Dr. Chen was a small woman with pale skin and dark hair that shot out in little points across her forehead. Her eyes burned bright beneath eyebrows that rose and dipped like roller coasters on her smooth forehead, and she was very smiley. Sophie had been going to see her ever since she was a baby, and Andrea had worked in the same building as her for the past five years. “They think she’s a saint,” she’d often express to Sophie, recounting a particularly crazy day at the clinic. Who were “they”? A baby bitten by a rat, a man whose liver was soaked through with alcohol, a diabetic woman with a body too heavy for her own muscles to move. It didn’t matter how awful their conditions were, what revulsion they might inspire, Dr. Chen cared for each of them with palpable tenderness, touching them gently, smiling in a way that edged their terror away. When she listened to a patient talk about the way his body was failing, a sensation of grace rose up, the feeling of demise halted, the doctor’s office a magical room where the sad laws of entropy and decay were paused, just for a moment, just long enough for a person to catch his breath and receive a bit of mercy.
“Well,” said the doctor, flashing her quick and shining eyes from Sophie to Andrea and back to Sophie again. “You really shouldn’t be hyperventilating. Passing yourself out. But you knew that, right?” Slender fingers darted out to ruffle Sophie’s unruly tangles.
Sophie nodded sheepishly. She felt more embarrassed than anything. The time she’d spent in the purgatory of the waiting room had dulled her terror, numbing her out with its abrasive atmosphere: fluorescent lights, a too-loud television bolted to the wall, the sick old man in the corner moaning steadily, a trio of hyperactive kids dashing in shrieking arcs. Her own mother grumbling bitter grumbles about having to miss work so that she could bring her careless daughter to her very place of employment.
“You do not know what it is like to be here and not be getting paid,” she hissed to Sophie, slapping an ancient copy of Better Homes and Gardens shut on her lap. She glanced furtively at intake, where her arch nemesis, a coworker named Dorothy, was resentfully pushing papers. “She better not call me over for anything. I am not on the clock.”
Sophie sunk down in the busted waiting-room seat, ashamed at the drama she’d stirred. She felt profoundly tired; all she wanted to do was collapse into her bed with the sheets so cool, sheets worn so soft they felt thin as Kleenex in places, her lovely bed filled with all her smells. She wanted to tuck herself in and drift away in the dusk, fading like the summer sky outside her window. She wanted real dreams, dreams with senseless plots and absurd juxtapositions, normal dreams that didn’t leave you haunted by new emotions. Dreams that occurred at night, as they should, unfurling through the darkest hours. She wanted to wake up fresh, this dumbest of days behind her, becoming history, just one of the millions of days lived and forgotten. But first she’d have to see Dr. Chen.
* * *
“I KNOW I shouldn’t do it,” Sophie mumbled. Maybe if she sounded really down on herself everyone would leave her alone.
“Now, now.” Dr. Chen shook her head, her smile an easy thing on her face. “So many of the kids do it, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s natural to be curious. It is quite a sensation.”
Sophie and Andrea both started at the doctor’s sly admission, Andrea in scorn and Sophie in surprise.
“You mean… you did it, too? When you were my age?”
“Yes, I did,” Dr. Chen affirmed. “I did all sorts of foolish things. The important thing is—I stopped before I hurt myself. And you must promise me that you will stop now, too.”
“Okay.” Sophie nodded. She just couldn’t imagine calm, sophisticated Dr. Chen, so cool and crisp with her bright white coat and perfect hair, clutching her throat and rolling on the ground. She nearly blushed at the thought, and Dr. Chen caught her.
“It is silly to think of, isn’t it? But most girls do such things. Andrea?”
Sophie sucked in a lungful of air at the suggestion. As strange as it was to visualize Dr. Chen, it was simply impossible to conjure an image of her own uptight mom, her almost-always-angry mom, her scornful-at-most-everything mom, letting go with the gasping huff-and-puff, allowing herself to float away. She honked out a rude little laugh.
