She may be capable of staying home, but that doesn’t mean she should. If Meret gives in to her social anxiety, it only feeds the beast. Her friends will have fun without her, will not call, will not text. She will sit here all night and think: See, I was right not to go. No one missed me anyway.

I run up the stairs and rap on Meret’s door. There is music pulsing; it sounds like the inside of a headache. When she doesn’t answer, I turn the knob and find her lying on her bed reading in sweatpants and a T-shirt, oblivious to the noise. The bass thumps so strong my pulse adjusts, a new moon and its tide. “Hey,” I say, deciding to play dumb. “What time are Sarah’s moms picking you up?”

“I’m not going,” she snaps.

“To the dance?” I cross to her laptop and hit the volume key, bringing down the decibel level. There’s no melody, just a beat and freestyling. I wonder if every generation is destined to find a style of music that is completely incomprehensible to the previous one.

Meret doesn’t answer. She lifts the spine of her book so that she breaks our line of sight.

“I don’t understand. You were looking forward to this.”

She was, a few days ago. Sarah had come home from STEM camp with her and there were whispers and hidden notes and at least once I caught a name: Todd. I wonder who he is. If he said something, did something, to hurt her.

Primally, I want to hurt him back.

“It’s not even a dance. It’s a bunch of kids grinding against each other.”

“Well,” I say lightly. “Friction is STEM.”

She puts down the book. “You did not just say that.”

I squeeze her arm. “Maybe it will be better than you think. Besides, what’s the alternative? Dad and I have a work thing.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Meret,” I say softly, “if you won’t even try—”

“Then no one will think I’m a loser,” she explodes. She turns onto her side, away from me. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

I get up and open her closet, pulling a dress from a hanger. “How about this?”

“I wore that to a funeral.”

“Jeans?” I suggest.

“Mom. It’s a dance.”

I pull her up from the bed. “Come on. We’re going to find something.”

Reluctantly, she lets herself be dragged into the master bedroom, the walk-in closet. I remember vividly how, as a little girl, she would sneak in here and try on my dresses and jewelry and come downstairs to give us a fashion show. I pull out a sequined blouse she used to love that was way too expensive for her to be playing in. “Here,” I say.

Meret’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

“As long as you don’t grind in it.”

She smirks and yanks her shirt over her head, turning her back to me. I help her unzip my blouse and settle it over her head. As she pulls it down, the stitches strain under the armpits.

“You know,” I say, “this was always cut weird. Try this.” I yank out a boxy tunic, which floats over Meret’s shoulders with room to spare, and spin her in front of the mirror.

“I’m wearing a tent.”

“A designer tent,” I amend, but she is swimming in it.

I go back into the closet, ripping through the hangers. I have a lot of black in my wardrobe, I realize, but then again, I go to a lot of funerals. I hesitate at a couple of dresses, but worry that the zippers might not close. “You know what?” I realize. “These are old-lady clothes.”

Meret blinks up at me.

“But I have killer shoes.”

I reach down into the recesses of my closet. My hand brushes the seam of spackled wall. When I was growing up, my mother hid a baby shoe in the insulation, to ward off evil. I thought it was ridiculous, and then when I moved into Brian’s home, I did exactly the same thing. Still, even when you plaster over something, you know it’s there.

I know we are both a shoe size eight. I hand Meret a pair of heels that are probably too high for her.

She takes them, looking down at the shoes instead of at me. We both know that this is a concession. Don’t say it, she tells me in silence.

I will take her shopping. I will buy her clothes that make her feel beautiful. I will show her what I see when I look at her. But none of that helps in this moment.

“Maybe jeans are okay,” Meret says, and it breaks my heart. She turns to go back to her room, her shoulders rounded. Diminished. It seems impossible that someone so worried about her size can make herself so small.

