by Jodi Picoult
Today I help her lug in a bunch of instruments from her car. "Lucy plays this?" I ask, as I set down a small marimba.
"No. She doesn't play any musical instruments. But the thing about the ones I've brought today is that you don't have to play an instrument to sound good. They're all tuned to the pentatonic scale."
"What's that?"
"A scale with five pitches. It's different from a heptatonic scale, which is seven notes, like the major scale--do re mi fa so la ti. You find them all over the world--in jazz, blues, Celtic folk music, Japanese folk music. The thing about it is that you just can't play a wrong note--whatever key you hit, it's going to sound good."
"I don't get it."
"You know the song 'My Girl'? By the Temptations?"
"Yeah."
Zoe lifts the lap harp she's holding and plays the instrumental intro, those six familiar rising notes that repeat. "That's a pentatonic scale. So is the melody that the aliens understood in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And a blues scale is based on a minor pentatonic scale." She puts down the harp and hands me a mallet. "Try it."
"Thanks but no thanks. My last experience with an instrument was violin, when I was eight. The neighbors called the fire department because they thought an animal was dying inside my house."
"Just try it."
I take a mallet and tentatively strike a bar. And another. And a third. Then I hit the same pattern. Before I know it I'm striking different bars, making up a song as I go. "That," I say, "is pretty cool."
"I know, right? It takes all the stress out of music."
Imagine if there was a pentatonic scale for life: if no matter what step you took, you could not strike a wrong note.
I hand her back the mallet just as Lucy sulks through the door. That's really the only way to describe it--she takes a look at Zoe and then glances at me and realizes she is not going to escape as easily this time around. She throws herself into a chair and starts gnawing on her thumbnail.
"Hi, Lucy," Zoe says. "It's good to see you again."
Lucy snaps her gum. I stand up, grab the trash can, and hold it under her jaw until she spits it out. Then I close the door of the special needs room, so that the noise in the hall doesn't interrupt Zoe's session.
"So, you can see that Ms. Shaw is with us today. That's because we want to make sure you haven't got a pressing appointment somewhere else again," Zoe tells her.
"You mean you don't want me to ditch," Lucy says.
"That too," I agree.
"I was thinking, Lucy, that maybe you could tell me one thing you liked about our last session, so that I could make sure we get to do it again . . ."
"That I cut it short," Lucy replies.
If I were Zoe, I'd probably want to throttle the kid. But Zoe just smiles at her. "Okay," she says. "I'll make sure we keep things moving along then." She takes the lap harp and puts it on the desk in front of Lucy. "Have you ever seen one of these?" When Lucy shakes her head, Zoe plucks a few strings. The notes are sporadic at first, and then rearrange themselves into a lullaby.
"Hush, little baby, don't say a word," Zoe sings softly, "Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing, Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring." She puts down the harp. "I never really understood those lyrics. I mean, wouldn't you rather have a mockingbird that could say everything you taught it to say? That's so much cooler than a piece of jewelry." She strums the harp a few more times. "Maybe you'd like to try this?"
Lucy makes no move to touch it. "I'd rather have the diamond ring," she says finally. "I'd pawn it and use the money for a bus ticket and get the hell out of here."
In the year I've known Lucy, I have never heard her string so many words together in a response. Stunned--maybe music does work wonders--I lean forward to see what Zoe will do next.
"Really?" she says. "Where would you go?"
"Where wouldn't I go?"
Zoe pulls the marimba closer. She begins to tap out a rhythm that feels vaguely African, or Caribbean. "I used to think of traveling around the world. I was going to do that after graduating from college. Work in one place, you know, waiting tables or something, until I got enough cash to travel somewhere else. I told myself I never wanted to be the kind of person who had more stuff than she could carry in a knapsack."
For the first time, I see Lucy actively look at Zoe. "Why didn't you do it?"
She shrugs. "Life got in the way."
Where, I wonder, did she dream about going? A pristine beach? A blue glacier rising from the center of an ice field? The crowded bookstalls on the banks of the Seine?
