The Privileges_ A Novel Part 4

"We need a bigger apartment," she whispered. "They can't keep sharing a room forever."

He nodded and reached out his hands to help her to her feet. When she was on the bed in their room he took her shoes off and brought her a couple of Advil and a gla.s.s of water. The room was lit only from outside but she lay back on the pillow with her forearm over her eyes.

"You okay?" Adam asked her. She nodded. Then, because her unguardedness was contagious, as drunk people's often is, he said, "Hey, Cyn, can I ask you something?"

Without moving her arm from her eyes she gestured grandly with her hand, like, Knock yourself out.

"When you go to that shrink," he said, "what do you talk about?"

She grinned. "Not supposed to ask that," she said.

He nodded, though she couldn't see him, and kept lightly stroking her hip with his fingertips. The radiator hissed softly.

"Now," she said, lifting her arm from her face. "Time to show me what you've got. Come on, stud. I knew you'd be good when I saw you in that bar."

She started struggling with her jeans. He stood up beside the bed to help her, and by the time he had them off, she was asleep.

The next morning he took the kids to school and let her stay in bed; he put the note about her mother's phone calls next to the coffeemaker where she'd see it. She scowled; okay, two more Advil and something to eat before I start to deal with that, she thought, but no such luck, at about five minutes to eight the phone rang again. Ruth sounded tense and offended, though that was pretty much par for the course.

"I called three times last night," she said.

"We were out late. Which is why a stranger answered the phone. We got home way past your bedtime."

"Well, anyway, I'm calling because I have a favor to ask you, and as I thought you might have gathered, it's urgent. It's about your sister."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your stepsister, Deborah." Before Cynthia could even think of what to say, Ruth pressed on: "You know she's living in New York-"

"No, I did not know that. I thought she lived in Boston. How would I know where she lives?"

Ruth made a sound of exasperation with which Cynthia was very familiar. "Well, I don't know how you manage not to know these things. Yes, she's been living right there in the same city as you for two years. She's been getting her PhD in art history at NYU."

"That's super for her," Cynthia said, holding the phone with her shoulder as she poured water into the coffeemaker. "So why-"

"She has been," Ruth said, and here her voice slowed down a bit as if she'd hit an obstacle, "she has been having some difficulties. Apparently. I mean we just found out about it. Apparently it involves a man, or anyway that's where it started. A professor of hers."

"How original," Cynthia said. She sat on the windowsill, feeling the metal safety guards against the small of her back.

"But it goes beyond that. She has-there have been-well, she ended up in the hospital, more or less against her will, there were some sort of pills involved, she says it was an accident but apparently some doctor there refuses to see it that way."

"Some doctor where?"

"In Bellevue," Ruth said.

"In Bellevue?" Bellevue?"

"It's not as bad as it sounds. The way it was explained to me, it's just a formality. Warren says it's a liability issue for them. They need to release her to someone, a family member, and so I need you to go down there and get her. The admitting doctor's name is-"

"Whoa," Cynthia said. "Whoa. I am not a part of this. Bellevue? Are you f.u.c.king kidding me?"

"She's your sister!" sister!" Ruth wailed. Ruth wailed.

"She is not my sister. Jesus. We are leaving for Costa Rica in less than a week. Why the h.e.l.l don't you and Warren come get her?"

"Warren is in San Francisco. He'll come get her if he has to, but it would mean another night in that place for her. Who knows what goes on? Even the doctor said she obviously didn't really belong in there. He seemed so nice." The thought of inst.i.tutional niceness in such circ.u.mstances undid Ruth, and she started crying. "Please, Cynthia. Please. It's his only child. Maybe you don't care about her but surely you won't just let someone you know keep suffering if you can stop it. You're not that kind of person."

Her head was pounding. She really needed to eat something soon. An egg sandwich, maybe. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it," she said. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it. All right. Where the f.u.c.k is Bellevue exactly, anyway?"

