mamas. What do they all have?”
“Never mind that,” Alan said. “What brings you to my office today?”
“I like that little house,” she said, turning her back to stare at the black-cat clock, its tail ticking back and forth each second. “I like it a lot.”
“I’ll have to tell the lady who made it,” he said.
Amy nodded. She moved from the clock to the Wall. Scanning the gallery, she found her pictures in the pack. Last year’s school photo, one from the year before, Amy at Jetty Beach, Amy sitting on her front steps. She had given him all of them.
“Are there any other kids with four pictures here?”
“Only you.”
“No one else has more?”
“No,” Alan said.
Wheeling around, she bent down to read the papers on his desk. Alan heard her breathing hard, and she smelled dusty, as if she hadn’t taken a shower or washed her hair in a while. Her forearms and hands were already summer-tan, and she had crescent moons of black dirt under her fingernails.
“Julia Robbins …” Amy read upside down. Gently Alan slid the pages of Julia’s chart under a pile of medical journals. He knew that Amy was jealous of his other patients. She was one of his neediest cases. Alan had the compulsion to help children who were hurting, but he knew some things couldn’t be cured.
Amy came from a lost home. Her mother was sinking in depression, just as Alan’s mother had drowned in drink thirty years earlier. She didn’t hit Amy or give him any clear cause to contact Marla Arden, Amy’s caseworker. But the state had gotten calls from neighbors. There were reports of Amy missing school, the mother fighting with her boyfriend, doors slamming, and people shouting. They had an open file on Amy. But Alan knew the terrible tightrope a child walked, loving a mother in trouble. They were always one step from falling.
Amy had latched on to Alan. From her first time in his office, she had loved him all out. She would clutch him like a tree monkey. His nurse would have to pry her off. She would cry leaving his office instead of coming in. Her mother slept all day to kill the pain of losing her husband, just as Alan’s mother had drunk to survive the death of his older brother, Neil.
“Come on,” he said to Amy. “I’ll drive you home.”
She shrugged.
Alan knew the cycles of grief. They spun all around him, taking people far away from the ones they were meant to love. His mother, Amy’s mother, Dianne, and Julia, even his brother Tim. Alan wanted to save them all. He wanted to heal everyone, fix entire families. He wished for Julia to live through her teens. He wanted Dianne to meet Amy because he believed they could help each other. People needed connection just to survive.
“I’ll drive you,” he said again.
“You don’t have to,” Amy said, starting to smile.
“I know,” he said. “But I want to.” Doctors were like parents; they weren’t supposed to have favorites, but they did. It was just the way life was.
Amy worried that someday Dr. McIntosh would stop her from coming to his office. She didn’t need to be there: She was as healthy as a horse, her fourth favorite animal following dolphins, cats, and green turtles.
“I only got two spelling words wrong today,” she said.
“Only two?” he asked. “Which ones?”
Amy frowned. She had wanted him to congratulate her: She had never gotten so many right before. “Judge and delightful,” she said.
“How’d you spell judge?”
“J-u-j-e,” she said. “Like it sounds.”
“Did you read those books I gave you?”
Amy fiddled with a loose thread. Dr. McIntosh had bought her two mystery books he thought she’d like. Amy had never read much. She kept feeling as if she were missing the key all other readers received at birth. Plus, it was hard to concentrate at home, where there were real mysteries to be solved.
“Do you have a maid?” she asked, changing the subject.
“A maid?”
Did he think she was dumb for asking? Amy slid down in her seat, feeling like an idiot. They were in his station wagon, driving past the fishing docks. This part of town smelled like clams, flounder, and powdered oyster shells. Amy breathed deeply, loving it. Her father had been a long-liner, and fishing was in her blood.
“You know, someone to clean your house,” she said.
“Not exactly,” he laughed, as if she had said something outlandish.
Amy tried not to feel hurt. He was rich, a doctor – he could afford it! He didn’t wear a wedding ring, and once she had asked him whether he was married and he’d said no. So he was alone, he needed someone to take care of him. Why shouldn’t it be Amy?
“I love to clean,” she said.
“You do?”
“It’s not exactly a hobby, but I’m very good at it. Mr. Clean smells like perfume to me – why do you think I like your office so much? Can you think of many other people who like the smell of doctors’ offices?”
“It’s a rare quality,” he said. “And I appreciate it.”
Turning inland, he drove onto the so-called expressway. In Hawthorne they had three kinds of roads: the beautiful ones down by the harbor, this one-mile highway leading away from downtown, and the ugly streets near the marshlands, where Amy lived.
“I could do it part-time,” she said.
“What about schoolwork?”
“I’d fit it in.”
Dr. McIntosh was pulling onto her street. The houses here were small and crooked. Hardly anyone had nice yards. Broken refrigerators leaned against ramshackle garages. Stray cats – half of which Amy had tried to save – roamed in packs. It was a neighborhood where kids didn’t do their homework and parents didn’t make them. The air was sour and stale.
“You know I want to help you,” he said, looking at her house. “Is it really bad, Amy? Do you want me to call Ms. Arden?”
“No,” Amy said with force.
“I know you worry about your mother. Maybe it would be good for you to stay somewhere for a little while, see if we can get her some help.”
“I’m not leaving,” Amy said. The whole idea filled her with panic. Her mother might die if she weren’t there. She would fall asleep and never wake up. Or her mother’s boyfriend, Buddy, might hurt her. Or – and this was the worst fear – her mother might just run away with Buddy and never come back.
“Do you have friends? Girls you hang out with?”
Amy shrugged. He didn’t get it. Her best friend was Amber DeGray, but Amber smoked and wrote on her legs with razor blades. Amy was scared of her. Other kids didn’t like Amy. She believed she wore her life on her person, that good kids would look at her and see her mother depressed in bed, Buddy’s angry fingers plucking out “Midnight Rambler” on his expensive electric guitar, Buddy’s new dog cowering in the back of its cage.
“I’m asking,” Dr. McIntosh said, “because I know someone you might like. She’s a young mother with a daughter. Do you ever baby-sit?”
“No,” Amy said. Who would ask her? Besides, Amy wanted only Dr. McIntosh for her friend. He already knew her and didn’t think she was gross. He was kind and funny, and she trusted him.
“It’s my sister-in-law and niece,” Dr. McIntosh said.
Amy gasped. She hadn’t known he had a family! Suddenly she felt curious, excited, and horribly jealous