“Did what?” I asked.
“Nudged me,” Lana answered. “It was a way we had of telling each other that we were sorry and wanted to be sisters again.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her otherwise perfectly pressed sleeve. “After we had pizza at Jake’s,” she said. “In the subway. We were running for the train, and Maddox gave me that hostile look she used when she was joking with me, and then she just nudged me, and that was her way of saying that she was sorry for hitting me, and that she knew I was sorry for what I’d said to her.” She looked at me softly. “And since we were both sorry, things were going to be okay.”
With those words, Lana finished her coffee. “Anyway, it’s quite sad what happened to Maddox.” She folded her napkin and placed it primly beside her plate. “The way she never got her balance after she left us.” She smiled. “And so she just … finally … stumbled into the pit.”
“Into the pit,” I repeated softly.
Shortly after that, we parted, Lana returning to her husband and children, I back to my apartment, where, with Janice out of town, I would spend the next few days alone.
I passed most of that time on the balcony, looking down at the tamed streets of Hell’s Kitchen, my attention forever drawn to families moving cheerfully toward the glittering lights of Times Square, fathers and mothers with their children in tow, guiding them, as best they could, through the shifting maze. I saw Maddox in every tiny face, remembered the tender touch of her small hand in mine, her quiet “Thank you,” for the little refrigerator magnet she had returned to me; the last bit of kindness I’d shown before sending her out of our lives forever.
Had she been a liar, a cheat, a thief? I don’t know. Had I completely misunderstood the little nudge she’d given Lana that day as the two girls raced for the train? Again, I don’t know. What children perceive and remember years later can be so different from what adults know … or think they know. Perhaps she’d already been doomed to live as she did after she left us, and to die as she did in that bleak, unlighted space. Or perhaps not. I couldn’t say. I knew only that for me, as for all parents, the art of controlling damage is one we practice in the dark.
THOMAS H. COOK is the international-award-winning author of more than thirty books. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award eight times in five different categories, and his novel The Chatham School Affair won the Best Novel Award in 1996. He has twice won the Swedish Academy of Detection’s Martin Beck Award, the only novelist ever to have done so. His short story “Fatherhood” won the Herodotus Prize for best historical short story. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages.
THE DAY AFTER VICTORY
Brendan DuBois
It was seven a.m. in Times Square, New York, on Wednesday August 15, when Leon Foss slowly maneuvered the trash cart—with its huge wheels and two brooms—along the sidewalk near the intersection of Seventh Avenue and West Forty-Sixth Street, shaking his head at the sheer amount of trash that was facing him and the other street sweepers from the Department of Sanitation. He had on the usual “white angel” uniform of white slacks, jacket, and cap—which was stiff and felt new—and never had he seen so much trash. It was almost up to his knees.
Traffic moved slowly through the square—Packards, Oldsmobiles, old Ford trucks making deliveries—tossing up plumes of torn paper, tickertape, and newspapers that had been tossed around with such glee the day before, on V-J Day—Victory over Japan Day—the end of the war.
His eyes darted along the sidewalk, taking in the Rexall Drugstore, a bar, a restaurant, and a joint called Spike’s Place. It had dark windows and an unlit neon sign overhead, and a small alcove with a closed door.
A few pedestrians were moving along the cluttered sidewalks, but it seemed like most of New York was taking the day off after yesterday’s events, the biggest party since … well, since anyone could remember. And what a party, and he had missed every single second of it. Instead, he had listened to NBC Blue via his RCA radio in his third-floor walk-up in Washington Heights; he had no interest in catching the subway south to join the party. He had sat there in the tiny room, smoking a Chesterfield, listening to Truman’s flat Missouri twang go on and on, nothing like FDR’s cultured way of talking. Months after FDR’s death, he still missed That Man’s voice.… As he had smoked that cigarette yesterday and listened, his phone rang.
“Leon?” had come a woman’s voice.
“Yes, Martha, it’s me,” he had said, speaking to his sister. In the background were sounds of machinery. Martha worked at a war plant out on Long Island. “How are you doing?”
“Taking a break, wondering how much longer I’ll have a job. Are you listening to the radio?”
“Yes.”