“Meow?” the boy replied.
The direction Conor was moving meant that he approached James from behind. The first time he had skirted widely around James as he sat at the small table. This time Conor slowed down as he drew near.
“Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”
James sat motionless so as not to frighten the boy.
“Whirrrr,” came the whisper behind him.
The child’s breathing was fast and shallow, giving a hollowness to the sound like a rheumy dog panting. Then came the very soft touch of the toy cat against the back of James’s neck. With staccato quickness it touched him and then was gone. The boy whirred. The nose of the cat came again, so lightly that it just tipped the hairs on James’s skin.
“Meow?”
James turned his head and there was the briefest moment of eye contact between them. James smiled.
“The cat knows,” the boy whispered.
Thinking that someone as well known as Laura Deighton wouldn’t want to sit out in the waiting room with Dr Sorenson’s clients, Dulcie had allowed her to go into James’s office to wait for him there. James hadn’t expected this. A flicker of alarm went through him when Dulcie told him, because, of course, Laura Deighton would notice that he had her books on the shelf and, quite understandably, she would then assume that he had read them.
James wasn’t a Laura Deighton fan. He knew her books only by what he’d read about them in The New York Times Book Review, that they were “complex,” “profound,” and worse, “literary,” which, James knew, were all euphemisms for pretentious and/or unreadable. However, Laura Deighton was native to this corner of South Dakota, and since James was a newcomer and hence an outsider, he was acutely aware of the need to show respect for local icons. Consequently, he had bought the books – in hardback, even – and had set them up prominently on the bookshelf in his office to show his local loyalty. He did intend to read them at some point. He’d just never quite got around to it.
When he entered the office, he found Laura Deighton’s attention was not on books, however. She was standing beside the window, her interest absorbed in something outside. She didn’t turn immediately.
“Dulcie will keep Conor busy for a moment so that we can talk,” James said. Going to his desk, he set down the folders and his notepad. He adjusted his suit jacket and straightened his tie. Only then did Laura Deighton finally drag her attention away from the window.
She was an unremarkable-looking woman. In early middle age with the mousy-coloured hair that is the aftermath of a blonde childhood and eyes that weren’t really any particular colour at all, neither brown nor green, she could have been mistaken for any ordinary woman down at the supermarket, any one of those of a certain age who go a little soft around the waist, a little saggy here and there, who don’t stand out for any reason.
Her clothes, James noticed, weren’t really appropriate to the situation. It wasn’t simply that they lacked style. They were too casual for a first meeting of this kind, even by South Dakota’s relaxed standards. Jeans … okay, maybe it was possible to pull off jeans if you were twenty-seven and leggy, or if they were a fashionable brand and dressed up, but Laura Deighton’s jeans were a cheap brand that the local ranchers favoured. The white shirt was nondescript and the tweed jacket fitted her carelessly. She wore no jewellery and little makeup. Depression? James wondered. Or maybe this was how creative genius dressed.
James felt vague disappointment on seeing her. He thought there’d be some aura of glamour around her, some presence that would make it impossible to mistake this literary giant, risen from the cornfields of the Midwest. In fact, there was nothing.
“Do sit down,” he said. He gestured broadly towards the sofa and chairs.
Laura ignored them. She came over, extended her hand to shake his and then sat down in the chair beside his desk. “I appreciate your seeing Conor at such short notice.”
Silence followed. James preferred to let the client set the tone of the interview, so he never started off by asking questions. This didn’t appear to unnerve her the way it did some parents, but she was obviously anticipating questions. She looked at him expectantly.
When he didn’t speak, she said once more, “Thank you for seeing Conor at such short notice. Conor’s paediatrician – Dr Wilson, over at the clinic – recommended we bring Conor in to you. He said you’d come here from Manhattan, that you’d been in a practice there.”
“Yes,” James said.
“He spoke very highly of you. Said it’s a renowned practice in New York, that to have been a partner there, you’d be a real high flyer.” She chuckled. “And I can tell you, that’s serious praise coming from Dr Wilson.”
“Thanks to him for that recommendation,” James replied, “but I’m sure there are also many good professionals out here too.”
Silence then. Again she looked expectantly at James. When he didn’t say anything further, she said, “Until now we’ve had Conor at the Avery School. In Denver. Have you heard of it?”.
“I don’t know it well,” James replied. “I’ve only been out here since February, but Dr Sorenson has mentioned it.”
“They work on a very structured behavioural program. Called ‘repatterning’. The school has an excellent reputation for success at socializing severely autistic children.”
A pause.
“Although,” she said with faint sarcasm, “maybe that’s simply because they do to the failures what they’ve just done to us. We received a letter right out of the blue saying they didn’t want Conor back this autumn. That they felt Avery wasn’t ‘helpful to his needs’. It was worded wonderfully. Like it was their fault things didn’t work out, when you knew they meant just the opposite. That they think we’ve got a funky kid. So here we are with absolutely no place to send him. Completely stuck.”
James looked at Laura closely. He was finding her difficult to read. On the face of it, she appeared straight-talking, but her words and body language gave off none of the usual subtle subtext. She sat absolutely still in a relatively neutral pose that was neither open nor closed. She made good, although not outstanding, eye contact. Her tone of voice was even but not very nuanced.
His inability to glean more intuitive information from her surprised James. He’d been prepared for other challenges in meeting Laura Deighton. Would her fame unnerve him, for instance? Or more likely, would he take an instant dislike to her? The literary people he’d known in Manhattan were, to a person, pompous and self-absorbed, and he hated these traits. When he’d discovered she was coming in, he caught himself feeling a certain gratification at the fact he’d never actually read any of her books. But her blankness was unexpected. There was just no discernible subtext. That was where James was accustomed to doing all his “reading,” where he got so much information about clients, there in that intuitive space beneath words and gestures. With Laura Deighton, it was as if this space did not exist.
“Has Conor always been in a residential program?” he asked finally. “Have you not found suitable programs locally?”
“It needs to be residential. Our ranch is out beyond Hill City. Realistically, we just couldn’t be driving him a long distance every day.”
“Was Dr Wilson clear with you about what kind of therapy I do?” James replied. “Because if I took Conor on, I would expect to see him three times a week.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly, although perhaps not so much so that it could be interpreted as surprise.
“I’m a child psychiatrist,” James continued. “What I prefer to do with the children I see is traditional play therapy, which means having them in on a very regular basis.”
She was silent a long moment. “No. I hadn’t quite realized that’s