George Higgins - A change of gravity

"Especially for family counselling. She's in the process of setting up a private practice, she told me afterwards. I held up a bit outside so I could talk to her a bit more; she told me Walter Fox's already showed her two offices in Hampton Pond. In that she'll be able pretty much to specialize in therapy for adolescents, young adults. She says she's just a grown-up kid herself, but one of the luckier ones. She made the dumb mistakes and did the stupid stunts that get kids in trouble, but came through them pretty much intact. Lots of kids don't, and those're the ones she can help.

"In the job we're offering, she wont be able to do that, concentrate on one age group. The referrals the center will get from the clinics and social agencies, the court will be people from every age group. She'd have to find a way to deal with all of them. A lot of the people needing help're going to be in their forties and fifties parents who're screwing up because they grew up in troubled families; husbands and wives who aren't getting along; substance abusers. And elderly people; there's a real need for bereavement counselling. Her age could be a handicap. People tend to resist telling their problems and taking advice from someone who's younger than they are.

"So if we give her the job, will she be able to cope? She's confident she can, of course, but how can we be sure? She's just gotten her degree; her judgments can't be all that empirically informed; how does she know what she can do? What basis does she have? How can we be sure?"

"That's easy," Hilliard said, nursing a Lowenbrau and watching Karl Maiden and Michael Douglas wrap up another case on The Streets of San Francisco, 'you can't."

"But then I ask," she said, 'does it matter how old someone happens to be? I'm really not sure. Anyone who wants this little part-time job, that doesn't pay much money, is either going to be young and inexperienced, like she is, or, if they're older, they're probably going to have something wrong with them. Either no experience, because they're career-changers, getting started late in counselling or else when we check their references we find out why they left or got fired from their previous place. I think we don't have much choice."

"So do I," he said, his eyes on the screen.

"Ohhh, you're not listening to me," she said, stamping down the hallway into the kitchen. "I don't know why I even bother, telling you anything. You never pay any attention."

"I was paying attention, for Christ sake," he said, his gaze still fixed on the screen. "What is it: if I agree with you or I don't interrupt you; or I don't answer a question because you haven't asked me one I must not be listening? I haven't been paying attention7. For Christ sake, gimme a fuckin' break here."

"Stop talking to me like you talk with Amby," she said loudly. This's Thursday night and you're at home here with me. It's not Friday night and you're not down on High Street, talking big with the boys. Try showing some class for a change."

"Jesus H. Christ," Hilliard said, taking his gaze off the screen as the volume went up in a Sears tire store commercial, speaking louder so that she could hear him in the kitchen, 'first I tell you for once I've got the night off. I don't have to go anywhere." He heard the cork come out of a wine bottle. "This is good because you've got a meeting.

This'll be one night when the kids wont have a sitter. So, I'm a good daddy. I help Emmy with her math and I flog Timmy into at least starting to read Ivanhoe. Then I even make them go to bed. Now you come home and you tell me, well, the substance of it anyway, that you're very impressed with this young woman who just got her master's, and even though she hasn't got any experience and you're afraid she might have trouble dealing with older patients, might not be her cup of tea, you're still very much leaning toward the idea that she's the one that you should hire, give her the job and get it over with. So you wont have to go out to meetings anymore on Thursday nights when you'd rather stay home after dinner with your family. And anyway: no matter who you end up hiring, anyone could present problems. That you'll always have that possibility.

"Not that you came right out and actually said all that stuff, but what you didn't say I could hear anyway. It was implied." The titles began to roll for Harry'O, starring David Janssen.

She came into the living room with a goblet of white wine and sat down.

"Okay wise guy," she said, 'so I guess you were listening. You're so smart, tell me what I do now."

"Is that my good Muscadet you're drinking?" he said.

"No it's not," she said. "It's the cheap Almaden Mountain white, from the jug. Now answer my question."

"Go through the rest of the interview process," he said. "Then when it's over, turn on the charm with the other committee members and hire her."

"I don't want to go through it," she said, pouting and sipping the wine. "She's the fourth person we've interviewed now. That's six hours we've put in, listening to people tell us how much they want the job."

"You sound like Emmy with her algebra," he said. "Don't see why they make us take this. I don't like it."

Mercy tossed her hair. "I do not," she said, 'and I don't care if I do so there." He laughed. "Six others we didn't even grant interviews to, they were so obviously unqualified. We've got four more scheduled to come in. One's a for tv-six-year-old psychology Ph.D. on the staff full-time at the Knox State Hospital. His letter says he wants to set up a private practice and he's decided Hampton Pond's where he wants to do it. He's making eighteen thousand dollars a year as a senior therapist and he's only got three more years to go at Knox which he can't do and come here at the same time before he qualifies for a pension. I'm not sure I believe him. It doesn't make sense to me.

Either he's fooling himself or he's playing with us. He's not going to dump that fairly good salary now and take our little job, paying six thousand dollars a year; if all he has to do is tough it out at Knox three more years and retire. There'll be another little job around some other pretty little town three years from now; he can start his practice then.

"The others that we've said we'll talk to: there's something slightly wrong with them too. You look at the resumes and think to yourself:

"Gee, I wish that wasn't there." "I'd feel better, she didn't have that."

"This other woman; she's forty-eight. That's a good age for our job; young enough to talk to the kids but still mature enough to be accepted by the older patients. She's had children, boy and a girl, both grown now, off on their own, apparently doing just fine. She's been divorced. Okay, nothing wrong with that anymore, having gone through a divorce; getting so more have 'n haven't."

She paused and chewed her lower lip. "Oh, must tell you this: this Diane also asked me, very casually, just by the way, out there in the parking lot, if Walter Fox might be getting a divorce. Well, I know from you that he is, but I'm not sure she should get it from me. So I said I didn't know. I think she might have her eye on him. Little old for her, you'd think, but still…"

"Oh, I'd think Walter can still probably get it up once a month or so, he gets proper rest and eats right," Hilliard said.

"Pig," she said. "Anyway, this woman's divorced: how that gives me a small problem? It's because she's been divorced three times. Once, even twice: sure, I could understand, but is it likely this woman's had three marriages fail and every time it was the other person's fault1.

That's hard to believe. And even if that's the case, she did have that much bad luck, it would still bother me. One way or the other that has to say something about what kind of judgment she's got, picking three husbands she couldn't live with. I'm certainly not going to want to hire her. I don't think anyone else will, either. So I don't think we need to see her. We should cancel that interview.