The Promise of Stardust (28 page)

I couldn't dispute my mother's argument, and truth can devour rationalizations.

Still I rationalized and told myself Elle
didn't
know what was happening, and therefore she was not afraid, and unlike her mother, she was not sensing waves of unbearable pain.

“Your cross, Mr. Sutter,” Judge Wheeler said.

Jake stood, buttoned his suit jacket, and shook his head as if he were searching for words. But he knew. He liked his witnesses to feel they had the upper hand before he targeted them. “Mrs. Beaulieu, you said you had a close relationship with Elle.”

“Yes.”

Acting troubled, Jake tapped his upper lip with his index finger. “I would think you would want to do anything you could to help your daughter-in-law.”

“Yes.”

“Did Elle ever indicate to you that she wanted children?”

A flutter of recognition entered my mother's eyes as Jake laid his trap. Through a series of questions he insinuated that because Mom already had nine grandchildren, the baby Elle was carrying didn't mean all that much to her. It wasn't true, it wasn't fair, and I didn't care. Jake pounded question after question at my mother, all aimed at showing how much Elle had wanted a child, how Elle grieved when she miscarried, how she named the babies even before they were born. And when he spoke about Dylan, the sheer heaviness of my son's absence hung like a dirge. It took a few moments for me to refocus my attention to the testimony.

“After Dylan's death …” Jake counted on his fingers. “About seven months ago, did Elle confide in you about her desire to try to have another baby, Mrs. Beaulieu?”

“Yes,” Mom said, shifting in the witness box.

“Did you discourage her from trying to conceive again?”

Mom's eyes narrowed slightly, her defenses raised like the quills on a porcupine. “We were all concerned about her health.”

“Did you discourage her?”

“I told her to consider adoption. Matt wanted her to consider adoption, too.”

“What did Elle say to that?”

“She knew I was right, but she was too stubborn to admit it.”

Jake shook his head. “If she was too stubborn to admit it, she never said she agreed with you, did she?”

Mom hung her head. “No. She wanted to have a baby. Is that what you want me to say?”

Jake walked over to our table and appeared to be glancing at his notes, but he was simply giving Mom's response a dramatic pause.

After a minute Jake continued, “Mrs. Beaulieu, in your earlier testimony, you stated that you and Elle had discussed the Terri Schiavo case.”

“Yes.”

“Just for clarification's sake, Terri Schiavo was the Florida woman who fell into a persistent vegetative state after she suffered a cardiac arrest in 1990, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Her husband, Michael Schiavo, petitioned the Florida court to discontinue Terri's life support after a number of years had passed. Her parents opposed. Are we discussing the same case?”

“Yes.”

“You stated that you had a conversation with Elle regarding the Schiavo case in January of 2005.”

“Yes.”

“Earlier you stated Elle thought the courts should rule to remove Terri Schiavo's life support. How many years after Schiavo went into a persistent vegetative state would that make this conversation?”

“What do you mean?”

“If Terri Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990, and the courts were deciding in 2005, how much time had elapsed?”

“Fifteen years, I guess.”

“And Elle's accident happened how long ago?”

Mom stared at her hands. “Only ten days ago, but you don't understand. Elle was terrified of being on life support. Under these circumstances, ten days is a long time.” Mom's voice broke.

Jake poured a glass of water and offered it to my mother. “Are you ready to continue?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“Terri Schiavo was on life support for fifteen years,” Jake said. “And Elle has been on it for ten days. And there's another difference, isn't there? Mrs. Schiavo wasn't pregnant, was she?”

Mom drew a deep breath and appeared to be holding it.

“Mrs. Beaulieu, I realize this is difficult, but—”

“No. Terri Schiavo wasn't pregnant.”

“Did you ever ask Elle if she would have supported the withdrawal of life support had Terri Schiavo been pregnant?”

“No, there was no reason to discuss that.”

“Did Elle ever state that under the circumstances she is currently in, pregnant and brain injured, what she would want done in her behalf?”

“Specifically? No, but …” Mom looked down at her hands again. “I know she didn't want to be kept alive.”

“But she never discussed this scenario, did she?”

“This exact scenario, no.”

“One more thing. Earlier you indicated Elle didn't want her father to make health care decisions for her, correct?”

“That's right.”

“And that's because he insisted her mother be kept on a feeding tube long after she could eat, correct?”

“Yes. Alice would have died within days if nature had been allowed to take its course.”

“At the time Elle's father was Elle's next of kin, but after Elle married Matt, he would be considered her next of kin, wouldn't he?”

A puzzled expression fell over my mother's face. “Um, I guess.”

