PLAYMATES

by Barbara Kent

(c) Barbara Kent, 1993

Kevin is a New York City Tactical Patrol Force policeman. His family and our family have been friends since we were very young, which means before we had any children, and before we realized we even were families. We often visit back and forth, one or the other, formality disappearing with shared tragedies and imagined triumphs.

This particular night my husband was working and the children were asleep upstairs. Kevnin dropped in on his way home from work before tackling the remainder of bleak expressway between their house and ours. He was in plain clothes which is a gross understatement. Actually, he was in rags, wearing a torn and half-patched denim jacket with a faded, used-to-be-black "Chicago" T-shirt underneath. One knobby knee showed through his deplorably worn jeans, and the last time I'd seen him clean-shaven was in New Orleans, circa 1973.

We sat out on the deck and contemplated relativity through a dramatically altered state of consciousness. The join burned down to his blistered fingertips and he salvaged a quarter-inch of good grass by carefully tapping the roach on the side of the glass ashtray. We were each enveloped in our own fragile universe. Kevin chose to intrude on mine, and I chose to allow it. His voice was soft and as faded as his T-shirt.

"You don't know what kind of a day I've had." He wasn't addressing me really, but the world in general.

"Mmmhmmm." I was drifting off, half-listening. He was barely there, and I'd heard it all before. The monotone of his voice was soothing, even as he described the gory particulars of cleaning up the city after another major black-out. I nodded in his direction, now and then. The city was maybe forty miles and ten years -- no, make that a lifetime -- away. I would have been more interested had he been speaking of Venus or Mars. It might have been amusing, just listening to the rhythm of his voice -- he explained how the "animals" in the ghetto had blown up some building and ripped down others with their bare hands. Broadway was burning and a fellow-policeman had been shot and killed at 14 Linden Street. I involuntarily jerked back into my body.

"What was that? 14 Linden Street?" Somehow, he'd remembered the wrong address. "Um, you've got to be wrong, where do you work again?" Perhaps there was another Linden street tucked away in the vast ghettos of the South Bronx. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

"Bushwick section, Brooklyn." I hadn't thought I was listening, but suddenly every word he'd said replayed itself and materialized into vivid images in my mind. The scene was no longer an anonymous city slum, it was home.

"You're kidding," I said, "...that's where I come from!" True surprised creased his face. "You can't come from there," he settled back into the lounge chair. "No kidding, hah? You really come from there? Gee, I'm sorry. You ought to see it now."

I was impervious to urban blight. I lived here, in a beautiful country setting with horses down the hill and an unlimited view of the universe. My children attended a properly integrated school with every educational advantage including hands-on computer experience beginning in Kindergarten. Our property is large by New York standards, almost an acre, and boasting the requisite kilowatts of flood-lighting and a pool. The house itself is large, meticulous furnished. We even have occasional help. I wanted my past to remain where it was -- comfortable, remote, and smudging nicely into acceptable, albeit selectively edited memories. I had even promised my eldest daughter that I would soon bring her to see where "mommy grew up." I had dreams of walking with her into my old school to show her what it was like. In short, ours is the American Dream come true...straight out of Father Knows Best. I ought to know, I worked very hard to make it that way. Now, my carefully constructed reality showed wear around the edges. Well, Brooklyn was yesterday, and Now is here. I lit another joint and passed it to him, filling my lungs with that curious mixture of smoke and Summer night.
"Kevin, it wasn't always like that."

Against the wishes of her family, my mother chose the apartment at 36 Linden Street because of it's prestigious address. Bushwick Avenue was more a boulevard in the grand old manner than just an avenue. It was the gracious urban setting for the affluent, and the Victorian and Gothic mansions stretched for miles. The thoroughfare terminated at the stately Highland Park, once home of New York's ex-Mayor Highland. Typical of the area, both sides of our street were lined with tall, dark-barked Linden tress symmetrically spaced every 15 feet. Most of the houses were elegant brownstones set back far from the street and carefully protected by fanciful black, wrought-iron fencing. They housed doctors, lawyers, merchants, politician and their assorted progeny. We lived in one of the two apartment houses at the end of the block. Ours was unmistakably the most impressive building visible. A pink and white candy-striped awning shaded a strip of dusty pink sidewalk that led from the street to the broad marble steps. The foundations plantings boasted espaliered privet and pink azalea. The doorman matched, and tiny awnings capped all the front windows. The broad, double front doors glistened with shiny brass and etched glass behind which gleamed tightly tucked, snow-white organza curtains. Vincent, the Syrian superintendent, and his wife Nancy, kept the building sparkling all the time. The front doors remained unlocked and opened into an outer lobby the size of a dance-floor, that barely hinted of what lay beyond the locked, inner lobby doors.

