Suzanne is silent. Of course Carlota is the only nanny there. “It’s okay,” she says, and looks at the back of Elliot’s head.
It’s a lot to ask of both of them, this daily trek to the center. If Elliot doesn’t begin to show improvement in a few weeks, she decides, she will tell Carlota to stop taking him. In the meantime, there are other options. She has trawled Internet forums devoted to every treatment imaginable. There is play therapy, music therapy, massage therapy. There are vitamin supplements and elimination diets and antifungal treatments. There is a detoxification procedure to remove metals from the system. There is acupuncture.
They begin with elimination diets. Suzanne instructs Carlota to remove all sugars from Elliot’s food for two weeks. This proves more difficult than expected—nearly every food label lists some form of sugar: evaporated cane juice, high fructose corn syrup—so that for two weeks Elliot eats nothing but lentils and cooked vegetables. Next, they take away food dyes, then gluten. There is, Suzanne thinks, a brief spell during the gluten-free period when Elliot seems more attentive. His eyes meet hers briefly when she soaps him in the tub, and for a breathless moment she believes she can read a message there: that he is on his way to her. But this happens only once.
Suzanne takes another vacation day and brings him to an acupuncturist. A foolish idea, she realizes, when she sees the long needles. He will shriek; she will cry. She pays for the annulled appointment and takes Elliot home.
There is still chelation therapy. For this, a willing doctor inserts a formula designed to bind with metal in the bloodstream and flush out any mercury left by vaccines. Suzanne has never been one of the hysterics who demonize immunizations—but who knows? Some mothers insist their children have been cured by chelation. Others warn that it’s quackery. Doctors have been sued. A little boy has died.
Suzanne lies awake while Brian sleeps untroubled beside her. No light comes through the window blinds of their bedroom; there are no streetlamps or passing headlights. The darkness of night here is complete. The city had offered unlikely comfort in its sheer, crazy numbers. Here, Suzanne feels stripped of such layered company. She finds the neighboring houses at their respectful distances to be curiously confining. Those houses are darkened now, dense with their respective sleepers and insomniacs, humming with individual dreams.
The pink balloons on the mailbox next door had eventually shrunk to limp mitts, drooping against the post, until someone finally removed them. Suzanne remembers the way the husband had looked at her. It hadn’t been flirtatious, but clinical, diagnostic. Holistic healing, his wife had said. Perhaps he’d been appraising her as a potential client. Perhaps he is one of those men who believe every woman is sick at the core, corroded by toxic memories, in need of a deep-tissue massage or scalding with hot rocks.
She shaps a vague resolution as she drifts off to sleep, and a few days later goes to the phone like a somnambulist. Madeleine answers, her voice heartier than Suzanne remembers.
“Madeleine, it’s Suzanne Crawford from next door.” She pauses. “It’s been a while. Just checking in to say hello.”
There is a moment of silence in which Suzanne fears that Madeleine has forgotten her, followed by a rambling of thanks, apology, grateful effusiveness. Suzanne listens. Then a breath, a pause.
“Oh,” Suzanne says breezily, “I think I remember you mentioning that your husband has a healing practice of some sort? Do you think you could tell me a little more about that?”
She puts a hand to the kitchen wall as she says this and focuses on a glass-paneled cabinet, rows of glass tumblers inside, layers of transparency. There is no reply on the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
Madeleine’s voice returns. “Let me put David on the phone.”
Suzanne briefly considers hanging up, pretending the connection has been cut. She grips the receiver to her ear as the husband’s voice comes on, dark and mellifluous, a radio voice.
They make an appointment for Saturday, when Brian will be on the boat. Suzanne will not mention it to him. The chance is too great that he will interpret it as evidence of her desperation, her rejection of responsibility. Any defense she might make would only cement her guilt.
On Saturday, Suzanne chooses an easy chambray shirtdress and ballerina flats, just a touch of nude lip gloss. She gives Elliot a bath, hastily shampooing his hair before he thinks of screaming, and dresses him in short overalls. He is reasonably compliant this morning, for which she is grateful.