“Harder than I thought it would be. They are like a mirror for this huge loss. They don’t completely understand yet. Well, they do and they don’t. It’s a hard thing to take in at their age. Oh, who am I fooling? It’s a hard thing to take in at any age. Even mine.” She took a small sip of her wine. “And how was your weekend with your father?”
“Pretty good, actually. Better than usual. I feel like we actually managed to talk about something. You know. Something real.”
“Good. Good. Now tell me one other thing, Raymond. I’ve been wondering about it while you were gone. So I will simply ask. Why are you so afraid for me?”
“Afraid for you?” he asked.
He turned his head to look at her face. For clues, maybe. It was angled toward him as if to help her listen. Slightly tilted, like a dog trying to identify a curious sound. Her fork and knife stood poised in the air, completely still. He could see that he had her full attention.
“Am I afraid for you?”
“It seems to me that you are.”
“Well . . . people have to eat, you know.”
“People can go many days without eating.”
“I suppose. But . . .” And then he felt it. The thing she had asked about. It was there. It was coming up through him. It was about to make its way out of his mouth. Out into the world, where he could not take it back again. Not deny it anymore. “I feel like . . . now that Luis is gone . . . you just seemed to have this really strong will to live, and I guess I worry that you’re losing that.”
“I see,” she said. She set down her fork and knife. Dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “Well, then, Raymond. Let me tell you more about me, so you will know. Many people I have known died young. And that is all I care to say about that. Were I to see them again . . . and, who knows? Maybe there is an afterlife. Maybe I will see them. Who can say? Do you think I will join them any sooner than necessary and tell them I gave up trying because life took something away from me? That is an affront to those who were not lucky enough to grow old. It’s a slap in the face. And even if I never see them, it would be a slap in the face to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. It would be failing to recognize that life took Luis away but also brought me you. Life takes something away from all of us. I will tell you something about life that you might or might not know, my young friend. Life gives us nothing outright. It only lends. Nothing is ours to keep. Absolutely nothing. Not even our bodies, our brains. This ‘self’ that we think we know so well, that we think of as us. It is only on loan. If a person comes into our life, they will go again. In a parting of ways, or because everyone dies. They will die or you will die. Nothing we receive in this life are we allowed to keep. I am not some spoiled child who will take my toys and go home because I do not wish to accept that this is the way things work.”
“Good,” Raymond said. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I was afraid you might . . .” But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Die? Of course I will die. Much sooner than you, I should think, though I thought the same about Luis. Yes, I will die, Raymond, and I can’t promise you when. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe when I’m a hundred and six. But one thing I will promise you: it won’t be because I soured on the idea of living. Living long is a gift denied to many, and so it comes with a responsibility to make the most of it. At very least to appreciate it. People gripe about growing older—their aches and pains, how much harder everything is—as if they had forgotten that the alternative is dying young.”
She picked up her fork again and resumed eating. With renewed vigor, Raymond thought. Or at least with a driving stubbornness.
“Besides,” she said between bites. “I have to live long enough to learn what happens to that woman when she goes to trial.”
PART TWO
APRIL
Chapter Eleven
* * *
Fortune Cookie
Raymond’s father walked in, surprising him. Raymond had been sitting on the couch in his father’s apartment, alone, reading an e-book about the Second World War on his laptop and eating Chinese food.
Raymond looked quickly at the time readout on his computer. It was six twenty.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said to his dad. “I got tired of pizza.”
“Thank goodness.” His father crossed the room to stand over Raymond, throwing his jacket on a chair. It slid down onto the rug, and he left it there. It would have driven Neesha crazy if she’d been home. “I thought you were the one who wanted all that pizza.”
“Well. To a point.”
“What did you get?”
His father sat down next to him on the couch and eased out of his shoes. As though his feet hurt. Which they probably did. He had been on them all day.
“Sesame chicken. Egg rolls. Shrimp fried rice. It just got here a few minutes ago. I’m not even sure you’ll need to heat it up.”
“I’ll get a plate.”
While his father was away in the kitchen, Raymond closed his laptop and took a deep breath. Prepared himself mentally as much as possible.
“I need to talk to you about something,” he said, before his father had even sat down again.
“Okay. Talk.”
“There’s something I really want to do. It’s important to me. But it would involve missing some school. But it’s educational, so I think it’s a reasonable thing to miss school for, and I’d get my work from my teachers and keep up from home in the evening. I wouldn’t let my grades slip. But I’d still need a note.”
“What does your mother think about it?”
Raymond said nothing. He sat and watched his father tilt the sesame chicken carton and pull food out onto his plate with a fresh pair of disposable chopsticks. He felt he should say something. But there was no safe place to go.
“I see,” his father said, sitting back with a sigh. “Why haven’t you asked her?”
“Well. You know how she is. She just wants everything to go the way she wants it to go. She’s not real flexible when somebody wants to change the plan.”
“You know that’s not going to work, though, Raymond. Were you really thinking I’d write you a note, and she’d never find out?”
“It was a thought.”
Then Raymond laughed. Just a quiet little breath of a laugh. And, to his relief, his father laughed as well.
“What’s this thing you want to do?”