Zoe begins to play another melody with the mallet. This one sounds like a polka. "One of the really cool things about these two instruments is that they're tuned on a pentatonic scale. Lots of world folk music is based off that. I love the way you can hear a piece of music, and it brings a snapshot from another part of the world into your mind. Next best thing to being there, if you can't hop a plane because you've got math next period, for example." She taps the mallet, and the tune sounds Asian, the notes jumping up and down the scale. I close my eyes and see cherry blossoms, paper houses. "Here," Zoe says, handing the mallet to Lucy. "How about if you play me a song that sounds like where you wish you were?"
Lucy takes the mallet in her fist and stares at it. She strikes the highest bar, just once. It sounds like a high-pitched cry. Lucy strikes it one more time, and then lets the mallet roll from her fingers. "This is so unbelievably gay," she says.
I can't help it, I flinch.
Zoe doesn't even look in my direction. "If by 'gay' you mean happy, which you must, because I can't imagine you'd find anything about playing a marimba that points to sexual orientation--well, then, I would have to disagree. I think Japanese folk songs are pretty melancholy, actually."
"What if that's not what I meant?" Lucy challenges.
"Then I suppose I'd ask myself why a kid who hates being labeled by everyone else, including therapists, is so willing to label other people."
At that, Lucy folds back into herself. Gone is the girl willing to talk about running away. In her place is the familiar drawstring purse of a mouth, the angry eyes, the folded arms. One step forward, two steps back. "Would you like to try the marimba?" Zoe asks again.
She is met by a stony wall of silence.
"How about the harp?"
When Lucy ignores her again, Zoe pulls the instruments aside. "Every songwriter uses music to express something she can't have. Maybe that's a place, and maybe that's a feeling. You know how sometimes you feel like if you don't let go of some of the pressure that's inside you, you're going to explode? A song can be that release. How about you pick a song, and we talk about the place it takes us when we listen to it?"
Lucy closes her eyes.
"I'll give you some choices," Zoe says. "'Amazing Grace.' 'Wake Me Up When September Ends.' Or, 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.'"
She could not have picked three more diverse options: a spiritual, a Green Day song, and an Elton John oldie.
"Okay, then," Zoe says, when Lucy doesn't respond. "I'll pick." She begins to play the lap harp. Her voice starts out on a husky low note, and swings upward:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
Was blind, but now I see.
There is a richness to Zoe's singing that feels like tea on a rainy day, like a blanket over your shoulders while you're shivering. Lots of women have pretty voices, but hers has a soul. I love how, when she wakes up in the morning, it sounds as if her throat is coated in sand. I love how, when she gets frustrated, she doesn't yell but instead belts one high, operatic note of anger.
When I look over at Lucy, she has tears in her eyes. She furtively glances at me, and wipes them away as Zoe finishes the song with a few strokes plucked on the harp. "Every time I hear that hymn I imagine a girl in a white dress, standing barefoot on a swing," Zoe says. "And t
he swing's on a big old elm tree." She laughs, shaking her head. "I have no idea why. It's actually about a slave trader who was struggling with his life, and how some divine power got him to see the person he was meant to be instead. How about you? What does the song make you think of?"
"Lies."
"Really!" Zoe says. "That's interesting. What sorts of lies?"
Suddenly Lucy stands so abruptly that she knocks over her chair. "I hate that song. I hate it!"
Zoe moves quickly so that she is only inches away from the girl. "That's great. The music made you feel something. What did you hate about it?"
Lucy narrows her eyes. "That you were singing it," she says, and she shoves Zoe out of the way. "I'm fucking done." She kicks the marimba as she passes. It sounds a low good-bye.
Zoe turns to me as the door slams behind Lucy. "Well," Zoe says, beaming. "At least this time, she stayed twice as long."
