EVEN ADELEINE—who gripped the frame of the door and kept one foot inside—came out to see the ambulance. Owen stood near the vehicle into which Edith had just disappeared, and gestured elaborately, his hands hinting at the arc of a fall. “. . . Just lying there when I came in,” they heard him say.
The four tenants watched him speak with a carefully groomed EMT, who touched a gold crucifix on his chest and stepped back towards the van. “Thank you for your help,” came Owen’s voice, wheedling, pitching up. The man in all white retreated further, his hands up to brush off the thanks, and hopped up and into the bright interior lights, which were hard and loud on the blues and violets of dusk. Paulie couldn’t believe how quickly it vanished—was it safe to go that fast, he wondered—and started to cry almost immediately and asked whether Edith was still alive. Claudia let out a small gasp, and Edward put a hairy hand on the back of his neck. Adeleine shifted the two inches back into the foyer and slipped up the stairs with her milky palm on her mouth. In the summer twilight, the wallpaper that followed her upward glinted.
Owen, with his hands on his head and his fists full of hair, swayed a little. His mother’s renters observed as he grew still for a time, then how his eyes came open, newly serene. He brought his wrist up and checked his watch, approached the building and climbed the stairs as efficiently as a commuter at rush hour. As he reached Claudia and Edward and Paulie, he wiped his hands on his khaki shorts and settled on the step beneath where they stood. “It’s hard to know,” he said, his voice speculative and restrained. “How do you tell someone her life has become too much for her?” Above him, unsure of their position, they transferred their weight from one hip to another, fiddled with the bodega receipts in their pockets. Paulie worked two fingers into the band of Edward’s pants. Soon they turned to go, leaving Owen to look down the view he’d been born into, the tall narrow buildings of the same cheerful brown, the old trees reaching for each other above the street. He looked like a child transfixed, face pressed to cool aquarium glass, willing cognition from mystery.
A FEW DAYS AFTER the ambulance took Edith away, Edward and Claudia sat on his tiny couch, dark bottles of beer in hand, their faces lit by a stand-up comedy special. Paulie sat between them on the floor, leaning his head lightly against Claudia’s knee and occasionally patting Edward’s calf. They passed things to each other wordlessly as they laughed: Claudia handed Edward the carton of lo mein; Edward removed a cushion from the sofa and placed it behind Paulie’s neck; Paulie, without taking his eyes from the screen, removed a pinecone from his pocket and placed it on Claudia’s right foot. That afternoon, while the three of them picnicked in the park, Drew had placed a trash bag on their stoop: Claudia’s dirty laundry, worn underwear and coffee-stained nylon button-ups she hadn’t bothered to wash before she left him.
Paulie finished eating first and began silently farting. Edward’s face contorted as though witness to a quick accident, a knuckle hacked off in shop class.
“Paulie! What the fuck! That smells like if celery were homeless!”
Claudia choked on her beer at this, sprayed it out the side of her mouth, and Paulie’s face reddened furiously. They were hidden in the safety of the moment, the comfort of intimate ridicule, when the lights went out.