Sing You Home: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  Lucy, however, is a blank slate.

  Her eyes stare straight over my shoulder; her thumb absently scratches at the carvings on the desk made by ballpoint pens and bored students.

  “So,” I say brightly. “I thought that, today, maybe you could help me learn a little more about you. Like, for example, have you ever played an instrument?”

  Lucy yawns.

  “I guess that’s a no. Well, have you ever wanted to play one?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I move my chair forward a little.

  “Lucy, I asked if you ever wanted to play an instrument . . .”

  She pillows her head on her arms, closing her eyes.

  “That’s okay. A lot of people never learn to play instruments. But, you know, if that’s something you become interested in when we’re working together, I could help you. I know how to play everything—woodwinds, percussion, brass, keyboard, guitar . . .” I look down at my notebook. So far I’ve written Lucy’s name and nothing else.

  “Everything,” Lucy repeats softly.

  I am so excited to hear her sandpaper voice that I nearly fall forward out of my seat. “Yes,” I reply. “Everything.”

  “Do you play the accordion?”

  “Well. No.” I hesitate. “But I could learn it with you, if you wanted.”

  “Didgeridoo?”

  I tried, once, but couldn’t master the round breathing. “No.”

  “So basically,” Lucy says, “you’re a fucking liar, like everyone else I’ve ever met.”

  I learned a long time ago that engagement—any at all, even anger—is a step above complete indifference. “What kind of music do you like? What would I find on your iPod?”

  Lucy has slipped back into silence. She takes out a pen and colors an elaborate pattern on the inside of her palm, a Maori knot of twists and swirls.

  Maybe she doesn’t have an iPod. I bite the inside of my lip, angry at myself for making a socioeconomic assumption about a client. “I know your family is pretty religious,” I say. “Do you listen to Christian rock? Maybe there’s one particular band you really like?”

  Silence.

  “How about the first pop song whose lyrics you memorized? When I was little, my best friend’s older sister had a record player, and she used to play ‘Billy, Don’t Be a Hero’ on repeat. It was 1974, and Paper Lace was singing it. I saved up my allowance to buy my own copy. Even now when I hear that song I get teary at the end when the girl gets the memo about her boyfriend’s death,” I say. “It’s funny—if I could pick one song to bring to a desert island, I’d take that one. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot more complex and deserving music since then, but for sheer nostalgia, that would have to get my vote.” I look at Lucy. “How about you? What music would you want to bring if you were stranded on a desert island?”

  Lucy smiles sweetly at me. “The Very Best of David Hasselhoff,” she says, and then she stands up. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  I just stare at her for a moment; Vanessa and I haven’t really talked about whether that’s allowed. But this is therapy, not jail—and besides, keeping her from going would be cruel and unusual punishment. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll wait here.”

  “I bet you will,” Lucy murmurs, and she slips out the door.

  I tap my fingers against the desk, and then pick up my pen. Client is very resistant to providing personal details, I write.

  Likes Hasselhoff.

  Then I cross off that last bit. Lucy only said that to see my reaction.

  I think.

  I had been so certain that I could break through to Lucy; I’d never doubted my skills as a therapist. But then again, the work I’d been doing lately involved either a captive audience (the nursing home residents) or those in so much physical distress that music could only help, not hurt (the burn victims). The factor of the equation I had left out was that, although I may have been looking forward to this session, Lucy DuBois wanted to be anywhere but here.

  After a few minutes I start looking around the room.

  Although most special needs kids are mainstreamed, this small conference room has the facilities for those whose Individualized Education Programs mandate them: bouncy balls to sit on instead of chairs; mini workstations where kids can stand behind the desks or work with others; shelves of books; tubs of Kooshes and rice and sandpaper. On the whiteboard is a single written phrase: Hi, Ian!

  Who’s Ian? I wonder. And what did they do with him so that Lucy and I could meet?