"The dead man on the train," I say.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That's what the song makes me think of," I say. "I was in college and I was going home for Thanksgiving. The trains were full, and I wound up sitting next to an old man who asked me what my name was. Vanessa, I told him, and he said Vanessa What? I didn't know him, and I was afraid to give out my last name in case he was a serial killer or something, so I told him my middle name instead: Vanessa Grace. And he started singing to me, substituting my name for Amazing grace. He had a really beautiful, deep voice, and people clapped. I was embarrassed, and he wouldn't quit talking, so I pretended to fall asleep. When we got to South Station, the last stop, he was leaning against the window with his eyes closed. I shook him, to tell him that it was time to get off the train, but he didn't wake up. I got a conductor, and the police and ambulance came, and I had to tell them everything I knew--which was almost nothing." I hesitate. "His name was Murray Wasserman, and he was a stranger, and I was the last person he sang to before he died."
When I finish speaking, I find Zoe staring at me. She glances at the door of the room, which is still closed, and then she hugs me. "I think he was probably a pretty lucky guy."
I look at her dubiously. "To drop dead? On Amtrak? The day before Thanksgiving?"
"No," Zoe says. "To have you sitting next to him, on the last ride of his life."
I duck my head. I'm not a praying woman, but I pray at that moment that, when it's my turn, Zoe and I will still be traveling together.
The day after I told my mother that I was a lesbian, the shock had worn off and she was full of questions. She asked me if this was some phase I was going through, like the time I'd been hell-bent on dyeing my hair purple and getting an eyebrow ring. When I told her I was convinced of my attraction to women, she burst into tears and asked me how she had failed me as a mother. She told me she'd pray for me. Every night, when I went to bed, she slipped a new pamphlet under the door. Many trees have died so that the Catholic Church can preach against homosexuality.
I started to wage a counterattack. On every pamphlet, I took a thick marker and wrote the name of someone famous who had an LGBT child: Cher. Barbra Streisand. Dick Gephardt. Michael Landon. I'd slip these under her bedroom door.
Finally, at a stalemate, I agreed to meet with her priest. He asked me how I could do this to the woman who'd raised me, as if my sexuality was a personal attack on her. He asked if I'd considered becoming a nun instead. Not once was I asked if I was afraid, or lonely, or worried about my future.
On the way home from the church, I asked my mother if she still loved me.
"I'm trying," she said.
It took my first long-term girlfriend (whose own mother, when she came out to her, shrugged and said, Tell me something I don't know) to make me understand why my mother was the complete opposite. "You're dead to her," my girlfriend had told me. "Everything she's dreamed of for you, everything she figured you'd be and have, it's not going to happen. She's been seeing you in suburbia with a cookie cutter husband and your two point four kids and a dog, and now you've gone and ruined that by being with me."
So I gave my mother time to grieve. I never flaunted my girlfriends in front of her, or brought one home to a holiday meal, or signed her name on a Christmas card. Not because I was ashamed but simply because I loved my mother, and I knew that was what she needed from me. When my mother got sick and went into the hospital, I took care of her. I like to think that, before the morphine took over her mind--before she died--she realized that my being a lesbian mattered far less than the fact that I was a good daughter.
I'm telling you this as a means of explaining that I have been through the coming-out ringer, and wish to repeat it about as much as a person wants a second root canal. But when Zoe begs me to come with her when she tells Dara about us, I know I will. Because it's the first proof I have that--maybe--Zoe isn't just trying this new gay persona on for size, and planning to return it and go back to her old, straight self.
"Are you nervous?" I ask, as we stand side by side in front of Zoe's mother's front door.
"No. Well, yeah. A little." She looks at me. "It feels big. It's big, right?"
"Your mother is one of the most open-minded people I've ever met."
"But she considers herself an expert on me," Zoe says. "It was just the two of us, when I was growing up."
"Well, I grew up with a single mom, too."
"This is different, Vanessa. On my birthday, my mother still calls me at 10:03 A.M. and screams and pants into the phone to relive the birth experience."
I blink at her. "That's just plain strange."
Zoe smiles. "I know. She's one in a million. It's a blessing and a curse all at once." With a deep breath, she rings the doorbell.
Dara opens it with a mangled coat hanger in her hands. "Zoe!" she says, delighted to see her daughter. "I didn't know you were coming out here!"
