asks, parent to parent, what you think of the school system here in this secluded corner of the White Mountains, since of course she has a girl only three grades behind Hallie and Garnet. Finally she gets around to the issue that matters most to Emily-the reason Valerian is here. She glances ever so slightly at your stomach, barely moving her head. It’s all done with her eyes.
“Tell me about the other night,” she asks.
“Well, without wanting to be glib, there are at least two ‘other nights’ that didn’t end well. There was the night when the girls had a friend over for dinner and a playdate and I wound up in the hospital. And then there was last night, when Garnet found a human skull and jawbone in the basement. Which?”
“Let’s start with the night of the playdate. What do you recall of your accident?”
You think about this. She said accident without a trace of sarcasm. Good for her. And so you tell her, as you have told others, about having Molly over for dinner. How you and Emily asked Molly a lot of questions about what she liked about the school and what she didn’t. She seemed like a good kid. A nice kid. Then you pause, recalling where everyone sat around the table in the dining room. There once again is Molly’s face, her elbow on the table and a fork balanced on the ends of her fingers. Behind her, on the wall, is one of those menacing sunflowers.
“I’m sure she is a good kid,” Valerian agrees, and the sound of her voice brings you back. “Go on.”
And so you do. “I felt we were running out of hot water after we ate,” you hear yourself saying, “which didn’t make any sense. One extra set of dishes? Oh, please. Besides, we were just putting the plates in the dishwasher.”
“What did you have for dinner?”
“It was all very easy. Mexican food. Rice. Beans.”
“Where were the girls?”
“By then they were out in the greenhouse. Hallie and Garnet view it as their playhouse.”
“A waste,” she says, and you can’t decide if she is kidding.
“They’ve had their dolls out there ever since we arrived.”
“Well, they’ll outgrow that soon enough,” she adds, as if she is trying to reassure you. “So, you and your wife were washing the dishes in the kitchen.”
“Yes. And the water felt lukewarm to me,” you explain, and then you tell her about the pilot light and going downstairs with the knife in your hands, and how you must have fallen down the wooden steps. You add that everything after that is now a bit of a fog. You shrug, hoping the motion does not appear theatrical.
“Did you hear Emily calling for you?”
“Not for a long while. Emily thinks that maybe I knocked my head and was unconscious for a few minutes. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Sure.”
“Anyway, when I did hear her, I started back up the stairs, and the next thing I know, I’m in the kitchen and I’m covered in blood.”
“With the knife inside you.”
“Yes.”
“You never reached the pilot light.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“But you didn’t relight it.”
“I don’t think I did.”
“So it probably wasn’t out,” she says. She seems to be thinking about this, but in reality you understand she is watching you. She is trying to decide if you’re lying. You realize at some point that your shoulders have sagged and you are hunched over with your hands in your lap. Once, a long time ago it seems, you had exceptional posture. You take a breath and sit up straight in your chair, inadvertently pulling at the stitches.
“What shoes were you wearing?” she asks.
“Slippers. Suede moccasins.”
“You’re certain?”
“I am. I always wear those slippers when I’m in for the night in the winter.”
“I like slippers,” she says, writing. You look down at her boots. Leather, small, solid heels. Her skirt is made of denim and falls just about to her knees. Her panty hose-no, these are tights-are black. “I’m just curious, did you ever wear slippers in the cockpit?”
“It’s a flight deck. We call it a flight deck.”
“Not a cockpit?”
“No.”
“Okay. I won’t ask why.”
“You can.”
“No, I’m good.”
“Why would you think we wore slippers while on the flight deck?”
“Well, not when you were actually flying the airplane. But once when I was flying from Philadelphia to Rome, the seat beside me was empty and the captain or the copilot came out and put on a pair of those eyeshades and slippers they give you when you fly and took a nap.”
“You were flying first class.”
“Business. Anyway, I can see you doing that.”
“No, you can’t. I never flew overseas. I flew regional jets.”
“The small ones?”
“Yes. The small ones.” Somehow, even this exchange has left you unsettled. It’s as if you were a failure because you never flew a jet bigger than a CRJ. Did she do this on purpose, too? Again, your mind recalls Reseda and her remark about geese; again, it circles back to the idea that you are being oversensitive.
“Can we talk about 1611?”
“Yes.” And you patiently answer the sorts of questions you have answered for other therapists (in two states), as well as investigators and lawyers and the FAA and the pilots’ union. Finally Valerian asks you if you blame yourself for the deaths of the thirty-nine people on the plane.
“I blame the geese,” you answer simply. “I blame the ferryboat captain who turned his boat too hard too quickly and created that wave. And, yes, I do blame myself.”
“But no one else does…”
“Blames me.”
“Right. The crash wasn’t pilot error. What Sully Sullenberger did was a miracle. You know there isn’t a soul in this world who thinks it’s your fault. You know that, don’t you?”
In this world. You try to decide what that means, because certainly Ethan Stearns views the crash as your fault. So did the families of some of the passengers who died who came to the hearings. You saw it in their faces. Why couldn’t you do what Sully Sullenberger did? they seemed to be asking. And you can feel Ethan’s presence right now, right here in the kitchen, in the way the top of your head is starting to throb. And although you try to restrain yourself, you can’t help but turn around in your seat-and there he is. He is in the doorway to the dining room, framed by those ghoulish sunflowers, and he is glaring at you. Shaking his head in disgust. And this only makes the pain in your skull worsen, and you fear that while this doctor is sitting across from you it might become the searing, white-light agony you have experienced around Ethan in the past.
She deserves friends. Do what it takes.
“Chip?”
You rub your eyes. You turn around. “I’m sorry,” you tell Valerian, wondering how it is that only you know Ethan is here with you. Valerian seems to be staring right at him.
“You looked a little peaked there,” she says. “A midafternoon sugar low?”
“I guess. My head hurts.”
She sighs. “Feverfew and cayenne,” she tells you. “I have just the tincture. Sadly, I have just the tincture at home. In the meantime, have another cupcake. You’ll feel so much better. I promise.” And she hands you another of those remarkable confections.
