by Jodi Picoult
“Showtime,” Wade murmurs, and I turn around to see what he’s looking at. Zoe’s just walked into the courtroom, along with Vanessa and a tiny lady with bouncy black curls that ricochet in all directions from her scalp.
“We’re outnumbered,” Vanessa says quietly, but I can hear her all the same, and I like the idea that Wade’s already thrown them off their game. Zoe doesn’t look at me as she takes her seat. I bet that little lawyer gave her a bunch of rules to follow, too.
Wade quietly dials a number on his cell phone, and, a moment later, the double doors at the back of the courtroom open and a young woman who works as a paralegal for Ben Benjamin wheels a hand truck full of books down the aisle. She stacks them on the table in front of Wade, while Zoe and Vanessa and their lawyer watch. There are books of research, books of law from other states. I start reading the titles on the spines: Traditional Marriage. The Preservation of Family Values.
The last book she sets on top of the pile is the Bible.
“Hey, Zoe,” the female lawyer says. “You know the difference between a catfish and Wade Preston? One’s a slimy, scum-sucking bottom-feeder. And the other one’s just a fish.”
A man stands up. “All rise, the honorable Padraic O’Neill presiding.”
The judge enters from another door. He is tall, with a mane of white hair that has a tiny triangle of black at the widow’s peak. Two deep lines bracket his mouth, as if his frown needed any more attention drawn to it.
When he sits down, we do, too. “Baxter versus Baxter,” the clerk reads.
The judge slips a pair of reading glasses on. “Whose motion is this?”
Ben Benjamin stands. “Your Honor, I’m here today on the behalf of third-party plaintiffs, Reid and Liddy Baxter. My client is joining in the effort to have them impleaded into the case, and my colleague, Mr. Preston, and I would very much like to be heard on that issue.”
The judge’s face crinkles in a smile. “Why, Benny Benjamin! Always a pleasure to have you in court. I get to see if you managed to learn anything I ever taught you.” He glances over the paperwork in his folder. “Now, what is this motion about exactly?”
“Judge, this a custody battle over three frozen embryos that remained after the divorce of Max and Zoe Baxter. Reid and Liddy Baxter are my client’s brother and sister-in-law. They wish—and Max wishes—to gain custody of the embryos for the purpose of giving them to his brother and sister-in-law to gestate and bring to term and raise as their own children.”
Judge O’Neill’s eyebrows knit together. “You’re telling me there’s a final judgment about property that the parties didn’t deal with during their divorce?”
Wade stands up beside me. His cologne smells like limes. “Your Honor, with all due respect,” he says, “we are talking about children. About pre-born children—”
Across the aisle, Zoe’s attorney rises. “Objection, Your Honor. This is ludicrous. Can someone please tell Mr. Preston we’re not in Louisiana?”
Judge O’Neill points at Wade. “You! Sit down right now.”
“Your Honor,” Zoe’s lawyer says, “Max Baxter is using biology as a trump card to take three frozen embryos away from my client—who is one of the intended parents. She and her legal spouse intend to raise them in a healthy, loving family.”
“Where’s her legal spouse?” O’Neill asks. “I don’t see him sitting next to her.”
“My client is legally married to her spouse, Vanessa Shaw, in the state of Massachusetts.”
“Well, Ms. Moretti,” the judge replies, “she’s not legally married in Rhode Island. Now, let me get this straight—”
Behind me, I hear Vanessa stifle a snort. “But we’re not,” she murmurs.
“—You want the embryos.” He points at Zoe. “And you want them,” he says, pointing at me, and finally he points to Reid and Liddy. “And now they want them?”
“Actually, Your Honor,” Zoe’s lawyer says, “Max Baxter doesn’t want the embryos. He plans to give them away.”
Wade stands up. “To the contrary, Your Honor. Max wants his children to be raised in a traditional family, not a sexually deviant one.”
“A man seeking embryos to give away to somebody else,” the judge sums up. “Are you saying that’s a traditional type of thing to do? Because it sure isn’t where I come from.”
