Sing You Home

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 who 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.

Vanessa doesn’t even hesitate. “My office. Take as long as you need.”

I march Lucy into the main office-a place where she’s spent far too much time, being disciplined by the assistant principal-and into Vanessa’s cozy space. I close the door behind us. “Are you all right?”

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve. “I just wanted him to shut up,” Lucy murmurs.

She must know, by now, that I am the center of this storm. There have been articles in the papers about the trial. Last night when I was brushing my teeth, there was my face, on the local late-night news. And now, there’s picketing on the steps of the school. I may initially have tried to keep my private life from her because of our therapy relationship, but now, doing so would be like trying to sandbag the ocean.

It makes sense that Lucy’s heard about all this. That people at her church are bad-mouthing me, and that she feels torn.

Torn enough to tackle Clive Lincoln.

I pull out a chair so she can sit down. “Do you believe him?” she asks.

“Frankly, no,” I admit. “He’s like something out of a circus sideshow.”

“No.” Lucy shakes her head. “I mean… do you believe him?”

At first I am shocked. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone who can listen to Pastor Clive and not take his words as utter lies. But then again, Lucy is only a teenager. Lucy goes to an evangelical church. She’s been spoon-fed this rhetoric all her life.

“No, I don’t believe him,” I say softly. “Do you?”

Lucy picks at the unraveling black threads of her leggings. “There was this kid who went to school here last year. Jeremy. He was in my homeroom. We all knew he was gay even though he never said it. He didn’t have to. I mean, everyone else called him a faggot often enough.” She looks up at me. “He hanged himself in his basement just before Christmas. His stupid fucking parents blamed it on a D he got in Civics.” Lucy’s eyes glint, hard as diamonds. “I was so jealous of him. Because he got to check out of this place for good. He left, and no matter how many times I try, I can’t.”

I taste copper on my tongue; it takes a moment for me to realize this is fear. “Lucy, are you thinking of hurting yourself?” When she doesn’t answer, I stare at her forearms, to see if she’s cutting again, but even in this mild weather she’s wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt.

“What I want to know is where the fuck is Jesus,” Lucy says. “Where is He when there’s so much hate it feels like concrete drying up around you? Well, fuck you, God. Fuck you for going when the going gets tough.”

“Lucy. Talk to me. Do you have a plan?” It is basic suicide counseling-get someone to talk about her intentions, and it’s possible to diffuse them. I need to know if she’s got pills in her purse, a rope in her closet, a gun under her mattress.

“Can someone stop loving you because you’re not who they want you to be?”

Her question stops me cold. I find myself thinking of Max. “I guess so,” I admit. Has Lucy had her heart broken? It could certainly account for her latest downslide; if I know anything about this girl, it’s that she expects people to leave her, and blames herself when they do. “Did something happen with a boy?”

She turns to me, her face as open as a wound. “Sing,” Lucy begs. “Make this all go away.”

I don’t have my guitar. I’ve left everything for music therapy in the car-the crowd that had gathered outside commanded my attention. The only instrument I have is my voice.

So I sing, slowly, a cappella. “Hallelujah,” the old Leonard Cohen song from before Lucy was born.

With my eyes closed, with every word a brushstroke, I do the kind of praying people do when they don’t know if there is a God. I hope, for Lucy. For me and Vanessa. For all the misfits in the world who don’t necessarily want to fit in. We just don’t want to always be blamed, either.

When I finish, I have tears in my eyes. But Lucy doesn’t. Her features might as well be stone.

“Again,” she commands.

I sing the song twice. Three times.

It is on the chorus, on the sixth round, that Lucy starts to sob. She buries her face in her hands. “It’s not a boy,” she confesses.

When I was small I got the strangest Christmas gift from a distant aunt: a twenty-dollar bill inside an acrylic puzzle. You had to pull knobs and twist levers in different machinations until you found the sequence that would release the catch and let you take the bounty. I was tempted to smash it open with a hammer, but my mother convinced me that the pieces would fall into place, and, once they started, it seemed I couldn’t make a wrong move. Boom boom boom, one door or latch opened after another as if they’d never been locked in the first place.

The same thing happens now-a curtain pulled back, a sentence turned on its edge to reveal a different meaning: the suicide attempts. Pastor Clive’s speech. Lucy’s angry tackle. Jeremy. Can someone stop loving you?

It’s not a boy, Lucy had said.

Maybe that’s because it’s a girl.

If there is one cardinal rule of music therapy, it’s that you come into a patient’s life at the place she needs you, and you leave her at a different place. You, as the therapist, are just a catalyst. A constant. You do not change as part of the equation. And you most certainly do not talk about yourself. You’re there solely for the patient.

It’s why, when Lucy asked me whether I was married, I didn’t answer.

It’s why she knew nothing about me and I know everything about her.