Once gaining entrance to the huge inner lobby, it was easy to imagine being in a castle, it was so beautiful. There were hand-painted frescoes on the vaulted ceiling and twelve-foot windows that looked out into the inner courtyard. The courtyard received little sunlight, but Vincent managed to find hardy little shrubs that flourished there, so we always had a garden. In the center of the lobby there was an imposing black marble fireplace that had been made in Italy and transported to the States by boat. In front of the fireplace by several feet stood a long, narrow banquet table with clawed feet, flanked by two Duncan-Phyfe chairs. Lavishly upholstered in blue and white dragon festooned satin, the chairs sat like sentinels. At Christmas time Vincent always put up the most beautifully decorated tree on that table, and the lights sparkled and twinkled through the sheer curtains, and you could see them from the street. It was such a good, warm feeling, knowing that Vincent took care of everything.

At both ends of the lobby there were Duncan-Phyfe tables, each with an antique mirror over it, and on either side of the wide doors were exquisitely crafted pink marble benches, made by the same craftsman who made the fireplace. The floor gleamed, black and white checkered ballroom tile, and paved the way to the two, broad, pink marble staircases that led to the apartments. In the evenings, the delicate crystal chandeliers and brass sconces brilliantly lit up the great hall and cast kaleidoscope shadows over the mirror-like floor. You could almost hear the silken swooshes of long skirts that must have swept that floor when the building was new.

We lived on the top floor, in a three-room apartment. After the grandeur of the lobby and the hall, the apartment itself must have been a great disappointment to anyone who entered, although I didn't notice it myself at the time. Architecturally, it was stunning and featured high ceilings and parquet floors, and ornate little brass sconces on the walls that had years ago turned green, shaped like little candelabra. Originally designed as gas jets, they now were "electrified" as the older tenants called it. We were poor people though, and I suppose that asphalt linoleum with pink and gray chintz curtains did little to enhance the architecture. Now that I think about tit, even then the neighborhood must have been on the decline.

Married ten years before I arrived, my parents had never considered children, so my unexpected appearance shocked them somewhat. In any case, I did not seem to be exactly what the wanted so they continued with their lives leaving me pretty much alone. Occasionally my presence startled them, as if they were still not quite sure why I was there.

Dozens of children lived in the building, but I was not allowed to play with them. Mother worked and brought me to my aunts house every morning. There were no little children there either, and my aunt considered three years old too young to play alone outside. I observed, for the adults around me rarely regarded me at all, had nothing to say to me, and I in turn, had nothing to say to them. By the time my parents arrived at night to pick me up, I was asleep.

But weekends! I knew there was something different about weekends! Both my parents were home, and while I was not exactly showered with attention, I was at least, not alone. I looked forward to the dawn of each Sunday, when the house sparkled clean and the aroma of Sunday's pasta sauce perfumed the air. Daddy's interminable games cranked out of the stand-up radio-Victrola combination, and through the open window lilted the strains of Chopin as Mrs. Shapiro played the piano. If it was a good day, we would go for a walk. On a superb day, we would either have company or be company somewhere. The highlight of the day was my Sunday night bath, after which Mother tucked me into the clean laundry-starched sheets of my crib. I should make note of that crib now too, before it gets any dimmer in my memory. Sufficient to say that it was built of blonde, varnished wood with a pink and blue teddy bear facing me. I remained in that crib until I was nearly six.

After methodically scrubbing me down, mother customarily left me in the tub to play for ten minutes or so. It was during this time that I first made contact with Richard. I sloshed in the tub, up front by the faucet, strategically sinking little ships with bursts of tap water. I felt the water move behind me, and turned around. Sitting there, sharing my bat, was a little boy, just a bit older and larger than me. He wore no clothes, which I promptly remarked on. He slapped the water gently. "Can't wear clothes in the bath." Of course.

