Sing You Home: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  “Oh yeah?” Angela asks. “When’s the last time you talked to him?”

  “Objection,” Wade says. “I won’t let her mock my witness.”

  “Sustained . . . watch yourself, Counselor.”

  “You said you’ve known Max for half a year, Pastor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve never met Zoe Baxter—you’ve only just seen her in this courtroom, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have no information about them when they were a married couple?”

  “No. They were not members of my church at the time.”

  “I see,” Angela says. “But you do know Reid and Liddy Baxter quite well?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had no trouble coming into this court and saying that, in your opinion, they are the preferred custodial couple for these embryos.”

  “Yes,” Pastor Clive says.

  “You have a professional relationship with Reid Baxter, too, right?”

  “He manages the church’s funds.”

  “He’s also one of the biggest contributors to your church, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Reid’s always been very generous.”

  “In fact, your church recommends tithing income for its members, doesn’t it?”

  “Many churches do that . . .”

  “Isn’t it true that you receive a grand total of about four hundred thousand dollars a year from your friend Reid Baxter annually?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “And coincidentally, here you are today recommending that he be awarded custody of these embryos, correct?”

  “Reid’s generosity to the church has nothing to do with my recommendation—”

  “Oh, I’ll bet,” Angela Moretti says. “When you spoke with Max about his ex-wife’s request to have custody of the embryos, you were the one who in fact suggested that he consider Reid and Liddy as potential parents, weren’t you?”

  “I opened his mind to the possibility.”

  “And you even went a step further, didn’t you—by finding him an attorney?”

  Pastor Clive nods. “I would have done the same for any member of my congregation . . .”

  “In fact, Pastor, you didn’t just find Max a lawyer. You found him the biggest hotshot attorney in the United States with a reputation for protecting the rights of the pre-born, right?”

  “I can’t help it if Max’s predicament attracted the attention of someone so prestigious.”

  “Mr. Lincoln, you stated that the purpose of marriage is to procreate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the Bible have anything to say about heterosexual couples who are unable to have children?”

  “No.”

  “What about heterosexual couples too old to have children?”

  “No—”

  “How about people who remain single? Does the Bible condemn them as unnatural?”

  “No.”

  “Even though, by your own logic, they are not procreating?”

  “Plenty of other passages in the Bible condemn homosexuality,” Pastor Clive says.

  “Ah, yes. That lovely bit you read from Leviticus. Are you aware, Mr. Lincoln, that Leviticus is a holiness code that was written over three thousand years ago?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Do you know that holiness codes had a very specific purpose? That they weren’t commandments but prohibitions of behaviors that people of faith would find offensive at a certain time and place? Are you aware, Pastor, that in the case of Leviticus, the code was written for priests in Israel only, and meant to hold them more accountable than priests from other countries, like Greece?”

  “It’s quite clear what’s right and wrong when you read that passage. And you may try to explain it away historically, but it’s still morally relevant today.”

  “Really. Did you know that, in Leviticus, there were many other prohibitions listed? For example, there’s one against wild haircuts, did you know that?”

  “Well—”

  “And one against tattoos.” She smiles. “I’ve got one myself, but I’m not gonna tell you where.” The lawyer walks toward Pastor Clive. “Is that a silk tie against a cotton shirt? Did you know that there’s another prohibition against wearing garments made of mixed fabric?”

  “I fail to see how—”

  “And hey, there’s another one saying you shouldn’t eat pork or shellfish. You like shrimp scampi, Pastor?”

  “This isn’t—”

  “There’s another prohibition against getting your fortune told. And how about football? You like football, right? I mean, who doesn’t? Well, there’s a prohibition against playing with the skin of a pig. Wouldn’t you agree, Pastor, that many of those prohibitions are indeed historically outdated?”

  “Objection,” Wade says. “Counsel is testifying!”

  The judge tilts his head. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, Mr. Preston. Overruled.”

  “The Bible is many things to many people, but it is not a sex manual, correct?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why on earth would you turn to it for recommendations about appropriate sexual activity?”

  Pastor Clive faces the lawyer. “I look to the Bible for everything, Ms. Moretti. Even examples of sexual deviance.”

  “What does it have to say about butt plugs?”

  Wade rises. “Objection!”

  “Really, Ms. Moretti?” the judge says, scowling.

  “Should we assume then that there might be things not mentioned in the Bible that are still sexually deviant?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” Pastor Clive says. “The Bible is just a general outline.”

  “But the ones that are mentioned in the Bible as being sexually deviant—that, in your opinion, is God’s word? Completely and utterly inviolable?”

  “That’s right.”

  Angela Moretti picks a Bible off the defense table that has been littered with Post-it notes. “Are you familiar with Deuteronomy 22:20–21?” she asks. “Could you read this out loud to the court?”

  Pastor Clive’s voice rings through the room. “If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”

  “Thank you, Pastor. Can you explain the passage?”

  He purses his lips. “It advocates stoning a woman who isn’t a virgin at the time of marriage.”