This isn’t a friendship-I’ve told Lucy that before. This is a professional relationship.

But that was before my future became a snack for public consumption. That was before I sat in a courtroom with the stares of strangers needling between my shoulder blades. Before I listened to a pastor I did not know or like tell me I was a reprobate. Before I went to the ladies’ room and had someone slip me a novena card underneath the stall wall with a message scribbled on the back: I am praying for you, dear.

If I have to run this gauntlet because I happen to love a woman, let it at least do someone else some good. Let me pay it forward.

“Lucy,” I say quietly. “You know I’m gay, right?”

Her head snaps up. “Why-why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling, but you need to understand that it’s completely normal.”

She stares at me, silent.

“You know how, when you go back into a preschool classroom, you sit down in the tiny chairs at the tiny tables and feel like Alice in Wonderland? You can’t imagine ever being small enough to fit the space? That’s what it feels like to come out. You look back and can’t imagine squeezing inside again. Even if Pastor Clive and his entire church are shoving as hard as they can.”

Lucy’s eyes are so wide I can see rims of white around the irises. She leans forward, her breath caught, as there is a knock on the door.

Vanessa pokes her head inside. “It’s eight-forty-five,” she tells me, and I jump out of my seat. We are going to have to fly if we want to get to the courthouse on time.

“Lucy, I have to go,” I say, but she is not looking at me. She’s looking at Vanessa, and thinking about what Pastor Clive said about her, and putting my life together as seamlessly as I just did hers.

Lucy grabs her backpack and, without a word, runs out of Vanessa’s office.

I didn’t realize how much of being a witness involves being an actor. Just as if I’m in a stage play, I’ve been well rehearsed for this moment-from learning the lines through the intonation of my voice to the costume which Angela herself picked out for me (a navy blue sheath dress with a white cardigan; so incredibly conservative that when Vanessa saw me she started laughing and called me Mother Baxter).

Yes, I have been prepared. Yes, I am technically ready. And yes, I’m certainly used to performing.

But then again, there’s a reason I play and sing music. Somehow, I get lost in the notes, adrift in the melodies, and forget where I am while I’m doing it. When I play for an audience, I can totally believe that the benefit sits squarely with me, instead of the people listening. On the other hand, the last time I was in a play, I was ten years old and cast as a cornstalk in The Wizard of Oz, and thirty seconds before I had to walk onto the stage, I threw up on the director’s shoes.

“My name is Zoe Baxter,” I say. “I live at six-eighty Garvin Street in Wilmington.”

Angela smiles brightly at me, as if I’ve solved a differential calculus problem, instead of just reciting my name and address. “How old are you, Zoe?”

“Forty-one.”

“Can you tell the court what you do for a living?”

“I’m a music therapist,” I say. “I use music in a clinical setting to help patients alleviate pain or change their moods or engage with the world. Sometimes I work in senior centers with patients with dementia; sometimes I work in a burn unit with children who are having dressings changed; sometimes I work in schools with autistic kids-there are dozens of different ways music therapy can be implemented.”

Immediately, I think of Lucy.

“How long have you been a music therapist?”

“For a decade.”

“And what’s your salary, Zoe?”

I smile a little. “About twenty-eight thousand dollars a year. You don’t go into music therapy because you have dreams of living the high life. You do it because you want to help people.”

“Is that your only income?”

“I also sing professionally. At restaurants, bars, coffeehouses. I write my own material. It’s not enough to make a living, but it’s a nice supplement.”

“Have you ever been married?” Angela asks.

I’ve known this question is coming. “Yes. I was married to the plaintiff, Max Baxter, for nine years, and I am currently married to Vanessa Shaw.”

There is a faint hum, like the buzz that sits over a bee colony, as the gallery digests this answer.

“Did you and Mr. Baxter have any children?”

“We had a lot of fertility problems, as a couple. We had two miscarriages and one stillborn son.”

Even now I can see him, blue and still as marble, his nails and eyebrows and eyelashes still missing. A work of art in progress.

“Can you describe for the court the nature of your infertility, and what steps you took as a couple to conceive?”

“I had polycystic ovary syndrome,” I begin. “I never had regular periods, and wouldn’t ovulate every month. I also had submucosal fibroids. Max had male pattern infertility-which is genetic. We started trying to get pregnant when I was thirty-one, and nothing happened for four years. So we started IVF when I was thirty-five.”

“How did that work?”

“I followed a medical protocol with various hormones and injections, and they were able to harvest fifteen eggs from me, which were injected with Max’s sperm. Three weren’t viable. Eight got fertilized, and of those eight, two were transferred to me, and three more were frozen.”

“Did you become pregnant?”

“Not that time. But when I was thirty-six, those three frozen embryos were thawed. Two were transferred and one was discarded.”

“Discarded? What does that mean?” Angela asks.

