Sing You Home Read online

  "Sorry that didn't go as well for you as you'd hoped," she replies.

  "That went just fine, thank you very much."

  "Maybe that's what you all think in Louisiana, but, believe me, here you just got slammed," the lawyer says.

  Wade leans on the books that were brought in by the paralegal. "The true colors of this judge will come out, darlin'," he says. "And believe me . . . they're not rainbow-striped."

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  The Mermaid (3:26)

  ZOE

  Lucy is drawing a mermaid: her hair long and twisted, her tail curled into the corner of the thick manila paper. As I finish singing "Angel," I put down my guitar, but Lucy keeps adding little touches--a ribbon of seaweed, the reflection of the sun. "You're a good artist," I tell her.

  She shrugs. "I design my own tattoos."

  "Do you have any?"

  "If I did, I'd be thrown out of my house," Lucy says. "One year, six months, four days."

  "That's when you're getting your tattoo?"

  She looks up at me. "That's the minute I turn eighteen."

  After our drumming session, I had vowed never to make Lucy meet in the special needs classroom again. Instead, Vanessa tells me which spaces are unoccupied (the French class that's on a field trip; the art class that has gone to the auditorium to watch a film). Today, for example, we are meeting in the health classroom. We're surrounded by inspirational posters: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS. And CHOOSE BOOZE? YOU LOSE. And a pregnant teen in profile: NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN.

  We have been working on lyric analysis. It's something I've done before with the nursing home groups, because it gets people interacting with each other. Usually I start by telling them the name of a song--often one they don't know--and ask them to guess what it will be about. Then I sing it, and ask for the words and phrases that stood out. We talk about their personal reactions to the lyrics, and, finally, I ask what emotions the song produced in them.

  Because I didn't think Lucy would want to verbally open up, I started having her draw her reactions to the lyrics. "It's interesting that you drew a mermaid," I said. "Angels aren't usually pictured underwater."

  Immediately, Lucy bristles. "You said there wasn't a right and a wrong way to do this."

  "There's not."

  "I guess I could have drawn some of those totally depressing animals on the ASPCA commercial . . ."

  It has been running a few years now: a montage of sad-eyed puppies and kittens, with this song playing in the background.

  "You know, Sarah McLachlan said the song was about the keyboard player for the Smashing Pumpkins, who OD'd on heroin," I say. I'd picked this song because I was hoping to get her talking about her previous suicide attempts.

  "Duh. That's why I drew a mermaid. She's floating and drowning at the same time."

  Sometimes Lucy says things that just leave me speechless. I wonder how Vanessa and all the other school counselors could have ever thought she was distancing herself from the world. She'd drawn a bead on it, better than any of us.

  "Have you ever felt like that?" I ask.

  Lucy looks up. "Like OD'ing on heroin?"

  "Among other things."

  She colors in the mermaid's hair, ignoring the question. "If you could pick, how would you want to die?"

  "In my sleep."

  "Everyone says that." Lucy rolls her eyes. "If that wasn't an option, then what?"

  "This is a pretty morbid conversation--"

  "So is talking about suicide."

  I nod, giving her that much. "Fast. Like an execution by firing squad. I wouldn't want to feel anything."

  "A plane crash," Lucy says. "You practically get vaporized."

  "Yeah, but imagine what it's like the few minutes before, when you know you're going down." I used to actually have nightmares about plane crashes. That I wouldn't be able to turn on my phone fast enough or get a signal so that I could leave Max a message telling him I loved him. I used to picture him sitting at the answering machine after my funeral, listening to the dead air and wondering what I was trying to say.

  "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 t