He said his name was Richard, and I remarked that I thought it was a peculiar name. I had an Uncle Tony, and two Uncles Frank, an Uncle Louis , an Uncle Angelo, and an Uncle Joe. Daddy's name was gaetano, and I had a boy-cousin named Michael. But I had never heard the name "Richard" before. H claimed it was not a peculiar name, because it was his fathers name, and his grandfather's name, too. In fact, he thought my names were peculiar and asked if we were American. I did not know what "American" meant, so I just nodded my head "Yes" and poked my boat fleet so that it would float between us. Those toys remained my very favorite for the longest time. One boat had little animals with flat metal feet. If you put them on top of the gangplank they walked right down and out. Another had a bunch of little plastic milk bottles that fit into the hold. A little wind-up canoe with a tiny Indian who paddled furiously when you would it up, was broken, but I still let him bob around with the other boats because it was so cute. Richard asked why I didn't have a gun-boat. His daddy had something to do with gun-boats, and he thought every fleet should have at least one. I had a toy gun, so I knew what a gun was, but putting the image of a a gun and a boat together made me giggle. I heard the door open and turned over my shoulder still laughing. Mother was standing there with a laundry-starched towel. She had a tight look on her face and grimly asked what all the noise was about. I kept giggling and turned to Richard, but he was gone! I was more surprised by his departure than by his arrival. As she lifted me out of the tub, I babbled.

"I met a friend, Mommy, and his name is Richard and he promised he would come play with me. Every day he will come to play. maybe we could take him to Aunt Franny's house and we can play there...can we?" She silently and efficiently rubbed me dry while I chattered about my new future. I felt so important! After I was powdered and pajama'd she prepared to tuck me in. I talked non-stop and she gave me a strange look. "My, aren't you the little chatterbox tonight?" Then she kissed me goodnight. Lulled to sleep by the customary bickering my parents indulged in, I dreamt dreams of Richard and red crayons.

The next morning I jumped up and ran into the bathroom. I took an extra long time hoping that Richard would come Mother finally complained that I took much too long and shooed me out. I went to Aunt Franny's very sad. That night I thought about Richard in the bathtub, but too tired to look for him, I just went to sleep. I went in, searching for him every morning, but he never showed up, so I got angry at him. My family paid less attention to me than usual, because Aunt Franny was ill and lost somewhere in her own thoughts.

The days at her house were long, and dull. I watched her iron mountains of clothes while she listened to soap operas on the radio. I watched her prepare my dinner which was invariably scrambled eggs or pastina heavily soaked with rich butter. I drew a zillion pictures on paper bags, old window shades and the backs of used envelopes. At night, the spirited conversation of the grown-ups irritated me as I tried to sleep before my parents took me home.

Richard came back the next Sunday night during my bath time again. I pretended not to notice as I sunk my ships. Finally he said "I'll play with you!" I handed him my favorite red tug-boat. This time I looked closely at him and touched his hand, afraid he would disappear again. "Your hand feels bubbly, like soda!" I said. He looked at it, a little puzzled, "I know, I don't think it was always like that though." I could just barely see through him, but the transparency didn't bother me. His skin sparkled, tinged blue. He appeared bigger than me, with curly blonde hair and strange pale eyes. Richard contemplated his hand for a few more moments then brought it down on the boat with a splash. "How old are you?" he asked. I held up four fingers, even though I knew I was still three. He giggled. "My sister's almost four. You'll like her, but she's very shy." I looked around, "Where is she?" He pointed to the corner of the tub without looking. "she's over there, but she's afraid to come out." I looked at the empty tile wall. There wasn't anybody there. I asked him where he had been all week, and he said he had been right there. "But I never saw you again!" He shrugged his bluish shoulders, "I saw you."

Just then Mother walked in. I saw Richard's mouth drop open and I turned. She was in the doorway, staring beyond me, at Richard. She shook her head once, fast, as if to clear it and looked again. When I turned back to him, he was gone. I was furious at her. As she lifted me out of the tub I kicked and screamed at her, "You chased him away! Go away! I want to play with Richard! You chased him away!" She struggled with me and pushed me around so that I faced the now-empty tub. "Look," she said, "there is no-one there." I allowed her to dress me, and cried myself to sleep. I didn't see Richard for a long time after that. My life returned to normal, and I watched the family carefully and quietly, taking care not to get in anyone's way.

Aunt Franny grew more remote by the day. I felt terrible sorrow for her, but I didn't know why. I would just hod on to her and try to give her little kisses so that she wouldn't be unhappy. When my uncle came home I stayed in the back room while Aunt Franny swept a dustless floor and scoured shining pots. I could not then, and cannot now, express the great sadness I felt when I was there.

