He smiles. “I’d better go,” he says. He returns to the coffee table, sets his glass on it, bends to address Punch through the glass. “Not because of you, buddy. Good boy.” He straightens up, shakes his hands over his thighs.
“Do you want a lint roller? For the dander?” I’m not even sure I’ve still got one.
“I’m okay.” He looks around. “Can I use your bathroom?”
I point to the red room. “All yours.”
While he’s in there, I check the sideboard mirror. A shower tonight, for sure. Tomorrow at latest.
I return to the sofa and open my laptop. Thanks for your help, DiscoMickey has written. You’re my hero.
I rattle off a quick reply as the toilet flushes. Ethan emerges from the bathroom a moment later, rubbing his palms on his jeans. “All set,” he informs me. He treads to the door, hands stuffed in pockets, a schoolboy shuffle.
I follow him. “Thanks so much for coming by.”
“See you around,” he says, pulling the door open.
No, you won’t, I think. “I’m sure you will,” I say.
9
After Ethan leaves, I watch Laura again. It shouldn’t work: Clifton Webb gorging on the scenery, Vincent Price test-driving a southern accent, the oil-and-vinegar leads. But work it does, and oh, that music. “They sent me the script, not the score,” Hedy Lamarr once griped.
I leave the candle lit, the tiny blob of flame pulsing.
And then, humming the Laura theme, I swipe my phone on and take to the Internet in search of my patients. My former patients. Ten months ago I lost them all: I lost Mary, nine years old, struggling with her parents’ divorce; I lost Justin, eight, whose twin brother had died of melanoma; I lost Anne Marie, at age twelve still afraid of the dark. I lost Rasheed (eleven, transgender) and Emily (nine, bullying); I lost a preternaturally depressed little ten-year-old named, of all things, Joy. I lost their tears and their troubles and their rage and their relief. I lost nineteen children all told. Twenty, if you count my daughter.
I know where Olivia is now, of course. The others I’ve been tracking. Not too often—a psychologist isn’t supposed to investigate her patients, past patients included—but every month or so, swollen with longing, I’ll take to the web. I’ve got a few Internet research tools at my disposal: a phantom Facebook account; a stale LinkedIn profile. With young people, though, only Google will do, really.
After reading of Ava’s spelling-bee championship and Theo’s election to the middle school student council, after scanning the Instagram albums of Grace’s mother and scrolling through Ben’s Twitter feed (he really ought to activate some privacy settings), after wiping the tears from my cheeks and sinking three glasses of red, I find myself back in my bedroom, browsing photos on my phone. And then, once more, I talk to Ed.
“Guess who,” I say, the way I always do.
“You’re pretty tipsy, slugger,” he points out.
“It’s been a long day.” I glance at my empty glass, feel a prickle of guilt. “What’s Livvy up to?”
“Getting ready for tomorrow.”
“Oh. What’s her costume?”
“A ghost,” Ed says.
“You got lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
I laugh. “Last year she was a fire truck.”
“Man, that took days.”
“It took me days.”
I can hear him grin.
Across the park, three stories up, through the window and in the depths of a dark room, there’s the glow of a computer screen. Light dawns, an instant sunrise; I see a desk, a table lamp, and then Ethan, shucking his sweater. Affirmative: Our bedrooms do indeed face each other.
He turns around, eyes cast down, and peels off his shirt. I look away.
Sunday, October 31
10
Weak morning light strains through my bedroom window. I roll over; my hip cracks against my laptop. A late night playing bad chess. My knights stumbled, my rooks crashed.
I drag myself to and from the shower, mop my hair with a towel, skid deodorant under my arms. Fit for fight, as Sally says. Happy Halloween.
I won’t be answering any doors this evening, of course. David will head out at seven—downtown, I think he said. I bet that’s fun.
He suggested earlier that we leave a bowl of candy on the stoop. “Any kid would take it within a minute, bowl and all,” I told him.
He seemed miffed. “I wasn’t a child psychologist,” he said.
“You don’t need to have been a child psychologist. You just need to have been a child.”
So I’m going to switch off the lights and pretend no one’s home.
I visit my film site. Andrew is online; he posted a link to a Pauline Kael essay on Vertigo—“stupid” and “shallow”—and beneath that, he’s making a list: Best noir to hold hands through? (The Third Man. The last shot alone.)
I read the Kael piece, ping him a message. After five minutes, he logs out.
I can’t remember the last time someone held my hand.
11
Whap.
The front door again. This time I’m coiled on the sofa, watching Rififi—the extended heist sequence, half an hour without a syllable of dialogue or a note of music, just diegetic sound and the hum of blood in your ears. Yves had suggested I spend more time with French cinema. Presumably a semi-silent film was not what he had in mind. Quel dommage.
Then that dull whap at the door, a second time.
I peel the blanket from my legs, swing myself to my feet, find the remote, pause the movie.
Twilight sifting down outside. I walk to the door and open it.
Whap.
I step into the hall—the one area of the house I dislike and distrust, the cool gray zone between my realm and the outside world. Right now it’s dim in the dusk, the dark walls like hands about to clap me between them.
Streaks of leaded glass line the front door. I approach one, gaze through it.
A crack, and the window shudders. A tiny missile has struck: an egg, blasted, its guts spangled across the glass. I hear myself gasp. Through the smear of yolk I can see three kids in the street, their faces bright, their grins bold, one of them poised with an egg in his fist.
I sway where I stand, place a hand against the wall.
This is my home. That’s my window.
My throat shrinks. Tears well in my eyes. I feel surprised, then ashamed.
Whap.
Then angry.
I can’t fling wide the door and send them scurrying. I can’t barrel outside and confront them. I rap on the window, sharply— Whap.
I slap the heel of my hand against the door.
I bash it with my fist.
I growl, then I roar, my voice bounding between the walls, the dark little hall a chamber of echoes.
I’m helpless.
No, you’re not, I can hear Dr. Fielding say.
In, two, three, four.
No, I’m not.
I’m not. I toiled nearly a decade as a graduate student. I spent fifteen months training in inner-city schools. I practiced for seven years. I’m tough, I promised Sally.
Scraping my hair back, I retreat to the living room, yank a breath from the air, stab the intercom with one finger.
“Get away from my house,” I hiss. Surely they’ll hear the squawk outside.
Whap.
My finger is wobbling on the intercom button. “Get away from my house!”
Whap.
I stumble across the room, trip up the stairs, race into my study, to the window. There they are, clustered in the street like marauders, laying siege to my home, their shadows endless in the dying light. I bat at the glass.
One of them points at me, laughs. Winds his arm like a pitcher. Looses another egg.
I knock harder on the glass, hard enough to dislodge a pane. That’s my door. This is my home.
My vision blurs.
And suddenly I’m rushing down the stairs; suddenly I’m back in the dark of the hall, my bare feet on the tiles, my hand on the knob. Anger grips me by the throat; my sight is swimming. I seize a breath, seize another.
In-two-three—
I jolt the door open. Light and air blast me.
For an instant it’s silent, as silent as the film, as slow as the sunset. The houses opposite. The three kids between. The street around them. Quiet and still, a stopped clock.
I could swear I hear a crack, as of a felled tree.
And then—