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 the 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 saidVanessa 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 forAmazing 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.”
