My Sister's Keeper

  Brian shakes his head. "I'm saying . . . I'm saying I was so sure Kate was going to die. But Sara, she didn't give up on Kate and she came back fighting." He looks over at his wife. "And now, Kate's kidneys are giving out. I don't want to see her suffering. But at the same time, I don't want to make the same mistake twice. I don't want to tell myself it's over, when it doesn't have to be."

  Brian has become an emotional avalanche, headed right for the glass house I have been meticulously crafting. I need to reel him in. "Mr. Fitzgerald, did you know your daughter was going to file a lawsuit against you and your wife?"

  "No."

  "When she did, did you speak to Anna about it?"

  "Yes."

  "Based on that conversation, Mr. Fitzgerald, what did you do?"

  "I moved out of the house with Anna."

  "Why?"

  "At the time I believed Anna had the right to think this decision out, which wasn't something she'd be able to do living in our house."

  "After having moved out with Anna, after having spoken to her at great lengths about why she's initiated this lawsuit--do you agree with your wife's request to have Anna continue to be a donor for Kate?"

  The answer we have rehearsed is no; this is the crux of my case. Brian leans forward to reply. "Yes, I do," he says.

  "Mr. Fitzgerald, in your opinion . . . " I begin, and then I realize what he's just done. "Excuse me?"

  "I still wish Anna would donate a kidney," Brian admits.

  Staring at this witness who has just completely fucked me over, I scramble for footing. If Brian won't support Anna's decision to stop being a donor, then the judge will find it far harder to rule in favor of emancipation.

  At the same time, I'm patently aware of the smallest sound that has escaped from Anna, the quiet break of soul that comes when you realize that what looked like a rainbow was actually only a trick of the light. "Mr. Fitzgerald, you're willing to have Anna undergo major surgery and the loss of an organ to benefit Kate?"

  It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces. "Can you tell me what the right answer is here?" Brian asks, his voice raw. "Because I don't know where to look for it. I know what's right. I know what's fair. But neither of those apply here. I can sit, and I can think about it, and I can tell you what should be and what ought to be. I can even tell you there's got to be a better solution. But it's been thirteen years, Mr. Alexander, and I still haven't found it."

  He slowly sinks forward, too big in that tiny space, until his forehead rests on the cool bar of wood that borders the witness stand.

  *

  Judge DeSalvo calls for a ten-minute recess before Sara Fitzgerald will begin her cross-examination, so that the witness can have a few moments to himself. Anna and I go downstairs to the vending machines, where you can spend a dollar on weak tea and weaker soup. She sits with her heels caught on the rungs of a stool, and when I hand her her cup of hot chocolate she sets it down on the table without drinking.

  "I've never seen my dad cry," she says. "My mom, she would lose it all the time over Kate. But Dad--well, if he fell apart, he made sure to do it where we weren't watching."

  "Anna--"

  "Do you think I did that to him?" she asks, turning to me. "Do you think I shouldn't have asked him to come here today?"

  "The judge would have asked him to testify even if you didn't." I shake my head. "Anna, you're going to have to do it yourself."

  She looks up at me, wary. "Do what?"

  "Testify."

  Anna blinks at me. "Are you kidding?"

  "I thought that the judge would clearly rule in your favor if he saw that your father was willing to support your choices. But unfortunately, that's not what just happened. And I have no idea what Julia's going to say--but even if she comes down on your side, Judge DeSalvo will still need to be convinced that you're mature enough to make these choices on your own, independent of your parents."

  "You mean I have to get up there? Like a witness?"

  I have always known that at some point, Anna would have to take the stand. In a case about emancipation of a minor, it stands to reason that a judge would want to hear from the minor herself. Anna might be acting skittish about testifying, but I believe that subconsciously, it's what she really wants to do. Why else go to the trouble of instigating a lawsuit, if not to make sure that you finally get to speak your mind?

  "You told me yesterday I wouldn't have to testify," Anna says, getting agitated.

  "I was wrong."

  "I hired you so that you could tell everyone what I want."

  "It doesn't work that way," I say. "You started this lawsuit. You wanted to be someone other than the person your family's made you for the past thirteen years. And that means you have to pull back the curtain and show us who she is."

  "Half the grown-ups on this planet have no idea who they are, but they get to make decisions for themselves every day," Anna argues.

