Page 104 of What Boys Learn

“No, we’re leaving the SUV in storage, here at the house,” he says. Then he looks at me and laughs. “You look relieved.”

I’m about to ask Dr. C if he had an accident with the SUV—he never said anything about that even though I’ve seen him basically every day—but then I have a more interesting thought. “That means we’re taking the Jag all the way to Fond du Lac.”

He shakes the keys. “Now you’re getting it.”

So, driving is part of it. Maybe the best part. Once we get there, he’s been telling me and Mom all week, I have to work for my “keep.” I’ve brought an old pair of jeans and two paint-stained shirts. A swimsuit, which might be optimistic. His father’s mansion might have a pool or it might not, but there’s also lakes. Or one big lake. I don’t know why I haven’t asked, I just don’t want to be one of those people who asks question after question, likeWhat’s a dumbwaiter?I heard him telling my mom something about that so I looked it up. Used by servants to move stuff between floors. Does his father have servants? Then I remember: I’m the servant.

Back home, Mom tried to give me sunscreen and a gardening trowel to bring, but I told her they probably had all that stuff.

Dr. C and I already loaded a toolbox into the trunk. Lots of other random hardware-store stuff—tape, ties, shovel, blue tarp.

“Premium,” Dr. C tells me. “Always.”

My mom says “cheapest one.” Always.

He goes inside the gas station while I’m pumping for him, and I see two girls checking me out. One is pumping gas into a little hatchback and the other has the front passenger door open, digging pop cans and wadded-up tissues from the door pockets, but while she does it, she’s looking under her arm to check me out. Okay, to check the car out. Not me, necessarily.

I stand up a little straighter, tense my biceps, squeeze the gas pump, and then immediately ease off, worrying the gas will overfill and spew all over the place.

Dr. C comes out. Sees what’s up. He wags a finger at me. I think he’s joking about it, with the girls and with me both, but then he comes up right next to me, takes the pump from my hand and says, “In.” He’s not joking.

I wasn’t even looking at them.

He’s crabby and quiet all the way to the Wisconsin border. It could be worse. We could be talking the entire way, every minute, which was closer to what I expected, since that’s what we do in his office. Talk talk talk.

His phone rings. I’m gonna kill my mom if it’s her. We just said goodbye less than an hour ago.

“Matt here,” he says, and I’m confused but I make sure I don’t look it. It’s a real estate agent, I can tell, because he’s talking about the house, showings, something about taxes, something about the cracked tennis court—they have a tennis court?—and then he’s telling her, yes, it will all be mowed by tomorrow. Front and back. No, he’s got it covered.

He hangs up. “Bitch.”

This time, I let my expression slip. He sees it and laughs.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to say that word.”

“Bitch?” He cackles. “Go ahead, you can say it. Say whatever you want.” He reels off a whole list—thecword and thewword and variousswords. “Just don’t say it in the wrong situation. Not in front of a woman, for starters.”

He drums on the steering wheel, pleased with himself, and I’m getting up the nerve to ask him how much a Jag XF costs when he adds, “and never text those words either. You already got in trouble for that.”

Yes, covered.

“It’s not so much what you do,” he says, “it’s what you get away with.”

I’m still working my way up to asking about the cost of his car when he says, “I go by Matt because that’s my birth name. Curtis is my middle name. Both are after my father. When I’m in Wisconsin, I like to leave my work identity behind, much as I’m able.”

“Oh,” I say, put at ease. I don’t know.Ease. Whatever. He can call himself anything he wants, especially when he’s talking to a bitch.

“I see that,” he says. I wasn’t even smiling yet. Sometimes I think Dr. C can read my mind.

“Matt’s a good name,” I say. Stupid comment. Not sure why I said it, except that we have a long day ahead. Me, him. Seats the color of a horse saddle. “I’d prefer to go by Ben but my mom says Benj which sounds like slang. Like it’s supposed to be short for ‘bougie’ or something else. I don’t know.”

“Ben it is. You should have told me that in our first session.”

“Sorry.”

He speeds up to pass a yellow convertible, then whips back into the right lane. “Don’t catch your mother’s apologizing disease. It’s not attractive. Especially for a man.”

I count the number of cars we’re passing. After fifty, I say, “You knew my mom in college, and I know you guys went out on a date after Sidney’s funeral because she came home from the restaurant a little drunk.”