Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“You’re looking for water?”

“Yes,” Dara says. “When I find it, the rods will move by themselves and cross in my hands.”

“Let me save you some trouble,” Zoe replies. “I’m pretty sure the water comes out of the faucets.”

“O ye of little faith. For your information, my practical girl, dowsing is a very lucrative skill. Say you’re going to invest in a piece of land. Don’t you want to know what’s under the surface?”

“I’d probably hire an artesian well company,” I say, “but that’s just me.”

“Maybe so, Vanessa, but who’s going to tell the well company where to dig, eh?” She smiles at me. “You two hungry? I’ve got a nice coffeecake in the fridge. One of my clients is trying to visualize becoming a pastry chef…”

“You know, Ma, actually, I came to tell you something really important,” Zoe says. “Something really good, I think.”

Dara’s eyes widen. “I had a dream about this, just last night. Let me guess-you’re going back to school!”

“What? No!” Zoe says. “What are you talking about? I have a master’s degree!”

“But you could have majored in classical voice. Vanessa, have you ever heard her sing…”

“Um, yes-”

“Mom,” Zoe interrupts. “I’m not going back to school for classical voice. I’m perfectly happy as a music therapist-”

Dara looks up at her. “For jazz piano, then?”

“For God’s sake, I’m not going back to school. I came here to tell you I’m a lesbian!”

The word cleaves the room in half.

“But,” Dara says after a moment. “But you were married.”

“I know. I was with Max. But now… now I’m with Vanessa.”

When Dara turns to me, her eyes seem wounded-as if I’ve betrayed her by pretending to be Zoe’s good friend when, in truth, that’s what I have been. “I know this is unexpected,” I say.

“This isn’t you, Zoe. I know you. I know who you are…”

“So do I. And if you think this means I’m going to start riding a Harley and wearing leather, you don’t know me at all. Believe me, I was surprised, too. This isn’t what I thought was going to happen to me.”

Dara starts to cry. She cups Zoe’s cheeks in her hands. “You could get married again.”

“I could, but I don’t want to, Ma.”

“What about grandchildren?”

“I couldn’t seem to make that happen even with a man,” Zoe points out. She reaches for her mother’s hand. “I found someone I want to be with. I’m happy. Can’t you be happy for me?”

Dara sits very still for a moment, looking down at their intertwined fingers. Then she pulls away. “I need a minute,” she says, and she picks up her dowsing rods and walks into the kitchen.

When she leaves, Zoe looks up at me, teary. “So much for her open-mindedness.”

I put my arm around her. “Give her a break. You’re still getting used to these feelings, and it’s been weeks. You can’t expect her to get over the shock in five seconds.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

See, this is why I love Zoe. In the middle of her own freak-out moment, she’s worried about her mother. “I’ll go check,” I say, and I head into the kitchen.

Dara is leaning against the kitchen counter, the dowsing rods beside her on the granite. “Was it something I did?” she asks. “I should have gotten married again, maybe. Just so there was a man in the house-”

“I don’t think it makes a difference. You have been a wonderful mother. Which is why Zoe is so afraid you’ll want to disown her.”

“Disown her? Don’t be ridiculous. She said she was a lesbian, not a Republican.” Dara draws in her breath. “It’s just… I have to get used to it.”

“You should tell her that. She’ll understand.”

Dara looks at me, then nods. She pushes back through the swinging door into the living room. I think about following her, but I want to give Zoe a minute alone with her mother. I want them to have the shift and redistribution of their relationship that I never got to have with my own mom, that acrobatic feat of love where everything is turned upside down and yet they are both still able to keep their balance.

So instead, I eavesdrop. I push the door open a crack in time to hear Dara speaking. “I couldn’t love you any more if you told me right now that you were straight,” she says. “And I don’t love you any less because you told me you aren’t.”

I gently close the door. In the kitchen, I turn around, surveying the bowl of fruit on the counter, the cobalt blue toaster, the Cuisinart. Dara has left behind her dowsing rods. I pick them up, hold them lightly in my hands. In spite of the fact that the faucet and the pipes are less than a foot away, the rods do not jump in my hands or twitch or cross. I imagine having that sixth sense, the certainty that what I’m looking for is within reach, even if it’s still hidden.

Movie theaters are wonderful places to be gay. Once the lights go down, there’s no one to stare at you if you hold your girlfriend’s hand or snuggle closer to her. Attention at the movies, by definition, is focused on the spectacle on the screen and not in the seats.

I’m not a PDA kind of person. I’ve never started kissing someone in public; I just don’t have the kind of selfless abandon that you see in teenage couples who are forever making out or walking down a street with their hands tucked halfway down each other’s pants. So I’m not saying that I’d necessarily walk down the street with my arm around the woman I love-but I’d sure like to know that, if I were so inclined, I wouldn’t attract a trail of shocked, uncomfortable stares. We’re conditioned to seeing men holding guns but not men holding hands.

When the movie credits roll, people begin to get out of their seats. As the lights come up, Zoe’s head is on my shoulder. Then I hear, “Zoe? Hey!”

She leaps up as if she’s been caught in the act of doing something wrong and pastes a huge smile on her face. “Wanda!” she says, to a woman who looks vaguely familiar. “Did you like the movie?”

“I’m not a big Tarantino fan, but actually, it wasn’t bad,” she says. She slips her arm through a man’s elbow. “Zoe, I don’t think you’ve ever met my husband, Stan? Zoe’s a music therapist who comes to the nursing home,” Wanda explains.

Zoe turns to me. “This is Vanessa,” she says. “My… my friend.”

Last night Zoe and I had celebrated a month together. We had champagne and strawberries, and she beat me at Scrabble. We made love, and when we woke up in the morning she was wrapped around me like a heliotrope vine.

Friend.

“We’ve met,” I say to Wanda, although I am not about to point out that it was at the baby shower for the baby who died.

We walk out of the movie theater with Wanda and her husband, making small talk about the plot and whether this will be an Oscar contender. Zoe is careful to keep a good foot of distance away from me. She doesn’t even make eye contact with me again until we’re in my car, driving back to my place.

Zoe fills the silence with a story about Wanda and Stan’s daughter, who wanted to join the army because she had a boyfriend who had already shipped out. I don’t think she notices that I haven’t said a word to her. When we reach the house, I unlock the door and walk inside and strip off my coat. “You want some tea?” Zoe asks, heading into the kitchen. “I’m going to put up the kettle.”

I don’t answer her. I am a thousand shades of hurt right now, and I don’t trust myself to speak.

Instead I sit down on the couch and pick up the newspaper I never got a chance to read today. I can hear Zoe in my kitchen, taking mugs out of the dishwasher, filling the kettle, turning on the stove. She knows where everything is, in which drawer to find the spoons, in which cabinet I keep the tea bags. She moves around my house as if she belongs here.