My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  “It’s only a little stick,” the doctor promises, exactly the wrong words, and Anna starts thrashing. Her arms clip me in the face, the belly. Brian cannot grab hold of her. Over her screams, he yells at me. “I thought you told her!”

  The doctor, who’s left the room without me even noticing, returns with several nurses in tow. “Kids and phlebotomy never mix well,” she says, as the nurses slide Anna off my lap and soothe her with their soft hands and softer words. “Don’t worry; we’re pros.”

  It is a déjà vu, just like the day Kate was diagnosed. Be careful what you wish for, I think. Anna is just like her sister.

  • • •

  I’m vacuuming the girls’ room when the handle of the Electrolux smacks Hercules’ bowl and sends the fish flying. No glass breaks, but it takes me a moment to find him, thrashing himself dry on the carpet beneath Kate’s desk.

  “Hang on, buddy,” I whisper, and I flip him into the bowl. I fill it with water from the bathroom sink.

  He floats to the top. Don’t, I think. Please.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed. How can I possibly tell Kate I’ve killed her fish? Will she notice if I run to the pet store and get a replacement?

  Suddenly Anna is next to me, home from morning kindergarten. “Mommy? How come Hercules isn’t moving?”

  I open my mouth, a confession melting on my tongue. But at that moment the goldfish shudders sideways, dives, and starts to swim again. “There,” I say. “He’s fine.”

  • • •

  When five thousand lymphocytes don’t seem to be enough, Dr. Chance calls for ten thousand. Anna’s appointment for a second donor lymphocyte draw falls in the middle of the gymnastics birthday party of a girl in her class. I agree to let her go for a little while, and then drive to the hospital from the gym.

  The girl is a sugar-spun princess with fairy-white hair, a tiny replica of her mother. As I slip off my shoes to trek across the padded floor, I try desperately to remember their names. The child is . . . Mallory. And the mother is . . . Monica? Margaret?

  I spot Anna right away, sitting on the trampoline as an instructor bounces them up and down like popcorn. The mother comes over to me, a smile strung on her face like a row of Christmas lights. “You must be Anna’s mom. I’m Mittie,” she says. “I’m so sorry she has to leave, but of course, we understand. It must be amazing, going somewhere no one else ever gets to go.”

  The hospital? “Well, just hope you never have to do the same.”

  “Oh, I know. I get dizzy going up an elevator.” She turns to the trampoline. “Anna, honey! Your mother’s here!”

  Anna barrels across the padded floor. This is exactly what I’d wanted to do to my living room when the kids were all small: cushion the walls and floor and ceiling for protection. And yet it turned out that I could have rolled Kate in bubble wrap, the danger for her was already under the skin.

  “What do you say?” I prompt, and Anna thanks Mallory’s mother.

  “Oh, you’re welcome.” She hands Anna a small bag of treats. “Now, have your husband call us anytime. We’d be happy to take Anna while you’re in Texas.”

  Anna hesitates in the middle of a shoelace knot. “Mittie?” I ask, “what exactly did Anna tell you?”

  “That she had to leave early so your whole family could take you to the airport. Because once training starts in Houston, you won’t see them until after the flight.”

  “The flight?”

  “On the space shuttle . . .?”

  For a moment I am stunned—that Anna would make up such a ridiculous story, that this woman would believe it. “I’m not an astronaut,” I confess. “I don’t know why Anna would even say something like that.”

  I pull Anna to her feet, one shoelace still untied. Dragging her out of the gymnasium, we reach the car before I say a word. “Why did you lie to her?”

  Anna scowls. “Why did I have to leave the party?”

  Because your sister is more important than cake and ice cream; because I cannot do this for her; because I said so.

  I’m so angry that I have to try twice before I can unlock the van. “Stop acting like a five-year-old,” I accuse, and then I remember that’s exactly what she is.

  • • •

  “It was so hot,” Brian says, “a silver tea set melted. Pencils were bent in half.”

  I look up from the newspaper. “How did it start?”

  “Cat and dog chasing each other, when the owners were on vacation. They turned on a Jenn-Air range.” He peels his jeans down, winces. “I got second-degree burns just kneeling on the roof.”

  His skin is raw, blistered. I watch him apply Neosporin and gauze. He keeps talking, telling me something about a rookie nicknamed Caesar who just joined their company. But my eyes are drawn to the advice column in the newspaper:

  Dear Abby,

  Every time my mother-in-law visits, she insists on cleaning out the refrigerator. My husband says she’s just trying to help, but it makes me feel like I’m being judged. She’s made my life a wreck. How do I make this woman stop without ruining my marriage?

  Sincerely,

  Past My Expiration Date,

  Seattle

  What sort of woman considers this to be her biggest problem? I picture her scrawling out a note to Dear Abby on linen-blend stationery. I wonder if she’s ever felt a baby turn inside her, tiny hands and feet walking in slow circles, as if the inside of a mother is a place to be carefully mapped.

  “What are you glued to?” Brian asks, coming to read the column over my shoulder.

  I shake my head in disbelief. “A woman whose life is being ruined by rings from jelly jars.”

  “Cream gone bad,” Brian adds, chuckling.

  “Slimy lettuce. Oh my God, how can she stand to be alive?” We both start laughing then. Contagious, all we have to do is look at each other to laugh even harder.

  And then just as suddenly as all this was funny, it isn’t anymore. Not all of us live in a world where our refrigerator contents are the barometer for our personal happiness. Some of us work in buildings that are burning down around us. Some of us have little girls who are dying. “Slimy fucking lettuce,” I say, my voice hitching. “It’s not fair.”

  Brian is across the room in an instant; he folds me into his embrace. “It never is, baby,” he answers.

  • • •

  One month later, we go back for a third lymphocyte donation. Anna and I take our seats in the doctor’s office, waiting to be called. After a few minutes, she tugs on my sleeve. “Mommy,” she says.

  I glance down at her. Anna is swinging her feet. On her fingernails is Kate’s mood-changing nail polish. “What?”

  She smiles up at me. “In case I forget to tell you after, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

  • • •

  One day my sister arrives unannounced, and with Brian’s permission, spirits me away to a penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton in Boston. “We can do anything you want,” she tells me. “Art museums, Freedom Trail walks, dinners out on the Harbor.” But what I really want to do is just forget, and so three hours later I am sitting on the floor beside her, finishing our second $100 bottle of wine.

  I lift the bottle by its neck. “I could have bought a dress with this.”

  Zanne snorts. “At Filene’s Basement, maybe.” Her feet are on a brocade chair; her body is sprawled on the white carpet. On the TV, Oprah counsels us to minimize our lives. “Plus, when you zip up a great Pinot Noir, you never look fat.”

  I look over at her, suddenly feeling sorry for myself.

  “No. You’re not doing the crying thing. Crying is not included in the room rate.”

  But suddenly all I can think of is how stupid the women on Oprah sound, with their stuffed Filofaxes and crammed closets. I wonder what Brian made for dinner. If Kate’s all right. “I’m going to call home.”

  She comes up on an elbow. “You are allowed to take a break, you know. No one has to be a martyr twen