My Sister's Keeper (15 page)

The fire was all but out; the boys were inside doing salvage and overhaul.
Smoke drew a veil over the night sky; I couldn't make out a single star in the
constellation Scorpio. I took off my gloves and wiped my hands across my eyes,
which would sting for hours. “Good work,” I said to Red, as he packed
up the hose.

“Good save, Cap,” he called back.

It would have been better, of course, if Luisa had been in her own room, as
her mother expected. But kids don't stay where they're supposed to. You turn
around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you
turn around and see she's not three but thirteen. Parenting is really just a
matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no
longer see their next moves.

I took off my helmet and stretched the muscles of my neck. I looked up at
the structure that was once a home. Suddenly I felt fingers wrap around my
hand. The woman who lived here stood with tears in her eyes. Her youngest was
still in her arms; the other kids were sitting in the fire truck under Red's
supervision. Silently she raised my knuckles to her lips. A streak of soot came
off my jacket to stripe her cheek. “You're welcome,” I said.

On our way back to the station I directed Caesar the long way, so that we
passed right down the street where I live. Jesse's Jeep sat in my driveway; the
lights in the house were all off. I pictured Anna with the covers pulled up to
her chin, like usual; Kate's bed empty.

“We all set, Fitz?” Caesar asked. The truck was barely crawling,
almost stopped directly in front of my driveway.

“Yeah, we're set,” I said. “Let's take it on home.” I
became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been
more specific. I should have named names.

JULIA

BRIAN FITZGERALD'S CAR IS FILLED with stars. There are charts on the
passenger seat and tables jammed into the console between us; the backseat is a
palette for Xerox copies of nebulae and planets. “Sorry,” he says,
reddening. “I wasn't expecting company.”

I help him clear off a space for me, and in the process pick up a map made
of pinpricks. “What's this?” I ask.

“A sky atlas.” He shrugs. “It's kind of a hobby.”

“When I was little, I once tried to name every star in the sky after
one of my relatives. The scary part is I hadn't run out of names by the time I
fell asleep.”

“Anna's named after a galaxy,” Brian says.

“That's much cooler than being named after a patron saint,” I
muse. “Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were
night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I
asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together
and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in
the middle of the night.”

Brian laughs out loud. “And here I was trying to explain atomic fusion
to my kids.”

“Did it work?”

He considers for a moment. “They could all probably find the Big Dipper
with their eyes closed.”

“That's impressive. Stars all look the same to me.”

“It's not that hard. You spot a piece of a constellation—like Orion's
belt—and suddenly it's easier to find Rigel in his foot and Betelgeuse in his
shoulder.” He hesitates. “But ninety percent of the universe is made
of stuff we can't even see.”

“Then how do you know it's there?”

He slows to a stop at a red light. “Dark matter has a gravitational
effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch
something being pulled in its direction.”

Ten seconds after Campbell left last night, Izzy walked into the living room
where I was just on the cusp of having one of those bone-cleansing cries a
woman should treat herself to at least once during a lunar cycle.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “I can see this is a totally
professional relationship.”

I scowled at her. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“Pardon me if you and Romeo were having your little tete-a-tete through
a thin wall.”

“If you've got something to say,” I suggested, “say it.”

“Me?” Izzy frowned. “Hey, it's none of my business, is
it?”

“No, it's not.”

“Right. So I'll just keep my opinion to myself.”

I rolled my eyes. “Out with it, Isobel.”

“Thought you'd never ask.” She sat down beside me on the couch.
“You know, Julia, the first time a bug sees that big purple zapper light,
it looks like God. The second time, he runs in the other direction.”

“First, don't compare me to a mosquito. Second, he'd fly in
the other direction, not run. Third, there is no second time. The bug's
dead.”

Izzy smirked. “You are such a lawyer.”

“I am not letting Campbell zap me.”

“Then request a transfer.”

