THE FOOT THAT MOVED
The place was called Ivor's and it had six tables out on the pavement under a dark red awning, and everybody eating at them was old and expensive-looking.
He was at the end table with his back to the window. Walter Kessler. Sixty-eight, white hair combed straight back, silver beard, navy suit, a watch that cost more than our car had. There was a chrome-and-black wheelchair pushed in under the table where a chair would normally be, and a waiter standing four feet behind him with his hands folded, the way they stand when the person eating is somebody.
I had Wren on my hip. Sam was holding the back of my jacket and Ruby was holding Sam's.
I got about ten feet away and a man in a grey coat came off the wall toward me, and I did the only clever thing I did that whole day.
I said, loudly, "Mr Kessler, your left foot moved on Tuesday. Nobody told you why."
The man in the grey coat stopped.
Kessler put his fork down. Not fast. He put it down flat on the plate and looked up at me and I saw something go across his face that I did not understand for another two weeks.
Because it was true. His foot had moved on Tuesday. He had been paralyzed for eighteen months and four doctors had told him the damage was permanent and complete, and on Tuesday morning his left foot had jumped once under the blanket, and he had told exactly one person about it, and that person was not me.
"Who are you," he said.
"Toby Mercer. Dana Mercer is my mother."
His face closed like a door. "Your mother stole from me."
"Yes," I said. "She did."
I think that is the only reason he did not have me removed. He was ready for me to cry and swear she was innocent, and I had thought about that on the bus for an hour and a half, and I had decided not to.
I put the paper bag on his tablecloth, next to the bread.
"She didn't steal from you," I said. "She stole what they were giving you."
I took the bottle out and stood it up on the white cloth between his plate and his water glass, label turned toward him.
It had his name printed on it. It did not have his doctor's name on it.
It had the name of his son's institute.