"Well then, I have another question." "You're saying that to me or to the phone?" "You. How long have those pads been by the displays?" "I don't know." "He died more than a year ago. That would be a long time, right?" "They couldn't have been out there that long." "You're sure?" "Pretty sure." "Are you more or less than seventy-five-percent sure?" "More." "Ninety-nine percent?" "Less." "Ninety percent?" "About that." I concentrated for a few seconds. "That's a lot of percent."
I ran home and did some more research, and I found 472 people with the name Black in New York. There were 216 different addresses, because some of the Blacks lived together, obviously. I calculated that if I went to two every Saturday, which seemed possible, plus holidays, minus Hamlet rehearsals and other stuff, like mineral and coin conventions, it would take me about three years to go through all of them. But I couldn't survive three years without knowing. I wrote a letter.
Cher Marcel,
Allô. I am Oskar's mom. I have thought about it a ton, and I have decided that it isn't obvious why Oskar should go to French lessons, so he will no longer be going to go to see you on Sundays like he used to. I want to thank you very much for everything you have taught Oskar, particularly the conditional tense, which is weird. Obviously, there's no need to call me when Oskar doesn't come to his lessons, because I already know, because this was my decision. Also, I will keep sending you checks, because you are a nice guy.
Votre ami dévouée,
Mademoiselle Schell
That was my great plan. I would spend my Saturdays and Sundays finding all of the people named Black and learning what they knew about the key in the vase in Dad's closet. In a year and a half I would know everything. Or at least know that I had to come up with a new plan.
Of course I wanted to talk to Mom that night I decided to go hunting for the lock, but I couldn't. It's not that I thought I would get in trouble for snooping around, or that I was afraid she'd be angry about the vase, or even that I was angry at her for spending so much time laughing with Ron when she should have been adding to the Reservoir of Tears. I can't explain why, but I was sure that she didn't know about the vase, the envelope, or the key. The lock was between me and Dad.
So for those eight months when I went looking around New York, and she would ask where I was going and when I'd be back, I would just say, "I'm going out. I'll be back later." What was so weird, and what I should have tried harder to understand, was that she never asked anything else, not even "Out where?" or "Later when?" even though she was normally so cautious about me, especially since Dad died. (She had bought me the cell phone so we could always find each other, and had told me to take cabs instead of the subway. She had even taken me to the police station to be fingerprinted, which was great.) So why was she suddenly starting to forget about me? Every time I left our apartment to go searching for the lock, I became a little lighter, because I was getting closer to Dad. But I also became a little heavier, because I was getting farther from Mom.
In bed that night, I couldn't stop thinking about the key, and how every
After forever, I got out of bed and went to the closet where I kept the phone. I hadn't taken it out since the worst day. It just wasn't possible.
A lot of the time I think about those four and a half minutes between when I came home and when Dad called. Stan touched my face, which he never did. I took the elevator for the last time. I opened the apartment door, put down my bag, and took off my shoes, like everything was wonderful, because I didn't know that in reality everything was actually horrible, because how could I? I petted Buckminster to show him I loved him. I went to the phone to check the messages, and listened to them one after another.
Message one: 8:52A.M.
Message two: 9:12 A.M.
Message three: 9:31 A.M.
Message four: 9:46 A.M.
Message five: 10:04 A.M.
I thought about calling Mom. I thought about grabbing my walkie-talkie and paging Grandma. I went back to the first message and listened to them all again. I looked at my watch. It was 10:22:21. I thought about running away and never talking to anyone again. I thought about hiding under my bed. I thought about rushing downtown to see if I could somehow rescue him myself. And then the phone rang. I looked at my watch. It was 10:22:27.
I knew I could never let Mom hear the messages, because protecting her is one of my most important raisons d'êetre, so what I did was I took Dad's emergency money from on top of his dresser, and I went to the Radio Shack on Amsterdam. It was on a TV there that I saw that the first building had fallen. I bought the exact same phone and ran home and recorded our greeting from the first phone onto it. I wrapped up the old phone in the scarf that Grandma was never able to finish because of my privacy, and I put that in a grocery bag, and I put that in a box, and I put that in another box, and I put that under a bunch of stuff in my closet, like my jewelry workbench and albums of foreign currencies.
That night when I decided that finding the lock was my ultimate raison d'etre—the raison that was the master over all other raisons—I really needed to hear him.
I was extremely careful not to make any noise as I took the phone out of all of its protections. Even though the volume was way down, so Dad's voice wouldn't wake Mom, he still filled the room, like how a light fills a room even when it's dim.