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  “What’s the matter with you?” Victoria cried. “I thought therapists were supposed to be understanding and compassionate. My son’s in a coma, and I’m trying to reconcile with my daughter. We’re finished with you. My husband and I want another family therapist.”

  “Well, I never!” Mrs. Blount huffed.

  “Well, you just did! I give opposing counsels’ experts more respect in a two-hour deposition than you’ve shown me in the whole time we’ve known you.” Victoria motioned toward the room. “This is about my daughter. And,” she said, pointing at her chest, “this is about me.”

  “I’m going to … I’m going to …”

  “You’re going to what? Report me to the principal? Go ahead.”

  Mrs. Blount’s face contorted like a gargoyle’s. “No wonder your relationship with Melinda is so terrible.”

  “Leave my daughter out of this. What do you know about relationships?” Victoria had done her homework. “Everyone in Philadelphia knows your husband is always fucking one of his patients and that neither of your children speaks to you.”

  Victoria marched back into the therapy office and slammed the door. “We’re done here,” she told Martin and Melinda. “I’m sure Dr. Milroy will get us someone we can work with.”

  Mrs. Blount barged into the room.

  Victoria yelled, “Get out and stay out!”

  “Good for you, Mother.” Melinda applauded.

  Martin glowered at Mrs. Blount. “I don’t care for how you’ve treated my wife.” Turing to Victoria, he said, “I’m sorry, Vic. I should have said something sooner.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Victoria said abruptly. She hadn’t intended to be so short, which brought to mind Jonas’s warning about getting a grip on her feelings about Martin.

  Dr. Milroy entered the room. “I heard a commotion. What’s going on?” Mrs. Blount opened her mouth, but Melinda interceded. “This woman is an asshole. All she does is upset my mother.”

  Mrs. Blount said to Melinda, “Your mother is the problem. She’s nasty, confrontational, and obstinate. No wonder you’re so ill, you poor thing.”

  “I’m not poor, you stupid bitch!” Melinda yelled. “And it’s not all her fault. I played a role in it, too, not that you have the brains to understand. As for nasty, confrontational, and obstinate, look in the mirror, lady. That’s you, not her.”

  “Let me talk with the Brauns alone,” Dr. Milroy said to Mrs. Blount, who slithered out, fangs still bared.

  “Can’t you help us?” Melinda said to Dr. Milroy. “You work with groups. You must know how to work with families.”

  Dr. Milroy looked at his watch. “Stay here, everybody, while I call home and tell them I’ll be late.”

  51

  During Dr. Milroy’s absence, Melinda withdrew several tissues from a Kleenex cube.

  “What is it, Melinda?” Victoria asked.

  “I’ve made such a mess. I love Gregory, too. I understand how much he means to you. I know I’m not as easy as him. It doesn’t matter anymore. I know you tried to love me the best you could.”

  “I did. I tried so hard,” Victoria said. “But I can do better, now. You’ll see.”

  When Dr. Milroy returned, Victoria and Melinda were embracing. He waited while Melinda composed herself and sat facing her parents.

  “This is hard,” she began. “But here’s what really happened. Do you remember the boy I hung around with this summer? I met him through someone at school, Nancy Grogan. I was so lonely; it made me happy she wanted me to hang out with her. The boy’s name was Todd Kramer; he was a friend of Nancy’s brother.

  “Todd went to Choate. He was visiting Philadelphia because he had an interview at Penn; he said he wanted to be a doctor. I told him you were smart and that both of you went there.

  “Todd had long hair, and his stubble made me think of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. I said something about the movie, and it turned out he liked it, too. So, we got into this thing where he’d say a line from the movie, and I’d say the next line; or he’d imitate one of the characters, and I’d say who it was. It was fun. I felt like someone finally got me. He’d talk with me and stuff, and he intrigued me, because he was so much older and wiser. Todd started texting me and, like, I couldn’t believe it. I really got the feeling he liked me.

