The Law of Similars (6 page)

But that comfort held little value for the toddler whom I'd now be raising alone. She was a month beyond two when well-meaning people told me that sort of thing, and the only suffering she really understood was her own.

"You and Abby aren't all that alone, are you? I don't get up to East Bartlett very often, but I've always envisioned it as a very close-knit community," Carissa said.

"There are lots of people who help. Really, lots. And I need every single one of them. Her godparents only live a few houses away--though that's about half a mile, given where we live. And the church has been remarkable. I don't think I cooked a meal for three months after Elizabeth died. And now I have the preschool network to help, too. But the fact is, it's still just Abby and me in the mornings and evenings. I'm the one who's tickling her awake, or ironing her dresses, or helping her pour her cereal in the morning. I'm the one who's making sure she has a glass of water by her bed every night, as well as her beloved trolls and her Chapstick and whatever plastic monstrosity happened to fall out of her cereal box that day."

"You sound angry."

"Not at all: I love her madly. I have no idea what I would have done after Elizabeth's death without her. Just no idea. I'd probably have gone completely to pieces. Right now I'm just tired...."

"And?"

"And, I guess, feeling guilty because I didn't pick her up tonight at her usual time."

"Where is she now?"

"Having dinner with the family of her sixteen-year-old baby-sitter. She's about three blocks from here."

"And you're really feeling guilty?"

"I am."

"What about grandparents, or aunts and uncles?"

"Both of my parents have passed away," I said. "Cancer in my mother's case. Alzheimer's in my father's."

"Your mother went first?"

"She did."

"And Elizabeth's parents?"

"They live in Florida. I have a sister two hours away. In New Hampshire, near Dartmouth. That's where Abby and I spend most of our holidays."

"Ever consider a nanny or housekeeper?"

"I have, but it's complicated. There's no day care in East Bartlett, and I want Abby to be around other kids, so that means she has to be in the village of Bartlett during the day--where there is day care. And that, in turn, means a nanny would just be filling in around breakfast and dinnertime. And I want to have breakfast with Abby, so that just leaves the gap before dinner, and I've got that covered right here in the village: I've found people in town who'll look after her from the moment the day care closes until I get here from Burlington."

"What about friends?"

"Oh, she has plenty of friends. She has friends from day care, and Sunday school, and now preschool. The Sunday-school kids and preschool kids are pretty much the same batch. The East Bartlett batch. But then there's also this whole other batch from here in the village. In Bartlett. The day-care batch. But between Greta and Chloe and Cole and--"

"I meant you."

"You mean, do I have friends?"

"Yes. You."

"Of course I do. I just never see them. Sometimes I talk to them on the phone. Mostly I send them E-mail."

"But isn't there someone you, I don't know, play squash with during lunch?"

"When I actually have a free lunch hour, it's usually spent buying Pocahontas underpants and little tiny socks. Or grocery shopping for nonperishables so Abby and I don't have to ruin a Saturday stocking up on cereal and toilet paper for the week. Recently I tried squeezing in visits to the health club, but it didn't last. And that really wasn't about bonding, anyway. It was about not dying any sooner than I have to."

"Who do you talk to--or E-mail--most?"

"Probably Steve Wagner."

"I know that name."

"He's the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Vermont."

"And he's your best friend...."

"It's not as ghoulish as it sounds," I said, but I nevertheless found myself thinking back on what I'd told her so far. I wondered if I sounded pathetic.

"You said you don't date much because of Abby. If Elizabeth had died before you two had any children, do you think you'd be dating now?"

"Meaning?"

She shrugged. "Do you think your libido survived Elizabeth's death?"

Well, I thought, there's my answer: I do sound pathetic. And ridiculous. Downright ridiculous.

And yet, usually, I didn't view myself as either pathetic or ridiculous. Just overweight. Just a slightly overweight guy with a cold.

"Oh, God," I asked, "must I do this?"

"It helps me," she said, her voice even. "But no, you don't have to." She stared at me and then scribbled another note.

"Oh, what the heck. I've never been to a therapist."

"Even after the accident?"

"Even then."

"So my professional advice is to go for it. You've already shared a very great deal with me."

And so I was off and running once more, telling her that my libido--a word I wasn't sure I'd ever verbalized in my life until then--was just fine. Teenage boys, I heard myself saying, spent less time surfing the Internet for smut than I did, and were certainly less creative about it. After all, how many fifteen-year-olds would think to search linking the words female and ejaculation?

"But you have so little time to begin with," she said.

"Oh, you know, just the morning routine: Shave, shower. See what the Web has to say about cunnilingus while sipping my coffee."

