A Harvest of Thorns Page 6

  “What?” Josh didn’t know anyone that quick on the draw.

  “Wait. Ha! There he is.” Tony held out his wrist and showed Josh his smartwatch. On the screen was a text from Rana. “He’s thrilled, as promised.”

  Josh shook his head, marveling at the speed of new media. “I owe you one.”

  Tony’s eyes sparkled, his lips askew in a beer-tinged smile. “You owe me nothing. I want this as much as you do. You break this story, I mean really break it, and I’ll see what I can do about getting your job back.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DOWNTOWN MALL

  CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

  FEBRUARY 13, 2015

  11:40 A.M.

  The place was too empty to call home. It wasn’t the fault of the condominium. Located in a steel-and-brick hipster retreat steps away from the urban oasis of Charlottesville’s pedestrian mall, it had hardwood floors, fashionable details, and a walkout terrace with a striking view of Brown’s Mountain in the direction of the Blue Ridge. The vacancy was the vice of the occupant. Josh had never really moved in—and never wanted to.

  He had lived there six months, since the previous August when Madison, his wife of sixteen years, had evicted him from his real home, a renovated farmhouse in the horse country of Keswick. He had taken almost nothing with him, except some books from the library, half of his closet, his computer equipment, and a framed map of the world festooned with red pins, one for every place he’d been. The mattress on the floor and the desk by the window he had bought from a student on Craigslist. The clothes that didn’t need to be hung he kept in a suitcase.

  It was the rootlessness that bothered him, not the address on his letter box. He had been a nomad his entire professional life, gallivanting from story to story, hot spot to hot spot. But he’d always had a port of call, and his wife waiting for him when the plane landed. Madison had grounded him, kept the lights on and the sheets warm. Then Lily had come along—dear, sweet, precious Lily—and given home a whole new meaning. The apartment was provisional. It had to be. He couldn’t stand the thought that the separation might become permanent.

  It was twenty minutes before noon on Friday, two days after his meeting with Tony at Old Ebbitt Grill, and he was up to his neck in research, reading every legal case he could find in which foreign workers had sued a multinational corporation for abuses suffered outside the United States. It was heady stuff, and outside his wheelhouse. He hadn’t given thought to the nuances of the law since his days at Harvard Law School, before he took a reporting job at the Post. But his training was coming back to him, as his source had promised him it would.

  His iPhone vibrated—a text from Madison. “Don’t forget Lily.”

  “I’m on it,” he replied. “Leaving in a few.”

  He put the phone down and returned to Doe v. Wal-Mart Stores—a far-reaching but ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit brought by workers in five countries to hold the world’s largest retailer accountable for labor abuses committed by its foreign suppliers.

  A minute later, his iPhone vibrated again. What now? he wondered. Madison’s obsession with punctuality—a consequence of her type A personality and work as a lawyer—rankled him to no end. He preferred to live on the edge, squeezing every last drop from the clock. He glanced at the phone and inhaled sharply. The text wasn’t from his wife. It was from Maria.

  “I send you e-mail. Please read. Beijinhos. M”

  He shook his head almost unconsciously. A thousand times he had considered blocking her number and changing his e-mail, but his heart had never permitted it. It wasn’t Maria he was worried about. It was her girls—by last count thirty-two of them, all teenagers rescued from penury and prostitution in Vidigal, a drug-infested favela in Rio de Janeiro just down the beach from the glittering wealth of Ipanema. I can’t deal with her now, he decided. Lily is waiting.

  He collected his keys and leather jacket from the kitchen counter and left his apartment. In the parking garage, he slid behind the wheel of his white BMW convertible—his single concession to vanity after his book, The End of Childhood, topped the Times list—and sped out of the lot. Traffic was heavier with the approach of the lunch hour, but he had grown up driving in DC and had a cabbie’s sense for shortcuts.