But, when Andrea was thirteen years old she had spent six months fascinated with this dream state her body could create. She didn’t know if she was more insulted at Dr. Chen outing her before her daughter, or at Sophie’s smug assertion that Andrea could never have done something so reckless, so childish, could never have been a child at all, that she had come onto the earth full-grown, the stressed-out single mother of a back-talking nerd.
“Dr. Chen,” she began, her tone pissed.
“Andrea.” The doctor held out her hand. “I mean only to bring you and your daughter together here. The truth is, Sophie, this is a dangerous game to play, and you should not do it again—but sometimes it seems to me that every adolescent girl is playing it.”
“And if every adolescent were smoking pot, would you suggest I remain calm about that, too?” Andrea challenged.
“There are a lot of similarities.” Dr. Chen rubbed her chin, ignoring the question. “They both kill brain cells, get you high, trigger a false euphoria.”
“What would produce a real euphoria?” Sophie asked.
“Sophie!” Andrea snapped. “Don’t act smart.”
“It’s a valid question.” The doctor nodded. “Real euphoria. Falling in love, those sort of feelings trigger euphoria. But then, often the love that triggers the euphoria isn’t ‘real’ love, if by real we mean requited, or lasting.” She sighed. “Runners, people who train for marathons, often experience euphoria, as do people whose bodies are enduring the first stages of starvation. Dieters, fasters, anorexics.” The doctor seemed confounded by her own thought process. “Perhaps all euphoria is false. Or, what we understand from euphoria is false. Because it makes us feel happy, we think we are happy, even if something terrible is happening to us. It’s purely chemical.”
“Dr. Chen. Is Sophie okay?” Andrea was brimming with impatience. The philosophical, chatty kindness she shared with her patients seemed sweet enough from a distance, but annoying firsthand.
“Sophie’s going to be fine!” Dr. Chen crowed, clapping the girl on her leg and standing up from her chair. She stretched her body into the air with a yawn and a groan. “Sophie, be suspicious of anything that gives you a quick rush of good feelings. True good feelings should be earned.”
“But my brain’s okay?” Sophie asked earnestly.
“Better than average brain.” The woman winked. “Keep asking questions, even if they drive everyone crazy. Especially if they drive everyone crazy.” She winked again, this time at Andrea. “Now, who do we have out there today? Victor Perez, is that who I saw carrying on in the corner? Victor Perez is the most arthritic man in the whole world,” she told Sophie.
“Really?”
“To hear him tell it, yes. So I have got to come up with the most powerful arthritis remedy in the whole world.” She shook her head and wrapped her hand around the doorknob. “It’s a tough job, I tell you. Andrea, I hope you take the rest of the day off, spend some time with Sophie here. And Sophie, I’ll see you for your checkup before you start high school in the fall. Where are you off to, hmm? One of those preppy schools in Boston?”
Dr. Chen could not have known of the tender spot she’d hit with her small talk. Sophie was dying to go to a one of the preparatory high schools across the big green bridge that arched into the city. There she would learn things that were real and true, things like art and psychology, and about all the different kinds of people in the world. Her classmates would have sophisticated hairdos, and her teachers would spend their days off feeding homeless people and protesting wars. Sophie had heard of these schools, but Andrea had shot her down. “Designer schools,” she had snapped. “They’re no better than the public high school. You’re just paying for the name.”
“It’s better for getting into college,” Sophie had suggested, her voice cracking a bit. It was the first time she’d brought up such a possibility. College. If her fantasies about the prep school were vivid, the story Sophie had told herself about college life were positively wondrous, full of rolling lawns she would lounge upon with her clever, witty, new best friends, girls with shining ponytails and smart skirts. They would share with one another their latest thrilling opinions; they would gossip, have crushes, be moved by poetry and pass among them a contagious interest in the world they’d just become a part of. Around them would rise Gothic buildings containing dusty books that explained the secrets histories of everything. College. But Andrea had only replied, “There’s got to be room in this world for the ditchdigger.” Sophie didn’t know any ditchdiggers, unless her mother meant the men in giant yellow construction trucks who broke up chunks of concrete when a road needed repair. Is that what she was supposed to do with her life? She was confused. But when Andrea ended the conversation with a quick jab, “You should have been born a Kennedy,” Sophie finally understood what was being said: Andrea didn’t have the money, and Sophie didn’t get it.
