The doctor leaned back in her chair and took a sip of tea. “Well, I hope this doesn’t come down to having to take sides. I don’t really know the father…”
“I think it will be more a matter of your impressions of Kennedy.”
“Yes, well, I’d have to be truthful, obviously.”
Silver didn’t like the way this was starting. “Of course.”
“Kennedy has a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder that is brought about by an inability to process stress in an appropriate manner. She was deeply disturbed. What we worked out was that it was directly related to separation anxiety — not in the traditional sense, but anxiety brought about by having her parents split up and her going from living in a two parent home to a single parent home.”
“That was a difficult time for everyone. But we’re past it now, right?”
“Well, yes and no. We’ve channeled her stress into a more normalized response mechanism, so she’s no longer pulling her hair and eyelashes out. But I suspect it’s still latent at some level. She did say that she wishes she had more time with you — I remember the last few sessions that was a big topic. From her standpoint, she feels like she only sees you for a few hours at night. It probably is exaggerated, but to hear her talk, she spends the day in school, then the afternoon into the evening at daycare, with only a sliver of time at night, where you eat, and then she plays on the computer or does schoolwork.”
Silver bristled. “Like with most single parents, it’s hard to juggle a career and raise a kid…”
“I understand. But that isn’t my place to judge. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can. I can only work with what she told me, and try to help her come up with coping mechanisms.”
“Half the households in the country have single parents fighting the same battles. It’s not like it’s unique to me.”
“No, but for your daughter, the important thing isn’t what everyone else does. It’s how she perceives her reality, which she views as being precarious because her family stability was suddenly upended.”
“Because her father was screwing everything in a skirt.”
“Look, Silver. I’m not the enemy here. I’m not questioning whether your marriage was a good one or not, or who did what to whom. I’m just telling you that your child has had a very rough emotional time of it, and that’s what my report will have to say. I can’t lie.”
“I’m not asking you to. But he’s going to try to make it sound like a life with him and his new trophy wife-to- be would be better for Kennedy than being with her own mom.”
The doctor regarded Silver over her bifocals. “Honest question for you. How many waking hours a week do you think you spend with Kennedy? Counting weekends?”
Silver thought about it. “She’s with her dad at least one day a week on weekends, so that’s not really fair.”
“Does he usually pick her up the night before and drop her off the next night? Or does he only get her for the day?”
“I try to accommodate him. Lately, he’s been getting her the night before. Eric says it’s easier to plan things in the morning if she’s already with him, and she seems to enjoy her sleepovers…”
“Let’s break it down. How many waking hours?”
“We have breakfast every morning…”
“She gets herself ready when she wakes up?”
“Yes. She has her little routine while I’m doing Yoga for half an hour. She’s been very insistent about being independent for about a year now.”
“So then you have breakfast, and…you take her to school? How long total together?”
“At least an hour.”
“Fine. Then you get her from daycare at…”
“I try to be there by five — five thirty.”
“She said she’s often there until after it closes. What time is that?”
“Oh, please. That was then — I had a case I was working that was demanding a lot out of me,” Silver insisted.
“Right. And do you have a case that’s demanding a lot out of you now?”
Silver bristled. “It’s been a rough couple of months.”
“You’re with the FBI. Would it be fair to say you often have cases that place demands on you?”
“Doctor. All jobs have their responsibilities. This one as much as any.”
“No question. In fact, I’d imagine being a special agent would be more demanding than, say, being a schoolteacher or working in an office. So what time does daycare close?”
“Officially? Six is when the doors close.”
“And do you ever leave her there longer? She seemed to make it sound like that was the case on a routine basis.”
“I try not to.”
“Silver, I’m sure you try as hard as you can. So let’s say you pick her up, on a regular basis, at, what, six o’clock? What time do you have her in bed?”
“Her cutoff time to be asleep is nine o’clock. She’s a cranky kid if she doesn’t get adequate sleep.”
“And does she have a routine at night? Tooth brushing? Preparing her stuff for the next day?”
“Of course.”
“And how long would you say that takes, on average?”
“No more than half an hour.” The sinking feeling in the pit of Silver’s stomach was becoming a kind of free fall.
“And she mentioned that she does homework every night? How long does that take, do you think?”
“Perhaps an hour or two.” Silver saw where the math was going. “Sometimes she doesn’t go to sleep until nine thirty.”
“Right. And sometimes you don’t pick her up until well after closing time. I’m just trying to get an idea here. Whoever your husband has working on this will be doing the same math. The way it looks to me, you spend an hour in the morning with her, and an hour or two in the evening. An entire day on the weekend is gone, so assuming she’s up at seven on Saturday and spends all day with you, no computers or friend visits or anything, you spend something like twelve hours a week with her during the week, and twelve on the weekends — although she did mention that you often bring work home with you on the weekends.”
Silver didn’t respond.
“When he picks her up, say, on a Saturday,” the doctor looked at Silver with a calculating expression, “does he generally get her before, or after, dinner?”
“Lately, he’s been taking her to dinner the night before.”
“And when he brings her home?”
“After dinner the next night.”
“I think Kennedy’s father could truthfully state he spends almost as much time with her already in one day as you do in an entire week. If she gets picked up before dinner time the night before and gets back after dinner the next evening, he’s spending, oh, a total of fifteen to sixteen hours of total quality time — three the night before, and twelve the next day. Looking at your numbers, you spend around twenty-four — a grand total of eight more hours a week with Kennedy than he does.” She took another sip of her tea, and might as well have said, ‘I rest my case’.
“But that’s so unfair. It doesn’t reflect reality.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Silver fought a feeling of sudden claustrophobia. “Doctor, what is your report going to say? Because you know they’re going to need one.”
“Yes, I expect they will. I’ll try to be as fair as possible, Silver, and skirt the weekly hours issue unless directly instructed to address it. But you might want to take a look at the hard numbers and consider your life with your daughter in that light. I’m saying that for both of your sakes.”
Back on the street, Silver felt like she had just gone ten rounds wrestling a bear. She’d been shot yesterday and had killed a man, and yet this was more traumatic. She was beginning to see why Eric thought he had a better than fair chance of prevailing. And she knew that if they took statements from Miriam, which was a given, even if she stretched the truth in Silver’s favor, she wasn’t crafty enough to know whether she was helping or hurting. That
