The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  He was into tide pools back then, and I listened to him talk of mollusks and sea urchins and entire ecosystems that were ruined at the whim of an ocean wave. Back then Oliver’s face would light up when he shared his marine discoveries. Now he only gets excited when he’s locked in his little study, examining data by himself. By the time he tells the rest of the world, he’s transformed from Oliver into Dr. Jones. Back then, I was the first person he told when something wonderful cropped up in his research. Today I’m not even fifth in line.

  At the second landing I turn to Oliver. “What are you going to look for?”

  “Where?”

  “In South America.” I try to scratch an itch in my back and when I can’t reach it Oliver does.

  “The winter breeding grounds. For whales,” he says. “Humpbacks.” As if I am a total moron. I give him a look. “I’d tell you, Jane, but it’s complicated.”

  Pedantic asshole. “I’ll remind you that I am an educator, and one thing I have learned is that anyone can understand anything. You just have to know how to present your information.”

  I find myself listening to my own words, like I tell my students, to hear where the cadences change. It is as if I am having an out-of-body experience, watching this weird one-act performance between a self-absorbed professor and his nutty wife. I am somewhat surprised at the character Jane. Jane is supposed to back down. Jane listens to Oliver. I find myself thinking, this is not my voice. This is not me.

  I know this house so well. I know how many steps there are to get upstairs, I know where the carpet has become worn, I know to feel for the spot where Rebecca carved all of our initials into the banister. She did that when she was ten, so that our family would have a legacy.

  Oliver’s footsteps trail off into his study. I walk down the hall into our room and throw myself onto the bed. I try to invent ways to celebrate Rebecca’s birthday. A circus, maybe, but that’s too juvenile. A dinner at Le Cirque; a shopping spree at Saks—both have been done before. A trip to San Francisco, or Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine—I wouldn’t know where to go. Honestly, I don’t know what my own daughter likes. After all, what did I want when I was fifteen? Oliver.

  I undress and go to hang up my suit. When I open my closet I find my shoe boxes missing. They have been replaced by cartons labeled with dates: Oliver’s research. He has already filled his own closet; he keeps his clothes folded in the bathroom linen closet. I don’t even care where my shoes are at this point. The real issue is that Oliver has infringed on my space.

  With energy I didn’t know I had, I lift the heavy boxes and throw them onto the bedroom floor. There are over twenty; they hold maps and charts and in some cases transcriptions of tapes. The bottom of one of the boxes breaks as I lift it, and the contents flutter like goosedown over my feet.

  The heavy thuds reach Oliver. He comes into the bedroom just as I am arranging a wall of these boxes outside the bedroom door. The boxes reach his hips but he manages to scale them. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “These can’t stay.”

  “What’s the problem? Your shoes are under the bathroom sink.”

  “Look, it’s not the shoes, it’s the space. I don’t want you in my closet. I don’t want your whale tapes—” here I kick a nearby box, “—your whale records, your whales period, in my closet.”

  “I don’t understand,” Oliver says softly, and I know I’ve hurt him. He touches the box closest to my right foot, and his quiet eyes hold the contents, these ruffled papers, checking their safety with a naked tenderness I am not accustomed to seeing.

  This is how it goes for several minutes: I take a carton and stack it in the hall; Oliver picks it up and moves it back inside the bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rebecca, a shadow behind the wall of cartons in the hall.

  “Jane,” Oliver says, clearing his throat, “that’s enough.”

  Imperceptibly, I snap. I pick up some of the papers from the broken carton and throw them at Oliver, who flinches, as if they have substantial weight. “Get these out of my sight. I’m tired of this, Oliver, and I’m tired of you, don’t you get it?”

  Oliver says, “Sit down.” I don’t. He pushes me down by my shoulders, and I squirm away and with my feet shove three or four cartons into the hall. Again I seem to take a vantage point high above, in the balcony, watching the show. Seeing the fight from this angle, instead of as a participant, absolves me of responsibility; I do not have to wonder about what part of my body or mind my belligerence came from, why shutting my eyes cannot control the howling. I see myself wrench away from Oliver’s hold, which is truly amazing because he has pinned me with his weight. I pick up a carton and with all my strength hold it over the banister. Its contents, according to the labels, include samples of baleen. I am doing this because I know it will drive Oliver crazy.

  “Don’t,” he says, pushing past the boxes in the hall. “I mean it.”

  I shake the box, which feels like it is getting heavier. At this point I cannot remember what our argument is about. The bottom of the carton splits; its contents fall two stories.

  Oliver and I grip the banister, watching the material drift through the air—paper like feathers and heavier samples in Ziploc bags that bounce when they hit the ceramic tile below. From where we stand we cannot tell how much has been broken.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, frightened to look at Oliver. “I didn’t expect that to happen.” Oliver doesn’t respond. “I’ll clean it all up. I’ll organize it. Keep it in my closet, whatever.” I make an effort to scoop nearby files into my arms, gathering them like a harvest. I do not look at Oliver and I do not see him coming for me.

  “You bitch.” He grabs my wrists in his hands.

  The way he looks at me cuts inside me, says I am violated, insignificant. I have seen these eyes before and I am trying to place them but it is so hard when I can feel myself dying. I have seen these eyes before. Bitch, he said.

  It is in me, and it has been waiting for years.

  As my knees sink, as red welts form on my wrists, I begin to take ownership of my own soul, something that has been missing since childhood. Strength that could move a city, that could heal a heart and resurrect the dead pushes and shoots and stands and (bitch) concentrates. With the sheer power of everything I used to dream I could be, I break away from Oliver’s hold and strike his face as hard as I can.

  Oliver drops my other wrist, and takes a step backward. I hear a cry and I realize afterward it has come from me.

  He rubs his hand across his cheek, red, and he throws his head back to protect his pride. When he looks at me again, he is smiling, but his lips are slack like a carnival clown’s. “I suppose it was inevitable,” he says. “Like father, like daughter.”

  It is only when he has said this, the unspeakable, that I can feel my fingers striking his skin, leaving an impression. It is only then that I feel the pain spreading like blood from my knuckles to my wrist to my gut.

  I never imagined there could be anything worse than the time Oliver struck me; the time that I had taken my baby and left him; the event that precipitated Rebecca’s plane crash. I believed the reason there was a God was to prevent such atrocities from happening to the same person twice. But nothing prepared me for this: I have done what I’ve sworn I could never do; I have become my own nightmare.

  I push past Oliver and run down the stairs. I am afraid to look back, or to speak. I have lost control.

  From the dirty laundry pile I quickly grab an old shirt of Oliver’s and a pair of shorts. I find my car keys. I pull a Rolodex card with Joley’s address and walk out the side door. I don’t look back, I slam the door behind me, and still wearing only a bra and a slip, climb into the cool refuge of my old station wagon.

  It is easy to get away from Oliver, I think. But how do I get away from my own self?

  I run my fingers over the leather of the seat, raking my fingernails into pits and tears that have developed over the years. In the rearview mirror, I see my face and I hav