“She’s going here, to Chelsea High, just like her mother,” Andrea told the doctor, phony pride stringing her voice tight across her throat.
Dr. Chen nodded. “I went here, too. Wherever you go, there you are.”
Sophie watched her mother and Dr. Chen watch one another. Dr. Chen’s coolness felt open, friendly, as if there wasn’t any reason, ever, to not be in a totally awesome mood. Her hair lay on her head perfect as a doll’s wig. Sophie couldn’t imagine anything ever mussing the sleek bob, especially not Dr. Chen, whose strides and motions had a fluid grace.
Andrea, on the other hand, seemed like she had burst through a wall to get where she stood. The heat affected her, keeping her flushed, keeping the fine curls at her temples wet and flat against her skin. She shone. The bobby pins she used to keep her hair in line looked jammed into the mass of curls haphazardly. Her dark eyes bounced in her face. They held a certain edgy sparkle, always in motion. Andrea exuded a strange combination of urgency and exhaustion, as if she’d been saving babies from a burning building all day. And it wasn’t because of Sophie’s seizure. Sophie’s mother was always like this.
As the doctor twisted her wrist to swing wide the door to her office, an ethereal whistling sound became audible; a high-pitched, mysterious ringing growing louder, fuller, melodious, and ending with a violent smack on the doctor’s curtained window. The glass shook with the impact, and everyone jumped.
“Oh, dear,” murmured Dr. Chen. She moved swiftly toward the window and, pushing aside the yellow curtains that filled the room with lemony warmth, flung open the glass. Immediately there was a fluttering, and something feathered and gray filled the space—a pigeon, soot colored and stocky, with the strangest contraption affixed to its tail feathers. Perched on the windowsill, it tucked its wings tight to its plump side, and fixed an eager, orange eye on the doctor.
“Oh, no,” Andrea grumbled. “They’ve got to net this building. These things are going to make sick people sicker.” Andrea switched into work mode and stepped toward the bird, making to shoo it away, but it only waddled sideways, ducking her flapping hand.
“No, no.” Dr. Chen smiled. She laid out her fingers like an elegant invitation and the bird accepted, daintily wrapping its skinny feet around the doctor. Andrea gasped. It was as if Dr. Chen was brazenly picking her nose, or scratching her bum, or plugging her thumb into her ear and smearing fresh wax onto her desk. Surely, she had lost her mind. The doctor gazed at the animal with a sort of reluctant admiration, possibly pride. She brought her arm up so that the others could witness the bird’s full form, including the strange cluster of tubes fixed to its backside with threads of glinting copper wire.
“This is Livia,” Dr. Chen introduced.
“You know that pigeon?” Andrea asked.
“This pigeon is a friend of mine. I guess you would call her my pet, though she’s a bit more independent than a dog or a cat. She lives in a dovecote on my roof.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Sophie peered at the object stuck awkwardly to the tail feathers.
“Nothing is wrong with her.” The doctor stroked the bird’s iridescent neck the way one would pet a docile cat. Andrea flinched as she watched the doctor’s sterile fingers rub the greasy feathers. “This is bamboo.” She touched the carved tubes lightly. “Bamboo whistles. When she flies, it makes the sweetest sound. Perhaps you heard it right before she smashed into the window. Silly bird,” she murmured, pecking the pigeon’s smooth gray head and leaving a bit of red lipstick on the feathers there. “You’re too smart to fly into a window! What was that about?” As if in answer, the pigeon shook itself all over, lifting from the doctor’s hand and taking to the air, there in the cramped office. Andrea cried out and backed away from the commotion of feathers, but Sophie remained still, even as the bird clumsily advanced and then settled on her head. She could feel the bird’s sharp claws tapping her scalp, sliding into her hair. She stayed very, very still.
“Oh my god,” Sophie said, feeling like a strange statue in a park, a girl with an animal perched on her head. She thought briefly of Ella. If her friend could see her now, she very likely would end the friendship for good, judging Sophie contaminated beyond repair.