  “Once, he and I texted back and forth all night, and I wouldn’t go to sleep because I was afraid I’d miss something. So, I stayed up even though I was exhausted. He said everyone was going to Atlantic City in the morning, and he asked me to go. Remember that day? I asked permission to go to Atlantic City, and you said yes.”

  “I remember that,” Victoria said, recalling how pleased she felt that Melinda had friends at school.

  “Todd said there would be a lot of supervision, but when I got to the Grogan’s house, Todd was the only one there. He said the Grogans had left when he overslept. This was the first time I was alone with him, and I liked it. Actually, I liked it a lot, a whole lot, and I got … I got … I felt …” Melinda’s face turned pink.

  Martin started to speak but Victoria shushed him and told Melinda to continue.

  “Todd asked if I wanted to eat. He said he had something that would make food taste really good; then he produced something that looked like half a squashed cigarette and he asked if I knew what it was and I guessed it was marijuana. Everyone in school had tried it, and I felt stupid, because nobody asked me to smoke with them, so I pretended I knew about it, so he wouldn’t think I was, like, some clueless moron.”

  Melinda searched Dr. Milroy’s face. He rolled his neck around as if he had a crick. If anything, he seemed pleased.

  “Todd took me into the bathroom and turned on the fan. He told me to inhale as deeply as I could. At first, it felt like sucking in gravel; I coughed so hard, it hurt my sides. The second and the third times were easier.

  “Then I started feeling weird. My legs felt heavy, and I wanted to lie down. I stumbled over to the nearest couch, and I remember looking at Todd’s shirt and becoming obsessed by the buttons, which I thought were amazing. I started thinking about who invented buttons and how it changed the world, and what people did before buttons. I started counting Todd’s buttons from the top down, and the bottom up.

  “Anyway, I was really tired from being up all night, so I fell asleep, but Todd must have thought I was dead, because he woke me up. I told him to let me be, which he did, but then he woke me up again and said he was afraid that if I went to sleep, I might stop breathing. That got me really scared.”

  Melinda said to her mother, “I didn’t want to call you or Daddy, because I knew you would yell at me.”

  The corners of Dr. Milroy’s mouth tightened.

  Victoria said, “That’s going to change, Melinda. I mean it.”

  Dr. Milroy smiled at Victoria and nodded for Melinda to continue.

  “Todd disappeared and came back with some blue pills. He told me to take one; he said it would keep me awake. I figured that someone who was going to be a doctor would know what he was doing, so I did what he said. I took a pill but nothing happened. Then I took another one, and that’s when everything went crazy. My heart beat out of my chest, my skin felt like it was on fire, and it felt like someone was pulling my hair. I pictured running in front of a bus or slashing my throat. I couldn’t make the thoughts stop.”

  Victoria recoiled, realizing how alike she and Melinda were.

  “I was hoping and hoping it would all go away, but it just kept getting worse. I asked Todd what the pills were. He said it was his ADD medicine, and I asked how to get it out of me. He went online and found out that too much ADD medicine could cause schizophrenia, and I thought how awful it would be to turn into some schizo. It went on and on. I remember telling myself, ‘Please, please, make this go away before I die. I don’t want to die in a strange house with a boy I hardly know.’”

  Melinda looked at her parents. “I haven’t been the same since. The bad thoughts got worse,
especially at night. That English teacher bitch made me feel like shit. She’s always yelling at me. I didn’t want you to know, because I knew you’d never forgive me for messing up my head.”

  “Did anything else happen to you while you were there?” Martin asked.

  “You mean did Todd try and have sex with me? No, it wasn’t like that.”

  Dr. Milroy spoke up, “Melinda and I are working on straightening out her thoughts. This is all a traumatic reaction in someone with bipolar tendencies. She has flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and feelings of helplessness. Periodically her mind gets flooded with horrific images.”

  “You don’t know how awful they are,” Melinda cried. “They’re bloody and they’re always about you, Daddy, and Gregory. The idea of Gregory with his head split open makes me want to vomit. It’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve been able to read again,” she said proudly. “The medicine makes me feel better.”

  “I’m sure talking helps, too,” said Victoria.

  Melinda said, “I like talking with Dr. Milroy.”

