Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

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AFTER THE CHOIR sings “Soon and Very Soon,” as the casket is carried from the church and we file out behind it; after the graveside ceremony, where the pastor speaks yet again, we reconvene at my mother’s apartment-the small space where I grew up. The church ladies have done their duty; there are giant bowls of potato salad and coleslaw and platters of fried chicken set out on pretty pink tablecloths. There are silk flowers on almost every horizontal space, and someone has thought to bring folding chairs, although there isn’t nearly enough room for everyone to sit.

I take refuge in the kitchen. I look over the stacked plates of brownies and lemon squares, and then walk to a tiny bookshelf above the sink. There’s a small black and white composition book there, and I open it, nearly brought to my knees by the spiky hills and valleys of Mama’s handwriting. Sweet potato pie, I read. Coconut dreams. Chocolate Cake to Break a Man. I smile at that last recipe-it was what I had cooked for Wesley, before he proposed, to which Mama only said, I told you so.

“Ruth,” I hear, and I turn around to find Kennedy and the other white woman she brought with her looking awkward and out of place in my mama’s kitchen.

I reach into the abyss and find my manners. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot.”

Kennedy takes a step forward. “I’d like you to meet my mother. Ava.”

The older woman holds out her hand in that southern way, like a limp fish, pressing just the tips of her fingers to the tips of mine. “My condolences. It was a lovely service.”

I nod. Really, what is there to say?

“How are you holding up?” Kennedy asks.

“I keep thinking Mama’s going to tell me to go tell Pastor Harold to use a coaster on her good coffee table.” I don’t have the words to tell her what it really feels like, seeing her with her own mother, knowing I don’t have that option. What it’s like being the balloon, when someone lets go of the string.

Kennedy glances down at the open book in my hands. “What’s that?”

“A recipe book. It’s only half finished. Mama kept telling me she was going to write down all her best ones for me, but she was always too busy cooking for someone else.” I realize how bitter I sound. “She wasted her life, slaving away for someone else. Polishing silver and cooking three meals a day and scrubbing toilets so her skin was always raw. Taking care of someone else’s baby.”

My voice breaks on that last bit. Falls off the cliff.

Kennedy’s mother, Ava, reaches into her purse. “I asked to come here today, with Kennedy,” she says. “I didn’t know your mom, but I knew someone like her. Someone I cared for very much.”

She holds out an old photo, the kind with scalloped edges. It is a picture of a Black woman wearing a maid’s uniform, holding a little girl in her arms. The girl has hair as light as snow, and her hand is pressed against her caregiver’s cheek in shocking contrast. There’s more than just duty between them. There’s pride. There’s love. “I didn’t know your mother. But, Ruth-she didn’t waste her life.”

Tears fill my eyes. I hand the photo back to Ava, and Kennedy pulls me into an embrace. Unlike the stiff hugs I remember from white women like Ms. Mina or my high school principal, this one does not feel forced, smug, inauthentic.

She lets go of me, so that we are eye to eye. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Kennedy says, and something crackles between us: a promise, a hope that when we go to trial, those same words will not cross her lips.

ON MY SIXTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, Micah gives me the stomach flu.

It started last week with Violet, like most transmittable viruses that enter our household. Then Micah began throwing up. I told myself I did not have time to get sick, and thought I was safe until I bolted upright in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, and made a beeline for the bathroom.

I wake up with my cheek pressed against the tile floor, and Micah standing over me. “Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “All smug because you’ve already been through this.”

“It gets better,” Micah promises.

I moan. “Wonderful.”

“I was going to make you breakfast in bed, but instead I opted for ginger ale.”

“You’re a prince.” I push myself upright. The room spins.

“Whoa. Steady, girl.” Micah crouches beside me, helping me to my feet. Then he sweeps me into his arms and carries me into the bedroom.

“In any other circumstance,” I say, “this would be very romantic.”

Micah laughs. “Rain check.”

“I’m trying really hard not to vomit on you.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that,” he says gravely, and he crosses his arms. “Would you like to have a fight now about how you’re not going into the office? Or do you want to finish your ginger ale first?”

“You’re using my tactics against me. That’s the kind of either-or I offer Violet-”

“See, and you think I never listen.”

“I’m going to work,” I say, and I try to get on my feet, but I black out. When I blink a moment later, Micah’s face is inches from mine. “I’m not going to work,” I whisper.

“Good answer. I already called Ava. She’s going to come over and play nurse.”

I groan. “Can’t you just kill me instead? I don’t think I can handle my mother. She thinks a shot of bourbon cures everything.”

“I’ll lock the liquor cabinet. You need anything else?”

“My briefcase?” I beg.

Micah knows better than to say no to that. As he goes downstairs to retrieve it, I prop myself up on pillows. I have too much to do to not be working, but my body doesn’t seem to be cooperating.

I drift off in the few minutes it takes Micah to come back into the bedroom. He’s trying to gently put the briefcase on the floor so he doesn’t disturb me, but I reach for it, overestimating my strength. The contents of the leather folio spill all over the bed and onto the floor, and Micah crouches to pick them up. “Huh,” he says, holding up a piece of paper. “What are you doing with a lab report?”

It’s wrinkled, having slipped between files to get wedged at the bottom of my bag. I have to squint, and then a run of graphs comes into focus. It’s the newborn screening results that I subpoenaed from the Mercy-West Haven Hospital, the ones that had been missing from Davis Bauer’s file. They came in this week, and given my lack of understanding of chemistry, I barely glanced at the charts, figuring I’d show them to Ruth sometime after her mother’s funeral. “It’s just some routine test,” I say.

“Apparently not,” Micah replies. “There’s abnormality in the blood work.”

I grab it out of his hand. “How do you know that?”

“Because,” Micah says, pointing to the cover letter I didn’t bother to read, “it says here there’s abnormality in the blood work .”

I scour the letter, addressed to Dr. Marlise Atkins. “Could it be fatal?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“I study eyes, not enzymes.”

I look up at him. “What did you get me for our anniversary?”

“I was going to take you out to dinner,” Micah admits.

“Well,” I suggest, “take me to see a neonatologist instead.”

–

WHEN WE SAY, in America, that you have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers, we’re not exactly telling the truth. The pool of jurors is not as random as you’d think, thanks to careful scrutiny by the defense and the prosecution to eliminate both ends of the bell curve-the people most likely to vote against our clients’ best interests. We weed out the folks who believe that people are guilty until proven innocent, or who tell us they see dead people, or who hold grudges against the legal system because they were once arrested. But we also prune on a case-by-case basis. If my client is a draft dodger, I try to limit jurors who have proudly served. If my client is a drug addict, I don’t want a juror who lost a family member to an overdose. Everyone has prejudices. It’s my job to make sure that they work in favor of the person I’m representing.