My Sister's Keeper (36 page)

“So that I could have a seizure in public? Believe me, no.”

“Not that.” I look away from him. “Because you know what it's
like to not have any control over your body.”

“Maybe,” Campbell says thoughtfully. “But my doorknobs did
sorely need polishing.”

If he's trying to make me feel better, he's failing miserably. “I told
you having me testify wasn't the greatest idea.”

He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Anna, come on. If I can go back in
there after that performance, you sure as hell can climb into the hot seat for
a few more questions.”

How am I supposed to fight that logic? So I follow Campbell back into the
courtroom, where nothing is the way it was just an hour ago. With everyone
watching him like he's a ticking bomb, Campbell walks up to the bench and turns
to the court in general. “I'm very sorry about that, Judge,” he says.
“Anything for a ten-minute break, right?”

How can he make jokes about something like this? And then I realize: it's
what Kate does, too. Maybe if God gives you a handicap, he makes sure you've
got a few extra doses of humor to take the edge off.

“Why don't you take the rest of the day, Counselor,” Judge DeSalvo
offers.

“No, I'm all right now. And I think it's important that we get to the
bottom of this.” He turns to the court reporter. “Could you, uh,
refresh my memory?”

She reads back the transcript, and Campbell nods, but he acts like he's
hearing my words, regurgitated, for the very first time. “All right, Anna,
you were saying Kate asked you to file this lawsuit for medical
emancipation?”

Again, I squirm. “Not quite.”

“Can you explain?”

“She didn't ask me to file the lawsuit.”

“Then what did she ask you?”

I steal a glance at my mother. She knows; she has to know. Don't make me say
it out loud.

“Anna,” Campbell presses, “what did she ask you?”

I shake my head, tight-lipped, and Judge DeSalvo leans over. “Anna,
you're going to have to give us an answer to this question.”

“Fine.” The truth bursts out of me; a raging river, now that the
dam's washed away. “She asked me to kill her.”

The first thing that was wrong was that Kate had locked the door to our
bedroom, when there wasn't really a lock, which meant she'd either pushed up
furniture or pennied it shut. “Kate,” I yelled, banging, because I
was sweaty and gross from hockey practice and I wanted to take a shower and
change. “Kate, this isn't fair.”

I guess I made enough noise, because she opened up. And that was the second
thing: there was something just wrong about the room. I glanced around, but
everything seemed to be in place—most importantly, none of my stuff had been
messed with—and yet Kate still looked like she'd swilled a mystery.

“What's your problem?” I asked, and then I went into the bathroom,
turned on the shower, and smelled it—sweet and almost angry, the same boozy
scent I associated with Jesse's apartment. I started opening up cabinets and
rummaging through towels and trying to find the proof, no pun intended, and
sure enough there was a half-empty bottle of whiskey hidden behind the boxes of
tampons.

“Looky here…” I said, brandishing it and walking back into the
bedroom, thinking I had a great little wedge of blackmail to use to my
advantage for a while, and then I saw Kate holding the pills.

“What are you doing?”

Kate rolled over. “Leave me alone, Anna.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No,” Kate said. “I'm just sick of waiting for something
that's going to happen anyway. I think I've fucked up everyone's life long
enough, don't you?”

“But everyone's worked so hard just to keep you alive. You can't kill
yourself.”

All of a sudden Kate started to cry. “I know. I can't.” It took me
a few moments to realize this meant she'd already tried before.

My mother gets up slowly. “It's not true,” she says, her voice
stretched thin as glass. “Anna, I don't know why you'd say that.”

My eyes fill up. “Why would I make it up?”

She walks closer. “Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe she was just having a
bad day, or being dramatic.” She smiles in the pained way of people who
really want to cry. “Because if she was that upset, she would have told
me.”

“She couldn't tell you,” I reply. “She was too afraid if she
killed herself she'd be killing you, too.” I cannot catch my breath. I am
sinking in a tar pit; I am running and the ground's gone beneath my feet.
Campbell asks the judge for a few minutes so that I can pull myself together,
but even if Judge DeSalvo answers, I am crying so hard I don't hear it. “I
don't want her to die, but I know she doesn't want to live like this, and I'm
the one who can give her what she wants.” I keep my eyes on my mother,
even as she swims away from me. “I've always been the one who can give her
what she wants.”

