Jake shut it off.
Tears were in her eyes. “Wow,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”
Jake was scowling down at his hands, his face red.
“That’s really smart,” she went on. “I mean, I don’t think college admissions people are going to love it.”
Jake shrugged. “They’re never going to hear it anyway.”
She was relieved. His words were dark and cynical, sure, but they weren’t the words of a troubled teenager. They were the words of a quirky, original kid. Maybe his view of the world was a bit grim — well, she wasn’t exactly in a position to tell him that everything was unicorns and rainbows out there. They both knew better.
When they arrived at Link’s parents’ condo building, Jake hopped out and grabbed his backpack. She looked at the building, at the security both inside and out, and was glad he’d be safe for a little while.
And then with a terrible pang she realized: I might not ever see him again.
When they got home, half an hour later, Duncan said, “He asked me not to tell you about the podcast.”
“But did you know he was at Karney Kone?”
“Of course not. I didn’t know where the hell he was.” Duncan was eating a cold slice of leftover pizza; she wasn’t hungry.
She shook her head. “Without telling anybody. I just about freaked out there when we found him gone, Dunc. I thought something had happened to him. So did you.”
“I know.”
“He just went to Karney’s without telling us, without leaving a note or sending a text or even asking permission. And he thinks it’s okay with Dad.”
“So?”
“How’s he ever going to develop a sense of responsibility? Or accountability? He just does whatever feels good in the moment. And you’re clearly okay with that.”
“I’m okay with letting the kid enjoy his life,” Duncan said.
“He has to learn to be responsible.”
“That’s called being an adult, and he’s not. He’s not an adult. He’s a kid. Why not let him enjoy his childhood?”
“He’s not a child either. He’s sixteen. Ashley was never like this.”
“Maybe because Ashley’s not a boy.”
“Jake’s not a boy anymore, Dunc; he’s a man.”
“No,” Duncan said.
“And it’s time for him to start acting like a man. Like a responsible adult.”
“If you had your way, every inch of that kid’s life would be planned, no spontaneity, everything scheduled.”
“That’s not fair, Dunc, and you know it. I just don’t want him looking around when he’s twenty-two, a college graduate on the job market, wishing he’d made better choices with his life.”
There was a long pause. She could see Duncan slowly turning red. “What?” she said.
“Goddamn it, Juliana, you know better!” he shouted. “You’ve read the fine print! We don’t even know if he’s going to see twenty-two!”
And Juliana was stunned. They stared at each other. There were tears in his eyes and in hers too.
“Don’t say that,” she said.
He shook his head, the words choking in his throat, for a long while before he began speaking again, in a low voice. He said, “I knew a kid in college who thought he’d beaten Hodgkin’s and died of a relapse before he graduated.”
“No, Dunc. He’s in remission.”
“Yeah, the kid’s parents paid for a commemorative bench in the college” — his voice broke — “courtyard.”
She was shaking her head. Her throat hurt. She was thinking, No. No. No.
She remembered the lines that Duncan had wanted to feature in Jake’s birth announcement. It was a passage from a nineteenth-century Russian thinker, Alexander Herzen.
We think the purpose of the child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death.
She’d objected. It was too somber, too pretentious, she said. Duncan gave in. But the words were meaningful to him, and from time to time they came back to her too. Its purpose is to play.
“We both know a recurrence is possible,” he said. “We’ve read the medical cautions, over and over. It could come back at any time.”
“It won’t.”
She was in denial, she knew it — she told herself Jake had been cured. To her it felt like a betrayal even to entertain the possibility that it might come back.
Duncan was blinking back tears, almost furiously. “These years — these years — these months — this now — these could end up being the entirety of his time on this planet,” Duncan said. “Right now. I want him to love his life, to make the most of it. To get everything out of life. You remember when Jake was in the crisis, and he was shaking and seizing and convulsing, and I held him in the hospital bed, and I told him things would be better after it was over? It’ll be behind us, I told him. And then — no more bad days, is what I said, right?”
She nodded. She remembered Duncan repeating that: No more bad days.
She could still smell the hospital room, that medicinal odor, hear the low buzz of the unwatched TV set mounted on the ceiling, its meaningless chatter flowing like hot water through a radiator. The fluorescent-hued gelatin dessert cups. Jake’s ashy lips and poisoned, jaundiced flesh.
“No more bad days,” Duncan said hoarsely.
And for an instant that memory flooded her brain again. She was looking at their sun-drenched backyard, watching ten-year-old Jake marching around the yard, imitating his father imitating Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, chanting, “O Captain! My Captain!”
Her eyes filled with tears. Suddenly her cell phone rang, jolting her. She looked at it, glanced at the number. Didn’t recognize it.
She picked it up, said hello.
“Your Honor, my name is Alex Venkovsky. I, uh, got your name from a mutual friend.”
“Okay,” she said warily. She had no idea who it was.
“He might have mentioned I work for the government?”
“Right,” she said. This had to be the guy from Treasury, from FinCEN Special Collections. “Nice to hear from you.”
“Tomorrow seems to be a day of opportunity,” he said.
“I think so.”
“How early in the morning can I meet you? There’s some toys I wanted to show you.”
They arranged to meet in the morning. He was taking the earliest flight out of Dulles, at zero dark hundred. She didn’t have to give him her address. He already knew it. “I’ll be at your house at five o’clock,” he said.
Another call was coming in. She took it. This number she recognized: Nazarov, the mafiya guy.
She said hello.
“Your Honor,” Nazarov said, “I think we are all set. If you are really so sure this is what you want.”
“I need to find the file Hersh left for me,” Juliana told Duncan later. “I didn’t have time to look for it in my lobby this morning. And it may have something important in it.”
“No,” Duncan said. “You’re exhausted — we both are — and we have a big day ahead of us. You need to be sharp.”
“You’re right.” Juliana realized there was no use arguing with Duncan, that neither was going to budge. But she needed that file.