“Not like that, Arturito,” Corinna said. “You shake hands with Mr. Viddich.”
In Kit’s grip the boy’s hand felt more ordinary, sticky with lunch and fragile. But Arturo held on several seconds longer than necessary, smirking, squint-eyed. If he’d been a few years older, and maybe eighty pounds heavier, Kit would’ve said the kid was sizing him up for a fight. Kit looked to Corinna, but she was speaking with the woman who’d brought the boy from school, a heavy old nonna with a growth on one eyelid. The two women used a shorthand neighborly Spanish, made still harder to follow by the difference in their accents. Corinna’s friend had a back-of-the-throat sound, upcountry, like the Mexicans Kit had worked with in the Carolinas.
“Hey,” the boy said, “I get it. Mama ain’t told you what the scene is yet.”
Corinna broke off her conversation, turning and taking the boy’s chin in one swift hand.
“I told you,” she said in firm English, “in this family we don’t say ain’t.”
Aw, Viddich, what have you got yourself into now? For someone whose chosen work was supposed to be bringing the news back to sea level, Kit was spending a lot of time out at the hard-to-figure farther edges. He wondered if there weren’t some quick fix he could offer Corrina. We have to close or we’re as bad as they are.
At least the mother’s conversation with her ugly old babysitter made one thing clear — she was glad he’d come. He was some sort of good luck, apparently. Maybe a last-minute substitution. Other than that, he understood only that Corinna would handle Arturito from here. After the “session” (did Kit have the expression right?), she’d take over. In his goodbyes to the sitter Kit tried warming things up with a brief display of his Spanish, and then in the elevator he floated a small trial balloon.
“Corinna,” he said, “it’s no problem you taking the afternoon off. The way we set up your weekly schedule …”
Abruptly she squatted beside her boy, whispering. No indication she still gave a hoot about her “weekly schedule.”
The counselor’s office, at first, set Kit in a more familiar world. One brown bookshelf held a dormitory-style tea setup, complete with a cheap immersion heater, and the mug read “Ver-I-Tas.” It smelled as if Dr. Halsey — finally Kit learned his name — preferred chamomile. Bifocal’d, at home behind a desk, the man wore a sweater vest in a bright scotch tartan. He looked so utterly unhip, un-streetwise, that Arturo stared wide-eyed. The first Kit had seen the boy look like his photo. The counselor knew the uses of keeping his distance, yes; he didn’t waste time. No sooner had Corinna finished introductions than Halsey thanked Kit for volunteering.
“You don’t know what it means to this child”—the doctor nodded towards Arturo—“to spend time alone with a grown man.”
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.