“Sounds like the word you’re looking for is despair.”
“Yeah,” Raymond said, looking up directly into his father’s face. “Despair.”
Malcolm sighed deeply. “It’s probably not what you want to hear, but there’s a limited amount you can do. You can listen.”
“Listen? That doesn’t sound like much help.”
“Well, here’s the problem, son. I think you’re asking me how you fix a thing like that for somebody else. And unfortunately the answer is . . . you can’t. In fact, sometimes that gets in the way, when we try to fix what somebody else is feeling. Ever had somebody telling you what you ought to do to get out of what you’re feeling when you wish they would just hear you out?”
“Yeah. More times than I could count.”
“When we care about somebody, we don’t want to see them in pain, and that’s normal. But when a person is in despair about the world, I mean . . . what can you do? You can’t change the whole world into something they’ll like better.”
“No,” Raymond said.
A waiter in a red-and-white striped apron appeared with the ice cream and the root beer float. He seemed to catch the mood at their table, and he quickly left their order and retreated.
“This is about the trial?” his father asked. “And that woman shooter getting acquitted?”
“I thought so. At first. But it turns out it’s partly about that and partly about some other bad things from her past that I think she never really got over.”
“I see.”
“Listen? You really think that’ll be enough?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Raymond took a big gulp of his root beer float. Or tried to, anyway. The straw was full of ice cream, and it was hard to pull much in. But it was good, the little bit he got.
“You know anything about the law?” Raymond asked his father.
“Not too much. Probably just what your average person who’s not a lawyer would know.”
“Is there anything we can do about that woman now?”
“Like what?”
“An appeal or something?”
“I don’t think you can appeal an acquittal. I think you appeal a conviction. Otherwise you’d run into that double jeopardy thing.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I think you’d need to talk to an attorney about whether there are any options left in a case like this.”
Right. Like I can afford to talk to an attorney.
Then it hit him. He knew an attorney. Luis Javier Velez, Esquire. The man who had given Raymond his business card in case there was anything he could do to help. Now Raymond just had to figure out where he had put the card. Then again, he’d already found the man without a card once.
They spooned and sipped in silence for a minute or two.
“It’s nice to see you caring about the world,” his father said, “and having people you care about. But you have to let people go through whatever it is they have to go through. Just be there for your friends. That’s all we can really do for each other sometimes.”
Raymond nodded, though it was far less than he had hoped to hear.
“You know what I think is nice? That we talk to each other more than we used to.”
“Absolutely,” his father said. “I think that’s nice, too.”
“I have two more little favors to ask you,” Raymond said. “Can I borrow your cell phone? And, next Sunday, would it be okay if I left early? Like right in the middle of the day?”
His father reached into his jacket pocket and frowned. “I think . . . I forgot it.”
“Then can I come in and use your phone when we get back?”
“Seems a shame to come all the way back to the apartment just to make a phone call. You need to go the exact opposite direction to get home.”
Raymond turned his face away. Looked out the window and watched people hurry by, so his father wouldn’t see the disappointment in his eyes. He was not welcome back at his dad’s apartment after they were done with their ice cream, because his dad wasn’t willing to fight it out with his wife.
“Tell you what I’ll do, though,” Malcolm said, digging in his wallet.
Money won’t help this.
“You can take my phone card. It has a PIN number, and you can use a pay phone, and the charges will go directly to my phone bill. And yes, of course, if there’s someplace you need to be on Sunday, then go ahead and be there. We’ll work around it.”