I think you are, I told him. I think you’re talking directly out of your ass.

Bernard chuckled resonantly. (Often cello players have voices that seem contrived to match their instruments.)

I said something like: Bernard, it’s not that I actually felt the same pain she felt, of course, but I’m certain that I not only felt the same amount of pain, I’m sure I was feeling more pain. More than she was. Maybe it was a different kind of pain. My own. In a different way. But more of it.

You’re a selfish prick, he said.

Then Sylvia came into the kitchen and saw us on the floor (My voice began shaking and I thought I might weep right there at the Harvard Club), and she started crying, too—you know, that raw kind of clinched-up pain of an eight-year-old; you know, the pain kids feel on the keenest level. They know pain a hell of a lot better than we do. They respect the stuff. Know it firsthand. I swear she understood exactly what was going on and was grieving for both of us.

[Omitted from this section: He wrapped the towel tight around Margaret’s hand, told her to hold it, to stanch the flow, as he guided her out the service entrance to wait for the elevator. He despised Bernard, who seemed to think that knowing about religion, facts, slogans, sayings, proverbs, ancient questions from the Talmud somehow counted as living a solid life of belief. Bernard had conducted his own affairs, including one with a whip-thin girl named Andrea who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, which had ultimately led to his divorce; his kids were out in Santa Cruz with his second wife. Also omitted from this section: Just after Margaret cut her hand and he was leading her through the lobby, asking the doorman to please hail a cab, he felt for the first time beneath the base of his fingers, radiating out from the center of his palm, a cold electric tingle that would, in later months, establish itself as one of the physical aspects of his failure. ]

[Omitted from this section: He used Antoinette as an example, saying, Do you remember that old friend of mine, from back when, from when you were just a little kid, that friend Antoinette, who fell, hurt her ankle, and then couldn’t dance? Do you remember her? Really? Good, because she’s just one good example of what can happen, and I know I’m being, well, fatherly, but I have to say it, I really do, she fell, just warming up was all, and she tore a ligament or something—I can’t even remember the details—and her career was over and she, well, she gave into it. She just couldn’t go on. Well, that’s kind of off the subject and I don’t mean to scare you, and I know that you’re not going to change your mind, nor should you, sweetie, not at all, don’t change your mind on account of anything I say to you. I don’t expect that at all, would even be scared if you did change your mind, but it’s important that you know that a career can become so unhinged by such a little thing. I love you dearly, more than the world, more than the earth itself; you and your mom, you two. Yes. Yes, more than music itself, of course, that’s easy to say. More than music, much, much more. ]