  I realize that about fifteen minutes have passed since Lucy left to go to the bathroom. Walking out of the classroom, I spy the girls’ restroom just across the hall. I push through the door to find a girl leaning toward the mirror, applying black eyeliner.

  I duck down, but there are no feet beneath any of the stalls.

  “Do you know Lucy DuBois?”

  “Uh, yeah,” the girl says. “Total freak.”

  “Did she come into the bathroom?”

  The girl shakes her head.

  “Dammit,” I mutter, walking back into the hallway. I glance into the room where we have been meeting, but I’m not naïve enough to think Lucy will be waiting.

  I will have to go back to the main office, and report the fact that Lucy left the session.

  I’ll have to tell Vanessa.

  And then I’ll do exactly what Lucy did: cut my losses, and leave.

  After failing miserably with Lucy, the last thing I want to do is go home. I know there will be messages waiting from Vanessa—she wasn’t in her office when I signed out, and so I had to leave an explanatory and apologetic note about the abortive first music therapy session. I turn off my cell phone and drive to the most anonymous place I could think of: Walmart. You’d be surprised at how much time you can spend wandering through the aisles; looking at Corelle dinnerware with lemon and lime patterns, and comparing the prices of generic vitamins to those of brand names. I fill up a cart with things I do not need: dish towels and a camping lantern and a BeDazzler; three Jim Carrey DVDs packaged together for ten dollars, Crest Whitestrips. Then I abandon the cart somewhere in the fishing and hunting section and unfold a lawn chair. I sit down and try to read the latest People.

  I don’t quite know why my failure with Lucy DuBois is so crushing. I’ve had plenty of other clients whose initial meetings were not dynamic successes. The autistic boy I worked with at the same high school a year ago, for example, did nothing but rock in a corner for the first four visits. I know that, in spite of what happened today, Vanessa will trust my judgment if I say that next time will be better. She’ll forgive me for letting Lucy slip away; she’ll probably even blame the girl instead of me.

  I’m not afraid of her being disappointed.

  It’s just that I don’t want to be the one to disappoint her.

  “Excuse me,” an employee says. I look up to see his big Walmart badge, his thinning hair. He speaks slowly, as if I am a toddler unable to understand him. “The chairs are not for sitting.”

  Then what are they for? I wonder. But I just smile politely, get up, refold the chair, and stick it back on the shelf.

  I drive mindlessly for a half hour before finding myself in the parking lot of a bar that’s only a mile from my house. I used to work there—first as a waitress, then as a singer—before Max and I started in vitro. Then, I was tired all the time, or stressed, or both. Playing acoustic guitar at 10:00 P.M. twice a week lost its appeal.

  It’s nearly empty, because it’s a Wednesday, and it’s only just past dinnertime.

  Also because there is a big sign out front that says, WEDNESDAY IS KARAOKE NIGHT.

  Karaoke, in my opinion, is right up there on the list of the greatest mistakes ever invented, along with Windows Vista and spray-on hair for balding men. It allows people who would normally only have the courage to sing in the confines of their own showers with the water running loudly to instead get on a stage and have fifteen minutes of dubious fame. For every truly remarkable karaoke performance you�
�ve ever heard, you’ve probably heard twenty horrendous ones.

  Then again, by the time I’ve had my fourth drink in two hours, I am nearly ripping the microphone out of the hands of a middle-aged lady with a bad perm. I tell myself that this is because if she sings one more Celine Dion song I will have to strangle her with the hose that’s hooked up to the soda keg underneath the bar. But it is equally likely that the reason I need to sing is because I know it’s the one thing that will make me feel better.

  The difference between people who become musicians and people who become music therapists is simple: a change in focus from what you personally can get out of music and what you can encourage someone else to get out of it. Music therapy is music without the ego—although most of us still hone our skills by playing in community bands and performing in choirs.

  Or, in my case right now, karaoke.

