Handle With Care Read online

  On the back of it, I had painted a pink heart and the words HANDLE WITH CARE. I pushed you out to the car and lifted you into your car seat, then folded the wheelchair into the back of the van. When I slid into the driver's seat and checked you in the rearview mirror, you were cradling your sore arm. 'Daddy,' you said, 'I don't want to go back there.'

  'I know, baby.'

  Suddenly I knew what I would do. I drove past our exit on the highway, to the Comfort Inn in Dover, and paid sixty-nine dollars for a room I had no plans to use. Strapped in your wheelchair, I pushed you to the indoor pool.

  It was empty on a Tuesday morning. The room smelled heavily of chlorine, and there were six chaise lounges in various states of disrepair scattered around. A skylight was responsible for the dance of diamonds on the surface of the water. A stack of green and white striped towels sat on a bench beneath a sign: SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  'Wills,' I said, 'you and I are going swimming.'

  You looked at me. 'Mom said I can't, until my shoulder--'

  'Mom isn't here to find out, is she?'

  A smile bloomed on your face. 'What about our bathing suits?'

  'Well, that's part of the plan. If we stop off home to get our suits, Mom'll know something's up, won't she?' I stripped off my T-shirt and sneakers, and stood before you in a pair of faded cargo shorts. 'I'm good to go.'

  You laughed and tried to get your shirt over your head, but you couldn't lift your arm high enough. I helped, and then shimmied your shorts down your legs so that you were sitting in the wheelchair in your underpants. They said THURSDAY on the front, although it was Tuesday. On the butt was a yellow smiley face.

  After four months in the spica cast, your legs were thin and white, too reedy to support you. But I held you under the armpits as you walked toward the water and then sat you down on the steps. From a supply bin against the far wall, I took a kid's life jacket and zipped it onto you. I carried you in my arms to the middle of the pool.

  'Fish can swim at sixty-eight miles an hour,' you said, clutching at my shoulders.

  'Impressive.'

  'The most common name for a goldfish is Jaws.' You wrapped your arm around my neck in a death grip. 'A can of Diet Coke floats in a pool. Regular Coke sinks . . .'

  'Willow?' I said. 'I know you're nervous. But if you don't close your mouth, a lot of water's going to go into it.' And I let go.

  Predictably, you panicked. Your arms and legs started pinwheeling, and the combined force flipped you onto your back, where you splashed and stared up at the ceiling. 'Daddy! Daddy! I'm drowning!'

  'You're not drowning.' I lifted you upright. 'It's all about those stomach muscles. The ones you didn't want to work on today at therapy. Think about moving slowly and staying upright.' More gently this time, I released you.

  You bobbled, your mouth sinking under the water. Immediately, I lunged for you, but you righted yourself. 'I can do it,' you said, maybe to me and maybe to yourself. You moved one arm through the water, and then the other, compensating for the shoulder that was still healing. You bicycled your legs. And incrementally, you came closer to me. 'Daddy!' you shouted, although I was only two feet away. 'Daddy! Look at me!'

  I watched you moving forward, inch by inch. 'Look at you,' I said, as you paddled under the weight of your own conviction. 'Look at you.'

  'Sean,' Charlotte said that night, when I thought she might have already fallen asleep beside me, 'Marin Gates called today.'

  I was on my side, staring at the wall. I knew why the lawyer had phoned Charlotte: because I hadn't answered the six messages she'd left on my cell, asking me whether I had returned the signed papers agreeing to file a wrongful birth lawsuit - or if they'd somehow gotten lost in the mail.

  I knew exactly where those papers were: inside the glove compartment of my car, where I'd shoved them after Charlotte handed them to me a month ago. 'I'll get around to it,' I said.

  Her hand lighted on my shoulder. 'Sean--'

  I rolled onto my back. 'You remember Ed Gatwick?' I asked.

  'Ed?'

  'Yeah. Guy I graduated from the academy with? He was on the job in Nashua. Responded to a call last week about suspicious activity at a residence, made by a neighbor. He told his partner he had a bad feeling about it, but he went inside, just in time for the meth lab in the kitchen to blow up in his face.'

  'How awful--'

  'My point being,' I interrupted, 'that you should always listen to your gut.'

  'I am,' Charlotte said. 'I did. You heard what Marin said. Most of these cases settle out of court anyway. It's money. Money that we could put to good use for Willow.'

  'Yeah, and Piper becomes the sacrificial lamb.'

  Charlotte got quiet. 'She has malpractice insurance.'

  'I don't think that protects her against backstabbing by her best friend.'

  She drew the sheet around her, sitting up in bed. 'She would do it if it was her daughter.'

  I stared at her. 'I don't think she would. I don't think most people would.'

  'Well, I don't care what other people think. Willow's opinion is the only one that counts,' Charlotte said.

  That, I realized, was the reason that I hadn't signed those damn papers. Like Charlotte, I was only thinking of you. I was thinking of the moment you realized that I wasn't a knight in shining armor. I knew it would happen eventually - that's what growing up is all about. But I didn't want to rush it. I wanted to be your champion for as long as I could keep you believing in me.

  'If Willow's opinion is the only one that counts,' I said, 'how are you going to explain to her what you're doing? I mean, you want to lie on the witness stand - say you would have aborted her - that's up to you. But to Willow, it might sound a hell of a lot like the truth.'

  Tears sprang to Charlotte's eyes. 'She's smart. She'll understand that it doesn't matter what it looks like on the surface. She'll know deep down that I love her.'

  It was a catch-22. My refusal to sign those papers didn't mean Charlotte wouldn't try to proceed without me. If I refused to sign those papers, the rift between the two of us would hurt you, too. But what if Charlotte's prediction came true - that the money we'd get as a payout would go a long way toward justifying whatever wrong we'd done to get it? What if this lawsuit made it possible for you to have any adaptive aid you needed, any therapy not covered by insurance?

  If I really wanted what was best for you, how could I sign those papers?

  How could I not ?

  Suddenly, I wanted to make Charlotte see how this was tearing me up inside. I wanted her to feel the same sick knot that I felt every time I opened up my glove compartment and saw that envelope. It was like Pandora's box - she had opened it, and what had flown out but a solution to a problem we never imagined could be solved. Closing the lid now wouldn't change anything; we couldn't unlearn what we now knew to be possible.

  I guess, if I was being honest, I wanted to punish her for putting me into this situation, where there was no black and white but a thousand shades of gray.

  She was surprised when I grabbed her and kissed her. She backed away at first, looking at me, and then leaned into my body, trusting me to take her down a dizzy road where I'd taken her a thousand times before. 'I love you,' I said. 'Do you believe that?'

  Charlotte nodded, and as soon as she did, I tightened my fingers in her hair, forcing her head back and pinning her to the mattress. 'Sean, you're crushing me,' she whispered, and I covered her mouth with one hand and roughly ripped aside her pajama bottoms with the other. I forced my way inside her, even as she fought against me, even as I watched her back arch with surprise and maybe pain, even as her eyes filled with tears. 'Doesn't matter what it looks like on the surface,' I whispered, her own words striking her like a whip. 'You know deep down that I love you.'

  I had started this wanting to make Charlotte feel like crap, but somehow, I wound up feeling like crap myself. So I rolled off her, yanking up my boxers. Charlotte turned away, curling into a ball. 'You bastard,' she s