John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

The boy knew where to go, Halsey went on briskly. Just down the hall. There were toys, musical instruments, a book or two. Kit and Arturo could do whatever they liked.

“Whatever …” Kit said.

“You’ll have thirty minutes,” Halsey said. “That’s our standard stranger session.”

Kit touched his neck. He knew where Corinna was, in a corner chair, loosely embracing her boy. But he found himself unable to look at her. The doctor removed his bifocals, his longest conversational pause yet.

“You can’t imagine how much it means,” he said.

Corinna at last caught Kit’s eye, pulling her son to her till her broad head hung over his shoulder. Her look made Kit think of Bette on the beach, at the Cottage. Pleading, angry, at a loss and willing to try anything. And what had he told Bette, back in that freezing ocean wind? There’s one woman I’d like to keep if I can .

*

Arturo started in as soon as they reached the session room. “You know what the scene is now, right? This kind of scene, you’ve heard of it, right?”

Kit had heard of it. Bette might even have done the editing on a paper by one of Halsey’s mentors.

“You my father now, right?”

Experimental therapy for deprived youngsters, the approach seemed sensible. You put children together with whichever gender of adult they lacked around the home, and let them get a feel for what having a mommy or daddy might be like. Under supervision, of course. The room had a — what did you call those things? A one-way mirror?

“We play in here,” Arturo said, “and they watch in there.” One quick and dirty hand jabbed, all four fingers extended, towards the set-in mirror occupying most of one wall. “You better do good, Mister. They watch.”

Kit wasn’t yet over his surprise. That, plus the thought of his runaway wife. He took stock of the room. They’d probably hooked up the microphone overhead, among the fluorescents. There were two smallish chairs and a table, a shelf with jigsaw puzzles and games, and elsewhere Raggedy Andy and Annie slouched together with stitched-on smiles. In a corner stood a toy box. A couple of boy things lay on top, a gun and a bat, and below that a welter of surreal and plasticized colors, Kryptonite green and Superman blue and red. A nice theater.

“Hi Mom!” Arturo was in front of the mirror, waving. “Hi there, Doc Halsey! We doing fine.”

Kit exhaled deliberately. “I didn’t hear the doctor say anything about watching.”

“Yeah right.”

“We’re supposed to give him a report afterwards, aren’t we? Didn’t he say that?”

“Aw, he’s always saying that.” Arturo went on dancing before the mirror. “He won’t never let on what he’s got going here. But I figured it out right from the jump.”

The kid was a disco monkey with curly red hair, an animal Kit had never seen. Considerably more of a handful than Cecilia’s two Rucky-rats. He began undoing the complicated belt on his overcoat, saying aloud that, anyway, they were here. Here for the next half-hour. Might as well make the most…

Arturo turned around, arms dropping. “Don’t you want to say hello to my Mom, over there?”

Now why hadn’t Kit taken his coat off in the office?

“You’re my Mom’s boss, ain’t you?”

And once more he was thinking of Bette, of how she’d left him feeling naked.

“Well ain’t you?”

Kit was nodding, tongue-tied again. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I’m her boss.” He worked up a frown. “And your Mom doesn’t want you saying ain’t.”

Arturo took off around the room, circling Kit in great, leaping skips. “Well I know,” skip, “there’s something weird,” skip, “going on here, Mister.” Skip. “My Mom bringing her boss, that’s weird.” He skidded to a stop at the toy box and began pulling things out in handfuls. “Right.”

“Why does it have to be weird?” Kit asked. “Why does there have to be somebody watching, or me and your Mom pulling …”

“Hey, think fast!” Arturo spun up from the box and heaved a vivid yellow ball. If Kit hadn’t gotten a hand up — if he’d still had his head back in the Woods Hole crossing — he’d have been hit in the face.

“Stop that,” he said. “Why does it have to be weird? I don’t see that there’s any tricky business going …”

“Think fast!”

This time it was a miniature Frisbee. Arturo wasn’t so good with a backhand; the thing sailed wide.

“Cut it out! I’m telling you it’s no setup here, Arturo. Yeah, I’m your Mom’s boss, but …”

“ Yo, fast !”

Kit actually caught this one, a fad toy called Stretch Armstrong. A rubbery thing, an impact like a beanbag’s; the doctor had thought ahead.

“Suppose it is a setup?” he asked then. “Hey, Arturo, suppose it is. So what?”

He lobbed the Stretch Armstrong as the boy straightened back up out of the box — straightened up looking at Kit differently. The toy caught the kid in the chest.

“Suppose we say you’re right?” Kit asked. “The doctor and your Mom are watching, and myself I owe your Mom a favor.”

Grinning, Arturo grabbed up the Stretch Armstrong and put his back into a grunting return throw.

“Suppose you’re right?” Kit went on, snatching the toy in midair. “So what, my man? So what? They’re there, and we’re here. We can still have fun.”

With that they were into a game of catch with the cartoon strongman. Corinna’s boy still put everything he had into each throw, his red curls flaring and shivering (Kit imagined the doctor’s note: signs of aggression ), but he was laughing along with what Kit was saying. He was yelping, agreeing in his kid’s way: yes they could still have fun, still play and tussle and talk, even if the big mirror on the wall made it look like a sham.

“Yeah, I am right!” Arturo shouted, his tongue poking through his grin.

“Yeah, and so what?” Kit made another toss.

“So what, right! Right, Mister!”

“I’m not a mister!” Kit shouted. Quickly he pulled his suit-jacket up over his head, hooking it against his hairline as he tucked his chin into his shirt collar. He adjusted the set of his sleeves and locked his elbows against his sides, so his arms poked up shrunken and misshapen.

“I’mm the Monn -sterr!” he said.

Hadn’t Kit known he’d be harder to handle than the Rucky-rats? The nine-year-old proved no easy prey, impossible to corner, and with the red plastic bat in his hands Arturo gave as good as he got. The chairs went over. One of the jigsaw puzzles spilled off the shelf. Yet as Kit galumphed around after the boy, as he enjoyed the blood rush of his first exercise in days, he knew what he was doing. After moment or two he thought of Monsod, of Junior’s sleepy glare across the stinking seepage. But even that didn’t faze him. Kit knew what he was doing, and what he wasn’t. When Arturo at last landed a blow on Kit’s bruised temple — when that singing pulsing pain in the shape of his stitches shot through him — all Kit had to do was fall on his butt, let the suit-coat slip off his head, and say, “Ouch.” Only that, and Arturo dropped his bat and looked terrified.

“I’m afraid that’s it, Arturo,” Kit said, wincing. “The Monster’s got to quit for today.”

“Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m so-so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” When Kit closed his eyes, the pattern of his stitches flickered red before him.

“Mister, really, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, Arturo. We were just playing.”

The boy came a step closer. “What happened to you anyway?”

*

No, this wasn’t Monsod. Kit managed a chuckle, he made an explanation. He even let Arturo touch the sutures. Soon he and the child were finishing up their half-hour over the spilled jigsaw puzzle. The picture in the puzzle was a natural for them, a fists-up portrait of the Incredible Hulk. Kit saw no reason they couldn’t put it together on the floor, so long as Arturo first helped pick up the chairs and get the toys back in the box. Then as they sorted through the bright puzzle pieces, for the second time in three jam-packed days Kit caught the whiff of kid-sweat. The odor struck him, just now, as somehow herbal.