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person in the audience to the Dead, or to heal them of some minor or imagined misfortune. One woman felt her carpal tunnel syndrome had disappeared. There were tears and someone even fell to her knees. Banks seemed aloof, otherworldly, almost unaffected by the commotion he was causing in the lives of the living. It was as though he wasn’t quite here, but had one foot in the Light himself and was only marking time on this earth.
    After the final applause, Adriana and Jazz waited in the hotel lobby for Mr. Song to pick them up. Jazz was radiant, Adriana, sunk in gloom. She didn’t know why, but the fact that the mother who kept her company in her head was not the woman that Bartholomew Banks had summoned set up an almost intolerable anxiety in her.
    Mr. Song arrived at 9:25, and they went out to meet him. “How was it?” he asked, handing each of them a takeout cup of tea. Adriana glanced at Jazz, who rested her forehead against the car window, smiling dreamily at the winking street lights. “It was fine,” Adriana said, trying to sound bored. “Mom told me I have everything I need.” Her father’s eyes were shiny with worry. Adriana turned her head away.
    When they arrived at Jazz’s house, Adriana turned to Jazz. “Thanks,” she said. Jazz, glowing, hugged her shoulders.
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    As she lay in bed that night, Adriana pondered why the spirit Bartholomew Banks conjured up had told her she had everything she needed. It wasn’t as if she had been asking for something. In fact, quite the opposite, unless longing for complete oblivion counted as asking.
    Adriana couldn’t escape the question any longer. Was the version of her mother that Bartholomew Banks had conjured the fiction, or was the mother she had known for so many years, the mother who accompanied her thoughts every day as judge and jury? She didn’t believe Bartholomew Banks, but she couldn’t afford not to. The thought of that mother opened up in her a longing, so keen and unfamiliar and irresistible that it was almost unbearable. She felt at the same time, like her life to that point had been an empty parking lot. Adriana pictured a tub of ice cream someone had come along and taken a big scoop out of, and then someone else had showed up and scooped some more. What was left was used up and hollow, something to be discarded. But it was all she had.
    The day after the spiritualist meeting, Adriana got up and swept the kitchen floor. She had no more energy for anything else. Sitting at the kitchen table, drained, she drank some tea that her father had made for breakfast. It was lukewarm and bitter, which was how Adriana felt. She returned to bed, in a room which was about the same as the day her mother died, except for the Cure poster on the opposite wall.

Chapter 6
    â€œYou can call me Dr. Bob,” said the psychologist as she seated herself opposite him in his office overlooking the campus.
    Her father, who’d come home at lunch with cartons of Chinese takeout the day after Bartholomew Banks, had given her an ultimatum. “You’ll see a therapist, or I’ll drive you to the doctor myself.” She barely cared, at this point. Adriana, who felt she’d reached the bottom of the well, was almost relieved to surrender.
    â€œTell me a little about yourself… what brings you here today?” Dr. Bob asked. The psychologist looked at her kindly, pityingly, she thought, pen poised in his chubby hand to take notes. Adriana hadn’t been banking on that. She looked at him as though from far away, and tried to think.
    â€œMy dad thinks I’m depressed,” she said. That was about all she could muster. Dr. Bob looked at her closely, taking note, she thought, of her unkempt hair and worn sweatshirt.
    â€œAnd are you?” was all he said.
    Adriana felt surprised. Of course she was. She nodded.
    â€œOn a scale of one to ten, how would you rate how depressed you are?” Dr.