by Jodi Picoult
Another laugh. “I have cancer,” she says, incredulous. “I actually have cancer.”
“Maybe you can get gangrene, too, before sunset.”
“I wouldn’t want to be greedy,” Zoe answers. “I mean, surely someone else needs a plague of locusts or the swine flu—”
“Termites!” I add. “Dry rot!”
“Gingivitis . . .”
“A leaky muffler,” I say.
Zoe pauses. “Metaphorically,” she points out, “that was the problem in the first place.”
This makes us laugh even harder, so much so that the guidance department secretary pokes her head in to make sure we’re all right. By then, my eyes are tearing, my abdominal muscles actually ache. “I need a hysterectomy,” Zoe says, bent over to catch her breath, “and I can’t stop laughing. What’s wrong with me?”
I stare at her as soberly as I can. “Well . . . I believe you have cancer,” I say.
When I came out to Teddy, my college boyfriend, at the Matthew Shepard vigil, the most remarkable thing happened: he came out to me, too. There we were, two gays who had tried to act as straight as possible for the rest of the college community—and now, happily, were coming clean. We still cuddled and hugged but with the utter relief of knowing that we no longer had to try (unsuccessfully) to arouse each other, or to fake attraction. (When I’ve told heterosexual people in the past that I had a boyfriend in college, slept with him, the whole nine yards, they are always surprised. But just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I can’t have sex with a guy—only that it’s not at the top of my to-do list.) In the wake of our newfound same-sexual awakening, Teddy and I went to Provincetown over Memorial Day weekend. We ogled drag queens racing down Commercial Street in high heels and bronze-oiled men in butt floss walking the beach. We went to a tea dance at the Boatslip and afterward went to the PiedBar—where I’d never seen so many lesbians in one room in my life. That weekend, it was as if the world had been turned upside down, and straight folks were the anomaly rather than the norm. And yet, I didn’t feel like I fit in there, either. I have never been one of those gay people who hangs out exclusively with gay people, or parties all the time, or lives a wild and decadent lifestyle. I’m not butch. I wouldn’t know how to ride a motorcycle if my life depended on it. No, I’m much more likely to be in my pajamas by 8:00 P.M., watching reruns of House on the USA network. Which means that the women I run across most of the time are more likely to be straight than to be lesbian.
Everyone who’s gay has had the unfortunate circumstance of falling for someone who’s not. The first time it happens, you think: I can change her. I know her better than she knows herself. And invariably, you are left with a broken relationship and an even more broken heart. The straight equivalent, in a way, is the woman who’s sure that the guy she loves—the one who beats her every night—will eventually stop. The bottom line in both cases is that people don’t change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into someone she’s not.
I had crushes on straight girls my whole childhood, even if I couldn’t put a name to the feeling—but my first grown-up mistake was Janine Durfee, who played first base on a college intramural softball team. I knew she had a boyfriend—one who was continuously cheating on her. One night when she came to my dorm room in tears because she’d walked in on him with someone else, I invited her inside while she calmed down. Somehow listening to her cry morphed into me kissing her and ten phenomenal days as a couple before she went back to the guy who treated her like dirt. It was fun, Vanessa, she said apologetically. It’s just not me.
It’s important to point out that I have plenty of straight friends, women I’ve never been attracted to but still like to meet for lunch, movies, whatever. But over the years there have been a few who made a tiny flame fan inside me, a what if. They are the ones I have to actively keep my distance from, because I’m not a masochist. There are only so many times you can hear: It’s not you. It’s me.
I am not a proving ground. I don’t want to be the experiment. I have no interest in seeing if my personal charms can overpower the wiring of someone’s brain.
I believe I was born the way I am, and so I have to believe that someone straight is born that way, too. But I also believe you fall in love with a person; it stands to reason sometimes that could be a guy, and sometimes that could be a girl. I’ve often asked myself what I’d do if the greatest love of my life turned out to be male. Are you attracted to someone because of who they are, or what they are?
