Handle With Care

  When I came downstairs, I heard music in the kitchen. Emma had left for the bus stop before I'd even gotten into the shower, and Rob - well, Rob had been at work by seven thirty every morning for the past three weeks. It was less of a burgeoning work ethic, I believed, than a burning desire to be out of the house by the time I awakened, just in case we'd have to have a civil conversation without Emma there to serve as a buffer.

  'It's about time,' Rob said as I walked into the kitchen. He reached over to the radio and turned down the volume, then pointed to a plate on the table that was piled high with bagels. 'The store only had one pumpernickel,' he said. 'But there's also jalapeno-cheddar, and cinnamon-raisin--'

  'But I heard you leave,' I said.

  Rob nodded. 'And I came back. Veggie cream cheese, or regular?'

  I didn't answer, just stood very still, watching him.

  'I don't know if I ever got around to telling you,' Rob said, 'but the kitchen? It's so much brighter, now that you painted it. You'd be a hell of an interior designer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think you're better suited to be an obstetrician, but still . . .'

  My head was starting to pound. 'Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but what are you doing here?'

  'Toasting a bagel?'

  'You know what I mean.'

  The toaster popped, Rob ignored it. 'There's a reason we have to say "for better or for worse." I've been a total asshole, Piper. I'm sorry.' He looked down at the space between us. 'You didn't ask for this lawsuit; it was lobbed at you. I have to admit, it made me think about things I thought I'd never have to think about again. But regardless of all that, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't provide any less than the standard of care for Charlotte and Sean. If anything, you went above and beyond.'

  I felt a sob rise in my throat. 'Your brother,' I managed.

  'I don't know how different my life would have been if he'd never been born,' Rob said quietly. 'But I do know this: I loved him, while he was here.' He glanced up at me. 'I can't take back what I said to you, and I can't erase my behavior these past few months. But I was hoping, all the same, that you might not mind me coming to court.'

  I didn't know how he'd cleared his schedule, or for how long. But I looked up at Rob and saw behind him the new cabinets I'd installed, the track of blue lighting, the warm copper paint on the walls, and for the first time I did not see a room that needed perfecting; I saw a home. 'On one condition,' I hedged.

  Rob nodded. 'Fair enough.'

  'I get the pumpernickel bagel,' I said, and I walked right into his open arms.

  Marin

  A

  n hour before the trial was supposed to start, I really didn't know whether or not my client was planning to show up. I'd tried to call her all weekend, and had not been able to reach her landline or her cell. When I reached the courthouse and saw the news crews lining the steps, I tried to phone her again.

  You've reached the O'Keefes, the message machine sang.

  That wasn't exactly true, if Sean was proceeding with a divorce. But then, if I had learned anything about Charlotte, it was that the sound bite offered to the public might not be what was true behind the scenes, and to be honest, I didn't particularly care, as long as she didn't confuse her rhetoric when I had her on the witness stand.

  I knew when she arrived. The roar on the steps was audible, and when she finally breached the door of the courthouse, the press poured in after her. I immediately hooked my arm through hers, muttering 'No comment' as I dragged Charlotte down a hallway and into a private room, locking the door behind me.

  'My God,' she said, still stunned. 'There are so many of them.'

  'Slow news day in New Hampshire,' I reasoned. 'I would have been happy to wait for you out in the parking lot and take you through the back way, but that would actually have meant you'd returned my seven thousand messages this weekend, so that we could arrange a time to meet.'

  Charlotte stared blankly out the window at the white vans and their satellite dishes. 'I didn't know you called. I wasn't home. Willow broke her femur. We spent the weekend at the hospital, having a rod surgically implanted.'

  I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Charlotte hadn't been ignoring my calls; she'd been putting out a fire. 'Is she all right?'

  'She broke it running away from us. Sean told her about the divorce.'

  'I don't think any kid wants to hear something like that.' I hesitated. 'I know you've got a lot on your mind, but I wanted to have a few minutes to talk to you about what's going to happen today--'

  'Marin,' Charlotte said. 'I can't do this.'

