“I’m trying to think how to put it better,” she said. “So it makes sense. You know how sometimes you have pain, so you call the doctor? Well, maybe you don’t, because you’re healthy and young. But there must be something in your life like this. So you make an appointment, and let’s say it’s weeks away. You start hanging on the calendar and putting all your hopes in that day. Like if you can just make it to the doctor’s appointment, then everything will be okay, but really you know in the back of your head that you might be setting yourself up for a big fall. Maybe he’ll know what’s causing the pain, or maybe he’ll have to run more tests. Or maybe he’ll know what it is, but there’s no easy cure. You know there’s a good chance you’ll walk out of that office still in pain. And then you’ll be faced with that very difficult task where you reset that internal clock of yours to some other time when it might be okay. Ever had something like that in your life?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.” He looked up to see the bank at the end of the block. He glanced at her watch. They were going to make it with seven minutes to spare. “So you’re saying you feel like you’re doing that with the trial?”
“Exactly.”
They walked in silence down the block. Through the doors of the bank, which an older male customer held open for them. Inside, where Raymond guided her into place at the end of the medium-length line.
“Is there anything you can do to fix that?” he asked as they waited.
“Not that I’ve discovered so far.”
They waited in silence until they reached the head of the line and a teller window opened up. It was Mrs. G’s favorite teller, Patty.
“My two favorite customers!” Patty crowed, a bit too loudly, as they stepped slowly up to her window. “Mrs. Gutermann and Raymond!”
Raymond led her up to the window, where she set her purse on the counter and began to plow through its contents.
A moment later he looked up and past her, to the door of the bank.
And there Raymond saw . . . his mother.
It had been inevitable, and he’d known it. It was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t bumped into her in the hall of their building in all these months. Or bumped into one of his sisters. Raymond had assumed some special brand of luck had attached itself to him. But if so, it had just run out.
She looked right into his face, and he had no choice but to return her stare. His heart began to drum and his ears felt hot. She continued to question him with her gaze. She didn’t look mad. Just curious.
“Excuse me,” he said to Patty and Mrs. G. “I’ll be right back.”
Heart pounding at a dizzying rate, he walked to her. He felt slightly outside his body, detached from his usual self.
They stood in front of each other for a silent second or two.
“This is not our bank,” he said.
“No.” Her tone was wry, as was the angle of her eyebrows. And the rest of her face. “It’s not.”
“So what’re you doing here?”
“I could ask much the same question of you.”
“No, seriously. What’re you doing here?”
She placed her hands on her hips, elbows wide. That was never a good sign.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but somebody at work wrote me a check, and I thought I’d cash it at their bank, because then it’s just like cash, you know? Not like income, like the IRS’ll ask me why I didn’t pay taxes on it if I ever get audited. Okay. Your turn.”
Raymond opened his mouth to speak. But just as he did, Patty called to him.
“Raymond! Raymond, honey, she needs you back now. We’re all done.”
His mother’s eyebrows did that wry thing again. Or maybe still, only more so.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He walked to the teller window to fetch Mrs. G. He reached out for her hand as he always did, and placed it on his upper arm. Then, having located the arm, she slid her own arm through it. And they walked together.
“Where did you go?” she asked. “It’s not like you to take off while I’m at the window. Not that I wasn’t okay there. I just wondered.”
“My mom is here.”
A lot came through in those simple words. He heard it in his own voice, and he knew Mrs. G heard it, too.
“I would love to meet her,” she said, leaving the subtext alone.
“Good. Because that seems to be where things are headed.”
He led her up to his mother and stopped a couple of steps away. It hit Raymond that the bank was only open for a couple of minutes more, and that his mother might not get her banking done at the rate they were going.