Saving Elijah

going to ask Kate if she was on the phone. I don't think she was."
    He turned on me, mouth open in a grimace. "Don't you dare impugn my honesty in front of our daughter." He was angrier than I'd ever seen him before.
    I took a step backward in the force of his fury.
    "I am not having an affair, Dinah," he said. "But I'll tell you one thing. If you don't get some help soon, I've had it with this marriage." He went inside the house.
    "Now, there's a good tactic," the demon said, materializing, white under a clear starry sky. "Make it seem as if you're the one who has the problem, when he's the one fucking a virtual teenager every chance he gets."
    It disappeared.
    I stood in the driveway for a few minutes, shaking, then went inside the house. The phone was ringing.
    I heard Kate's voice. "Mom, it's for you."
    I picked up the phone in the mudroom. "Dinah? It's Brian Dawson."
    I knew what my editor wanted. I'd missed another deadline.
    "Dinah, I hate to lose you, but we can't operate this way."
    "I'm really sorry, Brian. I just can't do it anymore. Not right now."
    "Is there anything I can do to help?"
    "No."
    I hung up. I was alone, so alone, and yet I was never alone.

    *    *    *

    "Dinah?" It was Peter again, phoning again. "Did you see Selson?"
    I glanced at the little doctor bear on my shelf. "We were down there a few weeks ago. Thanks. We liked him."
    "Good. That's good. What did he say? Did he concur with Moore?"
    "He did."
    "Has it helped?"
    I sighed. "I guess. But I can't help it, I'm still terrified."
    "I've been thinking about you a lot, Dinah. What you must be going through."
    "No one understands who hasn't been through it." And no one's been through this.
    "Of course not. But I can't get it out of my mind. Once, my son Austin fell off his bike and was knocked out, stayed unconscious for nearly eight hours. I think those were the worst few hours of my life, and for months afterward I feared the worst every time he got on that bike. If I ever lost one of my boys I don't know how I'd go on."
    We met two days later at a decidedly unchic restaurant on tres chic Main Street. For coffee and a chat, I told myself. He was better-looking than I remembered from our brief meeting. We talked about the latest White House scandal, Peter's amicable split from his wife, whose name was Vanessa. I pictured a woman with a hard cold mouth who wears a size four, and has tits with little tiny always-erect nipples like pencil erasers that still point skyward even though she's no spring chicken, either, compliments of Peter's colleague Dr. Saul Saperstein, the best boob man this side of Beverly Hills. He told me about Austin and Raymond, whose names were a little highbrow for my tastes and who attended Choate, which I knew was too highbrow for me. Not that we could afford private boarding school. He showed me a picture of two handsome young boys in matching blue jackets, standing one on either side of him.
    "It would break my heart to send my children away to boarding school," I said.
    He shrugged. "Never thought of it that way. Went to boarding school myself. Besides, if they hadn't gone away they would have lived with her."
    Judging by the way he talked about her, I doubted that his split with his wife was all that amicable. Maybe he was amicable since he wanted to leave, or maybe she broke his heart. What we say to one another is only what we choose to present, or what we know, at any given moment.
    I told him I didn't really want to talk about my marriage, or my husband. I told him a little about my children. I described Kate, my flute-playing beauty.
    "I hate to brag, but her coloring is incredible, auburn hair, blue eyes, real peaches and cream."
    "Not unlike her mother's." He smiled.
    "Thanks, but at this point I think mine is more cider and milk."
    He laughed.
    I told him about Alex—the angry, sullen adolescent who in these last months, during Elijah's illness and its aftermath, took the place of a sweet thoughtful boy who used to kiss me goodnight and wanted me to come to his baseball games and cheer.
    I told him about Elijah, who'd started in a special summer pre-kinder-garten class with a new teacher, Miss Larkin, and was doing remarkably well. He'd mastered the alphabet and was starting to learn how to spell a few words. Last week in Krafty Kids he presented me with a mask made from a mold of his own face. He'd painted it blue and decorated it with white stars. He even came up with a name for it, Blue