Zoe's laugh is strangled. "You have no idea . . ."
Dara wraps her arms around me for a quick hug, too. "How are you, Vanessa?"
"Great," I say. "I've never been better."
In the background there is a man's voice, deep and soothing. Sense the water. Sense it rising beneath you . . .
"Oh," Dara says. "Let me go shut that off. Come in, you two." She hustles toward the stereo and turns off the CD player, taking the disc out of the machine and slipping it into its plastic sleeve. "It's my homework for my dowsing class. That's what the coat hanger's for."
"You're looking for water?"
"Yes," Dara says. "When I find it, the rods will move by themselves and cross in my hands."
"Let me save you some trouble," Zoe replies. "I'm pretty sure the water comes out of the faucets."
"O ye of little faith. For your information, my practical girl, dowsing is a very lucrative skill. Say you're going to invest in a piece of land. Don't you want to know what's under the surface?"
"I'd probably hire an artesian well company," I say, "but that's just me."
"Maybe so, Vanessa, but who's going to tell the well company where to dig, eh?" She smiles at me. "You two hungry? I've got a nice coffeecake in the fridge. One of my clients is trying to visualize becoming a pastry chef . . ."
"You know, Ma, actually, I came to tell you something really important," Zoe says. "Something really good, I think."
Dara's eyes widen. "I had a dream about this, just last night. Let me guess--you're going back to school!"
"What? No!" Zoe says. "What are you talking about? I have a master's degree!"
"But you could have majored in classical voice. Vanessa, have you ever heard her sing . . ."
"Um, yes--"
"Mom," Zoe interrupts. "I'm not going back to school for classical voice. I'm perfectly happy as a music therapist--"
Dara looks up at her. "For jazz piano, then?"
"For God's sake, I'm not going back to school. I came here to tell you I'm a lesbian!"
The word cleaves the room in half.
"But," Dara says after a moment. "But you were married."
"I
know. I was with Max. But now . . . now I'm with Vanessa."
When Dara turns to me, her eyes seem wounded--as if I've betrayed her by pretending to be Zoe's good friend when, in truth, that's what I have been. "I know this is unexpected," I say.
"This isn't you, Zoe. I know you. I know who you are . . ."
"So do I. And if you think this means I'm going to start riding a Harley and wearing leather, you don't know me at all. Believe me, I was surprised, too. This isn't what I thought was going to happen to me."
Dara starts to cry. She cups Zoe's cheeks in her hands. "You could get married again."
"I could, but I don't want to, Ma."
"What about grandchildren?"
"I couldn't seem to make that happen even with a man," Zoe points out. She reaches for her mother's hand. "I found someone I want to be with. I'm happy. Can't you be happy for me?"
Dara sits very still for a moment, looking down at their intertwined fingers. Then she pulls away. "I need a minute," she says, and she picks up her dowsing rods and walks into the kitchen.
When she leaves, Zoe looks up at me, teary. "So much for her open-mindedness."
I put my arm around her. "Give her a break. You're still getting used to these feelings, and it's been weeks. You can't expect her to get over the shock in five seconds."
"Do you think she's okay?"
See, this is why I love Zoe. In the middle of her own freak-out moment, she's worried about her mother. "I'll go check," I say, and I head into the kitchen.
Dara is leaning against the kitchen counter, the dowsing rods beside her on the granite. "Was it something I did?" she asks. "I should have gotten married again, maybe. Just so there was a man in the house--"
"I don't think it makes a difference. You have been a wonderful mother. Which is why Zoe is so afraid you'll want to disown her."
"Disown her? Don't be ridiculous. She said she was a lesbian, not a Republican." Dara draws in her breath. "It's just . . . I have to get used to it."
"You should tell her that. She'll understand."
Dara looks at me, then nods. She pushes back through the swinging door into the living room. I think about following her, but I want to give Zoe a minute alone with her mother. I want them to have the shift and redistribution of their relationship that I never got to have with my own mom, that acrobatic feat of love where everything is turned upside down and yet they are both still able to keep their balance.