  He made it to St. Anne’s a minute shy of noon. Perched atop a grassy knoll outside the city, the prep school was one of the crown jewels of Charlottesville’s educational establishment. Lily met him at the entrance, hands buried in the pockets of her pink puffer coat. He reached across the console and opened the door for her.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said with a grin as big as hers. “Hop in. It’s cold out there.”

  When she was seated, backpack between her legs, he kissed her on the forehead and took a long look at her. She was a willowy girl of eight years, with Madison’s chestnut-brown hair and chocolate eyes and Josh’s upturned nose and infectious smile. Her face was a bit fleshy around the edges—a consequence of the steroid dexamethasone, or Dex, as they called it, that she had taken since her diagnosis—but she was beautiful, radiantly so, and he was smitten.

  “How was school?” he asked, accelerating down the road beneath the gunmetal sky.

  “I made something for you in art class,” she said, her fairylike voice as articulate as a young adult. She rummaged in her backpack and removed a painting of green mountains and a black horse with a man at the reins wearing breeches, boots, and a riding helmet.

  “Is that me?” he asked mirthfully as he merged onto the bypass again. “I still haven’t had a chance to wear the outfit you got me at Christmas.”

  “Mommy says it’s supposed to be pretty tomorrow,” Lily replied, always the optimist. “We could go riding. Tommy misses you.”

  “And I miss Tommy,” Josh lied, picturing the quarter horse and barely suppressing a laugh. I doubt Tommy would shed a tear if I got run over by a bus.

  It was one of the great ironies of his life—his daughter’s love affair with horses. He was a city boy through and through, a denizen of skyscrapers and sidewalks and sounding horns, more alive in a crowded bar than in the sunshine of a Virginia meadow. Madison, on the other hand, had been born in the saddle on Painted Hill Farm, a two-hundred-acre homestead that had been in her family since Reconstruction. It was impossible not to admire the place. It was as idyllic as a storybook. But the horses were a scourge. Tommy, an otherwise placid gelding, had once tried to buck him. In Lily’s mind, however, they were made for each other.

  Fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot at the University of Virginia Medical Center. As always when they reached the hospital, Lily fell silent. She was in the long-term maintenance phase of treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia—a curable form of the illness, but still a grave threat. Gone were the early days of blood transfusions, PICC lines, and intensive chemotherapy. Her hair had grown back to the length it had been before falling out in clumps. But her monthly clinic visit meant another round of Dex, another round of moodiness, hunger, and suppressed creativity. She hated the steroid—they all did. But there was no getting around it.

  They walked together hand in hand into the Children’s Hospital and took the elevator up to the pediatric oncology department. The outpatient facility had the bright, airy feel of a candy store, with walls the color of lollipops, waiting rooms suffused with natural light, and play areas with toys for the patients and their siblings.

  “Hi, Lily,” said an African American nurse, standing with her clipboard beside the check-in desk. “Hi, Josh. You can come on back.”

  “Cherise!” Lily cried, skipping across the floor and giving the nurse a hug.

  Cherise led them to an intake room and checked Lily’s vitals. Then she took them to an infusion room with a window overlooking the city. There, she conducted a physical exam, drew Lily’s blood, and administered an injection of the chemotherapy drug Vincristine.

  As Cherise and Lily went through the motions, Josh examined the artwork beside Lily’s chair. It was a painte
d glass mosaic of a girl and a tree with a bird hovering above them. He squinted his eyes and tried to identify the tiny shapes that formed the girl’s body—a rain cloud, a telescope, a shark, a cowboy boot, the planet Saturn. For ten minutes, he managed to ignore the e-mail waiting in his in-box. Eventually, however, his restless mind returned to it.

  He knew what Maria wanted. It was a devil’s bargain, the only way out to deny his conscience. He could recriminate all day about the choices he had made—the way he’d gotten too close, asked her too many personal questions, and allowed the answers to affect him, to turn his attraction into affection and affection into a centaur of love and lust; the way he’d extended his research trips to Rio to spend time with her, not just at Casa da Amizade, where her girls lived, but over dinner and on walks along the sand; the way he’d escorted her to her flat after a meal at Zuka, ostensibly for her safety but knowing full well it was more than that; and the way, once they were intimate, that he had carried on the deception, his heart a divided thing, loving Maria in São Paulo and Madison almost five thousand miles away. But the past was gone. The present was the problem. Maria’s girls had nowhere else to go.

