Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“Did you know the gender of the baby?”

“No. We wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Did you feel the baby moving inside you?”

Even now, her words evoke that slow roll, that lazy aquatic somersault. “Yes.”

“Can you describe how you felt, being pregnant?”

“I loved every minute of it,” I say. “I’d waited my whole life for it.”

“How did Max react to the pregnancy?”

She has told me not to look at him, but magnetically, my gaze is pulled toward Max, who is sitting with his hands folded. Beside him, Wade Preston sporadically writes notes with a Montblanc fountain pen.

How did we get here? I wonder, looking at Max.

How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?

How could I have not known that one day I would love someone else?

How could you have not known that, one day, you would hate me for who I’ve become?

“He was excited, too,” I say. “He used to stick the earphones of my iPod into my belly button so that the baby could hear the music he liked the most.”

“Zoe, did you carry that baby to term?” Angela asks.

“No. At twenty-eight weeks, something went wrong.” I look up at her. “I was at my baby shower when I started having really bad cramps, and bleeding. A lot. I was rushed to the hospital and put on a monitor. The doctors couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. They brought in an ultrasound machine and tried for five minutes-but it felt like five hours. Finally they told me that the placenta had sheared away from the uterus. The baby…” I swallow. “The baby was dead.”

“And then what?”

“I had to deliver it. They gave me drugs to start labor.”

“Was Max there?”

“Yes.”

“What was going through your mind at the time?”

“That this was a mistake,” I say, looking right at Max. “That I would have the baby and they’d see how wrong they were, when it came out kicking and crying.”

“What happened when the baby was delivered?”

“He wasn’t kicking. He wasn’t crying.” Max looks down at the table. “He was so tiny. He didn’t have any fat on him yet, not like you see on other newborns. And he didn’t have fingernails yet, or eyelashes, but he was perfect. He was so incredibly perfect, and so… so still.” I find that I am leaning forward on the witness chair, perched with my hands held in front of me, as if I’m waiting for something. I force myself to sit back. “We named him Daniel. We scattered his ashes into the ocean.”

Angela takes a step toward me. “What happened after your son died?”

“I had more medical complications. When I stood up to go to the bathroom, I got dizzy and short of breath. I started having chest pains. It turned out that I had a blood clot that had developed postpartum, which had settled in my lungs. I was put on heparin, and during blood tests, the doctors learned I had a genetic condition called an AT III deficiency-basically, it means I’m susceptible to blood clots, and the pregnancy probably made it worse. But the first question I asked was whether I’d still be able to have a baby.”

“What was the answer?”

“That this could happen again. There could be even more severe complications. But that ultimately if I wanted to try to conceive again-I could.”

“Did Max want to try to have another baby?” Angela asks.

“I thought so,” I admit. “He always had been on the same page as me before. But after the visit at the doctor’s office, he told me that he couldn’t be with me because I wanted a baby more than anything in the world-and that wasn’t what he wanted.”

“What did he want?”

I look up. “A divorce,” I say.

“So you were still reeling from the death of your child, and dealing with all these medical complications, and then your husband told you he wanted a divorce. What was your reaction?”

“I really can’t remember. I think I went to bed for about a month. Everything was a blur. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t do anything, really.”

“What did Max do?”

“He moved out, and went to live with his brother.”

“Who represented you in your divorce?”

I shrug. “We represented ourselves. We didn’t have any money or property, so it didn’t seem as if it was going to be complicated. I was still so numb back then, I barely even remember going to court. I signed whatever papers came in the mail.”

“Did the three frozen embryos at the clinic ever cross your mind during the divorce proceedings?” Angela says.

“No.”

“Even though you still wanted a child?”

“At the time,” I explain, “I wanted a child with a spouse who loved me. I thought that was Max; I was wrong.”

“Are you married now?”

“Yes,” I say. “To Vanessa Shaw.” Just saying her name makes me feel like I can breathe easier. “She’s a school counselor at Wilmington High. I’d met her years earlier, when she asked me to do some music therapy with an autistic child. I ran into her again, and she asked me to work with another child-a suicidal teenage girl. Gradually, we began to hang out as friends.”

“Did something happen that brought you closer together?”

“She saved my life,” I say flatly. “I was hemorrhaging, and she was the one who found me and called an ambulance. I needed a D & C, and as a result of the procedure I learned that I had endometrial cancer and needed a hysterectomy. It was a very, very difficult time for me.”

I am not looking at Max, now. I’m not sure how much of this he even knows.

“I knew, once I had that hysterectomy, I’d never have a baby,” I say.

“Did your relationship with Vanessa change?”

“Yes. She took care of me, after the surgery. We spent a lot of time together-hanging out, running errands, cooking, whatever-and I started to realize that when I wasn’t with her, I really wanted to be. That I liked her as more than an ordinary friend.”

“Zoe, had you ever had a same-sex relationship before?”

“No,” I say, carefully picking my words. “I know it seems strange, but when you are attracted to people, it’s because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. Their smile. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most. I felt all those things for Vanessa. The fact that she was a woman-well, it was unexpected, but it was really the least important part of the equation.”

“That seems hard to understand, given the fact that you were married to a man…”

I nod. “I think that’s why it took me a while to realize I was in love with Vanessa. I just didn’t get it. I’d had female friends before and never felt like I wanted a physical relationship with them. But once our relationship did take that turn, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if not having her in my life would be like asking me to stop breathing air and start breathing water instead.”

“Do you call yourself a lesbian now?”

“I call myself Vanessa’s spouse. But if I have to wear someone else’s label in order to be with her forever, then I will.”

“What happened after you fell in love?” Angela asks.

“I moved into her house. This April, we got married in Fall River.”

“At some point did you two talk about having a family?”

“On our honeymoon,” I say. “I had assumed, after my hysterectomy, that I’d never have children. But I had three frozen embryos with my own genetic material in them… and, now, a partner with a uterus who could carry those babies to term.”

“Did Vanessa want to gestate the embryos?”

“She was the one who suggested it,” I say.