“This isn't the Navy.” I hugged one of the throw pillows from the
couch. “And I can't do that, not now. It'll make him think that I'm such a
wimp I can't balance my professional life with some stupid, silly, adolescent.
. . incident.”

“You can't.” Izzy shook her head. “He's an
egotistical dickhead who's going to chew you up and spit you out; and you have
a really awful history of falling for assholes that you ought to run screaming
from; and I don't feel like sitting around listening to you try to convince
yourself you don't still feel something for Campbell Alexander when, in fact,
you've spent the past fifteen years trying to fill in the hole he made inside
you.”

I stared at her. “Wow.”

She shrugged. "Guess I had a lot to get off my chest, after all.”

“Do you hate all men, or just Campbell?"

Izzy seemed to think about that for a while. “Just Campbell,” she
said finally.

What I wanted, at that moment, was to be alone in my living room so that I
could throw things, like the TV remote or the glass vase or preferably my
sister. But I couldn't order Izzy out of a house she'd moved into just hours
before. I stood up and plucked my house keys off the counter. “I'm going
out,” I told her. “Don't wait up.”

I'm not much of a party girl, which explains why I hadn't frequented
Shakespeare's Cat before, although it was a mere four blocks from my condo. The
bar was dark and crowded and smelled of patchouli and cloves. I pushed my way
inside, hopped up on a stool, and smiled at the man sitting next to me.

I was in the mood to make out in the back row of the movie theater with
someone who did not know my first name. I wanted three guys to fight for the
honor of buying me a drink.

I wanted to show Campbell Alexander what he'd been missing.

The man beside me had sky-eyes, a black ponytail, and a Gary Grant grin. He
nodded politely at me, then turned away and began to kiss a white-haired
gentleman flush on the mouth. I looked around and saw what I had missed on my
entrance: the bar was filled with single men—but they were dancing, flirting,
hooking up with each other.

“What can I get you?” The bartender had fuchsia porcupine hair and
an oxen ring pierced through his nose.

“This is a gay bar?”

“No, it's the officers' club at West Point. You want a drink or
not?” I pointed over his shoulder to the bottle of tequila, and he reached
for a shot glass.

I rummaged in my purse and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “The whole
thing.” Glancing down at the bottle, I frowned. “I bet Shakespeare
didn't even have a cat.”

“Who peed in your coffee?” the bartender asked.

Narrowing my eyes, I stared at him. “You're not gay.”

“Sure I am.”

“Based on my track record, if you were gay, I'd probably find you
attractive. As it is…” I looked at the busy couple beside me, and then
shrugged at the bartender. He blanched, then handed me back my fifty. I tucked
it back into my wallet. “Who says you can't buy friends,” I murmured.

Three hours later, I was the only person still there, unless you counted
Seven, which was what the bartender had rechristened himself last August after
deciding to jettison whatever sort of label the name Neil suggested. Seven
stood for absolutely nothing, he had told me, which was exactly the way he
liked it.

“Maybe I should be Six,” I told him, when I'd made my way to the
bottom of the tequila bottle, “and you could be Nine.”

Seven finished stacking the clean glasses. “That's it. You're cut
off.”

“He used to call me Jewel,” I said, and that was enough to make me
start crying.

A jewel's first a rock put under enormous heat and pressure.
Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.

But Campbell had looked. And then he'd left me, reminding me that whatever
he'd seen wasn't worth the time or effort.

“I used to have pink hair,” I told Seven.

“I used to have a real job,” he answered.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I dyed my hair pink. What happened to you?”

“I let mine grow out,” I answered.

Seven wiped up a spill I'd made without noticing. “Nobody ever wants
what they've got,” he said.

Anna sits at the kitchen table by herself, eating a bowl of Golden Grahams.
Her eyes widen, as she is surprised to see me with her father, but that's as
much as she'll reveal. “Fire last night, huh?” she says, sniffing.

Brian crosses the kitchen and gives her a hug. “Big one.”

