It was 8:40. Dr. Brindle's deadline was noon. I knew exactly what was going to happen at noon if I did nothing. The airline's system would close, and Dr. Brindle would sit in her office in Boston, or her kitchen, or wherever she was, and watch the clock, and at 12:01 she would call me. And I would either not answer, or I would answer and say something about the passport not coming, and she would be kind, and she would say she was sorry, and she would call the boy in Tucson. And I would never have told anybody anything. The plan would have worked after all. Just with me running it instead of my mother.
I sat with that for a while. A green heron came out of the reeds at the far end of the pond, low and hunched like an old man with his hands in his pockets, and stood absolutely still at the edge of the water. Green herons are one of the only birds in the world that fish with bait. They'll drop a feather or a bug or a piece of bread on the water and wait for a fish to come up to look at it. My mother told me that the first time we saw one, here, at this exact pond. I remember I didn't believe her. I remember she said, "Watch," and we watched for forty minutes, and it did it, and I screamed, and it flew away.
I called Dr. Brindle.
She answered on the second ring. "Maya," she said, in her late-night-radio voice, already warm, already relieved. "Tell me you have good news."
"I don't," I said. "I'm sorry. I can't come."
There was a little pause. I could hear a dishwasher running somewhere behind her, and a dog's nails on a wood floor.
"The passport didn't arrive?"
I opened my mouth to say no. It would have been so easy. It was the truth, technically. The passport didn't arrive. It never would. I could say it and hang up and she would never think about it again, except maybe to wonder, the way you wonder about anybody who drops off a list.
"I don't have one," I said. "I can't get one. I found out this morning. It's—there's a documentation problem with me, personally. It's not something anybody can fix by noon. Or, I don't know. Maybe ever. I can't leave the country. If I leave, I can't come back."
The dishwasher went on running. The dog's nails stopped.
"Okay," Dr. Brindle said slowly. Her voice had changed, not colder but more careful, the way you walk on a dock when you're not sure about the boards. "Okay. Maya, thank you for telling me. You didn't have to tell me that."
"I know."