Ruth gave her the address. "Just a night or two with you," she said, "and she'll be better, maybe well enough to go back to her own place, though they told us she shouldn't try-"

"No way is that happening. She's your problem. And don't hand me that family s.h.i.+t. This is not some sanitarium. I have children here." In the cab down to 27th Street she called Delta and booked Deborah on a flight to Pittsburgh that night. Some two hours later, after she'd filled out every form and then waited in the lobby, which was lit like an autopsy room, for somebody to find somebody else who would sign off on the discharge, the steel door to the ward clicked open and her stepsister walked through. They hadn't seen each other in eight years, but Cynthia, remembering the old hostility in Deborah's eyes, was surprised to see it gone, and nothing else in its place. Probably just the drugs, Cynthia thought. They've got to have some designer s.h.i.+t up in here.

She was thin and pale, and looked very much like someone who had just spent a lot of time throwing up. Like a much more intense version of the hangover Cynthia herself was still fighting down. Her hair was in knots. The great unlikeliness of this moment was actually kind of compelling, but Cynthia tried not to let it show. "So you're on a 7:32 flight to Pittsburgh," she said, but Deborah didn't even break stride, she was in such a hurry to get out of there. Cynthia fell into step alongside her. "They probably won't even let you on the plane looking like this, though. You can come back to our apartment and clean up and borrow something to wear. Do you have to go back to your place for any reason?"

Deborah licked her lips and said hoa.r.s.ely, "No."

"Good. I don't think there's time, anyway."

She sat in the kitchen while Deborah took a shower that lasted a good thirty minutes. Cynthia was torn between irritation-the kids had to be picked up at school at three-fifteen-and nervousness about whatever might be going on in there. Finally Deborah exited in a huge cloud of steam, looking flushed and a little more like herself, though still woefully skinny. Cynthia's jeans barely stayed on her hips; she had a smaller pair but there was no way she was giving those up. "I can't believe you live like this," Deborah said. "That is the nicest shower I've ever been in. You should see my place."

Cynthia looked her over, not listening to what she said. She didn't trust her. In her state she might do anything, and if it happened here, it would become Cynthia's problem. "Come on," she said. "We have to go pick up my kids."

Dalton's lower-school building was a double-wide townhouse just a few blocks away; the early-arriving mothers went into the lobby, where there was a fireplace, to keep warm, but Cynthia and Deborah waited outside at the bottom of the steps for April and Jonas to emerge. Deborah seemed to have some awareness of herself as out of place; she stayed a step behind Cynthia's shoulder and cringed a bit as if trying not to be seen, not just by the kids (whom she wouldn't have recognized anyway) but by anyone. More than half the women out on the sidewalk were nannies, substantial and mostly dark-skinned and sober-looking, talking to one another with their eyes on the door and occasionally laughing without smiling. When April and Jonas appeared on the landing, wrapped tightly in their coats, and walked smiling down the steps toward their mother, Cynthia heard from behind her, softly but unmistakably, a gasp.

"Kids," Cynthia said; and then, just because it was the shortest available explanation, "this is your aunt Deborah."

Their mouths fell open, but they also remembered their manners and held out their hands for Deborah to shake. "I've seen pictures of you," April said, and for a moment Cynthia was surprised. "At Mom and Dad's wedding. You were one of the bridesmaids."

"That would be correct," Deborah said. Cynthia rolled her eyes. Some people had no talent for talking to children at all.

At home the kids watched TV and had a snack, as usual; and Deborah, after sitting silently under the kitchen clock with Cynthia for a few minutes, stood up from the table and went into the living room to join them. Cynthia phoned her mother with Deborah's flight information. "Yes, Mom, she's fine," she said, watching warily through the kitchen doorway. "Perfectly normal. I mean, if a grown woman sitting on the floor eating Goldfish and watching the Disney Channel is normal. Just be there when her flight gets in so she doesn't go AWOL or whatever." When Adam walked through the door, Cynthia stood up, kissed him, and grabbed her keys. "They've eaten," she said to him. "Let me just get my coat and we're out of here." He went into the TV room, and the kids jumped all over him. "Daddy," they yelled, "have you met Aunt Deborah?"

