Now the Square sits empty, denuded of trees except for a strip that extends from the northeast corner to the southeast corner. Here, there are still benches, still paths, still a few remnants of the playground. But this, I have to imagine, is temporary; in the rest of the park, workers spend the day pouring cement across areas that had once been covered with grass. One of my colleagues in the Home Ministry said the space will be converted into some kind of outdoor bazaar, with vendors who will compensate for the loss of stores.
So it was here, to this final remaining section of green, that I let Charlie venture. She was to confine herself only to this area, and she was to talk to no one, and if anyone approached her, she was to go straight home. For the first two weeks, I watched her—I had set up a camera in one of the upstairs windows, and as I sat in the lab, I could see her on the screen, walking briskly to the southern end of the park, never stopping to look around her, and then resting for a few seconds before marching back. Soon she was home again, and the second camera showed her walking inside, locking the front door behind her, and going to the kitchen for a glass of water.
She usually walks late in the afternoon, when the sun’s lower in the sky, and as I talk or write, I can still see her movements, a stripe on the screen moving farther away from the camera and then closer, her round little body and round little face receding from view and then returning.
Then came this past Thursday. I was on a Committee call. The topic was the cooling suit, which will likely be introduced next year, and differs from your version because ours comes with a full hard-shell helmet with a pollutant-filtering shield. Have you tried one yet? You don’t walk so much as waddle, and the helmet is so heavy that the manufacturer is incorporating a neck brace into the design. But they’re truly effective. A group of us tested them out one evening, and for the first time in years, I didn’t reenter the lab and immediately begin coughing and wheezing and sweating. They’re going to be expensive, though, and the state is investigating whether we can reduce the price from astronomical to extraordinary.
Anyway, I was half listening to the call, half watching Charlie begin her walk through the park. I went to the bathroom, got some tea, returned to my desk. One of the interior ministers was droning on, still in the midst of his presentation about the difficulties of producing the suits on a mass scale, and so I looked back at my screen—only to see that Charlie was missing.
I stood, as if that would help matters. After reaching the southern end of the park, she usually sits on one of the benches. If she has a snack with her, she eats her snack. And then she stands and begins moving north. But now there was nothing: just a state employee sweeping the sidewalk, and, in the background, a soldier, facing south.
I accessed the camera and swiveled it to the right, but there were only the soldiers in their navy-blue uniforms, an engineer corps, it seemed, taking measurements of the Square. Then I swiveled the camera to the left, as far as I could.
For a while, there was nothing. Just the sweeper and the soldier and, on the northeast corner, another soldier, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet: one of those casual, carefree gestures that startle me more than anything else—that, even with everything that’s changed, people still rock on their feet, they still pick their noses, they still scratch their behinds and belch.
But then, at the very edge of the southeast corner, I saw something, a movement. I magnified the image as much as I could. There were two boys—young teenagers, I thought—both standing with their backs to the camera, talking to someone else who was facing the camera. I could only see this person’s feet, their white sneakers.
Oh, I thought. Oh, please.
And then the boys moved, and I saw that the third person was Charlie, in her white sneakers and red T-shirt dress, and she was following those boys, who didn’t even look around them, as they began walking east on Washington Square South.
“Officer!” I shouted at the screen, uselessly. “Charlie!”
But of course no one stopped, and I sat and watched as all three of them vanished from sight, strolling offscreen. One of the boys had his arm draped loosely around her neck; she was so short that the top of her head fit just beneath his armpit.
I told my secretary to have a security unit deployed, and then I ran downstairs to my car, calling and recalling the nanny as we drove south. When she finally picked up, I yelled at her. “But, Dr. Griffith,” she said, quaveringly, “Charlie’s right here. She just got home from her walk.”
“Give her to me,” I snapped, and when Charlie’s face appeared on the screen, her expression the same as always, I nearly sobbed. “Charlie,” I said to her. “Little cat. Are you all right?”
“Yes, Grandfather,” she said.
“Don’t leave,” I told her. “Stay right there. I’m coming home.”
“All right,” she said.
At home, I dismissed the nanny （leaving it intentionally unclear whether that dismissal was for the day or forever） and went upstairs to Charlie’s room, where she was sitting on her bed, holding the cat. I had been fearing torn clothes, bruises, tears, but she looked the same as she always did—a little flushed, maybe, but that could have been the heat.
I sat down next to her, trying to calm myself. “Little cat,” I said, “I saw you in the Square today.” She didn’t turn from me. “On the camera,” I told her, but she remained silent. “Who were those boys?” I asked, and, when she still didn’t speak, “I’m not angry, Charlie. I just want to know who they are.”
She was silent. After four years, I’ve grown used to her silences. She isn’t being insubordinate or stubborn—she’s just trying to think of how to answer, and it takes time. Finally, she said, “I met them.”
“All right,” I said. “When did you meet them? And where?”
She frowned, concentrating. “A week ago,” she said. “On University Place.”
“Near the Mews?” I asked, and she nodded. “What are their names?” I asked, but she shook her head, and I knew she was getting upset—that she didn’t know, or didn’t remember. It was one of the things I was always reminding her: Ask people’s names. And if you forget, ask them again. You can always ask—you have every right. “It’s okay,” I told her. “Have you seen them every day since you met them?” Again, a shake of her head.
Finally, she said, in a small voice, “They told me to meet them in the park today.”
“And what did you do?” I asked.
“They said we should go on a walk,” she said. “But then—” And here she stopped, and pressed her face into Little Cat’s back. She began to rock herself, which she does when she’s upset, and I rubbed her back as she did. “They said they were my friends,” she said, at last, and she hugged the cat so tightly that he yelped. “They said they wanted to be friends,” she repeated, almost in a moan, and I pulled her close to me, and she didn’t resist.
The doctor has said there won’t be any permanent damage: minor tearing, minor abrasions, some bleeding. She suggested a psychologist, and I agreed, not telling her that Charlie already sees one, along with an occupational therapist and a behavioral therapist. Then I turned the video over to Interior and ordered a full search—they found the boys, fourteen-year-olds, both residents of Zone Eight, sons of research fellows at Memorial, one white, the other Asian, within three hours. One of their parents is a friend of a friend of Wesley’s, and he sent a note asking for mercy for his son, which Wesley hand-delivered to the house yesterday, his face expressionless. “It doesn’t matter to me, Charles,” he said, and when I crumpled the note and handed it back to him, he just nodded, and wished me good night, and left.