Gaits of Heaven

coffee. Kevin and Caprice both accepted.
    “The, uh, prescription bottles,” Kevin said, “have the names of a lot of doctors. Maybe you could give me a sort of who’s who.”
    Caprice gave a quirky smile. “It’s a cast of thousands.“
    “Just the M.D.s. The ones who wrote prescriptions.“
    “Let’s see. My mother had an internist. I forget her name. Salzman, maybe. Dr. Salzman. And a dermatologist. A man. I don’t know his name. Her gynecologist. Dr. Cohen. Her therapist, Nixie Needleman. She’s a psychiatrist. M.D. And her psychopharm guy, Dr. Youngman. He’s Ted’s, too. Ted’s therapist is Dr. Tortorello. He’s a psychiatrist, so he probably prescribes. Ted must have a primary-care physician, but I don’t know who that is. Maybe he sees Dr. Salzman, too. And their couples therapist is Dr. Foote. Psychiatrist. I don’t know whether she wrote prescriptions for them, but she could have. Wyeth supposedly goes to a pediatrician, which he hates, but mostly he pretends to go and doesn’t actually see the doctor. His therapist is new. Dr. York. But he’s a psychologist. A few of them can prescribe, but I don’t know if this one does. My therapist is a Ph.D. She doesn’t prescribe. I don’t exactly have a primary. I just go to the University Health Services.” She went on to name three dentists and her mother’s endodontist. “She had a root canal last winter. He could’ve given her painkillers then. That’s all I can think of. Unless you count my mother’s herbalist.“
    “Is that the houseplant lady?”
    “Oh, her. No. She’s a houseplant tutor, to teach my mother to grow plants. Just for decoration. The herbalist prescribes medicinal herbs, not prescription drugs. My mother took a lot of supplements, too. She got most of them from Loaves and Fishes, not from a practitioner. Oh, I forgot the homeopath. But she wasn’t seeing him anymore, anyway.” Kevin looked pale and wide-eyed. I felt sure that until he’d landed in the hospital with a bullet wound and had required a surgeon, he’d had a doctor and a dentist. And that had been it. “Did any of these, uh, practitioners talk to the others? Coordinate?”
    “Probably not. Well, the psychopharm guy, Dr. Youngman, might talk to the individual therapists, I think. But otherwise...? I don’t think so.”
    “So, one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing. Hands. So, it was more like those Hindu goddesses, you know? Like what’s her name, Colleen there, the lady with ten arms.”
    “Kali,” Caprice said.
    “Her. And all the hands got no idea about the prescriptions the others are writing.”
    “Precisely,” said Caprice. “The perfect image.”
    “I got one last question, and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want.”
    “Okay. If I don’t want to answer it, I won’t.”
    “Trauma. I keep hearing about your mother’s trauma history. You want to say anything about that?”
    “It’s no secret,” said Caprice. “Ted wrote about it in his book. He didn’t use my mother’s real name, but it’s her story. Her father was an undertaker. When her mother died, he did the embalming. Her father embalmed her mother. He embalmed his own wife. Or that’s the story Ted tells, anyway.”
     

CHAPTER 17
     
    On the afternoon of Thursday, June 2, the day of her mother’s memorial service, Caprice Brainard goes to the house on Avon Hill that she prefers not to think of as home. She has chosen the time because Ted has told her that this is when he’ll be taking Wyeth out to buy something appropriate to wear to Eumie’s service. Dolfo is next door at George and Barbara’s. The only people in the house are six employees of a cleaning service that has accepted the job because it has never before been hired to clean this dog-dirtied abode. Caprice’s previous departure was hurried; she had time only to grab her notebook computer and throw a few essentials into her backpack and a suitcase. This time she fills two suitcases, which she carries downstairs and out to the street, where I help her to load them into my car. When we reach Steve’s and my house, where she is our guest, I drop her off and leave to run errands.
    Alone in the house, Caprice goes to my study to take advantage of my invitation to use my desktop computer. Obeying the house rules, she is careful to shut the door so that Tracker does not escape. Startled at the entry of a stranger, Tracker leaps off the mouse pad and vanishes. Caprice seats