A Child's Wish

“There’s a problem with Josie?” Meredith asked, glancing at the child, wanting so badly to protect her from life’s hurts—big and small. Her eyes bright and dark above a pouting mouth, Kelsey was definitely upset about something.

“The talk was about you.”

“Josie says you’re messed up

.” Kelsey stared at the top of Mark’s desk and chewed on a paper clip.

“Messed up,” Meredith said, switching gears, trying to assess.

“You know,” the little girl added. “Weird.”

Meredith dropped to the chair next to the one Mark had vacated. “Because of what was in the newspaper?” She focused solely on Kelsey.

“Because of what you did. Some of the kids were talking about it today ’cause their parents asked them if they knew you and they didn’t, but since I know you a lot they talked to Josie and me and some of the other kids who had you last year.”

“And this is all because I talked to Tommy’s mom?”

Kelsey shrugged, the straps of her pink corduroy overalls growing taut and then loosening again.

Mark reclaimed his seat, his legs stretched out in front of him, hands on the arms of the chair. Usually those hands represented some kind of security to her. Today they could crush her job, her way of life.

“Kelsey’s trying to understand how you could know what was wrong with Tommy when he didn’t tell you.”

I see. And her father, an unbeliever, was supposed to enlighten her?

Ignoring him, she sat forward. “Hey, Kelse, remember when Rock Hudson tricked Doris Day into thinking he was a naive scientist, when he was really the playboy ad executive who was trying to ruin her?”

The little girl glanced up. “Yeah.”

“How’d you feel?”

“I dunno.” She looked away and then back. “Mad.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.”

Meredith waited.

“Because he was a jerk.”

“Yeah, but not to you.”

Kelsey dropped the paper clip, put both hands on the arms of her father’s chair, giving Meredith a piercing look. The likeness between Kelsey and her father grabbed at Meredith’s heart. These were special people.

“You felt what the Doris Day character felt, didn’t you?”

Kelsey frowned. “I guess, but…”

“I know, it was just a movie and you were supposed to feel that way,” Meredith said, having to concentrate in order not to be undone by the child’s skeptical father sitting next to her.

At least Mark was letting her handle this; she appreciated that.

“The movie people made it easy for you to feel that way,” she explained. “But you could feel that way in real life, too, if you paid really close attention to what was going on in another person’s life. You knew all about what was happening to Doris Day because you were completely focused on the movie and the director showed you all the important stuff about her without you having to look for it. They did the work for you.”

Kelsey was quiet, but she appeared to be considering what Meredith had said. Meredith knew all the signs of boredom and a wandering mind, and Kelsey wasn’t fidgeting, her gaze was steady and she wasn’t yawning.

“Just as most of us have the ability to watch a movie and feel what the characters are feeling, we can watch other people, sometimes even just in our minds, and we can feel some of what they’re feeling. It’s just a matter of paying attention to the right things.”