Sing You Home

a Gomez Addams mustache on my upper lip for a school play.

I mention all this to duly underscore the fact that at 7:00 A.M. I am poking my eye out with Zoe’s eyeliner applicator. I am grimacing in the mirror so that I can roll Hot Tamale lipstick over my mouth. If Wade Preston and Judge O’Neill want to see the traditional woman who stays at home and does her nails and cooks roasts for dinner, I’ll become one for the next eight hours.

(Unless I have to wear a skirt. That is just not happening.)

I lean back with spots dancing before my eyes (it is really hard to not go cross-eyed while you’re putting on liquid liner) and scrutinize my handiwork in the mirror. Just then, Zoe stumbles into the bathroom, still half asleep. She sits down on the closed toilet seat and blinks up at me.

Then she gasps, horrified. “Why do you look like a scary clown?”

“Really?” I say, rubbing my hands over my cheeks. “Too much blush?” I frown into the mirror again. “I was going for that nineteen fifties pinup look. Like Katy Perry.”

“Well, you got Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror,” Zoe says. She stands and pushes me down on the seat instead. Then she takes makeup remover, squirts it on a cotton ball, and wipes my face clean. “You want to tell me why you’ve suddenly decided to use makeup?”

“Just trying to look more… feminine,” I answer.

“You mean less like a dyke,” Zoe corrects. She puts her hands on her hips. “You know you look fine without a drop of anything on your face, Ness.”

“See, this is why I’m married to you instead of Wade Preston.”

She leans forward, sweeping blush along my cheekbone. “And here I thought it was because I had-”

“An eyelash curler,” I interrupt, grinning. “I married you for your Shu Uemura.”

“Stop,” Zoe says. “You’re making me feel so cheap.” She tilts up my chin. “Close your eyes.”

She brushes and dabs at me. I even let her use the eyelash curler, although I nearly wind up blind in the process. She finishes by telling me to let my mouth hang open, and she swipes it over with lipstick.

“Ta da,” Zoe says.

I am expecting a drag queen. Instead, I see something entirely different. “Oh, my God. I’ve turned into my mother.”

Zoe peers over my shoulder, so that we are both looking at our reflections. “From what I hear,” she says, “it happens to the best of us.”

Angela pays a janitor twenty bucks to let us into the courthouse through the delivery door in the back. We walk in spy-novel silence past the boiler room and a supply closet stocked with paper towels and toilet tissue before he leads us into a rickety, grimy service elevator that will take us up to the main floor. He turns the key and pushes a button and then looks at me. “I got a cousin who’s gay,” he says, this man who hasn’t spoken more than four words to us the whole time he’s been with us.

Because I don’t know what he thinks of that cousin, I don’t say anything.

“How did you know who we are?” Zoe asks.

He shrugs. “I’m the custodian. I know everything.”

The elevator belches us out into a corridor near the clerk’s office. Angela winds her way through the maze of hallways until we are at the door of our courtroom. There is literally a wall of human media facing away from us, toward the door, waiting for our entrance up the front steps of the courthouse.

While we’re actually standing right behind the morons.

I think I have more respect for Angela at that moment than I ever had before.

“Go get a granola bar or something in the snack room,” she advises. “That way you’ll be outta sight, outta mind while Preston’s coming into court, and the reporters won’t come after you.” Because I’m still sequestered-at least for the first few minutes of today’s court session-this makes sense. I watch her safely tuck Zoe inside the courtroom and then slip down the hallway unnoticed while the rest of the counsel arrives.

I eat a pack of Nutter Butters, but they make me queasy. The truth is, I’m not good when it comes to public speaking. It’s why I’m a school counselor and not up in front of a classroom. The fact that Zoe can sit on a stool and sing her heart to shreds in front of an audience leaves me in awe.

Then again, watching Zoe load the dishwasher pretty much takes my breath away, too.

“You can do this,” I say under my breath, and by the time I come back to the double doors of the courtroom, a bailiff is waiting to bring me inside.

I do the whole rigmarole-the swearing on the Bible, the name and age and address. Angela walks toward me, looking much more poised and intense than she does when she’s not in front of a judge. To my surprise, she drops her pad of notes about a foot in front of me. “You know how Wade Preston sleeps?” she whispers quickly. “He lies on one side and then he lies on the other.” When she sees me smother a laugh, she winks, and I realize she didn’t fumble that pad at all.

“Where do you live, Ms. Shaw?”

“In Wilmington.”

“Are you presently employed?” Angela asks.

“I work as a school counselor at Wilmington High School.”

“What does that entail?”

“Counseling students in grades nine through twelve. I make sure they’re academically on track, I see if there are problems at home, keep an eye out for depression or substance abuse, and I help guide kids through the college application process.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes,” I say, smiling. “To Zoe Baxter.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Not yet, but I hope that will be the outcome of this litigation. Our intent is to have me gestate to term the embryos that are biologically Zoe’s.”

“Have you had any experience with small children?”

“To a limited degree,” I say. “I’ve taken care of our neighbor’s kids for a weekend here and there. But from what I hear from friends, parenthood is trial by fire no matter how many books you’ve read by Dr. Brazelton.”

“How would you and Zoe be able to support this child financially?”

“We both work, and we’d both continue to work. Luckily our schedules allow for flexibility. We plan to raise the children equally, and Zoe’s mother lives ten minutes away and is delighted at the thought of helping us out.”

“What, if any, is your relationship to Max Baxter?”

I think of the argument Zoe and I had last night. My relationship to this man is that, forever, we will be linked together through her. That there will be parts of her heart she’s already given to someone else.

“He’s my spouse’s ex-husband,” I say evenly. “He’s biologically related to the embryos. I don’t really know him; I only know what Zoe’s told me about him.”

“Are you willing to allow him to have contact with any child that might result?”

“If he wants to.”

Angela faces me directly. “Vanessa,” she says, “is there anything that prevents you from being considered a fit and proper person to have custody of a child?”

“Absolutely not,” I reply.

“Your witness,” Angela says, turning toward Wade Preston.

Today he is wearing an outfit that shouldn’t work-and believe me, if I’m making a fashion commentary, it must be truly hideous. His shirt is checkered, purple and white. His tie is striped, lilac and black. His black suit jacket is flecked with bits of gray and silver and purple. And yet what should look like a nasty eighties anachronism somehow looks, with his spray-on tan and his bling, like a GQ spread. “Ms. Shaw,” he begins. I actually look down to see if he’s left a trail of oil as he comes closer. “Does your employer know you’re a lesbian?”

I square my shoulders. If he wants to play hard, I’m ready.

After all-I’m wearing my lipstick.

“It’s nothing I’ve volunteered. Teachers don’t normally sit around the break room talking about their sex lives. But it’s nothing I hide, either.”

“Don’t you think parents have a right to know what sort of guidance their children are getting?” He absolutely sneers the word guidance.