My eyes widen. “You did—okay. You did what, exactly?”
SHAI
He shrugs. “Allison gave me your documents and I ran a DMV and criminal check.” He doesn’t even look guilty. “You passed.”
“Of course I did. You know I have the fingerprint card. I’ve been background checked extensively and it’s updated regularly.” It’s hard to keep the irritation from my voice. “There was no need to redo the check.”
“I like to do my own checking.” He meets my eyes, not backing down.
I breathe out. “Gabriel, I appreciate your concern for Michael’s safety, and I assure you that I share the concern as well. However, next time, please let me know before you’d like to request any information like that. Otherwise I won’t be able to work with you and Michael at all. For this to work, we need to develop trust. Okay?” I phrase it as a question, but it’s more of a flat statement.
Googling is one thing. I mean, I googled him, too! Doing your own in-depth checks is another entirely. It’s not the way I like to interact with clients. And something flutters in my chest, a sick dark bat, then relief. Obviously he didn’t do a personal background check in addition to DMV and criminal, or surely he’d at least ask about—I swallow hard and maintain my gaze.
He doesn’t look away, but something in his face shows more respect. “Understood.” His voice is low. “I apologize for overstepping, but he’s everything to me. If someone else, someone new is going to take him places… he won’t go anywhere with me right now.”
And just like that, my irritation turns to compassion and understanding. “It’s all right.” I want to hug him, to tell him everything will be okay. When kids are hurting this badly, the parents are usually also in pain. When a child feels alone, the parent is isolated, too, locked into a sad cavern of depression. And Gabriel doesn’t even have anyone to help him through it. A wife. Arielle flits through my mind and departs just as quickly as she entered. Brilliant and bright, sunny and shiny, she seems like a firework that burns out fast and leaves ash behind. She doesn’t have what it takes to help with a long, painful haul like this one.
We’re silent for a minute, and I look down at my documents. I see that he’s highlighted the place where he commented, “Three months maximum.”
I say, “I have to tell you that children do better with long-term therapy, but even in three months we should start to see some improvements in his mood and behaviors, and you can decide if you want to continue longer term.”
“I probably won’t.” His tone is flat. “I just need someone to help him through this rough patch right now. I don’t want him reliant on shrinks.”
I bite my lip. “I understand the desire to have him be self-sufficient. Believe me, that’s my goal. I just need to let you know that it may take longer than a few months. Sometimes, children who have suffered trauma may need a year to learn how to deal with their feelings. Or longer.”
His gaze is sharp. “I want him ready to re-assimilate into his mainstream classroom by January at the new session. It’s important for him to be back in school with kids his age. He spends way too much time in this house with no playmates, doing nothing but computer… stuff. It’s not normal. It’s not healthy. His surgeon said it’s safe for him to get back out there, but he refuses.” He’s hot and cold; I know it’s normal when a parent is anxious about a child, but I prefer it when we’re on the same side.
I keep my tone even. “Getting back into a classroom is an admirable goal. I agree that’s important. I’m concerned with giving any child an artificial time constraint. Many times, when a child thinks there’s a deadline, he may balk at it and push back.”
“You don’t know my son,” he snaps. “If he puts his mind to it, he can do whatever he wants.”
I let my breath out. I know I’m pressing his buttons—and he won’t see things my way right now—but I’m the expert here. “I have experience with children in the same situation, and in every situation, giving the child an open time frame has worked well. It allows them to feel free to control and direct the pace of their therapy, and they usually put more effort into it once it’s their own choice. When that happens, the child makes progress faster than expected.”
“Well, you’re the one who needs to put in the effort,” he retorts. “It’s your time frame. You can feel the pressure. I expect to see improvements soon. If I don’t, it will be obvious to me that your efforts are useless. And he’s going back to that classroom no matter what.” His voice is a challenge.
I swallow back a snippy reply. If I keep pushing, he might fire me before I even start. “I will do my absolute best with Michael. Monday, Wednesday and Friday at ten a.m.?”