Deborah stood up, brus.h.i.+ng crumbs off her s.h.i.+rt. She and Adam nodded to each other awkwardly. Jonas, holding both his father's hands, walked up his thighs and flipped himself over.

"How's your brother doing?" Deborah said.

Adam's eyebrows went up. "Good," he said. "He's in Los Angeles. I guess I'd forgotten you knew each other. You want me to tell him you said hi?"

"No," she said, as Cynthia reappeared in the doorway behind him and beckoned with one finger.

They hit traffic getting on the FDR at that hour and again once they were over the Triborough. Cynthia started looking nervously at her watch. No way in h.e.l.l they were missing this flight. Suddenly she felt a kind of shudder go through the seat beneath her, and when she turned she saw that Deborah was crying, and shaking with the effort not to make any noise while doing it.

"Oh please," Cynthia said-not to Deborah, exactly, but that was how she took it.

"Please what?" Deborah said angrily, wiping her eyes on her borrowed s.h.i.+rt. "I'm sorry that unhappiness doesn't fit in with your lifestyle. I know you don't give a s.h.i.+t about me but I'd think I'd merit the sympathy a total stranger would, at least. Of course maybe the total stranger would get nothing from you either. I'd forgotten how easy everything's always been for you. I just didn't expect I'd ever feel so jealous of it."

"As I understand it," Cynthia said, "you banged some married professor and what do you know, it turns out he's a liar. Wow, I'm sure you're the first person that's ever happened to. So you forget about it and you move forward. The rest of it is just drama, which should really be your middle name, by the way. You may not respect me but at least I'd respect myself enough not to wind up in the bats.h.i.+t ward."

"What do you know about it? What do you know about anything? You have never suffered a day in your life. You've never not gotten anything you wanted. And now those kids of yours are growing up the same way. Like a little ruling cla.s.s. It's terrifying."

"What did you say to them?" Cynthia said.

"Everything given to them. No idea how fortunate they are. Sweet and content and well bred. Everything as it should be and they have no idea how the other ninety-nine percent lives."

"Hey, you're right," Cynthia said. "I really should try to enn.o.ble them with some early suffering. I really should go back home and take some things away from them. Boy, it's a mystery to me how someone as smart as you has never had a kid of her own."

And when she said that, Deborah stiffened as if she'd been hit; she stopped talking and turned to look out the window; and just like that Cynthia had a pretty good idea what had really happened. They rode the rest of the way to LaGuardia in silence.

"Keep the meter running," Cynthia said to the driver. Deborah, her hand on the door, turned to face her. "I know you only did this because you had to," she said, "but thank you anyway."

"I didn't have to do it," Cynthia said. "Why would I have to do it?"

"Because we're quote-unquote family," Deborah said.

But that's what's so f.u.c.ked up about it, Cynthia thought when she was back in the city-bound traffic on the L.I.E. Everyone thought they could keep playing this family card with her to get her to do what they wanted; the irony was that they had no idea how deeply she bought into the idea they were so cynical about. She believed in it more than any of them. But you didn't get to screw around with definitions, your own or anyone else's. Just because Ruth found some rich guy to get old with, it didn't follow that Cynthia was no longer an only child. And she hadn't heard from her father in the last three years, but that didn't mean he wasn't still her father, or that anybody else was. That was how you kept the whole idea meaningful, and powerful. You kept it small.

