“Because . . . your father had money.”
“Yes. Because my father had the equivalent of a few thousand dollars, and their fathers had nothing. Money, my friend. Money bought us our lives. And that is called privilege. We bought our lives, while those who couldn’t afford to were slaughtered like animals. Does that make our lives worth more? Of course not. No life is worth more, except by virtue of one’s character. But I was eleven. My character was no better than that of my peers.”
She sniffled slightly in the cold. Took a cloth hankie out of her purse and dabbed at her nose.
“I do not want this privilege,” she added. Firmly.
“I don’t know that growing up half-Jewish in Nazi Germany was a lesson in privilege.”
“No. It was not. So now I know this story from both sides. And now I am on the wrong side, and I do not want to be here. How many times do you think I could tap a person on the shoulder and return a dropped wallet? How many wallets will I hand back before someone shoots me?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“Yes you do, Raymond. Yes you do. Nobody will ever shoot me, and you know it. They will shoot my friend Luis, but they will never shoot me. And the people on the other side, they don’t even see it. I see my privilege because I have lived both with it and without it. The jury did not even see. They did not even see, Raymond. What can you do with a world where people do not even see?”
They continued to sit by the water for a time. Another ten or fifteen minutes at least.
Raymond never managed to come up with an answer to her question. He had no idea what you do with a world where people do not even see.
Raymond arrived at his father’s door at a little after three o’clock in the afternoon. He knocked, more tentatively than he had intended.
Please let Dad answer. Please let Dad answer. Please let Dad answer.
Neesha answered.
He watched her eyes narrow as she took in his face.
“This is not your weekend,” she said.
Duh. If I didn’t know that I would have been here on Friday.
“I just need to talk to Dad.”
“Right. That’s why you’re here every other weekend. To give you plenty of time to talk to Malcolm.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he said.
For several seconds, nothing happened. No words were spoken. It was beginning to dawn on Raymond that she might not let him in.
Then he heard his father’s booming voice.
“Who is that, honey?”
A second awkward pause fell, and seemed to amount to a tug-of-war without words or motion.
Raymond looked up to see his father’s face appear behind her.
“Raymond. What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to ask your advice about something.”
“Is this some kind of emergency?”
“Not really, I guess. It’s just important to me.”
Malcolm sighed. Not as though disgusted with Raymond, Raymond thought. More as though he was gearing up to fight about it with his wife.
“Give me a minute to get a jacket,” he said. “I’ll take you out for an ice cream soda like we used to do in the old days.”
While he was waiting, no one invited Raymond in.
He stood out in the hall, one ear near the narrow opening of the door, and listened to them going back and forth about it.
“He’s my son.”
“I’m your wife.”
“He’s just a boy. He needs a strong adult in his life.”
“I’m making us a special dinner, and you knew it.”
“I’ll still eat it. That’s hours away.”
“He could have called.”
“I’ll talk to him about that.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I said I will, and I will.”
“You always say that, but then you never want to ruffle anybody’s feathers.”
“I’ll be back in less than an hour. Love you.”
No reply.
Raymond’s father popped out into the hall with him, and Raymond jumped back to give him room.
“I suppose you heard all of that,” his father said.
Raymond didn’t offer any reply.
They walked toward the elevator side by side.
“So why didn’t you call?”
“I figured Neesha would answer and not let me talk to you and tell me not to come.”
“That’s honest enough. And I’m not going to stand here and tell you that couldn’t have happened.”
Raymond ordered a root beer float, his father a single scoop of vanilla. Raymond knew his father was being careful not to spoil his appetite.
They sat at a round stainless steel table by one of the front windows, where they could watch what looked like the entirety of the human population of Earth as it teemed by. The table had sparkly stars on its surface. Slightly raised. Raymond traced them with his finger as he spoke.
“So, what would you do if you had a friend who was just . . . completely . . . I’m not sure what the word is I’m looking for. I want to say depressed, but I feel like it’s more than that. Like she’s just given up on the world. Like the way the world is, she just can’t face it.”
“Sounds like the word you’re looking for is despair.”
“Yeah,” Raymond said, looking up directly into his father’s face. “Despair.”
Malcolm sighed deeply. “It’s probably not what you want to hear, but there’s a limited amount you can do. You can listen.”
“Listen? That doesn’t sound like much help.”
“Well, here’s the problem, son. I think you’re asking me how you fix a thing like that for somebody else. And unfortunately the answer is . . . you can’t. In fact, sometimes that gets in the way, when we try to fix what somebody else is feeling. Ever had somebody telling you what you ought to do to get out of what you’re feeling when you wish they would just hear you out?”
“Yeah. More times than I could count.”
“When we care about somebody, we don’t want to see them in pain, and that’s normal. But when a person is in despair about the world, I mean . . . what can you do? You can’t change the whole world into something they’ll like better.”
“No,” Raymond said.