Handle With Care Read online

  I figured there was one seminal moment when a woman realized what it meant to be a mother. For my birth mom, maybe it was when she passed me to a nurse and said good-bye. For the mother who'd raised me, it was when she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me that I had been adopted. For your mother, it was making the decision to file this lawsuit in spite of the public and private backlash. Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.

  'I wanted another baby so much,' Charlotte said quietly. 'I wanted to experience that, with Sean. I wanted us to take her to the park and push her on the swings. I wanted to bake cookies with her and go to her school plays. I wanted to teach her how to ride a horse and water-ski. I wanted her to take care of me when I got old,' she said, looking up at me. 'Not the other way around.'

  I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I didn't want to believe that a person who had brought a baby into this world would quit so easily when the going got tough. 'I think most parents know there's going to be some bad to go with the good,' I said evenly.

  'I wasn't naive - I already had a daughter. I knew I'd take care of Willow when she was hurt. I knew I'd have to get up in the middle of the night when she had nightmares. But I didn't know she was going to be hurt for weeks at a time, for years at a time. I didn't know I'd be up with her every night. I didn't know that she would never get better.'

  I looked down, pretending to straighten some papers. What if the reason my mother had given me away was that I didn't measure up to what she had hoped for? 'What about Willow?' I said, bluntly playing devil's advocate. 'She's a smart kid. How do you think she'll handle her mother saying she should never have been born?'

  Charlotte flinched. 'She knows that's not the truth,' she said. 'I could never imagine my life without her in it.'

  A red flag went up in my mind. 'Stop right there. Don't say that. You can't even hint at it. If you file this lawsuit, Mrs O'Keefe, you have to be able to swear - under oath - that if you'd known about your daughter's illness earlier, if you'd been given the choice, you would have terminated the pregnancy.' I waited until her gaze met mine. 'Is that going to be a problem?'

  Her eyes slid away, focusing on something outside my window. 'Can you miss a person you've never known?'

  There was a knock at the door, and the receptionist popped her head in. 'Sorry to interrupt, Marin,' Briony said, 'but your eleven o'clock is here.'

  'Eleven?' Charlotte said, jumping to her feet. 'I'm late. Willow's going to panic.' She grabbed her purse, slung it over her shoulder, and hurried out of my office.

  'I'll be in touch,' I called after her.

  It wasn't until that afternoon, when I began to think about what Charlotte O'Keefe had said to me, that I realized she'd answered my question about abortion with another question.

  Sean

  A

  t ten o'clock on Saturday night, it became clear to me that I was going to hell.

  Saturday nights were the ones that made you remember every sleepy picture-postcard New England town had a split personality, that the healthy, smiling guys you saw featured in Yankee magazine might pass out drunk at the local bar. On Saturday nights, lonely kids tried to hang themselves from the closet racks in their dorm rooms and high school girls got raped by college boys.

  Saturday nights were also when you'd catch someone bobbing and weaving so bad in a car that it was only a matter of time before the drunk rammed into someone else. Tonight I was pulled over behind a bank parking lot when a white Camry crawled by, practically on the dotted yellow line. I flicked on my blues and followed the driver, waiting for the car to pull onto the shoulder.

  I stepped out and approached the driver's window. 'Good evening,' I said, 'do you know why--' But before I could finish asking the driver to tell me why he thought I'd pulled him over, the window rolled down and I found myself staring at our priest.

  'Oh, Sean, it's you,' Father Grady said. He had a shock of white hair that Amelia called his Einstein-do, and he was wearing his clerical collar. His eyes were glassy and bright.

  I hesitated. 'Father, I'm going to have to see your license and registration . . .'

  'Not a problem,' the priest said, digging in his glove compartment. 'You're just doing your job.' I watched him fumble, dropping his license three times before he managed to hand it to me. I glanced inside the car but didn't see any bottles or cans.

  'Father, you were all over the road there.'

  'Was I?'

  I could smell alcohol on his breath. 'You have any drinks tonight, Father?'

  'Can't say that I have . . .'

  Priests couldn't lie, could they? 'You mind stepping out of the car for me?'

  'Sure, Sean.' He stumbled out of the door and leaned against the hood of his Camry, his hands in his pockets. 'Haven't seen your family at Mass lately . . .'

  'Father, do you wear contact lenses?'

  'No . . .'

  This was the beginning of the test for horizontal gaze nystagmus, an involuntary jerking of the eyeball that could suggest drunkenness. 'I'm just going to ask you to follow this light,' I said, taking a penlight out of my pocket and holding it several inches away from his face, a bit above eye level. 'Follow it only with your eyes - keep your head still,' I added. 'Understand?'

  Father Grady nodded. I checked his equal pupil size and tracking as he followed the beam, marking down a lack of smooth pursuit, and an end-point nystagmus as I moved the beam toward his left ear.

  'Thanks, Father. Now, can you stand on your right foot for me, like this?' I demonstrated, and he lifted his left foot. He wobbled but stayed upright. 'Now the left,' I said, and this time, he pitched forward.

  'Okay, Father, one last thing - can you walk for me, heel to toe?' I showed him how and then watched him trip over his own feet.

  Bankton was so tiny we didn't ride with partners. I could have probably let Father Grady go; no one would have been the wiser, and maybe he'd even put a good word in to heaven for me. But letting him go also meant I would be lying to myself - and surely that was just as grievous a sin. Who might be driving on the roads that led to his house . . . a teenager, coming home from a date? A dad flying back from a business trip out of town? A mom with a sick kid, headed to the hospital? It wasn't Father Grady I was trying to rescue, it was the people he might hurt in his condition.

  'I hate to do this, Father, but I'm going to have to arrest you for driving under the influence.' I Mirandized him and gently led the priest into the back of the cruiser.

  'What about my car?'

  'It'll be towed. You can get it tomorrow,' I said.

  'But tomorrow's Sunday!'

  We were only about a half mile from the station, which was a blessing, because I didn't think I could stand to make small talk with my priest after I'd arrested him. At the station, I went through the rigmarole of implied consent and told Father Grady I wanted him to take a Breathalyzer test. 'You have the right to have a similar test or tests done by a person of your choosing,' I said. 'You'll be given the opportunity to request this additional test, if you want. If you do not permit a test at the direction of the law enforcement officer, you may lose your license for a period of one hundred and eighty days, not concurrent with any loss of license if found guilty of the charge of DUI.'

  'No, Seanie, I trust you,' Father Grady said.

  It didn't surprise me when he blew a .15.

  Since my shift was ending, I offered to take him back home. The road snaked in front of me as I passed the church and drove up a hill to the little white house that served as the rectory. I parked in the driveway and helped him walk a relatively straight line to the door. 'I was at a wake tonight,' he said, turning his key in the lock.

  'Father,' I sighed. 'You don't have to explain.'

  'It was a boy - only twenty-six. Motorcycle accident last Tuesday, you probably know all about it. I knew I'd be driving home. But there was the mother, sobbing her heart out, and the brothers, completely shattered - and I wanted to l