But the whole blowup stayed with her, particularly the indictment of her children, or at least of the way she was raising them. That was beyond the pale. Even if you'd spent the previous night in Bellevue, she thought, you should know better than to go there. It wasn't the first time she'd reached the conclusion that, on the subject of children, most people were full of s.h.i.+t. What was supposed to be the point of denying them anything? Who decided that not having things that your parents hadn't had either was character-building somehow? Narcissistic bulls.h.i.+t. Your children's lives were supposed to be better than yours: that was the whole idea. And what was the point of getting hung up on how much things cost? You were expected to complain when things were, or seemed, more expensive than they should be: braces, for instance, which their dentist said both kids were eventually going to need. Fifteen grand, probably, before that was all over. But the fact was they could afford it. They spent sixty thousand dollars a year just to send their kids to school and they could afford that too. They knew or observed plenty of people-in their neighborhood, in their own building-richer than they were; still, they already had much more money than Cynthia had ever seen as a kid, even during the flush times. In fact the very notion of "flush times" was one that Cynthia did not care to revisit. And as far as the kids' characters being shaped by money, it was clearly untrue because money itself was one area where you saw the fundamental differences between them. The two of them fought less and less as time went on; there was little ground for compet.i.tion or envy because they just didn't want the same things. April was a thoroughly social animal, obsessed with preteen perks and downright lawyerly when it came to the question of their early acquisition. She'd been given her own cell phone this year, because that was a safety issue; but just last week Cynthia had bought her a pair of Tory Burch shoes for Christmas-to be honest, it thrilled her somewhat, just on the level of pride in her daughter's precociousness, that April had even asked for them-and before that there'd been a kind of mini-scandal at school when some kids she knew in the grade ahead of hers were caught trying to pay for lunch at Serendipity with a parent's credit card. You could hold them off for a while, but any parent knew that it wasn't about possessing all these things so much as it was about asking to be trusted, to be let into the world a little more, and in that light Cynthia couldn't see the argument for saying no to very much. That the lines should stay open, that she should always be the first person April would come to about anything and everything-that was the important consideration, and she wasn't going to risk losing her daughter's confidence over something as stupid as other people's b.i.t.c.hy judgments of her privileges. She knew April already had a bit of a mean-girl rep at school, but as far as Cynthia was concerned, wailing over that kind of natural social stratification was more about the mothers' egos than the kids'. April could handle herself just fine. In truth Cynthia couldn't help but be a little impressed by the fantastic amount of ingenuity April put into appearing two or three years older than she was. The great irony, of course, was that Jonas's complete lack of interest in whatever his own peers were doing or buying or watching made him seem like he was about forty years old.

But there was no getting out of certain forms of sibling togetherness; she had to take them to see that dentist again before they left for Costa Rica, for instance, and even though April was furious about having to miss ballet, Cynthia had made this appointment six months ago and if they missed it this huckster was booked until summer. She picked them up at school, and even though they were running late they had to take the subway instead of a cab, because for the past three weeks Jonas's homeroom teacher had been doing a unit about conservation and air pollution and if Cynthia had to hear another word about the f.u.c.king ozone layer she was going to scream. They crossed 87th and at the storefront gap that led to the subway entrance they found themselves converging with a guy pus.h.i.+ng a baby in a stroller-actually not a baby at all, Cynthia saw, more like three years old, a kid who, by virtue of still being strollered around at that age, was clearly running the show. Beautiful boy, though. The father was a good-looking guy too, very expensively tousled. All four of them did that little no-you-go-first dance at the top step, and even though it only took a second, Cynthia was suddenly conscious of impatient people mustering behind them.

"Sorry," she said to the dad, "you go ahead," and she smiled before she realized that he was not even looking at her but instead, uncertainly, down the steps themselves. She had a vestigial memory of p.i.s.sing off rude strangers while pus.h.i.+ng April around in one of those strollers, and also a mother's instinctive a.s.sumption that men are overmatched by small children. "Guys, go on downstairs," she said to April and Jonas. "Not through the turnstile." She turned back to the father with her most prim smile as other commuters swirled into the open lane created by the kids' departure and said, "Can I give you a hand carrying the pasha here?" Suddenly his eyes seemed to focus on her, and he gave her a very winning smile, though without nodding or shrugging or otherwise acknowledging that she'd spoken. He did not even seem to notice the swarm of hostile strangers struggling to get past him, which was an admirable quality, Cynthia thought. Or maybe there was something wrong with him.

