Slouched again in the wingback chair, Nate let go of whatever responsibility he’d felt to prepare for the test. What did an AP credit matter when he hadn’t even applied to college? It didn’t compel. Not like the woman in front of him, who was so clearly driven by her own imaginings. It reminded him of the time his father had borrowed someone’s yacht and sailed Nate out to Block Island to visit a businessman he had met on an airplane, a man who owned a paper company and might want to make a deal, only the businessman wasn’t home when they arrived at his waterfront house; the maid said he’d gone to Brazil. And so they sat together on the empty beach sipping the gin his father had brought in a thermos, the liquid warm now and rather bitter.
Thus, while it surprised Nate when Ms. Graves asked at the end of the session if he would like to continue their work over dinner, it seemed to make an odd kind of sense, and he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
At five thirty on a Friday afternoon they were the only customers at Finden Szechwan. A sunken-eyed waiter greeted them and the two dogs with a resigned nod of the head, directing them toward a banquette in the corner.
“At least their prices don’t seem to have changed,” Ms. Graves said, studying the menu through her reading glasses. “But you shouldn’t worry about that. I’ll take care of this. I’m celebrating, you see. I got a letter today about this suit I’ve filed. There’s going to be a hearing soon and it turns out that the case has been assigned to the perfect judge. You noticed, I’m sure, that enormous house next to mine.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty impressive.”
Her head recoiled, as if he’d tossed a rat onto the table.
“Of course,” she said, slowly gaining hold of herself, “there’s no reason you should understand. I forget so easily—the ignorance of the young. How would you know these things? No one’s taught you.” She put down her menu and leant across the table toward him. “In which case, allow me. That house,” she said, her voice dropping, “that house is an abomination!”
“It was just an opinion,” he said.
“No!” she cried. “That’s precisely what it isn’t! That’s precisely what’s become so endemic. That cheap, mindless relativism. You’re all awash in it. Of course it’s a pluralist society. So we’re modest. In the big things: religion, metaphysics. We’re non-absolutists. That’s secularism. That’s maturity. That’s what the zealots can’t abide. But this business of opinions. As if the world had no discernible qualities. As if there were no history. It’s a disaster. It’s an abandonment of the Enlightenment. All in the name of individualism. And they expect people to just stand by and watch. I was run out of my job on this sort of hogwash. The whole four-hundred-year effort sacrificed on the altar of the inoffensive. It’s unspeakable.”
“Right,” Nate said, afraid of the woman for the first time.
“But that’s just it!” she exclaimed, thrusting her hands out to her side, knocking Sam in the face. “You’re agreeing with me because you think that’s what I want. That’s the problem. Do you think I was the one who brought The Autobiography of Malcolm X into the classroom? No. That’s what they forget. It was students, black students God forbid, bused out from the city, who told me they’d stop coming to class if I didn’t assign it as a counterpoint to King and the nonviolent wing of the movement. And more power to them. They were right. But by the time the authorities got rid of me those children were swallowing that book down like just one more palliative drop of minor guilt and minor catharsis, one more petty event in their two-bit little moral Olympiad, where everyone always wins gold. The young limbs of the body politic cleansing themselves for future efficiency. I played them the tapes of his speeches, and even met them halfway by showing the damn movie. But it was all just one big entertainment to them.”
The waiter had come over to take their order but in her enthusiasm Ms. Graves failed to notice him.
“However, I digress. The point is, that house, you mark my words, it’ll be gone. This town, those selectmen—they broke the law.”
Nate glanced at the idling waiter, trying to clue his tutor to his presence.
“Oh, hello there,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her cardigan, from where