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Amber light spills across the floor from the three new living room lamps. The faux-leather club chair is new too, but the low marble coffee table is one that she and Melvin brought home from the Salvation Army. Instead of posters, a Navajo blanket she found at a street fair covers a large patch of wall. Open to a May breeze, two long windows await blinds that still must be bought.

The TV drones the eleven o’clock news. She and Richie are on the couch watching, but he rarely comments on whatever’s going on. During the Pentagon action planning meetings at the apartment, he listens to the jabber but won’t give up his thoughts. Perhaps unearthing even a sentence would loose an avalanche.

Over the last several weeks, she’s gotten used to his silences; still, she’s grateful for his presence. Their shared past leaves her less lonely. She told him about the visit to their mother, that she entered the apartment a child and left feeling more like an adult. How crazy was that? But he understood, said that Ma had the ability to both confuse and provoke. He is her brother after all.

The phone rings. Calls this late are never good—her mother’s words. She reaches over to lift the receiver.

“Hello.”

“We just got word”—it’s Celia’s anxious whisper—“about a date for Miles’s trial. It’s soon, sooner than expected. He’s glad about it. Told me nothing could be worse than Rikers. I’m not prepared for a verdict. I want to keep hold of my hopes.”

“I understand. It’s nerve-racking. Is Sam asleep?”

“Think so. Am I whispering?”

“Are you okay? I mean, I know you can’t be totally okay, but—”

“Josie, I can’t sleep. Nightmares wake me, but the daytime feels just as bad. I keep trying to hear Paul in my head. He’d be giving me one reassuring sentence after another. But I can’t hear him anymore. My head’s too filled with fearsome thoughts. Miles keeps telling me that he’s fine, that he’ll get through it. But he’s pale with fright. He’s my son. I know him. He can’t fool me. And—”

“Let’s meet for a drink after work. I’ll come up to the Bronx.” She’s never heard her sister sound so defeated.

“Can’t. I’m meeting with the attorney. He told me to bring Sam, wants to prep him in case he’s called as a character witness. Sam would be a terrible witness. He’s furious about what Miles has done to our family; at least that’s how he puts it. I don’t want Sam on the stand. I’m—”

“Celia, Sam won’t be called,” she says with certainty, though how would she know? But she needs to bring down her sister’s distress.

“Is Richie still awake?”

“Want to talk to him?”

“Not now. Say hi to him.”

“Okay. Have some wine.”

“I already am.”

She replaces the receiver. “Celia says hi.”

Thing is, she’s not ready for the trial either. It’s the cap on the bottle, the lock on the door. Miles sent to God knows where for God knows how long if not forever. Most of his visiting time is spent with Celia or an attorney. She saw him once. He didn’t say much, his face drawn, his hair buzz cut, the auburn gone, no more glasses, just the dark, fiery eyes. She tried to be upbeat, but he’s as aware as she is of what’s coming. She, Ben, and a few others are working to raise funds for his defense, but the response has been less than generous. The wealthy liberals who gave money to other funds do not find the actions of Miles’s collective defensible. At work, too, there are nasty comments from colleagues who don’t know Miles is her nephew. Ben cautions her not to respond, that it would only endanger her job, and how would that help Miles? He has a point.

She won’t share these thoughts with Richie, won’t be the one to add anxiety to his daily dose of discomfort. The least she can do is to protect him from her fears.

Suddenly, there on the TV screen is Melvin in jeans and a T-shirt, his big eyes blazing, finger pointing, as he harangues Black students at some southern university to get more involved. Her riveted focus feasts on Melvin’s face, her breathing caught somewhere too deep to access. Then the twenty-second blip is over.

“Do you want another beer? I’m going to have one,” she says.

“Always welcome.”

When she turns on the kitchen light, the brightness feels like an affront. She extracts two beers from the fridge and returns to the living room, where the screen is now on a commercial. She takes a long swallow, and the cold bitterness reaches into the pit of her stomach as car headlights shoot past the windows like bullets.

With Richie in bed, she tries to focus on the TV screen, but Melvin has climbed back into her head, where it hurts to have him. How dare he take up vital space? A twenty-second TV blip, that’s all it was, a finger pointing . . . the words lost on her. She ought to visit a shrink or a shaman, someone, anyone, that can erase the hurt and sense of loss that shadows her. She remembers how in that dark Broadway bar Melvin shivered in a leather jacket that couldn’t keep him warm. Yet there he was on TV in only a T-shirt and jeans, doing his thing without a thought about her. And here she is, allowing him back into her thoughts, where he no longer resides every day. Hasn’t enough time passed for her to be able to take in the good work he’s doing without feeling haunted? No answer.

A loud, frenzied, hoarse noise comes from Richie’s bedroom. She’s heard him struggle through many nightmares. Tonight, though, it sounds as if something has him by the throat.

She switches on his bedside lamp, opening a pool of light. His eyes are shut tight. His head moves from side to side as if trying to rid itself of whatever chases him. The frightening sound continues to gurgle out from deep in his throat.

“Richie. Wake up. It’s me, Josie.” She clasps one of his shoulders and shakes him. Maybe waking him is wrong. Maybe only in nightmares can he work out the demons that plague him. Yet she can’t leave him in such anguish. She calls his name, louder, again and again, and then places her hand lightly on his forehead to still his head. His eyes open.

“Richie. It’s me, Josie. You’re having a nightmare.”

He lies very still; his eyes steady on her.

“Are you okay?”

He nods.

She waits a few minutes, not sure if he’s truly awake.

“Go to bed,” he mumbles and sounds exhausted.

“I could stay . . .”

“No . . . Don’t turn the lamp off.”

This fucking war, she thinks, leaving his door ajar.