"Yes, thanks," he said at last. "That's really nice of you."

He didn't move and so she went around to the front of the stroller and picked up the strap between the front wheels, even though that meant she would be the one backing down the stairs. He lifted his end by the handles and they started down slowly.

"So you've obviously been in my position before," he said. "Beautiful kids."

She smiled, looking down at her feet for the next step. In front of her, the little boy's eyes opened slightly.

"Easy to see where they get it from," the father said.

"Thanks. Well, you too. He's a knockout."

"So, I guess this is like the meet-cute," he said, and she laughed, even if she didn't quite know what he meant. People flowed all around them. She tried to find April and Jonas but couldn't turn her head far enough to see them. "My name's Eric, by the way," he said.

"Cynthia."

"Hey Cynthia?" he said. He bent from the waist, and so she knew she was almost at the bottom step. She had to lean forward suddenly just to hear him. "This was so nice of you. Look, this is going to sound bizarre, but do you live in this neighborhood? I would hate to think that I'll never see you again. You are a really beautiful woman."

"I'm sorry?" Cynthia said.

"I can't believe I said that," Eric said, and it seemed exactly like he was telling the truth. He was probably an unemployed actor. His wife was probably some corporate lawyer who felt guilty for not spending more time with her son, while her husband spent his afternoons in the playground collecting phone numbers from au pairs.

They were now both standing on the cement floor inside the station, still holding the stroller between them, a couple of feet off the ground. People hustling down the stairs brushed past them as if they weren't even there. She knew that the longer she just stood there, the more emboldened he would become. She could feel herself turning red.

"Do you do this a lot, Eric?" she said.

He knew how to stare into a woman's eyes, that was for sure. "I know I'm being insanely forward," he said, "but I'm not sorry, because two more seconds and I was never going to see you again. I know you're married. I'm married too. It doesn't have to be about that."

What? she kept saying to herself, as if she were deaf to whatever she was thinking. she kept saying to herself, as if she were deaf to whatever she was thinking. What? What? His son's eyes were half open and on her, as expressionless as if he had just sentenced her to death. It made Eric himself seem like some sort of superman to know that on some level he'd forgotten that the boy was even there. His son's eyes were half open and on her, as expressionless as if he had just sentenced her to death. It made Eric himself seem like some sort of superman to know that on some level he'd forgotten that the boy was even there.

She put her end of the stroller gently on the floor and turned and walked away as fast as she could. Jonas and April were standing by the nearest turnstile with that look of infinite sarcastic indulgence kids always wore when they had to wait for you. Cynthia panicked for a moment, thinking that they would surely ask her what all that was about and knowing she was still too rattled to make up an answer; but they didn't say a word, they couldn't have cared less. They turned and ran their MetroCards through the slot and walked ahead of her down the steps to the express track.

Cynthia was neither offended nor flattered, really-mostly she just thought it was hilarious. She couldn't wait to tell Adam about it. It did bother her a little bit to think that this kind of unsanctioned activity went on without her, that she was not a part of it, even though she had no desire to be be part of it-married strangers hooking up in earshot of their kids. Who knew? Maybe this sort of decadence went on all the time. There was a time when she might have at least led the guy on a little bit just to shock herself, when anything that new to her would have presented itself in the form of a hypothetical dare. part of it-married strangers hooking up in earshot of their kids. Who knew? Maybe this sort of decadence went on all the time. There was a time when she might have at least led the guy on a little bit just to shock herself, when anything that new to her would have presented itself in the form of a hypothetical dare.

