The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  Rebecca sits on the sand and crosses her legs Indian-style. “Are you going to go back?”

  I sigh. How do you explain marriage to a fifteen-year-old? “You don’t just pack up and run away, Rebecca. Your father and I have a commitment. Besides, I have a job.”

  “You’ll take me, won’t you?”

  I shake my head. “Rebecca.”

  “It’s obvious, Mom. You need space—” here Rebecca makes a sweeping gesture with her arms. “You need room to reconsider. And don’t worry about me. Everyone’s parents are doing it. Reconsidering. It’s the age of separation.”

  “That’s ludicrous. And I wouldn’t take you even if I were leaving. You’re his daughter too. Answer me this,” I say, looking hard at her. “What did your father ever do to you to deserve you leaving?”

  Rebecca picks up a rock, a perfect stone for skimming, and bounces it across the ocean six, no, seven times. “What did he ever do to deserve me staying?” She looks at me and jumps to her feet. “Let’s go now,” she says, “while we can still outsmart him. He’s a scientist and he tracks things for a living, so we need as much of a head start as we can get. We can go anywhere—anywhere!” Rebecca points towards the parking lot. “We only have a limited supply of money, so we’ll have to budget, and I can call up Mrs. Nulty at the pool and tell her I have mono or something, and you can call up the superintendent and tell him you caught mono from me. And I’m up for anything, as long as we drive. I have this thing about air travel . . .” She lets her voice trail off, giggling, and then she scrambles towards me, falling on her knees. “How does that sound, Mom?”

  “I want you to listen to me, and listen carefully. Do you understand what happened this afternoon? I . . . . hit . . . your . . . father. I don’t know where that came from, or why I did it. I just snapped. I could do it again—”

  “No you won’t.”

  I begin to walk down the beach. “I don’t know what happened, Rebecca, but I got angry enough and they say these things happen over and over; they say it’s a cycle and it’s passed down, do you follow? What if I hit you by mistake?” The words cough out of my mouth like stones. “What if I hit my baby?”

  Rebecca throws her arms around me, burying her face in my chest. I can tell that she is crying too. Someone near the volleyball net shouts, “Yeah, man, that’s game!” and I draw her closer to me.

  “I could never be afraid of you,” Rebecca says so quietly that I think for a minute it may be the sea. “I feel safe with you.”

  I hold her face between my hands and I think: this time around, I am in a position to change things. Rebecca hugs me, her hands knotted into fists, and I do not have to question what she is grasping so tight: my daughter is holding our future.

  “I have no idea where to go,” I tell Rebecca. “But your uncle will.” Thinking about Joley it is easy to forget Oliver. My brother is the only person I have ever truly trusted with my life. We think each other’s ideas, we can finish each other’s sentences. And because he was there when this all began, he will be able to understand.

  Suddenly I break free from Rebecca and sprint down the beach, kicking sand up behind me, like I used to do with Joley. You can run but you can’t hide, I think. Oh yes, but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive.

  6 REBECCA

  August 2, 1990

  Sam, who has never in his life left Massachusetts, tells me about a Chinese ritual of death, minutes before I leave his apple orchard. We are sitting in the dark cellar of the Big House, on rusted milk cans from the early 1900s. We have adjusted to the heavy air, the white mice and the wet smell of apples that has been built into the foundation of this place: mortar mixed with cider to form sweet cement. Sam’s back is pressed against my back to help me sit up; I am still not feeling one hundred percent. When he breathes in, I can feel his heartbeat. It is the closest to him I’ve been since we arrived in Stow. I am beginning to understand my mother.

  There are thick beams in the cellar walls, and forgotten cane rockers and cracked canning jars. I can make out the jaws of the animal traps. Sam says, “In China, a person cannot be buried until an adequate number of people have paid their respects.” I do not doubt him, and I do not ask how he knows of this. With Sam, you take things for granted. He reads a lot. “Even tourists can go into the funeral parlor and bow to the widow of a dead man, and they count. It doesn’t matter if you knew the person who has died.”

  A small square of light sits in the center of the dirt floor. It comes from the only window in the cellar, which has been padlocked shut the entire time we’ve been here.

  “Meanwhile, outside the funeral parlor, relatives sit on the sidewalk and fold paper into the shapes of castles and cars and fine clothing. They fold it into jewelry and coins.”

  “Origami,” I say.

  “I guess. They make piles and piles of these, you know, things that the dead person didn’t have when he was alive, and then when they cremate the body they add all these paper possessions to the fire. The idea is that the person will have all these things when he gets to his next life.”

  Someone starts a tractor outside. I am amazed that the orchard is still business as usual with all that has happened. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

  “Because I can’t tell your mother.”

  I wonder if he expects me to tell her, then. I wonder if I can remember the way he told it. The exact words would mean so much to her.

  Sam stands abruptly and the imbalance knocks me off the milk can. He looks down at me on the floor but makes no effort to pick me up. He hands me the flannel shirt—Hadley’s—that I have let him hold for a few minutes. “I loved him too. He was my best friend,” Sam says. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

  At the mention of this, I begin to cry.

  Uncle Joley’s face appears in the square of the cellar window. He raps on the glass with such force I think the pane will shatter. I wipe my nose on Hadley’s beautiful blue shirt.

  Uncle Joley has been outside with my parents. He must have been the one to talk my mother into going back to California. No one else here has that much power over her, except maybe Sam, and he wouldn’t tell her to go.

  Sam picks me up in his arms. I am exhausted. I lean my head in the crook of his shoulder and try to clear my mind. Outside is too bright. I shade my eyes, partly because of this and partly because everyone who works at the orchard has come from the fields to see the spectacle, to see me.

  My father is the only one who is smiling. He touches my hair and opens the door of the shiny Lincoln Town Car. He is careful not to get too close to Sam; after all, he is not a stupid man. I look at my father briefly. “Hey, kiddo,” he says under his breath. I feel nothing.

  Sam stretches me on the back seat on top of old horsehair blankets I recognize from the barn. These remind me of Hadley. He looked nothing like Sam—Hadley had choppy fair hair and pale brown eyes like the wet sands in Carolina. His lip dipped down a little too far in the middle. “These are yours now,” Sam says. He puts a hand to my forehead. “No fever,” he adds, real matter-of-fact. Then he puts his lips to my forehead like I know he’s seen my mother do. He pretends it is to check my temperature.

  When he closes the car door he cuts off the sound from outside. All I hear is my own breathing, still rasping. I crane my neck so that I can watch out the window.

  It is like a beautiful mime. Sam and my father stand at opposite sides of the stage. There is a backdrop of willow trees and a green John Deere tractor. My mother holds both of Uncle Joley’s hands. She is crying. Uncle Joley lifts her chin with his finger and then she puts her arms around his neck. My mother tries to smile, she really tries. Then Uncle Joley points somewhere I can’t see and claps my father on the back. He propels my father out of my range of vision. My father turns his head. He tries to catch a glimpse of my mother, whom he has left behind.

  Sam a