The Venus Fix

Thirty-Eight

I didn’t get out of my office that day until it was time to leave for my session at the Park East School. It hadn’t been snowing five minutes earlier, when I’d looked out of my window to check, but now it was coming down hard again and I didn’t have time to go back for an umbrella without risking being late. But if I didn’t find a taxi-which I doubted I would in weather this bad-and I had to walk, I’d get soaked.

Rushing inside, I grabbed one of the extra umbrellas Allison kept in a stand by her desk. She was on the phone and waved good-night to me, and then I saw Blythe coming down the steps, wrapping her scarf around her head.

“It’s bad out there,” I said as I opened the door and held it for her.

“What else is new?”

She was heading Uptown, too, she said, and so we walked to Park Avenue together, hoping we’d find a cab to share. The two of us huddled under the one small collapsible umbrella and blinked the snow out of our eyes as we forged ahead. The wind was blowing west and I had to swirl the umbrella to keep it from flying away. It wouldn’t have mattered; it wasn’t preventing the snow from stinging our cheeks and our lips.

The sidewalks were packed with that day’s fresh snowfall, which covered previous layers of both snow and ice. Walking was hazardous, and halfway down the block Blythe hit a patch of ice and started to slide. Reaching out, I grabbed her arm, and she steadied herself.

“I can’t believe how dangerous it is just walking to the corner.” She laughed and thanked me for holding on to her.

We got lucky a few minutes later when a young woman with a toddler got out of a taxi in front of an apartment building on Sixty-seventh Street.

Once we were in the cab, I told Blythe I was going as far as Eighty-eighth Street and she said she’d drop me off then. She was going all the way up to 103rd Street.

“Mount Sinai hospital? Everything all right?” I’d felt an immediate lurch of fear in the center of my stomach upon hearing the address. There wasn’t anything else up there.

“The girl who was poisoned on Saturday night-the Webcam girl-she’s there. I don’t think there’s anything I can do for her, but I wanted to go in case she needs to talk to someone.”

“Do you know her?”

“No. Not personally. But…I feel like I do.”

The taxi was warm and I was wearing a heavy coat and good, thick gloves, but I shivered. Blythe, despite her degrees and her potential as a therapist and her desire to excel in my own field, was so close to the tragedy.

As the cab crept Uptown, I told Blythe where I was going and a little bit about the sessions I was doing at the school.

“I hope you can help them,” she said earnestly.

“So do I.”

“You don’t sound as if you think you can.”

I didn’t know if Blythe was especially perceptive or if my tone of voice had been too revealing. “These kids are encased in stone. Every week I chip away but make almost no progress. I can’t find a fissure to use to crack them open.”

“I never thought much about this before, but what’s going to happen when I have to work with a patient who has this problem? Has my problem?”

“You’ll be that much more sensitive and compassionate.”

She laughed. “Compassion is hardly my issue.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. You’ve only been seeing patients for a few months. You’re going to learn how to deal with all these feelings you have. I promise. That’s why we’re working with each other.”

She looked at me the way Dulcie used to and maybe would again when she was older-when she reached Blythe’s age.

We all need someone whom we believe has the answers and whom we can trust to help us. But when that person disappears from our lives, we feel every shift in the wind as a threat-we become one of the lost girls. It had happened to me when my mother had died. Blythe was one, too; I knew the signs. At some point in her life, Blythe’s anchor had disappeared. We needed to talk about it in a session, not in the back of a steamy cab.

The taxi stopped at a light at Eighty-seventh Street. I’d be getting out at the next block. I reached into my bag, opened my wallet, pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it to Blythe. “Take this.”

“No, I can pay.”

“There’s no reason for you to pick this up. It’s a business expense. I’m on my way to a session.” I forced the bill into her hand. The light changed. The driver pulled up to the middle of the next block. I put my hand on the door handle and then turned to Blythe.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Really, it’s not a big deal. I had to come Uptown, anyway.”

“No, I didn’t mean the cab. I meant what you said about me being okay. You always make me feel so much better. Like everything will work out.”

She smiled. That wide-open smile. It pulled me in again.

I stood on the corner in the falling snow. Flakes landed on my hair and my cheeks. A fat one settled on my bottom lip. While I watched the taxi pull away, Blythe turned around and waved at me, and for a moment I felt it, too-that maybe everything that was wrong really could be fixed.