The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “We know Jesus was baptized because—”

  “Because it’s in the Bible?” Shay laughed. “Someone wrote the Bible, and it wasn’t God. Just like someone wrote the Quran, and the Talmud. And he must have made decisions about what went in and what didn’t. It’s like when you write a letter, and you put in all the stuff you did during vacation but you leave out the part where your wallet got stolen and you got food poisoning.”

  “Do you really need to know if Jesus got food poisoning?” I asked.

  “You’re missing the point. You can’t take Matthew 26:39 or Luke 500:43 or whatever and read it as fact.”

  “See, Shay, that’s where you’re wrong. I can take Matthew 26:39 and know it’s the word of God. Or Luke 500:43, if it went up that high.”

  By now, other inmates on the pod were eavesdropping. Some of them—like Joey Kunz, who was Greek Orthodox, and Pogie, who was Southern Baptist—liked to listen when I visited Shay and read scripture; a few of them had even asked if I’d stop by and pray with them when I came in to see Shay. “Shut your piehole, Bourne,” Pogie yelled out. “You’re going to hell as soon as they push that needle in your arm.”

  “I’m not saying I’m right,” Shay said, his voice escalating. “I’m just saying that if you’re right, it still doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “Shay,” I said, “you have to stop shouting, or they’re going to ask me to leave.”

  He walked toward me, flattening his hands on the other side of the steel mesh door. “What if it didn’t matter if you were a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist or a Wiccan or a . . . a transcendentalist? What if all those roads led to the same place?”

  “Religion brings people together,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. You can track every polarizing issue in this country to religion. Stem cell research, the war in Iraq, the right to die, gay marriage, abortion, evolution, even the death penalty—what’s the fault line? That Bible of yours.” Shay shrugged. “You really think Jesus would be happy with the way the world’s turned out?”

  I thought of suicide bombers, of the radicals who stormed into Planned Parenthood clinics. I thought of the news footage of the Middle East. “I think God would be horrified by some of the things that are done in His name,” I admitted. “I think there are places His message has been distorted. Which is why I think it’s even more important to spread the one He meant to give.”

  Shay pushed away from the cell door. “You look at a guy like Calloway—”

  “Fuck you, Bourne,” Reece called out. “I don’t want to be part of your speech. I don’t even want your filthy-ass mouth speaking my name—”

  “—an AB guy, who burned down a temple—”

  “You’re dead, Bourne,” Reece said. “D-E-A-D.”

  “—or the CO who walks you to the shower and knows he can’t look you in the eye, because if his life had gone just a little different, he might be the one wearing the cuffs. Or the politicians who think that they can take someone they don’t really want in society anymore and lock him away—”

  At this, the other inmates began to cheer. Texas and Pogie picked up their dinner trays and began to bang them against the steel doors of their cells. On the intercom, an officer’s voice rang through. “What’s going on in there?”

  Shay was standing at the front of his house now, preaching to his congregation, disconnected from linear thought and everything but his moment of grandstanding. “And the ones who are really monsters, the ones they don’t ever want walking around near their wives and children again—the ones like me—well, those they get to dispose of. Because it’s easier than admitting there isn’t much difference between them and me.”

  There were catcalls; there were cheers. Shay backed up as if he were on a stage, bent at the waist, bowed. Then he came back for his encore.

  “The joke’s on them. One little hypodermic won’t be enough. Split a piece of wood, and they’ll find me. Lift up a stone, and they’ll find me. Look in the mirror, and they’ll find me.” Shay gazed squarely at me. “If you really want to know what makes someone a killer,” he said, “ask yourself what would make you do it.”

  My hands tightened on the Bible I always brought when I came to visit Shay. As it turned out, Shay wasn’t railing about nothing. He wasn’t disconnected from reality.

  That would have been me.

  Because, as Shay was suggesting, we weren’t as different as I would have liked to think. We were both murderers.

  The only distinction was that the death I’d caused had yet to happen.

  Maggie

  That week, when I showed up at the ChutZpah for lunch with my mother, she was too busy to see me. “Maggie,” she said when I was standing at the threshold of her office door. “What are you doing here?”

  It was the same day, the same time, we met for our habitual lunch—the same lunch I never wanted to go to. But today, I was actually looking forward to zoning out while my cuticles were being cut and shaped. Ever since Father Michael had barreled into my office talking about a meeting between Shay and June Nealon, I’d been doubting myself and my intentions. By trying to make it possible for Shay to donate his heart, was I carrying out what was in his best interests, or my own? Sure, it would be a media boon for the anti–death penalty movement if Shay’s last act on earth was as selfless as organ donation . . . but wasn’t it morally wrong to try to legally hasten a man’s execution, even if it was what he’d asked for? After three sleepless nights, all I wanted was to close my eyes, soak my hands in warm water, and think of anything but Shay Bourne.

  My mother was wearing a cream-colored skirt so tiny it might as well have come from the American Girl doll store, and her hair was twisted up in a chignon. “I have an investor coming in,” she said. “Remember?”

  What I remembered was her vague mention of adding another wing to the ChutZpah. And that there was some very rich lady from Woodbury, New York, who wanted to talk about financing it.

  “You never told me it was going to be today,” I said, and I sank down in one of the chairs opposite her desk.

  “You’re crushing the pillows,” my mother said. “And I did tell you. I called you at work, and you were typing, like you always do when I call even though you think I can’t hear it in the background. And I told you I had to postpone lunch till Thursday, and you yessed me and said you were really busy, and did I have to call you at work?”

  My face flushed. “I don’t type while I’m on the phone with you.”

  Okay, I do. But it’s my mother. And she calls for the most ridiculous reasons: Is it okay if she makes Chanukah dinner on Saturday, December 16, never mind that it’s currently March? Do I remember the name of the librarian in my elementary school, because she thinks she ran into her at the grocery store? In other words, my mother phones for reasons that are completely trivial compared to writing up a brief to save the life of a man who’s going to be executed.

  “You know, Maggie, I realize that nothing I do here could possibly be as important as what you do, but it does hurt me to know that you don’t even listen when I talk to you.” Her eyes were tearing up. “I can’t believe you came here to upset me before I have to sit down with Alicia Goldman-Hirsch.”

  “I didn’t come here to upset you! I came here because I always come here the second Tuesday of every month! You can’t blame me because of a stupid phone conversation we probably had six months ago!”

  “A stupid phone conversation,” my mother said quietly. “Well, it’s good to know what you really think of our relationship, Maggie.”

  I held up my hands. “I can’t win here,” I said. “I hope your meeting goes well.” Then I stormed out of her office, past the white secretary’s desk with the white computer and the nearly albino receptionist, all the way to my car in the parking lot, where I tried to tell myself that the reason I was crying had nothing to do with the fact that even when I wasn’t trying, all I did was let people down.

  * * *

  I found my father i