My Sister's Keeper Read online

  Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.

  The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. What if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?

  Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?

  *

  Campbell calls my father at the station when we're having lunch, and says that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid way to put it, since we all know he's talking about my mother. He says we have to meet at three o'clock in his office, no matter that it's Sunday.

  I sit on the floor with Judge's head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he doesn't even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and (since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She's put on some makeup. But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone else, once. I suppose we all were.

  "Hello," she says quietly.

  "Ms. Fitzgerald," Campbell replies. Ice.

  My mother's eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the floor. "Hi," she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to hug me, but she stops.

  "You called this meeting, Counselor," Campbell prompts.

  My mother sits down. "I know. I was . . . well, I'm hoping that we can clear this up. I want us to make a decision, together."

  Campbell raps his fingers on the table. "Are you offering us a deal?"

  He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him. "Yes, I guess I am." She turns her chair toward me, as if only the two of us are in the room. "Anna, I know how much you've done for Kate. I also know she doesn't have many chances left . . . but she might have this one."

  "My client doesn't need coercing--"

  "It's okay, Campbell," I say. "Let her talk."

  "If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn't work, if things don't wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate--well, I will never ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last thing?"

  By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither of us has moved.

  I glance at my father, but he's gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead of getting involved.

  "Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be necessary in the future to prolong Kate's life?" Campbell clarifies.

  My mother takes a deep breath. "Yes."

  "We need, of course, to discuss it."

  When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn't stupid enough to believe in Santa. It's Mom and Dad, he explained, and I fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary's mailbox. And I steadfastly did not tell my parents, although I dropped other hints about toys I hoped for that year.

  On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because she didn't know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa, nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be.

  Maybe Campbell thinks this is about the law, but really, it's about my mother. I get up from the floor and fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit. It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I've been saving come out of their hiding place. "Oh, Anna," she cries into my hair. "Thank God. Thank God."

  I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn't. "I can't."

  My mother's body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches the crown of my head. That's it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and walks out of the office.

  Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever seen him look. "Anna," he says. "Is this really what you want?"

  I open my mouth. And find an answer.

  JULIA

  "DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he's an asshole," I ask my sister, "or in spite of it?"

  Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a movie she's seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing. "If you make me miss the end, Julia, I'll kill you."

  "'See ya, Katie,'" I quote for her. "'See ya, Hubbell.'"

  She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music swells. "Barbra Streisand," Izzy says, "is the bomb."

  "I thought that was a gay men's stereotype." I look up over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow's hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in Anna Fitzgerald's best interests. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether I side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.

  "I thought we were talking about Campbell," Izzy says.

  "No, I was talking about Campbell. You were swooning." I rub my temples. "I thought you might be sympathetic."

  "About Campbell Alexander? I'm not sympathetic. I'm apathetic."

  "You're right. That is what kind of pathetic you are."

  "Look, Julia. Maybe it's hereditary," Izzy says. She gets up and starts rubbing the muscles of my neck. "Maybe you have a gene that attracts you to absolute jerks."

  "Then you have it, too."

  "Well." She laughs. "Case in point."

  "I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record."

  Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I'm drinking and finishes it off. "What happened to this being strictly professional?"

  "It is. There's just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind wishing otherwise."

  Izzy sits back down on the couch. "The problem, you know, is that you never forget your first one. And even if your brain's smart about it, your body's got the IQ of a fruit fly."

  "It's just so easy with him, Iz. It's like we're picking up where we left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows everything he needs to about me." I look at her. "Can you fall for someone because you're lazy?"

  "Why don't you just screw him and get it out of your system?"

  "Because," I say, "as soon as it's over, that's one more piece of the past I won't be able to get rid of."

  "I can fix you up with one of my friends," Izzy suggests.

  "They all have vaginas."

  "See, you're looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he's like marzipan frosting on a sardine."

  "You