We All Sleep in the Same Room Read Free

her?”
    â€œApparently she was only sympathetic. She said she knew better than to confront her about it, but I guess she got pretty frustrated when she couldn’t help get Olga immediate attention, and she told Olga as much. When Doreen came in the following Monday, she was told she’d violated a patient’s rights, that she’d breached confidentiality and used threatening and hostile language that profoundly upset the patient. And she was terminated.”
    * * *
    The impassioned noise of my son’s protests sputter angrily against a stream of his sobs. Dumbo and his mother are already reunited, and the train sailed off into the sunset. The End. Raina is once again holding Ben, and consequently subduing and quieting him as quickly as he starts. She tells Ben about his big day tomorrow. She tells him that if he cooperates, he can get two bedtime stories.
    â€œDaddy’s going to read to you tonight.”
    He gets about halfway to the bathroom and breaks down again.
    â€œYou can watch the movie again tomorrow. Now it’s time to relax and get ready for bed. How about Daddy reads one story to you, then I read one to you?”
    We’re perpetually compromising with Ben. It’s fitting that the son of a lawyer should already have internalized at the age of three that there is no such thing as an unbreakable rule or an unalterable situation. Thus far his only negotiating strategy is to cry. And it’s effective.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I say. “You guys read tonight. Can I read to you tomorrow night, Ben?” He stares at me blankly. “I’ll take that as a yes. I love you.” I walk over and steal a kiss from his wet cheek.
    Once Raina and Ben disappear into the bedroom, I turn on the TV. I retrieve my briefcase and lay Doreen’s file out on the coffee table. Raina’s voice creeps in from the other room as she starts to read. I turn off the overhead light and lie down on the couch.
    Other than the news and the occasional Ken Burns PBS special, I haven’t watched much TV in years. But, rather than feeling superior to the newer wave of sitcoms and the reality shows, I actually feel quite old and dumb when I watch them. Similar to Ben’s relationship with Dumbo , there’s a dimension to the shows that I don’t understand. Yet my curiosity isn’t sparked like his. The editing and shaky camerawork feels so distracting that I often lose track of what’s at stake. How about making a show where a family all sleeps in the same room so nobody has a sex life? Maybe it’s already been done. I switch the TV off.
    Suddenly, I’m seeing Doreen seated across my desk, shrinking downward, her thin neck lowering over her already-hunched shoulders. I picture her entrance into my office. First, Robin’s voice over the intercom, A Ms. Grant is here to see you, Tom . And that sound of footsteps in the corridor that signifies the imminent presence of a brand new other inside my office. And then this woman—deathly pale, bleach blonde, lightly freckled, blue-gray eyes—wearing a dress that seems to belong to a different era.
    I picture the vacant expression Doreen must have worn on her walk home from her former job that August morning, not even a half hour after arriving. I don’t remember much after that. I felt numb. Nothing made sense. It didn’t seem real. She said it wasn’t until she returned home and saw her husband, Hunter, asleep in their bed, that she went into her living room and cried. She said she cried for a month, and was despondent for nearly another before contacting the union. Prior to that she’d felt too crushed to do anything.
    â€œDid she have any idea how close she came to exceeding the sixty-day time frame for pursuing grievances in the contract?” Jessie had asked me over coffee. “She wouldn’t have had a case at all.”
    My apartment is silent. I close my eyes and discover the