The next time it came up was after my mother came into our room to talk
about donating a kidney. “Don't do it,” Kate said, when they were
gone.

I glanced at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I'm going to
do it.”

We were getting undressed, and I noticed that we had picked the same
pajamas—shiny satin ones printed with cherries. As we slid into bed I thought
we looked like we did as little kids, when our parents would dress us similarly
because they thought it was cute.

“Do you think it would work?” I asked. “A kidney
transplant?”

Kate looked at me. “It might.” She leaned over, her hand on the
light switch. “Don't do it,” she repeated, and it wasn't until I
heard her a second time that I understood what she was really saying.

My mother is a breath away from me, and in her eyes are all the mistakes
she's ever made. My father comes up and puts his arm around her shoulders.
“Come sit down,” he whispers into her hair.

“Your Honor,” Campbell says, getting to his feet. “May
I?”

He walks toward me, Judge right beside him. I am just as shaky as he is. I
think about that dog an hour ago. How did he know for sure what Campbell really
needed, and when?

“Anna, do you love your sister?”

“Of course.”

“But you were willing to take an action that might kill her?”

Something flashes inside me. “It was so she wouldn't have to go through
this anymore. I thought it was what she wanted.”

He goes silent; and I realize at that moment: he knows.

Inside me, something breaks. “It was… it was what I wanted, too.”

We were in the kitchen, washing and drying the dishes. “You hate going to
the hospital,” Kate said.

“Well, duh.” I put the forks and spoons, clean, back into their drawer.

“I know you'd do anything to not have to go there anymore.”

I glanced at her. “Sure. Because you'd be healthy.”

“Or dead.” Kate plunged her hands into the soapy water, careful
not to look at me. “Think about it, Anna. You could go to your hockey camps.
You could choose a college in a whole different country. You could do anything
you want and never have to worry about me.”

She pulled these examples right out of my head, and I could feel myself
blushing, ashamed that they were even up there to be drawn out into the open.
If Kate was feeling guilty about being a burden, then I was feeling twice as
guilty for knowing she felt that way. For knowing I felt that way.

We didn't talk after that. I dried whatever she handed me, and we both tried
to pretend we didn't know the truth: that in addition to the piece of me that's
always wanted Kate to live, there's another, horrible piece of me that
sometimes wishes I were free.

There, they understand: I am a monster. I started this lawsuit for some
reasons I'm proud of and many I'm not. And now Campbell will see why I couldn't
be a witness—not because I was scared to talk in front of everyone—but because
of all these terrible feelings, some of which are too awful to speak out loud.
That I want Kate alive, but also want to be myself, not part of her. That I
want the chance to grow up, even if Kate can't. That Kate's death would be the
worst thing that's ever happened to me… and also the best.

That sometimes, when I think about all this, I hate myself and just want to
crawl back to where I was, to the person they want me to be.

Now the whole courtroom is looking at me, and I'm sure that the witness
stand or my skin or maybe both is about to implode. Under this magnifying
glass, you can see right down to the rotten core at the heart of me. Maybe if
they keep staring at me, I will go up in blue, bitter smoke. Maybe I will
disappear without a trace.

“Anna,” Campbell says quietly, “what made you think that Kate
wanted to die?”

“She said she was ready.”

He walks up until he is standing right in front of me. “Isn't it
possible that's the same reason she asked you to help her?”

I look up slowly, and unwrap this gift Campbell's just handed me. What if
Kate wanted to die, so that I could live? What if after all these years of
saving Kate, she was only trying to do the same for me? “Did you tell Kate
you were going to stop being a donor?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“When?”

“The night before I hired you.”

“Anna, what did Kate say?”

Until now, I hadn't really thought about it, but Campbell has triggered the
memory. My sister had gotten very quiet, so quiet that I wondered if she'd
fallen asleep. And then she turned to me with all the world in her eyes, and a
smile that crumbled like a fault line.

I glance up at Campbell. “She said thanks.”

