Mercy (13 page)

"We now believe that people don't get sent to hell," she said, stopping to t ake a sip of water from a tumbler. "That would make God into a horrible sort of magistrate. Instead, we see hell as a choice people make for the afterli fe. People who decide during the time they're alive that they don't need God will have to spend eternity without Him too."

Jamie, who hadn't wanted to hear Verona MacBean, hadn't even wanted to lea ve the safe haven of Angus MacDonald's home, found himself wholly entrance d with her words. And as she began to speak of the popular image of hell, with its rings of Dantesque fire and burning walls, he had a sudden image of Maggie. She was getting into bed in the middle of the night, like she a lways did. She awakened at least once or twice to pee; she used to say she had a bladder like a thimble. By the time she came back to the bed-87

room, she'd be freezing. She'd slide under the covers and put her icy feet on Jamie's calves, and he'd pull her close, her back to his front. "You're burn ing," she would whisper. "You're on fire." He'd concentrate on the soft curve of her bottom, pressed to his groin, and he'd selflessly give her all his he at until he fell asleep, now clutching at Maggie for warmth. He did not necessarily agree with Verona MacBean's vision of hell. It could be much simpler than the theologians seemed to believe. You knew you were damned when you woke up in the morning and realized, with a jolt, that you were still alive. You knew you were damned when you went to sleep at night, and you kept seeing the love of your life just at the reach of an arm's le ngth, but every time you went to touch her face she vanished like a reflect ion in a pond.

He turned to watch Allie, still and intent on the lecture. She had come to the courthouse yesterday for his moral support; he knew this just as surely as he knew that she had not told Cam that was her reason for going. Jamie would have bet her husband didn't know he was with her now. Not that Jamie blamed her--he understood that sort of relationship, perhaps better than an yone. A lie of omission was much simpler than admitting to yourself you wer e going against the wishes of the person you idolized.

And suddenly, in the middle of the Wheelock Public Library, the pieces fell into place. Jamie understood why he had been able to kill Maggie. He had b een telling himself over and over during sleepless nights that he would hav e done anything Maggie had asked of him; that was the nature of love. But h e was starting to see that he had wanted to do it, and for a purely selfish reason: he did not wish to see her sick and pained and beaten, because tha t wasn't the way he wanted to remember her. He had held her head when she v omited after chemotherapy; he'd kissed the scar where her breast had been; he'd been a paragon instead of a husband. But when he first woke up in the morning and turned to see her sleeping--bones taut under stretched skin, ho llow asymmetry of her chest rising and falling with battered breaths--he ha d always shuddered. Slight, small tremors; they were easy enough to suppres s before he put his arms around Maggie and woke her up with a genuine smile

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: Jodi Picoult

He had wanted back the old Maggie. The woman he had fallen in love with. He hated himself for this.

But it had been a strong current in him, strong enough to make him take he r life when she asked, although he had to have known she was not--could no t have been--thinking clearly.

It disgusted Jamie that the last six months he spent with Maggie had been a well-constructed lie. It infuriated him that he had not been brave enough to see past what the cancer had taken away and to find instead the wonderful, indefatigable qualities that remained.

And it was agonizing to know that in spite of what he had done, it had all been for nothing. Killing Maggie had not brought her back whole and shining as she used to be. Jamie looked at Verona MacBean, black-clad and confiden t and artsy, and knew that she didn't really understand hell at all. Graham MacPhee was sitting in his office with a bottle of Rolling Rock--it being far after hours--and scribbling down defense possibilities on the bac k of a take-out Chinese menu.

Absence of Malice. Murder One was defined as having malice aforethought. Th is defense was the most likely possibility, and yet the one no one could re ally prove. Who knew what went on behind locked doors? Who said that an int entional killing motivated by grief or love even fit into the same category as an accidental killing? He considered Jamie's confession, which stated t hat Maggie had asked to be killed. If a victim consented to her own death, was the killing still a criminal action?

He knocked his head against the edge of his desk. There were big enough ho les in that argument to drive a herd of elephants through. The prosecution would laugh him out of the courtroom.

