The Lesson of Her Death

you?”
    “I like small towns.”
    “Small towns.” Diane nodded. A long moment of silence. “Well, it is a small town. That’s true.”
    Dr. Parker said, “When you called you mentioned your daughter. Why don’t you tell me about her.”
    Diane’s mind froze. “Well.”
    The doctor’s pen hovered, ready to scoot along the paper, dragging the eighteen-karat bracelet behind.
    Diane blurted, “Our Sarah’s been having some problems in school.”
    “How old is she?”
    “Nine.”
    “And how many months?”
    “Uh, six.”
    “That’s fifth grade?”
    “Fourth. We held her back a year.”
    “Tell me about her problem.”
    “She’s a smart girl. She really is. Some of the things that come out of her mouth …” Examples vanished from Diane’s mind. “But she has this attitude.… And she’s lazy. She doesn’t try. She won’t do her homework. She fails her tests. I was reading this book?
Your Hidden Child.”
She paused, waiting for Dr. Parker to approve the paperback. The doctor lifted her eyebrows quizzically, which gave Diane the impression she didn’t think much of the book. “It said that children sometimes behave badly because they want attention.”
    “You said she’s smart. Do you know her IQ?”
    “I don’t remember,” Diane said, flinching. This was something she should have looked up. “I’m sorry. I—”
    “It doesn’t matter. We can get it from the school.”
    “But she acts hostile, she acts stupid, she has temper tantrums. And you know what happens? She
gets
attention. I think that’s a lot of why she seems to be slow. We have another child—Sarah’s the second—so we think that she feels jealous. Which is crazy because we spend lots of time with her. Much more than we do with Jamie. I don’t let her get away with it. I don’t put up with any nonsense from her. But she doesn’t listen to me anymore. It’s like she tunes me out. So what I’d like you to do is talk to her. If
you
tell her—”
    “Has she ever seen a therapist or counselor about this?”
    “Just a counselor at her school. The New Lebanon Grade School. He recommended that book to me. Then I talked to our pediatrician about it. Dr. Sloving? He’s an expert with children?”
    Dr. Parker apparently did not engage in the practice of confirming parents’ opinions. She looked at Diane pleasantly and said nothing.
    “Anyway we went to Dr. Sloving and he prescribed Ritalin for her.”
    “For attention deficit?”
    This gave Diane a burst of relief, thinking that at least dottering old Sloving had diagnosed the problem correctly.
    Dr. Parker continued, “Was she behaving in an unruly way, overly active? Any compulsive behavior—like washing her hands frequently?”
    “Oh, she’s restless a lot. Jittery. Always running around. Nervous. She drives me to distraction.”
    “Did Dr. Sloving give her any psychological testing?”
    “No. He took a blood sample.” Diane was blushing and looked away from the doctor. “But he’s known herall her life.… I mean, he
seemed
to think it was the best form of treatment.”
    “Well,” said stern Dr. Parker, “if attention deficit is the diagnosis what brings you to see me?”
    “I think the medicine’s working.” Diane hesitated. “But not too well. In fact sometimes I don’t think it does any good, to be honest with you. It makes her very, I don’t know, spacy at times. And it upsets her stomach and seems to make her more jittery. She says it gives her the tummy squabbles.” She looked down at her hands and found to her astonishment that her knuckles were white as ivory. “The truth is she seems to be getting worse. Her grades are still terrible. Yesterday she tried to run away. She’s never done that before. And her temper tantrums are more violent too. She talks back more than she ever did. She also talks to herself.”
    “Let me ask you a few things.…”
    An avalanche of questions followed. Diane tried to understand where the doctor was headed. But it was useless; just when Diane would think she understood what the doctor had in mind, she would throw a curve.
    “Does she watch much TV?”
    “Two hours in the evening, only when her homework’s done. Actually she likes movies more. She thinks most sitcoms and commercials are stupid. She calls them yucky.”
    A miniature smile made a reappearance. “I’m inclined to agree. Go on.”
    “She pretends she doesn’t learn things quickly.… I know she’s, I don’t want to say,