  “Is that something you’d advise your flock to do?” Before he can answer, she asks him another question. “How about Mark 10:1–12? Those passages forbid divorce. Do you have any members of your congregation who are divorced? Oh, wait—of course you do. Max Baxter.”

  “God forgives sinners,” Pastor Clive says. “He welcomes them back into His fold.”

  Angela flips through her Bible again. “How about Mark 12:18–23? If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have sex with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir. Is that what you tell grieving widows?”

  I hate myself for it, but I think of Liddy again.

  “Objection!”

  “Or Deuteronomy 25:11–12? If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them tries to rescue her husband by grabbing his enemy’s genitals, her hand should be cut off and no pity should be shown to her—”

  Seriously? I had joined an adult Bible study at Reid’s suggestion, but we never read anything as juicy as that.

  “Objection!” Wade smacks the table with his open hand.

  The judge raises his voice. “Ms. Moretti, I will hold you in contempt if you—”

  “Fine. I’ll withdraw that last one. But you must admit, Pastor, that not every decree in the Bible makes sense in this day and age.”

  “Only because you’re taking the verses out of historical context—”

  “Mr. Lincoln,” Angela Moretti say
s flatly. “You did first.”

  “There is audio content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”

  Where You Are (3:22)

  ZOE

  For the first five seconds after I wake up, the day is as crisp as a new dollar bill—spotless, full of possibility.

  And then I remember.

  That there is a lawsuit.

  That there are three embryos.

  That today, I am testifying.

  That for the rest of my life, Vanessa and I will have to jump twice as high and run twice as fast to cover the same ground as a heterosexual couple. Love is never easy, but it seems that, for gay couples, it’s an obstacle course.

  I feel her arm steal around me from behind. “Stop thinking,” she says.

  “How do you know I’m thinking?”

  Vanessa smiles against my shoulder blade. “Because your eyes are open.”

  I roll over to face her. “How did you do it? How does anyone ever come out when they’re younger? I mean, I can barely handle what’s being said about me in that courtroom, and I’m forty-one years old. If I were fourteen, I wouldn’t just be in the closet—I’d be gluing myself to its inside wall.”

  Vanessa rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. “I would have rather died than come out in high school. Even though I knew, deep down, who I was. There are a million reasons to not come out when you’re a teenager—because adolescence is about matching everyone else, not standing out; because you don’t know what your parents are going to say; because you’re terrified your best friend will think you’re making the moves on her—seriously, I’ve been there.” She glances at me. “At my school now, there are five teens who are openly gay and lesbian, and about fifteen more who don’t want to realize they’re gay and lesbian yet. I can tell them a hundred million times that what they’re feeling is perfectly normal, and then they go home and turn on the news and they see that the military won’t let gay people serve. They watch another gay marriage referendum bite the dust. One thing kids aren’t is stupid.”

  “How many people have to say there’s something wrong with you before you start believing it?” I muse out loud.

  “You tell me,” Vanessa says. “You’re a late bloomer, Zo, but you’re just as brave as the rest of us. Gays and lesbians are like cockroaches, I guess. Resilient as all hell.”

  I laugh. “Clearly that would be Pastor Clive’s worst nightmare. Cockroaches have been around since the dinosaurs were walking the earth.”

  “But then Pastor Clive would have to believe in evolution,” Vanessa says.

  Thinking of Pastor Clive makes me think about the gauntlet we had to run yesterday to get into court. Last night, Wade Preston had been on the Hannity show. Today there will be twice as much media. Twice as much attention focused on me.

  I’m used to it; I’m a performer after all. But there’s an enormous difference between an audience that’s watching you because they can’t wait to see what comes next and an audience that’s watching you because they’re waiting for you to fail.

  Suddenly nothing about Pastor Clive seems funny at all.

  I roll onto my side, staring at the buttery light on the wood floor, wondering what would happen if I phoned Angela and told her I had the flu. Hives. The Black Plague.

  Vanessa curves her body around mine, tangles our ankles together. “Stop thinking,” she says again. “You’re going to be fine.”

  One of the hidden costs of a courtroom trial is the amount of time that your real life is entirely interrupted by something you’d much rather keep secret. Maybe you’re a little ashamed; maybe you just don’t think it’s anyone’s business. You have to take personal time off work; you have to assume that everything else is on hold and this takes precedence.

  In this, a lawsuit is not much different from in vitro.

  Because of this—and because Vanessa’s taking off just as much time as I am—we decide that we will spend an hour at the high school before we have to go to court for the day. Vanessa can clear her desk and put out whatever fires have sprung up since yesterday; I will meet with Lucy.

  Or so we think, until we turn the corner from the school parking lot and find a mob of picketers, holding signs and chanting.