  I know I have a good voice. And on a day when my other abilities are being called into question, it’s downright restorative to have the patrons of the bar clapping and asking for an encore, to have the bartender handing me a glass to use as a tip jar.

  I sing a little Ronstadt. A bit of Aretha. Some Eva Cassidy. At some point, I go out to my car to grab a guitar. I sing a few songs I’ve written, and sprinkle them with a little Melissa Etheridge and an acoustic version of Springsteen’s “Glory Days.” By the time I sing “American Pie,” I’ve got the whole bar doing the chorus with me, and I am not thinking about Lucy DuBois at all.

  I’m not thinking, period. I’m just letting the music carry me, be me. I’m a thread of sound that slips like a stitch through every single person in this room, binding us tightly together.

  When I finish, everyone applauds. The bartender pushes another gin and tonic down the bar toward me. “Zoe,” he says, “it’s about time you came back.”

  Maybe I should do more of this. “I don’t know, Jack. I’ll think about it.”

  “Do you take requests?”

  I turn around to find Vanessa standing beside the barstool.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Which version? Brenda Lee or Buckcherry?” I wait until she’s climbed onto the stool beside mine and ordered a drink. “I’m not going to ask how you found me.”

  “You have the only bright yellow Jeep in this entire town. Even the traffic helicopters can find you.” Vanessa shakes her head. “You’re not the first one Lucy’s run away from, you know. She did the same thing to the school shrink, the first time they met.”

  “You could have told me . . .”

  “I was hoping it would be different this time,” Vanessa says. “Are you going to come back?”

  “Do you want me to come back?” I ask. “I mean, if you just want a warm body for Lucy to ditch, you could hire some teenager at minimum wage.”

  “I’ll tie her down to the chair next time,” Vanessa promises. “And maybe we can make her listen to that lady sing Celine Dion.”

  She points to the middle-aged woman whose karaoke career I intercepted. “You’ve been here that long?”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t you tell me you could sing like that?”

  “You’ve heard me sing a hundred times—”

  “Somehow when you chime in with the Hot Pockets jingle, it doesn’t really convey the full range of your voice.”

  “I used to play here a couple times a week,” I tell her. “I forgot how much I liked it.”

  “Then you should do it again. I’ll even come be your audience so you never have to play to an empty room.”

  Hearing her talk about an empty room reminds me of the music therapy session my client abandoned. I wrap my arms around the neck of my guitar case, as if creating a shield for myself. “I really thought I could get Lucy to open up. I feel like such a loser.”

  “I don’t think you’re a loser.”

  “What do you think of me?” The words slip out, before I have even meant for them to fly away.

  “Well,” Vanessa says slowly, “I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Every time I think I have you pegged, I learn something else about you that totally surprises me. Like last weekend when you said that you keep a list of all the places you wish you’d gone to when you were younger. Or that you used to watch Star Trek and memorized the dialogue from every episode. Or that, I now realize, you are the next Sheryl Crow.”

  There is a buttery glow to the room now; my cheeks are flushed, and I’m dizzy even though I’m sitting down. I did not drink very much when I was married to Max—out of solidarity, and then intended pregnancy—and for this reason the alcohol I’m not accustomed to has even more sway over my system. I reach across Vanessa to the stack of napkins beside the olive tray, and the fine hairs on my wrist brush against the silk sleeve of her blouse. It makes me shiver.

  “Jack,” I call out. “I need a pen.”

  The bartender tosses me one, and I unfold the cocktail napkin and write the numbers one through eight in a list. “What songs,” I ask, “would be on the mix tape that describes you?”

  I hold my breath, thinking that she’s going to start laughing or just crumple the napkin, but instead Vanessa takes the pen out of my hand. When she bows her head toward the bar, her bangs cover one eye.

  Did you ever notice how other people’s houses have a smell? I had asked, the first time I went over to Vanessa’s.

  Please tell me mine isn’t something awful like bratwurst.