“If I may, Judge, this is a complicated case,” Zoe’s attorney says. “As far as I know, it’s a new area of the law that’s never been determined in Rhode Island. Today, though, we’re only convened because of the motion filed to implead Reid and Liddy Baxter, and I strenuously object to them becoming parties in this lawsuit. I have filed a memo today stating that, and, in fact, if you choose to allow prospective gestational carriers to implead this case, then Vanessa Shaw should also be a party, and I will file a motion immediately—”
“I object, Your Honor,” Wade argues. “You already said this is not a legal marriage, and now Ms. Moretti is raising a red herring that you already tossed out.”
The judge stares at him. “Mr. Preston, if you interrupt Ms. Moretti again, I am going to hold you in contempt of court. This is not a TV show; you’re not Pat Robertson. This is my courtroom, and I’m not about to let you turn it into the circus you’d like it to be. I’m retiring after this case, and so help me, I’m not going out in a religious catfight.” He bangs his gavel. “The motion to implead is denied. This case is between Max Baxter and Zoe Baxter, and it will proceed in the ordinary course. You, Mr. Benjamin, are welcome to call whomever you like as a witness, but I’m not impleading anyone. Not Reid and Liddy Baxter,” he says, and then he turns to the other lawyer. “And not Vanessa Shaw, so don’t file any motions requesting it.”
Finally, he turns to Wade. “And Mr. Preston. Word to the wise: think very carefully about what kind of grandstanding you plan to do. Because I’m not allowing you to run away with this court. I’m in charge here.”
He stands up and leaves the bench, and we jump up, too. Being in court isn’t that different from being in church. You rise, you fall, you look to the front of the room for guidance.
Zoe’s lawyer walks over to our table. “Angela,” Wade says. “I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to see you, but it’s a sin to lie.”
“Sorry that didn’t go as well for you as you’d hoped,” she replies.
“That went just fine, thank you very much.”
“Maybe that’s what you all think in Louisiana, but, believe me, here you just got slammed,” the lawyer says.
Wade leans on the books that were brought in by the paralegal. “The true colors of this judge will come out, darlin’,” he says. “And believe me . . . they’re not rainbow-striped.”
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The Mermaid (3:26)
ZOE
Lucy is drawing a mermaid: her hair long and twisted, her tail curled into the corner of the thick manila paper. As I finish singing “Angel,” I put down my guitar, but Lucy keeps adding little touches—a ribbon of seaweed, the reflection of the sun. “You’re a good artist,” I tell her.
She shrugs. “I design my own tattoos.”
“Do you have any?”
“If I did, I’d be thrown out of my house,” Lucy says. “One year, six months, four days.”
“That’s when you’re getting your tattoo?”
She looks up at me. “That’s the minute I turn eighteen.”
After our drumming session, I had vowed never to make Lucy meet in the special needs classroom again. Instead, Vanessa tells me which spaces are unoccupied (the French class that’s on a field trip; the art class that has gone to the auditorium to watch a film). Today, for example, we are meeting in the health classroom. We’re surrounded by inspirational posters: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS. And CHOOSE BOOZE? YOU LOSE. And a pregnant teen in profile: NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN.
We have been working on lyric analys
is. It’s something I’ve done before with the nursing home groups, because it gets people interacting with each other. Usually I start by telling them the name of a song—often one they don’t know—and ask them to guess what it will be about. Then I sing it, and ask for the words and phrases that stood out. We talk about their personal reactions to the lyrics, and, finally, I ask what emotions the song produced in them.
Because I didn’t think Lucy would want to verbally open up, I started having her draw her reactions to the lyrics. “It’s interesting that you drew a mermaid,” I said. “Angels aren’t usually pictured underwater.”
Immediately, Lucy bristles. “You said there wasn’t a right and a wrong way to do this.”
“There’s not.”
“I guess I could have drawn some of those totally depressing animals on the ASPCA commercial . . .”
