Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“I’ve heard drowning’s not so bad. You pass out from holding your breath before all the really awful stuff happens.” She looks down at the paper, at her mermaid. “With my luck, I’d be able to breathe water.”

I look at her. “Why would that be so bad?”

“How do mermaids commit suicide?” Lucy muses. “Death by oxygen?”

“Lucy,” I say, waiting for her to meet my gaze, “do you still think about killing yourself?”

She doesn’t make a joke out of the question. But she doesn’t answer, either. She begins to draw patterns on the mermaid’s tail, a flourish of scales. “You know how I get angry sometimes?” she says. “That’s because it’s the only thing I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I’m really here.”

Music therapy is a hybrid profession. Sometimes I’m an entertainer, sometimes I am a healer. Sometimes I am a psychologist, and sometimes I’m just a confidante. The art of my job is knowing when to be each of these things. “Maybe there are other ways to test yourself,” I suggest. “To make you feel.”

“Like what?”

“You could write some music,” I say. “For a lot of musicians, songs become the way to talk about really hard things they’re going through.”

“I can’t even play the kazoo.”

“I could teach you. And it doesn’t have to be the kazoo, either. It could be guitar, drums, piano. Anything you want.”

She shakes her head, already retreating. “Let’s play Russian roulette,” she says, and she grabs my iPod. “Let’s draw the next song that comes up on Shuffle.” She pushes the picture of the mermaid toward me and reaches for a fresh piece of paper.

“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” starts playing.

We both look up and start laughing. “Seriously?” Lucy says. “This is on one of your playlists?”

“I work with little kids. This is a big favorite.”

She bends over the paper and starts drawing again. “Every year, my sisters watch this on TV. And every year, it scares the hell out of me.”

“Rudolph scares you?”

“Not Rudolph. The place he goes.”

She is drawing a train with square wheels, a spotted elephant. “The Island of Misfit Toys?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Lucy says, looking up. “They creep me out.”

“I never really understood what was wrong with them,” I admit. “Like the Charlie-in-the-Box? Big deal. Tickle Me Elmo would have still been a hit if it were called Tickle Me Gertrude. And I always thought a water pistol that shot jelly could be the next Transformer.”

“What about the polka-dotted elephant?” Lucy says, a smile playing over her lips. “Total freak of nature.”

“On the contrary-sticking him on the island was a blatantly racist move. For all we know his mother had an affair with a cheetah.”

“The doll is the scariest…”

“What’s her issue?”

“She’s depressed,” Lucy says. “Because none of the kids want her.”

“Do they ever actually tell you that?”

“No, but what else could her problem be?” Suddenly, she grins. “Unless she’s a he …”

“Cross-dressing,” we say, at the same time.

We both laugh, and then Lucy bends down over her artwork again. She draws in silence for a few moments, adding spots to that poor misunderstood elephant. “I’d probably fit right in on that stupid island,” Lucy says. “Because I’m supposed to be invisible, but everyone can still see me.”

“Maybe you’re not supposed to be invisible. Maybe you’re just supposed to be different.”

As I say the words, I think of Angela Moretti, and Vanessa, and those frozen embryos. I think of Wade Preston, with his Hong Kong tailored suit and slicked-back hair, looking at me as if I am a total aberration, a crime against the species.

If I remember correctly, those toys all jump into Santa’s sleigh and get redistributed beneath Christmas trees everywhere. I hope that, if this is true, I wind up under Wade Preston’s.

I turn to find Lucy staring at me. “The other time I feel things,” she confesses, “is when I’m here with you.”

Usually after Lucy’s therapy session, I go to Vanessa’s office and we have lunch in the cafeteria-Tater Tots, let me tell you, are vastly underrated-but today, she’s off at a college admissions fair in Boston, so I head to my car instead. On the way I check my phone messages. There’s one from Vanessa, telling me about an admissions officer from Emerson with an orange beehive hairdo who looks like she fell off a B-52’s album cover, and another just telling me she loves me. There’s one from my mother, asking me if I can help her move furniture this afternoon.

As I get closer to my yellow Jeep in the parking lot, I see Angela Moretti leaning against it. “Is something wrong?” I say immediately. It can’t be a good thing when your attorney travels an hour to tell you something.

“I was in the neighborhood. Well, Fall River, anyway. So I figured I’d swing by to tell you the latest.”

“That doesn’t sound very good…”

“I got another motion on my desk this morning, courtesy of Wade Preston,” Angela explains. “He wants to appoint a guardian ad litem to the case.”

“A what?”

“They’re common in custody cases. It’s someone whose job it is to determine the best interests of the child, and to communicate that to the court.” She shakes her head. “Preston wants one appointed for the pre-born children.”

“How could he…” My voice trails off.

“This is posturing,” Angela explains. “It’s his way of setting forth a political agenda, that’s all. It’s going to be knocked out of court before you even sit down in your chair.” She glances up at me. “There’s more. Preston was on Joe Hoffman last night.”

“Who’s Joe Hoffman?”

“A conservative who runs the Voice of Liberty Broadcasting. A mecca for the closed-minded, if you ask me.”

“What did he talk about?”

Angela looks at me squarely. “The destruction of family values. He specifically named you and Vanessa as being at the forefront of the homosexual movement to ruin America. Do you two receive mail at your house? Because I’d strongly recommend a post office box. And I assume you have an alarm system…”

“Are you saying we’re in danger?”

“I don’t know,” Angela says. “Better safe than sorry. Hoffman’s small potatoes, compared to where Preston’s headed. O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh. He didn’t take this case because he cares so deeply for Max. He took it because it gives him a platform to stand on while he’s preaching, and because it’s a current hook that gets him booked on these shows. By the time we go to trial, Preston’s going to make sure you can’t turn on the TV without seeing his face.”

Angela had warned us that this would be an uphill battle, that we had to be prepared. I’d assumed that what was at stake was my chance to be a mother; I hadn’t realized that I’d also lose my privacy, my anonymity.

“When you think about the lengths he’s going to, it’s laughable,” Angela says.

But I don’t find it funny. When I start crying, Angela hugs me. “Is it all going to be like this?” I ask.

“Worse,” she promises. “But imagine the stories you’ll have to tell your baby one day.”

She waits until I’ve pulled myself together, and then tells me to be at court tomorrow to fight the motion. As I’m getting into my car again, my cell phone rings.

“Why aren’t you home yet?” Vanessa says.

I should tell her about Angela’s visit; I should tell her about Wade Preston. But when you love someone, you protect her. I may stand to lose my credibility, my reputation, my career, but then again, it’s my battle. This is my ex-husband, my former marriage’s embryos. The only reason Vanessa is even involved is because she had the misfortune of falling for me.