One Sunday afternoon I was caught playing with matches. I'd pushed a chair over to the Victrola and climbed up to get them. I was attempting to strike one when my mother walked in. I jumped off the chair, ran like hell, and locked myself in the bathroom. I stood leaning my whole weight against the door. My heart pounded wildly, but inside I was singing. She banged at the door and yelled at me, but I shut out the noise and would not hear. The banging finally stopped and I heard her walk away. I turned around, leaning on the door for support, and there was Richard, kneeling in the bathtub, chin in his hands and elbows propped on the tub-ledge.

"Hi!" I was filled with the adrenaline of rebellion and that combined with the joy and surprise of finding him there. I sat on the ledge next to him. He explained that he was afraid of my mother, and I confided to him that I was, too. He thought it very strange to be afraid of one's own mother. Then he brightened up, "Linda wants to meet you!" he exclaimed. I saw a little fat hand holding the shower curtain back, and big beautiful eyes almost obscured by the same golden curls that Richard had. "She won't come out any further 'cuz she's got no clothes." I asked him why, and he said he didn't know, but that he didn't have any clothes either. I told him I could give her a dress, but I didn't have any boy clothes. He said it was O.K., he didn't mind. I opened the bathroom door quietly, stepped into the hall and peeked into the living room. When I determined that the coast was clear, I hurried into the bedroom and carefully opened the door of the chiffarobe. There was a pretty blue and white dress in there, and pulled out a pair of ruffled white panties. I ran back into the bathroom, relieved to see that they were still there. We laughed as I dressed Linda and brushed the shiny curls. I stepped back to admire her, and suddenly the clothes fell in a heap on the bottom of the still wet tub, and Linda and Richard were gone. I had forgotten to lock the door! My mother was standing in the doorway, angry as all hell. The bathtub was still wet from her shower, and the blue taffeta dress stained dark as it soaked up the water. She grabbed the dripping dress and shook it in my face. What the hell did I think I was doing, anyway? I got a beating and she didn't believe me when I told her about Linda, but she looked at me in a way that chilled me to the bone.

That week was a nightmare. Aunt Franny had to go to a hospital upstate because she had tuberculosis and there was no place for me to go. The lady downstairs was supposed to watch me, but, fat and lazy, she did nothing but eat all the food in the house and watch television. having her there in my own home though, meant that I could see Linda and Richard every day, and they started coming every day, too. Although they claimed they were always there, I did not always see them.

Things got much easier for me with the fat woman because she let me play with other children. She even let them into the house, which my parents never allowed. I did not like her, but as long as she let me play, I would tolerate. her.

I made a friend of the little girl downstairs, Hellene, and I brought her in to meet Linda and Richard. She hated them though, and said I couldn't be her friend and their friend too. I told her O.K., but that was a lie, and Richard knew. One day he promised me that he would meet me outside to play, so I told all my new friends about my old friends, and how they would come play with us. I played on the pink sidewalk with Hellene, and the fat lady brought a chair down to sit with the other women. Nancy, the super's wife, leaned out of the window near the women so she wouldn't miss any of the gossip. The fat lady heard me bragging about Richard, and in her self-appointed role of disciplinarian, showed all of her friends how she 'Handles a child like that!" She leaned over, thick white knees wide apart, and without leaving the chair her bludgeon-like had caught me in the rear. Everybody laughed while she sarcastically yelled at me for lying about friends I never had. I felt as if I were suffocating, because I refused to cry. My bottom hurt, and I stood humiliated in front of the world. I wished that the fat lady had gone to Cushiquaw instead of Aunt Franny. I started to cry when I thought of her, so far away, but I knew I was really crying for myself. I expected Richard to appear any minute to show them that I wasn't lying, but needless to say, Richard did not show. The fat lady finally grew bored with tormenting me and dragged me up the stairs.

I ran into the bathroom crying, "Where were you? I told everybody you were coming to play with me and you never came! I hate you! I hate you hate you hate you!" Richard sat there alone, and he cried too. He couldn't get out of the tub. We sat there, holding each other and Richard said he wanted his mother, he was so afraid. I stopped crying and asked him where she went and he said he didn't know but he had to wait right there for her. I heard a thin, high-pitched wail that sent goose-bumps marching up my back and Richard said "Linda's crying, too. She's only a baby you know." I told him that when my mother came home I would tell her to help them. I fell asleep long before she got home though.

The next morning I woke up early and pleaded with her to help my friends somehow. She dragged me into the bathroom to prove to me once and for all that no one was there. And no one was. Then she threatened to send me away if I continued to talk about them, because it was evil, and they had places where they locked up people like me. She knew what she was talking about because she and her sisters were in the process of locking up their oldest sister in a place called "King's Park" and of course, Aunt Franny had been sent away too. I shut up.

