RIAN

HERE IS THE RECIPE TO BLOW SOMETHING UP: a Pyrex bowl; potassium chloride—found at health food stores, as a salt substitute. A hydrometer. Bleach. Take the bleach and pour it into the Pyrex, put it onto a stove burner. Meanwhile, weigh out your potassium chloride and add to the bleach. Check it with the hydrometer and boil until you get a reading of 1.3. Cool to room temperature, and filter out the crystals that form. This is what you will save.

It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.

I'm in what has to be the ugliest courtroom on the East Coast, sitting in chairs until it's my turn, when suddenly my beeper goes off. I look at the number, groan, and try to figure out what to do. I'm a witness later, but the department needs me right now.

It takes a few talking heads but I get permission from the judge to remove myself from the premises. I leave through the front door, and immediately I'm assailed with questions and cameras and lights. It is everything I can do not to punch these vultures, who want to rip apart the bleached bones of my family.

When I couldn't find Anna the morning of the hearing, I headed home. I looked in all her usual haunts-the kitchen, the bedroom, the hammock out back-but she wasn't there. As a last resort I climbed the garage stairs to the apartment Jesse uses.

He wasn't home either, although by now this is hardly a surprise. There was a time when Jesse disappointed me regularly; eventually, I told myself not to expect anything from him, and as a result, it has gotten easier for me to take what comes. I knocked on the door and yelled for Anna, for Jesse, but no one answered. Although there was a key to this apartment on my own set, I stopped short of letting myself inside. Turning on the stairs, I knocked over the red recycling bin I personally empty every Tuesday, since God forbid Jesse can remember to drag it out to the curb himself. A tenpin of beer bottles, lucent green, tumbled out. An empty jug of laundry detergent, an olive jar, a gallon container from orange juice.

I put everything back in, except for the orange juice container, which I've told Jesse isn't recyclable and which he puts in the bin nonetheless every damn week.

The difference between these fires and the other ones was that now the stakes have been ratcheted up a notch. Instead of an abandoned warehouse or a shack at the side of the water, it is an elementary school. This being summer, no one was on the premises when the fire was started. But there's no question in my mind it was due to unnatural causes.

When I get there, the engines are just loading up after salvage and overhaul. Paulie comes over to me right away. “How's Kate?”

“She's okay,” I tell him, and I nod toward the mess. “What'd you find?”

“He pretty much managed to gut the whole north side of the facility,” Paulie says. “You doing a walk through?”

'Yeah."

The fire began in the teacher's lounge; the char patterns point like an arrow to the origin. A collection of synthetic stuffing that hasn't burned clean through is still visible; whoever set this was smart enough to light his fire in the middle of a pile of couch cushions and stacks of paper. I can still smell the accelerant; this time it was as simple as gasoline. Bits of glass from the exploded Molotov cocktail litter the ashes.

I wander to the far side of the building, peer through a broken window. The guys must have vented the fire here. “You think we'll catch this little fuck, Cap?” asks Caesar, coming into the room. Still in his turnout gear, with a smudge across his left cheek, he looks down at the debris in the fire line. Then he bends down, and with his heavy glove, picks up a cigarette butt. “Unbelievable. The secretary's desk melted down to a puddle, but a goddamn tobacco stick survives.”

I take it out of his hands and turn it over in my palm. “That's because it wasn't here when the fire started. Someone had a nice smoke while he watched this, and then he walked away.” I tip it onto the side, to where the yellow meets the filter, and read the brand.

Paulie sticks his head in the shattered window, looking for Caesar. “We're heading back. Get on the truck.” Then he turns to me. “Hey, just so you know, we didn't break this one.”

“I wasn't gonna make you pay for it, Paulie.”

“No, I mean, we vented the roof. This was already broken when we got here.” He and Caesar leave, and a few moments later I hear the heavy drag of the engine pulling away.

It could have been a stray baseball, or a Frisbee. But even in the summertime, janitors monitor public property. A broken window is too much of a hazard to be left alone; it would have been taped up or boarded.

Unless the same guy who started the fire knew where to bring in oxygen, so that the flames would race through the wind tunnel created by that vacuum.

I look down at the cigarette in my hand, and crush it.