I watched Carissa think for a brief moment, then jot a quick note. Abruptly I became aware of the sorts of things she might or might not read into my body language, and so I spread my arms like an eagle's wings across the back of the couch and uncrossed my legs.

"Let's talk a little bit about your digestion," she said.

"My digestion."

"How is it?"

"It works. Given the five--okay, ten--pounds I should drop, my appetite seems fine."

"Do you lean toward constipation? Or diarrhea?"

"I don't have a preference. Neither, in my experience, is especially pleasant."

"You know what I mean. 'Fess up."

"I think I tend toward the...the solid end of the spectrum. I guess I get a lot of iron in my diet."

"Once a day? Twice a day?"

"Every other day."

She reached for the hardcover book without a dust jacket on the table beside her chair and glanced at a page. The cloth cover reminded me of her jeans: once entirely blue, now faded in parts to white.

"Any aversions?"

"Aside from talking about my stools?"

"Right."

"Let's see. Dates--the food, not the male-female go-to-a-movie thing. There's another attorney in my office who must live on them. She's eating them constantly, and they've always looked to me like big Palmetto bugs. Roaches. Once she insisted I try one, and it only reinforced my disgust. It was exactly like eating a bug--or what I've always imagined eating a bug would be like."

"Do all bugs make you a little squeamish?"

"I hope not."

"How do you feel about spiders?"

"Oh, I guess I hate them. Especially mother spiders, late summer and early fall. They hang out like gigantic marbles with legs in exactly the spots outside the house where I'm scraping and painting. It's inevitable. I'll be at the top of a thirty-two-foot ladder, underneath the eaves maybe, a scraper in one hand and a brush in the other, and there's Charlotte, staring right at me. Big and fat and about to unleash into the world a gazillion little Charlottes. I'm amazed I haven't stared up at one and fallen to my death."

"What do you do?"

"Well, I kill them. Sometimes I try to sort of bat them intact to the ground. I've always figured spiders don't mind falling thirty-two feet. And it's probably better than being squashed. I really don't want to kill them, because I know it's supposed to be bad luck to kill a spider, and the last thing I need at the top of a thirty-two-foot ladder is bad luck."

She laughed, and I took more pleasure from that than I thought was appropriate. It made me want to flirt. Seriously flirt. Tell her how much I liked her socks. The fact that the fabric was thin. And flowery. I wondered if socks were like lingerie.

"Do you have other superstitions?" she asked.

"Yeah, probably. But most of the time I'm not sure if they're superstitions or part of an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive personality disorder."

"Such as?"

"Well, whenever I leave my office, I have to tap the light switch four times. Whenever I leave my house, I tend to check the stove a zillion times to make sure it's off. And whenever I'm in Courtroom 3A--like I was a big part of this morning and afternoon--I have to sit in the chair with the small white stain on the cushion. That's my stain, I put it there. It's from this cinnamon bun I was eating one morning before a trial began."

"Why do you have to have that specific chair? Did you win that case?"

"I did. But it wasn't just that we sent the guy away for a long time--though we did. It's that I was good. I mean really good. Clarence Darrow good."

"What else? What other aversions do you have?"

I thought for a moment, returning to the image of spiders with egg sacs the size of my eyeballs, and began an eclectic litany that included mushrooms and flying and finding my shaving stubble in the sink. I told her I was afraid of singing in public--even in church if I wasn't in the very first pew--and of dying. Death scared the hell out of me. Prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer really terrified me, the former because it might leave me impotent, my bottom bagged, before I finally withered away, and the latter because it was just so horrifically incurable.

"What about cravings?" she asked when it seemed I was through.

"Are you thirsty?" I asked. I knew I was.

"Ah, right now you crave water." She got up for the first time, stretched the leg that had been underneath her--toes pressing against the thin cotton sock, and in my mind I saw the smooth sole of her foot, her arch, her ankle--and went to a water cooler on the far side of her desk.

"Yeah, I really am thirsty. I'm not used to...to talking about myself so much. I feel like a bore--like a guy in a bar who meets a woman for the first time and just spends hours talking about himself. I'm really sorry, Carissa."

"You're very entertaining," she said.

"I know this is your job and all, but...but still."

She handed me a coffee mug filled with water and returned to her chair.

"Want to tell me about your cravings?"

You, I thought as I took a long swallow. Right now I really crave you.

The consultation lasted almost two hours. It was past eight o'clock by the time we left the Octagon and discovered how cold it had become while we'd been talking inside. There were no stars in the sky, and I saw the first flakes of snow were starting to fall.

"Your house is on the Huntington Road?" she asked as she turned up the collar on her parka.