“If you’re coming, then you’ll see,” Emma said.
They walked north along Fort Washington Avenue. At mid-morning the rush-hour crowds had disappeared. The elderly and the parents of the very young were out in force. Emma improved outdoors. At least she swatted her hair out of her eyes and in a few minutes she even spoke. “I stopped checking my phone,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t realize you were coming.”
“Stopped when?”
“Maybe a month ago.”
Emma didn’t wait for the light at 181st Street. She glided right through the intersection and put up one hand. Cars trying to turn stopped short.
Kim played catch-up. The drivers didn’t honk at Emma, but they sure got loud with Kim.
As they continued up Fort Washington, they passed Bennett Park. “Apollo brings the baby here every morning now,” Emma said. “He doesn’t sleep much anymore.”
“Brian isn’t sleeping?”
“Apollo,” Emma said. “He started having nightmares.”
“If he takes Brian out, then at least that gives you time to rest in the morning.”
Emma trouped along. “I don’t sleep while they’re out,” she said. “I don’t sleep at all. We’re a mess.”
Kim made note of this as she felt her worry rise again. She switched into her professional mode, taking refuge in expertise. “You could try Benadryl, or there’s something called Tranquil Sleep,” she said. “They’re both safe to use while breastfeeding. Are you drinking coffee? The caffeine can stay in your system longer than you’d think.”
Emma nodded, but lowered her head as she walked. A curtain seemed drawn between them.
Kim tried to figure out how she’d part it again.
They reached a building on the corner of 190th Street, and Emma turned without any warning and entered the lobby. By the time Kim got inside, she’d already rung the buzzer and the lobby rattled as someone upstairs let her in. If Kim hadn’t rushed close, she felt sure Emma would’ve let the door shut behind her.
As they waited for the elevator, Kim tried pure honesty. “I’m worried about you, Emma. I see you, and I feel worried.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Emma said as she walked into the elevator. “I’m worried, too.”
The elevator crept upward slowly. Kim felt her throat tighten as she waited for Emma to say more, to explain, but Emma didn’t say a word.
The elevator reached the sixth floor, finally. Emma walked to an apartment door, rang once, and put her hands behind her back to wait.
“This is the place?” Kim asked. “What is this place?”
“Just try to trust me for once in your damn life,” Emma said.
Kim felt cold shock at the words, her cheeks tingling as if she’d been hit. Soon the door’s peephole went dark as someone inside watched them. A woman’s voice from the other side.
“Can I help you?” An accent to the voice.
“I heard about you on the message board,” Emma said. “You were told I’d come.”
“Who sent you?” the woman asked.
“Cal sent me,” Emma said.
The door opened a moment afterward. The woman inside looked much younger than Kim or Emma but wore the same signs of exhaustion that new mothers come to bear. Her skin sallow and her eyes a waxy red. She handed a large tote bag through the door, something heavy inside, the sound of metal shifting and clinking.
“I hope these are useful,” the woman said. She looked at Kim quickly, then shut the door.
Emma made for the elevator with Kim close by her side.
“Let’s go up to Fort Tryon Park,” Kim offered. The determination with which Emma moved made Kim fear her sister would get outside and sprint back to the apartment and lock Kim out.
“No,” Emma said.
Kim watched her sister, the way she clutched the bag with two hands and still had trouble carrying it.
Kim reached for the bag. “What the hell is in there?” She yanked it from Emma. Her sister put up surprisingly little fight.
Kim looked inside the bag. “Chains?” Kim said, so surprised she lost her breath.
Emma didn’t acknowledge the question. She slipped the tote back from her sister’s fingers, picked it up with a huff, then tired of waiting on the elevator, she made for the stairs.
“Chains,” Kim said again, but no one else was there.
KIM VALENTINE CHASED her sister out the building and followed her farther north. Not hard to find a thirty-three-year-old woman hauling a tote bag full of chains. And she became even more conspicuous in a playground. Kim watched Emma slip into Jacob Javits Playground and considered calling Apollo, but what would she tell him? Your wife is acting strange? She loved her brother-in-law, but this would seem like a betrayal. Since their parents died, no one had ever come between the two sisters, not truly, and Kim wasn’t about to break the tradition now. Also, maybe Emma needed the chains because they’d bought new bikes. There had been a U-lock in the bag, after all. Kim tried to get herself to believe this, but had a hard time feeling convinced.
Two mothers pushed their daughters in swings, and a couple helped their son climb the ladder of a jungle gym. An older girl, maybe eight, sat by herself in a tire hung from chains and spun it around and around to make herself dizzy. The girl’s grandmother sat at a nearby bench watching her but hardly seeing her, a distracted air, deeply tired.
And there was Emma walking the perimeter of the play area. She moved quietly, like a soldier on sentry duty, hefting the heavy bag alongside her; at times it slapped the ground making the chains rattle. It sounded like old Jacob Marley had come to haunt the kids.
Kim reached Emma, and they moved together quietly. Emma’s body gave off such tense energy that Kim’s own back stiffened and her shoulders locked until her posture matched her younger sister’s. It would not do to ask about the chains directly, about the woman at the door, about the kind of message board where coils of chain were advertised. Kim couldn’t expect to reach Emma with direct questions so instead she told her sister a story.
“April 14, 1988. You don’t remember the day as well as I do.”
Emma lost a step, nearly tripped. “I remember what you’ve told me before,” she said, then resumed her march.
“Oh yeah? Tell me what that was.”
“You and me came back from school, and the fire trucks were already there. The house was on fire, and we watched it burn for a long time. Mom and Dad got caught inside. The firemen tried to take us away, so we wouldn’t see, but we fought them, and they took us to the hospital. I never understood why they took us to the hospital, though.”
“That’s what I told you for years,” Kim said. “But that’s not what happened. Today I’m going to tell you what happened.”
One of the girls in the swing wanted to keep being pushed while the other decided she wanted out. Her mother tried to accommodate, but the girl wouldn’t leave without her friend. The one in the swing gripped its chains tightly and wouldn’t move. The mother, caught between the two, gave one a push and the other a hug.