You need 56 grams of these reserved crystals. Mix with distilled water. Heat to a boil and cool again, saving the crystals, pure potassium chlorate. Grind these to the consistency of face powder, and heat gently to dry. Melt five parts Vaseline with five parts wax. Dissolve in gasoline and pour this liquid onto 90 parts potassium chlorate crystals in a plastic bowl. Knead. Allow the gasoline to evaporate.

Mold into a cube and dip in wax to make it waterproof. This explosive requires a blasting cap of at least a grade A3.

When Jesse opens the door to his apartment, I am waiting on the couch. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Jesse says. “Remember?”

“Do you? Or are you using this as a place to hide?”

He takes out a cigarette from a pack in his front pocket and lights up. Merits. “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Why aren't you in court?”

“How come there's muriatic acid under your sink?” I ask. “Considering that we don't have a pool?”

“Hello? Is this, like, the Inquisition?” He scowls. “I used it when I was working with those tile layers last summer; you can clean up grout with it. To tell you the truth I didn't even know I still had it.”

“Then you probably wouldn't know, Jess, that when you put it into a bottle with a piece of aluminum foil with a rag stuffed into the top, it blows up pretty damn well.”

He goes very still. “Are you accusing me of something? Because if you are, just say it, you bastard.”

I get up from the couch. “Okay. I want to know if you scored the bottles before you made the cocktails, so that they'd break easier. I want to know if you realized how close that homeless guy was to dying when you set the warehouse on fire for kicks.” Reaching behind me, I lift the empty Clorox container from his recycle bin. “I want to know why the hell this is in your trash, when you don't do your own laundry and God knows you don't clean, yet there's an elementary school six miles from here that's been gutted with an explosive made of bleach and brake fluid?” I have him by the shoulders now, and although Jesse could break away if he really tried, he lets me shake him until his head snaps back. “Jesus Christ, Jesse!”

He stares at me, his face blank. “Are you about done?”

I let him go and he backs away, teeth bared. “Then tell me I'm wrong,” I challenge.

“I'll tell you more than that,” he yells. “I mean, I totally understand that you've spent your life believing that everything that's wrong in the universe all traces back to me, but news flash, Dad, this time you're totally off base.”

Slowly, I take something out of my pocket and press it into Jesse's hand. The Merit cigarette butt settles in the hollow of his palm. 'Then you shouldn't have left your calling card."

There is a point when a structure fire is raging out of control that you simply have to give it the distance to burn itself out. So you move back to safety, to a hill out of the wind, and you watch the building eat itself alive.

Jesse's hand comes up, trembling, and the cigarette rolls to the floor at our feet. He covers his face, presses his thumbs to the corners of his eyes. “I couldn't save her.” The words are ripped from his center. He hunches his shoulders, sliding backward into the body of a boy. “Who… who did you tell?”

He is asking, I realize, whether the police will be coming after him. Whether I have spoken to Sara about this.

He is asking to be punished.

So I do what I know will destroy him: I pull Jesse into my arms as he sobs. His back is broader than mine. He stands a half-head taller than me. I don't remember seeing him go from that five-year-old, who wasn't a genetic match, to the man he is now, and I guess this is the problem. How does someone go from thinking that if he cannot rescue, he must destroy? And do you blame him, or do you blame the folks who should have told him otherwise?

I will make sure that my son's pyromania ends here and now, but I won't tell the cops or the fire chief about this. Maybe that's nepotism, maybe it's stupidity. Maybe it's because Jesse isn't all that different from me, choosing fire as his medium, needing to know that he could command at least one uncontrollable thing.

Jesse's breathing evens against me, like it used to when he was so small, when I used to carry him upstairs after he'd fallen asleep in my lap. He used to hit me over and over with questions: What's a two-inch hose for, a one-inch? How come you wash the engines? Does the can man ever get to drive? I realize that I cannot remember exactly when he stopped asking. But I do remember feeling as if something had gone missing, as if the loss of a kid's hero worship can ache like a phantom limb.