  'Come again?'

  'I can't do this.' She looked up at me. 'I really don't think I can go through with it.'

  'If this is about the media--'

  'It's about my daughter. It's about my husband. I don't care how the rest of the world sees me, Marin. But I do care what they think.'

  I considered the countless hours I'd spent preparing for this trial, all the expert witnesses I'd interviewed and all the motions I'd filed. Somehow, in my mind, it was tangled up with the fruitless search for my mother, who had finally responded to Maisie the court clerk's phone call, asking her to send along my letter. 'Now's a little late to break this news to me, don't you think?'

  Charlotte faced me. 'My daughter thinks I don't want her, because she's broken.'

  'Well, what did you think she'd believe?'

  'Me,' Charlotte said softly. 'I thought she'd believe me.'

  'Then make her. Get up on that witness stand and say that you love her.'

  'That's sort of at odds with saying I'd have terminated the pregnancy, isn't it?'

  'I don't think they're mutually exclusive,' I said. 'You don't want to lie on the stand. I don't want you to lie on the stand. But I certainly don't want you judging yourself before a jury does.'

  'How can't they? You even did it, Marin. You as much as admitted that, if your mother had been like me, you wouldn't be here today.'

  'My mother was like you,' I confessed. 'She didn't have a choice.' I sat down on a desk across from Charlotte. 'Just a few weeks after she gave birth to me, abortion became legal. I don't know if she would have made the same decision if I'd been conceived nine months later. I don't know if her life would have been any better. But I do know it would have been different.'

  'Different,' Charlotte repeated.

  'You told me a year and a half ago that you wanted Willow to have opportunities to do things she might not otherwise be able to do,' I said. 'Didn't you deserve the same?'

  I held my breath until Charlotte lifted her face to mine. 'How long before we start?' she asked.

  The jury, which had looked so disparate on Friday, seemed to be a unified body already first thing Monday morning. Judge Gellar had dyed his hair over the weekend, a deep black Grecian Formula that drew my eyes like a magnet and made him look like an Elvis impersonator - never a good image to associate with a judge you are desperate to impress. When he instructed the four cameras that had been allowed in to report on the trial, I almost expected him to break out in a resounding chorus of 'Burning Love.'

  The courtroom was full - of media, of disability-rights advocates, of people who just liked to see a good show. Charlotte was trembling beside me, staring down at her lap. 'Ms. Gates,' Judge Gellar said. 'Whenever you're ready.'

  I squeezed Charlotte's hand, then stood up to face the jury. 'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,' I said. 'I'd like to tell you about a little girl named Willow O'Keefe.'

  I walked toward them. 'Willow's six and a half years old,' I said, 'and she's broken sixty-eight bones in her lifetime. The most recent one was Friday night, when her mom got home from jury selection. Willow was running and slipped. She broke her femur and had to have surgery to put a rod inside it. But Willow's also broken bones when she's sneezed. When she's bumped into a table. When she's rolled over in her sleep. That's because Willow has osteogenesis imperfecta, an illness you might know as brittle bone syndrome. It means sh
e has been and always will be susceptible to broken bones.'

  I held up my right hand. 'I broke my arm once in second grade. A girl named Lulu, who was the class bully, thought it would be funny to push me off the jungle gym to see if I could fly. I don't remember much about that break, except that it hurt like crazy. Every time Willow breaks a bone, it hurts just as much as it would if you or I broke a bone. The difference is that hers break more rapidly, and more easily. Because of this, from her birth, osteogenesis imperfecta has meant a lifetime of setbacks, rehabilitation, therapy, and surgeries for Willow, a lifetime of pain. And what osteogenesis imperfecta has meant for her mother, Charlotte, is a life interrupted.'

