Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

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Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen.
Music has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter's life. There's the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant.
For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.
In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people – even those she loves and trusts most – don't want that to happen.
Sing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It's about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it's about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family.

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“Objection!” Wade smacks the table with his open hand.

The judge raises his voice. “Ms. Moretti, I will hold you in contempt if you-”

“Fine. I’ll withdraw that last one. But you must admit, Pastor, that not every decree in the Bible makes sense in this day and age.”

“Only because you’re taking the verses out of historical context-”

“Mr. Lincoln,” Angela Moretti says flatly. “You did first.”

14

“There is audio content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”

Where You Are (3:22)

ZOE

For the first five seconds after I wake up, the day is as crisp as a new dollar bill-spotless, full of possibility.

And then I remember.

That there is a lawsuit.

That there are three embryos.

That today, I am testifying.

That for the rest of my life, Vanessa and I will have to jump twice as high and run twice as fast to cover the same ground as a heterosexual couple. Love is never easy, but it seems that, for gay couples, it’s an obstacle course.

I feel her arm steal around me from behind. “Stop thinking,” she says.

“How do you know I’m thinking?”

Vanessa smiles against my shoulder blade. “Because your eyes are open.”

I roll over to face her. “How did you do it? How does anyone ever come out when they’re younger? I mean, I can barely handle what’s being said about me in that courtroom, and I’m forty-one years old. If I were fourteen, I wouldn’t just be in the closet-I’d be gluing myself to its inside wall.”

Vanessa rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. “I would have rather died than come out in high school. Even though I knew, deep down, who I was. There are a million reasons to not come out when you’re a teenager-because adolescence is about matching everyone else, not standing out; because you don’t know what your parents are going to say; because you’re terrified your best friend will think you’re making the moves on her-seriously, I’ve been there.” She glances at me. “At my school now, there are five teens who are openly gay and lesbian, and about fifteen more who don’t want to realize they’re gay and lesbian yet. I can tell them a hundred million times that what they’re feeling is perfectly normal, and then they go home and turn on the news and they see that the military won’t let gay people serve. They watch another gay marriage referendum bite the dust. One thing kids aren’t is stupid.”

“How many people have to say there’s something wrong with you before you start believing it?” I muse out loud.

“You tell me,” Vanessa says. “You’re a late bloomer, Zo, but you’re just as brave as the rest of us. Gays and lesbians are like cockroaches, I guess. Resilient as all hell.”

I laugh. “Clearly that would be Pastor Clive’s worst nightmare. Cockroaches have been around since the dinosaurs were walking the earth.”

“But then Pastor Clive would have to believe in evolution,” Vanessa says.

Thinking of Pastor Clive makes me think about the gauntlet we had to run yesterday to get into court. Last night, Wade Preston had been on the Hannity show. Today there will be twice as much media. Twice as much attention focused on me.

I’m used to it; I’m a performer after all. But there’s an enormous difference between an audience that’s watching you because they can’t wait to see what comes next and an audience that’s watching you because they’re waiting for you to fail.

Suddenly nothing about Pastor Clive seems funny at all.

I roll onto my side, staring at the buttery light on the wood floor, wondering what would happen if I phoned Angela and told her I had the flu. Hives. The Black Plague.

Vanessa curves her body around mine, tangles our ankles together. “Stop thinking,” she says again. “You’re going to be fine.”

One of the hidden costs of a courtroom trial is the amount of time that your real life is entirely interrupted by something you’d much rather keep secret. Maybe you’re a little ashamed; maybe you just don’t think it’s anyone’s business. You have to take personal time off work; you have to assume that everything else is on hold and this takes precedence.

In this, a lawsuit is not much different from in vitro.

Because of this-and because Vanessa’s taking off just as much time as I am-we decide that we will spend an hour at the high school before we have to go to court for the day. Vanessa can clear her desk and put out whatever fires have sprung up since yesterday; I will meet with Lucy.

Or so we think, until we turn the corner from the school parking lot and find a mob of picketers, holding signs and chanting.

FEAR GOD, NOT GAYS

JUDGMENT IS COMING

NO QUEERS HERE

3 GAY RIGHTS: 1. STDS 2. AIDS 3. HELL

Two cops are standing by, warily watching the protest. Clive Lincoln is standing smack in the middle of this fiasco, wearing yet another white suit-this one double-breasted. “We are here to protect our children,” he bellows. “The future of this great country-and those at greatest risk to becoming the prey of homosexuals-homosexuals who work in this very school!”

“Vanessa.” I gasp. “What if he outs you?”

“After all this media coverage, I hardly think that’s possible,” Vanessa says. “Besides, the people I care about already know. The people I don’t care about-well, they’ll have to just deal with it. They can’t fire me because I’m gay.” She stands a little taller. “Angela would drool to take that case.”

A school bus pulls up, and as the baffled kids stream out of it, the church members yell at them, or shove signs in their faces. One small, delicate boy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that has been yanked tight around his face, turns bright red when he sees the signs.

Vanessa leans closer to me. “Remember what we were talking about this morning? He’s one of the other fifteen.”

The boy ducks his head, trying to become invisible.

“I’m going to run interference,” Vanessa says. “You okay on your own here?” She doesn’t wait to hear my answer but barrels through the crowd-shoving with a linebacker’s force until she reaches the boy and carefully steers him through this forcefield of hate. “Why don’t you get a life?” Vanessa yells at Pastor Clive.

“Why don’t you get a man ?” he replies.

Suddenly Vanessa’s face is just as red as the boy’s. I watch her disappear into the school doors, still trying to refocus the student’s attention.

“Homosexuals are teaching our children-trying to convert them to their lifestyle,” Pastor Clive says. “What irony is it that guidance is being provided to these impressionable youth by those who live in sin?”

I grab the sleeve of a policeman. “This is a school. Surely they shouldn’t be protesting here. Can’t you get rid of them?”

“Not unless they actually do something violent. You can blame the liberals for the flip side of democracy, lady. Guys like this get to blow their horn; terrorists move in the neighborhood. God bless the U.S.A.,” he says sarcastically. He looks at me, cracks his gum.

“I have nothing against homosexuals,” Pastor Clive says. “But I do not like what they do. Gays already have equal rights. What they want are special rights. Rights that will slowly but surely take away from your own freedoms. In places where they have prevailed, speaking my mind, like I am right now, could land me in jail for hate speech. In Canada and England and Sweden, pastors and ministers and cardinals and bishops have been sued or sentenced to prison for preaching against homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, an evangelical group carrying signs like you were arrested for ethnic intimidation.”

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