“The way the doctor explained it to me, they’re not pretty enough to be considered viable for pregnancy, so the clinic chooses not to save them.”

“I see. Did you become pregnant this time?”

“Yes,” I say. “And I miscarried a few weeks later.”

“Then what happened?”

“When I was thirty-seven we did another fresh cycle. This time I had twelve eggs harvested. Six were fertilized successfully. Two were transferred and two were frozen.”

“Did you get pregnant?”

“Yes, but I miscarried at eighteen weeks.”

“Did you continue to pursue IVF?”

I nod. “We used the two frozen embryos for another cycle. One was transferred, and one didn’t survive the thaw. I didn’t get pregnant.”

“How old were you at the time?”

“I was thirty-nine. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time left, so we scrambled to squeeze in one last fresh cycle. When I was forty, I had ten eggs harvested. Seven were fertilized. Of those seven, three were transferred, three were frozen, and one was discarded.” I look up. “I got pregnant.”

“And?”

“I was the happiest woman in the world,” I say softly.

“Did you know the gender of the baby?”

“No. We wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Did you feel the baby moving inside you?”

Even now, her words evoke that slow roll, that lazy aquatic somersault. “Yes.”

“Can you describe how you felt, being pregnant?”

“I loved every minute of it,” I say. “I’d waited my whole life for it.”

“How did Max react to the pregnancy?”

She has told me not to look at him, but magnetically, my gaze is pulled toward Max, who is sitting with his hands folded. Beside him, Wade Preston sporadically writes notes with a Montblanc fountain pen.

How did we get here? I wonder, looking at Max.

How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?

How could I have not known that one day I would love someone else?

How could you have not known that, one day, you would hate me for who I’ve become?

“He was excited, too,” I say. “He used to stick the earphones of my iPod into my belly button so that the baby could hear the music he liked the most.”

“Zoe, did you carry that baby to term?” Angela asks.

“No. At twenty-eight weeks, something went wrong.” I look up at her. “I was at my baby shower when I started having really bad cramps, and bleeding. A lot. I was rushed to the hospital and put on a monitor. The doctors couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. They brought in an ultrasound machine and tried for five minutes-but it felt like five hours. Finally they told me that the placenta had sheared away from the uterus. The baby…” I swallow. “The baby was dead.”

“And then what?”

“I had to deliver it. They gave me drugs to start labor.”

“Was Max there?”

“Yes.”

“What was going through your mind at the time?”

“That this was a mistake,” I say, looking right at Max. “That I would have the baby and they’d see how wrong they were, when it came out kicking and crying.”

“What happened when the baby was delivered?”

“He wasn’t kicking. He wasn’t crying.” Max looks down at the table. “He was so tiny. He didn’t have any fat on him yet, not like you see on other newborns. And he didn’t have fingernails yet, or eyelashes, but he was perfect. He was so incredibly perfect, and so… so still.” I find that I am leaning forward on the witness chair, perched with my hands held in front of me, as if I’m waiting for something. I force myself to sit back. “We named him Daniel. We scattered his ashes into the ocean.”

Angela takes a step toward me. “What happened after your son died?”

“I had more medical complications. When I stood up to go to the bathroom, I got dizzy and short of breath. I started having chest pains. It turned out that I had a blood clot that had developed postpartum, which had settled in my lungs. I was put on heparin, and during blood tests, the doctors learned I had a genetic condition called an AT III deficiency-basically, it means I’m susceptible to blood clots, and the pregnancy probably made it worse. But the first question I asked was whether I’d still be able to have a baby.”

“What was the answer?”

“That this could happen again. There could be even more severe complications. But that ultimately if I wanted to try to conceive again-I could.”

“Did Max want to try to have another baby?” Angela asks.

“I thought so,” I admit. “He always had been on the same page as me before. But after the visit at the doctor’s office, he told me that he couldn’t be with me because I wanted a baby more than anything in the world-and that wasn’t what he wanted.”

“What did he want?”

I look up. “A divorce,” I say.

“So you were still reeling from the death of your child, and dealing with all these medical complications, and then your husband told you he wanted a divorce. What was your reaction?”

“I really can’t remember. I think I went to bed for about a month. Everything was a blur. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t do anything, really.”

“What did Max do?”

“He moved out, and went to live with his brother.”

“Who represented you in your divorce?”

I shrug. “We represented ourselves. We didn’t have any money or property, so it didn’t seem as if it was going to be complicated. I was still so numb back then, I barely even remember going to court. I signed whatever papers came in the mail.”

“Did the three frozen embryos at the clinic ever cross your mind during the divorce proceedings?” Angela says.

“No.”

“Even though you still wanted a child?”

“At the time,” I explain, “I wanted a child with a spouse who loved me. I thought that was Max; I was wrong.”

