The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  24 SAM

  If you look real carefully, you can see the scars on my eyes. I was born cross-eyed, and the first operation was done when I was so young I cannot remember. Medically speaking, the procedure involved tightening up the slack muscles that let my eye wander. Invisible stitches, I guess. There’s hardly anything there now, twenty-four years later, except a thin line of film in each eye, like a yellow eyelash. You can see this when I look out the corner of my eye.

  Until I had the second operation I wore thick Coke-bottle glasses; round ones that made me look something like a bullfrog or a lawyer. I did not have many friends, and during recess I’d sit alone behind the swings and eat the sandwich my mother had packed in my lunch box. Sometimes the other kids came up, called me four-eyes or crossed their eyes to make fun of me. If I came home from school crying, my mother would bury my face in her apron—it smelled of fresh flour—and tell me how handsome I was. I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t. I took to looking down at my shoes.

  My teachers began to say I was shy, and they called up my mother, concerned. One day my parents told me I was going to have an operation. I would stay in a hospital, and I would have patches on my eyes for a while, and when it was all over my eyes would look just like everyone else’s. Like I said, I do not remember my first operation, but the second is very clear. I was scared it would change the way I’d see things. I wondered if when the bandages were removed, I would look the way I thought I looked. If the colors I saw would be the same.

  The day after the operation I heard my mother’s voice at the foot of the bed. “Sam, honey, how do you feel?”

  My father touched my shoulder and handed me a wrapped package. “See if you can tell what it is.” I ripped off the paper and ran my hands along the soft leather folds of a soccer ball. Best of all—I knew exactly what it would look like.

  I asked to hold the soccer ball when my bandages were removed. The doctor smelled like aftershave and told me what he was doing every step of the way. Finally he told me to open my eyes.

  When I did, everything was fuzzy, but I could make out the black and white boxes of the soccer ball. Black was still black and white was still white. As I blinked, everything started to come clear-clearer than it was before the operation, in fact. I smiled when I saw my mother. “It’s you,” I said, and she laughed.

  “Who did you expect?” she asked.

  Sometimes when I look in the mirror now I still see my eyes crossed. I’ve dated ladies who tell me how nice my eyes are: the most unusual color, reminds them of the fog in summer, things like that. I let the words roll right off my back. I’m no more handsome than the next guy, really. In a lot of ways I’m still four-eyes, eating lunch behind the swings at school.

  My mother burned all the photos she had of me with my eyes crossed. Said we didn’t need a reminder of that around the house, now that I had the operation. So at this point all I have left is this faulty perception, from time to time, and the scars. I also have that soccer ball. I keep it in my closet, because I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you should ever get rid of.

  25 JANE

  Oliver is the only man who has ever made love to me. I know, I grew up during the generation of sex and drugs and peace, but I was never like that. I’d met Oliver when I was fifteen, and dated him until we were married. We built up a repertoire over the years, but we always stopped at a critical point. I talked about sex with my friends and pretended I had done it. Since no one ever corrected me, I assumed I was saying the right things.

  As for Oliver, he did not really pressure me. I assumed he had slept with other women, like all the other guys I had known, but he never asked me to do anything I didn’t want to. The perfect gentleman, I told my friends. We would sit for hours on the docks downtown in Boston, and all we’d do is hold hands. He would kiss me goodnight, but perfunctorily, as if he were holding back much more.

  My best friend in college, a girl named Ellen, told me in excruciating detail about all the sexual positions she and her boyfriend Roger had mastered in the cramped quarters of a VW bug. She’d come into class early and stretch her legs out in front of her seat, complaining how tight the muscles in her calves were. I had been dating Oliver for five years, and we never came close to the unbridled passion Ellen discussed as casually as she talked about her pantyhose size. I began to think it was me.

  One night when Oliver and I went to a movie, I asked if we could sit in the back row. The movie was The Way We Were. As soon as the opening credits rolled on the screen, I handed Oliver the popcorn and began to trace my thumb along the inseam of his jeans. I thought, if that doesn’t get him excited, what will? But Oliver took my hand and clasped it between his own.

  I tried once more during the movie. I took a deep breath and started to kiss Oliver’s neck, the edge of his ear. I did all the things I had heard Ellen talk about that I thought might work in a public theater. I unbuttoned a middle button of Oliver’s oxford shirt, and slipped my hand inside. I rubbed my palm over his smooth, olive chest, his strong shoulders. The entire time, mind you, I was staring at the movie screen like I was really watching.

  Oh, Oliver was gorgeous. He had thick blond hair and a smile that ruined me. His pale eyes gave him the air of being somewhere else. I wanted him to really see me, to stake a claim.

  During the scene where Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand take a walk on the beach and discuss names for the baby, Oliver grabbed my hand and withdrew it from his shirt. He buttoned himself up again and gave me a sidelong look. He pulled me out of the theater.

  Oliver didn’t look at me. He waited for the popcorn attendant to turn the other way. When she did, he slipped up the stairs to the balcony, which was closed for the night.

  The balcony was empty and cordoned off with golden silk ties. Oliver pressed against me from behind. He had removed his shirt and was silhouetted against the satin wall of the theater. “Do you know what you do to me?” Oliver said.

  He unbuttoned my cotton blouse and ripped the zipper of my jeans. When I was standing before him in my bra and panties, he took a step back, and just looked. I began to worry about the people below us, if they would turn around and see this show instead. And like he could read my mind (which I think he could do back then), Oliver pulled me down to sit on his lap.

  We sat on the aisle seat in the back, me straddling him and blindly facing the projection booth; him glassy-eyed, facing the movie. He lowered my bra straps from my shoulders and held my breasts in his hands, like a scale. He held them very lightly, like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. He let my bra fall to my waist and then he unbuttoned the fly of his jeans. With some acrobatics, we pushed his pants down around his ankles, and I didn’t even have to stand up. In the background I heard the characters talking.

  “Do you love me?” I whispered into his neck, unsure if he would hear.

  Oliver looked at me, absolutely looked at me, the first time I was sure I had one hundred percent of his attention. “Actually,” he answered, “I think I do.”

  I started to do the things that Ellen told me about, pressing against him and rocking my hips slowly, then faster. I felt the crotch of my panties becoming damp. The tip of Oliver’s penis peeked through the fly of his boxers, swollen pink. Gingerly, I brushed it with my index finger. It jumped.

  When Oliver touched me I thought I would faint. The back of the chair in front of us supported me, otherwise I am sure I would have fallen. He pulled aside the crotch of my underwear and then with his free hand pushed himself through his shorts. I was riveted; I watched this pulsing, knotted arrow and completely forgot that it was attached to Oliver. I watched the entire time while Oliver positioned himself and then lifted my hips and in an awful siren of pain I saw him disappear inside of me. Ellen did not tell me that this would hurt. I didn’t scream, though, or cry, because of all the people below. I kept my eyes wide and stared at the satin curtain of the back wall. Only then did Oliver say, “Have you ever done this?”

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