doctor before he goes in for the kill. “Dr. Fourchette,” he says, “you say the embryos that aren’t ‘good’ are discarded. Incinerated?”
“That’s correct.”
“Incinerated means ‘burned,’ does it not?”
“Yes.”
“Which is in fact,” he says, standing, “what we sometimes do with people who die. Cremate them. Right?”
“True, but these embryos are not people.”
“And yet they’re treated in the same manner as a deceased person. You don’t flush them down the toilet—you reduce them to ash.”
“It’s important to note that sixty-five percent of embryos actually are abnormal and die on their own,” the doctor says. “And that both parties in this lawsuit actually signed a contract with the clinic agreeing to the incineration of embryos that were not appropriate to be transferred or frozen, among other things.”
At the word
contract,
Wade Preston turns. Angela, in front of me, snaps erect. And Judge O’Neill leans toward Dr. Fourchette. “Excuse me? There’s a
contract?”
He asks to see it, and Dr. Fourchette hands over the document. The judge scans it for a few moments in silence. “According to this contract, in the event of divorce of these parties, any embryos that remain shall be destroyed by the clinic. Dr. Fourchette, why was this contract not carried out?”
“The clinic was unaware of the Baxters’ divorce,” the doctor says. “By the time we learned of it, it was clear that a lawsuit was about to be filed.”