Theory of Remainders (2 page)

“Don’t tell me what’s enough.” She turned to arm herself again, but the only weapon left on the end table was the African sculpture of a long-necked woman with prominent breasts. It stood nearly three feet high, and Melanie needed both hands to lift it from the metal rod supporting it.

At this sight, Philip rose to his feet. Usually he tried to downplay his height, but now he stretched to his full six-foot-three, maximizing the illusion of authority. It was time to put his foot down before somebody got hurt. Besides, he liked that sculpture, had spent a long time choosing it.

“Put that down,” he ordered.

She glared at him through slitted lids. “No.”

“
Now
.”

“
Make me
.”

He took a step forward, but Melanie raised the wooden figure higher, threatening to heave it in his direction. Given how bad her aim was, he wouldn’t even have a chance to catch it. Not daring to go forward, he also couldn’t retreat. Melanie’s eyes shone with triumph, accompanied by a flicker of anxiety. What should he do? If he backed down, she would find herself in charge, which was exactly where she didn’t want to be. But if he didn’t step back, she’d be compelled to sling this sculpture—a collector’s piece, very expensive—at the one person who was trying to help her, which wouldn’t do either of them any good. They were in a stalemate. A terribly interesting one, Philip reckoned, but a stalemate nonetheless.

A knock came at the door. At least, that’s what it sounded like—though in twenty-five years of consultations, no one had ever interrupted one of Philip’s meetings with a patient. Sessions were sacred. He wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Perhaps the noise had come from the wall or ceiling, the clanking of a pipe or the clatter of heels upstairs. But Melanie, too, looked toward the office door, confusion in her eyes. The spell had been broken, and he wasn’t sure he could conjure it back.

Three sharp raps sounded again, more insistently. The battle of the titans evaporated, and now there were just two people, a girl and a man, Melanie Patterson and Philip Adler, the little one and the tall one, the one with a wooden sculpture and the one without, both feeling a touch ridiculous. They exchanged a look and Philip cracked a smile. A sputter of laughter escaped from Melanie, nearly causing her to drop her weapon.

The knob turned and the door opened a few inches, breaking the seal of the vault. In the crack Philip made out the drawn features of Linda Durrell, whom he and Jonas had recently hired. What could have possessed her to interrupt him now? Was it Melanie’s shrieks? The broken glass?

“I’m
terribly
sorry to bother you,” came the thin voice as Linda widened the opening. Her eyes slid to the left, taking in Melanie doubled over with laughter, one hand still gripping the neck of the sculpture.

Philip straightened his smile, and while he spoke, Melanie labored to contain herself. “We’re fine, Linda,” he said. “Our discussion grew a little animated, and Melanie, she . . . she . . . dropped a water glass.” He glanced at his patient, whose lips bulged with mirth, trembling like a flooded levee about to give way. She was a beautiful girl, really, when she gave herself half a chance. “Against the wall,” he clarified.

Melanie exploded with laughter.

Linda looked at the floor. “It’s not that, Dr. Adler,” she said. “I’m used to . . .” she hesitated. “What I mean is, I know I shouldn’t interrupt your appointments.” She fiddled with a pleat in her skirt.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “No harm done.”

“There’s a woman on the phone, Dr. Adler.”

He squinted. It was an absurd statement. They didn’t interrupt sessions every time the phone rang. That was the whole point of having a receptionist.

“Couldn’t you take a message?”

“She says it’s important.”

“Can’t Jonas handle it? After all, I’m rather—”

“I’m
really
sorry,” Linda said, her face pained, “but she asked for you personally. She . . . she won’t talk to anyone else.”

He was completely flummoxed. “Right this instant?”

She closed the fingers of both hands into small fists, relaxed them, and closed them again. “You see,” she said, “it’s . . . your wife, Dr. Adler.”

He gaped. While he searched for words, Melanie’s snickering petered out.

“Yes sir,” Linda nodded with vigor. “That’s what she said.”

While Linda and Melanie exchanged a glance, Philip pressed his professional smile back in place. “Of course. Thank you, Linda.” He turned to Melanie. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

He crossed the threshold into the beige plainness of the reception area, exposed by glass doors to the fifth-floor lobby. At Linda’s desk he reached out for the phone, hesitating at the last instant as if it were too hot to grasp. It was impossible. There was no Mrs. Philip Adler. Hadn’t been for—he did the quick calculation—nearly thirteen years.

He picked up the handset and studied it like an unfamiliar object before raising it to his ear.

“Hello?” he said. “Hello?” Then he listened. All at once he stood a bit straighter. “Yes, it’s me.” Again it was his turn to listen. Now he felt himself sinking, and he braced himself against the desk. The next time he spoke his voice had softened. “
Calme-toi
,” he said in heavily accented French. “
Calme-toi
.”

A series of beeps jostled Philip from his stupor, the noise coming from the telephone he still clutched, and that had tired of humming its dial tone. He hadn’t moved, but was short of breath. How long had he stood there after she hung up?

