RAYMONDE: Do you still have that obituary of Arthur Leander? I remember you showed it to me, years ago, but I don’t remember if it had the name—
DIALLO: Do I still have the second-to-last edition of the New York Times? What a question. Of course I do. But no, it doesn’t have the name. That man from the audience who performed CPR on Leander, he’s unidentified. Under normal circumstances there would’ve been a follow-up story, presumably. Someone would have found him, tracked him down. But tell me what happened. Mr. Leander fell, and then …
RAYMONDE: Yes, he collapsed, and then a man came running across the stage and I realized he’d come from the audience. He was trying to save Arthur, he was performing CPR, and then the medics arrived and the man from the audience sat with me while they did their work. I remember the curtain fell and I was sitting there onstage, watching the medics, and the man from the audience spoke with me. He was so calm, that’s what I remember about him. We went and sat in the wings for a while until my minder found us. She was a babysitter, I guess. It was her job to look after me and the other two children in the show.
DIALLO: Do you remember her name?
RAYMONDE: No. I remember she was crying, really sobbing, and it made me cry too. She cleaned my makeup off, and then she gave me a present, that glass paperweight I showed you once.
DIALLO: You’re still the only person I know who carries a paperweight in her backpack.
RAYMONDE: It’s not that heavy.
DIALLO: It seems an unusual gift for a child.
RAYMONDE: I know, but I thought it was beautiful. I still think it’s beautiful.
DIALLO: That’s why you took it with you when you left Toronto?
RAYMONDE: Yes. Anyway, she gave it to me, and I guess eventually we quieted down, I remember after that we stayed in the dressing room playing cards, and then she kept calling my parents, but they never came.
DIALLO: Did they call her back?
RAYMONDE: She couldn’t reach them. I should say I don’t really remember this next part, but my brother told me. Eventually she called Peter, my brother, who was at home that night. He said he didn’t know where they were either, but said she could bring me home and he’d look after me. Peter was much older than me, fifteen or sixteen at the time, so he looked after me a lot. The woman drove me home and left me there with him.
DIALLO: And your parents …?
RAYMONDE: I never saw them again. I have friends with similar stories. People just vanished.
DIALLO: They were among the very first, then, if this was Day One in Toronto.
RAYMONDE: Yes, they must have been. I wonder sometimes what happened to them. I think perhaps they got sick in their offices and went to the ER. That seems to me the most likely scenario. And then once they got there, well, I can’t imagine how anyone could have survived in any of the hospitals.
DIALLO: So you stayed at home with your brother and waited for them to come back.
RAYMONDE: We didn’t know what was happening. For the first little while, waiting seemed to make sense.