didn’t put any pressure on Reggie to perform. I respected Reggie as a
person. Respected his con/aenliahty. I said whats my part in all
this?
He said paying the bills and minding my own business. Reggie had to
develop his own responsibility-long as I did it for him he’d never
straighten out. Not that he kept what I said to him about Reggie
confidential. Two years paid that faker and at the end of it I got a
boy who hated me because of what that man put in his head. It wasn’t
till later that I found out he’d repeated everything I’d told him.
Blown it way up and made it worse.”
“Did you complain?”
“Why? I was the stupid one. For believing. You wanna know how
stupid? After . . . after Reggie . . . after he had his . . . after
he was . . . gone-a year after, I went to another one. Of your
crowd.
Because my supervisor thought I should not that she’d pay for it.
And not that I wasn’t doing my job properly, cause I was. But I wasn t
sleeping well or eating or enjoying anything. It wasn’t like being
alive at all. So she gave me a referral. I figured maybe a woman
would be a better judge of character. . . . This joker was in Beverly
Hills. Hundred and twenty an hour. Inflation, right? Not that the
value went up. Though in the beginning this one seemed even more on
the ball than the first one. Quiet. Polite. A real gentleman. And
he seemed to understand. I felt. . . talking to him made me feel
better.
In the beginning. I started to be able to work again. Then.
She stopped, clamping her mouth shut. Shifting her attention from me
to the walls to the floor to the handkerchief in her hand.
Staring at the sodden cloth with surprise and revulsion.
She dropped it as if it were lice-ridden.
“Forget it,” she said. “Water under the dam.”
I nodded.
She tossed the handkerchief at me and I caught it.
She said, “Baseball Bob,” with reflexive quickness. Laughed. Shut it off.
I put the handkerchief on the table. “Baseball Bob?”
I hung up. She remained on her feet.
“That second therapist,” I said. “He abused you, didn’t he?”
Abuse?” The word seemed to amuse her. “What? Like some kind of
abused child?”
“It’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?” I said. “Breaking a
trust?”
“Breaking a trust, huh? How about blowing it up? But that’s okay. I
learned from it-it made me stronger. Now I watch myself.”
“You never complained about him either?”
“Nope. Told you I’m stupid.”
“I–”
“Sure,” she said. “That’s all I needed, his word against minewho’re
they gonna believe? He’d get lawyers to go into my life and dig it all
up about Reggie. Probably get experts to say I was a liar and a rotten
mother. . .” Tears. “I wanted my boy to rest in peace, okay? Even though…”
She threw up her hands, put her palms together.
“Even though what, Vicki?”
“Even though he never gave me peace.” Her voice soared in pitch,
teetering on hysteria. “He blamed me till the end. Never got rid of those feelings that first
faker planted in his head. I was the bad one. I’d never cared about him. I’d made him not learn, not do his homework. I didn’t force him
“We used to say that,” she said defensively. jimmy and me and
Reggie.
When Reggie was little. When someone would make a good catch, he was
Baseball Bob-it was stupid.”
“In my family it was You can be on my team.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one.”
We sat in silence, resigned to each other, like boxers in the
thirteenth round.
She said, “That’s it. My secrets. Happy?”
The phone rang. I picked It up. The operator said, “Dr. Delaware,
please?”
“Speaking.”
“There’s a call for you from a Dr. sturgis. He’s been paging you for
the last ten minutes.”
Vicki stood.
I motioned her to wait. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”
“I didn’t force him to go to
school because I didn’t care a hoot. It was cause of me he dropped out