JUDGE DESALVO CALLS for a ten-minute break. I put down my knapsack, a Guatemalan weave, and startwashing my hands when the door to one of the bathroom stalls opens. Anna comes out, hesitating for just amoment. Then she turns on the tap beside me.
“Hey,” I say.
Anna goes to dry her hands under the blower. The air doesn’t feed out, not reading the sensor of her palm forsome reason. She waves her fingers beneath the machine again, then stares at them, as if trying to make surethat she’s not invisible. She bangs on the metal.
When I lean over and wave a hand beneath it, hot air breathes into my palm. We share this small warmth,hobos around a kettle-bellied fire. “Campbell tells me you don’t want to testify.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Anna says.
“Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”
She leans against the bathroom wall and crosses her arms. “Who died and made you Confucius?” Anna turnsaway, then reaches down to pick up my knapsack for me. “I like this. All the colors.”
I take it and slip it over my shoulder. “I saw old women weaving them, when I was in South America. It takestwenty spools of thread to make this pattern.”
“Truth’s like that,” Anna says, or it’s what I think she says, but by then she has left the room.
I am watching Campbell’s hands. They move around a lot while he is talking; he almost seems to use them topunctuate whatever he’s saying. But they’re trembling a little, too, and I attribute this to the fact that hedoesn’t know what I’m going to say. “As the guardian ad litem,” he asks, “what are your recommendations inthis case?”
I take a deep breath and look at Anna. “What I see here is a young woman who has spent her life feeling anenormous responsibility for her sister’s well-being. In fact, she knows she was brought into this world tocarry that responsibility.” I glance at Sara, sitting at her table. “I think that this family, when they conceivedAnna, had the best of intentions. They wanted to save their older daughter; they believed Anna would be awelcome addition to the family—not just because of what she would provide genetically, but also becausethey wanted to love her and watch her grow up well.”
Then I turn to Campbell. “I also understand completely how, in this family, it became critical to do anythingthat was humanly possible to save Kate. When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can to keep themwith you.”
As a little girl, I used to wake up in the middle of the night remembering my wildest dreams—I was flying; Iwas locked in a chocolate factory; I was queen of a Caribbean isle. I would wake with the smell of frangipaniin my hair or clouds caught in the hem of my nightgown until I realized that I was somewhere different. Andno matter how hard I tried, I might fall asleep again but I could not will myself back into the fabric of thatdream I’d been having.
Once, during the night Campbell and I spent together, I woke up in his arms to find him still sleeping. Itraced the geography of his face: from the cliff of his cheekbone to the whirlpool of his ear to the laugh linesravined beside his mouth. Then I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life fell right back into thedream, in the very spot where I’d left it.
“Unfortunately,” I say to the Court, “there is also a point when you have to step back and say that it’s time tolet go.”
For a month after Campbell dumped me, I did not get out of bed except when forced to go to Mass or to sit atthe dinner table. I stopped washing my hair. Under my eyes were dark circles. Izzy and I, at very first glance,looked completely different.
On the day that I mustered the courage to get out of bed of my own volition, I went to Wheeler and trolledaround the boathouse, carefully staying hidden until I found a boy on the sailing team—a summer sessionstudent—who was taking out one of the school’s skiffs. He had blond hair, instead of Campbell’s black. Hewas stocky, not tall and lean. I pretended I needed a ride home.
Within an hour I had fucked him in the backseat of his Honda.
I did it because if there was someone else, then I wouldn’t smell Campbell on my skin and taste him on theinside of my lips. I did it because I had been feeling so hollow inside that I feared floating away, like ahelium balloon that rose so high you couldn’t even see the faintest splash of color.
I felt this boy whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember grunting and heaving inside me; I was thatempty and that far away. And suddenly I knew what became of all those lost balloons: they were the lovesthat slipped out of our fists; the blank eyes that rose in every night sky.
“When I first was given this assignment two weeks ago,” I tell the judge, “and I started to look at thedynamics of this family, it seemed to me that medical emancipation was in Anna’s best interests. But then Irealized I was guilty of making judgments the way everyone else in this family does—based solely onphysiological effects, instead of psychological ones. The easy part of this decision is to figure out what’smedically right for Anna. Bottom line: it is not in her best interests to donate organs and blood that has nomedical benefit for Anna herself but prolongs her sister’s life.”
I see Campbell’s eyes spark; this endorsement has surprised him. “It’s harder to come up with a solution,though—because although it may not be in Anna’s best interests to be a donor for her sister, her own familyis incapable of making informed decisions about that. If Kate’s illness is a runaway train, then everyonereacts from crisis to crisis without figuring out the best way to bring this into the station. And using the sameanalogy, her parents’ pressure is a switch on the track—Anna isn’t mentally or physically strong enough toguide her own decisions, knowing what their wishes are.”
Campbell’s dog gets up and begins to whine. Distracted, I turn to the noise. Campbell pushes away Judge’ssnout, never taking his eyes off me.
“I see no one in the Fitzgerald family who can make unbiased decisions about Anna’s health care,” I admit.
“Not her parents, and not Anna herself.”
