"My Sister's Keeper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Picoult Jodie)

CAMPBELL

THE MINUTE I WALK INTO THE HOSPITAL with Judge at my side, I know I'm in trouble. A security officer—think Hitler in drag with a very bad perm—crosses her arms and blocks my entry at the elevator bank. "No dogs," she orders.

"This is a service dog."

"You're not blind."

"I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified."

I head up to the office of Dr. Peter Bergen, a psychiatrist who happens to be the chairman of the medical ethics board at Providence Hospital. I'm here by default: I can't seem to find my client, who may or may not still be pursuing her lawsuit. Frankly, after the hearing yesterday I was pissed off—I wanted her to come to me. When she didn't, I went so far as to sit on her doorstep last night for an hour, but no one showed up at her home; this morning, assuming Anna was with her sister, I came to the hospital—only to be told I couldn't go in to see Kate. I can't find Julia, either, although I fully expected to see her still waiting yesterday on the other side of the door when Judge and I left after the incident at the courthouse. I asked her sister for a cell number, at least, but something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL is out of service.

So, because I have nothing better to do, I'm going to work on my case on the off chance that it still exists.

Bergen's secretary looks like the kind of woman whose bra size ranks higher than her IQ. "Ooh, a puppy!" she squeals. She reaches out to pat Judge.

"Please. Don't." I start to come up with one of my ready replies, but why waste it on her? Then I head for the door in the back.

There I find a small, squat man with a stars-and-stripes bandanna over his graying curls, wearing yoga gear and doing Tai Chi. "Busy," Bergen grunts.

"Something we have in common, Doctor. I'm Campbell Alexander, the attorney who asked for the charts on the Fitzgerald girl."

Arms extended forward, the psychiatrist exhales. "I sent them over."

"You sent Kate Fitzgerald's records. I need Anna Fitzgerald's."

"You know," he replies, "now is not a very good time for me …"

"Don't let me interrupt your workout." I sit down, and Judge lies at my feet. "As I was saying—Anna Fitzgerald? Do you have any notes from the ethics committee about her?"

"The ethics committee has never convened on Anna Fitzgerald's behalf. It's her sister who's the patient."

I watch him arch his back, then hunch forward. "Do you have any idea how many times Anna's been both an outpatient and an inpatient in this hospital?"

"No," Bergen says.

"I'm counting eight."

"But those procedures wouldn't necessarily come before the ethics committee. When the physicians agree with what the patients want, and vice versa, there's no conflict. No reason for us to even hear about it." Dr. Bergen lowers the foot he has raised in the air and reaches for a towel to mop under his arms. "We all have full-time jobs, Mr. Alexander. We're psychiatrists and nurses and doctors and scientists and chaplains. We don't go looking for problems."

Julia and I leaned against my locker, having an argument about the Virgin Mary, I had been fingering her miraculous medal—well, actually, it was her collarbone I was after, and the medal had gotten in the way. "What if," I said, ''she was just some kid who got herself in trouble, and came up with an ingenious way out of it?"

Julia nearly choked, "I think they can even throw you out of the Episcopal Church for that one, Campbell."

"Think about it—you're thirteen, or however old they were back then when they were shacking up—and you have a nice little roll in the hay with Joseph, and before you know it your EPT is coming up positive. You can either face your father's wrath, or you can spin a good story. Who's going to contradict you if you say God's the one who knocked you up? Don't you think Mary's dad was thinking, 'I could ground her… but what if that causes a plague?' "

Just then I jacked open my locker and a hundred condoms spilled out. A bunch of guys from the sailing team morphed out of their hiding spots, laughing like hyenas. "Figured you could use a new supply," one of them said.

Well, what was I supposed to do? I smiled.

Before I knew it Julia had taken off. For a girl, she ran goddamn fast. I didn't catch up to her until the school was a distant smudge behind us. "Jewel," I said, although I didn't know what should come after that. It was not the first time I had made a girl cry, but it was the first time it hurt me to do it. "Should I have decked them all? Is that what you want?"

She rounded on me. "What do you tell them about us when you're in the locker room?"

"I don't tell them anything."

"What do you tell your parents about us?"

"I don't," I admitted.

"Fuck you," she said, and she started running again.

The elevator doors open on the third floor, and there's Julia Romano. We stare at each other for a moment, and then Judge gets up and starts wagging his tail. "Going down?"

She steps inside and pushes the button for the lobby, already lit.

But it makes her lean across me, so that I can smell her hair—vanilla and cinnamon. "What are you doing here?" she asks.

"Becoming supremely disappointed in the state of American health care. How about you?"

"Meeting with Kate's oncologist, Dr. Chance."