“Wait,” I say, and I take her hand. I draw her into the master bathroom and sit her down on the closed toilet seat. I pull out foundation and eyeliner, shadow and rouge. When Meret was little, she would watch me put on my makeup, and beg me to make her match. I’d lean into the mirror, swooping the mascara wand over my lashes, and then I’d cap it and pretend to do the same to her. Blush on her cheeks. Lipstick and gloss.

This time I do not pretend. Meret is my canvas. Except I am not creating anything; I am only tracing art that already exists.

I used to hold up a hand mirror when I was finished, and Meret would turn her little face left and right, as if she could truly see that invisible difference. Mommy, she would ask. Am I beautiful now?

I would kiss her forehead. You already were, I said.

* * *

—

THE DEAN OF the faculty, Horace Germaine, lives in a brownstone on Mass Ave that still has its Halloween decorations in spite of the fact that it is summer. Or maybe it’s because his wife, Kelsey Hobbs, is rumored to be descended from a family whose daughter was tried for witchcraft in Salem. Either way, I like her more than I like him. While Brian is sucking up to whoever it is that makes departmental chair appointments, I stand in a corner, nursing my third glass of white wine, feigning interest in a discussion about traffic in Cambridge.

“So, Dawn,” says the husband of an economist. “What do you do?”

“I’m a death doula,” I say.

“A what?”

“I’m contracted privately by people who need end-of-life care.”

Another wife nods. “Like nursing?”

“Everything but nursing,” I explain. I give a nutshell description.

I can see it, the moment their demeanor changes. Tell someone you work with the dying, and you are suddenly a saint. “It was so hard when my mother passed,” another spouse offers, touching my arm. “You’re an angel.”

Here is what I wish I could say: No, I’m not. It’s important work, but I am much less Mother Teresa than I am a pain in the ass. Just because I get close to something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m special. It just means I am willing to get close to the things that make people uncomfortable.

Here’s what I do say: “Thanks.”

The fact that I can still censor myself proves I’m not as drunk as I thought I was.

The husband of the economist sways closer, lowering his voice. “Anyone ever ask you to…speed up the process?”

We’ve all heard the stories about so-called mercy killers, upping a morphine dose so that a patient never awakens. The closest I’ve ever come to that was a Catholic client on heart medication. If she stopped taking it, she asked, was it suicide? I told her I didn’t think so—there’s a difference between actively ending your life versus letting a disease progress in a way it would without treatment.

She kept taking her heart medication, and died of a stroke two weeks later.

“My grandmother was hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium,” a young woman says. “Dropped like a stone.”

“That must have been incredibly difficult for you and your family,” I say.

“I heard that on Mount Everest, there are bodies that have been frozen so long they’re used as trail markers—”

If you are an expert on dying, people believe you are also an expert on death. Suddenly, Kelsey Hobbs slips her arm through mine, as if we are long-lost friends instead of spouses introduced only a half hour ago. “Dawn,” she says, “I must show you some memento mori I have in the library.”

Death memorabilia. I wouldn’t have taken Kelsey for a collector. But her bright blue eyes widen, and I realize that she’s sending me a message. “Oh, of course,” I reply, letting her unravel me from the knot of people and pull me down a hallway.

I do not expect there to actually be a trinket, but I am wrong. A photograph hangs on the wall across from a massive bookcase, and in it, a couple poses on either side of a young girl. The couple is hazy; the child crystal clear. I know that in Victorian times, photography was a popular way to commemorate the dead. The reason the girl’s parents are blurry is because of the long exposure time. The dead, on the other hand, don’t move.

“Who is she?” I ask politely.

“Who the fuck knows,” Kelsey answers. “She came with the house. For years I thought the parents were ghosts and that’s why they were fuzzy. Then I did a little research.” She reaches into the top drawer of a massive desk and takes out two cigars, offering me one. “Smoke?”

“No, thanks.” I think Kelsey Hobbs may be my favorite person at Harvard.

She lights her cigar and takes a deep drag. “It felt like you needed rescuing. Just a guess, but I’m thinking if you spend the whole day with people who are dying, it’s not your first choice of conversation topic when you’re off the clock.”