I made a lot of friends in the building and on the block, but Richard and Linda remained my best friends. On my fifth birthday I snack some cake into the bathroom for them but it made Richard sad because he couldn't eat it. I stood nearly as tall as him now, and Linda, just my age when we met, now seemed the perfect little baby. She was so quiet and beautiful when we were together, but on some nights I could hear her wailing and Daddy would get up and bang on the pipes, thinking that her cries were the steam heat, somehow. Richard remembered that his birthday was March sixth, but he did not remember Linda's.

One special day I invited them to have dinner with us, and they accepted. I'm not sure whether we were all very dull children or just very forgetful, but I set up my little card table in the kitchen hallway and insisted my mother set three place settings. She did it in spite of what she must have felt, and to her credit, she did not mention sending me away again. I waited and waited at the table, jumped now and then to the bathroom to peer in, until dinner got cold and my parents had long since cleared the big table after their own meal. I finally threw my chair over and ran into the empty bathroom and shouted at the sterile tile walls. "Why didn't you come? Don't you like me anymore?" They were like two faint little shadows merging together in the corner of the tub. Richard moved toward me. "We can't leave here, you know. If our mother comes and finds us gone, she won't know where to look for us and she'll go on without us." That night I had the first terrible nightmare about not being able to find my mother.

Richard and Linda remained my best friends for years. Richard occasionally voiced concern that I grew so fast and he didn't grow anymore. He'd always thought he was a big, strong boy, but here, I, a little girl, threatened to tower over him any minute. I talked about them occasionally, and my mother asked the family doctor if I was crazy. HE told her it wasn't unusual for an only, lonely child to invent an imaginary playmate, and that the best cure was for her to have another child. She grunted and muttered something like "When pigs fly..." Then he discussed it with me, but after I answered his questions he gave me the same bone-chilling look that Mother had. She started discussing it with the few neighbors she was friendly with, including the fat lady and Mrs. Still. I resented it, even though I loved Mrs. Still who was a very wonderful, beautiful and ancient lady. I loved her handsome son Bill, as much. Mrs. Still would look and me and smile, and chuckle and cluck and cheerfully tell Mother "She's such a bright little thing, she'll outgrow it!"

Out of survival, I stopped talking about Richard and Linda when I was about six and had started school. I would bring my homework into the bathroom. Richard was very smart. He and Linda even spoke a little French, and they taught me some. My sudden knowledge of French staggered my family and teacher, and they took to thinking I was a genius but really, it was Linda and Richard. I took to leaving my books behind me in the bathroom, so that they would not be bored while I was gone.

My playmates grew increasingly anxious over their mother and constantly talked about the day when she would finally come to get them. Soon, they said, they knew she would return. I wondered how my own mother would react to a stranger coming to our front door and heading for the bathroom, or even if she would be allowed in. Linda and Richard confided that it bewildered them to see so many strangers in their home, and that we were not the first ones, but the most recent ones. Richard also grew more and more agitated that I was growing, and he was not. I no longer had little dresses that fit Linda. He whispered to me, so that Linda wouldn't hear, "Elizabeth, I suspect that something is terribly wrong."

Every now and then Hellene or Mrs. Still would inquire about them, and I just laughed and dismissed it lightly. Mother was relieved that I didn't discuss them anymore. The year that I was eight my father left the house after one of their arguments and never came back. I cried myself to sleep every night but was afraid to let my mother know. Daddy made three, and I was afraid she would get rid of me, next. Linda wailed too, through the nights, and mother spent hours banging on the pipes, checking the windows for drafts and complaining to Vincent about the noise.

Very, very early one morning, I was awakened by someone gently tapping my shoulder. I jumped up, expecting my Mother. Instead, it was Richard. He put his finger to his lips, "Shhh, Elizabeth, we have to go now," he was incredibly beautiful, all shimmery and sparkling in the early morning light, "our mother has come to get us." I'd never seen him out of the bathtub before. He was right on top of me, and nearly as big as I, but he didn't weigh more than a breeze. "I shouldn't even be here," he went on, "but I couldn't go without saying good-bye." "You mean I'll never see you again?" I suddenly felt a clutch of panic. He smiled, "No, I don't think it works that way at all. Hurry up though! We must go, and I want you to meet my mother!"