"I assume that means we still have a lawsuit?"

Julia shakes her head. "I don't know. No one in that family's returning my calls, except for Jesse, and that's strictly hormonal."

"Did you go up to—"

"Kate's room? Yeah. They wouldn't let me in. Something about dialysis."

"They said the same thing to me," I tell her.

"Well, if you talk to her—"

"Look," I interrupt. "I have to assume we still have a hearing in three days until Anna tells me otherwise. If that's the case, you and I really need to sit down and figure out what the hell is going on in this kid's life. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?"

"No," Julia says, and she starts to leave.

"Stop." When I grasp her arm, she freezes. "I know this is uncomfortable for you. It's uncomfortable for me, too. But just because you and I can't seem to grow up doesn't mean Anna shouldn't have a chance to." This is accompanied by a particularly hangdog look.

Julia folds her arms. "Did you want to write that one down, so you can use it again?"

I burst out laughing. "Jesus, you're tough—"

"Oh, stuff it, Campbell. You're so glib you probably oil your lips every morning."

That conjures all sorts of images for me, but they involve her body parts.

"You're right," she says then.

"Now that I want to write down …" When she starts walking away this time, Judge and I follow.

She heads out of the hospital and down a side street, an alley, and past a tenement before we break into the sunshine again on Mineral Spring Avenue in North Providence. By that time, I'm grateful that my left hand is wrapped tight to the leash of a dog with an excessive amount of teeth. "Chance told me that there's nothing left to do for Kate," Julia tells me.

"You mean other than the kidney transplant."

"No. Here's the incredible thing." She stops walking, plants herself in front of me. "Dr. Chance doesn't think Kate's strong enough."

"And Sara Fitzgerald's pushing for it," I say. "When you think about it, Campbell, you can't blame her logic. If Kate's going to die without the transplant anyway, why not go for it?" We step delicately around a homeless man and his collection of bottles. "Because the transplant involves major surgery for her other daughter," I point out. "And putting Anna's health at risk for a procedure that's not necessary for her seems a little cavalier."

Suddenly Julia comes to a halt in front of a small shack with a hand-painted sign, Luigi Ravioli. It looks like the sort of place they keep dark, so that you don't notice the rats. "Isn't there a Starbucks nearby?" I ask, just as an enormous bald man in a white apron opens the door and nearly knocks Julia over.

"Isobella!" he cries, kissing her on both cheeks. "No, Uncle Luigi, it's Julia."

"Julia?" He pulls back and frowns. "You sure? You ought to cut your hair or something, give us a break."

"You used to get on my case about my hair when it was short."

"We got on your case about your hair because it was pink." He looks at me. "You hungry?"

"We were hoping for some coffee, and a quiet table." He grins. "A quiet table?" Julia sighs. "Not that kind of quiet table."

"Right, right, everything's a big secret. Come in, I'll give you the room in the back." He glances down at Judge. "Dog stays here."

"Dog comes," I respond.

"Not in my restaurant," Luigi insists. "He's a service dog, he can't stay outside."

Luigi leans close, a couple of inches away from my face. "You're blind?"

"Color-blind," I reply. "He tells me when the traffic lights change." Julia's uncle's mouth turns down at the corners. "Everyone's a wiseass today," he says, and then he leads the way.

For weeks, my mother tried to guess the identity of my girlfriend. "It's Bitsy, right?—the one we met on the Vineyard? Or no, wait, it's not Sheila's daughter, the redhead, is it?" I told her over and over it was no one she knew, when what I really meant was that Julia was no one she would recognize.

"I know what's right for Anna," Julia tells me, "but I'm not sure she's mature enough to make her own decisions."

I pick up another piece of antipasto. "If you think she's justified in filing the petition, then what's the conflict?"

"Commitment," Julia says dryly. "Would you like me to define that for you?"

"You know, it's impolite to unsheathe your claws at the dinner table."

"Right now, every time Anna's mom confronts her, she backs off. Every time something happens with Kate, she backs off. And in spite of what she thinks she's capable of, she hasn't made a decision of this magnitude before—considering what the consequences are going to be to her sister."

"What if I told you that by the time we have our hearing, she'll be able to make that decision?"

Julia glances up. "Why are you so sure that'll happen?"

"I'm always sure of myself."

She plucks an olive out of the tray between us. "Yeah," she says quietly. "I remember that."

Although Julia must have had her suspicions, I didn't tell her about my parents, my house. As we drove into Newport in my Jeep, I pulled into the driveway of a huge brick mansion. "Campbell," Julia said. "You're kidding."

I circled the loop of the driveway and turned out the other side. "Yeah, l am."

