I became aware again that I was wasting time, and I went downstairs. I stood inside the glass doors to my building and stared at the steady gray pulse of the rain. Robert wasn’t there yet. The traffic was moving agonizingly slowly. Finally, he pulled up. He, of course, didn’t know what was happening, so I ducked through the rain, got into the car, and tried to seem sunny as we drove uptown. Freddy was waiting on the corner outside his office, and we hugged each other. “This is too weird,” he said, and I agreed. “I don’t feel anything,” he said, and I realized that I was numb, completely numb. On the way to my parents’ apartment we had a conversation that was only half in code, so as not to give away too much to Robert; but we didn’t keep much secret, either.

We inched our way north through the slow traffic. Robert naturally drove us up Madison Avenue. Whether it is the most convenient route or not, Robert still drives up Madison Avenue rather than Park or Third, because it was always my mother’s preference. That training ran deep. I can remember how, when I was little, she would say: “Leonard, let’s drive up Madison. And don’t drive too quickly; I want to see what’s in the windows.” And my father would grumble something about shop windows, but he would drive up Madison, not too quickly, and my mother would watch out her window as though she were at the movies, at a movie version of her own life. So on this day, too, true to his training, Robert drove us up Madison Avenue, in the rainy day traffic, until we were finally there.

How many times had I gone upstairs on that same elevator in much that same way and come into the front hall, where the light was on? How many times had I gone from the front hall through the big wooden door into the back hall, how many times called out greetings (because my mother hated for people to come in and not call out their hellos; she said it was like thieves in the night). So this time, Freddy and I walked in the front door and we called out hello, and heard the echo sounding through the hall. And then we walked along that hall (my mother had lately recarpeted it in green, as part of her scheme to get the apartment into shape) and in my parents’ room (I still seem to call it my parents’ room; that was the last day that I did not have to reproach myself and say instead that it is my father’s room)—in my parents’ room were my parents. My father looked shocked and so grief-stricken; his whole face was tensed, as though his jaw and neck were being held together only through the strain of muscles beneath the skin.