Handle With Care (7 page)

The problem was that my real job kept interfering.

As soon as we finished showing the O’Keefes out of the law office
I rounded on my boss. “For the record? This kind of lawsuit is completely unpalatable to me,” I said.

“Will you still say that,” Bob mused, “if we wind up with the biggest wrongful birth payout in New Hampshire?”

“You don’t know that—”

He shrugged. “Depends on what her medical records turn up.”

A wrongful birth lawsuit implies that, if the mother had known during her pregnancy that her child was going to be significantly impaired, she would have chosen to abort the fetus. It places the onus of responsibility for the child’s subsequent disability on the ob-gyn. From a plaintiff’s standpoint, it’s a medical malpractice suit. For the defense, it becomes a morality question: who has the right to decide what kind of life is too limited to be worth living?

Many states had banned wrongful birth suits. New Hampshire wasn’t one of them. There had been several settlements for the parents of children who’d been born with spina bifida or cystic fibrosis or, in one case, a boy who was profoundly retarded and wheelchair-bound due to a genetic abnormality—even though the illness had never been diagnosed before, much less noticed in utero. In New Hampshire, parents were responsible for the care of disabled children their whole lives—not just till age eighteen—which was as good a reason as any to seek damages. There was no question Willow O’Keefe was a sad story, with her enormous body cast, but she’d smiled and answered questions when the father left the room and Bob chatted her up. To put it bluntly: she was cute and bright and articulate—and therefore a much tougher hardship case to sell to a jury.

“If Charlotte O’Keefe’s provider didn’t meet the standard of care,” Bob said, “then she should be held liable, so this doesn’t happen again.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t play the conscience card when you stand to make a few million, Bob. And it’s a slippery slope—if an OB decides a kid with brittle bones shouldn’t be born, what’s next? A prenatal test for low IQ, so you can scrap the fetus that won’t grow up and get into Harvard?”

He clapped me on the back. “You know, it’s nice to see someone so passionate. Personally, whenever people start talking about curing too many things with science, I’m always glad bioethics wasn’t an issue
during the time polio, TB, and yellow fever were running rampant.” We were walking toward our individual offices, but he suddenly stopped and turned to me. “Are you a neo-Nazi?”

“What?”

“I didn’t think so. But if we were asked to defend a client who was a neo-Nazi in a criminal suit, could you do your job—even if you found his beliefs disgusting?”

“Of course, and that’s a question for a first-year law student,” I said immediately. “But this is totally different.”

Bob shook his head. “That’s the thing, Marin,” he replied. “It really isn’t.”

I waited until he’d closed the door to his office and then let out a groan of frustration. Inside my office, I kicked off my heels and stomped to my desk to sit down. Briony had brought in my mail, neatly bound in an elastic band. I sifted through it, sorting envelopes into case-by-case piles, until I came to one that had an unfamiliar return address.

A month ago, after I’d fired the private investigator, I had sent a letter to the court in Hillsborough County to get my adoption decree. For ten dollars, you could get a copy of the original document. Armed with that, and the fact that I had been born at St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, I planned to do some legwork and ferret out the first name of my birth mother. I was hoping for a court intern who might not know what he or she was doing and would forget to white out my birth name on the document. Instead, I wound up with a clerk named Maisie Donovan, who’d worked at the county court since the dinosaurs died out—and who had sent me the envelope I now held in my shaking hands.

COUNTY COURT OF HILLSBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE IN RE: ADOPTION OF BABY GIRL

FINAL DECREE

AND NOW, July 28, 1973, upon consideration of the within Petition and of the hearing and thereon, and the Court having made an investigation to verify the statements of the Petition and other facts to give the Court full knowledge as to the desirability of the proposed adoption;

The Court, being satisfied, finds that the statements made in the Petition are true, and that the welfare of the person proposed to be adopted will be promoted by this adoption; and directs that BABY GIRL, the person proposed to be adopted, shall have all the rights of a child and heir of Arthur William Gates and Yvonne Sugarman Gates, and shall be subject to all the duties of such child; and shall hereafter assume the name of MARIN ELIZA BETH GATES.