That way, when I pulled into the house two driveways down, the sprawling Georgian with its rows of beech trees and its slope to the Bay, it wasn't quite as imposing. At the very least, it was smaller than the first place.

Julia shook her head. "Your parents are going to take one look at me and pull us apart with a crowbar,"

"They're gonna love you," I told her, the first time I lied to Julia, but not the last.

Julia ducks beneath the table with a plateful of pasta. "Here you go, Judge," she says. "So what's with the dog?"

"He translates for my Spanish-speaking clients."

"Really."

I grin at her. "Really."

She leans forward, narrowing her eyes. "You know, I have six brothers. I know how you guys work."

"Do tell."

"And give away my trade secrets? I don't think so." She shakes her head. "Maybe Anna hired you because you're just as evasive as she is."

"She hired me because she saw my name in the paper," I say. "Nothing more to it than that."

"But why'd you take her on? This isn't your usual case."

"How would you know what my usual case is?"

It is said lightly, a joke, but Julia goes mute, and there's my answer: all these years, she's been following my career.

Sort of like I've been following hers.

I clear my throat, uncomfortable, and point to her face. "You've got sauce… over there."

She lifts her napkin and wipes the side of her mouth, but misses completely. "Did I get it off?" she asks.

Leaning forward with my own napkin, I clean the small spot—but then I don't move away. My hand rests on her cheek. Our eyes lock, and in that instance, we are young again and learning the shape of each other.

"Campbell," Julia says, "don't do this to me."

"Do what?"

"Push me off the same cliff twice."

When the cell phone in my coat pocket rings, we both jump. Julia inadvertently knocks over her glass of Chianti while I answer. "No, calm down. Calm down. Where are you? Okay, I'm on my way." Julia stops mopping the table as I hang up. "I have to go."

"Is everything all right?"

"That was Anna," I say. "She's at the Upper Darby Police Station."

On the way back to Providence, I tried to come up with at least one awful death per mile for my parents. Bludgeoning, scalping. Skinning alive and sprinkling with salt. Pickling in gin, although I don't know whether that would be considered torture or simply Nirvana.

It was possible they saw me sneaking into the guest room, bringing Julia down the servants' stairs to the rear door of the house. It is possible they could make out our silhouettes as we stripped off our clothes and waded into the Bay. Maybe they watched her legs wrap around me, watched me lay her down on a bed made of sweatshirts and flannel.

Their excuse, given the next morning over eggs Benedict, was an invitation to a party at the Club that night—black-tie, family only. An invitation that, of course, didn't include Julia.

It was so hot out by the time we pulled up to her house that some enterprising boy had pried open the fire hydrant, and kids bounced like popcorn through the stream. "Julia, I never should have dragged you home to meet my parents."

"There's a lot of stuff you shouldn't do," she admitted. "And most of it involves me."

"I'll call you before graduation," I said, as she kissed me and got out of the jeep.

But I didn't call. And I didn't meet up with her at graduation. And she thinks she knows why, but she doesn't.

The curious thing about Rhode Island is that it has absolutely no feng shui. By this I mean that there's a Little Compton, but no Big Compton. There's an Upper Darby but no Lower Darby. There are all sorts of places denned in terms of something else that doesn't actually exist.

Julia follows me in her own car. Judge and I must break a land-speed record, because it seems less than five minutes have passed since the phone call and the moment we walk into the station to find Anna hysterical beside the desk sergeant. She flies toward me, frantic. "You've got to help," she cries. "Jesse got arrested."

"What?" I stare at Anna, who tore me away from a very good meal, not to mention a conversation I really would rather have followed to its conclusion. "Why is this my problem?"

"Because I need you to get him out," Anna explains slowly, as if I am a moron. "You're a lawyer."

"I'm not his lawyer."

"But can't you be?"

"Why don't you call your mother," I suggest. "I hear she's taking new clients."

Julia whacks me on the arm. "Shut up." She turns to Anna.

"What happened?"

"Jesse stole a car and he got nailed."

"Give me more details," I say, already regretting this. "It was a Humvee, I think. A big, yellow one." There's one big yellow Humvee in this entire state, and it belongs to Judge Newbell. A headache begins between my eyes. "Your brother stole a judge's car, and you want me to get him out?" Anna blinks at me. "Well, yeah,"

Jesus. "Let me go talk to the officer." Leaving Anna in Julia's care, I walk to the desk sergeant, who—I swear it—is already laughing at me. "I'm representing Jesse Fitzgerald," I sigh. "Sorry to hear that."

"It was Judge Newbell's, wasn't it?" The officer smiles. "Yup."

