Sing You Home: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  “I’m pretty sure the hotline to God is wireless.”

  “People must see through all that rhetoric,” I say. “Does anyone really take Clive Lincoln seriously?”

  Vanessa runs her finger around the lip of her martini glass. “I was at the grocery store yesterday and there was a bumper sticker on the pickup truck next to my car. It said, SAVE A DEER . . . SHOOT A QUEER.” She glances up. “So yeah. I think some people take him seriously.”

  “But I never expected Max to be one of them.” I hesitate. “Do you think this is my fault?”

  I expect Vanessa to immediately dismiss the idea, but instead, she thinks for a moment. “If you hadn’t been pulling yourself together after you lost the baby, then maybe you would have been able to help Max when he needed it. Sounds to me, though, like Max was already broken when you met him. And if that’s the case, no matter how much you patched him up, sooner or later he was going to fall apart again.” She picks up her glass and drains it. “You know what you need? You need to let go.”

  “Of what?”

  “Max, obviously.”

  I can feel my cheeks burn. “I’m not holding on to him.”

  “Hey, I get it. It’s only natural, since you two—”

  “He wasn’t even my type,” I blurt out, and I realize after I say it that it is true. “Max was—well, he was just completely different from the kinds of guys who were usually interested in me.”

  “You mean big and brawny and sexy?”

  “You think?” I ask, surprised.

  “Just because I don’t hang modern art in my house doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it,” Vanessa says.

  “Max was always trying to teach me about football, and I hated football. All those guys piling on top of each other on Astroturf. And basketball is pointless. You don’t even have to watch a whole game—it always comes down to the last two minutes. And he was messy. He’d leave a melon on the counter after he cut himself a slice, and by nighttime, the kitchen would be crawling with ants. And he could hold a grudge like nobody’s business. I wouldn’t even know he was upset until six months went by and he brought it up during an argument about something totally different.”

  “But you married him,” Vanessa points out.

  “Well,” I answer. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I don’t even know how to answer that. “Because,” I say finally, “when you love someone, you don’t see the parts of him you don’t like.”

  “Seems to me you need to do a better job next time of getting what you really want.”

  “Next time!” I repeat. “I don’t think so. I’m through with relationships.”

  “Oh really. You’re putting yourself on the shelf at forty?”

  “Shut up,” I say. “Get back to me after you’re divorced.”

  “Zo, I’d take you up on that, if only because it means I’d have the right to be married. Seriously, look around. There’s got to be someone attractive in here for you . . .”

  “I am not letting you set me up, Vanessa.”

  “Then just tell me. As an academic exercise, of course . . .”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you’re looking for.”

  “For God’s sake, Vanessa, I have no idea. I’m not thinking about any of that yet.”

  I glance at the mermaid. She is on break, emerging from the tank by hopping up a ladder. When she gets to the top, where there is a ledge she can sit on, she reaches for a towel and dries herself off before checking her BlackBerry.

  “Someone real,” I hear myself saying. “Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who’s smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands that music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I’ve known my whole life, even if I haven’t.”

  When I’m done, I look up to find Vanessa smirking at me. “Gee,” she says. “I’m certainly glad you aren’t thinking about this yet.”

  I finish my wine. “Well, you asked.”

  “I did. So that when I bump into your future spouse on the street, I can give out your number.”

  “What’s your perfect date?” I ask.

  Vanessa tosses a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Oh, I’m not nearly as discriminating. Female, desperate, willing.” She glances up at the mermaid, now drinking sullenly from a whiskey glass. “Human.”

  “You’re so picky,” I say, laughing. “How are you ever going to find someone?”

  “Story of my life,” she replies. “Story of my life.”

  It is not until I am home and lying in bed that I realize Vanessa never seriously answered my question, at least not nearly as seriously as I’d answered hers.

  And that—with the exception of the pronoun I’d used—the verbal sketch I gave of my perfect match had actually described Vanessa.

