Afterward, the three of us had dinner at the Time Out café, an easygoing but trendy restaurant two blocks from the rehearsal studio. She had a soda; Mitch and I both had wine. It was much better than what had been offered at the meeting.
We got along well, this man whom I’d been married to for almost half my life, and I. After all, we had a common goal-to be the best parents we could be to our daughter. Dissolving a union is never easy, but our experience was sad as opposed to brutal, and neither of us felt animosity toward the other. We’d managed to stay friends through the proceedings, which I credit entirely to Mitch. He was generous and thoughtful.
If I am going to be truthful, I will say that part of my reason for being so reasonable was because Mitch and Dulcie have a very special relationship. They are more alike than she and I are. They share the same love of theater and film, of books and of physical activities such as skiing and mountain climbing. They have the same tall, lanky frame, the same near-sightedness, and the same taste in food, preferring their meals less spicy than I do.
I have, at times, been jealous of the bond they share, forgetting that Dulcie and I are also close. But having lost my mother so young, I worked too hard at connecting to my daughter and sometimes, in a moment of clarity, knew it did more to push us apart than bring us together.
We were on dessert. Well, Mitch and Dulcie were, each of them working on a slice of cheesecake. I was making do with an espresso. I’d been watching Dulcie all night, waiting to see the nerves relax even a little. But they hadn’t. Something was up.
“You okay?” I asked my daughter.
She nodded and then looked at Mitch.
I knew that look. I’d been seeing it for years. My daughter’s way of working out her problems never changed: she went to Mitch first and after that the two of them brought the dilemma to me.
When I’d talked it over with Nina years ago, she’d told me that it wasn’t unusual for the child of a therapist to be wary of that parent’s insight. That bringing in the nonpsychologist parent first gave the child a ballast and a buffer. Nina had helped me to accept the alliance, but that didn’t mean it made me happy.
“Morgan, it’s about the trip to Boston,” Mitch said, translating Dulcie’s look.
“Okay. Spill,” I said to her, trying for a lighthearted tone, hoping I could signal that I would just listen first and not react. But inside I was instantly worried. Instantly afraid. Some of this was my own projection about what she was going through, but more of it was coming from Dulcie.
Since she was a tiny baby, I had always picked up on her pain, both physical and emotional. Often, I’d be doing something miles away from her and get a sudden pain in my throat, or stomach, or hand, only to find out when I arrived home that she’d gotten sick or cut herself.
Other times, I’d felt a pang of homesickness or fear and found out that while she was on her sleepover or at camp she’d missed us and wanted to come back, or that in school some other kid had been mean to her.
Earlier that night, I’d felt nervous. I’d written off the feeling as what I’d assumed was her normal stage fright.
“I’d like Daddy to come with me to Boston.”
I felt relieved. “Of course he can come, honey. We’re both coming. You don’t even have to ask. Does she, Mitch?”
My ex-husband returned my gaze, warning me with his expression that I wasn’t hearing what Dulcie was saying.
“That’s not it, is it?” I asked her.
She was holding her lips pressed together, not wanting to explain, leaving it to me to do the work for her. It was easy enough. “You want me to stay home?”
She nodded and rushed into an explanation. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come. I just don’t want you to see the mistakes. I want to get all that out of the way first. I don’t want you to see the play till we open in New York. Till it’s right. Till it’s perfect.”
I nodded. Something that had been bothering me was suddenly making sense. “Hon, is that why you usually tell me to pick you up at one time, only for me to get there and realize I’m about ten or fifteen minutes later than the other parents? You don’t want me to see the rehearsals?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I just want you to see the play. On opening night. All perfect.”
There was something else she wasn’t saying, but I knew from the way her blue eyes had clouded over that she wasn’t going to tell me any more than that. She had inherited some of Mitch’s negative traits, too. That stubborn shutting down being one of them.
I picked up my glass of wine and took a long sip and tried to separate my hurt from a real clinical assessment of what my daughter was doing and why. But all I could think was what had I done to my daughter to make her think that I wanted-or needed-her to be perfect?
Putting my hand on hers, I leaned toward her. “Sweetheart, I don’t need your performances to be perfect. I’m not judging you.”
Tears came too quickly. “If I can’t do it right, you won’t let me keep doing it.”
“What makes you think that?”
No words now, just a shaky shrug of her shoulders,
“I love you, Dulcie, whether you get up there and belt out the songs like Judy Garland or flub your lines, or sing off-key. As for you continuing with acting, that’s a family decision. One that we’ll all make together when the run of this play is over. We’ll look at your schoolwork and what kind of stress you’re feeling and we’ll decide together.”
She nodded, but I didn’t know if I’d convinced her. Later, when I was alone, I’d deal with everything I was thinking. Right now all that mattered was saying something that would alleviate my daughter’s distress.
“I promise I am not going to stop you from pursuing this if it’s what you really want. You believe that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“What about Boston?” she said with a slight catch in her voice. “Can Dad go with me? Can you wait to see me till it’s the final show?”
“If it matters to you that much…” I let the rest of the sentence drift off.
“It does. The rehearsals always go bad. Lots of the other kids have convinced their parents not to come watch.”
I glanced at Mitch. There were no answers in his eyes.
Twenty-Nine
I waited until after we got home. And then I waited until after Dulcie had done her homework. I waited until after we sat and watched an episode of Seinfeld together, both of us laughing even though we knew all the jokes ahead of time. And finally I waited until after she got undressed and into bed and fell asleep.
Still I didn’t do anything. I put a pot of water on to boil. Waited for a cup of tea to brew. Waited for a teaspoon of honey to melt. And then there wasn’t any excuse I could give myself to wait anymore. Even though I didn’t have any solid information that I could give him. Even though I couldn’t break any confidence.
I could tell him that one thing I’d noticed in the photographs at the station house that hadn’t made sense at that time did make sense now, couldn’t I?
Didn’t I need to?
No one in the Scarlet Society group had told me anything about it. Shelby hadn’t mentioned it when we’d talked in private. It was something I had noticed on my own.
I picked up the phone.
And then hung up.
What if my talking to Jordain would make a difference to his investigation? What if the information I had dovetailed with facts he’d found out but hadn’t quite fit into place? I went over the argument again in my mind. Going to the police with information that had to do with any patients wasn’t something you just did. There was nothing more sacred in our business than the confidentiality between me and the people who came to me to help them.