  “Good,” Victoria said. “I have my own psychiatrist to talk with. He gives me medicine, too.”

  Dr. Milroy turned to Victoria, “She has your genes, which made it likely that, sooner or later, something would trigger a traumatic reaction, though not necessarily to this degree. It’s interesting. Not only does bipolar disorder run in families, but often a medication that works for one family member works for another. Melinda’s medication dampens her intrusive thoughts without making her a zombie. We can’t have her up night after night worrying that if she goes to sleep she won’t wake up.”

  “Now do you understand why I didn’t want to go to sleep?” Melinda pleaded. “I wasn’t being defiant; I was terrified. I kept myself up as long as I could, and when I did sleep, I had awful nightmares where I was paralyzed while spindly creatures that looked like tarantulas huddled together like they were going to swarm all over me.”

  “In addition to medication, we’re working on techniques for Melinda to feel more in control of her mind,” Dr. Milroy said.

  “I’m getting better at stopping bad thoughts. And I’m starting to be able to write again, too. I was afraid my mind would never work again.”

  “Having Melinda tell her story over and over doesn’t necessarily help,” Dr. Milroy said, “but it’s good you know where she’s coming from.”

  Victoria said, “It all makes sense now. Thanks for telling me, honey.”

  “I believe that with time, therapy, and medicine, Melinda will recover,” Dr. Milroy said.

  “Completely?” Victoria said.

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘completely.’ No one can promise that Melinda will never think about what happened that day.”

  “Will she be on medication forever?”

  “It’s way too early to speculate about that. The first order of business is for Melinda to get well and to stay well. Then, we’ll decide what’s next.”

  Melinda said, “What about family therapy? I never want to see that awful woman again. I know you’re very busy, Dr. Milroy, but … maybe you could …”

  “Sure I will. How’s this? We’ll arrange some day passes and see how it goes when you’re home. And on one of them, the three of you can come to my office for a session. I’ll put you down for a week from Friday at 5:00 PM. Okay, everybody?”

  “Can I use one of my passes to go to Children’s Hospital? I want to see my brother,” Melinda said.

  “We’ll talk about it,” Dr. Milroy said, glancing at his watch. “Whoa! It’s late. I’ve got to go now. Is everyone okay about that Friday time?”

  Melinda said, “Please, I really need to see him.”

  “We’ll talk about that first thing at our next session,” Dr. Milroy said.

  “I promise nothing bad will happen. I promise,” she pressed.

  Victoria perked up, eager to observe how Dr. Milroy handled Melinda’s insistence.

  “Speaking of promising,” Dr. Milroy said artfully. “I promise you and I will talk the whole thing out. Then we’ll see.”

  “What is there to see?” Melinda contended.

  “There’s a lot about that night we haven’t discussed,” Dr. Milroy said. “Understand, Melinda. I’m not saying no. But we need to be sure that visiting Gregory won’t cause a setback. Remember, I want you to go home as soon as you can.”

  “You’re not sure I’m ready?”

  “No. Not one hundred percent.”

  “How will you be able to tell?”

  Dr. Milroy laughed impishly. “We’ll know when you can tolerate not knowing whether or not you can visit Gregory without getting upset about it.”

  “Oh. Okay, I get it,” Melinda conceded.

  “Good,” said Dr. Milroy, who ushered the family toward the door. “I think we’ve accomplished a lot tonight.”

  As they walked down the hall, Dr. Milroy said to Victoria, “It’s obvious that you and Melinda are better with each other. You and Dr. Speller seem to be doing well, too. Please tell him I said hello.”

  52

  December 21, 2004

  For Jonas, the week before Christmas seemed endless. The first day of winter dawned raw with swirling gusts and single-digit wind chills that turned Manhattan’s cross streets into wind tunnels. No one dared sit on Central Park’s stone benches lest they adhere to them like ice cubes clinging to moist fingertips. Even the rats deserted the subway for the steam pipes and abandoned tunnels of Manhattan’s subterranean world.

