Chapter 6
“A typical female can lay between 500 and 600 eggs,” I read on the website, repulsed. “Brown and yellow, with a skull shape on its thorax, it’s known as the death’s-head hawkmoth.” I take a closer look at the illustration, wondering if these could be the annoying things that came out of Agatha Lawrence’s boxes, eating their way through the linens. “In many cultures, they are thought to be a bad omen, and—”
Someone’s outside. I peer out the window. It’s Sam, sitting on the bottom step of the porch, reading. By the time I open the front door to join him, he’s on his feet, the book tucked under his arm.
“Shoot,” I say. “Was about to join you for a cup of coffee. Am I too late?”
“Yeah, I have to get downstairs. Was trying to get in some reading.”
“What’s the book?” I ask.
He holds it up. “Misery, by Stephen King. It’s totally deranged.” He lowers his voice. “Speaking of deranged, back to work.”
I shoot him a playful look and watch him retreat down the path. Back inside, I click the dead bolt into place and head to the study. He’s right: back to work.
*
I know his routine by heart: He makes a cup of coffee in the waiting room.
Walks to his desk and flips on the radio, depressing himself with politics on Morning Edition while waiting for his first patient to arrive.
The bell rings, and he goes to the closet, where he keeps his blue Brooks Brothers sports jacket.
Jacket goes on, radio goes off, door opens.
“Good morning,” Sam says.
“Hi, Sam.” It’s Numb Nancy, right on time for her ten a.m. She’s the head of development at Meadow Hills, a private boarding school twenty-three miles north, recently lost her lust for life.
“Come in, have a seat where you’d like,” Sam says. He says this a lot. Allowing patients to choose where to sit is all part of the work (I’ve been reading up on therapy techniques in my spare time, and people in the biz would see this as diagnostic). Nancy takes a seat on the far side of the sofa, the farthest point from Sam’s chair (and directly under the vent). It’s the spot chosen by a majority of patients. Only the Pharmacist’s Wife chooses the opposite end.
Nancy unzips a bag. “Give me a minute to set up,” she says.
She has a health condition. Tarsal tunnel syndrome. It causes numbness in both heels and treatment includes rolling the soles of the feet along two hard, spiky balls at least three times a day. What better time to do this than the next forty-five minutes, which, if last week was any indication, Nancy will spend grousing to Sam about Angela, her seventeen-year-old daughter.
“Angela asked me this morning if she can invite that boy on vacation with us,” she begins. Bingo. “That boy” is what she calls her daughter’s boyfriend, despite the fact that he’s twenty-two.
Nancy knows about the relationship only because a few weeks ago, she set her alarm for four in the morning and snuck into Angela’s room to snoop through her phone. She discovered their texts, as well as her daughter’s secret Instagram account, which, to be honest, is pretty damning. I’ve looked. The account is private, and I had to create a fake account, pretending to be the brooding but attractive seventeen-year-old girl whose photo I copied from the Facebook account of someone in Brisbane, Australia. It worked: Angela accepted my request the next morning, allowing me access to all two hundred and six photos, which prove that she and “that boy” seem to like each other very much.
To be clear, I know it’s wrong what I’m doing (i.e., binging on Sam’s therapy sessions, five days a week for the last month), but who wouldn’t? The things I’ve heard. The Lipstick Painter’s impotent boyfriend! The Pharmacist’s Wife’s waning interest in the Pharmacist! The Somber Superintendent of Schools, who I often see at the grocery store, and her existential anxiety. How am I supposed to stop?