“No, I want to stay with Daddy. It’s raining and I want to stay with Daddy.”
“Come along, Philip.”
“Daddy, Daddy,” he cried, all the way to the door, and when it closed he could still be heard as Mrs. Henning must have heard his voice in the closet so many years ago.
“I move,” the old man said, “that we propose, if that lies within our power, a suspension of Dr. Cameron’s security clearance.” The proposal seemed to be within their power. The motion was passed and the meeting was adjourned. Cameron remained in the witness chair and Coverly went out with the others.
Emile and Melissa planned to meet in Boston. Melissa told Moses that she had to go north to see her aunt. Her aunt was in Florida but Moses didn’t question her explanation.
She and Emile flew in separate planes. He arrived an hour later than she, and went to her room, where they spent the afternoon. Later they went out for a walk. It was very cold, and, looking at the façades and campaniles of Copley Square, she was moved by the thought that Boston had once thought itself the sister city of Florence, that vale of flowers. The wind scored her face. He stopped to look at a ring in a jeweler’s window. It was a man’s ring, a star sapphire set in gold. The ring did not interest her but it seemed to hold him. She shook with the cold while he admired the stone. “I wonder how much it costs. I’m going in and ask.”
“Don’t, Emile,” she said. “I’m frozen. And anyhow, those things are always terribly expensive.”
“I’ll just ask. It won’t take a minute.”
She waited for him in the shelter of the door. “Eight hundred dollars!” he exclaimed when he came out. “Think of that. Eight hundred dollars.”
“I told you it would be expensive.”
“Eight hundred dollars. But it was pretty, though, wasn’t it? And I suppose if you needed money you could always sell it. I mean, they must fix the price on things like that, don’t you think? It would be sort of like an investment. You know, if I had eight hundred dollars I might buy a ring like that. I just might. People when they saw the ring, they would always know that you were worth eight hundred dollars. Waiters. Like that. I mean they would respect you when you were wearing a ring like that.”
It seemed to her that he was deliberately debasing their relationship and forcing her into the humiliating position of buying him the ring, but she was mistaken; the idea had never occurred to him.
“Do you want me to buy you the ring, Emile?”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t thinking about that. It just caught my eye. You know how things catch your eye.”
“I’ll buy it for you.”
“No, no, forget about it.”
They had dinner in a restaurant and went to a movie. Walking back to the hotel he bought a newspaper, and he sat reading it in her room while she undressed and brushed her hair. “I’m hungry,” he said suddenly. His tone was petulant. “At home I get a bowl of cornflakes or a sandwich, something before I go to bed.” He stood up, put his hands on his stomach and shouted, “I’m hungry. I just don’t get enough to eat in these restaurants. I’m still growing. I have to have three big meals a day and sometimes something in between!”
“Well, why don’t you go down and get something to eat?”
“Well.”
“Do you need money?”
“Sort of.”
“Here,” she said. “Here’s some money. Go down and get some supper.”
He went out, but he didn’t return. At midnight she locked the door and went to sleep. In the morning she dressed, went to the jeweler’s and bought the ring. “Oh, I remember you,” the clerk said, “I saw you last night. I saw you standing outside the door when your son came in to ask the price.” It was a blow, and she supposed she could be seen flinching. She thought that perhaps the winter dark and the pale light in the street had made her seem old. “You’re a very generous mother,” the clerk said when he took her check and passed her the box. She called Emile’s room and when he came down she gave him the ring. His pleasure and gratitude were not, she thought, mercenary and crass but only a natural response to the ancient tokens of love, the immemorial power of stones and fine gold. It was a foggy afternoon, all the planes were grounded, and they went back on the train, sitting in different cars.
