“I read all the time. I’ve been reading all day all my life. Unless I was swimming or asleep or something.” The phone rang. It was Hodding Carter calling from Greenville, Mississippi. It was Roy Reed of the New York Times. It was Anthony Lewis. It was Stokely Carmichael. It was Constance Baker Motley. It was her husband, Charles, saying he’d be late for dinner. It was her youngest daughter calling from Arizona. “She’s only fifteen,” Derry said. “She isn’t adjusting. She’s overweight right now. What can I do to help her? What would you suggest?” As she talked on the phone she had kept on fixing dinner. The salad was prepared. French bread was sliced, buttered, slipped into an oven. A roast was pulled from a second oven. A black woman came into the kitchen. “Let me help you, Derry,” she said. “Go sit with your company. Let me take over in here.”

“All right. Thanks, Aurora. I think everything’s done. Constance called again. She wants Roy to come if he can leave Florida.” She put her hand on the black woman’s shoulder. They looked into each other’s eyes. The black woman reached up and covered Derry’s hand with her own. I had never in my life been in a place so charged, so energized. It seemed momentous things were going on around me as dinner was being prepared. It seemed I had waited all my life to be sitting in this room with Derry. But there was nothing I could do to be worthy of it. There was no way I could earn the right to even drink her wine but I kept on drinking it.

“Let’s go find Charles William and Irise,” she said. “They went in the bedroom to look at the Wyeth. He lived in our apartment building in Washington. He gave us a painting for keeping his cat. Well, come along. Let’s find them before anyone else calls.” She swept out of the kitchen and through the beautiful open rooms. I followed carrying my wine. She stopped in the living room to answer the phone and talk to Roy Reed again. Then to someone named Thurgood Marshall.

“Who is that?” I asked. “I’ve heard of him.”

“A lawyer, a very brave man. It’s grown dark outside. Let me turn on these lamps.” She began to move around the living room turning on the lamps. She stopped in the middle of the room, became very still, rapt. “Charles will be home soon,” she said. “He’s so glad Charles William came to visit. We’ve been so cut off, you know. It’s been hard on him.”