Running with Scissors Read Online Free Page B

tidy reply.
    But still I was suspicious. Instead of being gloriously clinical and sanitized, his office was a hodgepodge of rooms on the top floor of an office building in Northampton. The waiting room had pale yellow paint on the walls that was peeling off in sheets, cracked rattan furniture, and an old gray metal file cabinet on top of which was a Mr. Coffee. There were posters of rainbows and balloons on the wall. A thick blanket of dust covered everything. Then there was a middle room that was used for storage of boxes and decade-old magazines. And then an even more inner room where the doctor saw his patients. You had to go through two doors, one right after the other, to get to that inner room. I liked these double doors and wished I had them in my room at home.
    Like Santa, Dr. Finch gave me presents. It wasn’t uncommon for him to hand me a glass paperweight etched with the name and logo of a prescription drug. Or a five-dollar bill that I could spend downstairs at the drugstore, which still had a soda fountain. And there was a certain glint in his eye that seemed to promise more, later. It was always as if he had one hand behind his back, something hidden up his sleeve.
    Every Saturday, I rode in the brown Dodge Aspen with my parents to Northampton. We would sit in complete silence and my parents would chain-smoke the whole way. Occasionally my mother would comment that there was a smell like manure emanating from my father’s ears. And sometimes he would tell her that she was a fucking bitch. Other than that, not a word was spoken.
    They took turns with the doctor. First my father would go in. Then my mother. Then the two of them together. The entire process took all of Saturday and we would usually drive through McDonald’s on the way home, my parents ordering nothing and me ordering two of everything and the two of them watching me eat and saying, “Don’t choke, you’re eating much too fast.”
    While they were in with Dr. Finch, I would sit on the rattan love seat and talk to the doctor’s receptionist, Hope. She had high cheekbones that made her look like an Indian princess and incredibly thick, long, straight black hair that she sometimes wore pulled into a ponytail and secured with a leather butterfly barrette. She favored trim black wool slacks and knit tops, even in the summer. She always had on some interesting piece of jewelry—an elephant pin, ladybug earrings, a silver bracelet made of two dogs chasing each other’s tails.
    “Do you have a white cap?” I asked her.
    She smiled. “What do you mean, a white cap? You mean like a sailor’s cap?”
    “No,” I said. “I mean like a regular doctor’s office receptionist. At the hospital I go to in Springfield for shots, they all wear white caps like the nurses.”
    Hope laughed. “Oh, God. I’m not that kind of receptionist. We’re a lot more casual here, can’t you tell?” She reached across her desk and straightened the snow globe.
    “Do you like working for him?” I asked. Maybe I could pry her for details.
    “I love working for Dad.”
    “He’s your father?”
    “Didn’t you know that?”
    “No.”
    Hope got up from behind her desk and came to sit next to me on the sofa. “Yeah, Dr. Finch is my father. That’s why I work here. I wouldn’t work for just any doctor.”
    I couldn’t imagine working for my father. We could barely take care of the garbage together. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
    Hope laughed again. “You could say that.” Then she looked up, stuck out her left hand and began counting them off. “There’s Kate, me, Anne, Jeff, Vickie and Natalie. We’re Dad and Agnes’s biological children. Plus Dad’s adopted son, Neil Bookman. So that’s seven of us.”
    Instantly, I was consumed with envy. “And you all live together?”
    “Not quite. My sister Kate lives around the corner with her daughter and so does my sister Anne and her son. Jeff lives in Boston. Vickie lives with some friends. But