Raymond sat stunned for a moment. Then his brain seized on one aspect of her little speech.
“Wait. So, the whole thing about tribalism . . . that sounded to you like something a seventeen-year-old would come up with?”
“Very much so. And it was a little bit New Agey, too, if you ask me. Like you have this theory that reality is completely subjective. But there’s such a thing as objective reality, you know, and those jurors were trying to find it.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her. To tell her she hadn’t been there. That if reality wasn’t subjective, she wouldn’t be assigning perfect civic honesty to a bunch of people she hadn’t met, or even seen. Maybe even to tell her that his seventeen-year-old’s theory of tribalism had been borrowed from a forty-year-old district attorney.
He closed his mouth again. Because he realized, clearly in that moment, that she had made up her mind. Nothing he said would change it.
He stuck his head into Mr. Bernstein’s English class at the end of the day.
Mr. Bernstein stood at the blackboard, erasing. Cleaning the board before leaving for the day. He was a young man, probably less than ten years Raymond’s senior, with a full, dark beard and a quick smile.
“Raymond,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Not sure if it’s okay to ask this.”
“Well.” The teacher dropped the hand with the eraser to his side. Offered Raymond his full attention. “You can always ask.”
“I wrote a report. You know, about the trial.”
“Right, right. How did that go?”
“Not so well.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Were you supposed to hand it in to me? If so, nobody told me.”
“No. I was supposed to give it to Miss Evans for social studies class. But I was just . . . I’d really like to hear more than one opinion on it. I was wondering if you’d read it and tell me what you think. You know. As a piece of nonfiction writing. Maybe even give it a grade. It doesn’t actually have to count for my English grade if you don’t want it to. I’m just interested to hear what somebody else thinks.”
“Not a problem, Raymond. Not a problem at all. Leave it here and I’ll take it home tonight. You can come in first thing before homeroom tomorrow, and I’ll give you my honest opinion.”
“Oh,” Raymond said. “I just thought of something.” He felt foolish for not having thought of it sooner. “I need to be able to print out”—he almost said “a clean copy,” but he changed it quickly before he spoke—“another copy.”
He didn’t want Mr. Bernstein to see his social studies teacher’s grade, or the notes she had scribbled throughout. He wanted a fresh take, with nobody else’s opinion in the back of the man’s head.
“I’ll walk with you down to the office,” the teacher said. “I think they’ll let us use their printer.”
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into going to the store with me?” Raymond asked.
Mrs. G sat slumped at her dining room table, across from Raymond. Not drinking her tea. Not eating her cookie.
“I need more time to rest,” she said. “I would be very grateful if you would go and shop for me.”
“Okay. But sooner or later I’d like to see you get out in the fresh air again.”
“Yes. Later. In the meantime we should speak of something else. Did you hand in your report today? How long will it be before you get your grade on it?”
“I already did.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“She gave me a terrible grade.”
“Like an F?”
“No! Not that terrible. I’d kill myself. C minus. That’s terrible for me. It’s for credit. It’s going to pull my average down.”
“What didn’t she like about it?”
“She wants to think the jury was fine and upstanding, and that they listened to the facts and did their civic duty. And that reality is not subjective.”
“Oh. I see. She is a believer in the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality.”
Raymond stopped chewing and just sat a moment with a mouth full of cookie. But he couldn’t answer around it, so he chewed and swallowed quickly.
“You don’t think there is?”
“It’s hard to know. A very debatable point. But science now makes a good case that perhaps not.”
“What science? I never learned any science like that in school.”