  FEAR GOD, NOT GAYS

  JUDGMENT IS COMING

  NO QUEERS HERE

  3 GAY RIGHTS: 1. STDS 2. AIDS 3. HELL

  Two cops are standing by, warily watching the protest. Clive Lincoln is standing smack in the middle of this fiasco, wearing yet another white suit—this one double-breasted. “We are here to protect our children,” he bellows. “The future of this great country—and those at greatest risk to becoming the prey of homosexuals—homosexuals who work in this very school!”

  “Vanessa.” I gasp. “What if he outs you?”

  “After all this media coverage, I hardly think that’s possible,” Vanessa says. “Besides, the people I care about already know. The people I don’t care about—well, they’ll have to just deal with it. They can’t fire me because I’m gay.” She stands a little taller. “Angela would drool to take that case.”

  A school bus pulls up, and as the baffled kids stream out of it, the church members yell at them, or shove signs in their faces. One small, delicate boy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that has been yanked tight around his face, turns bright red when he sees the signs.

  Vanessa leans closer to me. “Remember what we were talking about this morning? He’s one of the other fifteen.”

  The boy ducks his head, trying to become invisible.

  “I’m going to run interference,” Vanessa says. “You okay on your own here?” She doesn’t wait to hear my answer but barrels through the crowd—shoving with a linebacker’s force until she reaches the boy and carefully steers him through this forcefield of hate. “Why don’t you get a life?” Vanessa yells at Pastor Clive.

  “Why don’t you get a man?” he replies.

  Suddenly Vanessa’s face is just as red as the boy’s. I watch her disappear into the school doors, still trying to refocus the student’s attention.

  “Homosexuals are teaching our children—trying to convert them to their lifestyle,” Pastor Clive says. “What irony is it that guidance is being provided to these impressionable youth by those who live in sin?”

  I grab the sleeve of a policeman. “This is a school. Surely they shouldn’t be protesting here. Can’t you get rid of them?”

  “Not unless they actually do something violent. You can blame the liberals for the flip side of democracy, lady. Guys like this get to blow their horn; terrorists move in the neighborhood. God bless the U.S.A.,” he says sarcastically. He looks at me, cracks his gum.

  “I have nothing against homosexuals,” Pastor Clive says. “But I do not like what they do. Gays already have equal rights. What they want are special rights. Rights that will slowly but surely take away from your own freedoms. In places where they have prevailed, speaking my mind, like I am right now, could land me in jail for hate speech. In Canada and England and Sweden, pastors and ministers and cardinals and bishops have been sued or sentenced to prison for preaching against homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, an evangelical group carrying signs like you were arrested for ethnic intimidation.”

  Another busload of students walks by. One of them throws a spitball at Pastor Clive. “Dickhead,” the kid says.

  The pastor wipes it calmly off his face. “They have already been brainwashed,” he says. “The school systems now teach even babies in kindergarten that having two mommies is normal. If your child says differently, he’ll be humiliated in front of his peers. But it doesn’t stop in schools. You could wind up like Chris Kempling—a Canadian teacher who was suspended for writing a letter to the editor stating that gay sex poses health risks and that many religions find homosexuality immoral. He was just stating the facts, friends, and yet he was suspended without pay for a month. Or Annie Coffey-Montes, a Bell Atlantic employee w
ho was fired for asking to be removed from the e-mail list of gays and lesbians in her company that advertised parties and dances. Or Richard Peterson, who posted Bible verses about homosexuality on his office cubicle at Hewlett-Packard and found himself out of a job.”

  He is a cheerleader for the cheerless, I realize. Someone who doesn’t gather people to his cause as much as drive them there with paranoia.

  There is a rumble of disturbance at the edges of the crowd, an undulation like a puppy under a quilt. I am elbowed by a woman who has a large gold cross hanging between her breasts.

  “Your right as a Christian to embrace your own beliefs is being curtailed by the homosexual agenda,” Pastor Clive continues. “We must fight back now, before our religious and civil freedoms are a casualty, trampled by these—”

  All of a sudden, he is knocked over by a blur of black. Immediately, three of his suited thugs pull him to his feet, at the same time that the two cops grab the attacker. I think he’s just as shocked as I am to see who it is. “Lucy!” he cries. “What on earth are you doing!”

  I can’t figure out how he knows her name at first. Then I remember that she goes to his church.

  Apparently under duress.

  Shoving through the crowd, I step between Clive and the policemen, who are totally going for overkill with Lucy. Each of them has one of her arms twisted behind her back, and she weighs all of a hundred pounds. “I’ll take this from here,” I say, my voice brimming with so much authority that they actually let her go.

  “You and I aren’t finished,” Clive says, but I shoot him a look over my shoulder as I lead Lucy into the school.

  “Take it up with me in court,” I tell him.

  I bet Lucy’s never been so glad to have the doors of the school close behind her. Her face is flushed and mottled. “Take a deep breath,” I tell her. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Vanessa comes out of the main office and looks at us both. “What happened?”

  “Lucy and I need a place to calm down,” I say, keeping my voice as even as possible, when what I really want to do is call the ACLU or Angela or a proctologist, anyone who has experience in dealing with assholes like Clive Lincoln.