  I walked back toward our table. 'Charlotte O'Keefe was a successful pastry chef whose strength was an asset. She was used to hauling around fifty-pound bags of flour and punching dough - and now every movement of hers is done with finesse, since even lifting her daughter the wrong way can cause a break. If you ask Charlotte, she'll tell you how much she loves Willow. She'll tell you her daughter never lets her down. But she can't say the same about her obstetrician, Piper Reece - her friend, ladies and gentlemen - who knew that there was a problem with the fetus and failed to disclose it to Charlotte so that she could make decisions every prospective mother has the right to make.'

  Facing the jury again, I spread my palms wide. 'Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, this case is not about feelings. It's not about whether Charlotte O'Keefe adores her daughter. That's a given. This case is about facts - facts that Piper Reece knew and dismissed. Facts that weren't given to a patient by a physician she trusted. No one is blaming Dr Reece for Willow's condition; no one is saying she caused the illness. However, Dr Reece is to blame for not giving the O'Keefes all the information she had. You see, at Charlotte's eighteen-week ultrasound, there were already signs that the fetus suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta - signs that Dr Reece ignored,' I said.

  'Imagine if you, the jury, came into this courtroom expecting me to give you details about this case, and I did - but I held back one critical piece of information. Now imagine that, weeks after you'd rendered your verdict, you learned about this information. How would that make you feel? Angry? Troubled? Cheated? Maybe you'd even find yourself losing sleep at night, wondering if this information, presented earlier, might have changed your vote,' I said. 'If I withheld information during a trial, that would be grounds for appeal. But when a physician withholds information from a patient, that's malpractice.'

  I surveyed the jury. 'Now imagine that the information I withheld might affect not just the outcome of the jury trial you sat on . . . but your whole future.' I walked back to my seat. 'That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what brings Charlotte O'Keefe here today.'

  Charlotte

  I

  could feel Piper staring.

  As soon as Marin stood and started talking, she had a direct view of me from across the room, where she sat at a table with her attorney. Her gaze was blazing a hole in my skin; I had to turn away to stop it from burning.

  Somewhere behind her was Rob. His eyes were on me, too, like pinpricks, like lasers. I was the vertex, and they were the rays of the angle. Acute, somewhat less than the whole.

  Piper didn't look like Piper anymore. She was thinner, older. She was wearing something we would have made fun of while we were shopping, an outfit we would have consigned to the Skating Moms crowd.

  I wonder if I looked different, too - or if that was even possible, given that, the very moment I'd sued her, I'd become someone she never thought I could be.

  Marin slipped into her seat beside me with a sigh. 'Off and running,' she whispered as Guy Booker rose and buttoned his suit jacket.

  'I wouldn't doubt that Willow O'Keefe's had - what was it Ms. Gates said? - sixty-eight broken bones. But Willow also had a mad scientist birthday party in February. She's got a poster of Hannah Montana hanging over her bed, and she got the highest grade on a districtwide reading test last year. She hates the color orange and the smell of cooked cabbage and asked Santa for a monkey last Christmas. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, in many ways Willow O'Keefe is no different from any other six-and-a-half-year-old girl.'

  He walked toward the jury box. 'Yes, she is disabled. And yes, she has special needs. But does that mean she doesn't have a right to be alive? That her birth was a wrongful one? Because that's what this case is really about. The tort is called wrongful birth for a reason, and believe me, it's a tough one to wrap your heads around. But yes indeed, this mother, Charlotte O'Keefe, is saying that she wishes her own child had never been born.'

  I felt a shock go through me, as sure as lightning.

  'You're going to hear from Willow's mother about how much her daughter suffers. But you'll also hear from her father about how much Willow loves life. And you'll hear him say how much joy that child's brought into his life, and just what he thinks about this so-called wrongful birth. That's right. You're not misunderstanding me. Charlotte O'Keefe's own husband disagreed with the lawsuit his wife started and refused to be part of a scheme to milk the deep pockets of a medical insurance company.'

