“Well, here’s my idea,” she said. “We’ll get engaged. Just engaged. Nothing decided, nothing certain, no plans, but always that possibility. It’s very existential. And it’ll keep those kids all on their toes.”
Karl laughed. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Joy,” he said, “you take my breath away.”
59
A ticket window and a growl from the female functionary. The paint was thick and tired on the walls. The trip down to 2 Washington Street had been a tiring fuss of bumps and jerks, horns, the sputtering of the taxi TV that would not turn off, the smell of the driver’s lunch, which he ate as he swore automatically and without passion in his second language. The fare was a shock, and Joy tried to put it out of her mind as she waited for the elevator, waited and waited, then forgot what floor she was going to and guessed the fifth. She was right, there was a sign, and she turned and stood before a counter that had obviously emigrated from Eastern Europe well before the Velvet Revolution. Joy gave Ben’s name and handed over the rumpled pink traffic ticket.
“Is this where I belong?” she asked the clerk.
The woman nodded, and Joy said, “But I don’t really. I’m here for my grandson. He’s back in New Orleans tending bar while he applies to law school. He did very well on the LSATs. So he’s not here. But I am his emissary.”
The clerk handed her a card with a number and name scribbled on it.
“Where do I go?” Joy asked.
The clerk pointed to a hallway.
In the courtroom, Joy walked down the center aisle. On either side were long benches crowded with people, like a well-attended church, although a round-shouldered resentment permeated the space, a communal almost penal resentment and resignation. Joy found a space far in the back and settled on the hard bench. She was out of breath. She was out of her element. She was out of her mind. She could have been married to a nice old man who loved her and had enough money to keep her safe and warm and fed and to hire someone to wipe the drool from her chin. Aaron, she thought, don’t you think I should have said yes? I still could, though it would be so undignified. What do you think, Aaron? But Aaron had no answers for her. Why should he? He was safely out of this vale of tears. Well, enjoy, she said to him. Don’t worry about me, left behind in this place where I have no place. Enjoy.
There was a judge in the room, though he was not seated high above them on an elaborate wooden platform as Joy had expected. The bench in this case appeared to be a metal folding chair. In front of the judge, a lawyer stood and seemed to interview each defendant, reading out their names and crimes in a loud ringing voice, asking them questions, then repeating it all to the judge, who sat not more than two feet away.
Joy had dressed for a civic appointment. Her outfit did not fit her as well as she would have liked, that’s how much weight she had lost since Aaron’s death, but it was respectable, and with her silk scarf, it was quite elegant, she thought. The other traffic offenders had been somewhat less exacting about their clothing. Most of the men were wearing tank-top undershirts, and it was hot for a September day, Joy had to admit. There weren’t too many women present, but the ones who were there were also, for the most part, wearing tank tops, though theirs were brightly colored. So many young people had tattooed their arms and shoulders and necks. Joy could see tigers and winking eyes and dragons and flags and long-tailed birds. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. She had not a single tattoo. She could not imagine what tattoo she would wear if she chose to wear a tattoo. Her grandchildren’s initials? Betty Boop, perhaps.
She was overcome with self-consciousness. I do not belong here. I have no tattoo. I am out of place. My clothing is wrong. No, their clothing is wrong. How dare people come to a public hearing dressed for the beach? But that’s how it’s done these days, that must be how it’s done. I have lost touch with normal social behavior. I no longer know what is expected. And when I find out what is expected, undershirts and tattoos, I do not like it.
I do not belong here. I do not belong anywhere.
A gust of the place’s generalized resentment wafted over her for a moment, becoming her own resentment, resentment toward Ben for peeing in the street, resentment toward New York City for giving him no alternative, resentment toward the courtroom full of sweating people in shorts and flip-flops. Then the resentment eased into resignation, the room’s other mood, heavier, oppressive. Here I am, she thought, where I don’t belong. One more place in which I do not belong. A great spinning globe of places revolved beneath her feet, and not one patch of it was the right patch for her, Joy Bergman.