Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“Hell hath no fury like a teenager who wants her orthodontia removed,” Rob said. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure Charlotte had no idea she was there.”

I felt heat rise to my face. “Don’t you think people might wonder why you’re treating the daughter of the woman who’s suing us?”

“You,” he corrected. “She’s suing you.”

I reeled backward. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“And I can’t believe you’d expect me to throw Amelia out of the office.”

“Well, you know what, Rob? You should have. You’re my husband.”

Rob got to his feet. “And she’s a patient. And that’s my job. Something, unlike you, that I give a damn about.”

He stalked out of the kitchen, and I rubbed my temples. I felt like a plane in a holding pattern, making the turns with the airport in view and no clearance to land. In that moment, I resented Charlotte so much that it felt like a river stone in my belly, solid and cold. Rob was right-everything I was, everything I’d been-had been put on a shelf because of what Charlotte had done to me.

And in that instant I realized that Charlotte and I still had something in common: she felt exactly the same way about what I’d done to her.

The next morning, I was determined to change. I set my alarm, and instead of sleeping past the school bus pickup, I made Emma French toast and bacon for breakfast. I told a wary Rob to have a nice day. Instead of renovating the house, I cleaned it. I went grocery shopping-although I drove to a town thirty miles away, where I wouldn’t run into anyone familiar. I met Emma at school with her skating bag. “You’re taking me to the rink?” she said when she saw me.

“Is that a problem?”

“I guess not,” Emma said, and after a moment’s hesitation, she launched into a diatribe about how unfair it was for the teacher to give an algebra test when he knew he was going to be absent that day and couldn’t answer last-minute questions.

I’ve missed this, I thought. I’ve missed Emma. I reached across the seat and smoothed my hand over her hair.

“What’s up with that?”

“I just really love you. That’s all.”

Emma raised a brow. “Okay, now you’re skeeving me out. You aren’t going to tell me you have cancer or something, are you?”

“No, I just know I haven’t exactly been…present…lately. And I’m sorry.”

We were at a red light, and she faced me. “Charlotte’s a bitch,” she said, and I didn’t even tell her to watch her language. “Everybody knows the whole Willow thing isn’t your fault.”

“Everybody?”

“Well,” she said. “Me.”

That’s good enough, I realized.

A few minutes later, we arrived at the skating rink. Red-cheeked boys dribbled out of the main glass doors, their enormous hockey bags turtled onto their backs. It always had seemed so funny to me, the dichotomy between the coltish figure skaters and the lupine hockey players.

The minute I walked inside I realized what I’d forgotten-no, not forgotten, just blocked entirely from my mind: Amelia would be here, too.

She looked so different from the last time I’d seen her-dressed in black, with fingerless gloves and tattered jeans and combat boots-and that blue hair. And she was arguing heatedly with Charlotte. “I don’t care who hears,” she said. “I told you I don’t want to skate anymore.”

Emma grabbed my arm. “Just go,” she said under her breath.

But it was too late. We were a small town and this was a big story; the entire room, girls and their mothers, was waiting to see what would happen. And you, sitting on the bench beside Amelia’s bag, noticed me, too.

You had a cast on your right arm. How had you broken it this time? Four months ago, I would have known all the details.

Well, unlike Charlotte, I had no intention of airing my dirty laundry in public. I drew in my breath and pulled Emma closer, dragging her into the locker room. “Okay,” I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “So, you do this private lesson thing for how long? An hour?”

“Mom.”

“I may just run out and pick up the dry cleaning, instead of hanging around to watch-”

“Mom.” Emma reached for my hand, as if she were still little. “You weren’t the one who started this.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else. Here is what I had expected from my best friend: honesty. If she had spent the past six years of your life harboring the belief that I’d done something grievously wrong during her pregnancy, why didn’t she ever bring it up? Why didn’t she ever say, Hey, how come you didn’t…? Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything. But I did. Like, for starters, an explanation.

Emma finished lacing up her skates and hurried onto the ice. I waited a moment, then pushed out the locker room door and stood in front of the curved Plexiglas barrier. At one end of the rink was a tangle of beginners-a centipede of children in their snow pants and bicycle helmets, their legs widening triangles. When one went down, so did the others: dominoes. It wasn’t so long ago that this had been Emma, and yet here she was on the other end of the rink, executing a sit-spin as her teacher skated around her, calling out corrections.

I couldn’t see Amelia-or you or Charlotte for that matter-anywhere.

My pulse was almost back to normal by the time I reached my car. I slid into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine. When I heard a sharp rap on the window, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Charlotte stood there, a scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth, her eyes watering in the bite of the wind. I hesitated, then unrolled the window partway.

She looked as miserable as I felt. “I…I just had to tell you something,” she said, halting. “This was never about you and me.”

The effort of not speaking hurt; I was grinding my back teeth together.

“I was offered a chance to give Willow everything she’ll ever need.” Her breath formed a wreath around her face in the cold air. “I don’t blame you for hating me. But you can’t judge me, Piper. Because if Willow had been your child…I know you would have done the same thing.”

I let the words hang between us, caught on the guillotine of the window’s edge. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Charlotte,” I said coldly, and I pulled out of the parking spot and away from the rink without looking back.

Ten minutes later I burst into Rob’s office during a consultation. “Piper,” he said evenly, glancing down at the parents and preteen daughter, who were staring at my wild hair, my runny nose, the tears still streaking my face. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Um,” the mother said quickly. “Maybe we should just let you two talk.”

“Mrs. Spifield-”

“No, really,” she said, getting up and summoning the rest of the family. “We can give you a minute.”

They hurried out of the office, expecting me to self-destruct at any moment, and maybe they weren’t that far off the mark. “Are you happy?” Rob exploded. “You probably just cost me a new patient.”

“How about Piper, what happened? Tell me what I can do to help you?”

“Well, pardon me if the sympathy card’s been played so often that the face has worn straight off. Jesus, I’m trying to run a practice here.”

“I just ran into Charlotte at the skating rink.”

Rob blinked at me. “So?”

“Are you joking?”

“You live in the same town. A small town. It’s a miracle you haven’t crossed paths before. What did she do? Come after you with a sword? Call you out on the playground? Grow up, Piper.”