I don’t know. But I do know that I’m at the stage of my life where I want forever, not right now.
I know that the first person I kissed won’t be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.
And I also know better than to dream about things that can’t happen.
I am sitting at my desk getting nothing done.
Every two minutes I check the clock in the corner of the computer. It’s 12:45, which means that Zoe should be long out of surgery.
Her mom is at the hospital. I thought about going there, too, but didn’t know if that would seem weird. It’s not like Zoe asked me to come, after all. And I didn’t want to impose, if she just felt like being alone with her mom.
But I wonder if the reason she didn’t ask is because she didn’t want me to feel obligated to come.
Which I wouldn’t have, at all.
12:46.
Last weekend Zoe and I had gone to the art museum at RISD. The current exhibition was an empty room, with cardboard boxes on the perimeter. I’d sat down on one and been shooed out by a museum guard before realizing that I was inadvertently making myself part of the art. “Maybe I’m a philistine,” I had said, “but I like my art on canvas.”
“Blame Duchamp,” Zoe had answered. “The guy took a urinal, signed it, and put it on display in 1917 as a work of art called Fountain.”
“You’re kidding . . .”
“No,” Zoe had said. “It was recently voted the most influential art by, like, five hundred experts.”
“I suppose that’s because you’re supposed to realize anything can be art—like a urinal or a cardboard box—if you stick it in a museum?”
“Yes. Which is why,” Zoe had said, straight-faced, “I’m donating my uterus to RISD.”
“Make sure you have cardboard boxes, too. And a window. Then it can be called Womb with a View.”
She had laughed, a little wistfully. “More like Empty Womb,” Zoe said, and before she got tangled in her own thoughts, I had pulled her down the street to a place where they make the most amazing lattes, with foam designs on top that truly are art.
12:50.
I wonder if Dara will call me when Zoe’s out of surgery. I mean, it’s perfectly normal that I’d want to make sure she sailed through it. I tell myself that just because I haven’t heard from her doesn’t mean anything’s wrong.
I am the kind of person who imagines the worst. When friends fly somewhere, I check the arrivals online, just to make sure there wasn’t a crash. When I go out of town, I unplug all my appliances in case there is a power surge.
On my computer browser, I pull up the main page of the hospital where Zoe’s having her surgery. I type in the words “laparoscopic hysterectomy” on Google and look on the tab for a list of possible complications.
When the phone rings I pounce on it. “Hello?”
But it’s not Dara, and it’s not Zoe. The voice is tiny, so faint that it’s gone before it even registers. “Just calling to say good-bye,” Lucy DuBois murmurs.
It’s the girl—a junior—whom I mentioned to Zoe weeks ago, the one who has suffered from depression for some time now. This isn’t the first time she’s called me in the middle of a crisis.
But it’s the first time she’s sounded like this. Like she’s underwater and sinking fast.
“Lucy?” I yell into the phone. “Where are you?” In the background, I hear a train whistle, and what sounds like church bells.
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sp; “Tell the world,” Lucy slurs, “that I said fuck you.”
I grab the daily attendance sheet, where, prophetically, Lucy DuBois has already been marked absent.
It’s a pretty remarkable thing, to save someone’s life.
Based on the train whistle and the bells I heard, the police were able to focus their search near an old wooden bridge that backs up against a specific Catholic church with a 1:00 P.M. Mass. Lucy was found lying under a trestle with a liter of Gatorade and an empty bottle of Tylenol beside her.
I met her mother at the hospital. Now, after being given an activated charcoal solution to drink, Lucy has been brought up to the inpatient psych ward on suicide watch. It remains to be seen how much damage she’s done to her liver and kidneys.
Sandra DuBois sits beside me on a chair in the waiting room. “They need to keep her under observation for a few days,” she says, and she forces herself to meet my eye. “Ms. Shaw, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Please, it’s Vanessa,” I say. “And I do: Let me help your daughter.”