He nods, sits back down. “Work it with Natalie. She knows his tutor and music schedule better than I do right now. She’ll meet you in the kitchen. Ah. Thanks. For… your time.” He opens his laptop and starts typing, then looks up at me with those gorgeous green eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t walk you over. I have a bridge meeting in two minutes. You can find your way?”
He’s stern, but something about him seems lost. I want to put my hands on those chiseled cheekbones, to touch his chest, to tell him it will all be okay. That he will find his way, too.
But he puts on some kind of headset and looks at the door, and I nod. “I can.”
I find it hard to imagine that a father doesn’t know his son’s schedule as well as the housekeeper, especially if his son is everything to him. But I’ve seen this before, too—when someone is so precious, when someone is your world, it’s terrifying. People in pain distance themselves from the ones who mean the most, as if to protect themselves from a future wound that hasn’t happened yet. As if by doing so, they can get ahead of the imminent grief that lurks around each corner, rabid, salivating with death.
I stand at the door, and hesitate, not sure if I should say something else. But he’s already talking—in Chinese!—so I close the door silently behind me.
I wander back to the kitchen. Natalie is there, and to my disappointment, so is Arielle. Natalie is all motion; she’s chopping onions and a pot is heating on the stove.
Arielle taps her phone. “Natalie, excuse me, please? I need to get to the fridge.” She’s hovering right behind Natalie, and I wonder why she can’t just go around the other way.
Natalie reaches and grabs for a fallen onion skin beside her foot. “By all means.” She stands up, grabbing the edge of the table for support. “Be my guest.” She shakes out one foot, and I wonder if she has arthritis.
Arielle’s voice is honey. “Thanks so much. I’m parched.” She takes a green glass bottle from the fridge and twists it open, the carbonation making a sharp hiss, then stands in the spot where Natalie was standing and directs her laser gaze on me. “Is that car out front yours?” Her eyebrows are perfect arches.
I nod. “It is.”
“Hmm.” She tilts her head. “I hear you’re going to be working with Michael.” Natalie moves around her and pulls a clear plastic bag of tomatoes from the fridge.
“Yes.”
“He’s, like, a super little boy.” Arielle’s voice is cool. She takes another sip of Perrier. “I’ve known him for a year now, while I’ve been with Gabriel. A year for all of us. A big year.”
Natalie goes around her again to the other side of the table, retrieves a wooden cutting board and a chef knife.
“Uh huh.” I hear Arielle, loud and clear. She’s a dog pissing on her property. I get it.
“We spend a lot of time together. You’ll see me a lot here. Or, maybe I should say, we’ll see you coming and going.” She laughs.
“Hmmm.” I nod. I do not plan to engage. She can throw as many warnings as she wants, no problem. I can handle myself. I mean, I’m not here for Gabriel. I’m here for Michael. Why does she even care?
“Cute necklace. Did you get that at Claire’s at the mall?” She smiles, and it looks so sweet. “Very teenage retro. Does it open? ” She reaches out.
My hand shoo
ts to my locket and I’m ready to snarl at her; instead, I take a deep breath. “It’s a family treasure. I don’t actually ever open it.”
She shrugs, takes one more sip of water, then caps the bottle and sets it on the counter. “Okay! See you later. I’m going to say goodbye to Gabe and then I’m headed over to meet my agent.” She floats out, leaving only a trail of expensive perfume and silence as I contemplate her presence and how the room changes with her absence. I wonder if Natalie feels the same relief I do.
I turn to Natalie. “Okay. So. Gabriel asked me to discuss the scheduling with you for Michael’s therapy. I’d like to meet at ten a.m. three days a week. Will that work, do you think?”
She cocks her head, looking up from the table. “That’s too early. His private tutor comes in the mornings. But if you can do afternoons, say four to five? That would work.” Her fingers are fast; she’s turning the tomatoes into perfect dice.
I mentally rearrange my schedule. It will take some shuffling. But I need to work with this boy, and I’ll do what it takes. “I can do that. Sure! So I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Four p.m.”