"Earth to Mom," Jonas said. A train was already there at the express platform, its doors just sliding open, and the kids had quickened their steps to catch it. She ushered them along in front of her, where she could see them; when the doors opened, they stepped inside, and then a voice from on board the train roared, "Hold the door!" She heard a ticking sound; it was the cane of a blind man, white-haired, wearing an old blue blazer, a baseball cap, and enormous wraparound sungla.s.ses. He seemed angry about something, or at someone. "Hold the door!" door!" he yelled again, though someone, not Cynthia, was already holding it. His cane swung incautiously at about ankle level, swatting the base of the seats, the pole at the center of the car, the door frame, and people's legs. She couldn't tell whether he was actually orienting himself this way or just panicking. She took another step back, to avoid the cane's arc-not because she feared it would hurt, but because she didn't want to send the man any kind of false information-and then it happened: the doors closed with their two-note chime, and she was on the platform and they were on the train, and as it pulled out she saw the look of terror on Jonas's face, though he might well have been terrified mostly of her, banging her hands on the gla.s.s and screaming he yelled again, though someone, not Cynthia, was already holding it. His cane swung incautiously at about ankle level, swatting the base of the seats, the pole at the center of the car, the door frame, and people's legs. She couldn't tell whether he was actually orienting himself this way or just panicking. She took another step back, to avoid the cane's arc-not because she feared it would hurt, but because she didn't want to send the man any kind of false information-and then it happened: the doors closed with their two-note chime, and she was on the platform and they were on the train, and as it pulled out she saw the look of terror on Jonas's face, though he might well have been terrified mostly of her, banging her hands on the gla.s.s and screaming Wait Wait.

Even before she'd reached the end of the platform the train was moving too fast for her, and there she was, watching the train lights shrinking away from her down the tunnel. She couldn't turn away from it. She could feel that the strangers behind her had stopped moving too: nothing was moving anymore but that train. "You got kids on that train?" a voice said behind her, a young voice, a man's voice. Misfortune made everyone familiar with you. "How old are they?"

Cynthia turned around and tried to answer but could not. She could actually see a black circle forming at the edges of her own vision.

"Go to the booth and ask for a transit cop," the young man said-he was wearing a huge Knicks jersey. "You "You go," someone else said to him contemptuously. "You're going to send this woman up the stairs? You can't see she's about to pa.s.s out as it is?" Over their heads she heard a gathering roar, and she thought at first she was fainting but it was a real roar, there was another express train pulling in beside them. Two people were holding her gently by the elbows. The children had disappeared into a tunnel: it didn't seem real. "What's your name?" an older woman's voice said. go," someone else said to him contemptuously. "You're going to send this woman up the stairs? You can't see she's about to pa.s.s out as it is?" Over their heads she heard a gathering roar, and she thought at first she was fainting but it was a real roar, there was another express train pulling in beside them. Two people were holding her gently by the elbows. The children had disappeared into a tunnel: it didn't seem real. "What's your name?" an older woman's voice said.

Cynthia got on the first car of the train and groped her way to the locked front door that faced forward into the darkness. She understood it was a stupid idea but the logic of the situation was all dream logic now and she didn't feel there was anything to discuss. The children's fear filled every cell of her. She had to go find them. She had to put her face flat against the gla.s.s in order to see past her own reflection, even though there was nothing to see for a long time but the track and the steelwork that held open the tunnel and the ghostly local stations they sped through without stopping. Finally she felt the train slowing down beneath her feet and the lights of the platform at 59th Street floated toward her. She burst out onto the platform and only then did it occur to her that there was no real reason to think that the kids had gotten off here at all, maybe they were still crying on the train as it continued on its long loop beneath the city, but then she saw a cop farther down the platform and the cop had his hands on two children's shoulders and the two children were April and Jonas.

