The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Thanks, Mrs. Slegg, but I’m not very hungry yet.”

  “You call me Mother Slegg,” she urges. “And no wonder, a little thing like you. You can probably barely stand alone in a wind, much less take this kind of pain standing tall.”

  Uncle Joley walks over to the window. He peers out at the mountain. “Where is the funeral going to be?”

  “Not far from here. A cemetery where my husband is buried, God rest his soul. We have a family plot.” She says it so casually that I start to watch her for signs: did she not love her own son? Is she a closet mourner, tearing at her hair when everyone leaves?

  A boy comes into the kitchen. He takes the milk out of the refrigerator before acknowledging us. When he turns, he looks so much like Hadley I feel as if I have been punched. “You Rebecca?”

  I nod, speechless. “You’re—”

  “Cal,” he says. “I’m the younger one. Well, I was.” He turns to his mother. “Should we go?” He is wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.

  Cal, two of Hadley’s friends from high school and Uncle Joley are asked to be the pallbearers at the cemetery. There is a preacher who gives a nice, respectable service. In the middle of it all a robin lands on the casket. It begins to peck at the ring of flowers. After ten seconds of watching this peacefully, Mrs. Slegg screams to the preacher to stop. She falls onto the ground and crawls towards the casket to grab the flowers. In the flurry of noise the bird flies away. Someone leads Hadley’s mother away.

  I do not cry throughout the entire ceremony. No matter where I turn I can see that mountain, waiting to claim Hadley again when he is part of the earth. Here I will remain with worms that are thy chambermaids, I find myself thinking, and for the life of me I cannot place the quote. It must be something I have learned in school but it is hard to believe. It seems so long ago, and I was such a different person.

  The four men step forward and lower the leather straps that drop the casket slowly into the ground. I turn away. Up until this point I have pretended that Hadley is not in there at all; that this is just a token and he is waiting back at the Big House for me. But I see the struggle of muscles in Uncle Joley’s back and the sinews in Cal’s fingers. I am convinced that there is indeed something in the rough mustard box.

  I cover my ears so that I do not hear him hit the bottom. The cape falls away from my chest and exposes what has happened to me. Nobody notices except for Mrs. Slegg. She is some distance away, and she only cries a little bit harder.

  Before we leave the cemetery, Cal presents me with the shirt Hadley was wearing the night before he died. The one I wrapped around myself when my father and Sam came. It is blue flannel checked with black. He folds it into triangles, like a flag. Then he tucks in the corners and hands it to me. I do not thank him. I do not say goodbye to Hadley’s grieving mother. Instead, I let my uncle escort me to the truck. In near silence, he drives me back, where everyone else is waiting for their world to end.

  12 OLIVER

  I head to the Institute as if nothing has happened at all. I do not go in every day, and I have no real reason for going today of all days, except for the fact that as I walk through the halls I hear reverential acknowledgments of my presence—“Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones”—and this is somehow life-affirming.

  When I couldn’t sleep last night, I took the videotapes of the last trip to Maui and played them over and over on the VCR in the bedroom. On these tapes the humpbacks rise majestically out of the water, arch in midair, and slip back into the ocean, opening holes that weren’t there. Under the water you can see them, anticipate when they will break through the strained surface; their fins glistening and their flukes pulsing, and for that blessed moment before the magic ends, Jesus, they become pure beauty.

  I had watched the tape several times before the sun came up, and when it did I inexplicably found myself wondering how many months it had been since Jane and I had made love, and I am disappointed to say I could not come up with a concrete number.

  At the Institute, my office overlooks the San Diego Marina. There are three walls of glass, if you can imagine, and then one oak paneled door. It had been blond wood, but I decided to stain it to better see the grain of the wood, and Jane, who was up for a project at the time, insisted on doing it for me. She came into my office for an entire week, trying patches of stains on different pieces of the door molding: names like Colonial Cohasset and Mahogany Sheen and Natural, which seemed to me an irony. Finally she picked a shade called Golden Oak which was more brown than gold. I was at my desk the day she arrived with a squeegee and a disposable brush and a gallon of the stuff, although a quart would have done the job. She was very methodical, so much so that I was proud of her, working from the bottom to the top to avoid dripping, blotting the door after each coat. In truth she was quite lovely to watch. Then, when she finished, she stepped back from the door towards my desk. “What do you think—” she started to say, and then she covered her mouth. She ran to the door and began to scrape at the drying stain with the squeegee. I ran up and put my arms around her, trying to calm her down. “Don’t you see it,” she insisted, gesturing wildly. She pointed to several lines in the grain of the wood.

  “It looks beautiful.” Indeed the grain stood out.

  “You don’t see it,” she cried. “There. It’s plain as day now. The face of the devil.”

  Jane has not come to my office since then, since I refused to have the door stripped. I sort of like it. I close the door behind me, and twisting my head this way and that, I try to make out this face.

  It is obvious that she is headed to her brother’s, and that she is doing this via automobile or train—she can’t get Rebecca to fly. Most likely she is not taking a train; it would be too easy for me to trace the tickets. I could second-guess her and take a plane to Boston, and be there by the time she arrives. But then again her godforsaken brother would already be there, and he would find some way to warn Jane. They have this telepathic connection that, although astounding, frustrates.

  Second option: I can contact the police after a matter of time, and have an APB put out. After all, I did not do anything illegal that would make Jane leave, and I can bring her in on charges of kidnapping. Of course then I lose the freedom to act on my own.

  Third option: I can go after her myself. Somewhat like trying to put a butterfly on a leash and take it for a walk, but I imagine if I got the knack of the route I could catch her.

  I have never written a conclusion without collecting data to ground the hypothesis. And I have never been stumped scientifically. Perhaps you just go, and take inventory along the way. Perhaps you catch her and then decide what you are going to say.

  “Shirley.” I buzz my secretary, a tall woman with dyed red hair who I imagine has a crush on me.

  She swings open the oak door. “Yes, Dr. Jones?”

  “I have a problem that I’m afraid you are going to have to take care of.” Her lips set in a straight line, ready for the responsibility. “In regards to the trip to Venezuela . . . I need you to cancel.”

  “The trip?”

  I nod. “Do anything you have to do. Lie, cheat, anything. I need at least a month of personal time. Tell them that. Personal.” I lean across my desk and I take her wrists (her wrists) in my hands. “I’m counting on you,” I say softly. “Our secret.” The Institute will eat the coast of this trip, and I’m afraid to say in the frenzy, poor Shirley will lose her job. I must remember to send her something when this is over.

  She nods, a brave soldier. “Dr. Jones, will you be calling in for your messages?”

  “Twice a day,” I lie. I would rather wrap this mess up quickly and get entrenched in my research again than do a mediocre job, ten minutes here and ten minutes there. I will not call until I have found Jane.

  When the secretary leaves, I switch off the overhead lights and pull the blinds. I put on the Stellwagen tapes, the haunting, tortuous medley from the floor of the ocean. In the late 1970s, the Voyager spacecraft went into orbit carrying