  No, I said. It’s clean. Like sunlight on sheets. Then I asked her what my apartment smelled like.

  Don’t you know?

  No, I’d explained. I can’t tell because I live there. I’m too close to it.

  It smells like you, Vanessa had said. Like a place nobody ever wants to leave.

  Vanessa bites her lip as she writes down her list. Sometimes, she squints, or looks over at the bartender, or asks me a rhetorical question about the name of a band before she finds the answer herself.

  A few weeks ago we were watching a documentary that said people lie on an average of four times a day. That’s 1,460 times a year, Vanessa had pointed out.

  I did the math, too. Almost eighty-eight thousand times by the time you’re sixty.

  I bet I know what the most common lie is, Vanessa had said: I’m fine.

  I had told myself the reason I’d left the school without waiting for Vanessa to return to her office was because she was busy. I was afraid she’d think I was an abysmal music therapist. But the other reason I’d run was because I wanted (wished for?) her to come after me.

  “Ta da,” Vanessa says, and she pushes the cocktail napkin back toward me. It lifts, like a butterfly, and then settles on the bar.

  Aimee Mann. Ani DiFranco. Damien Rice. Howie Day.

  Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin, Garbage, Elvis Costello.

  Wilco. The Indigo Girls. Alison Krauss.

  Van Morrison, Anna Nalick, Etta James.

  I can’t speak for a moment.

  “I know, it’s weird, right? Pairing Wilco and Etta James on the same CD is like sitting Jesse Helms and Adam Lambert next to each other at a dinner party . . . but I felt guilty getting rid of one.” Vanessa leans closer, pointing to the list again. “I couldn’t pick individual songs, either. Isn’t that like asking a mom which kid she loves the most?”

  Every single artist she has put on her list is one I would have put on my list. And yet I know I’ve never shared that information with her. I couldn’t have, because I’ve never formally made my own CD playlist. I’ve tried but could never finish, not with all the possible songs in this world.

  In music, perfect pitch is the ability to reproduce a tone without any reference to an external standard. In other words—there’s no need to label or name notes, you can just start singing a C-sharp, or you can listen to an A and know what it is. You can hear a car horn and know that it is an F.

  In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.

  When Max and I wer
e married, we fought over the car radio all the time. He liked NPR; I liked music. I realize that, in all the months I’ve been friends with Vanessa, in all the car rides we’ve taken—from a quick run to the local bakery to a trip to Franconia Notch, New Hampshire—I have never changed the station. Not once. I’ve never even wanted to fast-forward through a CD she’s picked.

  Whatever Vanessa plays, I just want to keep listening to.

  Maybe I gasp, and maybe I don’t, but Vanessa turns, and for a moment we are frozen by our own proximity.

  “I have to go,” I mutter, tearing myself away. I dig out all the money I have in my pocket and leave it crumpled on the bar, then grab my guitar case and hurry into the parking lot. Even as I unlock my car, with my hands still shaking, I can see Vanessa standing in the doorway. Even when the door is closed and I rev the engine, I know she’s calling my name.

  On the night that Lila was shooting up heroin, there was a reason I’d been wandering through Ellie’s house.

  I had awakened in the middle of the night to find Ellie staring at me. “What’s the matter?” I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

  “Can you hear that?” she whispered.

  “Hear what?”

  “Ssh,” Ellie said, holding a finger up to her lips. Then she moved the same finger to my lips.

  But I didn’t hear anything. “I think—”

  Before I could finish, Ellie put both of her hands on my cheeks and kissed me.

  At that moment, I heard everything. From the bass in my blood to the sound of the house settling, to luna moths beating their heavy wings against the glass of the windows, to a baby crying somewhere down the block.

  I leaped out of the bed and started running down the hallway. I knew Ellie wouldn’t call after me, because she’d wake up the whole household. But Ellie’s mother, as it turned out, wasn’t home yet. And Lila, Ellie’s sister, was OD’ing in her bedroom when I burst through the door.