SARA

IT IS JUDGE DESALVO'S IDEA to take a field trip of sorts, so that he can
talk to Kate. When we all reach the hospital, she is sitting up in bed,
absently staring at the TV set that Jesse flicks through with the remote. She
is thin, her skin cast yellow, but she's conscious. “The tin man,”
Jesse says, “or the scarecrow?”

“Scarecrow would get the stuffing knocked out of him,” Kate says.
“Chynna from the WWF, or the Crocodile Hunter?”

Jesse snorts. “The Croc dude. Everyone knows the WWF is fake.” He
glances at her. “Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.?”

“They wouldn't sign the waiver.”

“We're talking Celebrity Boxing on Fox, babe,” Jesse
says. “What makes you think they bother with a waiver?”

Kate grins. “One of them would sit down in the ring, and the other
wouldn't put his mouthguard in.” This is the moment I walk inside.
“Hey, Mom,” she asks, “who'd win on Hypothetical Celebrity
Boxing—Marcia or Jan Brady?”

She notices then that I am not alone. As the whole crowd dribbles into the
room, her eyes widen, and she pulls the covers up higher. She looks right at
Anna, but her sister refuses to meet her eye. “What's going on?”

The judge steps forward, takes my arm. “I know you want to talk to her,
Sara, but I need to talk to her.” He walks forward, extending his
hand. “Hi, Kate. I'm Judge DeSalvo. I was wondering if I could maybe speak
to you for a few minutes? Alone,” he adds, and one by one, everyone else
leaves the room.

I am the last to go. I watch Kate lean back against the pillows, suddenly
exhausted again. “I had a feeling you'd come,” she tells the judge.

“Why?”

“Because,” Kate says, “it always comes back to me.”

About five years ago a new family bought the house across the street and
knocked it down, wanting to rebuild something different. A single bulldozer and
a half-dozen waste bins were all it took; in less than a morning this
structure, which we'd seen every time we walked outside, was reduced to a pile
of rubble. You'd think a house would last forever, but the truth is a strong
wind or a wrecking ball can devastate it. The family inside is not so
different. Nowadays I can hardly remember what that old house looked like. I
walk out the front door and never recall the stretch of months that the gaping
lot stood out, conspicuous in its absence, like a lost tooth. It took some
time, you know, but the new owners? They did rebuild.

When Judge DeSalvo comes outside, grim and troubled, Campbell, Brian, and I
get to our feet. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Closing's at nine
A.M.” With a nod to Vern to follow, he walks down the hallway.

“Come on,” Julia tells Campbell. “You're at the mercy of my
chaperonage.”

“That's not a real word.” But instead of following her, he walks
toward me. “Sara,” he says simply, “I'm sorry.” He gives me
one more gift: “You'll take Anna home?”

The minute they leave, Anna turns to me. “I really need to see
Kate.” I slide an arm around her. “Of course you can.”

We go inside, just our family, and Anna sits down on the edge of Kate's bed.
“Hey,” Kate murmurs, her eyes opening.

Anna shakes her head; it takes a moment for her to find the right words.
“I tried,” she says finally, her voice catching like cotton on thorns,
as Kate squeezes her hand.

Jesse sits down on the other side. The three of them in one spot; it makes
me think of the Christmas card photo we would take each October, balancing them
in height order in the wings of a maple tree or on a stone wall, one frozen
moment for everyone to remember them by.

“Alf or Mr. Ed,” Jesse says.

The corners of Kate's mouth turn up. “Horse. Eighth round.”

“You're on.”

Finally Brian leans down, kisses Kate's forehead. “Baby, you get a good
night's sleep.” As Anna and Jesse slip into the hall, he kisses me
good-bye, too. “Call me,” he whispers.

And then, when they are all gone, I sit down beside my daughter. Her arms
are so thin I can see the bones shifting as she moves; her eyes seem older than
mine.

“I guess you have questions,” Kate says.

“Maybe later,” I answer, surprising myself. I climb up onto the
bed and fold her into my embrace.

I realize then that we never have children, we receive
them. And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or
hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.
“Kate,” I confess, “I'm so sorry.”