At the sound of footsteps he turned to see Melanie escape through the glass door of the reception area, her backpack slung over her bony shoulders as she made a break for it, crossing the lobby to the elevator. While waiting for the getaway vehicle, she avoided his gaze. He understood why. She’d seen him on the phone, had witnessed his contraction from a doctor into a man. Her downturned eyes were a sign of embarrassment. For him.

He’d let her go for now. They would line up their pieces next week and start the game afresh.

Meanwhile, the way to his office was blocked by Linda, her eyes wide with questions he didn’t want to answer. So he forced a smile and made for the only exit left to him—the door opposite his own. Rapping once, he slipped in as the voice called for him to enter.

What greeted him was the back of Jonas Seeberg’s head, curls of dark hair springing chaotically, a bulge of neck showing above the back of the chair. Papers and books cluttered most of the surfaces, including the floor. Jonas sat hunched over a stack of files on his lap, running his fingers over the tabs, flicking through them one by one. “Good grief,” he muttered. “It was here a minute ago.”

Philip sank onto the leather couch, a manila folder lying on the cushion beside him. After letting Jonas hunt, he reached over, picked the file up, and prodded his partner’s arm with it.

The other man swiveled around and stared at the offering. His eyes brightened. “Where’d you find that? Like a needle in a goddamned haystack.”

He began to paw through the papers on his desk. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Now I can’t find the notes I have to put in there. I’m telling you, Philip, I need a personal assistant. Someone who can—” He halted, sat up straight, and rotated back around in his chair. “Say, what are you doing in here, anyway?”

He shrugged. “I need an excuse?”

“Wasn’t that glass I heard breaking in your office a little while ago?”

He swept the question aside with the back of his hand. “You know how it goes. Sometimes you do your best work when things get a touch out of control.” He cast about for an appropriate image. “I put us into a controlled skid.”

“Sounded like a patch of ice.”

Philip pictured Melanie about to lob the sculpture at him. Yes, perhaps things had gone too far. He could admit that. But sometimes you had to take a chance. He checked his watch. Linda would have returned to her desk by now, and probably he could sneak back into his office. He stood. “I’ll let you get back to your hunting and gathering.”

“That’s it?” Jonas said. “You slink in here, find my files for me and then vanish? What is this—
The Elves and the Shoemaker?
” His eyes thinned. “What’s going on?”

He shook his head. Nothing was going on. Nothing except that he had a three o’clock coming in, then two more patients after that—all before he could start the day’s paperwork. He headed for the door, but with each step he slowed, finally pausing and closing his eyes as he came to a stop.

“Yvonne called,” he said.

Jonas leaned back in his chair, absorbing the information. “You don’t say?”

“Anne-Madeleine has passed away. Her mother. My mother-in-law.”

“Your
ex-
mother-in-law.”

Philip ignored the correction. “Not really a surprise, of course, at eighty-two. Still, the news comes as a blow.”

Jonas folded his hands over his belly, waiting.

“She didn’t need to call, I suppose,” Philip continued. “Probably a letter would have been enough.”

“You mean you don’t intend to go back for the funeral?”

Philip looked up. “Now? All the way to France?”

Jonas responded by cocking his head and raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t be absurd,” Philip said. An ache was starting in his temple.

“How long has it been, Philip? A decade? You were pretty close to her, weren’t you?”

“I suppose so. Yes. Despite everything.”

“Are you all right?”

“A little numb, maybe. Taken off my guard.” He paused. “It’s Yvonne I feel for. She sounded . . . shaken.”

“You should go, you know.”

Philip began a vague protest about his schedule, his responsibilities, his patients. Jonas cut him off.

“Don’t use work as an excuse. You know people would understand. Even patient-type people.”

That much was right. What would it be, two or three days? Jonas could handle any emergencies. Work was not the problem. “It’s ridiculously rushed,” he said. “I’d have to leave tomorrow in order to make it.”

“Great. Then you won’t have time to fret about the flight.”

He ran his fingers through his beard. “What I mean is, I don’t see what it would accomplish.”

“I guess you’ll find out.”

He shook his head. “Look, I didn’t come in here for advice. I just wanted you to know.” He took the last step toward the door and laid his hand on the knob.

“Is she still teaching?” Jonas wanted to know.

He stiffened. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

The ache in his temple pulsed. “I mean, yes. I think so. In Rouen. At the university.”

“Remarried?”

This was the last straw. He turned and looked Jonas in the eye. “How should I know? She hasn’t gone out of her way to keep in touch. I don’t exactly get their Christmas newsletter.”

Jonas held his gaze.

Philip looked away. “Yes. They have a child.”

The silence ripened.

“A daughter?” Jonas said. He raised his hands to defend against Philip’s reaction. “We were both thinking it,” he said. “One of us had to say it.”

Not so, Philip thought as he stared down at the carpet. Jonas knew as well as he what a useful role repression could play in people’s lives.

“You should go,” Jonas said. “Take some time.”

Philip closed his eyes and shook his head. No, time was the last thing in the world he was inclined to take.

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