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evening, Mr. Ivins,” Carlo says when Billy finally picks up. “You have a visitor. Would you like me to send her up?”
    I can’t take a normal breath while my son responds.
    “Your mother,” says Carlo, nonchalant. “Is it all right for me to send her up?” He is a professional, graceful and charming, despite his young age.
    Carlo says thank you and hangs up. He gives me a look of apology; his unlined face, almost hairless too, is very kind. His wife, I hope, adores him. “Mr. Ivins asked if you’d give him ten minutes.”
    “All right,” I say gloomily. A son should not keep his mother waiting in the lobby. It both worries and annoys me—what is it that he wants to hide? If he needs a shower, I could sit in his living room and wait for him there. If empty beer or wine bottles are all over the place, or take-out containers, or cigarette butts, I could probably do a better job cleaning up than he would. If he has a woman up there who is not Danielle, so be it. He could at least introduce us. I know he wasn’t expecting me, but I don’t drop in on him unannounced very often.
    Despite how pleasant Carlo is, I don’t feel like making any more small talk. I go outside into the traffic noise and late-afternoon sun and make a phone call to a patient’s father who left a message at my office earlier in the day. One of the reasons I love my profession, despite its occasional sorrows and nuisances, is that I like knowing things. I like being an expert on something in our crowded, chaotic world.
    This man’s child has asthma, one of several dozen cases that I have diagnosed in the last year. The air quality here is as bad as advertised and is particularly hard on new and old pairs of lungs. When this father asks what more he and his wife can do, I repeat the prescription from their recent office visit—the inhaler as needed, a healthy diet, enough sleep, moderate exercise. The child should, as much as possible, be allowed a normal life, with games and friends and horseplay, and parents can also consider moving somewhere with better air quality, which they won’t or can’t often do.
    It is almost fifteen minutes before I can end the call and take the elevator up to Billy’s apartment. Carlo smiles as I walk by. He is on the phone and buzzes me through the glass door that leads to the elevator bank. There are three elevators for this twenty-story building, and a freight elevator that goes down to the garage, one filled with Mercedes and Jaguars and BMWs. My son drives an Audi; Anna a Prius, though her first car was a white Corvette, one her father gave her when she turned sixteen. I asked Renn if he was kidding. Offended, he said, Why the hell do you think that? Anna is not a Corvette type of girl at all, I told him, but out of politeness mixed with embarrassed pride she drove this car for a year before trading it for a Sebring convertible, which lasted until the Prius. On Billy’s sixteenth birthday, he was given a 1968 powder-blue Mustang. It really was beautiful, but I didn’t tell Renn that I thought so. Billy drove it until he wrecked it during his sophomore year of college. Or rather, until his roommate wrecked it by driving into a row of parked cars while trying to send a text message or change the radio station or I’m not sure what—Billy never would give me a straight answer.
    When I knock on his door, the hallway light tastefully muted, the walls vanilla-colored with their big abstract paintings by artists I don’t know, it takes Billy several long seconds to answer. To my relief, he is dressed neatly—clean blue jeans and a red Polo shirt—but there are dark circles under his eyes and he needs a haircut, and if I’m being honest, he doesn’t look very happy to see me. He seems barely capable of forcing a smile, and I feel both heartsick and angry.
    “Come in, Mom. Sorry to make you wait,” he mumbles. “I was on the phone.” He looks thin, too thin, and in the foyer right by the door, I