By now, the entire cafeteria is watching. A group of kids groove to a makeshift rap.
Lucy doesn’t notice. She’s pouring herself into the rhythm as it shimmies through her arms and her spine. I start singing “Love Is a Battlefield,” the words raw, like flags ripping in a wind. Lucy can’t take her eyes off me. I sing through one chorus, and then on the second, she joins in.
No promises. No demands.
She’s grinning like mad, and I think that surely this breakthrough will be written up in the annals of music therapy—and then the principal walks into the cafeteria, flanked by the lunch lady on one side and Vanessa on the other.
My spouse doesn’t look particularly happy, I might add.
I stop singing, stop banging the pots and pans.
“Zoe,” Vanessa says, “what on earth are youdoing?”
“My job.” I take Lucy’s hand and pull her in front of the serving station. She is absolutely mortified to be caught in the act. I hand the principal the spatula I’ve been drumming with and push past him without saying a word, until Lucy and I are facing the entire room of students. Quickly I raise our joined hands in a rock-band victory moment. “Thank you, Wilmington High!” I yell. “Peace out!”
Without another word—and with the stares of the principal and Vanessa boring into my back—Lucy and I ride out of the cafeteria to a round of applause and high fives. “Zoe,” she says.
I drag her through unfamiliar halls of the school, intent on getting as far away from the administration as possible.
“Zoe—”
“I’m going to get fired,” I mutter.
“Zoe,” Lucy says. “Stop.”
With a sigh, I turn to apologize. “I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that.”
But then I see that the flush in her cheeks wasn’t shame but excitement. Her eyes are sparkling, her smile infectious. “Zoe,” she breathes. “Can we do that again?”
In spite of Wanda’s warning, I am still a little taken aback to open the door of Mr. Docker’s room at Shady Acres and find him shrunken and faded in his bed. Even when he was in one of his quiet, catatonic states before, he was able to be moved to a rocking chair or to the common room, but, according to Wanda, he hasn’t left his bed in the two weeks since I’ve seen him. He hasn’t spoken, either.
“Morning, Mr. Docker,” I say, taking my guitar out of its case. “Remember me? Zoe? I’m here to play some music with you.”
I have seen this before with some of my patients—especially those in hospice care. There’s a cliff at the end point of a person’s life; most of us peer over the edge of it, hanging on. That’s why, when someone chooses to let go, it’s so dramatically visible. The body will seem almost transparent. The eyes will be looking at something the rest of us can’t see.
I start finger picking and humming, an impromptu lullaby. Today isn’t the day to get Mr. Docker to engage. Today, music therapy is all about being the Pied Piper, taking him peacefully to the point where he can close his eyes and leave us all behind.
As I play wordlessly for Mr. Docker, I find myself tearing up. The old man was a cranky, bitter bastard, but it’s the thorn in your side that leaves the biggest hole. I put down my guitar and reach for his hand. It feels like a bundle of sticks. His eyes, a rheumy blue, remain focused on the blank, black screen of the dormant television.
“I got married,” I tell him, although I am sure he’s not listening.
Mr. Docker doesn’t budge.
“It’s strange, isn’t it, how we wind up in places we never would have imagined. I bet you never thought, when you were in your big corner office, that one day you’d be stuck here, in a room that overlooks a parking lot. You never imagined, when you were ordering everyone around, that one day there might not be someone to hear you. Well, I know what that’s like, Mr. Docker.” I look down at him, but he continues to stare straight ahead at nothing. “You fell in love once. I know you did, because you’ve got a daughter. So you know what I mean when I say that I don’t think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You’re just pulled to that person like true north, whether it’s good for you or bound to break your heart.”
When I was married to Max, I mistook being a lifeline for being in love. I was the one who could save him; I was the one who could keep him sober. But there is a difference between mending someone who’s broken and finding someone who makes you complete.
I don’t say it out loud, but this is how I know that Vanessa will not hurt me: she cares more about my well-being than she does about her own. She’d break herownheart before causing even the smallest hairline fracture in mine.
This time when I glance down, Mr. Docker is looking right at me. “We’re going to have a baby,” I tell him.
The smile starts deep inside of me, like a pilot light, and fans the flames of possibility.
Saying it out loud, it’s suddenly real.
Vanessa and I are standing at the reception window of the fertility clinic. “Baxter,” I say. “We’ve got a meeting to discuss a frozen embryo transfer?”
The nurse finds my name on her computer. “There you are. Did you bring your husband today, too?”
