A Vision of Fire

Hours later, after five more appointments and two conference calls, it was time to pick up Jacob. She could tell as she approached the front door of her building that the temperature outside had dropped considerably. She snuggled into her coat collar and caught herself humming “Let It Snow.” As she stepped outside her humming stopped and she suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. It ran up her backbone and tickled out along her shoulder blades like a small animal. Instinctively, she moved closer to the wall, stood still, and looked around.

What the hell?

Her heart was thumping harder; her breaths grew shorter. There seemed to be a cold wind against her arms but there was no motion in her sleeves. She had goose bumps.

Get a grip, she told herself.

She saw people picking up their cars from the garage across the street, a smoker by a tree in the tiny park on top of the garage, a group of college students hurrying by her, but nothing to explain the chill that remained. She felt exposed, pinned there as though these other people existed on another plane and she was alone. Or nearly so.

There was also an unsettling sense of being watched. It was not a flash of exposure, like walking in front of a tourist taking videos.

Barbara was right, she thought. She was so deep in other peoples’ issues she had lost her own protective skin.

A burst of greetings startled her as students from the Roosevelt Hospital day program hustled out of the building and enfolded her in their group. Caitlin walked to the subway with them, pushing the noise and shapes of the city away, but not the creeping chill that danced along her spine.

CHAPTER 9

Dodging and maneuvering with Jacob through the crowded subway, Caitlin tried hard to shake the odd paranoia that had seized her outside her office, but it was like swallowing an oversized bite of a sandwich. She usually tried to make a game of their dash through rush hour—Crazy Football or Running with the Gazelles—but not today. Jacob was deep in his own thoughts and she just wanted to get home.

The third-floor hallway seemed unusually quiet, the clang of the keys uncommonly hollow. It reminded her, unpleasantly, of the feeling she’d had at the Pawars’ apartment. A sense that she was somehow in danger. Not Jacob, just her.

Unlocking the door, she made a mental note to talk to Barbara about this, then happily turned her attention to roasting broccoli and defrosting and heating a container of congee for dinner. Jacob went straight to his room. They had arrived home just in time for his weekly online chat with his father. Caitlin was surprisingly glad for Andy’s call right now; even abnormal normalcy was welcome.

Andrew Thwaite, divorced with three kids, was a sociologist from Sydney whom Caitlin had met in Thailand three weeks after the 2004 tsunami. He had joined one of her relief efforts, which Ben helped to coordinate through the under-secretary-general of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. When they met, Caitlin felt that he was “right for right now,” as she’d expressed it to Ben.

“The people I’ve talked to say he’s kind of a d-bag, Cai,” Ben had said.

“Oh, you checked?”

“Captain of your team,” he said evasively.

“Well, he’s smart, he’s entertaining, he isn’t making any promises to be something he’s not, and he’s six-three and ripped.”

“Uh-huh. I know the type, a swaggering narcissist.”

“Strong words, Ben.”

“I’ve been living in the shadow of miserable hotshots like him my whole life. He’ll use you and leave you in the dust.”

“Only after I leave him in mine. Hey, is this about me or you, Ben?”

“Fair enough,” he conceded, “but I think you’ve entirely misunderstood the meaning of ‘relief efforts.’”

The disagreement ended in laughter. But after passion trumped caution and she found out she was pregnant, she decided to keep the child. Andy was notified and had stayed far away, making everything blessedly simple.

Until recently.

Around the time Andy’s youngest kid went to college, in 2011, he’d suddenly asked for weekly video calls with Jacob. She had no objection to that. She and Jacob had discussed it repeatedly and Jacob seemed happy to accept him on the same level as an upstairs neighbor. But six months ago Andy had asked Caitlin why she hadn’t chosen a cochlear implant operation for Jacob when he was younger.

“Because it’s Jacob’s choice,” she said.

“Jacob is ten,” Andy pointed out. “The earlier the operation is performed, the easier the learning curve—”

“Having to work a little harder is a fair price for his freedom of choice.”

“I don’t think that’s a choice a fifth grader should be allowed to make.”

At that point Caitlin had descended with Thor’s hammer. Under no circumstances was Andy to have that conversation with her child. She delivered the message in a mode that had cowed recalcitrant bureaucrats around the world, and it seemed to work on Andy.