Jodi Picoult: Sing You Home

Because there are some things we’d rather forget.

The doll that I buried at a neighbor’s house on the day my father died was called Sweet Cindy. I had begged for her the previous Christmas, completely suckered by the television ads that ran on Saturday mornings between cartoons. Sweet Cindy could eat and drink and poop and tell you that she loved you. “Can she fix a carburetor?” my father had joked, when I showed him my Christmas list. “Can she clean the bathroom?”

I had a history of treating dolls badly. I cut off my Barbie dolls’ hair with fingernail scissors. I decapitated Ken, although in my defense that had been an accident involving a fall from a bicycle basket. But Sweet Cindy I treated like my own baby. I tucked her each night into a crib that was set beside my own bed. I bathed her every day. I pushed her up and down the driveway in a stroller we’d bought at a garage sale.

On the day of my father’s death, he’d wanted to go for a bike ride. It was beautiful out; I had just gotten my training wheels removed. But I’d told my father that I was playing with Cindy, and maybe we could go later. “Sounds like a plan, Zo,” he had said, and he’d started to mow the back lawn, and of course there was no later.

If I had never gotten Sweet Cindy for Christmas.

If I’d said yes to my father when he asked.

If I’d been watching him, instead of playing with the doll.

There were a thousand permutations of behavior that, in my mind, could have saved my father’s life-and so, although it was too late, I told myself I’d never wanted that stupid doll in the first place, that she was the reason my father wasn’t here anymore.

The first time it snowed after my father died, I had a dream that Sweet Cindy was sitting on my bed. Crows had pecked out her blue-marble eyes. She was shivering.

The next day I took a garden spade from the garage and walked to the neighbor’s house where I’d buried her. I dug up the snow and the mulch from half of the hedgerow, but the doll was gone. Carried away by a dog, maybe, or a little girl who knew better.

I know it’s stupid for a forty-year-old woman to connect a foolish act of grief with four unsuccessful cycles of IVF, two miscarriages, and enough infertility issues to bring down a civilization-but I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wondered if this is some kind of karmic punishment.

If I hadn’t so recklessly abandoned the first baby I ever loved, would I have a real one by now?

By the time my session with Mr. Docker ends, his daughter Mim has rushed from her ladies’ auxiliary meeting to Shady Acres. “Are you sure you didn’t get hurt?” she says, looking me over for the hundredth time.

“Yes,” I tell her, although I suspect her concern has more to do with a fear of being sued than with genuine concern for my well-being.

She rummages in her purse and pulls out a fistful of cash. “Here,” Mim says.

“But you’ve already paid me for this month-”

“This is a bonus,” she says. “I’m sure, with the baby and everything, there are expenses.”

It’s hush money, I know that, but she’s right. However, the expenses surrounding my baby have less to do with car seats and strollers than with Lupron and Follistim injections. After five IVF cycles-both fresh and frozen-we have depleted all of our savings and maxed out our credit cards. I take the money and tuck it into the pocket of my jeans. “Thank you,” I say, and then I meet her gaze. “What your father did? I know you don’t see it this way, but it’s a huge step forward for him. He connected with me.”

“Yeah, right on your jaw,” Wanda mutters.

“He interacted,” I correct. “Maybe in a less than socially appropriate way… but still. For a minute, the music got to him. For a minute, he was here.”

I can tell Mim doesn’t buy this, but that’s all right. I have been bitten by an autistic child; I have sobbed beside a little girl dying of brain cancer; I have played in tune with the screams of a child who was burned over eighty percent of his body. This job… if it hurts me, I know I am doing it well.

“I’d better go,” I say, picking up my guitar case.

Wanda doesn’t glance up from the chart she’s writing in. “See you next week.”

“Actually, you’ll see me in about two hours at the baby shower.”

“What baby shower?”

I grin. “The one I’m not supposed to know about.”

Wanda sighs. “If your mother asks, you better make sure you tell her I wasn’t the one who spilled the beans.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll act appropriately surprised.”

Mim reaches out her hand toward my protruding belly. “May I?” I nod. I know some pregnant women think it’s an invasion of privacy to have strangers reaching to pat or touch or offer parenting advice, but I don’t mind in the least. I can barely keep myself from rubbing my hands over the baby, from being magnetically drawn to the proof that this time, it is going to work.

“It’s a boy,” she announces.

I am thoroughly convinced that I’m carrying a girl. I dream in pink. I wake up with fairy tales caught on my tongue. “We’ll see,” I say.

I’ve always found it ironic that someone who has trouble getting pregnant begins in vitro fertilization by taking birth control pills. It is all about regulating an irregular cycle, in order to begin an endless alphabet soup of medications: three ampoules each of FSH and hMG-Follistim and Repronex-injected into me twice a day by Max, a man who used to faint at the sight of a needle and who now, after five years, can give me a shot with one hand and pour coffee with the other. Six days after starting the injections, a transvaginal ultrasound measured the size of my ovarian follicles, and a blood test measured my estradiol levels. That led to Antagon, a new medication meant to keep the eggs in the follicles until they were ready. Three days later: another ultrasound and blood test. The amounts of Follistim and Repronex were reduced-one ampoule of each morning and night-and then two days later, another ultrasound and blood test.

One of my follicles measured twenty-one millimeters. One measured twenty millimeters. And one was nineteen millimeters.

At precisely 8:30 P.M. Max injected ten thousand units of hCG into me. Exactly thirty-six hours later, those eggs were retrieved.

Then ICSI-intracytoplasmic sperm injection-was used to fertilize the egg with Max’s sperm. And three days later, with Max holding my hand, a vaginal catheter was inserted into me and we watched the embryo transfer on a blinking computer monitor. There, the lining of my uterus looked like sea grass swaying in the current. A little white spark, a star, shot out of the syringe and fell between two blades of grass. We celebrated our potential pregnancy with a shot of progesterone in my butt.

And to think, some people who want to have a baby only need to make love.

My mother is on her computer when I walk into her house, adding information to her recently acquired Facebook profile. DARA WEEKS, her status says, WISHES HER DAUGHTER WOULD FRIEND HER. “I’m not talking to you,” she says, snippy, “but your husband called.”

“Max?”

“Do you have more than one?”

“What did he want?”

She shrugs. Ignoring her, I pick up the phone in the kitchen and dial Max’s mobile number. “Why isn’t your cell on?” Max asks, as soon as he picks up.

“Yes, honey,” I reply. “I love you, too.”

In the background I can hear a lawn mower. Max runs a landscaping business. He is busy mowing in the summer, raking in the fall, and snowplowing in the winter. What do you do during mud season? I had asked the first time we met.

Wallow, he’d said, smiling.