  On the shortest day, the sun never really rose; instead it glowed dimly like a refrigerator light bulb, meandering across the sky barely above Central Park’s treetops.

  From the nonstop beeping of his telephone, Jonas concluded that his was not the only mood that was plunging. Whenever he thought about the holidays, his mind drifted back to Thanksgiving and how caught up he had become in Victoria’s family. Guiltily, Jonas tried to reassure himself he cared as much about Gil and Gracie as he did about the Braun children. He could hardly wait for the family excursion to Puerto Rico the day after Christmas.

  Hoping to break his mood, Jonas bundled up and walked south on Madison Avenue. When an arctic blast nearly toppled him, he ducked into Starbucks, which was teeming with gray-skirted girls in matching cardigans: Dalton School uniforms. A baby-faced strawberry blonde sat pigeon-toed, absorbed in her laptop. Jonas reckoned she was about fourteen, two years older than Gracie.

  “This is so cool,” she said to the friend on her left, a curly-haired round-faced girl who gazed out the window dreamily.

  “Huh,” her friend responded. “I can’t see the screen.”

  The blonde girl adjusted her laptop. “Can you see it now?”

  “Do you think they’re coming?”

  “Who?”

  “Justin and his friend, the lacrosse player; I think his name is Dewitt.”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Justin thinks you’re hot.”

  The blonde girl’s cheeks turned pink. “What? Who told you that?”

  “Justin told Rhiannon Schlieder, who’s friends with Shannon Parks, who told her sister—you know, that goofy-looking girl from Trinity Day who wears derbies and blood-red lipstick—that he thought you looked like Britney Spears.”

  “Britney Spears? That ditz. Is she for real?”

  The round-faced girl didn’t answer. She set her drink on the corner of an open book between the two of them. When the round-faced girl adjusted the laptop, she propelled her Frappuccino all over her friend’s skirt and computer.

  Instead of going ape as Jonas expected, the blonde girl laughed and grabbed a fistful of napkins, which she plastered to her clothes like paper towels.

  “I always hated this skirt,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” her friend said unconvincingly. “Here, let me.” She turned the laptop upside down, and a thin, steady stream of liquid poured out, reminding Jonas that Gregory Braun was still in a coma, hooked to an IV.

>   Two boys who looked like Abercrombie models walked in. One said something to the curly-haired girl, who wriggled around enough to make room for him to sit between her and her friend.

  The barista called, “Skinny half-caff no-foam latte.”

  “That’s mine, thanks,” said Jonas, taking a last look at the two girls. Admiring the good-natured one, he thought he’d love to have a daughter like that. Or would he, given the challenges of parenting a teenaged daughter? Thanksgiving had made him painfully aware of how much he wanted to leave children of his own flesh and blood behind when he died.

  Back at his office, Jonas had twenty minutes to kill before the weekly differential therapeutics seminar he conducted. He propped his feet next to a portable electric heater designed to look like a steam radiator. It reminded him of the scalding radiator at his grandmother’s house on holidays where he used to play “I Spy” with his favorite cousins—blood relatives, too.

  Jonas’s reverie ended when his cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “It’s me,” Eddie said. “I just heard from the concierge at Dorado Beach. They’re upgrading us to beach side.”

  “Well done,” said Jonas, picturing five days in the South Atlantic sun. His beach reading included several medical record reviews and a biography of Richard Wagner. “Have you been outside today? It’s freezing.”

  “Not really. I spent the morning taking the deposition of a guy from Greenwich who’s suing an all-Jewish country club for not letting him in. He says they blackballed him after they found out his wife wasn’t Jewish.”

  “Should you be telling me this?”

  “Of course! You’re my psychiatrist, Jonas,” Eddie wisecracked. “Whatever I tell you is privileged.”

  “Do you care one way or the other?”

  “Honestly? It’s total bullshit. But it’s an oral contract case. Something different.”

  “Anything else about the trip?”

  Eddie hesitated. “Are Jennie and the kids excited?”

  “Gracie would just as soon stay home with her friends. Gil’s Gil. He goes with the flow.” Jonas walked to his window. “Do you know anything about adoption law?”