  "They aren't thirteen. Listen," I say, getting to what I imagine is the crux of the matter. "I know, in the past, standing up and speaking your mind hasn't gotten you anywhere. But I promise you, this time, when you talk, everyone will listen."

  If anything, this has the reverse effect of what I've intended. Anna crosses her arms. "There is no way I'm getting up there," she says.

  "Anna, being a witness isn't really that big a deal--"

  "It is a big deal, Campbell. It's the hugest deal. And I'm not doing it."

  "If you don't testify, we lose," I explain.

  "Then find another way to win. You're the lawyer."

  I'm not going to rise to that bait. I drum my fingers on the table for patience. "Do you want to tell me why you're so dead set against this?"

  She glances up. "No."

  "No, you're not doing it? Or no, you won't tell me?"

  "There are just some things I don't like talking about." Her face hardens. "I thought you, of all people, would be able to understand that."

  She knows exactly what buttons to push. "Sleep on it," I suggest tightly.

  "I'm not going to change my mind."

  I stand up and dump my full cup of coffee into the trash. "Well then," I tell her. "Don't expect me to be able to change your life."

  SARA

  Present Day

  THERE IS A CURIOUS THING that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character. See, if the light hits Brian's face the right way, I can still see the pale blue hue of his eyes that has always made me think of an island ocean I had yet to swim in. Beneath the fine lines of his smile, there is the cleft of his chin--the first feature I looked for in the faces of my newborn children. There is his resolve, his quiet will, and a steady peace with himself that I have always wished would rub off on me. These are the base elements that made me fall in love with my husband; if there are times I do not recognize him now, maybe this isn't a drawback. Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.

  Brian's eyes dart from Anna, who is picking at a scab on her thumb, to me. He watches me like a mouse watches a hawk. There is something about this that makes me ache; is this really what he thinks of me?

  Does everyone?

  I wish there was not a courtroom between us. I wish I could walk up to him. Listen, I would say, this is not how I thought our lives would go; and maybe we cannot find our way out of this alley. But there is no one I'd rather be lost with.

  Listen, I'd say, maybe I was wrong.

  "Mrs. Fitzgerald," Judge DeSalvo asks, "do you have any questions for the witness?"

  It is, I realize, a good term for a spouse. What else does a husband or a wife do, but attest to each other's errors in judgment?

  I get up slowly from my seat. "Hello, Brian," I say, and my voice is not nearly as steady as I would have hoped.

  "Sara," he answers.

  Following that exchange, I have no idea what to say.

  A memory washes over me. We h
ad wanted to get away, but couldn't decide where to go. So we got into the car and drove, and every half hour we'd let one of the kids pick an exit, or tell us to turn right or left. We wound up in Seal Cove, Maine, and then stopped, because Jesse's next direction would have landed us in the Atlantic. We rented a cabin with no heat, no electricity--and our three kids afraid of the dark.

  I do not realize I have been speaking out loud until Brian answers. "I know," he says. "We put so many candles on that floor I thought for sure we'd burn the place down. It rained for five days."

  "And on the sixth day, when the weather cleared, the greenheads were so bad we couldn't even stand to be outside."

  "And then Jesse got poison ivy and his eyes swelled shut . . . "

  "Excuse me," Campbell Alexander interrupts.

  "Sustained," Judge DeSalvo says. "Where is this going, Counselor?"

  We hadn't been going anywhere, and the place we wound up was awful, and still I wouldn't have traded that week for the world. When you don't know where you're headed, you find places no one else would ever think to explore. "When Kate wasn't sick," Brian says slowly, carefully, "we've had some great times."

  "Don't you think Anna would miss those, if Kate were gone?"

  Campbell is out of his seat, just as I'd expect. "Objection!"

  The judge holds up his hand, and nods to Brian for his answer.

  "We all will," he says.

  And in that moment, the strangest thing happens. Brian and I, facing each other and poles apart, flip like magnets sometimes can; and instead of pushing each other away we suddenly seem to be on the same side. We are young and pulse-to-pulse for the first time; we are old and wondering how we have walked this enormous distance in so short a period of time. We are watching fireworks on television on a dozen New Year's Eves, three sleeping children wedged between us in our bed, pressed so tight that I can feel Brian's pride even though we two are not touching.

  Suddenly it does not matter that he has moved out with Anna, that he has questioned some of the decisions about Kate. He did what he thought was right, just the same as me, and I can't fault him for it. Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.