  What songs would be on a mix tape that describes you?

  It’s a question I’ve used my whole life, as a foolproof test of character. It grew out of the old “Witch Doctor” record that reminded my mother so much of my missing dad. There’s no question that, for her, this would be one of the tracks. And “Always and Forever”—the song she and my dad danced to at their wedding—which, when heard in its elevator Muzak incarnation, always made them circle around in each other’s arms no matter where they were or how large the crowd, which to me was magical and mortifying all at once. And a Beatles song—she tells a story about sleeping outside a hotel where the Fab Four were camped for a press junket, just so that she could get a glimpse of them as they left for the airport. And Enya and Yanni, which she uses now for mindful breathing. Seriously, if you looked through the Favorites list on my mother’s iPod, you could probably sketch her out as thoroughly as if you’d met her in person.

  This is true of anyone: the music we choose is a clear reflection of who we really are. There is a lot you can tell about a person who lists Bon Jovi among his favorites. Or, for that matter, Weezer. Or the original cast recording of Bye Bye Birdie.

  I first used the mix tape test to check romantic compatibility in high school, when my boyfriend insisted on playing one Journey track over and over again on his car stereo whenever we were steaming up the windows. He’d stop in the middle of whatever we were doing to belt out the chorus. I should have known better than to trust a man who loved power ballads.

  After that, I asked all my potential love interests about the fictional mix tape. I told them there was no right answer, which is true. There are, however, some blatantly wrong answers:

  “Crazy.”

  “I’m Too Sexy.”

  “Mmmbop.”

  “The Streak.”

  “All My Ex’s Live in Texas.”

  Max’s list was a collection of country music, a genre of which I’ve never been a fan. Somehow the songs always seem to talk about drinking and having your wife leave you, or else they compare women to large pieces of farm equipment, like tractors and trucks. You know that old joke about the cowboy and the biker who are on death row, set to be executed on the same day? The prison guard asks the cowboy for his last request, and he begs to hear the song “Achy Breaky Heart” before he dies. The guard then asks the biker for his last request. “To be killed before you play that song,” he says.

  The most interesting people I’ve ever met are the ones who answer the question with music I have never experienced before: South African a cappella groups, Peruvian drummers, up-and-coming alt rockers from Seattle, Jane Birkin, the Postelles. When I was at Berklee I dated a boy whose list was all rap. I had grown up in the suburbs listening to Casey Kasem and didn’t know much about hip-hop music. But he explained how its roots grew from the griots of West Africa—traveling singers and poets who were keeping a centuries-old oral storytelling tradition. He played me rap songs that were social commentary. He taug
ht me how to write my own flow, how to feel poetry in syllables and rhythm in the spaces between the words. He taught me that what wasn’t said was just as important as what was.

  I fell pretty hard for him, actually.

  I stopped using the question to learn more about potential dates once I met Max, of course, but I didn’t retire the inquiry. Now, I ask my clients. I’ve met people whose lists are all classical; I’ve met people who choose only heavy metal. I’ve met burly, tattooed motorcyclists who love opera and grandmothers who know Eminem’s lyrics by heart.

  The music we listen to may not define who we are.

  But it’s a damn good start.

  In February, Vanessa and I sign up for a Bikram yoga class, the kind that’s done in an abnormally hot room. We go to one session and leave at the halfway point five-minute break, certain we are both about to have strokes.

  So the next week I call her up and tell her that maybe belly dancing is more our thing. We are pretty good at it, actually, but our classmates are not. We get booted by the instructor because we can’t stop laughing when we are supposed to be focusing.

  On Saturdays, we fall into a habit. Vanessa comes to my house with coffee and bagels, and we read the paper at the kitchen table. Then we make a list of all the errands we need to accomplish during the weekend. Like me, she is too busy during business hours to get to the cleaners or the grocery store or the post office, so we pool our destinations. Instead of going alone, it is a lot more fun to wander the aisles of Walmart together debating whether plus-size Tinker Bell lingerie is serving a niche market or creating an aberrant one.

