My Sister's Keeper (21 page)

“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.

BRIAN

FIRE AND HOPE ARE CONNECTED, just so you know. The way the Greeks told it,
Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth.
Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strength and
fur and wings. By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been
given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire.

Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But Prometheus saw his pride and joy
shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man
again. To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed
on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her
a gift, a box she was forbidden to open.

Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box.
Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight
before hope escaped. It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others.

Ask any fireman; he'll tell you it's true. Hell. Ask any father.

“Come on up,” I say to Campbell Alexander, when he arrives with
Anna. “There's fresh coffee.” He follows me up the stairs, his German
shepherd trailing. I pour two cups. “What's the dog for?”

“He's a chick magnet,” the lawyer says. “Got any milk?”

I pass him the carton from the fridge, then sit down with my own mug. It's