“Great.” Her voice is tight.
“Natalie? What are you making? You have the perfect knife touch. Seriously, you could go on that Iron Chef show with those skills.” I gesture at the table.
She doesn’t smile. “Beef stew with lots of veggies. Michael’s doctor has him on a low-carb, no-sugar, organic protein diet. You’ll need to know that, because there are times you may need to give him a snack if I’m not here and his father is… busy with work.” I’m not sure, but I think I hear disapproval in her voice. Of me? Or of Gabriel’s schedule? I can’t tell, yet.
“That sounds healthy and delicious. I’d like to learn more about his diet. Maybe we can spend some time after my therapy session with him tomorrow to discuss it?”
She shrugs, nods, wipes her hands on her apron. “Sure. That will be fine. I’ll see you out.”
“Oh, no, you don’t need to stop. It’s okay.”
“I don’t mind.” She puts the knife on the edge of the table, then turns back, picks it up and puts it much farther in. Careful. I like that.
She walks me to the door, and as we pass the artwork and glass sculptures, she asks, “So I read about you, online. Sounds like you’ve won some award. I hope you can help Michael.” We stop walking in front of something that looks like a melted sun, all spangles and shiny glass. Her voice is noncommittal but her gaze is piercing.
I nod. “The real reward is seeing kids get better, though. That’s the only thing that matters to me. I love working with children.”
She clears her throat. “Michael said he likes you. He doesn’t say that about anyone, lately.” She tilts her head. “You must have made quite an impression.” She’s still looking at me, as if trying to see inside, what I think.
“I like him, too. He’s the coolest kid I’ve met in a long time. I want to help him.” I think my genuine emotion must show in my voice, because her gaze softens.
“Well, we’re all rooting for him. If there’s anything I can do…” She sighs. “He used to be so happy.”
“He’ll be that way again,” I promise, because life will deliver that, regardless of whether I bring it, or it comes another way. But that’s one thing I do know, which has been true for all of the families I work with: Life goes on, and if you let it, beauty comes back, all by itself.
“I hope so.” Her voice is vehement.
“So I’m curious, I guess, why you seem to know more about Michael’s schedule than Gabriel does.” Although I keep my voice neutral, she frowns and crosses her arms over her plump chest.
“Gabriel is very busy, Shai. His work schedule is… overwhelming. He had to do an emergency trip to Asia last week, and Michael’s tutor needed to switch up his hours right after Gabe left, so naturally I stepped in to help manage it. I stay here and act as a nanny when I need to, but Gabriel is a wonderful father. Normally he’d know the schedule, too.” She narrows her eyes.
“I can see how committed he is to helping Michael,” I say, because, although I don’t know much yet about Gabriel Baystock, that part comes through, along with his pain. “And I’ll do everything I can, I promise.”
Natalie softens back into an almost-smile. “Well, I’m glad he’s getting some help,” she allows.
I turn the knob and the arctic chill cracks my skin. “See you and Michael tomorrow. You guys and… um… Arielle?” I can’t resist. Maybe because I’m already halfway out the door, my mind decided it was okay to pry.
“She’s hardly ever at the house, so I doubt it.” She hesitates, then gives me a look. “For all their big year together, she doesn’t have a key.” Her voice is completely neutral, no emphasis on the word big or anything, but then she smiles, a small sly smile, and I smile back. I don’t know why that made me so suddenly exuberant.
She gives me another smile before I close the door. “See you soon.”
SHAI
We’re at the grassy tree-splashed park that extends, long and curved, along Montrose Beach. It’s cold, and the wind tosses icicles into our eyes, sharp end first, but we squint and run. Michael whoops and jumps and his scarf flies madly behind him in the wind, a red whip and blur. He darts in and out of the trees, their arms mostly bare, just a few tenacious brown leaves clinging, forgotten by winter.
“Shai!” he yells, and the word is cut in half by the gust. I wonder where the rest of the sound went, imagine little music notes slamming into the white and blue beach building and shattering into a cloud of vapor.
