Page 28 of Mornings By the Linden Tree
“Good luck,” she called as she reached out to pull all the pen bits and bobs toward her.
I wasn’t too worried. Marty wouldn’t give the case to someone else over a little miscalculation on my part. No, what had me worried was how I was waffling over things that a few months ago had seemed so concrete. How was it possible a tiny little girl could change a grown man so much in such a short amount of time? Speaking of that little girl, I needed to text Lennon to see how things were going at home. A lot could happen in the hour and fifty-two minutes I’d been gone.
***
“So, Uncle Wes, how has your first day back at work been?” Dr. Bajaj asked me out of the blue. I yanked my vision from Valeriaseated on a carpet—a new addition to an already overwhelming room of bright colors—that looked like a small city complete with roads and farms and stores to blink at the man with no shoes. Valeria was also in her stocking feet. Both had worn bright socks with silly animals on them. I could see a nearly four-year-old wearing ankle socks with little pink elephants, but a man of fifty wearing socks of penguins on rollers skates was just too much for me. Still, I could be polite even when faced with a grown man with no shoes. Usually that only happened on the trains, but hey, he had the degree in psychology. I did wish he would call me something else, though.
“Well, Dr. Bajaj, it was hectic, but overall a satisfactory return to my office.” I folded my arms over my chest. He raised a brow. I knew what he was thinking—that I was putting up arm armor—and so I let my hands drop to my lap. And there we sat, looking at each other while Valeria pushed a chunky plastic car heaped with Lego people along the carpet road. They’d talked for perhaps fifteen minutes about nothing of importance—mostly a discussion of how her stuffed bunnies didn’t like salad or how the stuffed bunnies felt scared when Uncle Wes left—but Lennon made her feel safe when Uncle Wes was working to break up mommies and daddies. A comment I had wanted to correct immediately, but Mr. Penguin Socks shushed me so as not to interrupt her flow of conversation.
“Wonderful. And how is the new nanny working out? Lennon, his name is, right?” he asked as if he didn’t know.
Valeria and I had only mentioned the man’s name a dozen times or more in each of our sessions this week. The mere fact I discussed our new temporary nanny rattled me greatly. I’d never had such overwhelming feelings for a man before and kissing him had just amplified my emotions tenfold. It was somewhat frightening how much I looked forward to seeing him arrive in the mornings I worked. Two days this week. That seemedlike far too many days leaving Valeria, while, at the same time, not enough days leaving Valeria. If I stayed home, I’d not see Lennon enough to satisfy this yearning, yet if I went to work, I was abandoning Valeria. Not that she saw it as such, for she was just as smitten with Lennon as I seemed to be. It was a giant knot the size of Old Ironsides and one I was neatly tied up in. We’d not kissed again, but every time we were in the same general area, the urge to jack him up against the nearest wall and run my tongue over every succulent inch of his pale skin grappled me. This morning, I’d barely managed to leave the kitchen without pulling him from pouring milk over Valeria’s cereal to shove my tongue into his mouth. It took a Herculean effort, but I did manage to leave even though I was late and wearing unsuitable socks.
“The new nanny is doing well. Yes, Lennon is his name. I am still searching for a permanent childcare worker, but it seems the agencies in the area are hiring wholly unsuitable people,” I replied as I crossed one leg over the other and placed my hands on my knee. Dr. Bajaj nodded along as therapists are known to do at times.
“Uncle Wes told Lennon he was late because I puked up cookie dough,” she chimed in from the floor. “Then I feeled bad about making Uncle Wes late for breaking up mommies and daddies so I don’t think I will eat no more cookies.”
I felt the look from the good doctor settle on me like a ton of bricks. “I’m sure you can eat cookies again, Valeria, just not an entire tube of dough while I’m sleeping.” There. I explained myself clearly and kindly. She shook her head, dark hair falling down to hide her face, and then retreated back into driving the Lego family to a patch of blue that I assumed was a lake.
