Uptown Girl. Olivia Goldsmith
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was not air-conditioned and the breeze from the open window felt good on the back of her neck. Brian, looking intently at her, was sweating, but it could just as easily have been from nerves as from the unseasonable April heat.
Kate sat silently. Silence was an important part of her work, though not something that came naturally. But she had learned that at times stillness and space were all that were needed.
Not today apparently. Brian pulled his eyes guiltily away from hers and looked around the office. Instead of the usual museum reproductions, all of the wall space not covered by bookshelves displayed pictures done by children – some of them very disturbing. Kate watched, waiting to see if Brian’s attention focused on one. Like Rorschach’s ink blot test, artistic expression often helped to open doors. She withheld a sigh. She was trying to wait Brian out but was conscious of their time ticking away and for his sake she needed immediate results. Brian was obviously in crisis. His teacher said he was showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder or even schizophrenia and was disrupting the class. And disruption simply wasn’t allowed at Andrew Country Day School. A private school in a smart neighborhood in Manhattan, it accepted only the best and the brightest – of students and staff. Every amenity was provided, from an indoor swimming pool to a state-of-the-art computer center, to language lessons that included Japanese and French for six-year-olds. That’s why there was a school psychologist. Kate had only gotten the plum job recently, and Brian, like other kids who showed the slightest ‘difficult’ behavior, seemed to be immediately remanded to her office. Nothing was to disrupt the smooth daily ingestion of information by the children of the elite.
‘Do you know why you’ve come here, Brian?’ she asked, her voice gentle. Brian shook his head. Kate rose from her desk, moved around it and sat down in one of the small chairs beside her eight-year-old ‘client’. ‘Can you guess?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, do you think it’s for eating gummy elephants in school?’
He looked at her for a moment then shook his head again. ‘There’s no such thing as gummy elephants.’
‘Gummy rhinos?’ Kate asked. Brian shook his head again. ‘Eating peanut butter and raccoon sandwiches at your desk?’
‘It wasn’t for eating anything,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice to barely a whisper. ‘It was for talking. Talking in class.’
Kate nodded, the pencil fell out of her bun and her hair cascaded down over her face while the pencil clattered to the floor. Brian smiled and actually let a giggle escape before he covered his mouth. Good, Kate thought. She leaned closer to her little patient. ‘You’re not just here for talking in class, Brian. If you were just talking in class, then you’d be sent to the principal’s office, right?’
Brian’s adorable face gazed up at Kate with terrified eyes. ‘Are you worse than the principal?’ he whispered.
Kate felt such empathy for the boy at that moment that she was tempted to take his hand in hers, but he was so very anxious that he might shy away. This kind of work was so delicate – like dealing with Venetian spun glass where the slightest jolt could shatter it – and she often felt so clumsy.
‘Nobody is worse than the principal,’ Kate said. Then she smiled and winked at Brian. None of the kids at Andrew Country Day liked Mr McKay and – as so often – their instincts were good. ‘Do I look as bad as Mr McKay?’ Kate asked, feigning shock.
Brian shook his head vigorously.
‘Well. Thank goodness. Anyway I do something different. You aren’t here to be punished because you didn’t do anything wrong. But everybody hears you talking – even though you’re not talking to anybody.’ She watched as Brian’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I’ll be quieter,’ he promised. Kate wanted to scoop him up onto her lap and let him cry as long as he needed to. After all, his mother had just died of cancer and he was still so very young. Kate’s own mother had passed away when she was eleven, and that had been almost unbearable.
She dared to take one of the boy’s hands in hers and said, ‘I don’t want you to be quiet, Brian. You do what you need to. But I’d like to know what you’re saying.’
Brian shook his head again. His eyes changed from tearful to frightened. ‘I can’t tell,’ he whispered. Then he averted his face. He mumbled something else and Kate only managed to hear one word but it was enough.
Go slow, she told herself. Go very, very slowly and casually. ‘You’re doing magic?’ she asked. Brian, face still turned away, nodded his head, but didn’t speak. Kate was already afraid she had gone too far. She held her breath. Then, after a long moment, she lowered her own voice to a whisper and asked, ‘Why can’t you tell?’
‘Because …’ Brian started, then it burst out of him ‘… because it’s magic and you can’t tell magic or your wish won’t come true. Like birthday candles. Everybody knows that!’ He got up and walked to the corner of the room.
Kate actually felt relieved. The boy wasn’t schizophrenic. He was caught in a typical childhood trap: total powerlessness combined with hopeless longing and guilt. A toxic cocktail. Kate gave Brian a moment. She didn’t want him to feel trapped. Yet he shouldn’t be alone with this pain. She approached him slowly, the way you might move toward a strange puppy. She put her hand on the little boy’s shoulder. ‘Your wish is about your mother, isn’t it?’ she asked, her voice as neutral as she could manage to keep it. Brian didn’t need any of her emotions – he needed space for his own. ‘Isn’t that right?’
Brian looked up at her and nodded. His face registered a cautious relief. The dreadful burdens of childhood secrets always touched Kate. Though she was a long-lapsed Catholic, she still remembered the power and release of the confessional. She had to serve this child well. ‘What are you wishing for?’ she asked, her voice as gentle as she could make it.
Brian began to cry. His face, usually so pale, flushed deep rose. Speaking through his tears, he said, ‘I thought if I just said “Mommy, come back” a million times that she would be back.’ He sobbed and put his face against Kate’s skirt. ‘But it isn’t working. I think I’ve said it two million times.’
Kate’s own eyes filled with tears. She took a deep breath. She could feel the heat of Brian’s face through the thin fabric of her skirt. The hell with professional detachment. She scooped Brian into her arms and over to one of the chairs. He was as small and light as a crushed sparrow. The boy nestled against her. After a time he stopped crying, but his silent neediness was even sadder. They sat for a few moments, but Kate knew their session was nearly over and she had to speak. ‘Oh, Brian, I am so sorry,’ she told him. ‘But magic doesn’t work. I wish it did. The doctors did everything they could to help your mommy. They couldn’t fix her and magic can’t fix that. It’s not your fault that the doctors couldn’t save her.’ She paused. ‘And it’s not your fault your mommy can’t come back.’ Kate sighed. Breaking children’s hearts, even to help them, had not been in her job description. ‘But she can’t and your magic can’t work.’
Brian suddenly pushed against her, wriggling his way out of her embrace. He stood up and looked angrily at her. ‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Why can’t my magic work?’ He glared at Kate for another moment then pushed her hard and barreled out of the room, nearly knocking over the dollhouse. The office door crashed and rebounded open. From down the hall, she heard a voice – Elliot Winston’s – try to stop Brian. ‘Shut up, you stinky dick!’ Brian shouted. Kate winced and listened to the little boy’s footsteps recede.
A moment later, Elliot stuck his head around Kate’s door. ‘Another satisfied customer?’ he asked, his eyebrows raised nearly to his receding hairline. ‘Perhaps you should have stuck with French.’
Kate had majored in French as an undergraduate. For a while she had even considered continuing her language studies in graduate school. She had never regretted not doing so, because her work with the children was so satisfying, but, occasionally, particularly at moments like this one, Elliot – one of the math teachers, and her best friend – teased her about her choice.
‘As