Sing You Home

“Ms. Shaw.” He sighs. “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

“That’s touching. But since I’m an atheist, it’s also irrelevant. In fact, I’d hope that you might consider reading up on homosexuality with a text that’s a little more current than the one you’ve been using-the Bible. There’s been a lot more literature written on the subject since five hundred A.D.”

“Are you finished yet? Because I came in here for a reason…”

“Not yet. There are a lot of things I’m not, Mr. Preston. I’m not a pedophile. I’m not a softball coach or a biker chick, any more than gay men are always hairstylists or florists or interior decorators. I’m not immoral. But you know what I am? Intelligent. Tolerant. Capable of parenting. Different from you, but not lesser,” I say. “People like me, we don’t need to be fixed. We need people like you to broaden your horizons.”

When I finish, I am sweating. Wade Preston is blissfullly, utterly silent.

“What’s the matter, Wade?” I ask. “Not used to getting beat up by a girl?”

He shrugs. “Say what you want, Ms. Shaw. You can even pee standing up if you like. But your balls, mark my words, are never gonna be bigger than mine.”

I hear him unzip his fly.

I cross my arms.

A standoff.

“Are you going to leave, Ms. Shaw?”

I shrug. “You won’t be the first dick I’ve run across in my life, Mr. Preston.”

With a quick indrawn breath, Wade Preston zips his pants again and storms out of the bathroom. I smile so wide it hurts, and then I turn on the faucet.

When a bailiff I’ve never seen before comes into the men’s room, he sees a strange, tall woman washing off her makeup in the sink, patting her face dry with cheap paper towels. “What?” I accuse when he stares at me, and I saunter out the door. After all, who’s he to say what’s normal?

Before Zoe’s mom testifies, she wants to talk to her glass of water.

“Ms. Weeks,” the judge says, “this isn’t a performance space. Can we please just get along with the trial?”

Dara faces him, still holding the glass in one hand. The pitcher that sits beside the witness stand is half full. “Don’t you know, Your Honor, that water can feel positive and negative energy?”

“I wasn’t aware that water could feel anything except wet,” he mutters.

“Dr. Masaru Emoto has done scientific experiments,” she says, huffy. “If human thoughts are directed at water before it’s frozen, the crystals will be either beautiful or ugly depending on whether the thoughts were positive or negative. So if you expose water to positive stimuli-like beautiful music, or pictures of people in love, or words of gratitude-and then freeze it and look under a microscope, you get ice crystals that are symmetrical. On the other hand, if you play a Hitler speech to your water or show pictures of murder victims or say I hate you and then freeze it, the crystals are jagged and distorted.” She looks up at him. “Our bodies are made up of more than sixty percent water. If positive thoughts can impact an eight-ounce glass of water, imagine the effect they might have on all of us.”

The judge rubs his hand down his face. “Ms. Moretti, I assume since this is your witness you don’t mind if she praises her water?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Preston?”

He shakes his head, dumbfounded. “Frankly, I don’t even know what to say.”

Dara sniffs. “All in all, that’s probably a real blessing from the water’s point of view.”

“You may proceed, Ms. Weeks,” the judge says.

Dara raises the glass. “Strength,” she says, her voice rich and full. “Wisdom. Tolerance. Justice.”

It should seem precious, wacky, New Age. Instead, it’s riveting. Who among us, no matter what we believe personally, would stand against those principles?

She tilts the glass and drinks every last drop. Then Dara glances at Judge O’Neill. “There. Was that really so bad?”

Angela walks toward the witness stand. She refills Dara’s glass-not out of habit but because she knows it will keep everyone thinking what words are being said in front of that water that might alter it, much the way having a toddler in the room acts as a deterrent for lewd conversation. “Can you state your name and address for the record?”

“Dara Weeks. I live at 5901 Renfrew Heights, Wilmington.”

“How old are you?”

Blanching, she looks at Angela. “I really have to tell you that?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Sixty-five. But I feel fifty.”

“How far away do you live from your daughter and Vanessa Shaw?”

“Ten minutes,” Dara says.

“Do you have any grandchildren?”

“Not yet. But…” She knocks the wood of the witness stand.

“I take it you’re looking forward to the prospect, then?”

“Are you kidding me? I’m going to be the best grandmother who ever lived.”

Angela crosses in front of the stand. “Ms. Weeks, do you know Vanessa Shaw?”

“I do. She’s married to my daughter.”

“What do you think of their relationship?”

“I think,” Dara says, “she makes my daughter very happy, and that’s what has always mattered most to me.”

“Has your daughter always been happy in her relationships?”

“No. She was miserable after the stillbirth, and during her divorce. Like a zombie. I’d go over to her place, and she’d still be wearing the same clothes I left her in the day before. She didn’t eat. She didn’t clean. She didn’t work. She didn’t play guitar. She just slept. Even when she was awake, she seemed to be sleeping.”

“When did that start to change for her?”

“She began to work with a student at Vanessa’s school. Gradually, she and Vanessa went to lunch, to movies, to art festivals and flea markets. I was just so glad Zoe had someone to talk to.”

“At some point did you learn that Zoe and Vanessa were more than just friends?”

Dara nods. “One day they came over and Zoe said she had something important to tell me. She was in love with Vanessa.”

“What was your reaction?”

“I was confused. I mean, I knew Vanessa had become her best friend-but now Zoe was telling me she wanted to move in with her and that she was a lesbian.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Like I’d been hit with a pickax.” Dara hesitates. “I don’t have anything against gay people, but I never thought of my daughter as gay. I thought about the grandchildren I wouldn’t have, about what my friends would say behind my back. But I realized that I wasn’t upset because of who Zoe fell in love with. I was upset because, as a mother, I would never have picked this path for her. No parent wants her child to have to struggle her whole life against people with small minds.”

“How do you feel now about your daughter’s relationship?”

“All I can see, whenever I’m with her, is how happy Vanessa makes her. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. But without Romeo,” Dara adds. “And with a much happier ending.”

“Do you have any qualms about them raising children?”

“I couldn’t imagine a better home for a child.”

Angela turns. “Ms. Weeks, if it were up to you, would you rather see Zoe’s children parented by Max or Vanessa?”

“Objection,” Wade Preston says. “Speculative.”

“Now, now, Mr. Preston,” the judge replies. “Not in front of the water. I’m going to allow it.”

Dara looks over at Max, sitting at the plaintiff’s table. “That’s not my question to answer. But I can tell you