Sing You Home: A Novel Read online

  She spins on her heel and marches through the gate, up the aisle, and out of the courtroom. Vanessa looks at me. “I’ll make sure she’s not setting his car on fire,” she says, and she hurries after Angela. Meanwhile, Wade Preston turns to his entourage. “Mission accomplished, my friends. When they’re running defense, they can’t mount an offense.”

  He and Ben Benjamin walk off together, speaking in muted whispers. They leave behind the stack of books that shows up every time Wade Preston does, and Max, who sits with his head bowed in his hands.

  When I stand up, Max does, too. There is a clerk somewhere in the courtroom, and a pair of bailiffs, but for that moment, everyone else falls away and it is just us. I notice the first gray glints in the stubble of his beard. His eyes are the color of a bruise. “Zoe. About that. I’m sorry.”

  I try to remember what Max said to me the day we lost our son. Maybe I was on sedatives, maybe I wasn’t myself, but I cannot remember a single word of comfort. In fact, I cannot remember one concrete thing he ever said to me, not even I love you. It’s as if every conversation in our past has grown mummified, an ancient relic that crumbles into thin air if you get too close.

  “You know, Max,” I say, “I don’t think you really are.”

  For two more music therapy sessions, Lucy arrives late, ignores me, and leaves. At the third, I decide I’ve had it. We are in a math classroom, and there are symbols on the board that are making me dizzy and slightly nauseated. When Lucy arrives, I ask her how her day’s been, like usual, and, like usual, she doesn’t answer. But this time, I take out my guitar and play Air Supply, “All Out of Love.”

  I follow that with an encore performance of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

  I play anything that I think will either put Lucy into a diabetic coma or make her rip the instrument out of my hands. At this point, I’d consider that a successful interaction. But Lucy won’t break.

  “I’m sorry,” I say finally. “But you’ve left me no other resort than to pull out the big guns.”

  I place my guitar back in its case and take out a ukulele instead. Then I begin to strum the theme song to Barney & Friends.

  For the first three choruses, Lucy ignores me. And then finally, in one swift move, she grabs the neck of the ukulele and clamps down with her fingers so that I can’t play it. “Just leave me alone,” she cries. “It’s what you want anyway.”

  “If you’re going to put words in my mouth, then I’m going to put some in yours,” I say. “I know what you’re doing, and I know why you’re doing it. I realize you’re mad.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Lucy mutters.

  “But you’re not mad at me. You’re mad at yourself. Because against all odds, in spite of the fact that you were so damn sure that you would hate working with me and going to music therapy sessions, they started to work. And you like coming.” I put the ukulele down on a desk beside me and stare at Lucy. “You like being around me.”

  She glances up, her face so raw and open that, for a moment, I forget what I was saying.

  “So what do you do? You sabotage the therapeutic relationship we’ve built, because that way, you get to tell yourself you were right. That this is a load of bullshit. That it would never work. It doesn’t matter how you do it or what you tell yourself is the reason we’re in a fight. You ruin the one good thing you’ve got going because if you ruin it, then you don’t have to deal with being disappointed later on.”

  Lucy stands abruptly. Her fists are clenched at her sides, and her mouth is a livid red slash. “Why can’t you just take a hint? Why the fuck are you still here?”

  “Because there’s nothing you can do or say or any way you can act that will drive me away, Lucy. I am not leaving you.”

  She freezes. “Never?” The word is like tempered glass, broken and full of beauty.

  I know how hard it is for her to lay herself bare, to expose the soft center under that hard shell. So I promise. I’m not surprised when the tears come, when she collapses against me. I do what anyone else would do, in that situation: I hold Lucy until she can hold herself.

  The bell rings, but Lucy makes no move to go to class. It crosses my mind that someone may need to use this space, but when a teacher comes in—her prep period finished—she sees Lucy sitting with her head down on the desk, my hand lightly rubbing her back. We make eye contact, and the teacher slips out of the room.

  “Zoe?” Lucy’s voice is slow and round, as if she’s spinning underwater. “Promise me?”

  “I already did.”

  “That you won’t ever play Barney again.”

  She looks at me sideways. Her eyes are red and swollen, her nose running, but there’s her smile. I brought that back for her, I think.

  I pretend to consider her demand. “You drive such a hard bargain,” I say.

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  Ordinary Life (3:04)

  MAX

  Nothing makes a church look better than a crisis situation. Give them a dying relative, a child having surgery, a cancer diagnosis—and suddenly everyone pitches in. You will find casseroles at your door, you will find your name on a prayer list in the bulletin. Ladies will show up at your house to clean, or watch your kids. You will know that whatever corner of Hell you are walking through, you’re not alone.

  For weeks now, I have been the subject of prayer for the Eternal Glory Church, so that by the time I go to court God will have gotten an earful from nearly a hundred parishioners. Today, I am sitting in the school auditorium as Pastor Clive begins his sermon.

  The children of the congregation are down the hall in the art room, gluing pictures of animals into a Xeroxed copy of an ark. I know this because, last night, I helped Liddy draw the giraffes and hippos and squirrels and aardvarks for the kids to color and cut out during Sunday School. And it’s a good thing they’re not here, because today Pastor Clive is talking about sex.

  “Brothers and sisters in Christ,” he says, “I have a question for you. You know how some things just seem to go together? You can’t say one without automatically thinking of its other natural half. Like salt and pepper. Peanut butter and jelly. Rock and roll. Hugs and kisses. If you only have one of the two, it feels like a wobbly stool, doesn’t it? Incomplete. Unfinished. And if you hear another word—like if I said cats and parrots, instead of cats and dogs, it sounds just plain wrong, doesn’t it? For example, if I say mother, you’d say . . . ?”

  “Father,” I murmur, along with everyone else.

  “Husband?”

  “Wife!”

  Pastor Clive nods. “You’ll notice I did not say mother and mother. I did not say husband and husband, or wife and wife. I did not say those things because when we hear them, we just know deep inside they are wrong. I believe this is especially true when it comes to understanding why God’s plan does not include a homosexual lifestyle.”

  He looks at the congregation. “There are those who will tell you the Bible has nothing to say about homosexuality—but that is not true. Romans 1:26–27, Because of this God gave them over to shameless lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Some naysayers—the ones who tell us God has nothing to say about homosexuality—will tell you that Paul is talking about what went on at pagan temples in Greece. These naysayers will tell you we are missing the big picture. I say, my friends, that we do see the big picture.” He pauses, making eye contact with all of us. “God hates homosexuality,” he says.

  Pastor Clive reads aloud the verse that’s written in the bulletin today. It’s from 1 Corinthians 6:9–10: “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders,