My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  “All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off today in the office. But . . . it was an emergency.”

  She stares at me. “What did you say the dog’s for?”

  “I didn’t.” When she turns, Judge and I follow her deeper into the apartment, closing the door behind us. “So I went to see Anna Fitzgerald. You were right—before I took out a restraining order against her mother, I needed to talk to her.”

  “And?”

  I think back to the two of us, sitting on that striped couch, stretching a web of trust between us. “I think we’re on the same page.” Julia doesn’t respond, just picks up a glass of white wine on the kitchen counter. “Why yes, I’d love some,” I say.

  She shrugs. “It’s in Smilla.”

  The fridge, of course. For its sense of snow. When I walk there and take out the bottle, I can feel her trying not to smile. “You forget that I know you.”

  “Knew,” she corrects.

  “Then educate me. What have you been doing for fifteen years?” I nod down the hallway toward Izzy’s room. “I mean, other than cloning yourself.” A thought occurs to me, and before I can even voice it Julia answers.

  “My brothers all became builders and chefs and plumbers. My parents wanted their girls to go to college, and figured attending Wheeler senior year might stack the odds. I had good enough grades to get a partial scholarship there; Izzy didn’t. My parents could only afford to send one of us to private school.”

  “Did she go to college?”

  “RISD,” Julia says. “She’s a jewelry designer.”

  “A hostile jewelry designer.”

  “Having your heart broken can do that.” Our eyes meet, and Julia realizes what she’s said. “She just moved in today.”

  My eyes canvass the apartment, looking for a hockey stick, a Sports Illustrated magazine, a La-Z-Boy chair, anything telltale and male. “Is it hard getting used to a roommate?”

  “I was living alone before, Campbell, if that’s what you’re asking.” She looks at me over the edge of her wine glass. “How about you?”

  “I have six wives, fifteen children, and an assortment of sheep.”

  Her lips curve. “People like you always make me feel like I’m underachieving.”

  “Oh yeah, you’re a real waste of space on the planet. Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law, a bleeding heart guardian ad litem—”

  “How’d you know where I went to law school?”

  “Judge DeSalvo,” I lie, and she buys it.

  I wonder if Julia feels like it has been moments, not years, since we’ve been together. If sitting at this counter with me feels as effortless for her as it does for me. It’s like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music and starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you’d once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.

  “I didn’t think you’d become a guardian ad litem,” I admit.

  “Neither did I.” Julia smiles. “I still have moments where I fantasize about standing on a soapbox in Boston Common, railing against a patriarchal society. Unfortunately, you can’t pay a landlord in dogma.” She glances at me. “Of course, I also mistakenly believed you’d be President of the United States by now.”

  “I inhaled,” I confess. “Had to set my sights a little lower. And you—well, actually, I figured you’d be living in the suburbs, doing the soccer mom thing with a bunch of kids and some lucky guy.”

  Julia shakes her head. “I think you’re confusing me with Muffy or Bitsie or Toto or whatever the hell the names of the girls in Wheeler were.”

  “No. I just thought that . . . that I might be the guy.”

  There is a thick, viscous silence. “You didn’t want to be that guy,” Julia says finally. “You made that pretty clear.”

  That’s not true, I want to argue. But how else would it look to her, when afterward, I wanted nothing to do with her. When, afterward, I acted just like everyone else. “Do you remember—” I begin.

  “I remember everything, Campbell,” she interrupts. “If I didn’t, this wouldn’t be so hard.”

  My pulse jumps so high that Judge gets to his feet and pushes his snout into my hip, alarmed. I had believed back then that nothing could hurt Julia, who seemed to be so free. I had hoped that I could be as lucky.

  I was mistaken on both counts.

  ANNA

  IN OUR LIVING ROOM we have a whole shelf devoted to the visual history of our family. Everyone’s baby pictures are there, and some school head shots, and then various photos from vacations and birthdays and holidays. They make me think of notches on a belt or scratches on a prison wall—proof that time’s passed, that we haven’t all just been swimming in limbo.

  There are double frames, singles, 8 x 10s, 4 x 6s. They are made of blond wood and inlaid wood and one very fancy glass mosaic. I pick up one of Jesse—he’s about two, in a cowboy costume. Looking at it, you’d never know what was coming down the pike.

  There is Kate with hair and Kate all bald; one of Kate as a baby sitting on Jesse’s lap; one of my mother holding each of them on the edge of a pool. There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop.

  Maybe it’s because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of life. Maybe it’s because they forgot.

  It’s nobody’s fault, and it’s not a big deal, but it’s a little depressing all the same. A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.

  • • •

  My father calls at eleven o’clock to ask if I want him to come get me. “Mom’s going to stay at the hospital,” he explains. “But if you don’t want to be alone in the house, you can sleep at the station.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I tell him. “I can always get Jesse if I need something.”

  “Right,” my father says. “Jesse.” We both pretend that this is a reliable backup plan.

  “How’s Kate?” I ask.

  “Still pretty out of it. They’ve got her drugged up.” I hear him drag in a breath. “You know, Anna,” he begins, but then there is a shrill bell in the background. “Honey, I’ve got to go.” He leaves me with an earful of dead air.

  For a second I just hold the phone, picturing my dad stepping into his boots and pulling up the puddle of pants by their suspenders. I imagine the door of the station yawning like Aladdin’s cave, and the engine screaming out, my father in the front passenger seat. Every time he goes to work, he has to put out fires.

  It’s just the encouragement I need. Grabbing a sweater, I leave the house and head for the garage.

  • • •

  There was this kid in my school, Jimmy Stredboe, who used to be a total loser. He got zits on top of his zits; he had a pet rat named Orphan Annie; and once in science class he puked into the fish tank. No one ever talked to him, in case dorkhood was contagious. But then one summer he was diagnosed with MS. After that, no one was mean to Jimmy anymore. If you passed him in the hall, you smiled. If he sat next to you at the lunch table, you nodded hello. It was as if being a walking tragedy canceled out ever having been a geek.

  From the moment I was born, I have been the girl with the sick sister. All my life bank tellers have given me extra lollipops; principals have known me by name. No one is ever outright mean to me.

  It makes me wonder how I’d be treated if I were like everyone else. Maybe I’m a pretty rotten person, not that anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I’m rude or ugly or stupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.

  It makes me wonder if what I’m doing now is just my true nature.

  • • •

  The headlights of another car bounce off the rearview mirror, lighting up like green goggles around Jesse’s eyes. He drives with one wrist on the wheel, lazy. He needs a haircut, in a big way