Chapter One, Part 1

Dumping Billy
by Olivia Goldsmith

Katherine Sean Jameson sat behind her desk and looked at her client. Being a therapist was never easy, but with a client who needed this much help and had this much resistance, it was really tough. And heartbreaking. To the casual observer, Kate was just a mildly pretty twenty-four-year-old (though she was actually thirty-one) with long curls of wild red hair.

Now, as she looked at Brian Conroy, she unconsciously twisted those curls into an impromptu bun at the nape of her neck with a practiced motion and pushed a pencil through it to hold it in place.

"So what do you think?" Kate said, and almost bit her tongue. Despite what laypeople believed, a good therapist didn't sit around all day saying, "What do you think?" She'd have to try a different approach. She was wasting her own time as well as Brian's. Why was it the clients she loved most were so often the ones she could help the least?

It was warm. Kate's office was not air-conditioned, and the breeze from the open window felt good on the back of her neck. Brian, looking at her intently, was sweating, but it could just as easily have been from nerves as from the early spring 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 her own and looked around the office. The walls were filled with pictures done by children—some of them very disturbing. Kate watched to see if Brian's attention focused on one.

Kate stifled 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. She looked with compassion at her eight-year-old "client." His teacher said he was constantly disrupting class and showing signs of obsessive-compulsive or maybe even schizophrenic behavior.

And disruption simply wasn't allowed at Andrew Country Day School. A private school in the best 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 gotten the plum job only recently, and Brian, like other kids who showed the slightest "difficult" behavior, had been 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 on one of the small chairs beside the boy. "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 a whisper. "It was for talking. Talking in class."

As Kate nodded, the pencil fell out of her bun, and her hair cascaded over her shoulders 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 here just 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 asked.

Kate felt such empathy for the boy at that moment that she was tempted to take his hand in hers, but he was so anxious that she feared he might shy away. This kind of work was so delicate—like dealing with Venetian spun glass, where the slightest jar 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 Dr. McKay, and—as so often was the case—their instincts were good. "Do I look as bad as Dr. 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. 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. "I don't want you to be quiet, Brian," she said. "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 turned his face away from her. He mumbled something else, and Kate managed to hear only 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 averted, nodded 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 him 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 said, 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?"

Copyright © 2004 by Olivia Goldsmith All rights reserved.

About the Author

OLIVIA GOLDSMITH, novelist and journalist, was the bestselling author of The First Wives Club, Flavor of the Month, The Bestseller, The Switch, Young Wives, Pen Pals, Bad Boy, and, most recently, Insiders. Her articles appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, and the Observer, among other publications.