  Guy Booker walked toward Piper. 'When a couple first find out that they're pregnant, they immediately hope the child will be healthy. No one wants a child to be born less than perfect. But the truth is, there are no guarantees. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that Charlotte O'Keefe is in this for two reasons, and two reasons only: to get some money, and to point the finger at someone other than herself.'

  There were times when I was baking that I opened the oven at eye level and was hit by a wave of heat so strong and severe that it temporarily blinded me. Guy Booker's words had the same effect at that moment. I realized that Marin was right. I could say that I loved you and that I wanted to sue for wrongful birth and not contradict myself. It was a little like telling someone, after she'd seen the color green, to completely forget its existence. I could never erase the mark of your hand holding mine, or your voice in my ear. I couldn't imagine life without you. If I'd never known you, the tale would be different; it would not be the story of you and me.

  I had never allowed myself to think that someone might have been responsible for your illness. We had been told that your disease was a spontaneous mutation, that Sean and I weren't carriers. We had been told that nothing I might have done differently during my pregnancy would have saved you from breaking in utero. But I was your mother, and I had carried you under the umbrella of my heart. I was the one who had summoned your soul to this world; I was the reason you'd wound up in this broken body. If I hadn't worked so hard to have a baby, you wouldn't have been born. There were countless reasons, as far as I could see, that I was to blame.

  Unless it was Piper's fault. If that was the case, then I was off the hook.

  Which meant that Guy Booker was also right.

  This lawsuit, which I'd filed because of you, which I'd sworn was all about you, was actually all about me.

  IV

  Do you remember still the falling stars

  that like swift horses through the heavens raced

  and suddenly leaped across the hurdles

  of our wishes - do you recall? And we

  did make so many! For there were countless numbers

  of stars: each time we looked above we were

  astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,

  while in our hearts we felt safe and secure

  watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,

  knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

  - Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Falling Stars'

  Proof: the part of a recipe where dough is allowed to rise.

  Twice, during the baking of bread, proof is required. Yeast is proofed in water and a small bit of sugar to make sure it's still active before going any further in the recipe. But proofing also describes a step where the dough doubles in size, the moment when it suddenly grows in dynamic proportion to what you started out with.

  What makes th
e dough rise? The yeast, which converts glucose and other carbohydrates into carbon dioxide gas. Different breads proof differently. Some require only a single proofing; others need many. Between these stages, the baker is told to punch down the dough.

  It's no surprise to me that - in baking, and in life - the cost of growth is always a small act of violence.

  * * *

  SUNDAY MORNING STICKY ROLLS

  DOUGH

  33/4 cups flour 1/3 cup sugar

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 packages active dry yeast

  1 cup heated milk

  1 egg

  1/3 cup butter, softened

  CARAMEL

  3/4 cup dark brown sugar

  1/2 cup unsalted butter

  1/4 cup light corn syrup

  3/4 cup pecan halves

  2 tablespoons butter, softened

  FILLING

  1/2 cup pecans, chopped

  2 tablespoons sugar

  2 tablespoons brown sugar

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  You once told me that the best part of a lazy Sunday is to wake up and smell something so delicious you follow your nose downstairs. This is one of those recipes that, like most breads, requires you to be thinking ahead - but then again, when wasn't I thinking ahead for you?

  To make the dough, mix together 2 cups of the flour, 1/3 cup sugar, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Add the heated milk, egg, and 1/3 cup butter, and beat at low speed for a minute. Add flour if necessary to make the dough easier to shape.

  On a lightly floured surface, knead dough for 5 minutes. This, I will add, was your favorite part - you would stand on a chair and throw your weight into it. When finished, put the dough into a greased bowl and flip it over once, so the greased side faces up. Cover and let it proof until it doubles in size, about 11/2 hours. It's ready if you poke it and the mark of your finger is left behind.

  Caramel comes next: Stirring constantly, heat 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup butter to boiling. Remove from the heat and add the corn syrup. Pour the mixture into a 13 by 9 by 2-inch ungreased pan. Sprinkle pecan halves over the mixture.