“That seed is as much what it’s not as what it is, as much what it will never be as what it will.” Her head rested on the desk sideways. She raised it and looked at the text again with Adam’s words for a guide, and right then she sort of slid into understanding how the explanation came out of what she read. She read it again. It made sense. She jumped and ran around, her feet pounding the floor. Downstairs, Mr. Rubinstein yelled and banged on the ceiling, but she couldn’t stop. She hopped and danced, then she ran back to the desk, terrified suddenly that comprehension was temporary. But she read Hegel’s words again, still understood, and knew absolutely that she would never again not understand what he wrote. She ran to the window, threw it open, and she leaned out over Seventy-­second Street. A brightly lit bus waited forlornly at the corner of Seventy-­second and Central Park West, which was the end of the line. The bus driver stood next to it and she shouted to him.

“I got it!”

Beneath her, Mr. Rubinstein shrieked and the bus driver laughed and yelled back up to her, “Never let it go.”

She told her parents that she’d felt more joy that night than she thought possible. She would feel like that again, she told them, and she had ideas. For instance, what did it mean to perceive objective . . . but she’d lost them. Her father was looking out of the window and her mother said, “Joy, shmoy, she’s doing it for that Adam Levy.”

Her mother hated Adam. He stayed with his father on the Sabbath, so Rachel never had a date on Friday night, and his father was a rabbi; not like Rabbi Rosten with good dark suits and shiny shoes. Adam’s father was from Brooklyn, leader of some village sect, and he probably wore a beard and side curls.

Rachel’s mother listed Adam’s flaws at Friday night dinner. His hair was wild, his clothes were shabby, his voice was too soft, he was short and skinny.

“But he’s got the biggest cock in New York,” Rachel snapped. Her mother gasped and started crying. Danny hiccuped and his girl friend, Madeline, stared.

“We’ve never met his family,” Rachel’s mother sobbed. It was the only safe thing she could think of to say.

“His mother’s dead,” Rachel said.

“He’s an orphan?” Danny asked.

“No, asshole,” Rachel said, “Jewish boys have fathers, too.”

At this Rachel’s grandmother laughed out loud, spraying vodka.

“Then we can meet the father?” her father asked desperately.

“Yes, but it can’t be on Shabbes, and he won’t eat here, so it has to be some place kosher if we do eat. I mean if he eats,” Rachel said. “We eat anything, don’t we?”