Gaits of Heaven

and said, “Sure. That makes it easy. Kimi’s the one with the Harvard accent.”
    We all laughed. If Caprice was joking about dogs, she was fitting in around here. Also, I have to admit I saw her in a new way. Before, she’d been an object of pity: a young woman whose face was distorted by obesity, a needy daughter whose mother had just died an unnatural death, the victim of her stepbrother’s verbal abuse, and so on. All of a sudden, she was someone with a sharp wit. Furthermore, the little remark she’d made hadn’t been about her obesity and hadn’t been at her own expense; she hadn’t played the role of fat clown. Anyway, the atmosphere abruptly loosened. Instead of issuing stilted, if genuine, assurances to Caprice that there was no need for her to return to Ted’s house, we talked about summer plans. Steve later told me that he’d made the same naive assumption I had, namely, that Caprice was going to attend Harvard Summer School, had a job lined up, or was volunteering somewhere. Her only plan, however, was to see her therapist.
    “All of us were going to go to Wellfleet in August,” she said. “Everyone’s therapist is away then, anyway.”
    “Rita says that they all go to Wellfleet,” I commented. “Rita has our third-floor apartment. She’s a psychologist. You’ll meet her. Anyway, she prides herself in not always going to Wellfleet. Every so often, she goes somewhere else.” Caprice smiled. “Truro. It’s the next town. But I’m not going with Ted and Wyeth. I don’t know what they’ll do. They’re supposed to go to Russia in July. It’s sort of a school trip.”
    I told myself that I’d seen Wyeth at his worst and that he must have redeeming qualities. Even so, it was difficult to imagine him reading Tolstoy and touring the Kremlin.
    “That must be some school,” said Steve, who’d had paying jobs practically since he’d taken his first steps.
    “Avon Hill likes parents to take students to the places they’re learning about. Eumie and I went to Greece the summer before last.” Caprice spoke offhandedly, as if she were mentioning an outing to Salem or Plymouth Rock. “It makes everything real when you’ve actually seen the Parthenon and Delphi and so forth instead of just reading about them. My father was supposed to take me, but he couldn’t. He had an important meeting.”
    “Is your father a therapist, too?” Steve asked.
    Her eyes lit up. “He’s a consultant. He’s mainly in New York, but he travels. He’s here pretty often.”
    I have never been able to figure out precisely what consultants do. Obviously, they consult. But about what? And how do they do it? I always imagine them strolling authoritatively past Dilbert-style cubicles or rows of machinery while making grand pronouncements. The only thing I know for sure about consultants is that they get paid a lot. It sometimes occurs to me when I’m writing my hundredth article about pet-stain removal or flea control that instead of making grand pronouncements on those topics ( Use enzyme products! Or, in the case of fleas, Infestation is easier to prevent than it is to cure!), I, too, could meander through high-tech businesses or low-tech factories while exclaiming, What this organization needs is an incentive plan! Or possibly, Responsive leadership is the key to productivity! I have only the vaguest idea of what an incentive plan is, and for all I know, leadership is totally unrelated to productivity, but I’ve never been convinced that consultants know more than I do. In fact, they almost certainly know nothing about pet-stain removal and flea control, topics on which I am an acknowledged expert.
    I kept my thoughts about Monty Brainard’s profession to myself, of course.
    Caprice went on. “He’ll help me think about what to do now. He might e-mail me tonight. Or call. He just got back to New York today, so he’s probably swamped.”
    “You can use my computer,” Leah volunteered.
    “Thanks, but I have my notebook.”
    “There’s a phone jack in your room,” I told her. We don’t have phone jacks everywhere, but when Rita moved to the third floor, I hooked up my phone line to what had been her phone wiring.
    The absence of dessert was normal enough; it wasn’t part of some sneaky scheme to take weight off Caprice, who had eaten average-size portions of dinner, including only one piece of French bread with a small amount of butter. Furthermore, when she helped Steve, Leah, and me to clear