Jodi Picoult: Sing You Home

Six months after my father died, my mother-still stoic-took his suits and shirts out of the closet they shared and brought them to Goodwill. She asked the liquor store for boxes, and she packed away the biography that he had been reading, which had been on the nightstand all this time; and his pipe, and his coin collection. She did not pack away his Abbott and Costello videos, although she always had told my father that she never really understood what made them funny.

My mother carried these boxes to the attic, a place that seemed to trap cluster flies and heat. On her third trip up, she didn’t come back. Instead, what floated downstairs was a silly, fizzy refrain piped through the speakers of an old record player. I could not understand all the words, but it had something to do with a witch doctor telling someone how to win the heart of a girl.

Ooo eee ooo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla, bing bang, I heard. It made a laugh bubble up in my chest, and since I hadn’t laughed all that much lately, I hurried to the source.

When I stepped into the attic, I found my mother weeping. “This record,” she said, playing it over again. “It made him so happy.”

I knew better than to ask why, then, she was sobbing. Instead, I curled up beside her and listened to the song that had finally given my mother permission to cry.

Every life has a soundtrack.

There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There’s another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday mornings to pick up the New York Times. There’s the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub; and the one that brings back my cousin Isobel’s sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup.

If you ask me, music is the language of memory.

Wanda, the shift nurse at Shady Acres Assisted Living, hands me a visitor pass, although I’ve been coming to the nursing home for the past year to work with various clients. “How is he today?” I ask.

“The usual,” Wanda says. “Swinging from the chandelier and entertaining the masses with a combination of tap dancing and shadow puppets.”

I grin. Mr. Docker is in the final throes of dementia. In the twelve months I’ve been his music therapist, he’s interacted with me twice. Most of the time, he sits in his bed or a wheelchair, staring through me, completely unresponsive.

When I tell people I am a music therapist, they think it means I play guitar for people who are in the hospital-that I’m a performer. Actually, I’m more like a physical therapist, except instead of using treadmills and grab bars as tools, I use music. When I tell people that, they usually dismiss my job as some New Age BS.

In fact, it’s very scientific. In brain scans, music lights up the medial prefrontal cortex and triggers a memory that starts playing in your mind. All of a sudden you can see a place, a person, an incident. The strongest responses to music-the ones that elicit vivid memories-cause the greatest activity on brain scans. It’s for this reason that stroke patients can access lyrics before they remember language, why Alzheimer’s patients can still remember songs from their youth.

And why I haven’t given up on Mr. Docker yet.

“Thanks for the warning,” I tell Wanda, and I pick up my duffel, my guitar, and my djembe.

“Put those down,” she insists. “You’re not supposed to be carrying anything heavy.”

“Then I’d better get rid of this,” I say, touching my belly. In my twenty-eighth week, I’m enormous-and I’m also completely lying. I worked way too hard to have this baby to feel like any part of the pregnancy is a burden. I give Wanda a wave and head down the hall to start today’s session.

Usually my nursing home clients meet in a group setting, but Mr. Docker is a special case. A former CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he now lives in this very chic elder-care facility, and his daughter Mim contracts my services for weekly sessions. He’s just shy of eighty, has a lion’s mane of white hair and gnarled hands that apparently used to play a mean jazz piano.

The last time Mr. Docker gave any indication that he was aware I shared the same physical space as him was two months ago. I’d been playing my guitar, and he smacked his fist against the handle of his wheelchair twice. I am not sure if he wanted to chime in for good measure or was trying to tell me to stop-but he was in rhythm.

I knock and open the door. “Mr. Docker?” I say. “It’s Zoe. Zoe Baxter. You feel like playing a little music?”

Someone on staff has moved him to an armchair, where he sits looking out the window. Or maybe just through it-he’s not focusing on anything. His hands are curled in his lap like lobster claws.

“Right!” I say briskly, trying to maneuver myself around the bed and the television stand and the table with his untouched breakfast. “What should we sing today?” I wait a beat but am not really expecting an answer. “‘You Are My Sunshine’?” I ask. “‘Tennessee Waltz’?” I try to extract my guitar from its case in a small space beside the bed, which is not really big enough for my instrument and my pregnancy. Settling the guitar awkwardly on top of my belly, I start to strum a few chords. Then, on second thought, I put it down.

I rummage through the duffel bag for a maraca-I have all sorts of small instruments in there, for opportunities just like this. I gently wedge it into the curl of his hand. “Just in case you want to join in.” Then I start singing softly. “Take me out to the ball game; take me out with the…”

The end, I leave hanging. There’s a need in all of us to finish a phrase we know, and so I’m hoping to get him to mutter that final “crowd.” I glance at Mr. Docker, but the maraca remains clenched in his hand, silent.

“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack; I don’t care if I never get back.”

I keep singing as I step in front of him, strumming gently. “Let me root, root, root for the home team; if they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three-”

Suddenly Mr. Docker’s hand comes flying up and the maraca clips me in the mouth. I can taste blood. I’m so surprised I stagger backward, and tears spring to my eyes. I press my sleeve to my cut lip, trying to keep him from seeing that he’s hurt me. “Did I do something to upset you?”

Mr. Docker doesn’t respond.

The maraca has landed on the pillow of his bed. “I’m just going to reach behind you, here, and get the instrument,” I say carefully, and as I do, he takes another swing at me. This time I stumble, crashing into the table and overturning his breakfast tray.

“What is going on in here?” Wanda cries, bursting through the door. She looks at me, at the mess on the floor, and then at Mr. Docker.

“We’re okay,” I tell her. “Everything’s okay.”

Wanda takes a long, pointed look at my belly. “You sure?”

I nod, and she backs out of the room. This time, I sit gingerly on the edge of the radiator in front of the window. “Mr. Docker,” I ask softly, “what’s wrong?”

When he faces me, his eyes are bright with tears and lucidity. He lets his gaze roam the room-from its institutional curtains to the emergency medical equipment in the cabinet behind the bed to the plastic pitcher of water on the nightstand. “Everything,” he says tightly.

I think about this man, who once was written up in Money and Fortune. Who used to command thousands of employees and whose days were spent in a richly paneled corner office with a plush carpet and a leather swivel chair. For a moment, I want to apologize for taking out my guitar, for unlocking his blocked mind with music.