I catch up and help rearrange his scarf. “This is crazy wind! We can only stay out here for like ten minutes!”
I have to yell, and it makes me exuberant. He runs again, and I follow, looping around a tree and laughing in delight. The air is frigid, but my muscles are warm from running, and I am invigorated, like I’m truly alive. I think Michael feels the same way. It’s our third trip to the beach this month, and every time we go, it seems like liquid joy suffuses his entire body for days after.
“We’re the only ones here!” Michael yells, tossing his arms out and twirling. “It’s like our own world. It’s all ours!” He breaks off as two figures trudge into view from a parked car across the vast expanse of grass, both bundled into jackets that swaddle them and defy any attempts to guess sex or shape, one tall, one short. “Oh. Another kid is coming.” He deflates, the wind dies down abruptly, and his words ring out across the meadow, making the figures look up.
As they approach, I can see that one of them is a girl, a few years younger than Michael, maybe. Her mittened hand is in her mother’s.
Michael’s voice is flat. “I want to go home now. Can we go home?” He tugs my arm.
“Of course.” I’m confused, but it’s cold and we needed to leave soon anyway. We start to walk back to the Lexus, and as we pass them, Michael averts his face. But something about him catches the girl’s eye, and she says, “Michael Melon?”
Michael scuffs his foot into the clumpy frozen grass. “Hurry up, Shai.”
“Wait, though. She’s talking to you. Just say hi, okay?” I get that he’s uncomfortable, but we need to work on manners. He gives me his signature angry look then sighs, a long-suffering sigh.
“Anna Banana,” he says. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Michael Melon!” She grabs at her mom and jumps up and down. “He’s from group, Mom. Last year. Remember?”
The mom’s gaze, as she looks at her girl, is so full of angst and longing that I know immediately from where they know Michael.
“Of course,” she says, a smile growing. “I remember fruit week. That was fun. Everyone got a fruit and a nickname and there was that scavenger hunt. All the floor nurses got involved. Even Dr. Avery came, remember? The kids loved it. Oh, remember Angelica Apple? And Pauly Persimmon?” She pushes back a strand of auburn hair that’s escaped her cap. She has freckles on her nose.
“Pauly cried when they gave him that one,” re
minds her daughter. “So he got to be an apple too, like Angie. And Michael didn’t want to play at all.”
“I was too old for that game.” Michael kicks harder at a lump of dirt, and it skitters away. “It was dumb.”
Anna’s face falls. “I liked it.” She sounds hopeful.
“It was for babies.” Michael’s voice is scornful.
“Michael.” I bend down to whisper. “Remember how we talked about empathy? Other people’s emotions?”
“No.” He sounds angry.
“I think you do. Right now you have a lot of power in your voice. You can make this girl cry, or you can make her smile. Which do you choose?” I look into his eyes. “Think it over.”
He walks away and kicks a nearby tree.
The mother puts her hand on Anna’s arm and gives me the saddest look. “We’re just going to walk to the sand. She wanted to see the waves for a few minutes.”
She’s not even angry. It’s like she knows, she gets how these kids have so much rage and despair that they can’t even control it. So much worrying on behalf of a child, it can make you so fragile that you crack. But right now she’s still strong enough to withstand all of this. It takes a special mother to do it. Not every kid has that.
“I’m so sorry.” I want to convey all of my thoughts and feelings into the words, and I probably don’t.
She smiles anyway. “It’s okay. Look. At least we’re both out here with our kids, right?” She gestures at the vast open expanse of grass, and the lake in front of us, endless gray water. “We’re here, on this amazing day, with our jewels. It’s all good.”
I nod. “It is.” I feel like I should disclose that Michael’s not my kid; it feels dishonest—even to a stranger—to let her think he’s mine. Of course, we’ll never see these people again, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. And the explanation would reveal a lot of personal information about me and Michael both that she has no right to hear. Still, it feels awkward inside, like I’ve swallowed something bitter, or like I’m wearing a sweater that doesn’t fit right.
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