The Devil's Interval Read Free Page A

lime-green cupola and blue fingernails on someone past the training-bra stage seemed pretty weird to me. Instead, I said, “Oh, you know, it’s like the Garrison Keillor joke about the Lutheran farmer who goes to the therapist every week, and the therapist asks how he is, and the farmer always says, ‘Can’t complain.’ And then they just sit there for fifty minutes.”
    More silence.
    Michael sighed and not so surreptitiously sneaked a look at his watch.
    â€œAre you Lutherans?” asked Dr. McQuist.
    This was hopeless. “No,” I tried to explain, “we’re SO not Lutherans, but the joke is that if he’s not going to complain or something, why is he there? He doesn’t get the point of therapy.”
    â€œIs that why you’re here?” asked Dr. McQuist. “To complain?” She took a sip from her big mug. At least it was black. Even from across the room, seated on her lavender, squishy couch, I could smell the tea. Musty, herbal, yuck. What’s wrong with coffee, anyway?
    â€œMaggie’s here to complain,” said Michael. “I’m here because we had some…problems last year, and they keep whack-a-moling back up.”
    â€œWhack-a-mole?”
    I could see we were going to need a UN simultaneous translator to talk to Dr. McQuist.
    Michael gestured, as if he were mercilessly bringing a baseball bat on targets in front of him. “It’s a game. You try to hit the mole with a mallet, and he keeps disappearing into his burrow or whatever you call it. You whack him, and he keeps popping up again.”
    Dr. McQuist blinked. I could see the wheels turning. “Not that anyone does any hitting,” I said, hoping to whack-a-mole down a misguided line of inquiry about domestic violence.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Michael. “Josh popped Zach a pretty good one last night about whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher.”
    â€œOur sons,” I explained. “They’re eight and almost thirteen, and they don’t usually hit each other.” I felt my fingers creeping toward my phone, in that irresistible maternal need to just see their faces. “They’re very handsome,” I said. “I have photos, if you’d like to see them.”
    A tiny line appeared between Dr. McQuist’s eyes. “Another time, thanks.” No one spoke. “Okay,” she said. “Michael, why don’t you tell me what you meant about the—I think you calledthem ‘problems’—last year.”
    Michael complied, providing a longish but very lawyerly summary of last year’s events: my affair with Quentin Hart, Quentin’s murder, my perseverance investigating the murder, the risks I’d created for our sons, and the denouement , which endangered my life.
    Dr. McQuist listened. I thought I had explained all this on the phone, but oh well, I guess she can’t be expected to keep all her philandering-wife/murder-investigation couples sorted out.
    â€œEndangered,” I offered brightly. “But I’m still here. All’s well that ends well. Plus, our au pair, Anya, met a very nice doctor at the emergency room where I ended up, and they’re still dating.” I paused. “Off and on.”
    Dr. McQuist blinked. “He’s Indian,” I offered. I touched my forehead and then put two fingers up in back of my head, as Dr. Singh had done when he met me at the ER. “You know, ‘dots, not feathers,’ Subcontinent Indian.” Dr. McQuist waited.
    â€œI wonder if that’s offensive,” I said. “Do you think it is, if an Indian person says it to you?”
    Dr. McQuist blinked again, then turned to Michael.
    â€œAll’s well? Is that how you’d sum things up, Michael?” she asked.
    Michael shifted on the couch, putting just a touch more distance between us. He shrugged. “Not from my perspective. But I may not have as finely