I read it a second time, and a third. I stared at the judge’s signature—Alfred something-or-other. For ten dollars I had been given the earth-shattering information that

1. I am female

2. My name is Marin Elizabeth Gates

Well, what had I expected? A Hallmark card from my birth mother and an invitation to this year’s family reunion? With a sigh, I opened my filing cabinet and dropped the decree into the folder that I’d marked PERSONAL. Then I took out a new manila folder and wrote O’KEEFE across the tab. “Wrongful birth,” I murmured out loud, just to test the words on my tongue; they were (no surprise) bitter as coffee grains. I tried to turn my attention to a lawsuit with the thinly veiled message that there are some children who should never be born, and winged a silent thank-you to my birth mother for not feeling the same way.

Piper

Technically, I was your godmother. Apparently, that meant that I was responsible for your religious education, which was sort of a colossal joke since I never set foot in a church (blame that healthy fear of the roof bursting into flames), while your mother rarely missed a weekend Mass. I liked to think of my role, instead, as the fairy-tale version. That one day, with or without the help of mice wearing tiny overalls, I’d make you feel like a princess.

To that end, I rarely showed up to your house empty-handed. Charlotte said I was spoiling you, but I wasn’t draping you in diamonds or giving you the keys to a Hummer. I brought magic tricks, candy bars, kiddie videotapes that Emma had outgrown. Even when I visited directly from a stint at the hospital, I’d improvise: a rubber glove, knotted into a balloon. A hair net from the OR. “The day you bring her a speculum,” Charlotte used to say, “your welcome is officially rescinded.”

“Hello,” I yelled as I walked through the front door. To be honest, I can’t remember a time I ever knocked. “Five minutes,” I said, as Emma tore up the stairs to find Amelia. “Don’t even take your coat off.” I wandered through the hallway into Charlotte’s living room, where you were propped up in your spica cast, reading.

“Piper!” you said, and your face lit up.

Sometimes, when I looked at you, I didn’t see the compromised twist of your bones or the short stature that came part and parcel with your illness. Instead, I remembered your mother crying when she told me that she had failed to get pregnant yet another month; I remembered her taking the Doptone out of my ears at an office visit so that she could listen to your hummingbird heartbeat, too.

I sat down beside you on the couch and took your gift du jour out of my coat pocket. It was a beach ball—believe me, it wasn’t easy finding one of those in February. “We didn’t get to go to the beach,” you said. “I fell down.”

“Ah, but this isn’t just a beach ball,” I corrected, and I inflated it until it was as firm and round as the belly of a woman in her ninth month. Then I pushed it between your knees, the ball wedged tight against the plaster, and began to strike the top of it with an open palm. “This,” I said, “is a bongo drum.”

You laughed, and began to smack the plastic surface, too. The sound brought Charlotte into the room. “You look like hell,” I said. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Gee, Piper, it’s really great to see you, too…”

“Is Amelia ready?”

“For what?”

“Skating?”

She smacked her forehead. “I totally forgot. Amelia!” she yelled, and then to me: “We just got home from the lawyer’s.”

“And? Is Sean still on a rampage to sue the world?”

Instead of answering, she rapped her hand against the beach ball. She didn’t like it when I ragged on Sean. Your mother was my best friend in the world, but your father could drive me crazy. He got an idea in his head, and that was the end of that—you couldn’t budge him. The world was utterly black-and-white for Sean, and I guess I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers a splash of color.

“Guess what, Piper,” you interrupted. “I went skating, too.”

I glanced at Charlotte, who nodded. She was usually terrified about the pond in the backyard and its constant temptation; I couldn’t wait to hear the details of this story. “I suppose if you forgot about skating, you forgot about the bake sale, too?”

Charlotte winced. “What did you make?”

“I made brownies,” I told her. “In the shape of skates. With frosting for the laces and blades. Get it? Ice skates with frosting?”

“You made brownies?” Charlotte said, and I followed her as she headed toward the kitchen.

“From scratch. The rest of the moms already blacklisted me because I missed the spring show for a medical conference. I’m trying to atone.”

“So you whipped these up when? While you were stitching an epi
siotomy? After being on call for thirty-six hours?” Charlotte opened her pantry and rummaged through the shelves, finally grabbing a package of Chips Ahoy! and spilling them onto a serving platter. “Honestly, Piper, do you always have to be so damn perfect?”

