Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

I felt like the bull must when he is let out of his pen. Freedom, relief…and then comes the picador, lancing him. “I’m going to leave,” I said softly. “I’m going to pick up Emma, and before you come home tonight, I hope you’ll think about the way you treated me.”

“The way I treated you?” Rob said. “I have been nothing but supportive. I have not said a word, even though you’ve abandoned your whole OB practice and turned into some female Ty Pennington. We get a lumber bill for two thousand dollars? No problem. You forget Emma’s chorus recital because you’re talking plumbing at Aubuchon Hardware? Forgiven. I mean, how ironic is it that you’ve become the do-it-yourself queen? Because you don’t want our help. You want to wallow in self-pity instead.”

“It’s not self-pity.” My cheeks were burning. Could the Spifields hear us arguing in the waiting room? Could the hygienists?

“I know what you want from me, Piper. I’m just not sure I can do it anymore.” Rob walked to the window, looking out onto the parking lot. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Steven,” he said after a moment.

When Rob was twelve, his older brother had committed suicide. Rob had been the one to find him, hanging from the rod in his closet. I knew all this; I’d known it since before we were married. It had taken me a while to convince Rob to have children, because he worried that his brother’s mental illness was printed in his genes. What I hadn’t known was that, these past few months, being with me had dragged Rob back to that time in his childhood.

“Back then no one knew the name for bipolar disorder, or how to take care of it. So for seventeen years my parents went through hell. My whole childhood was colored by how Steven was feeling: if it was a good day or a bad day. And,” he said, “it’s how I got so good at taking care of a person who is completely self-absorbed.”

I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I’d hurt Rob. Maybe that’s what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we’ve wounded the people we are trying to protect. “Ever since you got served, I’ve been thinking about it. What if my parents had known in advance?” Rob said. “What if they had been told, before Steven was born, that he was going to kill himself before his eighteenth birthday?”

I felt myself go very still.

“Would they have taken those seventeen years to get to know him? To have those good times that came between the crises? Or would they have spared themselves-and me-that emotional roller coaster?”

I imagined Rob, coming into his brother’s room to get him for dinner, and finding the older boy slumped to the side of the closet. The whole time I’d known my mother-in-law, I’d never seen a smile rise all the way to her eyes. Was this why?

“That’s not a fair comparison,” I said stiffly.

“Why not?”

“Bipolar illness can’t be diagnosed in utero. You’re missing the point.”

Rob raised his gaze to meet mine. “Am I?” he said.

February 2008

“Just be yourselves,” I coached. “We don’t want you to do anything special because of the camera. Pretend we’re not here.”

I gave a nervous little smile and glanced at the twenty-two moon faces staring up at me: Ms. Watkins’s kindergarten class. “Does anyone have any questions?”

A little boy raised his hand. “Do you know Simon Cowell?”

“No,” I said, grinning. “Anyone else?”

“Is Willow a movie star?”

I glanced at Charlotte, who was standing just behind me, with the videographer I’d hired to film A Day in the Life of Willow, to be aired for the jury. “No,” I said. “She’s still just your friend.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Me!” A classically pretty destined-to-be-cheerleader girl pumped her hand like a piston until I pointed to her. “If I pretend to be Willow’s friend today, will I be on Entertainment Tonight ?”

The teacher stepped forward. “No, Sapphire. And you shouldn’t have to pretend to be anyone’s friend in here. We’re all friends, right?”

“Yes, Ms. Watkins,” the class intoned.

Sapphire? That girl’s name was really Sapphire? I’d looked at the masking tape above the wooden cubbies when we first came in-names like Flint and Frisco and Cassidy. Did no one name their kids Tommy or Elizabeth anymore?

I wondered, not for the first time, if my birth mother had picked out names for me. If she’d called me Sarah or Abigail, a secret be tween the two of us that was overturned, like fresh earth, when my adoptive parents came and started my life over.

You were using your wheelchair today, which meant kids had to move out of the way to accommodate you if you approached with your aide to work at the art table or use Cuisenaire rods. “This is so strange,” Charlotte said softly. “I never get to watch her during school. I feel like I’ve been admitted to the inner sanctum.”

I had hired the camera crew to film one entire day with you. Although you were verbal enough to hold your own as a witness during this trial, putting you on the stand would not have been humane. I couldn’t bring myself to have you in the courtroom when your mother was testifying out loud about wanting to terminate her pregnancy.

We’d shown up on your doorstep at six a.m., in time to watch Charlotte come into your room to rouse you and Amelia. “Oh, my God, this sucks,” Amelia had groaned when she opened her eyes and saw the videographer. “The whole world’s going to see my bed hair.”

She had jumped up and run to the bathroom, but with you, it took more time. Every transition was careful-from the bed to the walker, from the walker to the bathroom, from the bathroom back to the bedroom to get dressed. Because mornings were the most painful for you-the curse of sleeping on a healing fracture-Charlotte had given you pain medication thirty minutes before we arrived, then let it start working to ease the soreness in your arm while you dozed for a while before she helped you get out of bed. Charlotte picked out a sweatshirt that zippered up the front so that you wouldn’t have to raise your arms to slip it over your head-your latest cast had been removed only a week ago and your upper arm was still stiff. “Besides your arm, what hurts today?” Charlotte asked.

You seemed to do a mental inventory. “My hip,” you said.

“Like yesterday, or worse?”

“The same.”

“Do you want to walk?” Charlotte asked, but you shook your head.

“The walker makes my arm ache,” you said.

“Then I’ll get the chair.”

“No! I don’t want to use the chair-”

“Willow, you don’t have a choice. I’m not going to carry you around all day.”

“But I hate the chair-”

“Then you’ll just have to work hard so you get out of it faster, right?”

Charlotte explained, on camera, that you were caught between a rock and a hard place-the arm injury, an old wound, was still healing, but the hip pain was new. The adaptive equipment-a walker to help you stand with support-meant putting pressure on your arm, which you could do for only short periods of time, and which left instead only the dreaded folding manual wheelchair. You hadn’t been fitted for a new one since you were two; at age six, you were nearly twice that size and complained of back and muscle pain after a full day’s use-but insurance wouldn’t upgrade your chair until you were seven.

I had expected a flurry of morning activity, made even more overwhelming by all of your needs, but Charlotte moved methodically-letting Amelia run around trying to find lost homework while she brushed your hair and fixed it in two braids, cooked scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, and loaded you into the car along with the walker, the thirty-pound wheelchair, a standing table, and the braces-to use during physical therapy. You couldn’t take the bus-jarring over bumps could cause microfractures-so Charlotte drove you instead, dropping Amelia off at the middle school on the way.