  If we lose Kate today, we will have had her for sixteen years, and no one can take that away. And ages from now, when it is hard to bring back the picture of her face when she laughed or the feel of her hand inside mine or the perfect pitch of her voice, I will have Brian to say, Don't you remember? It was like this.

  The judge's voice breaks into my reverie. "Mrs. Fitzgerald, are you finished?"

  There has never been a need for me to cross-examine Brian; I have always known his answers. What I've forgotten are the questions.

  "Almost." I turn to my husband. "Brian?" I ask. "When are you coming home?"

  *

  In the bowels of the court building are a sturdy row of vending machines, none of which have anything you'd want to eat. After Judge DeSalvo calls a recess, I wander down there, and stare at the Starbursts and the Pringles and the Cheetos trapped in their corkscrew cells.

  "The Oreos are your best shot," Brian says from behind me. I turn around in time to see him feed the machine seventy-five cents. "Simple. Classic." He pushes two buttons and the cookies begin their suicide plunge to the bottom of the machine.

  He leads me to the table, scarred and stained by people who have carved their eternal initials and graffitied their inner thoughts across the top. "I didn't know what to say to you on the stand," I admit, and then hesitate. "Brian? Do you think we've been good parents?" I am thinking of Jesse, who I gave up on so long ago. Of Kate, who I could not fix. Of Anna.

  "I don't know," Brian says. "Does anyone?"

  He hands me the package of Oreos. When I open my mouth to tell him I'm not hungry, Brian pushes a cookie inside. It is rich and rough against my tongue; suddenly I am famished. Brian brushes the crumbs from my lips as if I am made of fine china. I let him. I think maybe I have never tasted anything this sweet.

  *

  Brian and Anna move back home that night. We both tuck her in; we both kiss her. Brian goes to take a shower. In a little while, I will go to the hospital, but right now I sit down across from Anna, on Kate's bed. "Are you going to lecture me?" she asks.

  "Not the way you think." I finger the edge of one of Kate's pillows. "You're not a bad person because you want to be yourself."

  "I never--"

  I hold up a hand. "What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead." I take a deep breath, and shake my head. "Am I making any sense?"

  "Not really."

  That makes me smile. "I guess I'm saying that you remind me of someone."

  Anna comes up on an elbow. "Who?"

  "Me," I say.

  *

  When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recognize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point that wasn't there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn't new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.

  Brian lies beside me on the bed. He doesn't say anything, just puts his hand on the valley made by the curve of my neck. Then he kisses me, long and bittersweet. This I expect, but not the next--he bites down on my lip so hard that I taste blood. "Ow," I say, trying to laugh a little, make light of this. But he doesn't laugh, or apologize. He leans forward, licks it off.

  It makes me jump inside. This is Brian, and this is not Brian, and both of these things are remarkable. I run my own tongue over the blood, copper and slick. I open like an orchid, make my body a cradle, and feel his breath travel down my throat, over my breasts. He rests his head for a moment on my belly, and just as much as that bite was unexpected, there is now a pang of the familiar--this is what he would do each night, a ritual, when I was pregnant.

  Then he moves again. He rises over me, a second sun, and fills me with light and heat. We are a study of contrasts--hard to soft, fair to dark, frantic to smooth--and yet there is something about the fit of us that makes me realize neither of us would be quite right without the other. We are a Mobius strip, two continuous bodies, an impossible tangle.

  "We're going to lose her," I whisper, and even I don't know if I'm talking about Kate or about Anna.

  Brian kisses me. "Stop," he says.

  After that we don't talk anymore. That's safest.

  WEDNESDAY

  Yet from those flames,

  No light, but rather darkness visible.

  --JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

  JULIA

  IZZY IS SITTING IN THE LIVING ROOM when I come back from my morning run. "You okay?" she asks.

  "Yeah." I unlace my sneakers, wipe the sweat off my forehead. "Why?"

  "Because normal people don't go jogging at 4:30 A.M."

  "Well, I had some energy to burn off." I go into the kitchen, but the Braun coffeemaker I've programmed to have my hazelnut ready at this very moment hasn't done its job. I check Eva's plug, and press some of her buttons, but the whole LED display is shot. "Dammit," I say, yanking the cord out of the wall. "This isn't old enough to be broken."

  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?"