I had never really believed their mother would ever return for them. I just assumed they would live in the bathtub and be my friends forever. I scrambled out of bed. I still did not believe it, for I hadn't heard the door-bell ring, so how could she get in? I ran to the bathroom and it was filled with bright light like afternoon summer sun as it bounces off the water at the beach. I shielded my eyes and saw, in the center of the light, the vaguest outline of an old woman. Linda was already clutching her and the brilliance of the light rapidly washed out her profile. I don't know why, but I had expected them to have a flesh-and-blood mother. Stupidly I said "That's your mother? But she's so old!" Richard looked at me, "No she isn't," he said, "She's younger than your mother." Then he kissed me good-bye. The old lady opened her arms and the light shifted as Richard merged with her. The three of them just faded away leaving me alone in the cold, empty room awash with-pre-dawn light.

I missed Linda and Richard terribly, and the apartment was strangely empty without them. I was alone again, and Mother noticed that the pipes had suddenly stopped banging in the middle of the night. Through the years their memory gradually dimmed and faded almost as they did, and I came to believe they were the solitary illusions of a lonely, imaginative child. Hellene moved away, Grandpa moved in with us, and the dusty pink sidewalk was replaced with plain, grey concrete.

I was fifteen and siting on the pink marble bench in the lobby. Someone had accidentally cracked it and it hadn't been repaired. The lobby was delightfully cool due to the high ceiling and all the marble, but the streets outside sizzled in summer heat. Grandpa was very, very ill and I was taking a few minutes out from the relentless chores that had become my responsibility when Daddy moved away. I heard a key turn in the door and watched. It was dear Mrs. Still. She wore a blue and white cotton dress that hung shapelessly from her stopped shoulders almost to her ankles, in spite of the belt around her waist. Today she wore a delicate straw hat decorated with bright red cherries and a tiny, feathery blue-bird pinned tightly to her scalp. Her thin pouf of white hair whisped around it, and a demure white veil was coquetishly draped across her eyes. It took her a long time to push open he heavy brass door. She dragged tow over-flowing shopping bags and the handles were cutting through the little white crocheted mitts she'd made, making her old fingers red and swollen. I jumped up and pulled the door open for her. It was an effort for me, too. She looked up, somewhat startled and smiled when she recognized me, "Oh, it's you! Hello dear!" I bent over and kissed her soft, wrinkled and powdery cheek. She smelled of lavender sachet. She was more than eighty, and her once-blue eyes were now yellowing with age behind steel-rimmed glasses. I took her bundles and walked over to the bench, and she sat down with a rustle and a sigh. "It's so hard now, to get around," she tsked, "...and how is dear Grandpa doing?" She called him Grandpa even though she was ten years older than he. It got him so mad. I told her he was doing as well as could be expected, since it's what I heard the doctors say. She tsk-tsked again, "such a shame, he's so young to be so sick." Everything is relative. We sat for a few moments, enjoying the coolness, then she said "How are Linda and Richard?" I giggled. Mrs. Still was forgetting thins lately, but everybody humored her. I told her they were fine. She giggled too, and pinched my cheek. "You were such a cunning child! I knew you weren't crazy!" She took me by surprise when she said that, and she continued, as if we had discussed this before. "Oh, I wouldn't tell your mother though, you remember what she was like in those days, she had her own problems then." I was bewitched, fixed to the spot by her words, "I knew them, y'know--such cunning, dear children, tsk-tsk-tsk." She prattled on, unconsciously patting her hat, smoothing her dress over her lap, "She never got over their father not returning," she fumbled for a monogrammed hanky in her petite point purse, and sniffed genteely, "..scandal of the decade, it was." I found my wits and managed to get out "What happened? What are you talking about?"

Mrs. Still looked at me as if I were very slow. "Why, Richard and Linda of course. She drowned them. Right in the tub, she drowned them and took laudnum to kill herself. Of course, it didn't work, and when she woke up and found thier little bodies, well, poor thing." Mrs. Still sniffed and clucked again, "Such a sin. Never found out what happened to her." I knew. She died in 1958 and came back to reclaim her children. Mrs. Still got up, and I, dumb-struck and chilled, followed, carrying her packages.

I was caught up in watching the sky and saw a shooting star fall, more real to me now than yesterday. Kevin just watched me. "Wow. That's some story." He stood up and stretched, yawned. "I gotta split though." He walked into the den, said "Wow," once more and turned to me before he closed the screen door. "You coming in?" I shifted in the lounge chair and waved him on. "No, just lock the front door on your way out. I settled back in my comfortable, current reality. "Maybe it's good," I thought, "that Brooklyn is burning."