  We go to the farmers’ market—which is mostly jars of honey and beeswax candles and crafts made from homespun wool, at this time of year—and we wander from booth to booth, trying free samples. Sometimes we get inspired and pick a recipe out of Cooking Light, then cobble together the ingredients and spend the afternoon making the soufflé or the ragout or the beef Wellington.

  One Saturday in early March, I am left to my own devices. Vanessa’s gone to San Francisco to a friend’s wedding, which is actually a good thing—since I have more to do than usual. The student Vanessa spoke with me about months ago—Lucy DuBois—has just been released from a six-week inpatient program for depressed adolescents at McLean Hospital. She is coming back to school, and I’m going to start working with her. I have been poring over books about teens and depression, and music therapy for mood disorders.

  I’ve promised Vanessa I’ll pick up her dry cleaning along with mine, so I make a quick run downtown before settling in to reread Lucy’s school file. The woman who runs the cleaner is tiny, with a quickness to her movements that always makes me think of a hummingbird. “You’re all alone today,” she says, taking the tickets from me and running the wonderful maze of mechanized hangers. Last week, when Vanessa said they looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie, the owner took us behind the counter to see how they snaked around back, like a giant zipper running the perimeter of the ceiling.

  “Yeah. Flying solo this weekend,” I reply.

  She hands me my trousers, and a bright bouquet of Vanessa’s button-down shirts. I trade her this week’s dry cleaning and tuck the pink slips into my purse. “Thanks,” I say. “See you next week.”

  “Tell your partner I said hello!”

  I freeze in the act of zipping my wallet. “She’s not—I’m not—” I shake my head. “Mrs. Chin, Vanessa and I—We’re just friends.”

  It is, I suppose, an honest mistake. She has seen me with Vanessa for weeks now; it’s actually wonderful to think the world has changed enough that a storekeeper might assume two people of the same sex are a couple.

  So why am I blushing?

  As I carry the dry cleaning back to my car, I think that, actually, this is funny. That when I tell Vanessa, she’ll think so, too.

  The last teens I worked with were part of a diversion program meant to bring together warring adolescent gangs in the inner city. Previously, they’d been on the streets trying to kill each other. When I told them we’d be doing a drum circle together, they nearly charged for each other’s throats, but their resource officers forced them to sit down on the perimeter of the pile of percussion instruments I’d assembled: a djembe and a tubano, a conga drum, an ashiko, and a djun-djun. One by one, I handed out the instruments, and, believe me, if you are an adolescent boy with a drum in your hands, you’re going to beat it. We started with a simple hand rhythm: clap-clap-lap; clap-clap-lap. Then we moved to the drums. Eventually, we went around the circle so each kid could have a spotlighted solo with a unique rhythm.

  Here’s what’s great about a drum circle: no one ever has to play alone. And all the inappropriate ways of expressing anger can be channeled into the movement of beating that drum instead in a safe, controlled setting. Before the group could even realize it, they were creating a piece of music, and they were doing it together.

  So I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty confident about my first session with Lucy DuBois. One of the fantastic things about music is that it accesses both sides of the brain—the analytical left side and the emotional right side—and forces a connection. This is how a stroke victim who can’t speak a sentence might be able to sing a lyric; how a patient frozen by severe Parkinson’s disease can use the sequence and inherent rhythm in music in order to move and dance again. If music has the ability to bypass the part of the brain that isn’t working correctly in order to facilitate a link to the rest of the brain in these other situations, it must be able to do the same for a mind crippled by clinical depression.

  In school, Vanessa’s different than she is when we’re just hanging out together. She wears tailored pantsuits and silk blouses in bright jewel colors, and she walks briskly, as if she is already five minutes late. When she comes across two teens groping in the hall, she breaks them apart with efficiency. “People,” she sighs, with a quietly unassuming authority, “is this really how you want to waste my time?”

