37

I don’t know what to do for my birthday.” Lauren looked directly at Dr. Lewis, then over at his desk, where, to her great frustration, he had no pictures. It was beyond unfair that she had no idea what his wife looked like.

“What would you like to do?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know.”

“Is there pressure to do something?”

“Well, yeah—it’s my birthday.”

She thought of birthdays in the past—two years ago, when her parents took her and three friends to Mamma Mia!; last year, when her mom paid for her and Amanda to go to a day spa. When she was younger, she’d loved studying magazines for party ideas, but there was really nothing to do that she hadn’t already done, and besides, she wasn’t in the mood.

His white coat was on a hanger on the back of the door, and she couldn’t remember whether it was usually there or not. She had gotten kind of confused about his job—doing therapy here, seeing kids at the hospital. It seemed he should do one or the other.

He laced his fingers together. “I guess another question would be, what do you like to do?”

“For my birthday?”

“For anything.”

Here he went again. Every so often he’d sneak this question in, like maybe he’d trick her into having an answer. She didn’t like to do anything. That was her problem; she had no interests.

She wished she’d brought a bottle of water. Once, she’d seen a yogurt carton in the garbage under the Kleenex table, and she’d been awestruck that someone would eat in front of him. It wasn’t his carton, she was sure—there was another garbage can under his desk.

“You mentioned once,” he said, “that you like to draw.”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Do you like to look at art?”

“I’m not going to go to a museum for my birthday!”

He pooched out his lips, then sort of shrugged.

“That would be incredibly geeky,” she went on.

“Your friends aren’t interested?”

“I don’t have friends.”

He watched her for a long moment. “You’re feeling very empty,” he said at last. “It’s very painful.”

She sighed and looked out the window. Fuck you, she thought. The trees on his street were getting green, and she thought of how she used to try to draw leaves—like, really draw what they looked like. It was hard.

She turned back. “What do you mean ‘empty’?”

“No interests, no friends. No boyfriend.”

“You mean I’m a total loser.”

“I think that’s how you feel.”

“Because I am one.”

“I think there’s a difference,” he said, “between what you are and how you feel. And I don’t think how you feel now will last forever.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t, but I’m optimistic. You’re attacking yourself, but without as much passion or despair as a couple months ago. You’re not as focused on Jeff. And while you can’t decide about your birthday, you’d like to do something, which encourages me.”

The session was over, and she got to her feet and put on her jacket. He stood and opened the door. This moment, passing close by him to get out of his office, was always the same—crowded with things she suddenly wanted to say.

At home that evening she waited until everyone was occupied, then crept into the guest room. In a bookcase there her mom kept several books about art—a big art history book that she’d had since college, a book about the Italian Renaissance, several books on specific artists. There was one Lauren wanted to look at—Alex Katz. She pulled it from the shelf and kicked off her shoes, then sat on the guest room bed. This was a book her parents had bought on a trip to New York before she was born. From all the stuff they’d told her about that trip, you’d have thought they’d been there for months, but it was only a week.

Was it true that she wasn’t as focused on Jeff? She’d had some weird moments looking at him lately when she wasn’t even sure she liked him anymore. But she did—of course she did.

Somewhere in this book was a picture of a canoe on water, but she couldn’t find it. Instead, it was pretty much all paintings of people, and mostly of one person, a woman named Ada. The paintings had dates, and Lauren saw that over the years Alex Katz’s painting style had changed from sort of blurry or muddy to really sharp, almost like cutout paper. There was one of a woman—it was Ada again, though it didn’t say so—carrying an umbrella in the rain, and Lauren looked at it for a long time, focusing, finally, on the three white dots he’d put on each of her eyes. Those dots and the falling rain—it was as if she were crying, but she didn’t really look sad.

At last she found the canoe. She couldn’t remember the first time she’d seen it, but it was long ago, when she was a kid. It kind of freaked her out, actually, the canoe nearly filling the picture, blue all around it so you didn’t know where it was: near a house and people, or out in the middle of a cold lake. There had been a time when Lauren had taken this book from its shelf quite frequently, had sat on the guest room rug and stared at this picture. The page was even a little smudged. When had that been?

The blue was as dark as the ocean. The canoe was pale yellow, with markings that suggested it was made of bark. It sat on its own reflection, its pale water-self black at one end, as if that end would pull the entire reflected canoe down into the depths, leaving the other one to try to go on by itself. Lauren closed the book and lay back on the bed. The house was quiet: her parents were downstairs somewhere; Joe was in his room doing homework. She had homework, too, a page of math problems she could never finish by tomorrow, which made her feel it was pointless even to start them. She pulled the book close, rolled onto her side, and rested her forearm on its cool, smooth surface. Maybe she would sleep here tonight, for a change.