 

CAMPBELL

DOCTORS HAVE THIS THING about being subpoenaed: they let you know, with every syllable of every word, that no moment of this testimony will make up for the fact that while they were sitting on the witness stand under duress, patients were waiting, people were dying. Frankly, it pisses me off. And before I know it, I can't help myself, I am asking for a bathroom break, leaning down to retie my shoe, gathering my thoughts and stuffing sentences with pregnant pauses—whatever it takes to keep them cooling their heels just a few seconds more.

Dr. Chance is no exception to the rule. From the onset he's anxious to leave. He checks his watch so often you'd think he was about to miss a train. The difference this time around is that Sara Fitzgerald is just as anxious to get him out of the courtroom. Because the patient who is waiting, the person who is dying, is Kate.

But beside me, Anna's body throws heat. I get up, continue my questioning. Slowly. “Dr. Chance, were any of the treatments that involved donations from Anna's body sure things'?”

“Nothing in cancer is a sure thing, Mr. Alexander.”

“Was that explained to the Fitzgeralds?”

“We carefully explain the risks of every procedure, because once you begin treatments, you compromise other bodily systems. What we wind up doing for one treatment successfully may come back to haunt you the next time around.” He smiles at Sara. “That said, Kate's an incredible young woman. She wasn't expected to live past age five, and here she is at sixteen.”

“Thanks to her sister,” I point out.

Dr. Chance nods. “Not many patients have both the strength of body and the good fortune to have a perfectly matched donor available to them.”

I stand up, my hands in my pockets. “Can you tell the Court how the Fitzgeralds came to consult Providence Hospital's preimplantation genetic diagnosis team to conceive Anna?”

“After their son was tested and found to be an unsuitable donor for Kate, I told the Fitzgeralds about another family I'd worked with. They'd tested all the patient's siblings, and none qualified, but then the mother got pregnant during the course of treatment and that child happened to be a perfect match.”

“Did you tell the Fitzgeralds to conceive a genetically programmed child to serve as a donor for Kate?”

“Absolutely not,” Chance says, affronted. “I just explained that even if none of the existing children was a match, that didn't mean that a future child might not be.”

“Did you explain to the Fitzgeralds that this child, as a perfectly genetically programmed match, would have to be available for all these treatments for Kate throughout her life?”

“We were talking about a single cord blood treatment at the time,” Dr. Chance says. “Subsequent donations came about because Kate didn't respond to the first one. And because they offered more promising results.”

“So if tomorrow scientists were to come up with a procedure that would cure Kate's cancer if Anna only cut off her head and gave it to her sister, would you recommend that?”

“Obviously not. I would never recommend a treatment that risked another child's life.”

“Isn't that what you've done for the past thirteen years?”

His face tightens. “None of the treatments have caused significant long-term harm to Anna.”

I take a piece of paper out of my briefcase and hand it to the judge, and then to Dr. Chance. “Can you read the part that's marked?”

He puts on a pair of glasses and clears his throat. “I understand that anesthesia involves potential risks. These risks may include, but are not limited to: adverse drug reactions, sore throat, injury to teeth and dental work, damage to vocal cords, respiratory problems, minor pain and discomfort, loss of sensation, headaches, infection, allergic reaction, awareness during general anesthesia, jaundice, bleeding, nerve injury, blood clot, heart attack, brain damage, and even loss of bodily function or of life.”

“Are you familiar with this form, Doctor?”

“Yes. It's a standard consent form for a surgical procedure.”

“Can you tell us who the patient receiving it was?”

“Anna Fitzgerald.”

“And who signed the consent form?”

“Sara Fitzgerald.”

I rock back on my heels. “Dr. Chance, anesthesia carries a risk of life impairment or death. Those are pretty strong long-term effects.”

“That's exactly why we have a consent form. It's to protect us from people like you,” he says. “But realistically, the risk is extremely small. And the procedure of donating marrow is fairly simple.”

“Why was Anna being anesthetized for such a simple procedure?”

“It's less traumatic for a child, and they're less likely to squirm around.”

“And after the procedure, did Anna experience any pain?”

“Maybe a little,” Dr. Chance says.

“You don't remember?”

“It's been a long time. I'm sure even Anna's forgotten about it by now.”

“You think?” I turn to Anna. “Should we ask her?”

Judge DeSalvo crosses his arms.

