The Lesson of Her Death

parole.
    Diane had found a psychiatrist cartoon in a magazine and cut it out for Dr. Parker. It showed a little fish sitting in a chair holding a notebook. Next to him was a huge shark lying down on a couch and the little fish was saying to the shark, “Oh, no, it’s perfectly normal to want to eat your psychiatrist.” Diane kept studying the cartoon and not getting it. But the expression on the face of the shark was so funny she broke out in laughter.
    Which wasn’t as loud as the laughter that escaped from Dr. Parker’s mouth when she looked at the clipping. Maybe the woman
did
have a sense of humor after all. Dr. Parker pinned the cartoon up on her bulletin board. Diane felt ecstatic, as if she’d been given a gold star at school.
    Sarah was in the waiting room. Dr. Parker had asked to see Diane first today. By herself. This troubled Diane, who wondered what kind of bad news the woman had to report. But seeing the doctor laugh, she sensed this was no crisis. As Dr. Parker rummaged through her desk Diane told her about Ben Breck.
    “Breck? I think I’ve heard of him. Let’s look him up.” She spun around in her chair and found a huge book. She opened it and flipped through. “Ah, here we go. He’s forty-one.… Impressive. Summa cum from Yale, ditto an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. Ph.D. in education from Chicago. He’s taught at a number of IvyLeague schools. Currently tenured at Chicago. Published extensively in the journals. Visiting at Auden, is he? Lucky you.”
    “So I should take him up on it?”
    “Cheap tutoring from an expert. I’d say there isn’t much of a choice there.”
    “I’ve already told him I would.”
    “I think you’ll see some dramatic improvements in Sarah.” The doctor looked at her watch. “This session will be very short, Mrs. Corde. A few minutes with you, a few with Sarah. I’m not going to charge you for the time.”
    “My horoscope for this month must’ve said, ‘You will meet two generous therapists.’”
    Dr. Parker’s sense of humor had been spent on the cartoon; she ignored the pleasantry and dug again with some irritation into the bottom of her desk drawer. Finally she extracted a small black box.
    The doctor said, “You’re going to see Sarah carrying this around with her. Tell your husband and son to leave it alone. Don’t touch it, don’t listen to it, don’t ask her about it. Unless she says something first.”
    Diane asked the most innocuous question she could think of. “Is it a tape recorder?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What’s it for?”
    “I’m going to reconstruct Sarah’s self-esteem.”
    “How?”
    She answered tersely, “Sarah’s going to write a book.”
    Diane smiled, a reflex. Then she decided that the joke was in poor taste and she frowned. Dr. Parker pushed the recorder, a blank cassette and an instruction book toward Diane, who scooped them up and held them helplessly. When the doctor said nothing more Diane said, “You’re not joking, are you?”
    “Joking?” Dr. Parker looked as if Diane were the one making the tasteless comment. “Mrs. Corde, I’d think you’d know by now I rarely joke.”

    Diane Corde believed that the perfection of children’s fingers was proof that God existed and she thought of this now watching her daughter hold the tape recorder, examining it with some small suspicion and turning it over in her pale hands. Diane unfolded a tattered copy of the instruction manual and took the recorder back. She set it on the living room coffee table. In her left hand she held two AA batteries and a new cassette.
    “I think we should …” She examined the instruction sheet.
    “Lemme,” Sarah said.
    Diane read. “We have to—”
    “Lemme.”
    Click, click, click
. “There.”
    Diane looked down. Sarah had the machine running and was pressing the Play and Record buttons simultaneously, saying, “Testing, testing.”
    “How did you do that? Did you read the instructions?”
    Sarah rewound the tape and pressed another button. Diane’s tinny voice repeated, “…
read the instructions?”
    “Mom, come on. Like, it’s easy.” She looked at the recorder then back up to her mother. “Dr. Parker wants me to make up stories and put them in my book.”
    “That’s what she said.”
    “I don’t know what to write about. Maybe Buxter Fabricant?”
    “I think Dr. Parker would like to hear that story. He’s the dog that became president, right?”
    “I like Buxter—” Sarah scrunched her