My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Read online

  Caesar snorts. “Maybe it was. Maybe the fat guy was really a suicide arsonist. He crawled up into the chimney and lit himself on fire.”

  “Maybe he was just desperate to lose weight,” Paulie adds, and the other guys crack up.

  “Enough,” I say.

  “Aw, Fitz, you gotta admit it’s pretty funny—”

  “Not to that man’s parents. Not to his family.”

  There is that uncomfortable silence as the other men grasp at words. Finally Paulie, who has known me the longest, speaks. “Something going on with Kate again, Fitz?”

  There is always something going on with my eldest daughter; the problem is, it never seems to end. I push away from the table and set my plate in the sink. “I’m going up to the roof.”

  We all have our hobbies—Caesar’s got his girls, Paulie his bagpipes, Red his cooking, and me, I have my telescope. I mounted it years ago to the roof of the fire station, where I can get the best view of the night sky.

  If I weren’t a fireman, I’d be an astronomer. It takes too much math for my brain, I know that, but there’s always been something about charting the stars that appeals to me. On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven’t been discovered. It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn’t that way at all.

  Anna’s real name is Andromeda. It’s on her birth certificate, honest to God. The constellation she’s named after tells the story of a princess, who was shackled to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster—punishment for her mother Casseopeia, who had bragged to Poseidon about her own beauty. Perseus, flying by, fell in love with Andromeda and saved her. In the sky, she’s pictured with her arms outstretched and her hands chained.

  The way I saw it, the story had a happy ending. Who wouldn’t want that for a child?

  When Kate was born, I used to imagine how beautiful she would be on her wedding day. Then she was diagnosed with APL, and instead, I’d imagine her walking across a stage to get her high school diploma. When she relapsed, all this went out the window: I pictured her making it to her fifth birthday party. Nowadays, I don’t have expectations, and this way she beats them all.

  Kate is going to die. It took me a long time to be able to say that. We all are going to die, when you get down to it, but it’s not supposed to be like this. Kate ought to be the one who has to say good-bye to me.

  It almost seems like a cheat that after all these years of defying the odds, it won’t be the leukemia that kills her. Then again, Dr. Chance told us a long time ago that this was how it usually worked—a patient’s body just gets worn down, from all the fighting. Little by little, pieces of them start to give up. In Kate’s case, it is her kidneys.

  I turn my telescope to Barnard’s Loop and M42, glowing in Orion’s sword. Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. Others—blue giants—burn their fuel so fast they shine across great distances, and are easy to see. As they start to run out of fuel, they burn helium, grow even hotter, and explode in a supernova. Supernovas, they’re brighter than the brightest galaxies. They die, but everyone watches them go.

  • • •

  Earlier, after we ate, I helped Sara clean up in the kitchen. “You think something’s going on with Anna?” I asked, moving the ketchup back into the fridge.

  “Because she took off her necklace?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “Just in general.”

  “Compared to Kate’s kidneys and Jesse’s sociopathy, I’d say she’s doing fine.”

  “She wanted dinner over before it started.”

  Sara turned around at the sink. “What do you think it is?”

  “Uh . . . a guy?”

  Sara glanced at me. “She’s not dating anyone.”

  Thank God. “Maybe one of her friends said something to upset her.” Why was Sara asking me? What the hell did I know about the mood swings of thirteen-year-old girls?

  Sara wiped her hands on a towel and turned on the dishwasher. “Maybe she’s just being a teenager.”

  I tried to think back to what Kate was like when she was thirteen, but all I could remember was the relapse and the stem cell transplant she had. Kate’s ordinary life had a way of fading into the background, overshadowed by the times she was sick.

  “I have to take Kate to dialysis tomorrow,” Sara said. “When will you get home?”

  “By eight. But I’m on call, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our arsonist struck again.”

  “Brian?” she asked. “How did Kate look to you?”

  Better than Anna did, I thought, but this was not what she was asking. She wanted me to measure the yellow cast of Kate’s skin against yesterday; she wanted me to read into the way she leaned her elbows on the table, too tired to hold her body upright.

  “Kate looks great,” I lied, because this is what we do for each other.

  “Don’t forget to say good night to them before you leave,” Sara said, and she turned to gather the pills Kate takes at bedtime.

  • • •

  It’s quiet, tonight. Weeks have rhythms all their own, and the craziness of a Friday or Saturday night shift stands in direct contrast to a dull Sunday or Monday. I can already tell: this will be one of those nights where I bunk down and actually get to sleep.

  “Daddy?” The hatch to the roof opens, and Anna crawls out. “Red told me you were up here.”

  Immediately, I freeze. It is ten o’clock at night. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just . . . wanted to visit.”

  When the kids were small, Sara would stop by with them all the time. They’d play in the bays around the sleeping giant engines; they’d fall asleep upstairs in my bunk. Sometimes, in the warmest part of the summer, Sara would bring along an old blanket and we would spread it here on the roof, lie down with the kids between us, and watch the night rise.

  “Mom know where you are?”

  “She dropped me off.” Anna tiptoes across the roof. She’s never been all that great with heights, and there is only a three-inch lip around the concrete. Squinting, she bends to the telescope. “What can you see?”

  “Vega,” I tell her. I take a good look at Anna, something I haven’t done in some time. She’s not stick-straight anymore; she’s got the beginnings of curves. Even her motions—tucking her hair behind her ear, peering into the telescope—have a sort of grace I associate with full-grown women. “Got something you want to talk about?”

  Her teeth snag on her bottom lip, and she looks down at her sneakers. “Maybe instead you could talk to me,” Anna suggests.

  So I sit her down on my jacket and point to the stars. I tell her that Vega is a part of Lyra, the lyre that belonged to Orpheus. I am not one for stories, but I remember the ones that match up with the constellations. I tell her about this son of the sun god, whose music charmed animals and softened boulders. A man who loved his wife, Eurydice, so much that he wouldn’t let Death take her away.

  By the time I finish, we are lying flat on our backs. “Can I stay here with you?” Anna asks.

  I kiss the top of her head. “You bet.”

  “Daddy,” Anna whispers, when I think for sure she has fallen asleep, “did it work?”

  It takes me a moment to understand she is talking about Orpheus and Eurydice.

  “No,” I admit.

  She lets loose a sigh. “Figures,” she says.

  TUESDAY

  My candle burns at both ends;

  It will not last the night;

  But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

  It gives a lovely light!

  —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, “First Fig,” A Few Figs from Thistles

  ANNA

  I USED TO PRETEND that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one. It isn’t too much of a stretch, really—there’s Kate, the spitting image of my dad; and Jesse, the spitting image of my mo