I’d managed to bend the blade of the butter knife by stabbing it too hard into the side of the stuck drawer—one of my mother’s few good knives, a silver knife that had belonged to her mother. Gamely, I tried to bend it back, biting my lip and concentrating all my will on the task, as all the time ugly flashes of the day kept flying up and hitting me in the face. Trying to stop thinking about it was like trying to stop thinking of a purple cow. The purple cow was all you could think of.
Unexpectedly the drawer popped open. I stared down at the mess: rusty batteries, a broken cheese grater, the snowflake cookie cutters my mother hadn’t used since I was in first grade, jammed in with ragged old carry-out menus from Viand and Shun Lee Palace and Delmonico’s. I left the drawer wide open—so it would be the first thing she saw when she walked in—and wandered over to the couch and wrapped myself up in a blanket, propped up so I could keep a good eye on the front door.
My mind was churning in circles. For a long time I sat shivering and red-eyed in the glow of the television, as the blue shadows flickered uneasily in and out. There was no news, really; the picture kept returning to night shots of the museum (looking perfectly normal now, except for the yellow police tape still strung up on the sidewalk, the armed guards out front, rags of smoke blowing up sporadically from the roof into the Klieg-lit sky).
Where was she? Why hadn’t she come home yet? She would have a good explanation; she would make this into nothing, and then it would seem completely stupid how worried I’d been.
To force her from my mind I concentrated hard on an interview they were running again, from earlier in the evening. A bespectacled curator in tweed jacket and bow tie—visibly shaken—was talking about what a disgrace it was that they weren’t letting specialists into the museum to care for the artwork. “Yes,” he was saying, “I understand that it’s a crime scene, but these paintings are very sensitive to changes in air quality and temperature. They may have been damaged by water or chemicals or smoke. They may be deteriorating as we speak. It is of vital importance that conservators and curators be allowed into the crucial areas to assess the damage as soon as possible—”
All of a sudden the telephone rang—abnormally loud, like an alarm clock waking me from the worst dream of my life. My surge of relief was indescribable. I tripped and nearly fell on my face in my headlong dive to grab it. I was certain it was my mother, but the caller ID stopped me cold: NYDoCFS.
New York Department of—what? After half a beat of confusion, I snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello there,” said a voice of hushed and almost creepy gentleness. “To whom am I speaking?”
“Theodore Decker,” I said, taken aback. “Who is this?”
“Hello, Theodore. My name is Marjorie Beth Weinberg and I’m a social worker in the Department of Child and Family Services?”
“What is it? Are you calling about my mother?”
“You’re Audrey Decker’s son? Is that correct?”
“My mother! Where is she? Is she all right?”
A long pause—a terrible pause.
“What’s the matter?” I cried. “Where is she?”
“Is your father there? May I speak to him?”
“He can’t come to the phone. What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s an emergency. I’m afraid it’s really very important that I speak to your father right now.”
“What about my mother?” I said, rising to my feet. “Please! Just tell me where she is! What happened?”
“You’re not by yourself, are you, Theodore? Is there an adult with you?”
“No, they’ve gone out for coffee,” I said, looking wildly around the living room. Ballet slippers, askew beneath a chair. Purple hyacinths in a foil-wrapped pot.
“Your father, too?”
“No, he’s asleep. Where’s my mother? Is she hurt? What’s happened?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to wake your dad up, Theodore.”
“No! I can’t!”
“I’m afraid it’s very important.”
“He can’t come to the phone! Why can’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”
“Well then, if your dad’s not available, maybe it’s best if I just leave my contact information with you.” The voice, while soft and sympathetic, was reminiscent to my ear of Hal the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Please tell him to get in touch with me as soon as possible. It’s really very important that he returns the call.”
After I got off the telephone, I sat very still for a long time. According to the clock on the stove, which I could see from where I sat, it was two-forty-five in the morning. Never had I been alone and awake at such an hour. The living room—normally so airy and open, buoyant with my mother’s presence—had shrunk to a cold, pale discomfort, like a vacation house in winter: fragile fabrics, scratchy sisal rug, paper lamp shades from Chinatown and the chairs too little and light. All the furniture seemed spindly, poised at a tiptoe nervousness. I could feel my heart beating, hear the clicks and ticks and hisses of the large elderly building slumbering around me. Everyone was asleep. Even the distant horn-honks and the occasional rattle of trucks out on Fifty-Seventh Street seemed faint and uncertain, as lonely as a noise from another planet.