  “No, Miz Shaw,” the girl murmurs, and she and her boyfriend slink down opposite sides of the hallway, like two magnets repelled by the same polarity.

  “Sorry about that,” Vanessa says, as I hurry to keep pace with her. “In my job, hormones are an occupational hazard.” She smiles at me. “So what’s the game plan for today?”

  “An assessment,” I tell her. “The whole point of therapy is to come into the process where Lucy is.”

  “I’m psyched. I’ve never really seen you in action before,” Vanessa says.

  I stop walking. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea . . .”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re going to be great—”

  “It’s not that,” I interrupt. “Vanessa, it’s therapy. If you referred Lucy to a psychiatrist, you wouldn’t expect to sit in on the session, would you?”

  “Right. Got it,” she says, but I can tell she’s still miffed. “Anyway,” Vanessa starts moving at breakneck speed again, “I got you a room to use in the special needs wing.”

  “Look, I don’t want you to—”

  “Zoe,” Vanessa says brusquely, “I understand.”

  I tell myself that I will explain it to her later. Because we turn the corner into the reserved room, and Lucy DuBois is slumped in a chair.

  She has long ropes of red hair, some of which are caught beneath her checked flannel shirt. Her eyes are a hooded, angry brown. Her sleeves are rolled up to show faint red scars on her wrists, as if she’s daring the rest of us to comment. She’s chewing gum, which is banned on the school grounds.

  “Lucy,” Vanessa says. “Get rid of the gum.”

  She takes it out of her mouth and mashes it onto the surface of the desk.

  “Lucy, this is Ms. Baxter.”

  I toyed with going back to my maiden name, Weeks, but that made me think of my mother. Max had taken a lot away from me, but legally, I could still use that name if I wanted to. And a girl who’s grown up at the end of the alphabet doesn’t lightly decide to toss away a last name
that begins with a B. “You can call me Zoe,” I say.

  Everything about this girl screams defensive—from her hunched shoulders to her studious refusal to look me in the eye. I notice that she’s got a nose ring—one tiny, thin gold hoop that looks like a trick of the light until you do a second glance—and what seem to be tattoos on the knuckles of one hand.

  They’re letters, actually.

  F.U.C.K.

  I remember Vanessa telling me that Lucy’s family attends Eternal Glory—Max’s ultraconservative church. I try to imagine Lucy handing out pamphlets in front of the movie theater with the bright, sparkly teenage girls who’d been there the night Pastor Clive & Co. set up their protest.

  I wonder if Max knows her.

  “I’m really looking forward to working with you, Lucy,” I say.

  She doesn’t move a muscle.

  “I’ll expect you to give Zoe your full attention,” Vanessa adds. “Do you have any questions before you two start?”

  “Yeah.” Lucy’s head falls backward, like a dandelion too heavy for its stem. “If I don’t show up for these sessions, do I get a cut on my record?”

  Vanessa looks at me and raises her brows. “Good luck,” she says, and she closes the door behind her as she leaves.

  “So.” I pull a chair in front of Lucy’s so that she cannot help but see me, and sit down. “I’m really glad that I’ll be getting to work with you. Did anyone explain what music therapy is, exactly?”

  “Bullshit?” Lucy offers.

  “It’s a way to use music to access feelings that are sometimes locked inside,” I say, as if she hasn’t even spoken. “In fact, you’re probably doing a little of this on your own already. Everyone does. You know how, when you have a bad day and you only want to put on your sweats and eat a pint of chocolate ice cream and sob to the song ‘All by Myself’? That’s music therapy. Or when it finally gets warm enough to roll down the windows of you car, so you crank up the stereo and sing along? That’s music therapy, too.”

  As I speak, I take out a notebook, so that I can begin to do my assessment. The plan is to write down comments a client gives, and my own impressions, and later to cobble them into a more formal clinical document. When I do this in the hospital, it’s easy—I assess the pain level of the client, her state of anxiety, her facial expressions.