“Did she come to you and ask that you act on her behalf because she was concerned that Matt would not act as she would wish?”

Mom hesitated. “She probably thought that Matt would take her off life support.”

Jake repeated, “Did Elle ask you to act on her behalf once she had married Matt?”

“No.”

“Thank you. Nothing further.” Jake returned to the seat beside me.

“Redirect, Mr. Klein?”

“Not at this time. I'd like to call my next witness, Adam Cunningham.”

Judge Wheeler looked at his watch. “Yes. We'll hear from him after we reconvene at one o'clock sharp.”

After speaking with Jake for a few minutes in one of the conference rooms where attorneys and clients meet, I decided to swing by the hospital during the recess.

“Don't let the reporters provoke you,” he said. “No comment, no comment, ad infinitum.”

I raised my hand in acknowledgment and bolstered myself for the onslaught of cameras and microphones. Alas, no one awaited me in the hollowed-out halls. Relief.

Not until I left the courthouse did I understand where the reporters had gone. Across the street in Lincoln Park, the Pro-Life protesters had set up some kind of demonstration. And curiosity getting the better of many of the good people of Portland, a crowd was gathering on this late August lunchtime. The reporters were circling, looking for a story, an angle, or a headline.

Furtively, I peeked up as I strode the circumference. I had fifty-five minutes to make it to the hospital, see Elle, get an update, and return before Adam testified. I didn't want a distraction.

Then I saw my mother, cornered between the wrought-iron fence and a circle of people holding life-size baby dolls in her face as if my mother didn't know more about infants than any of them—as if she'd never helped a baby be born.

Christ. I stopped and swallowed, glancing back at the courthouse. There were security guards there. Would they leave to assist her? Did I actually have to step into this?

I inched forward, then stopped to pull out my phone to call the police. Someone shoved my mother, and I barreled forward. “Get away from her,” I yelled. “Get out of the way. What's wrong with you people?”

The crowd hardly parted, but people, even angry people, yield more readily to a six-foot-two-inch man than to a sixty-some-year-old woman. Funny that these people who believed they were standing up for weak, unprotected babies were willing to attack an old woman who had brought countless children into the world, a woman who'd saved more than a few babies' lives.

My mother's frantic eyes met mine, and she puffed out her chest in a final charade of bravery. “I'm fine,” she said.

I put my arm around her shoulders and began leading her through the crowd. “Leave her alone!” I said to no one in particular.

My mother was trembling, almost violently. I wrapped my hand around her wrist and checked her pulse. She was tachycardic, her heart rate close to one-fifty.

“What were they doing?” I asked.

“Trying to frighten me.” She swallowed hard and nodded. “Pretty good at it, too. I kept thinking about some of those abortion-clinic doctors getting shot, about the clinics that got bombed.”

“Why does everyone keep comparing this to abortion? This is about Elle. This is about the baby she's carrying. No one is having an abortion. I just wish these idiots would go away.”

“Thank you.” She squeezed my hand.

“I'm parked in the lot across the street,” I said.

A few reporters were taking pictures, asking questions, following at our heels. I ignored them all the way to my car, beeped the door unlocked and deposited my mother in the passenger seat, locked her door, and rounded the car.

Once inside, no, once moving down Franklin Street, I said, “I don't want you to get hurt. But just because I pulled you out of there doesn't mean I've stopped being angry.”

“I know. Where are we headed?” she asked.

“The hospital. You can get someone else to give you a ride back. Or you could drop the lawsuit, and we could be done with this shit. We could focus on what's important.”

She stared out the window. “Elle's important.”

“She is. Was. She's gone, though.” My voice buckled as I stopped at a light. I gripped the wheel as tightly as I could, as if by doing so I could release the pain.

Mom softly rested her hand on mine. “I know. If it were you, Matt—if it were you in that hospital bed, what do you think Elle would do?”

“It's a ridiculous question,” I said.

A horn blew behind us.

The light had changed to green, and I stepped on the gas too hard, lurching us into the intersection.

“Shit,” I said. “You can't reverse the situation and ask what Elle would do. I cannot carry a baby. If I could trade places with her, even if it meant leaving her alone and pregnant, if I could die for her, I would.”

“I know you think you're being noble. But isn't carrying the baby exactly what you're trying to do? Sitting there day in and day out? Aren't you trying to pull off the impossible?”

“Give me a chance to find out if it's impossible,” I said.

Mom squeezed shut her eyes. “Jake may be clever with manipulating words, words from me, from anyone who testifies, but I know Elle. I'm the one she cried to about Alice. Ellie didn't want to die this way.”

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