Raymond figured the principal did see. Probably far too much. More than Raymond had meant to reveal.
“So let me tell you about this thing I want to do. Please. It’s about me learning more about our criminal justice system. Firsthand. Well, not literally firsthand. I’m not on trial or anything. But hands-on. And I’d get my assignments from my teachers and do the work at home at night. I won’t fall behind. I won’t let my grades slip. I never let my grades slip. You can probably see that. Since you’re looking at my whole life there on your screen.”
At first, no reply. Mr. Landucci was not looking at Raymond. He was reading on his computer monitor. It struck Raymond that the principal hadn’t looked at him since that moment when Raymond had been trying to sort out his limbs. The man seemed to have lost interest after that.
“Yes,” Mr. Landucci said suddenly, startling Raymond. “You’re a good student. Wish we had more like you. But I’ll need a note from your mother. And after you went and made it ever so clear that you hope to bypass her, I’ll probably call her and verify. But beyond that I have no issues with what you propose, providing you keep up with the work.”
Raymond sat a moment. He knew he was supposed to get up and leave now. But for an awkward length of time, he didn’t.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“What don’t you understand? You seem like a smart young man, and none of this is complicated.”
“My father is just as much my parent as my mother is.”
“But she’s your primary caregiver. And he’s the secondary.”
“Oh,” Raymond said, reminding himself briefly of his dad. The man of few words. Oh.
“So I’ll see you again when you get that note from her.”
It was the principal’s polite way of saying the meeting was over now, and Raymond knew it.
He walked down the street with Mrs. G, his arm hooked through hers, on their way to the bank to deposit her two monthly checks. They were hurrying slightly, to get there before it closed for the day. Still, their version of hurrying was hard for Raymond because it felt so slow.
“So what did you find out about going?” she asked as they stood waiting for a light to change.
“Not sure yet,” he said. “I’m still working on it.”
She seemed to pick up on his discouragement. She seemed to pick up on everything, Raymond thought. He waited for her to ask more about it, but she never did. They crossed the street in silence.
“For myself, I think I’m putting too much on it,” she said. “Investing too much.”
“I don’t follow.”
He watched her white-and-red cane sweep back and forth in front of them as they walked. He was never sure why she used it in that way, since he would have told her if she was about to trip on—or walk into—something. But maybe that was easy for Raymond to think. He’d never had to walk down a busy Manhattan street wondering what he might be just about to run into.
“I’m trying to think how to put it better,” she said. “So it makes sense. You know how sometimes you have pain, so you call the doctor? Well, maybe you don’t, because you’re healthy and young. But there must be something in your life like this. So you make an appointment, and let’s say it’s weeks away. You start hanging on the calendar and putting all your hopes in that day. Like if you can just make it to the doctor’s appointment, then everything will be okay, but really you know in the back of your head that you might be setting yourself up for a big fall. Maybe he’ll know what’s causing the pain, or maybe he’ll have to run more tests. Or maybe he’ll know what it is, but there’s no easy cure. You know there’s a good chance you’ll walk out of that office still in pain. And then you’ll be faced with that very difficult task where you reset that internal clock of yours to some other time when it might be okay. Ever had something like that in your life?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.” He looked up to see the bank at the end of the block. He glanced at her watch. They were going to make it with seven minutes to spare. “So you’re saying you feel like you’re doing that with the trial?”
“Exactly.”
They walked in silence down the block. Through the doors of the bank, which an older male customer held open for them. Inside, where Raymond guided her into place at the end of the medium-length line.
“Is there anything you can do to fix that?” he asked as they waited.
“Not that I’ve discovered so far.”
They waited in silence until they reached the head of the line and a teller window opened up. It was Mrs. G’s favorite teller, Patty.
“My two favorite customers!” Patty crowed, a bit too loudly, as they stepped slowly up to her window. “Mrs. Gutermann and Raymond!”
Raymond led her up to the window, where she set her purse on the counter and began to plow through its contents.
A moment later he looked up and past her, to the door of the bank.
And there Raymond saw . . . his mother.
It had been inevitable, and he’d known it. It was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t bumped into her in the hall of their building in all these months. Or bumped into one of his sisters. Raymond had assumed some special brand of luck had attached itself to him. But if so, it had just run out.
She looked right into his face, and he had no choice but to return her stare. His heart began to drum and his ears felt hot. She continued to question him with her gaze. She didn’t look mad. Just curious.
“Excuse me,” he said to Patty and Mrs. G. “I’ll be right back.”
Heart pounding at a dizzying rate, he walked to her. He felt slightly outside his body, detached from his usual self.
They stood in front of each other for a silent second or two.
“This is not our bank,” he said.
“No.” Her tone was wry, as was the angle of her eyebrows. And the rest of her face. “It’s not.”
“So what’re you doing here?”
“I could ask much the same question of you.”
“No, seriously. What’re you doing here?”