"You're here?" here?" the cop said, not very sympathetically. "I just radioed 86th Street to look for you there. That wasn't real smart, getting on another train." The kids were staring at her with the blank expression of kids overhearing their parents fight. Even an hour later Cynthia couldn't remember much about how she got them back up the stairs and into the bright street and into a cab and back home, but she didn't recall any of them saying a word the entire way. the cop said, not very sympathetically. "I just radioed 86th Street to look for you there. That wasn't real smart, getting on another train." The kids were staring at her with the blank expression of kids overhearing their parents fight. Even an hour later Cynthia couldn't remember much about how she got them back up the stairs and into the bright street and into a cab and back home, but she didn't recall any of them saying a word the entire way.

She made Adam sleep in the kids' room that night, so they could both stay in the big bed with her. The next day she kept them both home from school. Adam was a little surprised but put it down to erring on the side of caution: they were quieter than usual, it was true, but it was hard to tell-even for April and Jonas themselves-how much of their anxiety was still their own and how much of it came from being treated so solicitously, as if something terrible had happened to them. He told them both how proud of them he was for being so brave and for being smart enough to ask for help from a police officer, just like they should have. He said that anytime they wanted to talk about yesterday, he was there for them; but that was not Cynthia's approach. She sat the kids down together and asked them what questions they had, about what had happened yesterday, and about why Mommy hadn't gotten on the train with them, and when they came up with nothing, she took that as evidence of how traumatized they were, how quickly you had to act before what was in them buried itself so deeply you were never going to get it out again. She let them return to school the next day but was so worried for them that she sat them down to talk again as soon as they got home, just to compensate in case she'd made a mistake. That night April woke up sobbing from a nightmare. Ten minutes later both kids were sleeping beside their mother and Adam was curled up in Jonas's short bed watching the shadows, awake but too tired to get up and turn the nightlight off.

By the weekend, they seemed to have gotten past it; they were a little less clingy, and that uncharacteristic wide-eyed silence in which Adam or Cynthia would sometimes come upon them diminished and then was gone. They went to the Radio City Christmas show and packed for the trip to Costa Rica and ate at 3 Guys and it all seemed behind them.

But Cynthia was unconvinced. Every night she postponed Adam's sleep demanding to know what more he thought they should do about it. He tried his best to say all the properly sympathetic things; he was pretty sure that the suffering she ascribed to them was really her own, but the great thing about Cynthia was that no matter how stressed she might get, she always returned to her own center, somehow, if you had the patience to just let it happen. But when she told him Wednesday night that she had called Dalton to ask if they could recommend a psychiatrist who specialized in treating children with PTSD-and that not only was there such a person but she had already made an appointment with him-Adam started to wonder whether the whole thing was getting out of hand.

"In a few days," he said soothingly, "we'll all be sitting on the beach, and we'll have a new perspective on everything. Them too."

They were whispering because though the kids had been put to bed down the hall hours ago, you never knew.

"Not so much," Cynthia said. "I called the resort tonight and canceled our reservation."

He struggled up onto his elbows and stared at her.

"The plane tickets weren't refundable. Sorry about that. But I told the kids and they're fine with it. We'll have Christmas at home for once. It won't kill us. I just don't feel like being in a strange place right now."

She started crying.

"But something has to change around here," she said. "Something has to start getting better. You can't just do nothing."

"It will. Things are going great." It was true, and yet even as he said it he could feel himself starting to panic. "Bonuses are this week, you know. It's only going to get better for us."

"I know it. But time doesn't mean the same thing to you and me anymore, you know? You're all like, in ten years we'll have everything we want, and in the meantime I feel like I need binoculars just to be able to see to the end of the f.u.c.king day."

"Look," he said pleadingly, "I don't blame you for being upset about what happened, but isn't there another way of looking at it? I mean, April and Jonas knew what to do. They did exactly the right thing. In a way it should make you worry less. Plus, I don't want to make light of it or anything, but it's New York. You can't protect them from everything."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't live here, then," she said.

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"