Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

I slurped on the straw, on purpose, and tried not to blink, because then maybe the tears would reabsorb through osmosis.

“The thing is, Amelia,” my mother continued, “if you weren’t here…I’d feel the same exact way.”

I was afraid to look at her. I was afraid I had heard her wrong. Was this her way of saying that she didn’t just love me, which was a given for a mother, but she liked me? I imagined her making me open the lid of the shake to be sure I’d drunk it all. I would grumble, but deep down, I’d like that she was insisting. It meant she cared; it meant she wasn’t going to let me go that easily.

“I did a little research today, at the hospital,” my mother said. “There’s a place just outside of Boston that takes care of kids with eating disorders. They have an inpatient program, and when you’re ready, you get to move to a residential program with other girls who are going through the same issues.”

My head snapped up. “Inpatient? Like, as in, live there?”

“Just until they can help you get this under control-”

“You’re sending me away?” I said, panicking. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. My mother knew what it felt like; so why didn’t she understand that cutting me off was just like saying I’d never be good enough for this family? “How come Willow can break a thousand bones and she’s still perfect and gets to live at home, and I make one little mistake and get shipped off?”

“Your father and I aren’t shipping you off,” my mother said. “We’re doing this to help you-”

“He knows about it?” I felt my nose running. I had hoped that my father could be my last appeal; now, I found out he was a conspirator. The whole world hated me.

Suddenly Marin Gates stuck her head into the room. “We’re ready to rock and roll,” she said.

“I just need a minute-”

“Well, Judge Gellar needs you now.”

My mother looked at me, her eyes begging me to cut her a break. “You have to sit inside the courtroom now. Your dad’s testifying, and I can’t stay here and watch over you.”

“Go to hell,” I said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Marin, who was watching all this, whistled long and low. “Actually, she can,” she said. “Because you’re a minor, and she’s your mother.”

I wanted to hurt my mother as bad as she’d hurt me, so I turned to the lawyer. “I don’t think you’re allowed to keep that title if you try to get rid of all of your kids.”

I could see my mother flinch. She was bleeding, even if you couldn’t see the cut, and she knew, like me, that she deserved it. As Marin unceremoniously deposited me in the gallery next to a man wearing a red flannel shirt and suspenders who smelled like tuna fish, I made myself a promise: if my mother was going to ruin my life, there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t ruin hers.

On our wedding day, Charlotte made me forget all the vows I’d written and diligently memorized. There she was, walking down the aisle of the church, and those sentences were like fishing nets; they couldn’t possibly hold all the feelings I wanted to present to her. Now, as I sat across from my wife in a courtroom, I hoped my words would transform one more time. Into feathers, clouds, steam-anything that did not have the power to land a solid blow.

“Lieutenant O’Keefe,” said Guy Booker, “weren’t you originally a plaintiff in this case?”

He’d promised me that he’d make it short and sweet, that I would be off the stand so quickly I barely felt it. I didn’t trust him. It was his job to lie, cheat, and twist the truth into something the jury could believe.

Something I sorely hoped he’d be successful at, this time around.

“I was, at first,” I replied. “My wife had convinced me that this lawsuit was in Willow’s best interests, but I started to realize I didn’t feel that way at all.”

“How so?”

“I think this lawsuit’s broken our family apart. Our dirty laundry is running on the six o’clock news. I’ve started divorce proceedings. And Willow, she knows what’s going on. There was no hiding it, once it became public knowledge.”

“You realize that wrongful birth suggests your daughter should never have been born. Do you wish that, Lieutenant O’Keefe?”

I shook my head. “Willow may not be perfect, but-well-neither am I. Neither are you. She may not be perfect,” I repeated, “but she’s one hundred percent right. ”

“Your witness,” Booker said, and as Marin Gates got to her feet, I took a deep breath to galvanize myself, the same way I did before I ran into a building with the SWAT team.

“You say that this lawsuit has broken your family apart,” she said. “But the same could be said of the divorce proceedings you initiated, isn’t that true?”

I looked at Guy Booker. He’d anticipated this question; we’d practiced an answer. I was supposed to say something about how my actions had been a measure to protect the girls-not to drag them through the mud. But instead of saying that, I found myself looking at Charlotte. At that plaintiff’s table, she seemed so tiny. She was staring down at the wood grain, as if she didn’t trust herself to look me in the eye.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “It is.”

Booker stood up, and then figured he couldn’t object to his own witness, I guess, because he sat back down.

I turned to the judge. “Sir? Do you mind if I talk directly to my wife?”

Judge Gellar raised his brows. “It’s the jury that needs to hear you, son.”

“With all due respect, Your Honor…I don’t think that’s true.”

“Judge,” Booker said. “May I approach?”

“No, Mr. Booker, you may not,” the judge said. “This man’s got something to say.”

Marin Gates looked like she’d swallowed a firecracker. She didn’t know whether to ask me anything else or just let me hang myself. And maybe I was doing that; I didn’t really care. “Charlotte,” I said, “I don’t know what’s right anymore, except admitting that I don’t know that. No, we don’t have enough money. And no, we haven’t had it easy. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been worth the trip.”

Charlotte lifted her face. Her eyes were wide and still. “Some guys at the station, they said they knew what they were getting into when they got married. Well, I didn’t. It was an adventure, and I was okay with that. See, you’re it, for me. You let me take you skiing, and you never mentioned you were afraid of heights. You sleep curled up against me, no matter how far I move to my side of the bed. You let me eat the vanilla half of your Dixie Cup, and you take my chocolate. You tell me when my socks don’t match. You buy Lucky Charms, because you know I like the marshmallows. You gave me two beautiful girls.

“Maybe you expected marriage to be perfect-I guess that’s where you and I are different. See, I thought it would be all about making mistakes, but doing it with someone who’s there to remind you what you learned along the way. And I think we were both wrong about something. People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that’s not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.”

Silence settled over the courtroom. “We’re going to adjourn for the day,” Judge Gellar announced.

“But I’m not finished-” Marin argued.

“Yes, you are,” the judge said. “For God’s sake, Ms. Gates, that’s why you’re still single. I want this courtroom cleared, except for Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe.”

He banged his gavel, and there was a flurry of activity, and suddenly, I was sitting alone on the witness stand and Charlotte was standing behind the plaintiff’s table. She took a few steps forward, until she was standing level with me, her hands lightly resting on the wooden railing between us. “I don’t want to get a divorce,” she said.