My Sister's Keeper Read online

  Brian has gone down ahead of us to bring the car around. I zip the last Tiger Beat and CD into Kate's duffel bag. She pulls a fleece cap on over her smooth, bare scalp and winds a scarf tight around her neck. She puts on a mask and gloves; now that we are venturing out of the hospital, she is the one who will need protection.

  We walk out the door to the applause of the nurses we have come to know so well. "Whatever you do, don't come back and see us, all right?" Willie jokes.

  One by one, they walk up to say their good-byes. When they have all dispersed, I smile at Kate. "Ready?"

  Kate nods, but she doesn't step forward. She stands rigid, fully aware that once she sets foot outside this doorway, everything changes. "Mom?"

  I fold her hand into mine. "We'll do it together," I promise, and side by side, we take the first step.

  *

  The mail is full of hospital bills. We have learned that the insurance company will not talk to the hospital billing department, and vice versa, but neither one thinks that the charges are accurate--which leads them to charge us for procedures we shouldn't have to cover, in the hopes that we are stupid enough to pay them. Managing the monetary aspect of Kate's care is a full-time job that neither Brian nor I can do.

  I leaf through a grocery store flyer, an AAA magazine, and a long-distance rate announcement before I open the letter from the mutual fund. It's not something I really pay attention to; Brian usually manages finances that require more than basic checkbook balancing. Besides, the three funds we have are all earmarked for the kids' education. We are not the sort of family that has enough spare change to play the stock market.

  Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

  This is to confirm your recent redemption from fund #323456, Brian D. Fitzgerald Custodian for Katherine S. Fitzgerald, in the amount of $8,369.56. This disbursement effectively closes the account.

  As banking errors go, this is a pretty major one. We've been off by pennies in our checking account, but at least I've never lost eight thousand dollars. I walk out of the kitchen and into the yard, where Brian is rolling an extra garden hose. "Well, either someone at the mutual fund screwed up," I say, handing the letter to him, "or the second wife you're supporting is no longer a secret."

  It takes him one moment too long to read it, the same moment that I realize that this is not a mistake after all. Brian wipes his forehead with the back of one wrist. "I took that money out," he says.

  "Without telling me?" I cannot imagine Brian doing such a thing. There have been times, in the past, where we dipped into the children's accounts, but only because we were having a month too tight to swing the cost of groceries and the mortgage, or because we needed the down payment for a new car when our old one had finally been put to rest. We'd lie awake in bed feeling guilt press down like an extra quilt, promising each other that we would put that money right back where it belonged as soon as humanly possible.

  "The guys at the station, they tried to raise some money, like I told you. They got ten thousand dollars. With this added to it, the hospital's willing to work out some kind of payment plan for us."

  "But you said--"

  "I know what I said, Sara."

  I shake my head, stunned. "You lied to me?"

  "I didn't--"

  "Zanne offered--"

  "I won't let your sister take care of Kate," Brian says. "I'm supposed to take care of Kate." The hose falls to the ground, dribbles and spits at our feet. "Sara, she's not going to live long enough to use that money for college."

  The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows. It is far too beautiful a day for words like these. I turn and run into the house. I lock myself in the bathroom.

  A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. "Sara? Sara, I'm sorry."

  I pretend I can't hear him. I pretend I haven't heard anything he's said.

  *

  At home, we all wear masks so that Kate doesn't have to. I find myself checking her fingernails while she brushes her teeth or pours cereal, to see if the dark ridges made by the chemo have disappeared--a sure sign of the bone marrow transplant's success. Twice a day I give Kate growth factor shots in the thigh, a necessity until her neutrophil count tops one thousand. At that point, the marrow will be reseeding itself.

  She can't go back to school yet, so we get her lessons sent home. Once or twice she has come with me to pick Anna up from kindergarten, but refuses to get out of the car. She will troop to the hospital for her routine CBC, but if I suggest a side trip to the video store or Dunkin' Donuts afterward, she begs off.

  One Saturday morning, the door to the girls' bedroom is ajar; I knock gently. "Want to go to the mall?"

  Kate shrugs. "Not now."

  I lean against the doorframe. "It'll be good to get out of the house."

  "I don't want to." Although I am sure she does not even realize she is doing it, she skims her palm over her head before tucking her hand into her back pocket.

  "Kate," I begin.

  "Don't say it. Don't tell me that nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. Don't tell me it doesn't matter, because it does. And don't tell me I look fine because that's a lie." Her eyes, lash-bare, fill with tears. "I'm a freak, Mom. Look at me."

  I do, and I see the spots where her brows have gone missing, and the slope of her endless brow, and the small divots and bumps that are usually hidden under a cover of hair. "Well," I say evenly. "We can fix this."

  Without another word, I walk out of her room, knowing Kate will follow. I pass Anna, who abandons her coloring book to trail behind her sister. In the basement, I pull out a pair of ancient electric grooming clippers we found when we bought the house, and plug them in. Then I cut a swath right down the middle of my scalp.

  "Mom!" Kate gasps.

  "What?" A tumble of brown waves falls onto Anna's shoulder; she picks them up delicately. "It's only hair."

  With another swipe of the razor, Kate starts to smile. She points out a spot that I've missed, where a small thatch stands like a forest. I sit down on an overturned milk crate and let her shave the other side of my head herself. Anna crawls onto my lap. "Me next," she begs.

  An hour later, we walk through the mall holding hands, a trio of bald girls. We stay for hours. Everywhere we go, heads turn and voices whisper. We are beautiful, times three.

  THE WEEKEND

  There is no fire without some smoke.

  --John Heywood, Proverbes

  JESSE

  DON'T DENY IT--you've driven by a bulldozer or front-end loader on the side of a highway, after hours, and wondered why the road crews leave the equipment out there where anyone, meaning me, could steal it. My first truckjacking was years ago; I put a cement mixer out of gear on a slope and watched it roll into a construction company's base trailer. Right now there's a dump truck a mile away from my house; I've seen it sleeping like a baby elephant next to a pile of Jersey barriers on I-195. Not my first choice of wheels, but beggars can't be choosers; in the wake of my little run-in with the law, my father's taken my car into custody, and is keeping it at the fire station.

  Driving a dump truck turns out to be a hell of a lot different than driving my car. First, you fill up the whole freaking road. Second, it handles like a tank, or at least like what I suppose a tank would handle like if you didn't have to join an army full of uptight, power-crazy assholes to drive one. Third--and least palatable--people see you coming. When I roll up to the underpass where Duracell Dan makes his cardboard home, he cowers behind his line of thirty-three-gallon drums. "Hey," I say, swinging out of the cab of the truck. "It's just me."

  It still takes Dan a minute to peek between his hands, make sure I'm telling him the truth. "Like my rig?" I ask.

  He gets up gingerly and touches the streaked side of the truck. Then he laughs. "Your Jeep been taking steroids, boy."

  I load up the rear of the cab with the materials I need. How cool would it be if I just backed the truck up to a window, dumped in several bottles of my Arsonist's