I take a deep breath. "The kid doesn't have a record.”

“That's because he just turned eighteen. He's got a juvy record a mile long."

"Look," I say. "His family's going through a lot right now. One sister's dying; the other one is suing her parents. Can you cut me a break here?"

The officer looks over at Anna. "I'll talk to the AG for you, but you'd better plead the kid, because I'm quite sure Judge Newbell doesn't want to come testify."

After a little more negotiation I walk back toward Anna, who leaps up the minute she sees me. "Did you fix it?"

"Yeah. But I'm never doing this again, and I'm not done with you." I stalk toward the rear of the station, where the holding cells are.

Jesse Fitzgerald lies on his back on the metal bunk, one arm thrown over his eyes. For a moment I stand outside his cell. "You know, you are the best argument I've ever seen for natural selection."

He sits up. "Who the hell are you?"

"Your fairy godmother. You dumb little shit—do you realize you stole a judge's Humvee?"

"Well, how was I supposed to know whose car it was?"

"Maybe because of the judicial vanity plate that says ALLRISE?"

I say. "I'm a lawyer. Your sister asked me to represent you. Against my better judgment, I've agreed."

"No kidding? So can you get me out?"

"They're going to let you go on PR bail. You need to give them your license and agree to live at home, which you already do, so that shouldn't be a problem."

Jesse considers this. "Do I have to give them my car?"

"No."

You can actually see the gears churning. A kid like Jesse couldn't care less about a piece of paper that permits him to drive, just so long as he has wheels. "That's cool, then," he says.

I motion to an officer waiting nearby, who unlocks the cell so that Jesse can leave. We walk side by side to the waiting area. He is as tall as I am, but unfinished around the edges. His face lights up as we turn the corner, and for a moment I think he is capable of redemption, that maybe he feels enough for Anna to be an ally for her.

But he ignores his sister, and instead approaches Julia. "Hey," he says. "Were you worried about me?"

I want, in that moment, to lock him back up. After I kill him.

"Get away," Julia sighs. "Come on, Anna. Let's go find something to eat."

Jesse looks up. "Excellent. I'm starving."

"Not you," I say. "We're going to court."

On the day I graduated from Wheeler, the locusts came. They arrived like a thick summer storm, tangling in the branches of trees and thudding hard on the ground. The meteorologists had a field day, trying to explain the phenomenon. They mentioned biblical plagues and El Nino and our prolonged drought. They recommended umbrellas, broad-brimmed hats, staying indoors. The graduation ceremony, however, was held outside under a large white canvas tent. As the salutatorian spoke, his message was punctuated by the suicide leap of bugs. Locusts rolled off the sloped roof, falling into the laps of spectators.

I hadn't wanted to come, but my parents forced me to go. Julia found me while I was putting on my cap. She wrapped her arms around my waist. She tried to kiss me. "Hey," she said. "Which side of the earth did you drop off?"

I remember thinking that in our white gowns, we looked like ghosts. I pushed her away from me. "Don't. Okay P Just don't."

In every graduation photo my parents took, I was smiling as if this new world were a place I actually wanted to live in, while all around me insects fell, big as fists.

What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world. In fact, we have a written code—the Rules of Professional Responsibility—which we have to read, be tested on, and follow in order to maintain a practice. But these very standards require us to do things that most people consider immoral. For example, if you walk into my office and say, "I killed the Lindbergh baby," I might ask you where the body is. "Under my bedroom floor," you tell me, "three feet down below the foundation of the house." If I am to do my job correctly, I can't tell a soul where that baby is. I could be disbarred, in fact, if I do.

All this means is that I'm actually educated to think that morals and ethics do not necessarily go hand in hand.

"Bruce," I say to the prosecutor, "my client will waive information. And if you get rid of some of these traffic misdemeanors, I swear he'll never come within fifty feet of the judge or his car again."

I wonder how much the general population of this country knows that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.

Bruce is an all right guy. Plus, I happen to know he's just been assigned to a double murder; he doesn't want to waste his time with Jesse Fitzgerald's conviction.

"You know, we're talking about Judge Newbell's Humvee, Campbell," he says.

"Yes. I am aware of that," I answer gravely, when what I'm thinking is that anyone vain enough to drive a Humvee is practically asking to have it ripped off.

"Let me talk to the judge," Bruce sighs. "I'm probably going to get eviscerated for suggesting it, but I'll tell him that the cops don't mind if we give the kid a break."

Twenty minutes later, we have signed all the forms, and Jesse stands beside me in the front of the court. Twenty-five minutes later he is on probation, officially, and we walk out onto the courthouse steps.