“Speaking of risk,” I continue smoothly. “Can you tell us about the research that's been done on the long-term effects of the growth factor shots she's taken twice now, prior to harvest for transplant?”

“Theoretically, there shouldn't be any long-term sequelae.”

“Theoretically,” I repeat. “Why theoretically?”

“Because the research has been done on lab animals,” Dr. Chance admits. “Effects on humans are still being tracked.”

“How comforting.”

He shrugs. “Physicians don't tend to prescribe drugs that have the potential to wreak havoc.”

“Have you ever heard of thalidomide, Doctor?” I ask.

“Of course. In fact, recently, it's been resurrected for cancer research.”

“And it was a milestone drug once before,” I point out. “With catastrophic effects. Speaking of which . . . this kidney donation—are there risks associated with the procedure?”

“No more than for most surgeries,” Dr. Chance says.

“Could Anna die from complications of this surgery?”

“It's highly unlikely, Mr. Alexander.”

“Well, then, let's assume Anna comes through the procedure with flying colors. How will having a single kidney affect her for the rest of her life?”

“It won't, really,” the doctor says. “That's the beauty of it.”

I hand him a flyer that has come from the nephrology department of his own hospital. “Can you read the highlighted section?”

He slips on his glasses again. “Increased chance of hypertension. Possible complications during pregnancy.” Dr. Chance glances up. “Donors are advised to refrain from contact sports to eliminate the risk of harming their remaining kidney.”

I clasp my hands behind my back. “Did you know that Anna plays hockey in her free time?”

He turns toward her. “No. I didn't.”

“She's a goalie. Has been for years now.” I let this sink in. “But since this donation is hypothetical, let's concentrate on the ones that have already happened. The growth factor shots, the DLI, the stem cells, the lymphocyte donations, the bone marrow—all of these myriad treatments Anna endured—in your expert opinion, Doctor, are you saying that Anna has not undergone any significant medical harm from these procedures?”

“Significant?” He hesitates. “No, she has not.”

“Has she received any significant benefit from them?” Dr. Chance looks at me for a long moment. “Sure,” he says. “She's saving her sister.”

Anna and I are eating lunch upstairs at the courthouse when Julia walks in. “Is this a private party?”

Anna waves her inside, and Julia sits down without so much as a glance toward me. “How are you doing?” she asks.

“Okay,” Anna replies. “I just want it to be over.”

Julia opens up a packet of salad dressing and pours it over the lunch she's brought. “It will be, before you know it.”

She looks at me when she says this, briefly.

That's all it takes for me to remember the smell of her skin, and the spot below her breast where she has a beauty mark in the shape of a crescent moon.

Suddenly Anna gets up. “I'm going to take Judge for a walk.” she announces.

“Like hell you are. There are reporters out there, still.”

“I'll walk him in the hallway, then.”

“You can't. He has to be walked by me; it's part of his training.”

“Then I'm going to pee,” Anna says. “That's something I'm still allowed to do by myself, right?”

She walks out of the conference room, leaving Julia and me and everything that shouldn't have happened but did.

“She left us alone on purpose,” I realize.

Julia nods. “She's a smart kid. She can read people very well.” Then she sets down her plastic fork. “Your car is full of dog hair.”

“I know. I keep asking Judge to pull it back in a ponytail but he never listens.”

“Why didn't you just get me up?”

I grin. “Because we were anchored in a no-wake zone.”

Julia, however, doesn't even crack a smile. “Was last night a joke to you, Campbell?”

That old adage pops into my head: If you want to see God laugh, make apian. And because I am a coward, I grab the dog by his collar. “I need to walk him before we're called back into court.”

Julia's voice follows me to the door. “You didn't answer me.”

“You don't want me to,” I say. I don't turn around. That way I don't have to see her face.

When Judge DeSalvo adjourns us for the day at three because of a weekly chiropractic appointment, I walk Anna out to the lobby to find her father—but Brian's gone. Sara looks around, surprised. “Maybe he got a fire call,” she says. "Anna, I'll—

But I put my hand on Anna's shoulder. “I'll take you to the fire station.”

