Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

The judge said a few words to the jury, and then everyone began to file out of the courtroom. Rob walked up to the bar that separated the gallery from the front of the court and put his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. I tried to offer him a smile.

“Thank you,” I said to Guy Booker.

He stuffed a pad into his briefcase. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said.

“You’re making me dizzy,” Sean said as I entered the conference room. Amelia was pacing back and forth, her hands speared through her electric hair. As soon as she saw me, she turned.

“So here’s the thing,” she said, talking fast. “I know you’re thinking about killing me, but that wouldn’t be the brightest move in a courthouse. I mean, there are cops all over the place, not to mention the fact that Dad’s here and he’d be obligated to arrest you-”

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said.

She stopped moving. “No?”

How had I never noticed before how beautiful Amelia had become? Her eyes, under the fringe of that ridiculous hair, were huge and almond-shaped. Her cheeks were naturally pink. Her mouth was a tiny bow, a purse string holding her opinions tight. I realized that she did not look like me, or like Sean. Mostly, she resembled you.

“What you did…what you said, ” I began. “I know why.”

“Because I don’t want to go to Boston!” Amelia blurted. “That stupid treatment facility. You’re just going to leave me behind there.”

I glanced at Sean, and then back at her. “Maybe we shouldn’t have made that decision without you.”

Amelia narrowed her eyes, as if she didn’t quite trust what she was hearing.

“You may be angry at us, but that’s not really why you told Guy Booker you’d testify,” I continued. “I think you did it because you were trying to protect your sister.”

“Well,” Amelia said. “Yeah.”

“How could I be angry at you, then, for doing the same thing I’m trying to do?”

Amelia threw herself into my arms with the force of a hurricane. “If we win,” she said, muffled against my chest, “can I buy a Jet Ski?”

“No,” Sean and I said simultaneously. He stood up, his hands in his pockets. “If you win,” he said, “I was thinking I might move back home for good.”

“What if I lose?”

“Well,” Sean said, “I was still thinking I’d move back home for good.”

I looked at him over the crown of Amelia’s head. “You drive a hard bargain,” I said, and I smiled.

On the way to Disney World, during an airport layover, we had eaten in a Mexican restaurant. You had a quesadilla; Amelia had a burrito. I had fish tacos, and Sean had a chimichanga. The mild sauce was too hot for us. Sean convinced me to get a margarita (“It’s not like you’re the one who’ll be flying the plane”). We talked about fried ice cream, which was on the dessert menu and didn’t seem possible: wouldn’t the ice cream melt when it was put into the deep fryer? We talked about which rides we would go on first in the Magic Kingdom.

Back then, possibility stretched out in front of us like a red carpet. Back then, we were all focused on what could happen, instead of what had gone wrong. On our way out of the restaurant, the hostess-a girl with pockmarks on her cheeks and a nose stud-gave us each a helium balloon. “What’s the point of this?” Sean said. “You can’t take them on the plane.”

“Not everything has to have a point,” I replied, looping my arm through his. “Live a little.”

Amelia nipped a hole in the neck of her balloon with her teeth and suctioned her lips over it. She took a deep breath, and then looked at us with a dazzling smile. “Hello, parents,” she said, but her voice was high and reedy, that of a Munchkin, not Amelia’s at all.

“God only knows what’s in there-”

“Duh, Mom,” Amelia trilled. “Helium.”

“Me, too,” you said, and Amelia took your balloon and showed you how to breathe it in.

“I really don’t think they should be sucking in helium-”

“Live a little,” Sean said, grinning, and he nipped a corner of his balloon and sucked in.

They all started talking at me, their voices a comedy, a bird chorus, a rainbow. “Do it, Mom,” you said. “Do it!”

So I followed suit. The helium burned a little as I swallowed it, one great gulp. I could feel my vocal cords buzzing. “Maybe this isn’t so bad after all,” I peeped.

We sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” We recited the Lord’s Prayer. And when a man in a business suit stopped Sean to ask if he knew the way to Baggage Claim, Sean took a long drag of his balloon and said, “Follow the yellow brick road.”

I cannot remember laughing as much as I did that day, or feeling so liberated. Maybe it was the helium, which made me lighter, made me feel like I could close my eyes and fly to Orlando with or without the plane. Or maybe it was the fact that, no matter what we said to one another, we were not ourselves.

Four hours later, the jury had still not returned a verdict. Sean had driven to the hospital to check on you and had just called to say he was on his way back, had there been any news? Amelia was writing haikus on the white board in the conference room:

Help, I’m clearly trapped

Behind this very white board.

Please do not erase.

The rule for today

Is that there are no more rules.

Guess you’re out of luck.

I headed to the bathroom for the third time since court had adjourned. I didn’t have to go, but I ran the water in the sink and splashed some on my face. I kept telling myself this was not such a big deal, but that was a lie. You did not drag your family to the verge of dissolution for nothing; to have gone through this with nothing to show would have been disastrous. If I had entered into this lawsuit to assuage my con science, how could I reconcile an outcome where I left feeling even more guilty?

I patted my face dry and dabbed at my sweater, where it had gotten wet. I tossed the toweling into the trash just as there was a flush in one of the stalls. The door opened as I stepped away from the sink, and I inadvertently smacked it back against the person who was trying to exit. “Sorry,” I said, and then I realized that the woman standing in front of me was Piper.

“You know, Charlotte,” she said softly, “so am I.”

I looked at her, silent. Of all the things to notice, I realized that she didn’t smell the way she used to. She’d changed her perfume or her shampoo.

“So you admit it,” I said. “That you made a mistake.”

Piper shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Not professionally, anyway. But on a personal level, well…I’m sorry that this is how things have turned out between us. And I’m sorry that you didn’t get the healthy baby you wanted.”

“Do you realize,” I replied, “in all the years after Willow was born, you never said that to me?”

“You should have told me you were waiting to hear it,” Piper said.

“I shouldn’t have had to.”

I tried not to remember how Piper and I had huddled together in the bleachers at the skating rink, reading the classified ads and trying to match up personal ads with each other. How we would take walks, pushing you in a stroller, punctuating the cold air with so many starbursts of conversation that three miles passed in no time at all. I tried not to remember that I had thought of her as the sister I’d never had, that I’d hoped you and Amelia would grow up just as close.

I tried not to remember, but I would.

Suddenly the door of the bathroom opened. “There you are,” Marin sighed. “The jury’s back.”