“Dr. Chen!” Andrea scolded. “Please, get your bird off my daughter!” But Andrea made no move to brush the bird away. Its status as the doctor’s special pet had elevated it above the common pigeons trolling for scraps in dumpsters around the city. It wasn’t wild—it belonged to Dr. Chen. Andrea felt it would be rude to swat it. But what kind of pet was a pigeon? A grimy one, she imagined. Still out there flying around in the muck, tucking germs into its dingy feathers. “Please!” she snapped again.
Sophie rather liked the bird settling on her head, though she feared its droppings. Its claws brought a roll of goose bumps down her neck, and her hair felt alive beneath its movements. The doctor shook her head at the scene and snapped her fingers at the pigeon. With a push off that stung Sophie, Livia jumped back into the air, flapping onto the doctor’s outstretched hand. Dr. Chen walked the animal to the window, stretching her fingers like a bridge for the bird to waddle across.
“Go home,” she said firmly. And the pigeon did. With all the world before it, its take off was powerful and smooth. It glided into the sky, pulling air through the whistles on its tail, leaving a flute of sound in its wake. “Listen to that,” the doctor said, smiling, and Sophie rushed to the window to see her new friend disappear, straining her ears to hear the last of the music as it faded. Like the thin, fragile tone of a finger on a ring of glass. Like the subtle vibrations of something gently, artfully struck. Andrea followed her daughter to the window, inspecting the girl’s head for fleas and bird poop. She found nothing but kept digging. Sophie allowed it. Her mother’s scratchy fingernails reminded her of the bird, its comforting heaviness and skittering claws.
“Did you do that?” Sophie marveled. “Give it that whistle?”
The doctor nodded. “I learned from my father. It is a very old art, mostly forgotten. Once, long ago, whole flocks of pigeons were whistled. They would fly together and it would be an orchestra in the air, like heaven was announcing itself to the world. Imagine! A sky full of such sound!” The doctor sighed wistfully, blowing her own light whistle through her lipsticked mouth. “But not all pigeons like the whistles. Some find it terrible.” She scrunched her face. “Would you want a tuba rigged up to your butt? I would not!”
Sophie considered it. She wouldn’t want to have to lug something around on her body, but she would like to leave a trail of invisible beauty behind her as she moved through the world. She would like to stir the air and feel her passing change it. “I don’t know…” she said thoughtfully.
“Livia likes it very much. She’s proud to have the whistle. I watch her swoop off from the roof—she finds new ways to tumble and soar that bring different sounds to her tail. She is a true artist.”
“How do you know?”
“You know.” The doctor nodded. “Do you have a pet?”
“A cat.”
“And you know what your cat likes, and what she does not like?”
Sophie thought. “She likes being petted, and then she hates it, and bites. But I know right when she starts to hate it. I can just tell.”
“Cats are the meanest.” Dr. Chen shuddered, as if Sophie had revealed that her pet was a dragon. “When they are done with your affections they slice you up!”
Andrea, finished with her inspection, smoothed her daughter’s hair down, and addressed the doctor with a grim look. “Dr. Chen, I’m going to have to report this. It is so unsanitary! I can’t believe you allow pigeons in here, in a hospital. On my daughter! I don’t care if they’re your pets.”
“Okay, Andrea,” the doctor said amicably. “Do what you must. I promise you that Livia is a clean bird, though, and that Sophie is fine.”
And with that Dr. Chen cracked her office door, swinging it wide on its hinges. In rushed the cacophony of the rooms beyond: the dinging elevators, the braying of a mother trying to control her kids, the steady typing of the intake workers, the whooshing of the glass doors sliding open and closed, open and closed. The television communicated its bad news to a slumped audience too consumed with their own bad news to pay attention. Wheelchairs spun by, beefy orderlies wheeling gurneys, a nurse pushing a med cart. Their motion spawned a breeze that fluttered the posters on the doctor’s wall, graphic posters in blood red and liver purple, illustrating the body’s many systems. The yellow curtains hung still before the now-closed window. Dr. Chen waited patiently for Sophie and Andrea to exit. They seemed stunned by the hectic activity beyond the room. “I know.” She nodded. “It’s a lot to return to. If I had my way, I’d spend all my time on my roof with the birds.”
