Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

Vanessa and I don’t speak until we are outside the clinic, riding down together in an otherwise empty elevator. “You have to talk to him,” she says.

“And say what? Hey, I’m married to Vanessa and we’d like you to be our sperm donor?”

“It’s not like that,” Vanessa points out. “The embryos already exist. What plans does he have for them?”

The doors slide open on the ground floor. A woman is waiting, with a baby in a stroller. The baby is wearing a white, hooded sweater with little bear ears sticking up.

“I’ll try,” I say.

I find Max at a client’s house, raking out mulch and twigs from the flower beds in preparation for spring landscaping. The snow has melted as quickly as it arrived, and it smells like spring. Max is wearing a shirt and tie, and he’s sweating. “Nice place,” I say appreciatively, looking around the grounds of this McMansion.

Max wheels at the sound of my voice. “Zoe? What are you doing here?”

“Liddy told me where to find you,” I say. “I was wondering if you’ve got a minute to talk?”

He leans on the rake and wipes the perspiration from his forehead, nods. “Sure. You want to, uh, sit down?” He gestures to a stone bench in the center of a hibernating garden. The granite is cold through the fabric of my jeans.

“What’s it like?” I ask. “When it’s blooming, I mean?”

“Oh, it’s pretty awesome, actually. Tiger lilies. They should be up by the end of April, if I can keep the beetles off of them.”

“I’m glad you’re still doing landscaping. I wasn’t sure.”

“Why wouldn’t I be doing it?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I thought you might be working for your church.”

“Well, on Mondays I do,” he says. “They’re one of my clients.” He rubs his jaw with his fist. “I saw a sign outside a bar, saying you’d be singing. You haven’t performed since before we got… well, for a long time.”

“I know-I sort of fell back into it.” I hesitate. “You weren’t at the bar…?”

“No.” Max laughs. “I’m cleaner than soap these days.”

“Good. I mean, that’s really good. And, yeah, I’ve been doing a little singing here and there. Acoustically. It keeps me on my toes for my therapy sessions.”

“So you’re still doing that.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. A lot about you has… changed.”

It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It’s as if you’re in a foreign film, and what you’re saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who know every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.

“I got married,” I blurt out.

Since Max hasn’t been paying me alimony, there’s really no reason he would have known. For a second he looks completely baffled. Then his eyes widen. “You mean, you and…?”

“Vanessa,” I say. “Yes.”

“Wow.” Max shifts, sliding centimeters away from me on the stone bench. “I, uh, didn’t realize it was so… real.”

“Real?”

“Serious, I mean. I figured it was some fling you had to get out of your system.”

“You mean the same way you were a casual drinker?” As soon as I say the words, I regret them. I’m supposed to be here to win Max over to my side, not to antagonize him. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Max looks like he’s about to be sick. “I’m glad you told me face-to-face. It would have been really tough to hear that through the grapevine.”

For a moment, I almost feel sorry for him. I can only imagine the flak he’ll get from his new church buddies about me. “There’s more,” I say, swallowing. “Vanessa and I want to start a family. Vanessa’s young and healthy, and there’s no reason she can’t have a baby.”

“I can think of a pretty major one,” Max says.

“Well, actually, that’s why I’m here.” I take a deep breath. “It would mean a lot to us if the baby Vanessa had was biologically mine. And there are three embryos left over from when you and I were trying. I’d like your permission to use them.”

Max’s head snaps up. “What?”

“I know this is a lot to take in at once-”

“I told you I don’t want to be a father…”

“And I’m not asking you to. No strings attached, Max. We’ll sign anything you want to guarantee that. We’re not expecting you to support a baby in any way-not with money, or with your name, nothing. You won’t have any obligations or responsibilities to the baby, if we’re lucky enough to have one.” I meet his gaze. “These embryos-they already exist. They’re just waiting. For how long? Five years? Ten? Fifty? Neither of us wants them destroyed, and you’ve already said you don’t want kids. But I do. I want them so bad that it hurts.”

“Zoe-”

“This is my last chance. I’m too old to go through in vitro again to harvest more eggs with an anonymous sperm donor.” With a shaking hand I pull the form from the clinic out of my purse. “Please, Max? I’m begging you.”

He takes the piece of paper but doesn’t look at it. He doesn’t look at me. “I… I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

You do, I realize. You just won’t say it.

“Think about it?” I ask.

He nods, and I stand up. “I really appreciate this, Max. I know this wasn’t what you expected.” I take a step back. “I, um, guess I’ll call you. Or you call me.”

He nods, then folds the paper in half and half again, and tucks it into his back pocket. I wonder if he will even look at it. If he’ll tear it up in little pieces and rake it into the dirt. If he’ll send it through the wash in his jeans so that he cannot read the words anymore.

I start walking down to the curb, where I’ve left my car, but I am stopped by Max’s voice. “Zoe,” he calls out. “I still pray for you, you know.”

I face him. “I don’t need your prayers, Max,” I say. “Just your consent.”

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Faith (4:01)

Sometimes God just plain pisses me off.

I am the first to tell you that I’m not always the brightest crayon in the box, and that I would never assume I could know what the Lord has up His sleeve, but there are situations where it’s really hard to figure out what He’s thinking at all.

Like when you hear about a bunch of kids being killed in a school shooting.

Or when there’s a hurricane that wipes out an entire community.

Or when Alison Gerhart, a sweet twenty-something who went to Bob Jones University and who had the prettiest soprano in the church choir and who never smoked a day in her life was diagnosed with lung cancer and dead in a month.

Or when Ed Emmerly, a deacon at Eternal Glory, lost his job just when his son needed a pricey spinal surgery.

Since Zoe’s unexpected visit, I’ve been praying over what’s the right thing to do here, but it’s not a matter of black or white. We’re in agreement about one thing: to us, those are not just frozen cells in that clinic; they’re potential children. Maybe we both believe this for very different reasons-mine religious and hers personal-but either way, we don’t want to see those embryos flushed down a drain. I’ve been putting off the inevitable by agreeing to keep them frozen, suspended in limbo. Zoe wants to give them the chance at life every baby deserves.