“He has a cat flap in the kitchen door.” I point to it. “But mostly he stays inside.”
“Good boy,” Ethan murmurs as Punch burrows into his armpit.
“How are you liking your new house?” I ask.
He pauses, kneading the cat’s skull with his knuckles. “I miss the old one,” he says after a moment.
“I bet. Where did you live before?” I already know the answer, of course.
“Boston.”
“What brought you to New York?” I know this one, too.
“My dad got a new job.” A transfer, technically, but I’m hardly going to argue. “My room’s bigger here,” he says, as though the thought has just occurred to him.
“The people who lived there before you did a big renovation.”
“My mom says it was a gut job.”
“Exactly. A gut job. And they combined some of the rooms upstairs.”
“Have you been to my house?” he asks.
“I’ve been a few times. I didn’t know them very well—the Lords. But they had a holiday party every year, so that’s when I’d come over.” It was nearly a year ago, in fact, that I last visited. Ed was there with me. He left two weeks later.
I’ve started to relax. For a moment I think it’s Ethan’s company—he’s soft-spoken and easy; even the cat approves—but then I realize that I’m reverting to analyst mode, to the seesaw give-and-take of Q&A. Curiosity and compassion: the tools of my trade.
And in an instant, for a moment, I’m back there, in my office on East Eighty-Eighth, the small hushed room sunk in dim light, two deep chairs opposite each other, a pond of blue rug between them. The radiator hisses.
The door drifts open, and there in the waiting area is the sofa, the wooden table; the slithering stacks of Highlights and Ranger Rick; the bin brimming with chunks of Lego; the white-noise machine purring in the corner.
And Wesley’s door. Wesley, my business partner, my grad-school mentor, the man who recruited me into private practice. Wesley Brill—Wesley Brilliant, we called him, he of the sloppy hair and mismatched socks, the lightning brain and thunder voice. I see him in his office, slouched in his Eames lounger, long legs arrowed toward the center of the room, a book propped in his lap. The window is open, gasping in the winter air. He’s been smoking. He looks up.
“Hello, Fox,” he says.
“My room is bigger than my old room,” Ethan repeats.
I settle back, fold one leg over the other. It feels almost absurdly posed. I wonder when I last crossed my legs. “Where are you going to school?”
“Home school,” he says. “My mom teaches me.” Before I can respond, he nods at a picture on a side table. “Is that your family?”
“Yes. That’s my husband and my daughter. He’s Ed and she’s Olivia.”
“Are they home?”
“No, they don’t live here. We’re separated.”
“Oh.” He strokes Punch’s back. “How old is she?”
“She’s eight. How old are you?”
“Sixteen. Seventeen in February.”
It’s the sort of thing Olivia would say. He’s older than he looks.
“My daughter was born in February. Valentine’s Day.”
“I’m the twenty-eighth.”
“So close to leap year,” I say.
He nods. “What do you do?”
“I’m a psychologist. I work with children.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Why would children need a psychologist?”
“All sorts of reasons. Some of them have trouble in school, some of them have difficulty at home. Some of them have a tough time moving to a new place.”
He says nothing.
“So I suppose that if you’re homeschooled, you have to meet friends outside of class.”
He sighs. “My dad found a swim league for me to join.”
“How long have you swum?”
“Since I was five.”
“You must be good.”
“I’m okay. My dad says I’m capable.”
I nod.
“I’m pretty good,” he admits modestly. “I teach it.”
“You teach swimming?”
“To people with disabilities. Not, like, physical disabilities,” he adds.
“Developmental disabilities.”
“Yeah. I did that a lot in Boston. I want to do it here, too.”
“How did you start doing that?”
“My friend’s sister has Down syndrome, and she saw the Olympics a couple years ago and wanted to learn to swim. So I taught her and then some other kids from her school. And then I got into that whole . . .”—he fumbles for the word—“scene, I guess.”
“That’s great.”
“I’m not into parties or anything like that.”
“Not your scene.”
“No.” Then he smiles. “Not at all.”
He twists his head, looks at the kitchen. “I can see your house from my room,” he says. “It’s up there.”
I turn. If he can see the house, that means he’s got an easterly view, facing my bedroom. The thought is briefly bothersome—he’s a teenage boy, after all. For the second time I wonder if he might be gay.
And then I see that his eyes have gone glassy.
“Oh . . .” I look to my right, where the tissues should be, where they used to be in my office. Instead there’s a picture frame, Olivia beaming at me, gap-toothed.
“Sorry,” Ethan says.
“No, don’t be sorry,” I tell him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He scrubs his eyes.
I wait a moment. He’s a child, I remind myself—tall and broken-voiced, but a child.
“I miss my friends,” he says.
“I bet. Of course.”
“I don’t know anyone here.” A tear tumbles down one cheek. He swipes at it with the heel of his hand.
“Moving is tough. It took me a little while to meet people when I moved here.”
He sniffles loudly. “When did you move?”
“Eight years ago. Or actually nine, now. From Connecticut.”
He sniffles again, brushes his nose with a finger. “That’s not as far away as Boston.”
“No. But moving from anywhere is tough.” I’d like to hug him. I won’t. local recluse fondles neighbor child.
We sit for a moment in silence.
“Can I have some more water?” he asks.
“I’ll get it for you.”
“No, it’s fine.” He begins to stand; Punch pours himself down his leg, pooling beneath the coffee table.
Ethan walks to the kitchen sink. As the faucet runs, I get up and approach the television, haul open the drawer beneath the set.
“Do you like movies?” I call. No answer; I turn to see him standing at the kitchen door, gazing at the park. Beside him, the bottles in the recycling bin glow fluorescent.
After a moment, he faces me. “What?”
“Do you like movies?” I repeat. He nods. “Come take a look. I’ve got a big DVD library. Very big. Too big, my husband says.”
“I thought you were separated,” Ethan mumbles, crossing toward me.
“Well, he’s still my husband.” I inspect the ring on my left hand, twist it. “But you’re right.” I gesture at the open drawer. “If you’d like to borrow anything, you’re welcome to it. Do you have a DVD player?”
“My dad’s got an attachment for his laptop.”
“That’ll work.”
“He might let me borrow it.”
“Let’s hope so.” I’m starting to get a sense of Alistair Russell.
“What sort of movies?” he asks.
“Mostly old ones.”
“Like, black-and-white?”
“Mostly black-and-white.”
“I’ve never seen a black-and-white movie.”
I make full moons of my eyes. “You’re in for a treat. All the best movies are black-and-white.”
He looks doubtful but peers into the drawer. Nearly two hundred slipcases, Criterion and Kino, Universal’s Hitchcock boxed set, assorted film noir collections, Star Wars (I’m only human). I inspect the spines: Night and the City. Whirlpool. Murder, My Sweet. “Here,” I announce, prying loose a case and handing it to Ethan.
“Night Must Fall,” he reads.
“It’s a good one to start with. Suspenseful but not scary.”
“Thanks.” He clears his throat, coughs. “Sorry,” he says, sipping his water. “I’m allergic to cats.”
I stare at him. “Why didn’t you say so?” I glare at the cat.
“He’s so friendly. I didn’t want to offend him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I tell him. “In a nice way.”