It is one of those summer days that feel like a memory welling up in your throat. On days like this, I would have been sailing with my father.

Jesse tips his head back. "We used to fish for tadpoles," he says out of nowhere. "Catch them up in a bucket, and then watch their tails turn into legs. Not a single one, I swear it, ever made it to frog." He turns to me and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.

"Want one?"

I haven't smoked since I was in law school. But I find myself taking a cigarette and lighting up. Judge watches life happen, lolling his tongue. Beside me, Jesse strikes a match. "Thanks," he says. "For what you're doing for Anna."

A car passes by, its radio playing one of those songs that stations never play in winter. A blue stream of smoke flares out from Jesse's mouth. I wonder if he's ever been sailing. If there's a memory he's held on to all these years—sitting on the front lawn and feeling the grass cool down after sunset, holding a sparkler on the Fourth of July until it burned his fingers. We all have something.

She left the note underneath the windshield wiper of my Jeep seventeen days after graduation. Before I even opened it I wondered how she got to Newport, how she made her way back. I carried it out to the Bay to read on the rocks; and after I was done I held it up and miffed at it, in case it smelled like her.

I was not technically allowed to drive, but that hardly mattered. We met, as per that note, at the cemetery.

Julia sat in front of the headstone, her arms clasped around her knees. She looked up when she saw me. "I wanted you to be different."

"Julia, it's not you."

"No?" She got to her feet. "I don't have a trust fund, Campbell. My father doesn't own a yacht. If you were crossing your fingers, expecting me to turn into Cinderella one of these days, you got it all wrong."

"I don't care about any of that."

"Bullshit you don't." Her eyes narrowed. "What did you think, that it would be fun to go slumming? Did you do it to piss off your parents? And now you can scrape me off your shoe like I'm something you stepped in by accident?" She struck out at me, clipping me across the chest. "I don't need you. I never needed you."

"Well, I fucking needed you!" I shouted back at her. When she turned I grabbed her shoulders and I kissed her. I took the things I couldn't bring myself to say, and poured them into her.

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.

I pushed Julia away from me. Walked down that cemetery hill. Didn't look back.

Anna sits in the passenger seat, which doesn't go over well with Judge. He hangs his sorry face into the front, right between us, panting up a storm. "Today wasn't a very good harbinger of what's to come," I tell her.

"What are you talking about?"

"If you want the right to make major decisions, Anna, then you need to start making them now. Not relying on the rest of the world to clean up the messes."

She scowls at me. "This is all because I called you to help my brother? I thought you were my friend."

"I already told you once I'm not your friend; I'm your attorney. There's a seminal difference."

"Fine." She fumbles with the lock. "I'll go back to the police and tell them to rearrest Jesse." She nearly succeeds in pushing the passenger door open, although we are traveling on a highway. I grab the handle and slam it shut. "Are you crazy?”

“I don't know," she answers. "I'd ask you what you think, but it's probably not in the job description."

With a yank of the wheel, I pull the car to the shoulder of the road. "You know what I think? The reason no one ever asks you for your opinion about anything important is because you change your mind so often they don't know what to believe. Take me, for example. I don't even know if we're still petitioning a judge for medical emancipation."

"Why wouldn't we be?"

"Ask your mother. Ask Julia. Every time I turn around someone informs me that you don't want to go through with this." I look down at the armrest, where her hand sits—purple sparkle polish, nails bitten to the quick. "If you want to be treated like an adult by the court, you need to start acting like one. The only way I can fight for you, Anna, is if you can prove to everyone that you can fight for yourself when I walk away."

I pull the car back onto the road, and glance at her sidelong, but Anna sits with her hands wedged between her thighs, her face set mutinously ahead. "We're almost at your house," I say dryly. "Then you can get out and give the door a good slam in my face."

"We're not going to my house. I need to go to the fire station. My dad and I are staying there for a while."

"Is it my imagination, or did I not spend a couple of hours at the family court yesterday arguing this very point? And I thought you told Julia that you didn't want to be separated from your mother? This is exactly what I'm talking about, Anna," I say, banging my hand on the steering wheel. "What the hell do you really want?"

When she blows, it is remarkable. "You want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick of nobody asking me how I feel about all this. I'm sick, but I'm never fucking sick enough for this family." She opens the car door while it is still moving, and takes off at a dead run to the firehouse, a few hundred feet in the distance.

Well. Deep in the recesses of my little client is the potential to make other people listen. It means that on the stand, she'll hold up better than I imagined.

And on the heels of that thought: Anna might be able to testify, but what she's said makes her seem unsympathetic. Immature, even. Or in other words, highly unlikely to convince the judge to rule in her favor.