A. Homes: In A Country Of Mothers

“And why?”

“It builds tension, reveals more without giving anything away. The other one is too diffuse, there’s too much in the background, it’s distracting.”

“A-plus, little one, A-plus. Do you know what that boy who was in here said?”

Jody shook her head. Karl had to be at least forty years old.

“He said A, because Carol looks old in the B shot. But she is old. For weeks I’ve been trying to make her look exactly like this, and suddenly he’s complaining. Old is nice, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Jody said, standing to leave.

“This isn’t a beauty contest,” Harry said.

There was a knock on the trailer door. Karl slipped in and deposited a huge tray of food in the middle of the table.

“That’s all for now,” Harry said.

After Karl turned and left, Jody also started for the door.

“You don’t expect me to eat alone?” Harry asked.

Jody shrugged and lied. “I’m not a food person.”

“But I am.”

And so Jody sat and watched Harry suck up his lunch like a vacuum cleaner, thinking about her own life, past, present, and future. She envisioned a high crane shot beginning inside the trailer: Harry chewing on the small bones of a roasted baby something — chicken, lamb, child; the crane pulling up through the skylight to reveal the set outside — technicians scurrying for lights, gaffer’s tape, the cinematographer riding his camera back and forth on dolly tracks, Heberton repetitiously rehearsing her lines, the pedestrians tripping over one another to get a closer look; and then the camera pulling away even more, sweeping past Michael in his office crunching numbers, and moving still farther away to an aerial view of Manhattan — New York from a distance, earth as seen from space.

By the time Harry was finished, Jody was nauseated as hell, partly from the sight of the great man with carroty flecks of cole slaw at the corners of his corpulent mouth, a wide yellow slap of mustard across his cheek, and partly from the anxiety of her own thoughts. Who did she think she was that she could make it in this business, where the recipe for success seemed to be equal amounts of arrogance, assholism, and unbridled brilliance? All she had for sure was curiosity and a peculiar little vision. When Karl returned with a huge pot of coffee and a tray of cookies, Jody immediately drank four cups, ate a dozen cookies, and spent the rest of the afternoon wishing there was a convenient building tall enough to jump off of.

B etween patients, Claire napped on the sofa in her office. Something — perhaps a dream, the sound of the phone ringing, or the young woman’s voice on the answering machine — woke her. Whatever it was came like a flash, a fleeting electrocution that left her with the sensation of having been ripped back and forth through time.

She sat up, convinced something horrible had happened. If she hadn’t been expecting a patient, Claire would’ve gone home and examined her children for signs of damage. She would’ve told them to open their mouths and say aah while she shined a flashlight in. She’d press her ear to their chests, her hand to their backs, and ask them to breathe deeply. Instead she went to her desk, and called the apartment.

“Everything all right?” Claire asked Frecia.

“Adam and I are making cookies, Jake’s watching TV,” the housekeeper answered, her voice a comforting singsong.

“Don’t let him get too close to the oven. He likes to look in.”

“His head won’t catch fire,” Frecia said firmly. She’d been with Claire for years. She was used to this.

The buzzer in Claire’s office went off.

“Sam called and said he won’t be home until after eleven,” Frecia said.

The buzzer sounded again. It reminded Claire of the air-raid test sirens in elementary school: the first Wednesday of every month, from 11:00 a.m. until 11:03—every month of every year, and always it came as a surprise. She looked out the window. A woman was crossing the street with a stroller. The light was changing, and a bus was about to force its way through the intersection. Claire held her breath until the woman and the stroller were safely on the other side.

“My four o’clock’s waiting,” Claire told Frecia. “See you later.” She buzzed the patient in and turned the volume on her answering machine all the way down.

It wasn’t until she was saying hello to her six o’clock that she remembered the phone ringing during her nap. She tried to focus on what the client was saying, but her mind kept circling back to the phone call. Somehow she thought it was from someone she knew.

“It’s really wonderful that you just sit and listen to me blabber,” the patient was saying. “You never judge me. I like that. Thank you.”

Patients were always thanking Claire, telling her how wonderful she was, how much she’d helped them. And while she appreciated these thoughts, they didn’t really count. They weren’t thanking her; they were thanking a little piece of her that, in terms of the whole, wasn’t much. They thanked their fantasy of Claire. If her patients really knew her, Claire figured, they’d never come back.

She smiled, nodded. “See you Thursday,” she said fifty minutes later, leading the patient to the door.

Alone at her desk, she pressed “play” on the answering machine and listened.

“Hi, how are you?” It was her friend Naomi. “Do we have theater tickets for Saturday? If you’ve got a sitter maybe we should leave our kids at your place — two for the price of one.”

Claire fast-forwarded.

“This is Jody Goodman, you don’t know me. I’m having some trouble making career decisions. Barbara Schwartz gave me your number. I think I should make an appointment. I can’t be reached at work, but my number at home is 555-2102. Thanks.”

Claire rewound the message and played it again, writing down word for word what the girl said. Years ago, when she got her first answering machine, Claire had started transcribing phone messages from patients or would-be patients. The way she saw it, the calls were filled with clues: what the callers did or didn’t say, their tone of voice, the way they dealt with the machine. She’d never told anyone. The transcriptions would have seemed like a peculiar habit, the kind of tic only a shrink would have.

In session, listening as intently as she could, Claire often felt as though she heard nothing. Writing it down gave her the sensation of studying something, making it tangible. If she’d thought her patients would stand for it, she would have taped their sessions. But then the tapes would just be there, piled up in a closet she would have to keep locked. When the therapy was terminated, what would she do — give the tapes back to the patient? Or would she be expected to erase them, as if the person had never existed?

She dialed Jody Goodman’s number. A machine answered, and as Claire started to leave a message, someone picked up. “Hello? Hello?”

“I’m trying to reach Jody Goodman,” Claire said.

“It’s me.”

“This is Claire Roth, returning your call.”

“Oh, hi,” Jody said. “Sorry if my message sounded a little strange, my boss was standing over my shoulder. Literally.”

Claire didn’t say anything.

“I think I should make an appointment with you,” Jody said.

“Could you tell me why?”

“Graduate school,” Jody said.

A simple answer. She didn’t say she’d been seeing spotted elephants walking down Broadway. She didn’t say her boyfriend had threatened to kill her and had just gone out for pizza but would be back any minute. In other words, it wasn’t an emergency. Claire relaxed. She hated talking to strangers.