  He took out his iPhone and saw her name in the message header: Maria Teresa de Santiago. “A Brazilian Mother Teresa” he had called her in his first dispatch for the Post about Casa da Amizade, or Friendship House. A child of Vidigal, Maria had escaped the slum only to return in adulthood and adopt a houseful of children as her own.

  He opened the message. “Joshua,” she had written, “please, we must talk. Your gift at Christmas is gone. We cannot pay the bills. No one helps us. All donors are gone, even the church. You only can understand. You promise me to help. Please help my girls.”

  Josh put the phone away and massaged his face. Suddenly he had a splitting headache.

  “Daddy,” he heard Lily say, as if from a distance. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up and nodded, watched Cherise pump the last of the Vincristine into Lily’s vein. How unfair is this world, he thought, mustering a smile despite the ache.

  The rest of the appointment was a blur. He greeted Dr. Holiday when she appeared, even interacted with her, but his focus was shot, his thoughts in another place, wandering the haunted lanes of Vidigal, smelling the stink of rubbish, staring into the hollow eyes of drug addicts and street kids advertising their bodies for sale. He was there as he was before the celebrity and scandal, as an orphan abandoned on the steps of the National Cathedral, as the protégé of an adoptive father destined for the Carter White House and a mother who served the homeless, as a scribbler whose power was in his pen. It was in Vidigal where he had first conceived of Rio Real, the feature that had won him his first Pulitzer. And it was Vidigal to which he had returned with The End of Childhood. How could he forsake it now?

  When the visit was over, Josh took Lily’s hand and led her back to the car. On the drive downtown, she was quiet, pensive.

  “You’re somewhere else,” she said perceptively. “Like Mommy always says.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, his guilt increasing. “I’m just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  She crossed her small arms in protest. “You mean I wouldn’t understand.”

  He tried to think of something to say. “I have some decisions to make. I want to do the right thing, but I’m not always sure what that is.”

  “Like when you’re going to make up with Mommy and come home?”

  Her words ran him through. “Yes.”

  “You should hurry,” Lily went on. “She isn’t happy.”

  Josh winced. “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” she said and looked out the window again.

  Before long, Josh drove through Court Square, past the Albemarle County Courthouse where Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe had once practiced law, and pulled to the curb in front of the stately brick building that housed the Center for Justice in Action, or CJA. Founded in 1986 by Madison’s father, Lewis Ames, CJA was one of the most prominent nonprofit legal organizations in the South. A scion of the Virginia bar, Lewis was a lawyer-statesman with a professor’s intellect and the courtly manner of a squire. He had argued five cases before the US Supreme Court and won all of them. For years, he had enticed Madison to leave the global law firm that allowed her to play hopscotch with Josh around the world in order to do “the real business of justice,” as he put it. When the Post transferred Josh back to DC, she acceded. Six years on, she was CJA’s chief litigation counsel.

  Madison was waiting for them on the sidewalk, her lithe equestrian’s body swaddled in a gray day coat and blue scarf that complemented her long brown hair.

  “Come riding tomorrow,” Lily said, giving Josh a hug. “Mommy won’t mind.”

  Josh glanced at his wife and saw her indecision. “I wish I could,” he replied, kissing Lily on the cheek. “But I have to go on a trip. I’ll be back soon. We’ll do it then.”

  Lily stepped back and sighed, and Josh felt the lash of her dejection. He took the whip from her silent eyes and turned it upon himself. How many times would he walk away? It was a question that had no answer until Madison decided to forgive him—if she decided to forgive him. He thought of Maria’s e-mail and flogged himself harder.

  “Run inside,” Madison told Lily. “Grandpa’s got something for you.”

