Jodi Picoult: Sing You Home

She stands up. “Do I look like a senior, for God’s sake? I color my hair religiously. I have an elliptical machine. I gave up Brian Williams for Jon Stewart.”

I have to give her this-she looks better than most of my friends’ mothers. She has the same poker-straight brown hair and green eyes that I do and the kind of funky, eclectic style that always makes you look twice at someone, wondering if she planned the outfit meticulously or just rummaged in the depths of her closet. “Mom,” I say, “you are the youngest sixty-five-year-old I know. You don’t need Facebook to prove it.”

It amazes me that someone-anyone-would pay my mother to be a life coach. I mean, as her daughter, isn’t her advice the very thing I’ve tried to escape? But my mother insists that her clients like the fact that she’s survived a great loss herself; it gives her credibility. She says the vast majority of life coaches are nothing more than good listeners who, every so often, can give a procrastinator a kick in the pants. And really, what are the best credentials for that, outside of being a mother?

I peer over her shoulder. “Don’t you think you should mention me on the site?” I say. “On account of the fact that I’m your primary qualification for this job?”

“Imagine how ridiculous it will look if your name is on the site and there isn’t a link to your profile. But”-she sighs-“that’s only for people who’ve accepted my friend invitation…”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I lean down and type, my hands between hers, this baby pressed to her back. I log in to my profile. The live feed that fills the screen contains the thoughts and actions of people I went to high school with or other music therapists or former professors; a former college roommate named Darci I haven’t spoken with in months. I should call her, I think, and at the same time I know I won’t. She has twins who are just going to preschool; their smiling faces are her profile photo.

I accept my mother’s pending friend request, even though it feels like a new low in social networking. “There,” I say. “Happy?”

“Very. Now at least I know I’ll be able to see new pictures of my grandchild when I log in.”

“As opposed to driving a mile to my apartment to see her in person?”

“It’s the principle, Zoe,” my mother says. “I’m just glad you finally got off your high horse.”

“No horses,” I say. “I’m just not in the mood to fight until it’s time to leave for my baby shower.”

My mother opens her mouth to respond, then snaps it shut. For a half second, she contemplates going along with the ruse, and, just as quickly, she gives up. “Who told you?”

“I think the pregnancy is bringing out a sixth sense in me,” I confide.

She considers this, impressed. “Really?”

I walk into her kitchen to raid the fridge-there are three tubs of hummus and a bag of carrots, plus various indistinguishable clots in Tupperware containers. “Some mornings I wake up and I just know Max is going to say he wants Cap’n Crunch for breakfast. Or I’ll hear the phone ring and I know it’s you before I even pick up.”

“I used to be able to predict rain when I was pregnant with you,” my mother says. “I was more accurate than the weatherman on the ABC news.”

I dip my finger into the hummus. “When I woke up this morning, the whole bedroom smelled like eggplant parmigiana-you know, the really good kind that they make at Bolonisi’s?”

“That’s where the shower’s being held!” she gasps, amazed. “When did all this start?”

“About the same time I found a Kinko’s receipt for the invitations in Max’s jacket.”

It takes my mother a moment, and then she starts to laugh. “And here I was planning the cruise I was going to take after I won the lottery with your number picks.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

She rubs her hand over my belly. “Zoe,” my mother says, “you couldn’t if you tried.”

Some cognitive scientists believe human response to music provides evidence that we are more than just flesh and blood-that we also have souls. Their thinking is as follows:

All reactions to external stimuli can be traced back to an evolutionary rationale. You pull your hand away from fire to avoid physical harm. You get butterflies before an important speech because the adrenaline running through your veins has caused a physiological fight-or-flight response. But there is no evolutionary context within which people’s response to music makes sense-the tapping of a foot, the urge to sing along or get up and dance, there’s just no survival benefit to these activities. For this reason, some believe that our response to music is proof that there’s more to us than just biological and physiological mechanics-that the only way to be moved by the spirit, so to speak, is to have one in the first place.

There are games. Estimate Zoe’s Belly Size, a purse scavenger hunt (who would have guessed that my mother had an overdue utility bill in her bag?), a baby-sock-matching relay, and, now, a particularly disgusting foray in which baby diapers filled with melted chocolate are passed around for identification by candy bar brand.

Even though this isn’t really my cup of tea, I play along. My part-time bookkeeper, Alexa, has organized the whole event-and has even gone to the trouble of rounding up guests: my mother, my cousin Isobel, Wanda from Shady Acres and another nurse from the burn unit of the hospital where I work, and a school counselor named Vanessa who contracted me to do music therapy earlier this year with a profoundly autistic ninth grader.

It’s sort of depressing that these women, acquaintances at best, are being substituted for close friends. Then again, if I’m not working, I’m with Max. And Max would rather be run over by his own lawn-mowing machines than identify chocolate feces in a diaper. For this reason alone, he is really the only friend I need.

I watch Wanda peer into the Pampers. “Snickers?” she guesses incorrectly.

Vanessa gets the diaper next. She’s tall, with short platinum blond hair and piercingly blue eyes. The first time I met her she invited me into her office and gave me a blistering lecture on how the SATs were a conspiracy by the College Board to take over the world eighty dollars at a time. Well? she said when she finally stopped for a breath. What do you have to say for yourself?

I’m the new music therapist, I told her.

She blinked at me, and then looked down at her calendar and flipped the page backward. Ah, she said. Guess the rep from Kaplan is coming tomorrow.

Vanessa doesn’t even glance down at the diaper. “They look like Mounds to me,” she says drily. “Two, to be exact.”

I burst out laughing, but I’m the only one who seems to get Vanessa’s joke. Alexa looks devastated because her party games aren’t being taken seriously. My mother intervenes, collecting the diaper from Vanessa’s place mat. “How about Name That Baby?” she suggests.

I feel a twinge in my side and absently rub my hand over the spot.

My mother reads from a paper Alexa has printed off the Internet. “A baby lion is a…”

My cousin’s hand shoots up. “Cub!” she yells out.

“Right! A baby fish is a…?”

“Caviar?” Vanessa suggests.

“Fry,” Wanda says.

“That’s a verb,” Isobel argues.

“I’m telling you, I saw it on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire- ”

Suddenly I am seized by a cramp so intense that all the breath rushes out of my body.

“Zoe?” My mother’s voice seems far away. I struggle to my feet.

Twenty-eight weeks, I think. Too soon.

Another current rips through me. As I fall against my mother, I feel a warm gush between my legs. “My water,” I whisper. “I think it just broke.”