“And she said the conclusion sounded juvenile,” Bernstein repeated, paraphrasing. “And I said it sounded too advanced for your age. And it turned out to be based on thoughts you got from an adult attorney. That’s funny.”
“Yeah,” Raymond said. “I thought that part was funny, too. She seems to think there’s just one objective reality, and good people will all see it if they’re willing to.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Bernstein said. “That’s a nice, predictable world she’s living in. It must be very pleasant there. I almost envy her that kind of thinking.”
Raymond stepped into the school library after last period. He almost skipped last period to go, but he had done that once before, and the librarian hadn’t reported him. He hated to press his luck with that.
“Well, look who it is,” she said, barely looking up from her book. “How’s the self-taught Spanish coming along?”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I hate to even tell you. But it was kind of . . . for a specific purpose. That I don’t need anymore. So I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with it.”
In fact, after he had returned the Spanish-English dictionary to the library, he hadn’t gone on to buy a phrasebook of his own. Because there had been no more Luis Velezes to find.
“Well, I just knew that was too good to be true. A student wanting to learn something just for the sake of learning it.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “I came here to ask if you have any books about quantum mechanics. Not for any special situation this time. Just for the sake of learning it.”
“Interesting,” she said. “You almost renew my faith in students, Raymond. It just so happens I have a fair amount on the subject. Follow me.”
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
Despair
“I’m starting to get worried about you,” Raymond said. “You haven’t been outside for almost eight days.”
“Has it only been eight days?”
She looked up at him from her bed. Turned her face in the general direction of where he stood in her bedroom doorway. It was after ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. She was awake. But she still hadn’t gotten up and dressed.
“Time has been going so slowly,” she added. A bit wistfully, Raymond thought.
“I want my old friend Mrs. G back,” he said, surprising himself. He had thought it many times, but hadn’t expected to hear himself say it out loud. “I miss her.”
“She is here,” Mrs. G said in a thin and unenthusiastic voice.
“No. Not really, she isn’t. I haven’t seen her since the trial. And I’m getting worried about you. I think I should call that nice Velez family who invited us to supper. We could go tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow. Please, Raymond. Next Sunday. Or the Sunday after that.”
“Tomorrow is better. You’ve had plenty of time to rest, right?”
“Physically, yes, but . . .”
“I’m going to call her right now and tell her we’re coming tomorrow.”
“Wait!”
He was halfway out of the room, but he stopped. Because she sounded too serious to ignore. Almost approaching the border of desperate.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t call. All right, if you want me to get outdoors, fine. Let’s go outdoors. But only you and me for now. Please. To meet new people, to be around a lot of people right now . . . I need more time. Tomorrow we will go somewhere, just the two of us. In a couple of weeks maybe we will go to supper with your friends.”
“Okay. That’s okay, I guess. Just . . . where do you want to go?”
“Give me until the morning to think. Come and get me in the morning, and I will tell you where we should go and what we should see. Only, you will have to see it for us both.”
At 9:00 the following morning he knocked on her door, then opened it with the key.
“You’re ready!” he said.
She was sitting up on the edge of the couch, wearing her red dress and white shoes, and the shawl she had worn to court. Her hair was neatly braided, the white braid falling forward over one shoulder. Her red-and-white cane was propped next to her against the couch. She held her purse tightly on her lap.
“Of course I’m ready. I told you we would go, so we will go.”
Raymond felt something dark and heavy drop away from his mood. Drop physically away from his body, from the feel of it. He had been carrying it for longer than he realized. He felt buoyant without it, almost as though he were in danger of floating away.
She’ll be okay, he thought. She’ll be okay after all.
“So where do you want to go?”
“New York Harbor,” she said.
“What part of it?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“We could ride the subway to Battery Park. Take the ferry over to Ellis Island.”
“No! Definitely not to Ellis Island. I just want to visit that shore.”
“Which shore, though?”
“The Battery is fine. That is all well and good. But no ferry ride. No Ellis Island.”
“So, you must have been here before,” Raymond said, spotting a bench that had just been vacated.
He hurried to it and placed her cane across it to save it for them. Then he slowly walked her over to sit down.
The morning was brisk for spring, with a strong wind. It was a little cold, Raymond thought. He thought the cold was perhaps why that couple, who had not been wearing jackets, had moved along and left the bench to them. It was one in a line of benches closest to the iron railing at the water’s edge.
The benches had no backs, so Raymond and Mrs. G sat forward, huddled over themselves in the damp cold.
“I have been here before, yes,” she said. “The first time I was here was in 1938. I was eleven years old. My family and I came into New York Harbor on a ship to Ellis Island. That was the first I saw it.”
Raymond fell silent and waited to see if she cared to say more.
“You are being awfully quiet,” she said after a time.
“It’s just that . . . you never told me anything about your past. You didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“Today I will talk about it,” she said.
But for a few moments, nobody talked about anything.
“It was very different back then,” she said. “In many ways. But in some ways the same. The statue of course is the same. Can you see the statue from where we sit, Raymond?”