I have tried, for the past month, to convince Lucy’s parents that music therapy is a valid scientific tool to try to break through to their increasingly isolated daughter. So far, I haven’t gotten them to agree. Sandra and her husband are heavily involved in the Eternal Glory Church—and they don’t treat mental illness on a par with physical illness. If Lucy was diagnosed with appendicitis, they would understand the need for treatment. But depression, to them, is something a good night’s sleep and a Bible study meeting can cure.
I kind of wonder how many suicide attempts it will take before that changes.
“My husband doesn’t believe in psychiatrists . . .”
“So you’ve told me.” He’s not even here, in spite of Lucy’s close call—he is traveling for business, apparently. “Your husband wouldn’t necessarily have to know. We could keep this a secret, just between you and me.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t really see how singing songs can make a difference—”
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” I quote, and she blinks at me, as if I have finally spoken her language. “Look, Mrs. DuBois. I don’t know what will help Lucy, but whatever you and I have done so far doesn’t seem to be working. And you might have a whole congregation praying for your daughter, but if I were in your shoes, I’d have a backup plan just in case.”
The woman’s nostrils flare, and I’m certain that I’ve crossed that unwritten line where professionalism and personal belief bleed together. “This music therapist,” Sandra says finally, “she’s worked with adolescents before?”
“Yes.” I hesitate. “She is a friend of mine.”
“But is she a good Christian?”
I realize I have no idea what religious affiliation, if any, Zoe is. If she asked for a priest at the hospital, or even checked off a box on her intake form for any given denomination. Stumped, I watch as Sandra DuBois stands up and starts down the hall, toward Lucy.
And then I remember Max. “I believe she has relatives who attend your church,” I call out.
Lucy’s mother hesitates. Then, before she turns the corner, she looks back at me, and nods.
On the first day I visited Zoe, she was unconscious. Dara and I played gin rummy, and she asked me probing questions about my childhood before offering to read the dregs of my green tea.
On the second day I visited Zoe, I brought a flower that I’d made by sticking three dozen guitar picks into a piece of floral foam in the shape of a daisy. And let me just say I am not crafty, and in fact have a gag reaction when confronted by a glue gun or crochet hook.
On the third day, she is waiting for me at the front door. “Kidnap me,” she begs. “Please.”
I look over her shoulder, toward the kitchen, where I can hear Dara banging pots and pans for dinner preparations. “Seriously, Vanessa. There is only so much conversation about the positive effects of copper bracelets on a body that a normal human can take.”
“She’s going to kill me,” I murmur.
“No,” Zoe says. “She’s going to kill me.”
“You’re not even supposed to be walking . . .”
“The doctor didn’t have any restrictions against going for a little ride. Fresh air,” she says. “You’ve got a convertible . . .”
“It’s January,” I point out.
Still, I know that I’m going to do what she asks; Zoe could probably convince me that it’s a fantastic idea to take a vacation to Antarctica in the middle of winter. Hell, I’d probably book a ticket, if she was going, too.
She directs me to a golf course that is covered in snow, a local haunt for elementary school kids who drag their inflatable tubes up the hill and then grab each other’s legs and arms before sledding down, linked like atoms in a giant molecule. Zoe rolls down the window, so that we can hear their voices.
Man, that was awesome.
You almost hit that tree!
Did you see how much air I got on that jump?
Next time, I get to go first.
“Do you remember,” I ask, “when the most tragic part of your day was finding out that the cafeteria was serving meat loaf for hot lunch?”
“Or what it felt like to wake up and find out it was a snow day?”
“Actually,” I admit, “I still get to do that.”
Zoe watches the kids make another run. “When I was in the hospital, I had a dream about a little girl. We were on a Flexible Flyer and I was holding her in front of me. It was the first time she’d ever been sledding. It was so, so real. I mean, my eyes were tearing up because of the wind, and my cheeks were chapped, and that little girl—I could smell the shampoo in her hair. I could feel her heart beating.”
