Gaits of Heaven

someone’s husband’s pop psychology self-help book. It’s possible that she did realize that. Maybe she never said a word to him about me. Or to anyone else. But I know she talked about other clients. Not only to her husband. To Avon Hill parents, among others. And I know why she did it. She wanted to feel important. Who doesn’t? So, if someone’s name came up, a big name, obviously, she’d let it slip that she couldn’t talk about him or that she knew things she couldn’t say, stuff like that. Not that she came right out and said that these people were in treatment with her. But she might as well have. And then there was this conference where Ted Green, her husband, gave a talk, maybe two months ago, and supposedly the cases he described were composites or some such—he didn’t use real names, at least—but the mother of a friend of my daughter’s, the mother of one of her classmates, told me that these people were very easy to identify. At least for people in Cambridge. And that one of them was a patient of Eumie Brainard-Green’s. Not Ted Green’s. Hers. And Ted Green is apparently writing a second book.”
    Rita says nothing about the narcissism evident in her patient’s fantasy of being so interesting that Ted Green will be unable to resist the temptation to write about her case, of which, in reality, he may or may not have secondhand information blabbed by his wife. It should also be noted that Rita is not given to corny statements of the form You haven’t mentioned your mother lately. Even so, she does notice crucial omissions. What she says is casual and quite vague: “And Eumie Brainard-Green’s death?”
    “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
    Without making even the most oblique reference in this session. But Rita doesn’t say that, either.
    The patient continues. “When I heard she’d died, the first thing I felt was this incredible relief. That my secrets would go to the grave with her. Unless she’d told her husband. But, really, why should he write about me? I mean, for one thing, I was hardly one of their success stories. My therapy with her was a total failure. I didn’t embrace the concept of trauma and use that to revolutionize my life. I quit therapy with her, I started seeing you, you sent me to Dr. Youngman, and we’re working on how I learn to live with my illness. That doesn’t exactly make me a likely candidate to star in Ted Green’s next book. But I felt relieved anyway. And then I felt guilty. She dies, and my only reaction is that my secrets are safe. What kind of person does that make me? But now I have to wonder. All I did was wish that I’d never told her a thing. But there must be other clients of hers who were more worried than I was. The police think she was murdered, you know. There’s a little paragraph in today’s paper. And I have to wonder whether someone didn’t regret confiding in her even more than I do.”
    It’s all fantasy, of course. Well, most of it. What I know is that Rita had a patient, male or female, who’d been in treatment with Eumie Brainard-Green and who passed on the rumor that Ted Green gave a conference presentation in which two cases were readily identifiable to Cambridge cognoscenti as patients of Eumie Brainard-Green’s.
     

CHAPTER 21
     
    It was after midnight when Caprice and I got home from Ted’s. The malamutes, Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy, were asleep in their crates. Caprice asked whether Lady could stay with her. I was delighted and eventually found Lady, as well as India and my cat, Tracker, on the bed next to Steve, who had left my bedside light on for me. As quietly as possible, I led Lady into the hallway, and she happily trailed after Caprice. When I returned to the bedroom, India was on the floor next to Steve, and Tracker was on his pillow. Her eyes were ever so slightly open and, miraculously, she was purring. When I climbed in bed, instead 01 turning off the light, I took a few moments to enjoy the rare sight of Tracker relaxed and happy. She trusted no one but Steve. My love for him was so strong that I wanted to stroke his face: to feel his cheekbones under my fingertips, to trace his strong jawline. It seemed a magical opportunity to touch the impalpable: although I scoff at the idea of mystical emanations, Steve possessed a magnetism that made even the most frightened creatures feel safe. It seemed to me that he must be emanating the kinds of forces that don’t exist and that if I could have