I could far more easily drive to church and spare myself the discomfort of walking through this wasteland but I am in no hurry to reach home. I never know whom I will be coming home to, whether it will be mother, father, wife or son. Often it is just my son, my boy, and matters are quite as they should be, but since the end of school things have become more volatile. We live alone, you understand, the child and I. He’s nine, and the changes in this decade have been unfathomable. Indeed, it’s a different civilization now. My parents, with whom we were very close, died last year. My wife left in the spring. She just couldn’t feel anything for us anymore, she said, and was only trying to salvage the bit of life she could.

It’s as though he is answering the very question posed at Come and See! I took him there once. Sometimes someone brings a child or grandchild, it’s not unheard of. He listened attentively. No one expected him to contribute and everyone found him adorable. “Don’t ever take me into that stupid room again,” he later instructed me.

The week passes. Colson has a tutor in mathematics for the summer who is oblivious to the situation and I have the office I’m obliged to occupy. Colson wants to be an engineer or an architect but he has difficulty with concepts of scale and measurability. The tutor claims he’s progressing nicely but Colson never talks about these hours, only stubbornly reiterates his desire to create soaring nonutilitarian spaces.