In the car, she is quiet. I pull into the station parking lot and leave the engine running. “Listen,” I tell her, “you may not have realized it, but we had a great first day.”

“Whatever.”

She gets out of my car without another word and Judge hops up into the vacated front seat. Anna walks toward the station, but then veers left. I start to pull back out, and then against my better judgment turn off the engine. Leaving Judge in the car, I follow her around the back of the building.

She stands like a statue, her face turned up to the sky. What am I supposed to do, say? I have never been a parent; I can barely take care of myself.

As it turns out, Anna starts speaking first. “Did you ever do something you knew was wrong, even though it felt right?”

I think of Julia. “Yeah.”

“Sometimes I hate myself,” Anna murmurs.

“Sometimes,” I tell her, “I hate myself, too.”

This surprises her. She looks at me, and then at the sky again. “They're up there. The stars. Even when you can't see them.”

I put my hands into my pockets. “I used to wish on a star every night.”

“For what?”

“Rare baseball cards for my collection. A golden retriever. Young, hot female teachers.”

“My dad told me that a bunch of astronomers found a new place where stars are being born. Only it's taken us 2,500 years to see them.” She turns to me. “Do you get along with your parents?”

I think about lying to her, but then I shake my head. “I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I'm not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.”

The sun washes over her milky skin, lights the line of her throat. “I get it,” Anna says. “You were invisible, too.”

 

TUESDAY

A little fire is quickly trodden out;

Which, being suffered, rivers can not quench.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VI

 

CAMPBELL

BRIAN FITZGERALD IS MY LOCK. Once the judge realizes that at least one of Anna's parents agrees with her decision to stop being a donor for her sister, granting her emancipation won't be quite as great a leap. If Brian does what I need him to—namely, tell Judge DeSalvo that he knows Anna has rights, too, and that he's prepared to support her—then whatever Julia says in her report will be a moot point. And better still, Anna's testimony would only be a formality.

Brian shows up with Anna early the next morning, wearing his captain's uniform. I paste a smile on my face and get up, walking toward them with Judge. “Morning,” I say. “Everyone ready?”

Brian looks at Anna. Then he looks at me. There is a question right there on the verge of his lips, but he seems to be doing everything he can not to ask it.

“Hey,” I say to Anna, brainstorming. “Want to do me a favor? Judge could use a couple of quick runs up and down the stairs, or he's going to get restless in court.”

“Yesterday you told me I couldn't walk him.”

“Well, today you can.”

Anna shakes her head. “I'm not going anywhere. The minute I leave you're just going to talk about me.”

So I turn to Brian again. “Is everything all right?”

At that moment, Sara Fitzgerald comes into the building. She hurries toward the courtroom, and seeing Brian with me, pauses. Then she turns slowly away from her husband and continues inside. Brian Fitzgerald's eyes follow his wife, even after the doors close behind her. “We're fine,” he says, an answer not meant for me.

“Mr. Fitzgerald, were there times that you disagreed with your wife about having Anna participate in medical treatments for Kate's benefit?”

“Yes. The doctors said that it was only cord blood we needed for Kate. They'd be taking part of the umbilicus that usually gets thrown out after giving birth—it wasn't anything that the baby was ever going to miss, and it certainly wasn't going to hurt her.” He meets Anna's eye, gives her a smile. “And it worked for a little while, too. Kate went into remission. But in 1996, she relapsed again. The doctors wanted Anna to donate some lymphocytes. It wasn't going to be a cure, but it would hold Kate over for a while.” I try to draw him along. “You and your wife didn't see eye to eye over this treatment?”

“I didn't know if it was such a great idea. This time Anna was going to know what was happening, and she wasn't going to like it.”

“What did your wife say to make you change your mind?”

“That if we didn't draw blood from Anna this time, we'd need marrow soon anyway.”

“How did you feel about that?”

Brian shakes his head, clearly uncomfortable. “You don't know what it's like,” he says quietly, “until your child is dying. You find yourself saying things and doing things you don't want to do or say. And you think it's something you have a choice about, but then you get up a little closer to it, and you see you had it all wrong.” He looks up at Anna, who is so still beside me I think she has forgotten to breathe. “I didn't want to do that to Anna. But I couldn't lose Kate.”