  “Bye, Daddy,” Lily said with a wave.

  “Bye, sweetie,” he replied, watching her go. Then he stood up and faced his wife.

  She was a strong woman, even imperious when she wanted to be, but she bore in her heart all the self-doubt of a perfectionist and had never quite reconciled the conflict. As soon as Lily disappeared, the strain began to show around her eyes.

  “So you’re going away,” she said, burrowing her hands into her coat. “How long?”

  He scuffed his toe on the ground. “I don’t know. Could be a couple weeks. Maybe more.”

  “Is it a story?”

  “Not exactly. It’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you about it later.” He paused, feeling the sting of the winter wind. “I’m sorry to do this to you—to Lily.”

  “It’s already done,” she said matter-of-factly. “This is the fallout.”

  He bit his lip hard enough to notice. I miss you, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  She turned away as if to leave, but a thought brought her up short. “Bring something home for her,” she said, looking at him again. “You owe her that much.”

  “No,” he said, “I owe her more.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  FEBRUARY 17, 2015

  4:21 P.M.

  There was something about the light in Southern California, the way it embraced the world, as if the sun and sky were lovers, and the earth the bed beneath them. It was February in Los Angeles, but there were no coats in sight. There were cyclists on the highway, runners working up a sweat, even a few sun worshippers soaking up rays on the beach. It was a photographer’s paradise—the bronze hills graced with the green of rain-fed grass, the indigo ocean cradled by golden sand, the sky a patchless quilt of cornflowers.

  Josh had the top down on his rental convertible—a muscle-bound Mustang that made him feel like a kid again. He was on the Pacific Coast Highway, following its serpentine arcs through Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, the drizzling damp of the DC winter barely a memory in the mirror. His lips curled upward beneath his aviator shades, the warm wind tousling his curly hair. It was almost enough to make him forget the sorrow he had left behind. But not quite.

  He pulled into the lot at Gladstones restaurant, locked his luggage in the trunk, and left his keys with the valet. The place was a shrine to the sea, its umbrella-covered tables separated from the shore by a thin pane of glass. Rana Jalil was already there, having claimed a table at the edge of the deck that
afforded a little privacy. He was dressed like a man on holiday—linen pants, calfskin flip-flops, and an untucked shirt that revealed a wedge of ebony chest hair. He greeted Josh with an easy grin and a loose handshake.

  “You picked a fine day,” he said, the trace of a Bengali accent beneath his words. “It rained all last week. It’s good for the drought, but I much prefer sunshine.”

  A waiter appeared at their side as soon as Josh sat down.

  “What are you drinking?” Josh asked, glancing at the menu.

  “Perrier,” Rana replied. When Josh gave him an odd look, he explained, “I’m Muslim even in LA, but you get what you want. I hear they serve a mean vodka martini.”

  “I’ll try it,” he told the waiter.

  When they were alone, Josh sat back and watched the waves roll in off the ocean. He was weary from travel. He had been in transit for eleven hours. But he rested only a moment before reaching for something germane. “So you sue the clothing brands,” he began. “Tell me how you do it.”

  “California makes it easy,” Rana replied. “Under the law, the brands are guarantors of a worker’s wages. If the factory doesn’t pay—which they often don’t—the workers come to us, and we go to the labor commissioner. The brands usually settle. The factories are harder to nail. They just close up shop, create a new corporation, and reopen down the street.”

  “Do you ever take the brands to court?” Josh asked.

  “We’d love nothing more,” Rana said, “but we’ve never been able to find plaintiffs. Think about it. You’re an immigrant without a green card working the only job you can find to feed your kids—in a sweatshop, sewing clothes, being ripped off, probably abused. We offer you compensation now or the possibility of systemic impact in three years, with the real possibility your case will get kicked out of court and you’ll end up with nothing.”

  The waiter delivered their drinks, and Josh took a sip of his martini. “What if I told you I could find you plaintiffs? But you’ll have to work with another organization.”