Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

Which, of course, leads to the more colloquial definition of hardball: ruthless, aggressive, competitive behavior; the kind that’s designed to mold someone else’s thinking to match your own.

2½ cups sugar

½ cup light corn syrup

½ cup water

Pinch of salt

3 large egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup chopped pecans

½ cup dried cherries, blueberries, or cranberries

I’ve always found it interesting that a candy with a name such as Divinity requires so much brutality to create.

In a 2-quart saucepan, mix the sugar, corn syrup, water, and salt. Using a candy thermometer, heat to the hardball stage, stirring only until the sugar is dissolved. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. When the syrup reaches 260 degrees F, add it gradually to the egg whites while beating at high speed in a mixer. Continue to beat until the candy takes shape-about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla, nuts, and dried fruit. Quickly drop the candy from a teaspoon onto waxed paper, finishing each piece with a swirl, and let it cool to room temperature.

Hardball, beating, beating again. Maybe this candy should have been called Submission.

January 2008

It had started as a stain in the outline of a stingray on the ceiling in the dining room-a watermark, an indication that there was something wrong with the pipes in the upstairs bathroom. But the watermark spread, until it no longer looked like a stingray but a whole tide, and half the ceiling seemed to have been steeped in tea leaves. The plumber fussed around under the sinks and beneath the front panel of the tub for about an hour before he reappeared in the kitchen, where I was boiling down spaghetti sauce. “Acid,” he announced.

“No…just marinara.”

“In the pipes,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve been flushing down there, but it’s eroding them.”

“The only stuff we’ve been flushing is what everyone else flushes. It’s not like the girls are doing chemistry experiments in the shower.”

The plumber shrugged. “I can replace the pipes, but unless you fix the problem, it’s just going to happen again.”

It was costing me $350 just for this visit, by my calculation-we couldn’t afford it, much less a second visit. “Fine.”

It would be another thirty dollars for paint to cover the ceiling, and that was if we did it ourselves. And yet here we were eating pasta for the third time this week, because it was cheaper than meat, because you had needed new shoes, because we were effectively broke.

It was nearly six o’clock-the time Sean usually walked through the door. It had been almost three months since his disastrous deposition, not that you would have known it had ever happened, from our conver sations. We talked about what the police chief had said to a local newspaper about an act of vandalism at the high school, about whether Sean should take the detectives’ exam. We talked about Amelia, who had yesterday gone on a word strike and insisted on pantomiming. We talked about how you had walked all the way around the block today without me having to run back and get your chair because your legs were giving out.

We did not talk about this lawsuit.

I had grown up in a family where, if you didn’t discuss a crisis, it didn’t exist. My mother had breast cancer for months before I realized it, and by then it was too late. My father lost three jobs during my childhood, but it wasn’t a topic of conversation-one day he’d just put on a suit again and head to a new office, as if there had been no interruption in the routine. The only place we were supposed to turn with our fears and worries was the confessional; the only comfort we needed was from God.

I had sworn that, when I had my own family, all the cards would be on the table. We wouldn’t have hidden agendas and secrets and rose-colored glasses that kept us from seeing all the knots and snarls of an ordinary family’s affairs. I had forgotten one critical element, though: people who didn’t talk about their problems got to pretend they didn’t have any. People who discussed what was wrong, on the other hand, fought and ached and felt miserable.

“Girls,” I shouted. “Dinner!”

I heard the distant thunder of both your feet moving down the hallway upstairs. You were tentative-one foot on a step joined by another-whereas Amelia nearly skidded into the kitchen. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “Spaghetti again ?”

To be fair, it wasn’t like I’d just opened a box of Prince. I’d made the dough, rolled it, cut it into strands. “No, this time it’s fettuccine,” I said, unfazed. “You can set the table.”

Amelia stuck her head in the fridge. “News flash, we don’t have any juice.”

“We’re drinking water this week. It’s better for us.”

“And conveniently cheaper. Tell you what. Take twenty bucks out of my college fund and splurge on chicken cutlets.”

“Hmm, what is that sound?” I said, looking around with my brow furrowed. “Oh, right. The sound of me not laughing.”

At that, Amelia cracked a smile. “Tomorrow, we’d better get some protein.”

“Remind me to buy a little tofu.”

“Gross.” She set a stack of dishes on the table. “Remind me to kill myself before dinner then.”

You came into the kitchen and scooted into your high chair. We didn’t call it a high chair-you were nearly six, and you were quick to point out that you were a big girl-but you couldn’t reach the table without some sort of booster; you were just too tiny. “To cook a billion pounds of pasta, you’d need enough water to fill up seventy-five thousand swimming pools,” you said.

Amelia slouched into the chair beside you. “To eat a billion pounds of pasta, you only have to be born into the O’Keefe family.”

“Maybe if you all keep complaining, I’ll make something gourmet tomorrow night…like squid. Or haggis. Or calves’ brains. That’s protein, Amelia-”

“A long time ago there was this guy, Sawney Beane, in Scotland, who ate people, ” you said. “Like, a thousand of them.”

“Well, luckily, we’re not that desperate.”

“But if we were,” you said, your eyes lighting up, “I’d be boneless .”

“Okay, enough.” I dumped a serving of steaming pasta on your plate. “Bon appétit.”

I glanced up at the clock; it was 6:10. “What about Dad?” Amelia said, reading my thoughts.

“We’ll wait for him. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”

But five minutes later, Sean had not arrived. You were fidgeting in your seat, and Amelia was picking at the congealed mass of pasta on her plate. “The only thing more disgusting than pasta is ice-cold pasta,” she muttered.

“Eat,” I said, and you and your sister dove into your dinners like hawks.

I stared down at my meal, not hungry anymore. After a few minutes, you girls carried your plates to the sink. The plumber came back downstairs to say he was finished and left me a bill on the kitchen counter. The phone rang twice and was picked up by one of you.

At seven thirty, I called Sean’s cell, and it immediately rolled over into the voice mail.

At eight, I scraped the cold contents of my plate into the trash.

At eight thirty, I tucked you into bed.

At eight forty-five, I called the nonemergency line for dispatch. “This is Charlotte O’Keefe,” I said. “Do you know if Sean took on another shift tonight?”

“He left around five forty-five,” the dispatcher said.

“Oh, right, of course,” I replied lightly, as if I’d known that all along, because I didn’t want her to think I was the kind of wife who had no idea where her husband might be.