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“I wouldn’t say normal,” Zee said.
“Any more trouble with the Marblehead police?”
“Not lately,” Zee said.
“Well, that’s something.”
AT 3:35, LILLY STILL HADN’T arrived. Zee walked to the window. Across Storrow Drive a homeless woman sat on one of the benches, but there was no one walking along the Charles River. It was too hot and humid for movement of any kind. Traffic was snarled, the drivers honking and agitated, trying to get onto roads heading north. The “cardboard bridge,” as Zee called the Craigie, looked like a bad fourth-grade art project. Years of soot had collected in the wrong areas for shading, and today’s haze made it look even flatter and more one-dimensional and fake than it had ever looked before.
AT 3:45, ZEE DIALED LILLY’S number. It was a 631 exchange, Marblehead. It used to be NE 1, Lilly had told her when she’d scribbled down her phone number for the records. “NE for Neptune -you know, Neptune, the Roman god of the sea?”
Zee thought back to her school days. Neptune-or Poseidon, his Greek equivalent, god of the sea and consort of Amphitrite, which had been Zee’s mother’s middle name. Though Maureen Doherty was a decidedly Irish name, Zee’s grandmother had given all three of her children the middle names of Greek gods and goddesses. Thus Zee’s mother was Maureen Amphitrite Doherty. Uncle Mickey’s middle name was Zeus, and Uncle Liam, who had died back in Ireland before Zee was born, was Antaeus, a clear foreshadowing of the mythmaking violence in his future. Zee remembered Maureen teasing Uncle Mickey about his middle name. “Well, what mother doesn’t think her son is a god?” Mickey had answered. Indeed, Zee thought.
Zee willed herself back to the present. Lately her mind had been wandering. Not just with Lilly, but with all of her patients. They seemed to tell the same stories over and over until her job became more like detective work than therapy. The key wasn’t in the stories themselves, at least not the ones they told and retold. Rather it was in the variations of their stories, the small details that changed with each telling. Those details were often the keys to whatever deeper issues lay hidden beneath the surface. What wasn’t the patient telling the truth about?
“Everybody lies,” was another of Mattei’s favorite expressions.
And so as the weeks passed, Zee listened to Lilly, to the variations in the stories she told over and over. But on the day that Lilly had mentioned Neptune, the story she told was one that Zee had never before heard.
“Back in the day,” Lilly was saying, “before the phones in Marblehead had dials, way back when the operators used to ask ‘Number, please’ in a nasal four syllables, you would have to say ‘Neptune 1’ for the Marblehead exchange.” Lilly was far too young ever to have remembered phones without dials and operators who co
“Does Neptune have a special meaning for you?” Zee asked.
Lilly’s face contorted. “I’ve always been afraid of Neptune,” she said. “ Neptune is a vengeful god.”
AT 5:20, ZEE DIALED HER wedding pla
Zee felt a bit giddy, the way she’d felt as a kid when there was a snow day. Michael wouldn’t be home from Washington until the last shuttle. Having come up with the winter image, Zee decided to treat this unanticipated block of freedom as a snow day. Never mind that it was ninety-six degrees outside. The evening stretched ahead of her. She could do anything she wanted with it. Zee couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an open evening. Between her work schedule and the wedding plans, there’d been little time for anything else lately. She hadn’t even seen her father in the last few months, and she felt guilty about it, though she knew he understood.
The wedding date was not until the late fall, but it seemed as if there was at least one major wedding item a day on her to-do list. Zee hated the process. Tonight they were supposed to be sampling sushi at O Ya, and three kinds of sake. Not a bad evening, all things considered. But Michael wasn’t going to make it back in time, and she couldn’t deal with the wedding pla
Her excuse had been a lie-well, more of a twist, really. Lilly was her three-o’clock, not her five, and whether she showed up or not would make little difference to tonight’s plans.
2
THOUGH IT WAS AN easy walk to their house on Beacon Hill, Zee hailed a cab. She wasn’t Mattei. She didn’t like to sweat. Out on the streets, exhaust and steam merged, creating a heat mirage that made the buildings across the river look as if they were begi
It was chilly inside the cab. Mahler played on some weaker station, interrupted by intermittent static from the driver’s iPhone as it checked for e-mails. A king-size bottle of hand sanitizer had spilled onto the front seat and was spreading its alcohol scent, u
She thought of Mattei’s sense exercises. Close off two of your senses and switch them. Smell and what? Hearing? No, touch was better. Zee ran her fingers along the door handle and the fake leather seat. Shut off the offending senses, choose the ones you can manage.
When they finally reached the house, Zee tipped the cabbie and walked around back, climbing the outside stairway to the deck, letting herself in through the kitchen door. The room was freezing, which fit well with her snow-day theme.
She had been happy for the heat a few minutes ago, and now she was happy for the cold. Zee seemed to need these extremes more and more lately, something she didn’t want to think about because it reminded her too much of her mother. She removed her shoes but didn’t take a pair of slippers from the bin that Michael provided for guests. Her hot feet left moist footprints on the cool, dark wood floor. With each step forward, the footprints she left behind slowly disappeared.
She was vaguely hungry. She opened the fridge. There were some leftovers from the party they’d had last weekend, some imported prosciutto and a ton of cheese. They’d invited several people over. Mostly people Michael worked with and some of Mattei’s friends, too, including Rhonda, whom Zee really liked. Mattei and Rhonda were pla