A knock on the doorframe and on the other side a woman neither Nora nor I have ever seen before. Which means she can only be one person.
“Uh, hi. I’m not sure I’m in the right place.” She is little. Not just small. Slight. Winnowed. She has on vertiginous heels which somehow make her look shorter and a skirt straight as a drafting tool keeping her upright. Her face is so thin it’s concave in spots. She looks hungry and, with her movie-star makeup, like she’s overreacting—to this town and its empty afternoon and the weary week that yawns ahead. “I, um, I’d like to make an appointment?” A question at the end, that question being: Is this town so podunk your medical clinic is really just a house and doesn’t even have a receptionist? It is.
“Sure.” Nora sits behind her computer, pulls up the scheduling tool. “With me or Dr. Lilly?”
She blinks. “I wanted to make a”—her voice drops—“therapy appointment?”
Nora looks at her screen. “I’m pretty booked next week. There’s a hole the Friday after next.” Her gaze catches on the woman’s eyes, filled suddenly with tears. Nora looks at me. I nod. “Or, as it happens, I have some time right now—”
“Perfect,” the woman says, but without conviction, like at the grocery store when they ask if paper is okay and should they put your receipt in the bag, as if there being a virtually unheard-of opening the moment she seeks it is to be expected, as if the world is nothing but automatic doors that slide silently apart before her as she glides through.
“I usually take insurance information at the start of the first—” Nora begins, but is waved off before she can finish.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just pay out of pocket.”
“And, of course, if you would feel more comfortable, my daughter can wait outside.” Nora gestures in my direction, but the woman, who has been struggling to keep her cool eyes away from mine, flicks them over me and concludes it is as if Nora has asked if she’s comfortable being overheard by a lamp in the corner. “Nothing leaves this room,” Nora assures her. But needn’t.
The woman nods, unconcerned, at least about me. She comes into the room from the doorway and extends her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Apple Templeton.”
I almost laugh. It’s such an ill-fitting name now that I’ve seen her. There is nothing flushed or full or natural about her. Maybe she’s like a Granny Smith—tart, acerbic, hard, and pallid. Or maybe her parents imagined someone different than she turned out to be which, best I can tell, seems to be the trick of parenting.
“Nora Mitchell. Please, sit.”
“Thank you. My apologies for my unfamiliarity with the appointment system. I’m new to town.”
“I know,” Nora says.
“You do?”
“It’s a small town.”
“It really is.” Apple looks glad to have some corroboration on this point. “In fact, I believe I just came from your house.”
“You did?”
“I needed to look through some…” she begins, then trails off, then begins again. “I needed a library. And it seems, in different ways, we’re both living in one. It’s just yours has all the books.”
“Well,” Nora allows, “some of them.”
“I was hoping to help my son aspire to what comes next. Your daughter … made some interesting choices.”
“Which one?” Nora wonders, and it’s a good question actually.
But Apple looks taken aback. “The librarian?”
I exchange a smile with my mother. We can imagine exactly how interesting.
“I’m not sure the materials she selected will be much help,” Apple says, “but I can see you don’t have a wealth of options here.”
“That’s certainly true.” Entirely neutral. “Help with what?” Which was going to be my question as well, if probably not for the same reason.
“Parenting’s so exhausting, you know?” Apple sighs. “River did not want to come here. Me neither, I said. But he’s been moody, secretive, short with me and his father. I thought perhaps a reminder that we won’t be here long might help.”
“You’re leaving?” Not a flicker on her face of the jumping for joy she’d do now if she could.
“As soon as we possibly, possibly can,” Apple says.
“You’re not enjoying Bourne?” Nora asks gently.
“It’s … hard.”
“I bet. More so than you expected?”
“I guess, though I couldn’t tell you why. None of it’s a surprise. It’s not like I didn’t know you all were…” She looks embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I think she should look.
“I understand,” Nora assures her.
“And of course, to grossly understate it, it was not my choice to come.”
“Why did you?”
Apple shrugs. “Family. You know.”
Nora smiles. She does know.
“I begged him to say no to this move, but he never says no to his father. I refused to go, said we were staying in Boston, me and our son, and he could visit on the weekends if he liked, but he said our coming was the whole point. If he didn’t bring us, there was no point in going at all.”
“Those feelings of anger and powerlessness can’t be helping ease the transition any,” Nora imagines.
“No. To say the least. I’m just supposed to be understanding when he puts the company before his own wife? When he puts that family before this family? I’m supposed to just overlook the fact that he’s willing to risk our lives to—” She cuts herself off. Takes a breath. “And then there’s my own father if I’m being honest, speaking of family.” She pauses, waves that half thought away. “Anyway, I’m here. I wish I weren’t. And neither my son nor my husband is helping matters.”
“If you told your husband how unhappy you are, what do you think he’d say?”
“I have told him. He says I haven’t given it a chance. But some things you know right away, you know?”
Nora nods. She knows. Then she says, “What if you just returned home? Took your son, left him a note, and went?”
“He’d go ballistic.”
“He might be angry at first,” Nora concedes, “but once he sees how much it means to you, don’t you think he might give in?”
“Nathan never gives in,” says his wife.
“If he knew how much his family was hurting,” Nora muses, “his wife and his son, I bet he’d nix his plans here and just go home.”
Apple opens her mouth to reply, but Nora is on her feet suddenly, palm up and out like she wants Apple to wait on a busy street corner. “Actually, before you answer that question”—Nora puts the hand to her mouth and frowns with her whole face—“Apple, I’m concerned I might not be the right therapist for you.”
River’s mother pales, which you wouldn’t imagine possible.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no, of course not. I’d be happy to work with you, but there’s something of a conflict of interest here.”