Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

The same thing happens now-a curtain pulled back, a sentence turned on its edge to reveal a different meaning: the suicide attempts. Pastor Clive’s speech. Lucy’s angry tackle. Jeremy. Can someone stop loving you?

It’s not a boy, Lucy had said.

Maybe that’s because it’s a girl.

If there is one cardinal rule of music therapy, it’s that you come into a patient’s life at the place she needs you, and you leave her at a different place. You, as the therapist, are just a catalyst. A constant. You do not change as part of the equation. And you most certainly do not talk about yourself. You’re there solely for the patient.

It’s why, when Lucy asked me whether I was married, I didn’t answer.

It’s why she knew nothing about me and I know everything about her.

This isn’t a friendship-I’ve told Lucy that before. This is a professional relationship.

But that was before my future became a snack for public consumption. That was before I sat in a courtroom with the stares of strangers needling between my shoulder blades. Before I listened to a pastor I did not know or like tell me I was a reprobate. Before I went to the ladies’ room and had someone slip me a novena card underneath the stall wall with a message scribbled on the back: I am praying for you, dear.

If I have to run this gauntlet because I happen to love a woman, let it at least do someone else some good. Let me pay it forward.

“Lucy,” I say quietly. “You know I’m gay, right?”

Her head snaps up. “Why-why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling, but you need to understand that it’s completely normal.”

She stares at me, silent.

“You know how, when you go back into a preschool classroom, you sit down in the tiny chairs at the tiny tables and feel like Alice in Wonderland? You can’t imagine ever being small enough to fit the space? That’s what it feels like to come out. You look back and can’t imagine squeezing inside again. Even if Pastor Clive and his entire church are shoving as hard as they can.”

Lucy’s eyes are so wide I can see rims of white around the irises. She leans forward, her breath caught, as there is a knock on the door.

Vanessa pokes her head inside. “It’s eight-forty-five,” she tells me, and I jump out of my seat. We are going to have to fly if we want to get to the courthouse on time.

“Lucy, I have to go,” I say, but she is not looking at me. She’s looking at Vanessa, and thinking about what Pastor Clive said about her, and putting my life together as seamlessly as I just did hers.

Lucy grabs her backpack and, without a word, runs out of Vanessa’s office.

I didn’t realize how much of being a witness involves being an actor. Just as if I’m in a stage play, I’ve been well rehearsed for this moment-from learning the lines through the intonation of my voice to the costume which Angela herself picked out for me (a navy blue sheath dress with a white cardigan; so incredibly conservative that when Vanessa saw me she started laughing and called me Mother Baxter).

Yes, I have been prepared. Yes, I am technically ready. And yes, I’m certainly used to performing.

But then again, there’s a reason I play and sing music. Somehow, I get lost in the notes, adrift in the melodies, and forget where I am while I’m doing it. When I play for an audience, I can totally believe that the benefit sits squarely with me, instead of the people listening. On the other hand, the last time I was in a play, I was ten years old and cast as a cornstalk in The Wizard of Oz, and thirty seconds before I had to walk onto the stage, I threw up on the director’s shoes.

“My name is Zoe Baxter,” I say. “I live at six-eighty Garvin Street in Wilmington.”

Angela smiles brightly at me, as if I’ve solved a differential calculus problem, instead of just reciting my name and address. “How old are you, Zoe?”

“Forty-one.”

“Can you tell the court what you do for a living?”

“I’m a music therapist,” I say. “I use music in a clinical setting to help patients alleviate pain or change their moods or engage with the world. Sometimes I work in senior centers with patients with dementia; sometimes I work in a burn unit with children who are having dressings changed; sometimes I work in schools with autistic kids-there are dozens of different ways music therapy can be implemented.”

Immediately, I think of Lucy.

“How long have you been a music therapist?”

“For a decade.”

“And what’s your salary, Zoe?”

I smile a little. “About twenty-eight thousand dollars a year. You don’t go into music therapy because you have dreams of living the high life. You do it because you want to help people.”

“Is that your only income?”

“I also sing professionally. At restaurants, bars, coffeehouses. I write my own material. It’s not enough to make a living, but it’s a nice supplement.”

“Have you ever been married?” Angela asks.

I’ve known this question is coming. “Yes. I was married to the plaintiff, Max Baxter, for nine years, and I am currently married to Vanessa Shaw.”

There is a faint hum, like the buzz that sits over a bee colony, as the gallery digests this answer.

“Did you and Mr. Baxter have any children?”

“We had a lot of fertility problems, as a couple. We had two miscarriages and one stillborn son.”

Even now I can see him, blue and still as marble, his nails and eyebrows and eyelashes still missing. A work of art in progress.

“Can you describe for the court the nature of your infertility, and what steps you took as a couple to conceive?”

“I had polycystic ovary syndrome,” I begin. “I never had regular periods, and wouldn’t ovulate every month. I also had submucosal fibroids. Max had male pattern infertility-which is genetic. We started trying to get pregnant when I was thirty-one, and nothing happened for four years. So we started IVF when I was thirty-five.”

“How did that work?”

“I followed a medical protocol with various hormones and injections, and they were able to harvest fifteen eggs from me, which were injected with Max’s sperm. Three weren’t viable. Eight got fertilized, and of those eight, two were transferred to me, and three more were frozen.”

“Did you become pregnant?”

“Not that time. But when I was thirty-six, those three frozen embryos were thawed. Two were transferred and one was discarded.”

“Discarded? What does that mean?” Angela asks.

“The way the doctor explained it to me, they’re not pretty enough to be considered viable for pregnancy, so the clinic chooses not to save them.”

“I see. Did you become pregnant this time?”

“Yes,” I say. “And I miscarried a few weeks later.”

“Then what happened?”

“When I was thirty-seven we did another fresh cycle. This time I had twelve eggs harvested. Six were fertilized successfully. Two were transferred and two were frozen.”

“Did you get pregnant?”

“Yes, but I miscarried at eighteen weeks.”

“Did you continue to pursue IVF?”

I nod. “We used the two frozen embryos for another cycle. One was transferred, and one didn’t survive the thaw. I didn’t get pregnant.”

“How old were you at the time?”

“I was thirty-nine. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time left, so we scrambled to squeeze in one last fresh cycle. When I was forty, I had ten eggs harvested. Seven were fertilized. Of those seven, three were transferred, three were frozen, and one was discarded.” I look up. “I got pregnant.”

“And?”

“I was the happiest woman in the world,” I say softly.