“You have more?” Sophie asked, intrigued. Dr. Chen nodded.
“A whole bunch.” She smiled. And she took the first step, out of the office and into the clinic, breaking a certain spell.
* * *
“YOU’RE STILL PUNISHED.” Andrea’s mouth was a grim line on her face; her face was a resolution on her body.
“That’s not fair,” Sophie declared, remembering her mother’s guilty grimace when the doctor suggested that she, too, had played the pass-out game once upon a time. “That’s hypocritical.”
“Don’t think you’re so smart just because you learned a new word,” Andrea snapped. “You’re still punished.”
Sophie was insulted. “Hypocritical is not a new word,” she said. “I’ve known hypocritical for, like, a long time.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the plasticky car seat. It was so warm from being parked in the sun of the clinic parking lot that it felt like hot melting taffy beneath her thighs. She pulled the visor down to knock the sun away. She’d thought summer was going to be so great because there’d be no school, no nuns. She’d forgotten it just meant more and more Mom.
“Maybe I did it once,” Andrea relented. “Maybe twice. But I wasn’t doing it all the time, and I didn’t give myself a seizure.”
“Dr. Chen said it didn’t hurt me!”
“That woman needs her head examined.” Andrea shook her head. “She barely looked at you, and then she lets some germy pigeon run all over you! I am so reporting her. I don’t care if her bedside manner is great. There’s something wrong with her.” She flicked her eyes up and down her daughter, searching for remnants of the earlier strange behavior. “What was it then, huh?” She shook her head. “You’re grounded. I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”
“You’re not home, Ma,” Sophie said, with duh in her voice. “You won’t be keeping an eye on me. You won’t even be there.”
Andrea chewed her lip. It was true. She glanced sideways at her daughter. This was how it happened. The mothers were away at work because the fathers were away god knows where and before you knew it the girls turned wild and you had a Laurie LeClair on your hands, all shot up and smacked up and knocked up. Andrea herself had paid the price of her own young wildness—was still paying the price, arguing with her daughter on a hot summer’s day. She wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. She had to get her daughter under control.
“I’ll send you to be with your grandmother,” she threatened.
“No way,” Sophie cackled. “You hate Nana more than you hate me.”
Andrea’s gasp nearly flung her hands from the wheel. “Is that what you think? That I hate you?”
“Well, you don’t act like you like me,” Sophie said in a voice that started out sounding tough but weakened as the heaviness of what she was saying hit her. Did her mother really not like her? Were mothers even allowed to not like their daughters? Was there a special agency Sophie could file a report about this? What would happen? Were there orphanages and foster homes for the children of perfectly capable, functional mothers who just took a strong dislike to their offspring? Sophie felt her eyes fill with a painful mist, like she’d been gassed with something toxic. Don’t let her see you cry, she ordered herself.
“Sophie, you don’t understand how tough this world is. You think you do, I know you really think you do, but you just don’t. You think you can rattle off some smart-ass remarks and that’ll get you whatever you want? You think some fancy school is going to give you some big-shot life?” She shook her head. “That’s just what I’m going to do. That is just what you need. A summer at your grandmother’s. I don’t feel… great about it, but you’ve really left me no choice.” Andrea paused and chewed her lip. She shook her head again and sighed. “There’s really no place else for you to go.”
Sophie’s blood chilled as she realized her bluff was up. Why did she have to run her mouth like that? Why could she never resist picking a fight with her mom? A simple grounding issued by a working single mom would have been a cinch to sneak out on. She could have been running around the city and been back home sulking on the couch by the time Andrea returned from the clinic. She could have smuggled Ella inside to watch television, releasing her between programs to smoke her cigarettes in the alley next door, stashing her in a closet when her mother came home for lunch, freeing her when the coast was clear. The subterfuge could have even been fun. No fun now, not with Nana, Sophie thought, the grief settling in. Sophie was about to spend the remainder of the long, hot summer hanging out at the town dump.
