Chapter seventeen

we took a walk in Washington Square Park. Over the interweaving stone paths in the wind. Around the fountain. Under the statues. Over the paths again. I’d bought a pack of cigarettes at the little smoke shop across the street. I smoked them one after another. I wished she would stop crying.

The park was quiet. A few people were sunbathing on the grass. Someone was playing a guitar and singing. The drug dealers haunted the corners, whispering “cess,” like snakes, from the shadows. In the playground, the toddlers went down the slide with little cries.

We paused beneath the arch. Susannah leaned her back against the stone, her hands folded before her, her eyes cast down. I propped my shoulder beside her, faced away from her, up Fifth Avenue toward the Empire State Building. My hand was at my belt, the smoke from the cigarette wafting up to me. I smoked the cigarette. I wished she would stop.

She struggled with it. I heard her. And after a while, she walked out beneath the center of the arch. She turned to me. I could feel her gaze, feel her studying my profile. I wished she’d stop that too.

“Do you know what I love?” she whispered.

“No. No.”

“That you have blue eyes and black hair. Like a movie star. That’s what Kelly and Kate said. That you looked like you could have been a movie star: sort of tough because the black hair, the contrast, makes your eyes look cold, at first. But after a while … You’re not really so tough at all.”

“No,” I said. “Not so tough.”

“You’re a very handsome man, Michael,” she said, and then she sniffled loudly. “I’ll bet women just—” She couldn’t go on.

I took a drag on my cigarette. “Stop crying,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“Goddamnit …” I said. And then I said: “Please. Please, Susie, try to stop.”

“What difference does it make?”

I rounded on her, snapped at her. “Because I can’t do a goddamned thing about it and it’s breaking my fucking heart, all right?”

I had to turn away from her then. I still felt her looking at me. In another moment, she was silent. When I glanced at her again, she was dragging her palm across her cheeks—first one, then the other—to dry the tears.

“Thanks,” I said.

She nodded. “Sure.” She studied her shoes.

I leaned against the arch, looked up Fifth Avenue toward the Empire State.

She said to me: “Michael?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember?”

“No.”

“None of it?”

“Nothing.”

“Me either. But I thought: you were older.”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

That stopped her for a minute. Then she said: “Was it really the scarred man? Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, they’re going to execute Nathan Jersey.…”

“I know that, Sue.”

“I mean, even if he killed a guard—”

“I said I know.”

She whispered: “Don’t yell at me.”

“Okay.”

She hugged herself. She shivered. “I wish there’d been more,” she said.

I had gone on in the reel of microfilm, looking for follow-up stories. The first report had been wire copy with a police dispatcher for a source. But the day after, the news was dominated by the elections. The Hickman killing vanished from the Times for good.

“What are we going to do?”

I dropped my cigarette to the ground, crushed it under my heel. I took out another, lit it.

“I’m going to Indiana,” I said.

She nodded, blowing out a big breath. “All right.”

“You can stay with Angela, if you want.”

“No. I’ll come with you.”

“Okay.”

I smoked my cigarette. I stared up Fifth Avenue. I flipped my cigarette out over the sidewalk. It spun past the curb, fell into the gutter.

Then Susannah was standing next to me. She had her hands in the pockets of her skirt. She tilted her head. The breeze pushed her hair against her cheek, strands of it curled between her lips.

“I love you,” she said.

I pushed off the wall. “You can’t love me. You’re not allowed to love me.”

“Yes I can. I’m your sister.”

The words ripped into me and suddenly I grabbed the front of her dress. I dragged her to me.

She cried: “Michael, stop it, it hurts.”

“What if we don’t care?” I said. “What if we don’t? Why should we? What is it? It’s just a rule. You make a rule, I make another rule. What if we just don’t care?”

I pulled her until her lips were crushed against mine. She turned her face away from me.

“Michael,” she said, “stop it. It hurts too much.”

I let her go. I leaned against the arch. I stared up Fifth Avenue toward the Empire State.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Okay.”