a little exercise. And I like Bina.”
“She’s become a friend.”
“In a way,” I admit. “A friend I pay.”
“She’s coming on Wednesdays these days, is that right?”
“Usually.”
“Good,” he says, as though Wednesday is a day particularly suitable for aerobic activity. He’s never met Bina. I can’t picture them together; they don’t seem to occupy the same dimension.
It’s quitting time. I know this without consulting the clock hunched on the mantel, just as Dr. Fielding knows it—after years in practice, both of us can time fifty minutes almost to the second. “I want you to continue with the beta-blocker at the same dosage,” he says. “You’re on one-fifty Tofranil. We’ll increase it to two-fifty.” He frowns. “That’s based on what we’ve discussed today. It should help with your moods.”
“I get pretty blurry as is,” I remind him.
“Blurry?”
“Or bleary, I guess. Or both.”
“You mean your vision?”
“No, not my vision. It’s more …” We’ve discussed this—doesn’t he remember? Or have we discussed it? Blurry. Bleary. I could really use that drink. “Sometimes I’ve got too many thoughts at once. It’s like there’s a four-way intersection in my brain where everyone’s trying to go at the same time.” I chuckle, a bit uneasy.
Dr. Fielding knits his brow, then sighs. “Well, it’s not an exact science. As you know.”
“I do. I know.”
“You’re on quite a few different medications. We’ll adjust them one by one until we get it right.”
I nod. I know what this means. He thinks I’m getting worse. My chest tightens.
“Try the two-fifty and see how you feel. If it gets problematic, we can look at something to help you focus.”
“A nootropic?” Adderall. The number of times parents asked me whether Adderall would benefit their kids, the number of times I turned them down cold—and now I’m angling for it myself. Plus ça change.
“Let’s discuss it as and when,” he says. He slashes his pen across a prescription pad, peels away the top sheet, offers it to me. It twitches in his hand. Essential tremor or low blood sugar? Not, I hope, early-onset Parkinson’s. Not my place to ask, either. I take the paper.
“Thank you,” I say as he stands, smoothing his tie. “I’ll put this to good use.”
He nods. “Until next week, then.” He turns toward the door. “Anna?” Turning back.
“Yes?”
He nods again. “Please get that prescription filled.”
AFTER DR. FIELDING leaves, I log the prescription request online. They’ll deliver by five P.M. That’s enough time for a glass. Or even deux.
Not just yet, though. First I drag the mouse to a neglected corner of the desktop, hesitantly double-click on an Excel spreadsheet: meds.xlsx.
Here I’ve detailed all the drugs I’m on, all the dosages, all the directions … all the ingredients in my pharma-cocktail. I stopped updating it back in August, I see.
Dr. Fielding is, as usual, correct: I’m on quite a few medications. I need two hands to count them all. And I know—I wince as I think it—I know I’m not taking them as or when I should, not always. The double doses, the skipped doses, the drunk doses … Dr. Fielding would be furious. I need to do better. Don’t want to lose my grip.
Command-Q, and I’m out of Excel. Time for that drink.
WITH A TUMBLER IN ONE HAND and the Nikon in the other, I settle down in the corner of my study, cupped between the south and west windows, and survey the neighborhood—inventory check, Ed likes to say. There’s Rita Miller, returning from yoga, bright with sweat, a cell phone stuck to one ear. I adjust the lens and zoom in: She’s smiling. I wonder if it’s her contractor on the other end. Or her husband. Or neither.
Next door, outside 214, Mrs. Wasserman and her Henry pick their way down the front steps. Off to spread sweetness and light.
I swing my camera west: Two pedestrians loiter outside the double-wide, one of them pointing at the shutters. “Good bones,” I imagine him saying.
God. I’m inventing conversations now.
Cautiously, as though I don’t want to be caught—and indeed I don’t—I slide my sights across the park, over to the Russells’. The kitchen is dim and vacant, its blinds partly down, like half-shut eyes; but one floor up, in the parlor, captured neatly within the window, I spot Jane and Ethan on a candy-striped love seat. She wears a butter-yellow sweater that exposes a terse slit of cleavage; her locket dangles there, a mountaineer above a gorge.
I twist the lens; the image sharpens. She’s speaking quickly, teeth bared in a grin, her hands a flurry. His eyes are on his lap, but that shy smile skews his lips.
I haven’t mentioned the Russells to Dr. Fielding. I know what he’ll say; I can analyze myself: I’ve located in this nuclear unit—this mother, this father, their only child—an echo of my own. One house away, one door down, there’s the family I had, the life that was mine—a life thought lost, irretrievably, except here it is, right across the park. So what? I think. Maybe I say it; these days I’m not sure.
I sip my wine, wipe my lip, raise the Nikon again. Look through the lens.
She’s looking back at me.
I drop the camera in my lap.
No mistake: Even with my naked eye, I can clearly see her level gaze, her parted lips.
She raises a hand, waves it.
I want to hide.
Should I wave back? Do I look away? Can I blink at her, blankly, as though I’d been aiming the camera at something else, something near her? Didn’t see you there?
No.
I shoot to my feet, the camera tumbling to the floor. “Leave it,” I say—I definitely say it—and I flee the room, into the dark of the stairwell.
NO ONE’S ever caught me before. Not Dr. and Rita Miller, not the Takedas, not the Wassermen, not the gaggle of Grays. Not the Lords before they moved, nor the Motts before they split. Not passing cabs, not passersby. Not even the postman, whom I used to photograph every day, at every door. And for months I’d pore over those pictures, reliving those moments, until at last I could no longer keep up with the world beyond my window. I still make the odd exception, of course—the Millers interest me. Or they did before the Russells arrived.
And