It has been running a few years now: a montage of sad-eyed puppies and kittens, with this song playing in the background.
“You know, Sarah McLachlan said the song was about the keyboard player for the Smashing Pumpkins, who OD’d on heroin,” I say. I’d picked this song because I was hoping to get her talking about her previous suicide attempts.
“Duh. That’s why I drew a mermaid. She’s floating and drowning at the same time.”
Sometimes Lucy says things that just leave me speechless. I wonder how Vanessa and all the other school counselors could have ever thought she was distancing herself from the world. She’d drawn a bead on it, better than any of us.
“Have you ever felt like that?” I ask.
Lucy looks up. “Like OD’ing on heroin?”
“Among other things.”
She colors in the mermaid’s hair, ignoring the question. “If you could pick, how would you want to die?”
“In my sleep.”
“Everyone says that.” Lucy rolls her eyes. “If that wasn’t an option, then what?”
“This is a pretty morbid conversation—”
“So is talking about suicide.”
I nod, giving her that much. “Fast. Like an execution by firing squad. I wouldn’t want to feel anything.”
“A plane crash,” Lucy says. “You practically get vaporized.”
“Yeah, but imagine what it’s like the few minutes before, when you know you’re going down.” I used to actually have nightmares about plane crashes. That I wouldn’t be able to turn on my phone fast enough or get a signal so that I could leave Max a message telling him I loved him. I used to picture him sitting at the answering machine after my funeral, listening to the dead air and wondering what I was trying to say.
“I’ve heard drowning’s not so bad. You pass out from holding your breath before all the really awful stuff happens.” She looks down at the paper, at her mermaid. “With my luck, I’d be able to breathe water.”
I look at her. “Why would that be so bad?”
“How do mermaids commit suicide?” Lucy muses. “Death by oxygen?”
“Lucy,” I say, waiting for her to meet my gaze, “do you still think about killing yourself?”
She doesn’t make a joke out of the question. But she doesn’t answer, either. She begins to draw patterns on the mermaid’s tail, a flourish of scales. “You know how I get angry sometimes?” she says. “That’s because it’s the only thing I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I’m really here.”
Music therapy is a hybrid profession. Sometimes I’m an entertainer, sometimes I am a healer. Sometimes I am a psychologist, and sometimes I’m just a confidante. The art of my job is knowing when to be each of these things. “Maybe there are other ways to test yourself,” I suggest. “To make you feel.”
“Like what?”
“You could write some music,” I say. “For a lot of musicians, songs become the way to talk about really hard things they’re going through.”
“I can’t even play the kazoo.”
“I could teach you. And it doesn’t have to be the kazoo, either. It could be guitar, drums, piano. Anything you want.”
She shakes her head, already retreating. “Let’s play Russian roulette,” she says, and she grabs my iPod. “Let’s draw the next song that comes up on Shuffle.” She pushes the picture of the mermaid toward me and reaches for a fresh piece of paper.
“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” starts playing.
We both look up and start laughing. “Seriously?” Lucy says. “This is on one of your playlists?”
“I work with little kids. This is a big favorite.”
She bends over the paper and starts drawing again. “Every year, my sisters watch this on TV. And every year, it scares the hell out of me.”
“Rudolph scares you?”
“Not Rudolph. The place he goes.”
She is drawing a train with square wheels, a spotted elephant. “The Island of Misfit Toys?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Lucy says, looking up. “They creep me out.”
“I never really understood what was wrong with them,” I admit. “Like the Charlie-in-the-Box? Big deal. Tickle Me Elmo would have still been a hit if it were called Tickle Me Gertrude. And I always thought a water pistol that shot jelly could be the next Transformer.”
“What about the polka-dotted elephant?” Lucy says, a smile playing over her lips. “Total freak of nature.”
“On the contrary—sticking him on the island was a blatantly racist move. For all we know his mother had an affair with a cheetah.”
“The doll is the scariest . . .”