“The arsonist?” she asks.

“Doubt it. He goes for empty buildings and this one had a kid in
it.”

“Who you saved,” Anna guesses.

“You bet.” He glances at me. “I thought I'd take Julia up to
the hospital. Want to come?”

She looks down at her bowl. “I don't know.”

“Hey.” Brian lifts her chin. “No one's going to keep you from
seeing Kate.”

“No one's going to be too thrilled to see me there, either,” she
says.

The telephone rings, and he picks it up. He listens for a moment, and then
smiles. “That's great. That's so great. Yeah, of course I'm coming
in.” He hands the phone to Anna. “Mom wants to talk to you,” he
says, and he excuses himself to change clothes.

Anna hesitates, then curls her hand around the receiver. Her shoulders
hunch, a small cubicle of personal privacy. “Hello?” And then,
softly: “Really? She did?”

A few moments later, she hangs up. She sits down and takes another spoonful
of cereal, then pushes away her bowl. “Was that your mom?” I ask,
sitting down across from her.

“Yeah. Kate's awake,” Anna says.

“That's good news.”

“I guess.”

I put my elbows on the table. “Why wouldn't it be good
news?”

But Anna doesn't answer my question. “She asked where I was.”

“Your mother?”

“Kate.”

“Have you talked to her about your lawsuit, Anna?”

Ignoring me, she grabs the cereal box and begins to roll down the plastic
insert. “It's stale,” she says. “No one ever gets all the air
out, or closes the top right.”

“Has anyone told Kate what's going on?”

Anna pushes on the box top to get the cardboard tab into its slot, to no
avail. “I don't even like Golden Grahams.” When she tries
again, the box falls out of her arms and spills its contents all over the
floor. “Shoot!” She crawls under the table, trying to scoop
up the cereal with her hands.

I get on the floor with Anna and watch her shove fistfuls into the liner.
She won't look in my direction. “We can always buy Kate some more before
she gets home,” I say gently.

Anna stops and glances up. Without the veil of that secret, she looks much
younger. “Julia? What if she hates me?”

I tuck a strand of hair behind Anna's ear. “What if she doesn't?”

“The bottom line,” Seven explained last night, “is that we
never fall for the people we're supposed to.”

I glanced at him, intrigued enough to muster the effort to raise my face
from where it was plastered on the bar. “It's not just me?”

“Hell, no.” He set down a stack of clean glasses. “Think
about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them.
Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be
with Wonder Woman. Dawson and Joey—need I say more? And don't even get me
started on Charlie Brown and the little redheaded girl.”

“What about you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Like I said, it happens to everyone.” Leaning his
elbows on the counter, he came close enough that I could see the dark roots
beneath his magenta hair. “For me, it was Linden.”

“I'd break up with someone who was named for a tree, too,” I
sympathized. “Guy or girl?”

He smirked. "I'll never tell.”

“So what made her wrong for you?“ Seven sighed. ”Well, she—"

“Ha! You said she!”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Detective Julia. You've outed me at this gay
establishment. Happy?”

“Not particularly.”

“I sent Linden back to New Zealand. Green card ran out. It was that, or
get married.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Seven confessed. “She cleaned like a
banshee; she never let me wash a dish; she listened to everything I had to say;
she was a hurricane in bed. She was crazy about me, and believe it or not, I
was the one for her. It was, like, ninety-eight percent perfect.”

“What about the other two percent?”

“You tell me.” He started stacking the clean glasses on the far
side of the bar. “Something was missing. I couldn't tell you what it was,
if you asked, but it was off. And if you think of a relationship as a living
entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a
fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of
wax.” He turned to me. “I didn't cry when she got on the plane. She
lived with me for four years, and when she walked away, I didn't feel much of
anything at all.”

“Well, I had the other problem,” I told him. “I had the heart
of the relationship, and no body to grow it in.”

“What happened then?”

“What else,” I said. “It broke.”