Judge DeSalvo frowns down at me. “Then Ms. Romano,” he asks, “what’s your recommendation to thecourt
“Hey,” I say.
Anna goes to dry her hands under the blower. The air doesn’t feed out, not reading the sensor of her palm forsome reason. She waves her fingers beneath the machine again, then stares at them, as if trying to make surethat she’s not invisible. She bangs on the metal.
When I lean over and wave a hand beneath it, hot air breathes into my palm. We share this small warmth,hobos around a kettle-bellied fire. “Campbell tells me you don’t want to testify.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Anna says.
“Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”
She leans against the bathroom wall and crosses her arms. “Who died and made you Confucius?” Anna turnsaway, then reaches down to pick up my knapsack for me. “I like this. All the colors.”
I take it and slip it over my shoulder. “I saw old women weaving them, when I was in South America. It takestwenty spools of thread to make this pattern.”
“Truth’s like that,” Anna says, or it’s what I think she says, but by then she has left the room.
I am watching Campbell’s hands. They move around a lot while he is talking; he almost seems to use them topunctuate whatever he’s saying. But they’re trembling a little, too, and I attribute this to the fact that hedoesn’t know what I’m going to say. “As the guardian ad litem,” he asks, “what are your recommendations inthis case?”
I take a deep breath and look at Anna. “What I see here is a young woman who has spent her life feeling anenormous responsibility for her sister’s well-being. In fact, she knows she was brought into this world tocarry that responsibility.” I glance at Sara, sitting at her table. “I think that this family, when they conceivedAnna, had the best of intentions. They wanted to save their older daughter; they believed Anna would be awelcome addition to the family—not just because of what she would provide genetically, but also becausethey wanted to love her and watch her grow up well.”
Then I turn to Campbell. “I also understand completely how, in this family, it became critical to do anythingthat was humanly possible to save Kate. When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can to keep themwith you.”
As a little girl, I used to wake up in the middle of the night remembering my wildest dreams—I was flying; Iwas locked in a chocolate factory; I was queen of a Caribbean isle. I would wake with the smell of frangipaniin my hair or clouds caught in the hem of my nightgown until I realized that I was somewhere different. Andno matter how hard I tried, I might fall asleep again but I could not will myself back into the fabric of thatdream I’d been having.
Once, during the night Campbell and I spent together, I woke up in his arms to find him still sleeping. Itraced the geography of his face: from the cliff of his cheekbone to the whirlpool of his ear to the laugh linesravined beside his mouth. Then I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life fell right back into thedream, in the very spot where I’d left it.
“Unfortunately,” I say to the Court, “there is also a point when you have to step back and say that it’s time tolet go.”
For a month after Campbell dumped me, I did not get out of bed except when forced to go to Mass or to sit atthe dinner table. I stopped washing my hair. Under my eyes were dark circles. Izzy and I, at very first glance,looked completely different.
On the day that I mustered the courage to get out of bed of my own volition, I went to Wheeler and trolledaround the boathouse, carefully staying hidden until I found a boy on the sailing team—a summer sessionstudent—who was taking out one of the school’s skiffs. He had blond hair, instead of Campbell’s black. Hewas stocky, not tall and lean. I pretended I needed a ride home.
Within an hour I had fucked him in the backseat of his Honda.
I did it because if there was someone else, then I wouldn’t smell Campbell on my skin and taste him on theinside of my lips. I did it because I had been feeling so hollow inside that I feared floating away, like ahelium balloon that rose so high you couldn’t even see the faintest splash of color.
I felt this boy whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember grunting and heaving inside me; I was thatempty and that far away. And suddenly I knew what became of all those lost balloons: they were the lovesthat slipped out of our fists; the blank eyes that rose in every night sky.
“When I first was given this assignment two weeks ago,” I tell the judge, “and I started to look at thedynamics of this family, it seemed to me that medical emancipation was in Anna’s best interests. But then Irealized I was guilty of making judgments the way everyone else in this family does—based solely onphysiological effects, instead of psychological ones. The easy part of this decision is to figure out what’smedically right for Anna. Bottom line: it is not in her best interests to donate organs and blood that has nomedical benefit for Anna herself but prolongs her sister’s life.”
I see Campbell’s eyes spark; this endorsement has surprised him. “It’s harder to come up with a solution,though—because although it may not be in Anna’s best interests to be a donor for her sister, her own familyis incapable of making informed decisions about that. If Kate’s illness is a runaway train, then everyonereacts from crisis to crisis without figuring out the best way to bring this into the station. And using the sameanalogy, her parents’ pressure is a switch on the track—Anna isn’t mentally or physically strong enough toguide her own decisions, knowing what their wishes are.”
Campbell’s dog gets up and begins to whine. Distracted, I turn to the noise. Campbell pushes away Judge’ssnout, never taking his eyes off me.
“I see no one in the Fitzgerald family who can make unbiased decisions about Anna’s health care,” I admit.
“Not her parents, and not Anna herself.”
Judge DeSalvo frowns down at me. “Then Ms. Romano,” he asks, “what’s your recommendation to thecourt