“Are you married now?”

“Yes,” I say. “To Vanessa Shaw.” Just saying her name makes me feel like I can breathe easier. “She’s a school counselor at Wilmington High. I’d met her years earlier, when she asked me to do some music therapy with an autistic child. I ran into her again, and she asked me to work with another child-a suicidal teenage girl. Gradually, we began to hang out as friends.”

“Did something happen that brought you closer together?”

“She saved my life,” I say flatly. “I was hemorrhaging, and she was the one who found me and called an ambulance. I needed a D & C, and as a result of the procedure I learned that I had endometrial cancer and needed a hysterectomy. It was a very, very difficult time for me.”

I am not looking at Max, now. I’m not sure how much of this he even knows.

“I knew, once I had that hysterectomy, I’d never have a baby,” I say.

“Did your relationship with Vanessa change?”

“Yes. She took care of me, after the surgery. We spent a lot of time together-hanging out, running errands, cooking, whatever-and I started to realize that when I wasn’t with her, I really wanted to be. That I liked her as more than an ordinary friend.”

“Zoe, had you ever had a same-sex relationship before?”

“No,” I say, carefully picking my words. “I know it seems strange, but when you are attracted to people, it’s because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. Their smile. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most. I felt all those things for Vanessa. The fact that she was a woman-well, it was unexpected, but it was really the least important part of the equation.”

“That seems hard to understand, given the fact that you were married to a man…”

I nod. “I think that’s why it took me a while to realize I was in love with Vanessa. I just didn’t get it. I’d had female friends before and never felt like I wanted a physical relationship with them. But once our relationship did take that turn, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if not having her in my life would be like asking me to stop breathing air and start breathing water instead.”

“Do you call yourself a lesbian now?”

“I call myself Vanessa’s spouse. But if I have to wear someone else’s label in order to be with her forever, then I will.”

“What happened after you fell in love?” Angela asks.

“I moved into her house. This April, we got married in Fall River.”

“At some point did you two talk about having a family?”

“On our honeymoon,” I say. “I had assumed, after my hysterectomy, that I’d never have children. But I had three frozen embryos with my own genetic material in them… and, now, a partner with a uterus who could carry those babies to term.”

“Did Vanessa want to gestate the embryos?”

“She was the one who suggested it,” I say.

“What happened next?”

“I called the clinic and asked to use the embryos. I was told that my spouse had to sign off on it. But they didn’t mean Vanessa-they meant Max. So I went to him and asked for his permission to use the embryos. I knew that he didn’t want a baby-that was why he’d asked for a divorce. I honestly believed he would understand.”

“Did he?”

“He said that he’d think about it.”

Angela folds her arms. “Did Max seem different to you at that meeting from the man you used to know?”

I look at him. “Max used to be a surfer dude. A laid-back guy who didn’t wear a watch and didn’t have an agenda and was always a half hour late. He’d get his hair cut only because I reminded him to do it; he never remembered to wear a belt. But when I went to talk to Max about the embryos, he was at work. And even though he was doing manual labor-landscaping-he was wearing a tie. On a Saturday.”

“Did Max get back to you regarding the embryos?”

“Yes,” I say bitterly. “He had papers served, suing me for the right to use them.”

“How did that make you feel?” Angela asks.

“I was angry. And confused. He didn’t want to be a father; he’d told me so himself. He didn’t even have a relationship with anyone, as far as I knew. He didn’t want the embryos. He just didn’t want me to have them.”

“When you were married to Max, did he have a problem with homosexuality?”

“We didn’t really talk about it. But I never knew him to be judgmental before.”

“During your marriage,” Angela asks, “did you often see his brother?”

“Not very often at all.”

“How would you describe your relationship with Reid?”

“Contentious.”

“And with Liddy?” Angela asks.

I shake my head. “I just don’t get that woman.”

“Did you know that Reid had paid for your fifth cycle of IVF?”

“I had no idea, until I heard him testify. It was a huge stress for us, because we didn’t know how we could afford it-and then one day Max came home and said he had it all figured out, that he had found a credit card with zero interest, and I believed him.” I hesitate, correct myself. “I was stupid enough to believe him.”

“Did Max at any point tell you that he wanted the embryos to go to his brother and sister-in-law?”

“No. I learned about that when a motion was filed.”

“And what was your reaction?”

“I couldn’t believe he’d do that to me,” I say. “I’m forty-one. Even if my eggs were still worth anything, insurance won’t cover fertility treatments for me to harvest them again. This is literally my only chance to have my own biological child with someone I love.”

“Zoe,” Angela says, “have you and Vanessa talked about what Max’s relationship to these embryos might be if you receive the court’s permission to gain custody, and you have children?”

“Whatever Max wants. Whatever he’s ready for. If he wants to be a part of the babies’ lives, we’d understand; and if he doesn’t want to, we will respect that.”

