Denial by Keith Ablow

was serving time in a Department of Youth Services detention facility.
    "You've got to stop stealing," I told him during our first meeting."
    He was already as tall as I was and even broader in the shoulders.  A scar from a street fight ran from the corner of his mouth across his left cheek.  "Cause you say so?" he sneered.
    "You think I'm an asshole?" I sneered back.  "Why would you give two shits what I say?"
    He shrugged but looked me in the eyes for the first time.
    "You should stop stealing because you're lousy at it.  You get caught every time."
    "Not every time," he smirked.
    "OK, pretty lousy at it."
    "How would you know?  You never stoled nothin’."
    "I haven't?"
    He rolled his eyes.  "You're a doctor."
    "Let's see... A bike.  A crate of oranges.  More street signs than I could find places to hide.  A stereo.  A forklift, once, when I was about your age."
    "You grabbed a forklift?"
    "I didn't want it.  I mean:  What the hell was I going to do with a forklift, right?  But I wanted something .  I just couldn't figure out what it was."
    He nodded.  "It's like being hungry, but it don't go away when you eat."
    "It only gets worse."
    Having presented my bona fides as a thief, I went on meeting twice a week with Billy for a little less than a year — about a hundred hours tossing a football around my office, talking about loneliness and fear and rage, splitting enormous cheese steaks at Sunrise Subs down the street.  Then his sentence was up.  He was scheduled to join another foster family — the Worths — out in the western part of the state.
    "Too bad I can't live with you," he said, chuckling.
    I had thought of that possibility, but not seriously.  It would have raised concerns at the Department of Youth Services about my ‘clinical boundaries.’   More important, it would have meant giving up the independence I loved.  "You're going to do fine," I told him.
    Within two months Billy was drinking heavily again.  His ‘family’ was talking about getting rid of him.  He called and asked me to visit, but I told him I didn't want to interfere with him and the Worths working things out.  "You hang in there, and I'll give you a call in a few days," I said.
    He was sobbing.
    "OK?"
    "OK," he managed.
    The next day Anne Sacon, a Department of Youth Services case manager, called me at the office.  "Dr. Clevenger," she said, "I have bad news about Billy."
    I figured he'd stolen another car and been locked up.  Part of me welcomed the chance to work with him again.  "Where's Billy the Kid now?  Maximum Security?" I asked.
    She exhaled audibly.  "Billy's dead.  He killed himself."
    "Killed himself?"
    "Mr. Worth found him in the garage.  He used a rope and one of the beams."
    "When?"
    "Early morning."
    "What happened?  Did he leave a note?"
    "It was eerie," she said.  "It said, ‘Hang in there.’"
    I was trembling.
    "Are you there?"
    "OK," I said.
    "Since you two already terminated, we'll finish all the paperwork, including the incident report."
    What a strange word for saying goodbye to Billy, I thought — terminate .  "Is there anyone else to contact?"
    "He didn't really have anyone else."
    After we hung up, I thought how Billy had never really had me, either.  I'd been available, for a fee, two hours a week.  When push came to shove, and he'd needed a real father, I hadn't been able to do any better for him than my own father had for me.  Not even when he'd reached the end of his rope.  I hadn't even heard the final desperation that must have been in his voice the day he called.
    I worried more and more that I was a dabbler in life stories, rather than a student of them, that I would skim over another critical page.  Three months after Billy died, I terminated with the rest of my patients and closed up my psychotherapy practice.
    A couple of BMWs were traveling side by side down the two eastbound lanes of Storrow Drive, like a moving roadblock.  I tailgated in the passing lane, but