Graham twirled his pencil around his fingers like a miniature baton. Suicid e, he wrote, Accomplice to the Act. He was reaching a little, since Maggie MacDonald had certainly been capable of slitting her own wrists or swallowi ng a bucket of pills. What would she need Jamie for?

In some states, a botched suicide attempt was considered a crime. This wasn'

t the case in Massachusetts, thanks to generations

of Democrats. If committing suicide wasn't a criminal act, aiding a suicide s hould not be one either.

"Sure," he said aloud. "Tell that to Jack Kevorkian." Temporary Insanity. This was what Graham had suggested to Jamie at their fi rst meeting; the catchall for defense strategies when there were extenuatin g circumstances. It meant that Jamie was not in control of his faculties at the moment he had killed his wife. He would not have been able to understa nd the nature and the quality of the act he was committing. Which basically said that when he picked up a pillow, Jamie didn't really know it could be used to smother; when he held it to his wife's face, he didn't know it cou ld be fatal. Temporary insanity meant that Jamie did not know at the time t hat what he was doing was wrong.

Graham snorted. Jamie had known damn well what he was doing; he simply t hought it was right.

In other cases, where killing had been a means of mercy and the defense had been psychiatric, the record of acquittals seemed to follow a pattern. The m ore violent the method of killing--bullets, knives--the more likely the defe ndant was to go to jail. The more incapacitated the victim had been at the t ime of the killing, the more likely the defendant was to go free. Jamie had used a pillow; you couldn't get gentler than that. But Maggie had been walki ng, talking, laughing, in the minutes before.

Graham swallowed the last of his beer and set the bottle upside down on the polished surface of his desk. He was pussyfooting around the truth, which suddenly seemed to have a startling presence, as if it had taken the form o f a carrion bird that was perched on the edge of his windowsill. The reason Jamie MacDonald had killed his wife was because she was going to die, she was in pain, and she simply didn't want to suffer anymore. Mercy killing was too gray an area to be a suitable defense. Jurors weren't r eliable enough to guarantee acquittal. Prosecutors talked out of both sides o f their mouths, saying euthanasia was merciful, of course, but that didn't ju stify breaking the law.

Graham had known when he got into trial law that his business was not judg ing morality but securing acquittals. His father had defended clients who were as seedy as the bottom of a sewer, and had won his cases anyway, beca use it was what he was paid to

I Jodi Picoult

do. But to defend Jamie on the basis of the truth?--well, that meant challen ging the way the laws had been written.

Graham didn't know how he felt about euthanasia. He had never loved a woma n enough to even contemplate what kind of thoughts had run through Jamie's mind leading up to the killing. He tried to see it from Maggie's point of view--if he was going to be sentenced to such a life, would he want someo ne to help him out of it? Was it the same as wanting someone to pull the p lug if you ever became a vegetable?

It was easy to mull over after three Rolling Rocks, when he was in full cont rol of his faculties and every cell in his body was screaming with health. H

e was too young to make that kind of choice.

Maggie hadn't been all that old either.

Taking a deep breath, Graham began to draw circles around the words he'd a lready written on the menu. Were there certain variables, certain instance s where the law should not have control over death? What kind of law could you possibly put on the books, when there were so many different issues t o consider? To Graham, defining mercy killing would be like peeling an oni on. Every case involved another layer, and another, and you'd keep strippi ng these and making exceptions and before you knew it there'd be nothing l eft at all.

He tossed the empty bottle into the trash can and shut off the banker's lamp on his desk. Don't sweat it, he told himself. You've got time. But as he was locking the office door behind him, a thought tugged at his min d. You've got time, it said. Jamie doesn't.

Cam thought of the total-immersion technique in which people learned langu ages by speaking them exclusively, living in the origin country, sleeping with Berlitz tapes murmuring beside their heads. He knew of people who had done this successfully and had come to love the language. And with this i n mind, he took the next day off from work and asked his wife to go fishing. He hadn't asked her in three years, but he thought that if he spent every w aking minute of the day with Allie, listening to her and watching her and o nly her, he could surely drive Mia Townsend from his mind. 91

Cam was just propping up against the banister the bamboo fly rod that had be en his grandfather's, when Allie appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a faded denim shirt and a baggy pair of khaki pants rolled up to the knees. She sat down on the top step and slipped on a pair of Tretorns riddl ed with holes. "We're going to be getting wet, right?' she said, knotting th e laces. "I figured after what Arbuth did to these, there's very little left to damage." Arbuth was the neighbor's mastiff. Cam smiled, remembering how Allie had chased him with a Wiffle bat when she found the dog chewing on her new sneakers.