“So… you’re willing to let the children know that Max is the biological father?”

“Of course.”

“And be involved in their lives, as much as Max is comfortable doing so?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Do you think you’d be given the same courtesy, if the court awards the embryos to Max?”

I look at Max; I look at Wade Preston. “I’ve spent two days hearing how deviant my lifestyle is, how vile I am for choosing it,” I reply. “They won’t let those kids within five miles of me.”

Angela looks up at the judge. “Nothing further,” she says.

Angela and I go to get a cup of coffee during the recess. She won’t let me travel through the courthouse alone, for fear I’ll be ambushed by one of Wade’s special interest groups. “Zoe,” she says, pushing the buttons on the vending machine, “you did great.”

“You were the easy part,” I tell her.

“That’s true,” she says. “Wade is going to come after you like Bill Clinton on an intern. But you sounded calm, and smart, and very sympathetic.” She hands me the first cup and is about to put coins in for the second cup when Wade Preston walks up and puts in fifty cents.

“I hear you’re not getting paid for this one, Counselor,” he says. “Consider this my contribution.”

Angela ignores him. “Hey, Zoe? You know the difference between Wade Preston and God?” She waits a beat. “God doesn’t think he’s Wade Preston.”

I laugh, like I always do at her jokes. But the laughter jams in my throat this time. Because two feet away from Reid, staring at me, is Liddy Baxter. She’s come down here with Max’s lawyer, presumably for the same reason I have.

“Zoe,” she says, taking a step forward.

Angela speaks on my behalf. “My client has nothing to say to you.” She steps between us.

In a completely uncharacteristic move, Liddy says, “But I have something to say to her.”

I don’t really know Liddy well. I never wanted to. Max always told me I was missing out-that she was funny and smart and knew all the dialogue to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! for whatever that was worth-but I couldn’t see past a woman who, in this day and age, actually waited for her husband to come home from work so that she could ask him about his day and feed him a meal. Max used to say we should go out shopping, or to lunch, get to know each other-but I figured we’d run out of things to talk about before we’d backed out of her driveway.

She seems, though, to have developed a little bit of a spine. It’s amazing what taking away someone else’s embryos can do for one’s self-esteem, I guess.

“Thanks, but I’ve reached my prayer quota for the day,” I tell her.

“No prayers. Just… well…” She looks up at me. “Max isn’t trying to hurt you.”

“Yeah, I’m only collateral damage. I get it.”

“I know how you must be feeling.”

I am amazed at her nerve. “You have no idea how I’m feeling. You and I,” I spit out, “have absolutely nothing in common.”

I shove past Liddy, Angela hurrying beside me.

“You giving your clients lessons in charm, Counselor?” Wade calls out.

Liddy’s voice rings down the hallway after me. “We do have something in common, Zoe,” she says. “We both already love these babies.”

That stops me in my tracks. I turn around again.

“For what it’s worth,” Liddy says quietly, “I always thought you’d make a great mother.”

Angela loops her arm through mine and drags me down the hallway.

“Ignore them both,” she says. “You know the difference between a porcupine and Wade Preston driving in his car? The prick’s on the outside.”

But this time, I can’t even crack a smile.

I do not remember my mother going on many dates when I was growing up, but one sticks out in my mind. A man had come to the door bathed in more perfume than my own mother had on and took her out to dinner. I fell asleep on the couch watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and woke up sometime during Saturday Night Live to find her in her stocking feet, with mascara smudged under her eyes and her hair tumbling out of its updo. “Was he nice?” I remember asking, and my mother just snorted.

“Never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring,” she said.

I didn’t understand, back then. But now I agree: the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a Super Bowl ring. Anything else is a clue that it isn’t going to work out: a high school ring says he never grew up; a cocktail ring says he’s gay and doesn’t know it yet. A pinkie ring says he’s too polished for his own good; a Truman Capote wannabe concerned more with how he looks than with how you do.

Wade Preston wears a pinkie ring.

“You certainly have had your fair share of health complications, Ms. Baxter,” he says. “One might say it’s almost Job-like.”

“Objection,” Angela says. “One might not say that.”

“Sustained. Counsel will refrain from personal commentary,” Judge O’Neill says.

“Many have been life-threatening, isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” I say.

“So there’s a chance that, if this court awards you the pre-born children, you might not even be around to see them grow up, right?”

“Right now, I am completely cancer-free. My chance of recurrence is less than two percent.” I smile at him. “I’m healthy as a horse, Mr. Preston.”

“You do understand that, if the court somehow awards you and your lesbian lover these pre-born children, there’s no guarantee a pregnancy will occur?”

“I understand that better than anyone,” I say. “But I also understand that this is my last chance to have a biological child.”

“You now live with Vanessa Shaw in her home, is that correct?”