“Did you have to use Anna's bone marrow, eventually?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Fitzgerald, as a certified EMT, would you ever perform a procedure on a patient who didn't present with any physical problems?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you, as Anna's father, think this invasive procedure, which carried risk to Anna herself and no personal physical benefit, was in her best interests?”

“Because,” Brian says, “I couldn't let Kate die.”

“Were there other points, Mr. Fitzgerald, when you and your wife disagreed over the use of Anna's body for your other daughter's treatment?”

“A few years ago, Kate was hospitalized and… losing so much blood nobody thought she'd make it through. I thought maybe it was time to let her go. Sara didn't.”

“What happened?”

“The doctors gave her arsenic, and it kicked in, putting Kate into remission for a year.”

“Are you saying that there was a treatment which saved Kate, that didn't involve the use of Anna's body?”

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 biggest 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 had 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 green-heads 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, butt he 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?”

He looks up at me, piercing. “What are you going to tell DeSalvo?”

“Are you asking because of Anna, or because you're afraid of losing this trial?”

“Thanks, but I gave my conscience up for Lent.”

“Aren't you going to ask yourself why a thirteen-year-old girl's gotten under your skin?”

He grimaces. “Why don't you just butt out, Julia, and ruin my case like you were planning to do in the first place?”

“This isn't your case, it's Anna's. Although I can certainly see why you'd think otherwise.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're cowards. You're both hell-bent on running away from yourself,” I say. “I know what consequences Anna's afraid of. What about you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“No? Where's the one-liner? Or is it too hard to joke about something that hits so close to the bone? You back away every time someone gets close to you. It's okay if Anna's just a client, but the minute she becomes someone you care about, you're in trouble. Me, well, a quick fuck's just fine, but making an emotional attachment, that's out of the question. The only relationship you have is with your dog, and even that's some enormous State secret.”

"You are way out of line, Julia—

“No, actually, I'm probably the only person who's qualified to let you know exactly what a jerk you are. But that's okay, right? Because if everyone thinks you're a jerk, no one will bother getting too close.” I stare at him a beat longer. “It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you, isn't it, Campbell.”

He gets up, stone-faced. “I have a case to try.”

“You do that,” I say. “Just make sure you separate justice from the client who needs it. Otherwise, God forbid, you may actually find out that you have a working heart.”

I walk off before I can embarrass myself any further, and hear Campbell's voice reach out to me. “Julia. It's not true.”

I close my eyes, and against my better judgment, turn around.

He hesitates. "The dog. I—

But whatever he is about to admit is interrupted by Vern's appearance in the doorway. “Judge DeSalvo's on the warpath,” he interrupts. “You're late, and the mini-mart was sold out of coffee milk.”

I meet Campbell's gaze. I wait for him to finish his sentence. “You're my next witness,” he says evenly, and the moment is gone before I can even remember it existed.

 

CAMPBELL

IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER to be a bastard.

By the time I get into the courtroom, my hands are trembling. Part of it, of course, is the same old same old. But part of it involves the fact that my client is about as responsive as a boulder beside me; and the woman I'm crazy about is the one I am about to put on the witness stand. I glance once at Julia as the judge enters; she makes a point of looking away.

My pen rolls off the table. “Anna, can you get that for me?”

“I don't know. I'd be wasting time and manpower, wouldn't I?” she says, and the goddamn pen stays on the floor.

“Are you ready to call your next witness, Mr. Alexander?” Judge DeSalvo asks, but before I can even say Julia's name Sara Fitzgerald asks to approach the bench.

I gear up for yet another complication, and sure enough, opposing counsel doesn't disappoint. “The psychiatrist that I've asked to call as a witness has an appointment at the hospital this afternoon. Would it be all right with the Court if we took her testimony out of order?”

“Mr. Alexander?”

I shrug. It's just a stay of execution for me, when you get right down to it. So I sit down beside Anna and watch a small, dark woman with a bun twisted ten degrees too tight for her face take the stand. “Please state your name and address for the record,” Sara begins.

“Dr. Beata Neaux,” the psychiatrist says. “1250 Orrick Way, Woonsocket.”

