"It's never one sentence."
"And that girl in reception? The aides?"
"Still in the pipeline. Four months of 'need more comfort on founder.'"
"Your aunt Vera did home care thirty years," his mother said softly. "Those women carry this whole city on their backs, and nobody ever sees their faces." She was quiet for a while. "So what do you want, baby? Not what are you going to do to her. What do you want?"
It was the question he had been dodging for nine months. He sat in his mother's kitchen, fifty-two years old, chairman of the firm where she had polished the table, and tried to answer it truthfully.
"I want a place where somebody like you could have sat down," he said slowly. "Not because somebody was being nice. Because it was obvious. I want it to be obvious."
She reached across and patted his hand twice, the way she had when he was small.
"Then do that," she said. "It's harder than firing anybody, and it'll take longer than you have patience for. Eat your chicken."
Driving home over the Triborough, he called Celia and told her everything. When he got to the poinsettia, she was quiet so long he thought the call had dropped.
"Are you all right?" she said.
"I wanted to see her scared," he said. "This morning. For about a second, when Douglas walked in, I wanted to watch her figure it out." The bridge lights slid past. "I'm not proud of that."