But that was three months ago, and his mother still hasn’t signed the documents. “We’re working on it, Sam,” Mrs. French keeps assuring him. (She’s also been telling him to call her Sally, but she was their next-door neighbor growing up and he finds it impossible to reimagine her as a peer.) Margaret has deteriorated more quickly than anyone expected and, as legally required, has to endure a series of tests to prove she’s signing the papers in sound mind. She keeps failing.
He’s trying not to worry. It will all be fine. She’ll pass the tests, and he’ll get power of attorney. The money will transfer into his account, and he’ll wipe away the pile of debt he’s accrued, dozens of bills he’s been hiding here in his desk drawer, keeping them from Annie. (No need to worry her. It’s all going to be fine!)
The doorbell rings, and he slips the bills back into the drawer. With a deep breath, he presses the button to unlock the door.
“Hello,” Sam says, greeting the patient standing by the couch. “Come on in, sit wherever you’d like.”
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?
And it’s not only them I’m interested in, it’s him, too, Dr. Statler. Hearing the way he speaks to his patients—the comfort with their vulnerability, the sympathy—I can’t turn away. And just because something isn’t right doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It’s not like I’m putting children in cages. In fact, I think what I’m doing is good for Sam’s patients, another dose of positive energy, as I am genuinely rooting for every one of them.
Well, everyone except Christopher Zucker, VP of Idiots at a new widget company where he earns enough to spend a half hour blabbing to Sam about his blind adoration of David Foster Wallace. Skinny Jeans, that’s my pet name for him, after I saw him sauntering out of Sam’s office in those ludicrous three-hundred-dollar Diesels. He’s Sam’s only male client, and just the kind of guy I’ve always hated. Pretty boy with a model girlfriend. His is named Sofie with an f. She’s Czech and, according to Skinny Jeans, crazy in bed. Eastern European girls are known to be this way, he explained, assigning it to “all that Communist oppression,” and it took every ounce of restraint not to shout at him through the vent, reminding him that the Czech Republic returned to a liberal democracy in 1989.
Sam and Numb Nancy talk for a while—her husband says she’s being too strict with Angela, but he’s not in touch with what today’s world is like—when the room goes suddenly quiet.
“Something happened the other night,” Nancy says. “I was making dinner, and out of nowhere, this memory pops into my head. My mom, going out at night and leaving me and Jill alone.”
“How old were you?” Sam asks.
“Six, probably. Which would mean Jill was three. I can see it so clearly. Getting out of bed, finding the house empty, her bed made. I was terrified.”
“Where do you think she was?”
“I have no idea.”
Sam waits a moment. “How often would this happen?”
“Definitely more than once.” Her voice is strained. “I called Jill the other day, asked her if she had any recollection of this. She didn’t.”
“Have you asked your mom?”
“No. I’m afraid I’m making it up.”