“It’s okay to feel bad when we do something that upsets another person or makes them more work,” Dr. Bajaj said from his seat on the floor with his back resting on the chair his grownass should be sitting in. “I spilled some tea last night, and it ran all over my wife’s papers. I felt bad, but she said it was okay because accidents happen.”
“Yes, I know, but Uncle Wes never said nothing about accidents that happen,” she mumbled from behind the screen of her black hair. I exhaled with restraint. For some reason, I felt I was being guilted into something, but I couldn’t fathom that a child of her age could wield a guilt cudgel that effectively. “Because…sometimes when a kid throws up, it’s a big accident.”
She peeked through her hair. Yes, I was being played, and rather expertly at that.
“You’re right,” I conceded, hoping to get past this point and move, with speed, to the end of the session. “I should have noted that children do get sick on occasion. I also would like to mention children should not be stealing around the house like a petty larcenist.”
“What is a pretty marsonist?” Her query got a snort of amusement from Dr. Bajaj.
“Your uncle is saying you should have asked before eating all that cookie dough,” Bajaj slipped in. I was grateful to hear that he actually agreed with me on one point of parenting. Most of the time, I felt like an utter failure when we were here talking about our home lives.
“Yes, I know. It was an accident.” She vroomed her car to the water and dumped the poor Lego family out on their heads. “Lennon says that Uncle Wes is springy.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Springy? What on earth did that mean? And why was the man I had kissed so passionately been talking about me with a child? Also, and this was important…how was I springy?!
“Lennon seems to be becoming a good friend of yours,” Dr. Bajaj said as he stretched out his legs and wiggled his toes. His. Toes. Wiggled. In his socks. For all the world to see.
“Oh, he is a bestest friend in Boston! Oh my sorry, baby, your head felled off.” She shot to her feet and brought the Lego to me. “Can you fix this baby, Uncle Wes? She is sad for her head popped off, but I know…you are…I know you is good for fixing scared girls.”
The ball of emotion suddenly lodged in my throat made it hard to speak. “Yes, of course I will fix her, but next time be more careful of baby heads. They are very delicate.” I snapped the head back on. Valeria beamed up at me and raced back to the family having a lakeside picnic on the floor.
“You are the best broken girl fixer ever. You should stop breaking up mommies and daddies and do head fixes,” she crowed at the top of her lungs.
I did my best not to look at the doctor. Surely, he was just glowing with mental health goodness about how endearing a moment that had just been. Yes, I felt the tenderness well up inside of me. Yes, I was pleased she felt I had fixed things for her. And yes, I was rather skilled at manipulating tiny plastic heads back onto tiny plastic bodies. I was thrilled to say I had spent seven years studying my skinny ass off to become a lawyer, and now my only accolades from my niece came from sticking tiny heads onto tiny bodies.
“My job is not just breaking up mommies and daddies,” I calmly told the therapist.
“I’m aware,” Dr. Bajaj replied with that placid counselor tone that made me want to throw myself from the window. “But sometimes children will whittle away at the extraneous wood we adults layer on our tender cores, much like bark on a tree, until they have our heartwood pared down to what they can understand.”
“Of course.”
“So, Uncle Wes, how was your first day back at work?”
Ugh. The man was as tenacious as my neighbor Miss Howarth’s snaggle-toothed Pomeranian. Once he got hold of your pant leg, he refused to let go.
“It was quite satisfactory,” I repeated. What did the man want me to say? That I got questioned about my sudden change of tact regarding the Wilton case or that I had texted Lennon a dozen times in four hours or that I had worn the wrong tone of blue socks to the most prestigious law office in Boston? “It’s a law office, not the Ringling Brothers circus. I’m not sure what you wish to discover about a day spent up to your armpits in legal documents and ill-tempered clients.”
“I like a circus,” Valeria chimed in as Dr. Bajaj gave me a look that set me on edge. He was analyzing my reply just like a damn therapist. “There was a circus inDumbo. He flyed on his big ears. Can we go see a circus, Uncle Wes?”