So this is why she directed me to the hill, why she is watching these children as if she’s going to be tested later on their features. “I’m guessing she wasn’t someone you knew?”
“No. And now I never will.”
“Zoe—” I put my hand on her arm.
“I always wanted to be a mother,” she says. “I thought it was because I wanted to read bedtime stories or see my child singing in the school chorus or shop for her prom dress—you know, the things I remember making my own mom so happy. But the real reason turned out to be selfish. I wanted someone who would grow up to be my anchor, you know?” she says. “The one who calls every day to check in. The one who runs out to the pharmacy in the middle of the night if you’re sick. The one who misses you, when you’re away. The one who has to love you, no matter what.”
I could be that person.
It hits me like a hurricane: the realization that what I’ve labeled friendship is—on my end, anyway—more than that. And the understanding that what I want from Zoe is something I will never have.
I’ve been here before, so I know how to act, how to pretend. After all, I’d much rather have a piece of her than nothing at all.
So I move away from Zoe, letting my arm drop, intentionally putting space between us. “Well,” I say, forcing a smile. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”
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The Last (3:25)
ZOE
My very first best friendship was grounded in proximity. Ellie lived across the street in a house that always looked a little tired at the edges, with its droopy window wells and frayed clapboards. Her mother was single, like mine, although by choice and not by fate. She worked in an insurance company and wore low heels and boxy suits to the office, but I remember her glamorously affixing fake eyelashes and ratting her hair before heading out to a dance club on weekends.
I was completely unlike Ellie, who—at age eleven—was a stunning girl with sunshine twined in the curls of her hair, and long colt legs with a perpetual summer tan. Her room was always a mess, and she’d have to dump piles of clothes and books and stuffed animals on the floor in order for us to have a pla
ce to sit on the bed. She thought nothing of stealing into her mother’s closet to “borrow” clothes for dress up or sprays of perfume. She read magazines, never books.
But the one thing Ellie and I had in common was that, of all the kids in our class, we were the two without fathers. Even kids whose parents were divorced saw the missing parent for weekends or holidays, but not Ellie and me. I couldn’t, obviously. And Ellie had never met her dad. Ellie’s mother referred to him as the One, in a reverent tone that made me think he must have died young, like my own father. Years later I learned that this wasn’t the case at all; that the One was a married guy who’d been cheating on his wife but wouldn’t leave her.
Ellie’s older sister, Lila, was supposed to watch us on the nights when her mom went out, but Lila spent all her time in her bedroom with the door closed. We weren’t allowed to bother her, and most of the time we didn’t, even though she had the coolest fluorescent posters that glowed under a black light behind her bed. Instead we cooked ourselves Campbell’s soup and watched scary movies on the premium cable channels, shielding our eyes from the screen.
I could tell Ellie anything. Like how, sometimes, I woke up screaming because I had a nightmare that my mother had died, too. Or that I worried I would never be brilliant at anything, and who wanted to be average her whole life? I confessed that I faked a stomachache to get out of taking a math quiz and that I had once seen a boy’s penis at camp when his bathing suit slid off during a jackknife dive. On school nights I called her before I went to sleep, and in the morning, she phoned me to ask what color shirt I was wearing, so that we would match.
One weekend, during a sleepover at Ellie’s house, I climbed out of the bed we shared and crept down the hallway. The door to her mother’s room was open, and inside, the room was empty, even though it was after 3:00 A.M. Lila’s door, as usual, was closed, but there was a purple line of light bleeding out from beneath it. I turned the knob, wondering if she was still awake. Inside, the room was magical—cloudy with incense and lavender streams of light, those ultraviolet posters coming alive in 3-D. One, a skull with rosette eyes, seemed to be moving toward me. Lila was lying on the bed with her eyes wide open and a rubber hose tied around her arm, like the kind I’d seen at the doctor’s office when I had to have a blood test, once. A syringe was in the palm of her open hand.