Dr. No. I look around the courtroom, but apparently I'm the only James Bond fan. I take out a legal pad and write a note to Anna: If she married Dr. Chance, she'd be Dr. Neaux-Chance.

A smile twitches at the corner of Anna's mouth. She picks up the pen that dropped and writes back: If she got a divorce and then married Mr. Buster, she'd be Dr. Neaux-Chance-Buster.

We both start to laugh, and Judge DeSalvo clears his throat and looks at us. “Sorry, Your Honor,” I say.

Anna passes me another note: I'm still mad at you.

Sara walks toward her witness. “Can you tell us, Doctor, the nature of your practice?”

“I'm a child psychiatrist.”

“How did you first meet my children?”

Dr. Neaux glances at Anna. “About seven years ago, you brought in your son, Jesse, because of some behavioral problems. Since then I've met with all the children, over various occasions, to talk about different issues that have come up.”

“Doctor, I called you last week and asked you to prepare a report giving your expert opinion about psychological harm Anna might suffer if her sister dies.”

“Yes. In fact, I did a little research. There was a similar case in Maryland in which a girl was asked to be a donor for her twin. The psychiatrist who examined the twins found they had such a strong identification with each other that if the expected successful results were achieved, it would be of immense benefit to the donor.” She looks at Anna. “In my opinion, you're looking at a very similar set of circumstances here. Anna and Kate are very close, and not just genetically. They live together. They hang out together. They have literally spent their entire lives together. If Anna donates a kidney that saves her sister's life, it's a tremendous gift—and not just to Kate. Because Anna herself will continue to be part of the intact family by which she defines herself, rather than a family that's lost one of its members.”

This is such a load of psychobabble bullshit I can barely see to swim through it, but to my shock, the judge seems to be taking this with great sincerity. Julia, too, has her head tilted and a tiny frown line between her brows. Am I the only person in the room with a functioning brain?

“Moreover,” Dr. Neaux continues, “there are several studies that indicate children who serve as donors have higher self-esteem, and feel more important within the family structure. They consider themselves superheroes, because they can do the one thing no one else can.”

That's the most off-the-mark description of Anna Fitzgerald I have ever heard.

“Do you think that Anna is capable of making her own medical decisions?” Sara asks.

“Absolutely not.”

Big surprise.

“Whatever decision she makes is going to have overtones for this entire family,” Dr. Neaux says. “She's going to be thinking of that while making her decision, and therefore, it will never truly be independent. Plus, she's only thirteen years old. Developmentally her brain isn't wired yet to look that far ahead, so any decision will be made based on her immediate future, rather than the long term.”

“Dr. Neaux,” the judge interrupts, “what would you recommend, in this case?”

“Anna needs the guidance of someone with more life experience… someone who has her best interests in mind. I'm happy to work with the family, but the parents need to be the parents, here—because the children can't be.”

When Sara turns the witness over to me, I go in for the kill. “You're asking us to believe that donating a kidney will net Anna all these fabulous psychological perks.”

“That's correct,” Dr. Neaux says.

“Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that if she donates that same kidney—and her sister dies as a result of the operation—then Anna will suffer significant psychological trauma?”

“I believe her parents will help her reason through that.”

“What about the fact that Anna's saying she doesn't want to be a donor anymore,” I point out. “Isn't that important?”

“Absolutely. But like I said, Anna's current state of mind is driven by the short-term consequences. She doesn't understand how this decision is really going to play out.”

“Who does?” I ask. “Mrs. Fitzgerald may not be thirteen, but she lives each day waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of Kate's health, don't you think?”

Grudgingly, the psychiatrist nods.

“You might say she defines her own ability to be a good mother by keeping Kate healthy. In fact, if her actions keep Kate alive, she herself benefits psychologically.”

“Of course.”

“Mrs. Fitzgerald would be much better off in a family that included Kate. Why, I'd even go as far as to say that the choices she makes in her life are not at all independent, but rather colored by issues concerning Kate's health care.”

“Probably.”

“Then by your own reasoning,” I finish, “isn't it true that Sara Fitzgerald looks, feels, and acts like a donor for Kate?”

“Well—”

“Except she's not offering her own bone marrow and blood. Just Anna's.”