My Son

 After lionizing my child's therapist, I learned that he was abruptly leaving us. His reasons were inconsistent and sketchy--mostly, he claimed to feel surprised about an onerous commute whose onerousness was surprising to no one else--and it was sort of a relief to let him go.

Toward the end, the therapist's Catholic anxiety became a bit too much to handle. He was keenly aware of the unsavory history of male childcare workers; he himself would not change a diaper or walk my child to the potty, because he envisioned lawsuits. My son is sharp and imaginative, and he made use of the therapist's anxiety in surprising ways.

A bulb went on behind his eyes. "I will tell Papa that you hit me."

Or, on another occasion: "What if I hit you? Would you hit me back?"

I think my son is an actor and a mimic; I think, like Audra McDonald, he has a particular kind of ADHD that spills into a rich interior life. I think his unnerving questions were just innocent thought experiments. But they were troubling to the therapist--who wanted me to "probe" Joshua for the "source" of the questions.

"Do you really know my son?" is what I did not ask. "Do you think he is going to produce detailed paragraphs to explain why he says what he says?"

I've tried to get my son into a theater camp, but he says he doesn't want that. I think a child--particularly an anxious child--decides this: "I have a set of routines that is working for me, and I have no interest in straying from my little field." It's not difficult to understand this.

The calendar pages fly away. I wish nothing but the best for the now-departed therapist. I imagine a kind of Lillian Hellman play written by my son, and here is the opening line: "I'll tell Papa that you hit me."

What happens next?