The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian Page A

The fact that I'd told Abby earlier that night that I'd been to a lady who was sort of like a doctor.
    "I think so," I answered. "Why?"
    She took a deep breath in through her nose and then wiped a strand of hair that had fallen across her eyes. She reached over and began to toy with my tie, her thumb disappearing momentarily behind the silk.
    "Wellllllll," she said, drawing the word out the way she did whenever she was figuring something out, "my mommy died. And your mommy and daddy died. And God had to carry them all up to heaven."
    I kissed her once on her nose. "He sure did," I said, ignoring the literalist inside me who had started to murmur, Well, they all died a few years apart, Abby, so God didn't have to carry them up to heaven at exactly the same time. He probably took a couple of trips.
    "Yeah, I thought so," she said. She released my necktie and sat up for a moment in bed, and turned her pillow over so the cotton pillowcase felt cool once again. Then she lay back down upon it and curled her hands up beside her head.
    "Should I go on with the story of the night the trolls came to life?"
    "Please," she said, and I resumed with the moment the trolls escaped from her room and started down the stairs of the house. She was sound asleep by the time they'd gotten to the kitchen and had started to raid the refrigerator.
    I must admit, I was disappointed when Carissa said she wanted to think about my case for a few days before suggesting a remedy. I'd hoped she would simply open a cabinet that I imagined was filled with homeopathic potions, and give me a first dose of something that would magically restore me to what I'd begun to think was as close as one gets to perfect health. There had been a time, I'd begun to realize, when I really had felt so good that I'd never even thought about my health--a time when the pockets of my jackets and pants weren't constantly filled with the tiny scraps of paper that surrounded each cough drop.
    The first thing I did once I'd put Abby to bed was to pick those wrappers out of my pockets and throw them away. I even thought that the next morning, when I stopped at the gas station outside of Burlington for my newspaper and coffee, I might start weaning myself from the cough drops: I would not allow myself to buy one of those inviting little square tubes. Good-bye, Mentho-Lyptus. I'm going cold turkey.
    I decided I should eat something after all, and so I zapped the calzone for a few minutes in the microwave while I changed into my pajamas, hanging up my suit and putting wooden shoe trees into my wingtips, and then I listened to the pair of messages on my answering machine. The professor of the criminal justice course at UVM had called to thank me for speaking to her class the other day, although it was clear she thought my view of the system was a tad one-sided. "You took a group of aspiring public defenders and turned them into a lynch mob," she'd said, more than a trace of an edge in her voice. And Howard Lansing, a friend of mine and a church trustee, had phoned, wondering if the rails I had volunteered to build for the church's handicapped-access ramp back in April would be up in time for the Christmas tea in December.
    The Christmas tea was on the tenth this year. I figured I'd have a chance to take care of the railing if the weather was decent over the weekend, especially since Abby would be at a friend's birthday party most of Saturday afternoon. Of course, I also figured there was a chance that between the wife beaters and drunks who peppered a state's attorney's view of Vermont, I might be tied up for some part of Saturday or Sunday, since it was my turn to be on call.
    I scribbled the words hardware store on a yellow Post-it note and pressed the sticky strip against the inside of my front door. I was pretty sure I didn't have a lunch scheduled the next day, and so I'd try and use that time to pick up the materials for the railing.
    When I finally sat down with Carissa's book and my