The Institute for Better Boys looked nothing like Lena remembered.
Indestructible vinyl flooring painted to look like barnyard wood had replaced the converted church’s original rotting floorboards. The old oversized reception desk and lumpy couch at the front entrance had been thrown out and replaced with a simple light switch alert system and a cozy seating area.
A variety of options for waiting parents and patients filled the space: all sorts of stuffed chairs and couches, a table with several board games on top, and even an old school standup Pac Man arcade console with the sound cut off. State of the art white noise machine stood outside each of the doors. Everywhere she looked there were either plants or some other interactive element, like paintings you could touch, to make the space look warm, inviting and safe.
“Wow, a lot has changed around here,” she said to Nancy as they walked down a hallway lined in chalk drawings from the many emotion exercises. “I still remember how hard it was to get the boys to line up and take turns at the easel chalkboard after feelings meditation. Now you’ve got a whole hallway!”
“Yes, we’ve made many, many improvements over the last decade. We were lucky to receive a special grant from DGK to hire a consultant and interior designer to make our waiting spaces more inviting and patient friendly,” Nancy answered happily. She also looked nothing like the good-hearted but harried founder she remembered. The gray hairs that used to feather her temples were gone now, covered over in a matching vibrant red. She also wore her hair in a trendy bob, instead of a frizzy high ponytail, because “who has time for hair appointments?” And though all the day campers would be arriving any minute now, she seemed calm and relaxed.
She’d even offered to introduce Lena around the expanded offices, since the summer camp now apparently ran like clockwork.
Lena was grateful for the extra time, but her stomach soured at the mention of DGK.
“How many day campers do we have this year?” she asked, changing the subject. “I’m so sorry Max had to drop out at the last minute.”
“Oh don’t be, dear,” Nancy answered with a wry chuckle. “I used to have to canvas the neighborhood to get boys willing to attend the Better Connections summer camp. Now we’ve got a waiting list and rich parents complaining about their kids not qualifying to get in. A few of them even threatened to sue us. Can you believe it?”
Wow…no…no she couldn’t. But she didn’t blame them for being angry. If she was still a doctor’s wife, living in South Pasadena, she’d want to get Max into a day camp that looked like this, too. Had Keane really donated enough money to make all of this happen?
Mistaking her agitated look, Nancy said, “Don’t worry. Nothing ever came of it. Luckily, DGK also gave us free access to their legal department to handle the parents who think they can sue their way in. They really have been a godsend—oh, here’s Julio, who runs our Rainbow Grit group therapy sessions. Julio, this is Lena. She’s training with us in the hopes of starting a Dialectical Behavior Therapy group for her own practice.”
Julio’s eyes lit up. “For girls? Parents are always asking me for referrals. What part of Boston are you located?”
“No part of Boston.” Lena shook her head with an apologetic wince. “My home practice is in Pasadena, California. It’s also co-ed and definitely not a non-profit. Truth be told, they’re a little skeptical about me taking on this training, because there’s already another practice, offering something similar for girls in California—though, that’s not a non-profit either.”
Julio’s shoulder’s sank. “That’s too bad. We need more programs like this for our underserved populations here in Boston.”
“Yes, I bet,” Lena answered, remembering how many girls in the mostly black school she attended before high school could have benefitted from the array of early intervention cognitive and dialectical therapies offered at the Institute for Better Boys. “This place is truly one of a kind. And wonderful.”
Yes, it was. But pointing that out made Lena’s chest erupt with guilt. She had hoped Keane had been exaggerating when he said the Institute for Better Boys wouldn’t be able to survive without his company’s funding. But he so obviously hadn’t been.
Who does this, she wondered as Nancy walked her through the cutting edge chart system software that her Pasadena practice was still trying to decide if they could afford—another gift from DGK. Who gives a worthy cause this much money, then threatens to destroy it if one person doesn’t do exactly as he wants?
The same kind of person who’d answered her question about getting her punishment over with, so that they could arrange a custody arrangement with, “120 fucks. No condom.”
The answer had come back so fast she’d thought she’d misheard. “What?”
“You heard me. I want 120 fucks. One for each month you kept him from me. No condoms.”
For a moment she could only goggle at him. Wondering how she’d ever felt so close to this Masshole that she’d rushed to his side after his accident.
“You can’t be serious. 120 times in just three months. That’s impossible! And no condoms? I’m not on birth control. What if I got pregnant? Again?”
“We’d negotiate that baby into the custody agreement, too. I’m assuming you’ll be wanting something like both of the kids with you most of the time and me getting them holidays, breaks and a few weekends. I can give you that. But I would get summers with Max. Plus, no more bullshit minor league for him. He’s in triple A from now on. Same goes for the next kid if it’s a boy. Summers will be for top tier hockey, starting at age five. And if Max decides to attend Boston Glenn, then he’ll be spending his weekends with me.
Her mind reeled with all the new input. “He won’t be going to Boston Glenn,” Lena said, her voice adamant.
Keane paused and regarded her with that shrewd look she remembered so well. The one that had never quite let her believe he was just another dummy with athletic skills like the rest of the sticks. Unfortunately, she’d been right about that.
“You hated it there,” he said after a considering moment. “But if Max decides that’s where he wants to go, you’re not going to stop him, right?”
“He won’t ever decide to become a Stick,” Lena assured him, knowing her son so much better than he did.
“But if he does decide to go there, I’m going to need it on paper that you won’t stand in his way,” Keane insisted. Then before she could answer, he asked. “Why do you think it’s impossible?”
“What?” she asked, unable to keep up.
“Why do you think I wouldn’t be able to get my 120 fucks in before the summer’s done? You trying to say you don’t remember the way we used to go at it?”
Without warning, a montage of memories from that summer hit her hot and hard. Them erupting like a volcano every time they kissed. Fucking everywhere. At his apartment, in the salsa club bathroom after Keane surprised her with a dance class date, so that she could cross “learn how to dance” off her Shake It Off list. Toward the beginning of their relationship, they’d been in the middle of an argument about where they should go to dinner, and Keane had suddenly leaped across the seat to make #5 on the list come true. Sex not in a bed. They’d ended up crossing that one off the list, so many times she’d lost count. They couldn’t get enough of each other that summer.
But…
“We’re not kids anymore,” she reminded him.
He’d given her a heated look, but then after a moment, shrugged and said, “Fine. 100 fucks. Take it or leave it, you decide. I got a Zamboni appointment with the kid I’m just now finding out is mine.”
Leave it. She should leave it.
She’d decided that while watching his departing back. And she concluded the same thing this morning, while entering all her data into the fancy chart system. What he was suggesting was crazy, not to mention riddled with dangerous emotional minefields.
But the thing was, she did want another baby. That had been the other thing ripping at the seams of her and Rohan’s marriage when everything with Max blew up. After years of trying for another baby, they’d found out that Rohan couldn’t father children, thanks to a chromosomal defect issue. He’d refused to consider allowing Lena to use a sperm donor, and adoption had been off the table, too, “because then everyone would know I can’t father my own children.”
She also hadn’t hated being a single mom these last couple of years. In fact, raising Max to be a happy and healthy boy despite what happened with the man he thought was his father had been a privilege and a joy. So much so that she often found herself not just wanting, but aching for another baby. And at thirty-three, she wasn’t getting any younger.
After using her lump sum alimony payment to pay off her considerable student loans, she’d saved enough for a sperm donor. But when she started scrolling through the portfolios of eligible candidates at the fertility clinic she’d chosen to do the procedure, there had been something so off-putting about the whole process. She had left without being able to pick anyone she liked enough to father a child with.
She hated Keane, but the thought of finally being able to have the second child she’d been so longing for, to be able to give Max a younger sibling….
The vibration of her phone brought her out of her what if trance.
“Hey, Vihaan,” she said after picking up.
“Hey, Lena, I’m outside in the waiting room. Do I come in to get Max or does he come out to me—oh, and I got a list of other hockey programs for him.”
Lena slapped a hand over her face. Oh no, she’d completely forgotten that Vihaan and Max had made plans to eat lunch together!
She winced. “Vihaan, I’m coming out. There’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago….”