Free The Doctor's Daughter by Hilma Wolitzer Page B

sounding like some starstruck idiot, and because I didn’t want to distract him from his own vision of his characters and their story.
    He’d called unexpectedly one afternoon the week before, saying that he just wanted to hear my voice, to make sure he hadn’t dreamed me up. He sounded as appealing on the phone as he was on the page. “I figured I’d probably reach some suicide hotline,” he said, “but that would just be pretty convenient.” His voice was both rough and honeyed, the way I’d imagined Joe’s would be. There was a lot of noise in the background, some kind of grinding machinery.
    “You sound like you’re in Michigan,” I said.
    “Everyone tells me that,” he said, and we both laughed.
    The relative intimacy of a telephone conversation after all that e-mailing made me loosen my reserve, and I told him more candidly how much I admired his writing. The revisions were strong, I said—and he’d addressed all of my smaller concerns, about oft-repeated words or similes that seemed forced—but it was important not to hold back emotionally, as he still sometimes tended to do. He kept saying, “Yes, I know. You’re right about that. I’ll fix it.”
    Then I explained how a novel had to be pitched these days, maybe in one compelling sentence, and how crucial the sales department was to the fate of any book. It wasn’t my usual style to bring up commerce in the middle of a discussion about craft, but I felt a little reckless and giddy that day. “When the time comes,” I said, “I might be able to help you place it.”
    Michael said that at the rate he was going, he’d probably have a draft done by the end of the summer. He proposed delivering it to me then by hand, and I warned him not to rush things, to let the writing follow its natural flow.
    The evening of Jeremy’s concert, Ev was already waiting in the church when I got there. To my surprise, Scott and Suzy were there, too. Jeremy had invited them, and I was elated by this evidence of our children’s autonomy, and that they had outgrown the ferocious hostilities of childhood. They were still so different from one another—Suzy avidly read the program notes, while Scott went through some cards in his own wallet and then checked out a prayer book and the donation envelopes in a pocket in our pew—but now they were civilized beings temporarily bonded by music and family occasion.
    A truce must have been called between Ev and Scott, as well, because I saw Ev lean over to whisper something in Scott’s ear, making him laugh. Poulenc and Debussy were on the short program. My clone, Jeremy, blushing under the spotlight at the altar, gave us a shy little salute before the group started tuning up, just as he used to do at school concerts and plays. His girlfriend lifted her bow and waved, too. Scotty and Suzy sat between Ev and me, separating and uniting us, as they did on Sunday mornings in our bed when they were children, and we smiled at each other over their heads as the music began.

6
    My uneasiness around household help was probably a throwback to my childhood, when it began as a kind of love affair. Faye Harriet White was born in Beaufort, North Carolina, and came to New York City in search of work when she was thirty years old. My mother had just been confined to bed with the threatened pregnancy that was to result in my safe delivery, and so it was my father who hired Faye, through the auspices of the Maid-Rite Employment Agency (renamed Domestic Arrangements in a more politically correct era), to replace their part-time cleaning woman, to live with them and run their household.
    When the story of Faye’s hiring was first related to me, I pictured something like an adoption agency in a Shirley Temple movie, with various orphaned maids lined up, each one yearning to be picked, and my father, with his infallible eye and knowing heart, choosing the one shining person in their midst.
    Faye was securely in place when I was born, so I