With a fork, she was attacking the edges of the cookies. “Whoa. Who peed in your Cheerios?”

“Well, what do you expect? You waltz in here and tell me I look like crap, and then you make me feel completely inadequate—”

“You’re a pastry chef, Charlotte. You could bake circles around—What on earth are you doing?”

“Making them look homemade,” Charlotte said. “Because I’m not a pastry chef, not anymore. Not for a long time.”

When I’d first met Charlotte, she had just been named the finest pastry chef in New Hampshire. I’d actually read about her in a magazine that lauded her ability to take unlikely ingredients and come up with the most remarkable confections. She used to never come empty-handed to my house—she’d bring cupcakes with spun-sugar icing, pies with berries that burst like fireworks, puddings that acted like balms. Her soufflés were as light as summer clouds; her chocolate fondant could wipe your mind clean of whatever obstacles had littered your day. She told me that, when she baked, she could feel herself coming back to center, that everything else fell away, and she remembered who she was supposed to be. I’d been jealous. I had a vocation—and I was a damn good doctor—but Charlotte had a calling. She dreamed of opening a patisserie, of writing her own bestselling cookbook. In fact, I never imagined she would find anything she loved more than baking, until you came along.

I moved the platter away. “Charlotte. Are you okay?”

“Let’s see. I was arrested last weekend; my daughter’s in a body cast; I don’t even have time to take a shower—yup, I’m just fantastic.” She turned to the doorway and the staircase upstairs. “Amelia! Let’s go!”

“Emma’s gone selectively deaf, too,” I said. “I swear she ignores me on purpose. Yesterday, I asked her eight times to clear the kitchen counter—”

“You know what,” Charlotte said wearily. “I really don’t care about the problems you’re having with your daughter.”

No sooner had my jaw dropped—I had always been Charlotte’s confidante, not her punching bag—than she shook her head and apologized. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t be taking this out on you.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Just then the older girls clattered down the stairs and skidded past us in a flurry of whispers and giggles. I put my hand on Charlotte’s arm. “Just so you know,” I said firmly. “You’re the most devoted mother I’ve ever met. You’ve given up your whole life to take care of Willow.”

She ducked her head and nodded before looking up at me. “Do you remember her first ultrasound?”

I thought for a second, and then I grinned. “We saw her sucking her thumb. I didn’t even have to point it out to you and Sean; it was clear as day.”

“Right,” your mother repeated. “Clear as day.”

Charlotte

March 2007

What if it was someone’s fault?

The idea was just the germ of a seed, carried in the hollow beneath my breastbone when we left the law offices. Even when I was lying awake next to Sean, I heard it as a drumbeat in my blood: what if, what if, what if. For five years now I had loved you, hovered over you, held you when you had a break. I had gotten exactly what I so desperately wished for: a beautiful baby. So how could I admit to anyone—much less myself—that you were not only the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me…but also the most exhausting, the most overwhelming?

I would listen to people complain about their kids being impolite or surly or even getting into trouble with the law, and I’d be jealous. When those kids turned eighteen, they’d be on their own, making their own mistakes and being held accountable. But you were not the kind of child I could let fly in the world. After all, what if you fell?

And what would happen to you when I wasn’t around to catch you anymore?

After one week went by and then another, I began to realize that the law offices of Robert Ramirez were just as disgusted by a woman who would harbor these secret thoughts as I was. Instead, I threw myself into making you happy. I played Scrabble until I knew all the two-letter words by heart; I watched programs on Animal Planet until I had memorized the scripts. By now, your father had settled back into his work routine; Amelia had gone back to school.

This morning, you and I were squeezed into the downstairs bathroom. I faced you, my arms under yours, balancing you over the toilet so that you could pee. “The bags,” you said. “They’re getting in the way!”

With one hand, I adjusted the trash bags that were wrapped around your legs while I grunted under the weight of you. It had taken a series of failed attempts to figure out how one went to the bathroom while wearing a spica cast—another little tidbit the doctors don’t share. From parents on online forums I had learned to wedge plastic garbage bags under the lip of the cast where it had been left open, a liner of sorts so that the plaster edge would stay dry and clean. Needless to say, a trip to the bathroom for you took about thirty minutes, and after a few accidents, you’d gotten very good at predicting when you had to go, instead of waiting till the last minute.