Cam tucked a short-handled net into his belt and jammed a red felt hat on hi s head. It was dotted with bucktail streamers and woolly boogers and nymphs, several dry flies as well. He held his arms out to the sides and pirouetted slowly. Allie whistled. "You're a vision."

She scrambled down the stairs and wrapped her arms around Cam's waist. "You see how lucky we are that Mia came to town?" she said, and Cam stiffened i n her embrace. "If it wasn't for her, I couldn't just take a whole day off.

"

"Lucky," Cam repeated, pulling away. He reached for the fishing rod. He di d not want to look at Allie. Having heard Mia's name again, he knew what w ould happen--he'd turn to his wife and he'd start comparing her flushed ch eeks and pointed chin to Mia's smooth brow and tumbling curls. "Let's go," he said curtly, and moved toward the door. He left Allie standing alone, rubbing her upper arms and wondering what she'd already done wrong. Recovering, Allie followed Cam out the front door and, to her surprise, wa tched him walk toward the backyard gate. "Come on," he said, waving her cl oser. "We don't have all day."

"I thought we did," Allie murmured. "I thought that was the point." She wat ched Cam move to the center of the slightly sloping lawn, holding the fishi ng pole in front of him. He pulled free some of the bright yellow line, and then with his left hand, he began to swing the rod back and forth, back an d forth, like a human metronome, until the line had whizzed through the gui des and was arcing over him like a monochromatic rainbow.

"You know, I may be a novice, but wouldn't we have a better chance of catch ing fish if we did this near water?"

Jodi Picoult

Cam smirked at her. "You think I'm going to let you hold my grandfather's fly rod without practicing on dry ground?" He let the leader rest on the crabgra ss and looked at Allie. Her hands were on her hips, her ponytail was curling over her shoulder; her feet pointed out to the sides, as if she was getting r eady to do a plie.

The last time he'd taken Allie fishing, it had been deep-water. Not his favor ite kind, but he hadn't the time or the inclination then to teach Allie how t o fly-fish, which in his opinion was more of an art than a sport. They had go ne out for blues, and Allie--who'd had to be shown how to work the reel--had caught the biggest fish. He could remember her dancing in little circles in h er borrowed slicker when the captain presented her with a free day's pass to return, a prize for the catch of the day.

Pulling his thoughts back, he tugged at the line. The leader had snagged on a piece of grass. "Shows you what you know." He grinned. "I have a bite." He t ugged gently, until the neon-bright line snapped into the air. "Now," he said

, closing his mind to anything but the beauty of what he was about to do, "it

's all in the presentation." He started swinging the line in rhythm again as he backcast and false-cast, over and over. "You've got no weight on the end o f your line. You're using the weight of the line itself to cast. Well, hell, you're not even really casting. You're just kind of suspending your line abov e the water."

"Grass," Allie murmured.

"Whatever." He closed his eyes, letting the sway and the motion lead him. "You w ant to roll the line out in front of the fish, like a red carpet . . . rolling .

. . rolling . . . until finally the fly just drops"--here he made a light poppi ng noise--"into the water."

Then he stopped speaking. He let his arm sway from front to back, occasional ly pulling out more line and feeding with his casts until the leader reached even farther. He felt the sun on the back of his neck and watched the j unc os fly toward the narrow purple pass in the mountains several miles away. He breathed in with each backcast, out with each false cast, and lost himself. He was in New Zealand, fishing for giant rainbow trout. In the wilds of Alas ka, tall grass burning his legs while he cast for salmon. With a deep breath

, he pictured himself in Montana, tying two leaders in a blood knot as he pr epared to fish for cutthroat. He