Read Online Are You Alone on Purpose? by Nancy Werlin - Free Book Online

too heartily. Harry could feel his eyes. Looking at the crippled kid. Looking away from the crippled kid. Looking again.
    Asshole.
    The couple got off on six. An orderly with a patient in a wheelchair—a patient who didn’t really need one, Harry noted—got on.
    Seven. Harry wheeled out and followed the green painted line on the floor down a couple of corridors and into the next wing, to Dr. Jefferies’s office. The door was open. Good. At least he could get the appointment over with on time. Sometimes the previous appointment ran over a little and Harry had to wait. Harry’s own appointment never ran over. He watched the clock to make sure of it.
    He sighed. He went in.
    â€œHi, Harry,” said Dr. Jefferies. She was a tallish, thinnish woman with brown eyes and thick gray-brown hair worn in a messy bun. There were age spots on her hands. She had on an oversize white cardigan with big wooden buttons down the front and the name tag KARIN JEFFERIES, M.D. pinned slightly askew on the sweater near her collarbone.
    Harry nodded. He wheeled himself to his usual corner, next to the old wooden chair with frayed orange cushions that Dr. Jefferies always sat in. He’d been very surprised by that, at their first meeting. He’d thought she’d sit behind her desk. He had said so, and she had wanted to talk about that for the longest time. But she still sat in the orange chair.
    She sat there now, pulling it a little closer to his than he would have liked. Not that he would say anything. He knew better now.
    â€œHow are you today, Harry? How are things on the ward?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œHave you got anything special you’d like to talk about today? Or ask?”
    â€œNo.”
    There was silence. It stretched for a full minute before Dr. Jefferies spoke. “Well, Harry. Tell me a little bit about your mother.”
    â€œMy mother?” said Harry, suspiciously. “Why? We never talked about her before. Anyway, she’s dead. Didn’t you know she’s dead?”
    Dr. Jefferies nodded. “Uterine cancer, wasn’t it?”
    Harry didn’t reply.
    â€œWhen did she die?” Dr. Jefferies asked.
    â€œOver four years ago,” Harry said, after a pause. He had to answer. It did no good when you didn’t answer Dr. Jefferies. She just kept right on. It was exhausting.
    â€œYou were eleven? Is that right?”
    After another pause, Harry said, “Yes. Well, no. I was almost eleven. It was right before my birthday.
    â€œHow close before your birthday?”
    He shouldn’t have said anything. “The day before.”
    â€œYour mother died the day before your birthday ?”
    â€œYes.” For no reason, he added: “September twenty-seventh.”
    â€œAh,” said Dr. Jefferies. She looked thoughtful. “Then her funeral would have been the very next day, the twenty-eighth, on your birthday. Is that right? Harry?”
    â€œYes,” said Harry. It had had to be. His father had said so. It was what Jews did. The funeral had to be right away, within twenty-four hours. Unless it was the Sabbath. You didn’t bury anyone on the Sabbath. On your son’s birthday, yes, but not on the Sabbath.
    â€œAh,” said Dr. Jefferies again. “Do you remember the funeral, Harry?”
    â€œNo,” said Harry. He wasn’t going to tell her about that.
    Dr. Jefferies nodded. It was impossible to tell whether she knew he was lying. “What was your mother’s name?” she asked, tapping her pencil against her hand. She did that, played with a pencil. She never wrote anything down, at least not while Harry was there. He worried sometimes about whether she did later, whether there was a file somewhere, on her computer maybe, that was full of his personal business. If he wasn’t careful, pretty soon they’d have enough information on him in this place to start a library.
    â€œMargaret,” he