art or saving people's lives or anything. I've just got Jamal and my job and this apartment.”
“That's enough,” Will said. “You don't have to be a brain surgeon.”
“The thing is, if this went away. If a miracle happened, and I wasn't sick anymore? I don't think I'd change all that much. I can't honestly say I'd become a doctor or work with the poor or anything like that. I mean, for a while I was having these kind of silent conversations with, like, some invisible power, and I'd try to convince whoever it was that if I had another chance I'd do everything differently. But even when I was saying it I knew it wasn't true.”
“You've done plenty, sweetheart. I don't want you to worry about this.”
“The really funny thing,” she said, “is how I don't seem to feel any better about, you know. The idea of dying. The fact that it wouldn't interrupt some great work of mine.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Sometimes I feel like I'd like to be a bigger tragedy. It's ridiculous, isn't it? I feel like I want my absence to be this huge loss to the world, and I know it wouldn't be. The one person it'd be really devastating to is Jamal.”
“Listen, Zo, this kind of talk is premature, don't you think?”
“If something happens to me, and if something happens to Cassandra, I think, I mean I was wondering.”
“You look fine. These are only your first symptoms—”
“I was wondering if you'd think about maybe taking Jamal. I need to know he'd have somebody to take care of him.”
“God, Zo,” Will said. “I guess I would.”
“Cassandra has this thing about Jamal going to live with Mom. And, I don't know. Mom is so, well. She's Mom. She and Jamal just aren't a match for each other, I'd rather think of him with you.”
“I'd have to think about it. But, well. It'd probably be okay. I'd probably take him if you wanted me to.”
“Thank you.”
Will said, “Do you want to come up to Boston? I could help you find a place up there.”
“No. This is our home, Jamal has friends here. And I couldn't separate him and Cassandra.”
“Right.”
“Cassandra is at least as good a parent as I am. You have no idea.”
“Well, if you ever change your mind, if you want to come up north for a while, just let me know.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't thank me. Please.”
She walked the Klingon across the tabletop, stood him in front of Will.
“Thank you, Will,” she said in a deep voice.
“You're welcome,” he said.
They sat at the table together until Jamal came into the kitchen to say that he had finished his homework and wanted to watch television. They watched television with him for an hour, then Zoe put him to bed. She and Will returned to the kitchen table and sat there for most of the night, talking. Sometimes Will moved the Klingon idly around on the tabletop, and sometimes Zoe did. As they talked, Will worked the tangles out of Zoe's hair.
1989/ Mary got to Boston once or twice a year, to see her son and to be in a city that didn't recognize her. Or, rather, she went to see her son and as a side effect, an added and less complicated pleasure, she enjoyed being in Boston. Boston was a kind of miniature New York where she looked better than most of the women her age and where she had no history. She always stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, an extravagance under any circumstance and even more so now that she lived on her alimony checks and the money she made working at Anne Klein. Still, the Ritz was worth it. Walking through the lobby in a skirt and jacket, she could have been a discreet, prosperous businesswoman from San Francisco. She could have been the American wife of a wine importer who kept an apartment in Paris and a house in Tuscany. She saved her money for these trips, took no other vacations, and when she bought new clothes it was always with an eye toward wearing them in Boston. In Boston, walking on Newbury or Arlington Street, past the windows of expensive stores, she could have been almost anyone. In Boston, where the women in the better part of town tended toward the squat, puggish, disappointed look of old Anglican money; where Burberry raincoats appeared to be the height of fashion and women fifty pounds overweight didn't seem to know better than to wear plaids and bold checks—there Mary could