My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  This girl’s medical vocabulary would put some of my paid experts to shame. I pull a legal pad out of a drawer. “Obviously, you’ve agreed to be a donor for your sister before.”

  She hesitates, then shakes her head. “Nobody ever asked.”

  “Did you tell your parents you don’t want to donate a kidney?”

  “They don’t listen to me.”

  “They might, if you mentioned this.”

  She looks down, so that her hair covers her face. “They don’t really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn’t even be alive, if it wasn’t for Kate being sick.”

  An heir and a spare: this was a custom that went back to my ancestors in England. It sounded callous—having a subsequent child just in case the first one happens to die—yet it had been eminently practical once. Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every single day: to glue a bad marriage together; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent’s own image. “They had me so that I could save Kate,” the girl explains. “They went to special doctors and everything, and picked the embryo that would be a perfect genetic match.”

  There had been ethics courses in law school, but they were generally regarded as either a gut or an oxymoron, and I usually skipped them. Still, anyone who tuned in periodically to CNN would know about the controversies of stem cell research. Spare-parts babies, designer infants, the science of tomorrow to save the children of today.

  I tap my pen on the desk, and Judge—my dog—sidles closer. “What happens if you don’t give your sister a kidney?”

  “She’ll die.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  Anna’s mouth sets in a thin line. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are. I’m just trying to figure out what made you want to put your foot down, after all this time.”

  She looks over at the bookshelf. “Because,” she says simply, “it never stops.”

  Suddenly, something seems to jog her memory. She reaches into her pocket and puts a wad of crumpled bills and change onto my desk. “You don’t have to worry about getting paid, either. That’s $136.87. I know it’s not enough, but I’ll figure out a way to get more.”

  “I charge two hundred an hour.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Wampum doesn’t fit in the ATM deposit slot,” I say.

  “Maybe I could walk your dog, or something.”

  “Service dogs get walked by their owners.” I shrug. “We’ll work something out.”

  “You can’t be my lawyer for free,” she insists.

  “Fine, then. You can polish my doorknobs.” It’s not that I’m a particularly charitable man, but rather that legally, this case is a lock: she doesn’t want to give a kidney; no court in its right mind would force her to give up a kidney; I don’t have to do any legal research; the parents will cave in before we go to trial, and that will be that. Plus, the case will generate a ton of publicity for me, and will jack up my pro bono for the whole damn decade. “I’m going to file a petition for you in family court: legal emancipation for medical purposes,” I say.

  “Then what?”

  “There will be a hearing, and the judge will appoint a guardian ad litem, which is—”

  “—a person trained to work with kids in the family court, who determines what’s in the child’s best interests,” Anna recites. “Or in other words, just another grown-up deciding what happens to me.”

  “Well, that’s the way the law works, and you can’t get around it. But a GAL is theoretically only looking out for you, not your sister or your parents.”

  She watches me take out a legal pad and scrawl a few notes. “Does it bother you that your name is backward?”

  “What?” I stop writing, and stare at her.

  “Campbell Alexander. Your last name is a first name, and your first name is a last name.” She pauses. “Or a soup.”

  “And how does that have any bearing on your case?”

  “It doesn’t,” Anna admits, “except that it was a pretty bad decision your parents made for you.”

  I reach across my desk to hand her a card. “If you have any questions, call me.”

  She takes it, and runs her fingers over the raised lettering of my name. My backward name. For the love of God. Then she leans across the desk, grabs my pad, and tears the bottom off the page. Borrowing my pen, she writes something down and hands it back to me. I glance down at the note in my hand:

  Anna 555 3211

  “If you have any questions,” she says.

  • • •

  When I walk out to the reception area, Anna is gone and Kerri sits at her desk, a catalog spread-eagled across it. “Did you know they used to use those L. L. Bean canvas bags to carry ice?”

  “Yeah.” And vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Toted from the cottage to the beach every Saturday morning. Which reminds me, my mother called.

  Kerri has an aunt who makes her living as a psychic, and every now and then this genetic predisposition rears its head. Or maybe she’s just been working for me long enough to know most of my secrets. At any rate, she knows what I am thinking. “She says your father’s taken up with a seventeen-year-old and that discretion isn’t in his vocabulary and that she’s checking herself into The Pines unless you call her by . . .” Kerri glances at her watch. “Oops.”

  “How many times has she threatened to commit herself this week?”

  “Only three,” Kerri says.

  “We’re still way below average.” I lean over the desk and close the catalog. “Time to earn a living, Ms. Donatelli.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “That girl, Anna Fitzgerald—”

  “Planned Parenthood?”

  “Not quite,” I say. “We’re representing her. I need to dictate a petition for medical emancipation, so that you can file it with the family court by tomorrow.”

  “Get out! You’re representing her?”

  I put a hand over my heart. “I’m wounded that you think so little of me.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about your wallet. Do her parents know?”

  “They will by tomorrow.”

  “Are you a complete idiot?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Kerri shakes her head. “Where’s she going to live?”

  The comment stops me. In fact, I hadn’t really considered it. But a girl who brings a lawsuit against her parents will not be particularly comfortable residing under the same roof, once the papers are served.

  Suddenly Judge is at my side, pushing against my thigh with his nose. I shake my head, annoyed. Timing is everything. “Give me fifteen minutes,” I tell Kerri. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  “Campbell,” Kerri presses, relentless, “you can’t expect a kid to fend for herself.”

  I head back into my office. Judge follows, pausing just inside the threshold. “It’s not my problem,” I say; and then I close the door, lock it securely, and wait.

  SARA

  1990

  THE BRUISE IS THE SIZE AND SHAPE of a four-leaf clover, and sits square between Kate’s shoulder blades. Jesse is the one to find it, while they are both in the bathtub. “Mommy,” he asks, “does that mean she’s lucky?”

  I try to rub it off first, assuming it’s dirt, without success. Kate, two, the subject of scrutiny, stares up at me with her china blue eyes. “Does it hurt?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.

  Somewhere in the hallway behind me, Brian is telling me about his day. He smells faintly of smoke. “So the guy bought a case of expensive cigars,” he says, “and had them insured against fire for $15,000. Next thing you know, the insurance company gets a claim, saying all the cigars were lost in a series of small fires.”

  “He smoked them?” I say, washing the soap out of Jesse’s hair.

  Brian leans against the threshold of the door. “Yeah. But the judge ruled that the compa