Sing You Home

“Which he doesn’t,” Pastor Clive says.

“No, but if you did, the court would have to consider your legal right to do so.”

“The court cares about the best interests of the children,” Wade adds. “You’ve heard that term. And the choices here are a traditional Christian family or a unit that doesn’t even come close to approximating that definition.”

“We’ll have your brother and sister-in-law testify. They’re going to be a very central part of this trial,” Ben says.

I run my thumbnail along a groove in the table. Last night, Liddy and Reid had been online looking up baby names. Joshua’s nice, Reid had said, and Liddy had said maybe Mason.

Too trendy, Reid had said.

And Liddy had said, Well, what does Max think? He ought to have a say in this, too.

I flatten my hands on the table. “About this trial… I probably should have brought this up before. But I can’t afford one lawyer, much less two of you.”

Pastor Clive puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that, son. The church is taking care of it. After all, this is going to bring us a lot of attention.”

Wade leans back, a smile unraveling across his face. “Attention,” he says, “is what I do best.”

9 ZOE

I like Emma. And Ella. And Hannah.

“Does every baby name have to be a palindrome?” Vanessa asks.

“No,” I tell her, as we sprawl across the living room floor, surrounded by every single baby name book stocked by the local bookstore.

“Florals?” Vanessa says. “Rose? Lily? Or Daisy. I’ve always liked Daisy.”

“Amanda Lynn?” I wait to see if she’ll get the joke.

Vanessa smirks. “Well, it’s better than Tuba or Banjo…”

“How about girl names that are also boy names?” I say. “Like Stevie. Or Alex.”

“It would save us half the work here,” Vanessa admits.

I have been pregnant three times and have avoided doing just this: hoping. It’s a lot easier to not be disappointed when you have no expectations. And yet this time I almost can’t help myself. There was something about the way I left things with Max that makes me believe this might actually happen.

After all, he didn’t say no right away, which is what I expected.

Which means he’s still thinking.

And that has to be good, right?

“Joey,” Vanessa suggests. “That’s kind of cute.”

“If you’re a kangaroo…” I roll over onto my back and look up at the ceiling. “Clouds.”

“No way. I’m not doing the hippie thing. No Clouds or Rain or Meadow. I mean, imagine the poor kid when she’s ninety and in a nursing home.”

“I wasn’t talking about a name,” I say. “I was thinking about the nursery. I’ve always thought it would be peaceful to fall asleep staring up at clouds painted on your ceiling.”

“That’s cool. You think Michelangelo is listed in the yellow pages?”

The doorbell rings as I toss a pillow at her. “You expecting anyone?” I ask.

Vanessa shakes her head. “Are you?”

A man is standing on the porch, smiling. He’s wearing a red baseball cap and a Red Sox sweatshirt and doesn’t strike me as a serial killer, so I open the door. “Are you Zoe Baxter?” he asks.

“Yes…”

He pulls a sheaf of blue papers out of his back pocket. “These papers are for you,” he says. “You’ve been served.”

I open the folded document and words leap off the page at me:

Pray this Honorable Court…

… award him full possession and custody of his pre-born children…

… wishes to provide them with an appropriate two-parent family…

I sink to the floor and read.

In support thereof, it is hereby stated:

1. The plaintiff is the biological father of these pre-born children, which were conceived during a heterosexual, God-condoned, constitutional marriage for the purposes of being raised in a heterosexual, God- condoned, constitutional marriage.

2. Since these pre-born children were conceived the parties have divorced.

3. Since the final judgment the defendant has engaged in a meretricious, deviant, homosexual lifestyle.

4. The defendant has contacted the clinic for possession of the pre-born children for the purpose of having them transferred to her lesbian lover.

“Zoe?”

Vanessa sounds like she is a thousand miles away. I hear her, but I cannot move.

“Zoe?” she says again, and she grabs the paper out of my hand. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. There is no language to describe a betrayal this big.

Vanessa starts flipping through the pages so quickly I expect them to burst into flame. “What is this garbage?”

Equilibrium is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. You can be punched without ever fielding a blow. “It’s from Max,” I say. “He’s trying to take away our baby.”

10 VANESSA

Just after Thanksgiving 2008, a woman on her deathbed confessed to killing two girls forty-two years earlier, who had bullied her for being a lesbian. Sharron Smith had gone into the ice cream shop in Staunton, Virginia, where they all were employed to say she couldn’t work the next day. According to the police transcript, one thing led to another, and she shot them.

I don’t know why she was packing a.25-caliber automatic handgun when she went into the ice cream store, but I understand her motivation. Especially while I am standing here, holding this ridiculous legal allegation from Zoe’s ex-husband.

One that calls me meretricious and deviant.

I am flooded with a feeling I thought I left behind in college, when I was called a freak by girls in the locker room, who would move away from my changing area because they were sure I was staring at them; when I was pinned into a dark corner at a dance and groped by some asshole on the football team, who had bet his friends he could turn me into a real girl. I was punished just because I was me, and what I wanted to say-what I never did say, until my throat was sore with the effort of silence-was Why do I matter to you? Why can’t you just worry about yourselves instead?

So although I don’t condone violence any more than I am truly meretricious and deviant, in that moment I sort of wish I had Sharron Smith’s balls.