When old patients get in touch it's usually because they're doing great and want to brag, or exactly the opposite. Either way they tend to be people with whom I've connected. Lauren Teague didn't qualify. Far from it. If anything, I was the last person she'd want to see. Why was her mother contacting me now?

Presenting problems: poor school achiev., noncompliance at home. Clin. impressions: fath. angry; moth. possib. deprssd. Tension bet. moth. and father— marital strss? Parents agree re: Lauren's behavior as the prim. prob. Uneventful birth hx, only child, no sig. health probs., contact pediatric M.D. to verify. School: per Mom: “Lauren's always been smart.” “Used to love to read, now hates it.” B2 aver. till last year, then “change of attitude,” new friends—“bums” (fath.), some truancy, C's and D's. Basic mood is “sullen.” “No communic.” Parents try to talk, get no resp. Suspect drug use.

As I leafed through the file, Jane and Lyle Teague's faces came into semifocus. She, thin, blond, edgy, a former flight attendant, now a “full-time mom.” A heavy smoker— forty-five minutes without tobacco had been torture.

Lauren's father had been slit-eyed, blank-faced, reluctant to engage. His wife had talked fast . . . nervous hands, moist eyes. When she'd looked to him for support, he'd turned away.

They were both thirty-nine, but he looked older. . . . He'd done something in the building trades . . . here it was, elect. contractr. A powerful-looking man, fighting the advent of middle age with long hair, sprayed in place, that fringed his shoulders. Black pelt of beard. Muscles made obvious by a too-tight polo shirt and pressed jeans. Crude but well-balanced features . . . gold chain circling a ruddy neck . . . gold I.D. bracelet— how did I remember that? Put him in buckskins and he could've been a grizzly hunter.

Lyle Teague had sat with his legs spread wide, consulted his watch every few minutes, fondled his beeper as if hoping for intrusion. Unable to maintain eye contact— lapsing into dreamy stares. That had made me wonder about attention deficit, something he might've passed on to Lauren. But when I raised the topic of academic testing, he didn't stir defensively, and his wife said Lauren had been examined two years before by a school psychologist and found to be “normal and extremely bright.”

“Bright,” he said, putting no praise into the word. “Nothing wrong with her brain that a little discipline won't cure.” Accusing glance at his wife.

Her mouth twisted, but she said, “That's what we're here to learn.”

Lyle Teague smirked.

I said, “Mr. Teague, do you think anything else is going on, besides Lauren's being spoiled?”

“Nah, basic teenage garbage.” Another look at his wife, this time seeking confirmation.

She said, “Lauren's a good girl.”

Lyle Teague laughed threateningly. “Then why the hell are we here?”

“Honey—”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.”