“Yes. We’re married.”

“Not in the state of Rhode Island,” Wade Preston says.

I fix my gaze on him. “All I know is that the state of Massachusetts gave me a marriage certificate.”

“How long have you been together?”

“About five months.”

He raises his brows. “That’s not very long.”

“I guess I knew something good as soon as I saw it.” I shrug. “And I wanted to be with her forever.”

“You felt the same way when you married Max Baxter, didn’t you?”

First blood. “I wasn’t the one who wanted a divorce. Max left me.”

“Just like Vanessa could leave you?”

“I don’t think that will happen,” I say.

“But you don’t know, do you?”

“Anything’s possible. Reid and Liddy could get a divorce.” As I say the words, I glance at Liddy in the gallery. Her face drains of color.

I don’t know what the story is between her and Max, but there is one. I could feel threads between them, invisible as they were, during her testimony, as if I’d walked through a spiderweb stretched across an open doorway. And then her words downstairs in the snack room: Max isn’t trying to hurt you. As if she’d discussed this with him.

Max couldn’t be in love with her.

She’s as different from me as a person could possibly be.

At that thought, I have to smile a little. Max could clearly say the same thing about Vanessa.

Even if Max has a crush on his sister-in-law, I can’t imagine it going anyplace. Liddy is far too caught up in being the perfect wife, the ideal church lady. And as far as I can tell, there’s no wiggle room for a fall from grace.

“Ms. Baxter?” Wade Preston says impatiently, and I realize I have completely missed his question.

“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

“I said that you resent Reid and Liddy for the life they lead, don’t you?”

“I don’t resent them. We just place importance on very different things.”

“So you’re not jealous of their wealth?”

“No. Money isn’t everything.”

“Then you resent the fact that they’re such good role models?”

I smother a laugh. “Actually, I don’t think they are. I think they buy what they want-including these embryos. I think they use their Bible to judge people like me. Neither of which are qualities I’d want to pass down to a child.”

“You don’t go to church on a regular basis, do you, Ms. Baxter?”

“Objection,” Angela says. “Perhaps we need a visual.” She takes two legal books and smacks one down in front of her. “Church.” She moves the second book to the opposite edge of the defense table. “State.” Then she looks up at the judge. “See all the nice room in between.”

“Cute, Counselor. Please answer the question, Ms. Baxter,” the judge says.

“No.”

“You don’t think much of people who go to church, do you?”

“I think everyone should be entitled to believe what they want. Which includes not believing at all,” I add.

Vanessa doesn’t believe in God. I think her mother’s attempts to pray away the gay in her closed the door on organized religion. We’ve talked about it, in the folds of the night. How she doesn’t really care much about an afterlife, as long as she gets what she needs in her present one; how there’s an evolutionary component to helping people that has nothing to do with a Golden Rule; how even though I can’t subscribe to an organized religion, I also can’t say with certainty that I don’t believe in some higher power. I’m not sure if this is because I actually still cling to the vestiges of religion, or because I’m too afraid to admit out loud that I might not believe in God.

Atheism, I realize, is the new gay. The thing you hope no one finds out about you-because of all the negative assumptions that are sure to follow.

“So you wouldn’t plan to raise these pre-born children with any religion?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I’m going to raise a child to be loved and to show love; to be self-respecting and open-minded and tolerant of everyone. If I can find the right religious group to support that, then maybe we will join it.”

“Ms. Baxter, are you familiar with the case of Burrows v. Brady?”

“Objection!” Angela says. “Counsel is referencing a custody case, and this is a property issue.”

“Overruled,” Judge O’Neill says. “Where are you going with this, Mr. Preston?”

“In Burrows v. Brady, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that, when parents are divorced, each parent who has custody has the right to raise the child in the faith they think is in the child’s best interests. Moreover, Pettinato v. Pettinato said that the moral character of each potential custodial parent must be considered-”

“Is counsel trying to tell the court how to do its job,” Angela asks, “or does he actually have a question for my client?”

“Yes,” Wade replies. “I do have a question. You testified, Ms. Baxter, that you went through several in vitro procedures, all of which resulted in disaster?”

“Objection-”

“I’ll rephrase. You did not actually carry a baby to term, did you?”

“No,” I say.

“In fact you had two miscarriages?”

“Yes.”

“And then a stillbirth?”

I look into my lap. “Yes.”

“It’s your testimony today that you’ve always wanted a child, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Your Honor.” Angela sighs. “All this has been asked and answered.”

“Why then, Ms. Baxter, did you murder your own child in 1989?”

“What?” I say, stunned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about-”

But I do. And his next words confirm it: “Did you or did you not have a voluntary abortion when you were nineteen years old?”

