My Sister's Keeper (26 page)

Outside, Anna picks up a hockey stick and starts to shoot against the wall
of the garage. She keeps this up for nearly an hour, a rhythmic beat, until I
forget she is out there and begin to think a home might have its own pulse.

Seventeen days after Kate is admitted to the hospital, she develops an infection.
Her body spikes a fever. She is pancultured—blood, urine, stool, and sputum
sent out to isolate the organism—but is put on a broad-spectrum antibiotic
right away in the hopes that whatever is making her sick might respond.

Steph, our favorite nurse, stays late some nights just so that I don't have
to face this by myself. She brings me People magazines filched from
the day surgery waiting rooms, and holds sunny onesided conversations with my
unconscious daughter. She is a model of resolve and optimism on the surface,
but I have seen her eyes cloud with tears as she is sponge-bathing Kate, in the
moments when she doesn't think I can see her.

One morning, Dr. Chance comes in to check on Kate. He wraps his stethoscope
around his neck and sits down in a chair across from me. “I
wanted to be invited to her wedding.”

“You will,” I insist, but he shakes his head.

My heart beats a little faster. “A punch bowl, that's what you can buy.
A picture frame. You can make a toast.”

“Sara,” Dr. Chance says, “you need to say
good-bye.”

Jesse spends fifteen minutes in Kate's closed room, and comes out looking
for all the world like a bomb about to explode. He runs through the halls of
the pediatric ICU ward. “I'll go,” Brian says. He heads down the
corridor in Jesse's direction.

Anna sits with her back to the wall. She is angry, too. “I'm not doing
this.”

I crouch down next to her. “There is nothing, believe me, I'd rather
make you do less. But if you don't, Anna, then one day, you're going to wish
you had.”

Belligerent, Anna walks into Kate's room, climbs onto a chair. Kate's chest
rises and falls, the work of the respirator. All the fight goes out of Anna as
she reaches out to touch her sister's cheek. “Can she hear me?”

“Absolutely,” I answer, more for myself than for her.

“I won't go to Minnesota,” Anna whispers. “I won't ever go
anywhere.” She leans close. “Wake up, Kate.”

We both hold our breath, but nothing happens.

I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that
careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't
necessarily want them to be there.

Brian and Kate and I are a circuit. We sit on each side of the bed and hold
each other's hands, and one of hers. “You were right,” I tell him.
“We should have taken her home.”

Brian shakes his head. “If we hadn't tried the arsenic, we'd spend the
rest of our lives asking why not.” He brushes back the pale hair that
surrounds Kate's face. “She's such a good girl. She's always done what you
ask her to do.” I nod, unable to speak. “That's why she's hanging on,
you know. She wants your permission to leave.”

He bends down to Kate, crying so hard he cannot catch his breath. I put my
hand on his head. We are not the first parents to lose a child. But we are the
first parents to lose our child. And that makes all the difference.

When Brian falls asleep, draped over the foot of the bed, I take Kate's
scarred hand between both of mine. I trace the ovals of her nails and remember
the first time I painted them, when Brian couldn't believe I'd do that to a
one-year-old. Now, twelve years later, I turn over her palm and wish I knew how
to read it, or better yet, how to edit that lifeline.

I pull my chair closer to the hospital bed. “Do you remember the summer
we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you'd
changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to get a seat on the left
side of the bus, so that when it pulled away, you'd be able to look back and
see me there, waiting for you.” I press her hand against my cheek, hard
enough to leave a mark. “You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you
can watch me, watching you.”

I bury my face in the blankets and tell this daughter of mine how much I
love her. I squeeze her hand one last time.

Only to feel the slightest pulse, the tiniest grasp, the smallest clutch of
Kate's fingers, as she claws her way back to this world.

ANNA

HERE”S MY QUESTION: What age are you when you're in Heaven? I mean, if it's
Heaven, you should be at your beauty-queen best, and I doubt that all the
people who die of old age are wandering around toothless and bald. It opens up
a whole additional realm of questions, too. If you hang yourself, do you walk
around all gross and blue, with your tongue spitting out of your mouth? If you
are killed in a war, do you spend eternity minus the leg that got blown up by a
mine?

I figure that maybe you get a choice. You fill out the application form that
asks you if you want a star view or a cloud view, if you like chicken or fish
or manna for dinner, what age you'd like to be seen as by everyone else. Like
me, for example, I might pick seventeen, in the hopes I grow boobs by then, and
even if I'm a pruny centegenarian by the time I die, in Heaven I'd be young and
pretty.

Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old
old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you
wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no
matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.

The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven
when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent
apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died
five years ago. What if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove
at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?

Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to
look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone
ever be able to find you?

Campbell calls my father at the station when we're having lunch, and says
that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid
way to put it, since we all know he's talking about my mother. He says we have
to meet at three o'clock in his office, no matter that it's Sunday.

I sit on the floor with Judge's head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he
doesn't even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and
(since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a
special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She's put on some makeup.
But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and
off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe
that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone
else, once. I suppose we all were. “Hello,” she says quietly.
“Ms. Fitzgerald,” Campbell replies. Ice.

My mother's eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the
floor. “Hi,” she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to
hug me, but she stops.

“You called this meeting, Counselor,” Campbell prompts. My mother
sits down. “I know. I was… well, I'm hoping that we can clear this up. I
want us to make a decision, together.”

Campbell raps his fingers on the table. “Are you offering us a
deal?” He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him.
“Yes, I guess I am.” She turns her chair toward me, as if only the
two of us are in the room. “Anna, I know how much you've done for Kate. I
also know she doesn't have many chances left… but she might have this
one.”

“My client doesn't need coercing—”

“It's okay, Campbell,” I say. “Let her talk.”

“If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn't work, if
things don't wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate—well, I will never
ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last
thing?”

By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and
she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither
of us has moved.

I glance at my father, but he's gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing
everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead
of getting involved.

“Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then
she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be
necessary in the future to prolong Kate's life?” Campbell clarifies. My
mother takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

“We need, of course, to discuss it.”

When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn't stupid
enough to believe in Santa. It's Mom and Dad, he explained, and I
fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas
I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the
world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary's mailbox. And I
steadfastly did not tell my parents, although I dropped other hints about toys
I hoped for that year.

On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed
comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because
she didn't know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa,
nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be. Maybe Campbell thinks this is
about the law, but really, it's about my mother. I get up from the floor and
fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking
about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit.
It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I've been saving come out of their
hiding place. “Oh, Anna,” she cries into my hair. “Thank God.
Thank God.”

I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment
the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my
brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her
ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn't. “I can't.”

My mother's body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then
she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches
the crown of my head. That's it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and
walks out of the office.

Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the
place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever
seen him look. “Anna,” he says. “Is this really what you
want?”

I open my mouth. And find an answer.

JULIA

“DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he's an asshole,” I
ask my sister, “or in spite of it?”

Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a
movie she's seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot
Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty
Dancing. “If you make me miss the end, Julia, I'll kill you.”

“'See ya, Katie/ ” I quote for her. “ 'See ya,
Hubbell.'”

She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music
swells. “Barbra Streisand,” Izzy says, “is the bomb.”

“I thought that was a gay men's stereotype.” I look up
over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow's
hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in
Anna Fitzgerald's best interests. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether I
side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.

“I thought we were talking about Campbell,” Izzy says.

“No, / was talking about Campbell. You were swooning.” I
rub my temples. “I thought you might be sympathetic.”

“About Campbell Alexander? I'm not sympathetic. I'm apathetic.”

“You're right. That is what kind of pathetic you are.”

“Look, Julia. Maybe it's hereditary,” Izzy says. She gets up ands
tarts rubbing the muscles of my neck. “Maybe you have a gene that attracts
you to absolute jerks.”

"Then you have it, too.”

“Well.“ She laughs. ”Case in point."

“I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record.”
Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I'm drinking and finishes it
off. “What happened to this being strictly professional?”

“It is. There's just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind
wishing otherwise.”

Izzy sits back down on the couch. “The problem, you know, is that you
never forget your first one. And even if your brain's smart about it, your
body's got the IQ of a fruit fly.”

“It's just so easy with him, Iz. It's like we're picking up where we
left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows
everything he needs to about me.” I look at her. “Can you fall for
someone because you're lazy?”

"Why don't you just screw him and get it out of your system?”

“Because,“ I say, ”as soon as it's over, that's one more piece of
the past I won't be able to get rid of."

“I can fix you up with one of my friends,” Izzy suggests.
“They all have vaginas.”

“See, you're looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be
attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's
presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he's like marzipan frosting
on a sardine.”

“You think he's gorgeous?”

Izzy rolls her eyes. “You,” she says, “are doomed.” When
the doorbell rings, Izzy goes to look through the peephole. “Speak of the
devil.”

“It's Campbell?” I whisper. “Tell him I'm not here.”

Izzy opens the door just a few inches. “Julia says she's not
here.”

“I'm going to kill you,” I mutter, and walk up behind her.

Pushing her out of the way, I undo the chain and let Campbell and his dog
inside.

“The reception here just keeps getting warmer and fuzzier,” he
says.