Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Sometimes I think about what would happen if I got into a car crash and was stuck upside down like that,” I say. “Not in the car, you know, but at the hospital in one of those neck braces that get screwed into your skull so that your vertebrae don’t shift? What if the doctors flipped me onto my belly, and I got congested like I am right now and couldn’t tell them? Or if I was in that kind of coma where you’re awake but trapped inside your body and you can’t talk, and you desperately need to blow your nose.” My head is pounding now, from being in this position. “It doesn’t even have to be that complicated. What if I live to a hundred and five and I’m in a rest home and I get a cold and no one thinks to get me a few drops of Afrin?”

Clarice’s feet move away from my range of view, and then I feel cool air on my legs as she begins to massage my left calf. “My mother got me this treatment for my birthday,” I say.

“That’s nice…”

“She is a big fan of moisturizing. She actually said that it wouldn’t kill me to not have dinosaur hide for skin if I wanted my husband to stick around. I pointed out that if lotion was what was keeping my marriage intact I had a much bigger problem than whether or not I had time to schedule a massage…”

“Ms. McQuarrie?” the therapist says. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a client who needed a massage quite as much as you do.”

For some reason, this makes me proud.

“And at the risk of losing my tip, I also don’t think I’ve ever had a client who was so bad at getting a massage.”

This makes me even prouder. “Thanks,” I say.

“Maybe you could just try…to relax. Stop talking. Clear your mind.”

I close my eyes again. And start going over my to-do list in my head.

“For what it’s worth,” I murmur, “I’m bad at yoga too.”

–

ON DAYS WHEN I work late and Micah is still at the hospital, my mother picks Violet up from school. It’s a win-win-win-I don’t have to pay for a sitter, my mother gets time with her only grandchild, and Violet adores her. No one throws a tea party like my mom, who insists on using her old wedding china and linen napkins and pouring sweet tea from the pot. I know, when I come home, that Violet will have been bathed, read to, and tucked in. There will be leftover lemon drops or oatmeal raisin cookies from the afternoon’s tea party, still warm inside a Tupperware. My kitchen will be cleaner than I left it that morning.

My mother also drives Micah crazy. “Ava means well,” he is fond of saying. “But so did Joseph McCarthy.” He says that my mother is a bulldozer dressed as a southern belle. In a way, this is true. My mother has a way of getting what she wants before you consciously realize you’ve been played.

“Hi,” I say, dropping my briefcase on the couch as Violet launches herself into my arms.

“I finger-painted,” Violet announces, holding her palms up to me. They are still slightly blue. “I couldn’t take the picture home yet because it’s still wet.”

“Hey, sugar,” my mother says, coming out of the kitchen. “How was your day?” Her voice always makes me think of heliotrope and a convertible ride and the sun beating on the crown of your head.

“Oh, the usual,” I tell her. “I didn’t have a client try to kill me today, so that was a plus.” Last week, a man I was representing in an aggravated assault charge tried to strangle me at the defense table when the judge set bail unusually high. I’m still not sure if my client was angry, or planting a seed for an insanity defense. If it was the latter, I sort of have to give him props for thinking ahead.

“Kennedy, not in front of the C-H-I-L-D. Vi, honey, can you go get Grandma’s purse?” I set Violet on her feet, and she sprints into the mudroom. “You know when you say things like that it makes me want to get a prescription for Xanax,” my mother sighs. “I thought that you were going to start looking for a real job when Violet went to school.”

“A, I do have a real job, and B, you’re already taking Xanax, so that’s a specious threat.”

“Must you argue everything ?”

“Yeah. I’m a lawyer.” I realize then that my mother is wearing her coat. “Are you cold?”

“I told you I couldn’t stay late tonight. Darla and I are going to that counterdance to meet some silver foxes.”

“Contra dance,” I correct. “Number one, ew. Number two, you never told me.”

“I did. Last week. You just chose not to listen, sugar.” Violet comes into the room again and hands her her purse. “That’s a good girl,” she says. “Give me a kiss now.”

Violet throws her arms around my mother. “But you can’t go,” I say. “I have a date.”

“Kennedy, you’re married. If anyone needs a date, it’s me. And Darla and I have big plans for just that.”

She sails out the door and I sit down on the couch. “Mommy,” Violet says, “can we have pizza?”

I look at the sequined shoes on her feet. “I’ve got a better idea,” I tell her.

–

“WELL!” MICAH SAYS, when he sees me sitting at the table of the Indian restaurant with Violet, who has never been anywhere fancier than a Chili’s. “This is a surprise.”

“Our babysitter skipped town,” I tell him, and I glance sidelong at Violet. “And we are skating the thin edge of DEFCON Four, so I already ordered.”

Violet is coloring on the paper tablecloth. “Daddy,” she announces, “I want pizza.”

“But you love Indian food, Vi,” Micah says.

“No I don’t. I want pizza,” she insists.

Just then, the waiter comes over with our food. “Perfect timing,” I murmur. “See, honey?”

Violet turns her face up to the waiter, her blue eyes wide as she stares at his Sikh turban. “How come he’s wearing a towel?”

“Don’t be rude, sweetie,” I reply. “That’s called a turban, and that’s what some Indian people wear.”

She furrows her brow. “But he doesn’t look like Pocahontas.”

I want the floor to open up and swallow me, but instead, I paste a smile on my face. “I’m so sorry,” I tell the waiter, who is now unloading our dishes as quickly as he can. “Violet…look, your favorite. Chicken tikka masala.” I spoon some onto her plate, trying to distract her until the waiter goes away.

“Oh my God,” I whisper to Micah. “What if he thinks we’re horrible parents? Or horrible people ?”

“Blame Disney.”

“Maybe I should have said something different?”

Micah takes a spoonful of vindaloo and puts it on his plate. “Yeah,” he says. “You could have picked Italian.”

I’M STANDING IN THE MIDDLE of the nursery my son is never going to use.

My fists are like two anvils at my sides; I want to swing them. I want to punch holes in the plaster. I want the whole fucking room to come tumbling down.

Suddenly there is a firm hand on my shoulder. “You ready?”

Francis Mitchum-my father-in-law-stands behind me.

This is his duplex-Brit and I live on one side, and he lives on the other. Francis crosses the room and yanks down the Peter Rabbit curtains. Then he pours paint into a little tray and begins to roll the walls white again, washing away the pale yellow that Brit and I brushed onto the walls less than a month ago. The first coat doesn’t quite cover the paint beneath, so the color peeks through, like something trapped under ice. With a deep breath I lie down under the crib. I lift the Allen wrench and begin to loosen the bolts that I had so carefully tightened, because I didn’t want to be the reason anything bad happened to my son.

Who knew there didn’t have to be a reason?

I left Brit sleeping off a sedative, which was an improvement over the way she was this morning at the hospital. I’d thought nothing could be worse than the crying that wouldn’t stop, the sound of her breaking into pieces. But then, at about 4:00 A.M., all of that stopped. Brit didn’t make a sound. She just stared, blank, at the wall. She wouldn’t answer when I called her name; she wouldn’t even look at me. The doctors gave her medicine to make her sleep. Sleep, they told me, was the best way for a body to heal.