“Objection!” Angela is out of her seat immediately. “This is irrelevant and occurred prior to my client’s marriage, and I move that it be stricken immediately from the record-”

“It’s completely relevant. It informs her desire to have a baby now. She’s trying to make up for past sins.”

“Objection!”

My hands have gone numb.

A woman stands up in the gallery. “Baby killer!” she yells, and that is the hairline crack it takes to break the dam. There is shouting-by the Westboro contingent and by the Eternal Glory congregants. The judge calls for order, and about twenty observers are hauled through the double doors of the courtroom. I imagine Vanessa watching on the other side. I wonder what she’s thinking.

“Mr. Preston, you may continue your line of questioning, but without the editorial comments,” Judge O’Neill says. “And as for the gallery, if there is one more disruption, I will turn this into a closed session.”

Yes, I tell him. I had an abortion. I was nineteen, in college. It wasn’t the right time to have a baby. I thought-stupidly-that I’d have many more chances.

When I finish, I am gutted. I have only spoken once of the procedure since it happened, and that was at the fertility clinic, when I had to be completely honest about my reproductive history or compromise my chances of conceiving. It has been twenty-two years, but suddenly I feel the same way I felt back then: Shaky. Embarrassed.

And angry.

The clinic could not legally have released that information to Wade Preston. Which means that it must have come from the only other person who was at the clinic the day I gave my medical history.

Max.

“Is there a reason you were hiding this information from the court?”

“I wasn’t hiding-”

“Could it be because you thought, correctly, it might make you seem a little disingenuous when you start sobbing about how much you want a baby?”

“Objection!”

“Have you ever considered,” Wade Preston presses, “that the fact that you haven’t been able to have another child was God’s judgment on you for killing your first?”

Angela is furious. She goes after Wade with a verbal streak of fire. But even once he has withdrawn his question, it hangs in the air like the letters of a neon sign after you close your eyes.

And even if I don’t have to reply out loud, I may just have already answered silently.

I don’t want to believe in a God who’d punish me for having an abortion.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered if it’s true.

“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Angela asks the minute the judge says that we are adjourning for the day. “How did he get your medical files?”

“He didn’t have to,” I say flatly. “Max must have told him.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? It would have been much less damaging if we’d been able to bring it up on direct instead of cross!”

Like Max’s alcoholism. Everyone likes a reformed sinner. If we’d been the ones to bring up his drinking, it would have looked like he had something to hide.

Which is exactly how Wade Preston has painted me today.

Preston has finished packing up his briefcase; he smiles politely as he walks by. “Sorry you didn’t know about the skeleton in your client’s closet. The literal one, that is.”

Angela ignores him. “Is there anything else I need to know about? Because I really do not like surprises.”

I shake my head, still numb, and follow her out of the courtroom. Vanessa is waiting with my mother-both of them still sequestered. “What happened in there?” Vanessa asks. “How come the judge threw out half the gallery?”

“Can we talk about it in the car? I really just want to go home.”

But the moment we open the front door of the courthouse and step outside, there is a hail and volley of questions.

I’m expecting this. Just not the ones they ask.

How far along were you when you had the abortion?

Who was the baby daddy?

Do you still keep in touch with him?

A woman walks up to me. From her yellow T-shirt I realize she is from Westboro Baptist Church. She’s holding a recyclable plastic bottle filled with some kind of fruit punch, but it looks like blood from here.

I know she’s going to throw it at me the moment before she actually does. “Some choices are wrong,” she cries.

I step back, shielding myself, so that the liquid only lands on my right foot. I completely forget about Vanessa until I hear her voice beside me. “You never told me.”

“I never told anyone.”

Vanessa’s eyes are cold. She glances at Max, walking between his attorneys. “Somehow,” she says, “I don’t believe you.”

My mother wants to go after Wade Preston for dragging up my history; it takes Angela’s interference and the magic word (grandchild) before she agrees to go home without putting up a fight. She tells me she will call me later to make sure I’m all right, but it’s pretty clear to her that I don’t want to talk right now. To anyone except Vanessa, that is. The whole ride home, I try to explain what happened during my testimony. She doesn’t say a word. When I mention my abortion, she flinches.

Finally, by the time we park the car, I can’t stand it. “Are you going to give me the silent treatment forever?” I yell, slamming the car door and following Vanessa into the house. I strip off my panty hose, which are still sticky. “Is this some Catholic thing?”

“You know I’m not Catholic,” Vanessa answers.

“But you used to be-”

“This isn’t about the damn abortion, Zoe. It’s about you.” She is facing me now, her hands still clutching the keys to the car. “That’s a pretty big bit of history to leave out of a relationship. It’s like forgetting to tell someone you have AIDS.”

“For God’s sake, Vanessa, you can’t catch an abortion like an STD-”

“Do you think that’s the only reason to disclose something incredibly personal to the people you love?”

