Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [239]
“Do you plan to finish your next four years of residency at Our Lady?” Thomas Stone said, abruptly, breaking into my reverie. “If you were interested in moving to Boston …” So much for his perceptiveness. Just when I was ready to talk about the past, he wanted to know about my future.
“I don't want to leave Our Lady. The hospital is my Missing equivalent. I never wanted to leave Missing or Addis, but I had to. Now I don't want to leave Our Lady.”
Any other man would have asked me why I had to leave Missing. That was my fault—had he posed the question, I might not have answered. And perhaps he knew that.
As she cleared our plates, Anna said to Thomas Stone in English, “How did you like the food?”
“It was good,” he said, barely glancing at her. He reddened as she and I studied him. “Thank you,” he added, as if he hoped that would help get rid of her. She took two packaged towelettes out from her apron pocket and put them on the table.
I said to Anna, “Honestly, it was good, but you could make the wot hotter.”
“Of course we can,” she said in Amharic, a little taken aback by the implied criticism. “But then people like him won't be able to touch the food. Also we use local butter, so even if we make it hotter, it won't taste the same as home. Only someone like you would know the difference.”
“You mean there is no place to get real habesha food? The real thing? With all these Ethiopians in New York?”
She shook her head. “Not here. If you ever visit Boston, go see the Queen of Sheba. She's in Roxbury She is famous. The house is like our embassy. Upstairs, in one room, they sell groceries, and downstairs they serve home food. Cooked with true Ethiopian butter. The Ethiopian Airlines crew bring it just for her. All the Ethiopian taxi drivers eat there. You won't see anybody but Ethiopians there.”
THOMAS STONE HAD WATCHED this exchange, his face blank. When Anna left, he reached into his pocket. I thought he was reaching for his billfold. Instead, he pulled out the bookmark I had left in his room, the one on which Sister Mary Joseph Praise had written her note to him.
I dried my hands carefully and took it from him. I realized that I had missed it; it felt as if it shouldn't be here on a basket table but in a bank vault. It had been my talisman on a harrowing journey, an escape from Ethiopia which he knew nothing about. I read her last lines—”Also, I am enclosing a letter to you from me. Please read at once. SMJP”—and then I looked up.
Thomas Stone fidgeted in his seat. He swallowed hard, leaning on the basket table.
“Marion. This bookmark … was in the textbook, I presume?”
“Yes, it was. I have the textbook.”
He grew stiff, his hands trapped under his thighs as if an electric current were running through him. “Would you … Can I ask if … Do you have … Was there a letter?”
He looked helpless, sitting so low to the ground, like a parent visiting kindergarten, his knees under his chin.
“I thought you had the letter,” I said.
“No!” he said, so emphatically that Anna looked over at us.
“I'm sorry,” I said, though I wasn't sure what I was sorry for. “I assumed that you took the letter when you left. That you left the book with the bookmark in it.”
His face, so expectant a moment ago, collapsed.
“I took almost nothing,” he said. “I walked out of Missing with the clothes I had on and one or two things from the office. I never went back.”
“I know,” I said.
He cringed when I said those words. No wonder he was reluctant to probe my past. No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son. But did he really think of me this way? As a son? “But you took the finger with you?” I went on.
“Yes … that's all I took. It was in her room. I went back there.” He looked up.
I said, “I'm sorry. I wish I had the letter.”
“And the bookmark?” he said. “How did you get it?”
I sighed. Anna served us coffee. The small cup with no handle felt inadequate for my task of trying