again. Who the hell? I think—or have I said it? David left an hour ago for a job in East Harlem—I watched him from Ed’s library—and I’m not expecting any deliveries. I stoop, cram the towels against the mess, then march to the door.
Framed within the intercom screen is a tall kid in a slim jacket, hands clasping a small white box. It’s the Russell boy.
I press the Talk button. “Yes?” I call. Less inviting than Hello, more gracious than Who the hell?
“I live across the park,” he says, almost shouting, his voice improbably sweet. “My mom asked me to give you this.” I watch him thrust the box toward the speaker; then, unsure where the camera might be, he slowly pivots, arms orbiting overhead.
“You can just …” I begin. Should I ask him to deposit it in the hall? Not very neighborly, I suppose, but I haven’t bathed in two days, and the cat might nip at him.
He’s still on the stoop, box held aloft.
“… come in,” I finish, and I tap the buzzer.
I hear the lock unbuckle and move to the door, cautiously, the way Punch approaches unfamiliar people—or used to, back when unfamiliar people visited the house.
A shadow piles up against the frosted glass, dim and slim, like a sapling. I shoot the bolts, turn the knob.
He’s tall indeed, baby-faced and blue-eyed, with a flap of sandy hair and a faint scar notching one eyebrow, trailing up his forehead. Maybe fifteen years old. He looks like a boy I once knew, once kissed—summer camp in Maine, a quarter century ago. I like him.
“I’m Ethan,” he says.
“Come in,” I repeat.
He enters. “It’s dark in here.”
I flick the switch on the wall.
As I examine him, he examines the room: the paintings, the cat spread along the chaise, the mound of sodden towels melting on the kitchen floor. “What happened?”
“I had an accident,” I say. “I’m Anna. Fox,” I add, in case he goes in for formalities; I’m old enough to be his (young) mother.
We shake hands, then he offers me the box, bright and tight and lashed with ribbon. “For you,” he says shyly.
“Just set that down over there. Can I get you something to drink?”
He moves to the sofa. “Could I have some water?”
“Sure.” I return to the kitchen, clear up the wreckage. “Ice?”
“No, thanks.” I fill a glass, then another, ignoring the bottle of pinot noir on the counter.
The box squats on the coffee table, next to my laptop. I’m still logged in to the Agora, having talked DiscoMickey through an incipient panic attack a little while ago; his thank-you note is writ large across the screen. “Right,” I say, sitting beside Ethan, setting his glass in front of him. I snap the computer shut and reach for the gift. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
I tug the ribbon, lift the flap, and from a nest of tissue remove a candle—the kind with blooms and stalks trapped inside like insects in amber. I bring it to my face, making a show of it.
“Lavender,” Ethan volunteers.
“I thought so.” I inhale. “I lav lovender.” Try again. “I love lavender.”
He smiles a bit, one corner of his mouth tipping upward, as though tugged by a string. He’s going to be a handsome man, I realize, in just a few years. That scar—women will love it. Girls might love it already. Or boys.
“My mom asked me to give this to you. Like, days ago.”
“That’s very thoughtful. New neighbors are supposed to give you gifts.”
“One lady came by already,” he says. “She told us that we didn’t need such a big house if we’re such a small family.”
“I bet that was Mrs. Wasserman.”
“Yes.”
“Ignore her.”
“We did.”
Punch has dropped from the chaise onto the floor and approaches us gingerly. Ethan leans forward, lays his hand on the rug, palm upward. The cat pauses, then slithers toward us, sniffing at Ethan’s fingers, licking them. Ethan giggles.
“I love cats’ tongues,” he says, as though confessing.
“So do I.” I sip my water. “They’re covered in little barbs—little needles,” I say, in case he doesn’t know the word barb. I realize I’m not certain how to speak to a teenager; my oldest patients were twelve. “Shall I light the candle?”
Ethan shrugs, smiles. “Sure.”
I find a matchbox in the desk, cherry red, the words THE RED CAT marching across it; I remember dining there with Ed, more than two years ago now. Or three. Chicken tagine, I think, and as I recall, he praised the wine. I wasn’t drinking as much then.
I strike a match, light the wick. “Look at that,” I say as a little claw of flame scratches at the air; the glow blossoms, the blossoms glow. “How lovely.”
There’s a soft silence. Punch figure-eights around Ethan’s legs, then vaults to his lap. Ethan laughs, a bright bark.
“I think he likes you.”
“I guess so,” he says, crooking a finger behind the cat’s ear and gently niggling it.
“He doesn’t like most people. Bad temper.”
A low growl, like a quiet motor. Punch is actually purring.
Ethan grins. “Is he an indoor-only cat?”
“He has a cat flap in the kitchen door.” I point to it. “But mostly he stays inside.”
“Good boy,” Ethan murmurs as Punch burrows into his armpit.
“How are you liking your new house?” I ask.
He pauses, kneading the cat’s skull with his knuckles. “I miss the old one,” he says after a moment.
“I bet. Where did you live before?” I already know the answer, of course.
“Boston.”
“What brought you to New York?” I know this one, too.
“My dad got a new job.” A transfer, technically, but I’m hardly going to argue. “My room’s bigger here,” he says, as though the thought has just occurred to him.
“The people who lived there before you did a big renovation.”
“My mom says it was a gut job.”
“Exactly. A gut job. And they combined some of the rooms upstairs.”
“Have you been to my house?” he asks.
“I’ve been a few times. I didn’t know them very well—the Lords. But they had a holiday party every year, so that’s when I’d come over.” It was nearly a year ago, in fact, that I last visited. Ed was there with me. He left two weeks later.
I’ve started to relax. For a moment I think it’s Ethan’s company—he’s soft-spoken and easy; even the cat approves—but then I realize that I’m reverting to analyst mode, to the seesaw give-and-take of Q&A. Curiosity and compassion: the tools of my trade.
And in an instant, for a moment, I’m back there, in my office on East Eighty-Eighth, the small hushed room sunk in dim light, two deep chairs opposite each other, a pond of blue rug between them. The radiator hisses.
The door drifts open, and there in the waiting area is the sofa, the wooden table; the slithering stacks of Highlights and Ranger Rick; the bin brimming