“It was a horrible decision to have to make, even if I was lucky enough to be able to make it. I don’t particularly enjoy reliving it.”

“Then tell me this,” she argues. “How is it that Max knew, and I didn’t?”

“You’re jealous? You’re actually jealous that I told Max about something horrible in my past!”

“Yeah, I am,” Vanessa admits. “Okay? I’m a selfish bitch who wishes that my wife opened herself up to me as much as she opened herself up to the guy she used to be married to.”

“And maybe I’d like my wife to show a little compassion,” I say. “Considering I was just raked over the coals by Wade Preston and that I’m now Public Enemy Number One for the entire religious right.”

“There’s more than just a u in us,” Vanessa says. “Not that you seem to realize it.”

“Great!” I yell, tears springing to my eyes. “You want to know about my abortion? It was the worst day of my life. I cried the whole way there and the whole way home. I had to eat ramen noodles for two months because I didn’t want to ask my mother for money; and I didn’t tell her I’d done it until I was back home for the summer. I didn’t take the medicine they gave me for the cramps afterward because I felt like I deserved the pain. And the guy I was dating-the guy who decided with me that this was the right thing to do-broke up with me a month later. And in spite of the fact that every doctor I’ve ever seen tells me that my infertility has nothing to do with that procedure, I’ve never really been able to believe it. So how’s that? Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to know?”

By the time I finish, I am crying so hard I can barely understand my own words. My nose is running and my hair is in my face and I want her to touch me, to take me in her arms and tell me it’s all right, but instead she steps back. “What else don’t I know about you?” she asks, and she leaves me standing alone in the entryway of a house that no longer feels like home.

The actual procedure took only six minutes.

I know, I counted.

They had talked to me about all my options. They had given me lab tests and a physical. They had given me a sedative. They had opened my cervix with dilators. They had given me forms to sign.

This took a few hours.

I remember the nurse fitting my feet into the stirrups, telling me to scoot down. I remember the shine of the speculum as the doctor lifted it from its sterile napkin. I remember the wet-vac sound of the suction device.

The doctor never called it a baby. She never even called it a fetus. She referred to it as tissue. I remember closing my eyes and thinking of a Kleenex, balled up and tossed in the trash.

On the way back to campus, I put my hand on the stick shift of my boyfriend’s old Dodge Dart. I just wanted his palm to cover mine. Instead, he untangled my fingers. “Zoe,” he said. “Just let me drive.”

Although it was only two in the afternoon when I got back to my dorm room, I put on my pajamas. I watched General Hospital, honing my focus on the characters of Frisco and Felicia, as if I would have to pass a test on them later on. I ate an entire jar of Jif peanut butter.

I still felt empty.

I had nightmares for weeks, that I could hear the fetus crying. That I followed the sound to the courtyard outside my dorm window and crouched down in my pajama bottoms and torn tank to dig with my bare hands in the ragged ground. I pulled up hunks of sod, chipped my fingernails on stones, and finally uncovered it:

Sweet Cindy, the baby doll I’d buried the day my father died.

I can’t unwind that night. I hear Vanessa moving around above me, in the bedroom, and then when it gets quiet I assume she’s fallen asleep. So instead, I sit down at my digital keyboard and I start playing. I let the music bind me like a bandage. I sew myself together note by note.

I play for so long that my wrists begin to cramp. I sing until my voice frays, until I feel like I’m breathing through a straw. When I stop, I lean my forehead so that it rests on the keys. The silence in the room becomes a thick cotton batting.

Then I hear clapping.

I turn around to find Vanessa standing in the doorway. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” She sits down beside me on the piano bench. “This is what he wants, you know.”

“Who?”

“Wade Preston. To break us apart.”

“I don’t want that,” I admit.

“Me neither.” She hesitates. “I’ve been upstairs doing math.”

“No wonder you’ve been gone so long,” I murmur. “You suck at math.”

“The way I figure it, you were with Max for nine years. I plan to be with you for the next forty-nine years.”

“Just forty-nine?”

“Stick with me, here. It’s a nice round number.” Vanessa looks at me. “So by the time you’re ninety, you’ll have spent over half your life with me, as opposed to ten percent of your life with Max. Don’t get me wrong-I’m still wicked jealous of those nine years, because I can’t ever have them with you, no matter what I do. But if you hadn’t lived them back then with Max, maybe you wouldn’t be here with me now.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep a secret from you,” I tell her.

“But you should be able to. I love you so much that there’s nothing you could possibly tell me that would change that.”

“I used to be a guy,” I say, straight-faced.

“Deal breaker.” Vanessa laughs, and she leans forward and kisses me. She puts her hands on either side of my face. “I know you’re strong enough to do this alone, but you don’t have to. I promise not to be an idiot anymore.”

I settle closer to her, rest my head on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, too,” I say, an apology as wide as the night sky, with no limits.