“What’s her issue?”
“She’s depressed,” Lucy says. “Because none of the kids want her.”
“Do they ever actually tell you that?”
“No, but what else could her problem be?” Suddenly, she grins. “Unless she’s a he . . .”
“Cross-dressing,” we say, at the same time.
We both laugh, and then Lucy bends down over her artwork again. She draws in silence for a few moments, adding spots to that poor misunderstood elephant. “I’d probably fit right in on that stupid island,” Lucy says. “Because I’m supposed to be invisible, but everyone can still see me.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to be invisible. Maybe you’re just supposed to be different.”
As I say the words, I think of Angela Moretti, and Vanessa, and those frozen embryos. I think of Wade Preston, with his Hong Kong tailored suit and slicked-back hair, looking at me as if I am a total aberration, a crime against the species.
If I remember correctly, those toys all jump into Santa’s sleigh and get redistributed beneath Christmas trees everywhere. I hope that, if this is true, I wind up under Wade Preston’s.
I turn to find Lucy staring at me. “The other time I feel things,” she confesses, “is when I’m here with you.”
Usually after Lucy’s therapy session, I go to Vanessa’s office and we have lunch in the cafeteria—Tater Tots, let me tell you, are vastly underrated—but today, she’s off at a college admissions fair in Boston, so I head to my car instead. On the way I check my phone messages. There’s one from Vanessa, telling me about an admissions officer from Emerson with an orange beehive hairdo who looks like she fell off a B-52’s album cover, and another just telling me she loves me. There’s one from my mother, asking me if I can help her move furniture this afternoon.
As I get closer to my yellow Jeep in the parking lot, I see Angela Moretti leaning against it. “Is something wrong?” I say immediately. It can’t be a good thing when your attorney travels an hour to tell you something.
“I was in the neighborhood. Well, Fall River, anyway. So I figured I’d swing by to tell you the latest.”
“That doesn’t sound very good . . .”
“I got another motion on my desk this morning, courtesy of Wade Preston,” Angela explains. “He wants to appoint a guardian ad litem to the case.”
“A what?”
“They’re common in custody cases. It’s someone whose job it is to determine the best interests of the
child, and to communicate that to the court.” She shakes her head. “Preston wants one appointed for the pre-born children.”
“How could he . . .” My voice trails off.
“This is posturing,” Angela explains. “It’s his way of setting forth a political agenda, that’s all. It’s going to be knocked out of court before you even sit down in your chair.” She glances up at me. “There’s more. Preston was on Joe Hoffman last night.”
“Who’s Joe Hoffman?”
“A conservative who runs the Voice of Liberty Broadcasting. A mecca for the closed-minded, if you ask me.”
“What did he talk about?”
Angela looks at me squarely. “The destruction of family values. He specifically named you and Vanessa as being at the forefront of the homosexual movement to ruin America. Do you two receive mail at your house? Because I’d strongly recommend a post office box. And I assume you have an alarm system . . .”
“Are you saying we’re in danger?”
“I don’t know,” Angela says. “Better safe than sorry. Hoffman’s small potatoes, compared to where Preston’s headed. O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh. He didn’t take this case because he cares so deeply for Max. He took it because it gives him a platform to stand on while he’s preaching, and because it’s a current hook that gets him booked on these shows. By the time we go to trial, Preston’s going to make sure you can’t turn on the TV without seeing his face.”
Angela had warned us that this would be an uphill battle, that we had to be prepared. I’d assumed that what was at stake was my chance to be a mother; I hadn’t realized that I’d also lose my privacy, my anonymity.
“When you think about the lengths he’s going to, it’s laughable,” Angela says.
But I don’t find it funny. When I start crying, Angela hugs me. “Is it all going to be like this?” I ask.
“Worse,” she promises. “But imagine the stories you’ll have to tell your baby one day.”
She waits until I’ve pulled myself together, and then tells me to be at court tomorrow to fight the motion. As I’m getting into my car again, my cell phone rings.