Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“Your Honor, if the witness would like to recant her testimony and admit that she did attempt suicide, I am happy to dismiss the records entirely,” Preston says.

“Enough.” The judge sighs. “I will allow the records in for identification purposes only. However, I’d like counsel to explain how he obtained them before we go any further.”

“They were pushed under the door of my hotel room,” he says. “God works in mysterious ways.”

I highly doubt that God was the one running the Xerox machine at Blackstone.

“Ms. Shaw, I’m going to ask you again. Did your suicide attempt lead to your stay at Blackstone Hospital in 2003?”

My face is flushed; I can feel my pulse hammering. “No.”

“So you accidentally swallowed a bottle of Tylenol?”

“I was depressed. I didn’t have a plan to kill myself. It was a long time ago, and I’m in a very different place now than I was back then. Frankly, I don’t understand why you’re even on this witch hunt.”

“Is it fair to say that you were upset eight years ago? In crisis?”

“Yes.”

“Something unexpected happened that rattled you to the point where you ended up hospitalized?”

I look down. “I guess.”

“Zoe Baxter has testified that she had cancer. Are you aware of that?”

“Yes, I am. But she’s healthy now.”

“Cancer has a nasty way of recurring, doesn’t it? Ms. Baxter could get cancer again, couldn’t she?”

“So could you,” I say.

Preferably in the next three minutes.

“This is a terrible thought,” Preston says, “but we do need to press through all possibilities here. Let’s say Ms. Baxter got cancer again. You’d be upset, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d be devastated.”

“To the point of another breakdown, Ms. Shaw? Another bottle of Tylenol?”

Angela stands again, objecting.

Wade Preston shakes his head and tsks. “In that case, Ms. Shaw,” he says, “who’s gonna take care of those poor children?”

As soon as I step down from the witness stand, the judge calls a recess. Zoe turns to the seat I’ve taken behind her in the gallery. We both stand; she wraps her arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

I know she is thinking of Lucy, how I went above and beyond the call of a school counselor’s duty to find that girl something that would keep her tethered to this world instead of checking out of it. I know she’s wondering if I saw myself in her.

From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of purple. Wade Preston heads up the aisle. Gently I disengage myself from Zoe’s embrace. “I’ll be back.”

I follow Preston down the hallway, drawing into shadows as he glad-hands congregants and gives sound bites to reporters. He whistles, too full of himself to even notice that he’s got a shadow. He turns a corner and pushes open the door to the men’s room.

I go in right after him.

“Mr. Preston,” I say.

He raises his brows. “Why, Ms. Shaw. I would think a person with your sort of lifestyle would be the last one to make the mistake of walking into the facility with the picture of a man on it.”

“You know, I’m an educator. And you, Mr. Preston, are sorely in need of an education.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“I do.” I quickly glance under the stall doors, but, fortunately, we are the only ones in the room. “First, homosexuality? It’s not a lifestyle. It’s who I happen to be. Second, I didn’t choose to be attracted to women. I just am. Did you make a choice to be attracted to women? Was it during puberty? When you graduated from high school? Was it a question on the SATs? No. Homosexuality isn’t a choice any more than heterosexuality is. And I know this because why on earth would anyone choose to be gay? Why would I want to put myself through all the bullying and name-calling and physical abuse I’ve faced? Why would I want to constantly be looked down at and stereotyped by people like you? Why would I willingly pick a lifestyle, as you call it, that’s such an uphill battle? I honestly cannot believe someone who has traveled the world as much as you have, Mr. Preston, could have his eyes so tightly shut.”

“Ms. Shaw.” He sighs. “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

“That’s touching. But since I’m an atheist, it’s also irrelevant. In fact, I’d hope that you might consider reading up on homosexuality with a text that’s a little more current than the one you’ve been using-the Bible. There’s been a lot more literature written on the subject since five hundred A.D.”

“Are you finished yet? Because I came in here for a reason…”

“Not yet. There are a lot of things I’m not, Mr. Preston. I’m not a pedophile. I’m not a softball coach or a biker chick, any more than gay men are always hairstylists or florists or interior decorators. I’m not immoral. But you know what I am ? Intelligent. Tolerant. Capable of parenting. Different from you, but not lesser,” I say. “People like me, we don’t need to be fixed. We need people like you to broaden your horizons.”

When I finish, I am sweating. Wade Preston is blissfullly, utterly silent.

“What’s the matter, Wade?” I ask. “Not used to getting beat up by a girl?”

He shrugs. “Say what you want, Ms. Shaw. You can even pee standing up if you like. But your balls, mark my words, are never gonna be bigger than mine.”

I hear him unzip his fly.

I cross my arms.

A standoff.

“Are you going to leave, Ms. Shaw?”

I shrug. “You won’t be the first dick I’ve run across in my life, Mr. Preston.”

With a quick indrawn breath, Wade Preston zips his pants again and storms out of the bathroom. I smile so wide it hurts, and then I turn on the faucet.

When a bailiff I’ve never seen before comes into the men’s room, he sees a strange, tall woman washing off her makeup in the sink, patting her face dry with cheap paper towels. “What?” I accuse when he stares at me, and I saunter out the door. After all, who’s he to say what’s normal?

Before Zoe’s mom testifies, she wants to talk to her glass of water.

“Ms. Weeks,” the judge says, “this isn’t a performance space. Can we please just get along with the trial?”

Dara faces him, still holding the glass in one hand. The pitcher that sits beside the witness stand is half full. “Don’t you know, Your Honor, that water can feel positive and negative energy?”

“I wasn’t aware that water could feel anything except wet,” he mutters.

“Dr. Masaru Emoto has done scientific experiments,” she says, huffy. “If human thoughts are directed at water before it’s frozen, the crystals will be either beautiful or ugly depending on whether the thoughts were positive or negative. So if you expose water to positive stimuli-like beautiful music, or pictures of people in love, or words of gratitude-and then freeze it and look under a microscope, you get ice crystals that are symmetrical. On the other hand, if you play a Hitler speech to your water or show pictures of murder victims or say I hate you and then freeze it, the crystals are jagged and distorted.” She looks up at him. “Our bodies are made up of more than sixty percent water. If positive thoughts can impact an eight-ounce glass of water, imagine the effect they might have on all of us.”

The judge rubs his hand down his face. “Ms. Moretti, I assume since this is your witness you don’t mind if she praises her water?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Preston?”

He shakes his head, dumbfounded. “Frankly, I don’t even know what to say.”

Dara sniffs. “All in all, that’s probably a real blessing from the water’s point of view.”