Irresistible Impulse

THREE

Marlene’s morning meditation: a thundering speed bag, her flying gloves maintaining the rhythm independent of her conscious mind, which floated in what the Zen people call mushin, a no-thought realm supposedly good for the soul. A final slam, and the squeaking rattle of the punching bag shackle as the bag precessed into stillness. She stripped off her speed gloves and picked up the rope and skipped fast, snapping hard, both feet, alternate feet, five minutes with the sweat flying off her forehead in the air and blackening her gray T-shirt under the arms. By the time she hung it up, she could hear the twins burbling to each other in the nursery next door, and she let herself drift back into real life.

Boxing training was no affectation for Marlene: her father had briefly been a welterweight contender in the forties and had taught all six of his children to box. Marlene was the only one of the three girls who had taken to it, and she had kept it up over the years. Not a Jazzercise girl, Marlene.

She stripped off her sodden shorts and T-shirt, pulled a ragged terrycloth robe over her bare skin, and went into the nursery next door. It had once been Lucy’s playroom, another deeply felt injustice, but what could they do? The loft was large but not infinite, and Lucy was a little old now to need a separate playroom.

In the nursery she moved with dispatch. First, Zak out of the crib (because if she did Zik first, Zak would go crazy, whereas Zik would watch placidly as she tended Zak) and onto the changing table, crooning (Zak, did you sleep well? Yes, you did, yes, you did, didn’t wake up screaming even one little time, what a good-looking beautiful baby, what a yucky monster ugly baby, yes, you are, and so on) whipping the sodden Pamper off and into the waiting plastic bag, quick check for diaper rash, a blown raspberry on the hot little belly, squeals of delight, wipe-off with pre-moistened towelettes, dust with baby powder, new Pamper out, swick-swick, strip off p.j.’s, toss into hamper, into baby T-shirt, back into crib. Next!

Identical twins, Marlene had always thought, were among the most interesting things that could happen to a family, fascinating for the parents, but often a disaster to any other children. Who could compete for attention with such a show? Looking down at Zik as she serviced him (but in a slightly different way, with a different patter than she had used with his brother), she was struck by how differently he had played out the same genetic cards Zak had been dealt. His eyes: the same lovely mahogany, completely different expression. Zak’s eyes said, “Yumm-yumm! Gimme!” Zik’s said, “What’s your story?” Zak was violent motion, quick moods; Zik was a gentle prober, and placid. Now he was touching her lower lip as she taped his Pamper. Zak never did that; punch and slap, yes, but not this delicate palpation.

However, no time to dawdle in naughty maternal eroticism! One babe on each hip, she marched into the kitchen, punched up the lights and placed each boy in his own high chair. She could hear the roar of water from where her husband was up and taking his shower. Briefly, she considered slipping under the steaming spray with him, to renew the stolen passion of the night before, stolen, because the twins absolutely refused to allow them any sexual space. Since the evening they were brought home from the hospital, their subtle oedipal radar had detected even the most careful insinuation of moist organs, at which time both sirens would go off full blast, banishing romance and wakening Lucy. It was uncanny. On the other hand, on the occasions when they did manage a date, their sex had the furtive urgency of an illicit affair. Still reasonably good sex too, for a wonder, after nearly eleven years, Marlene thought, not like it was at first, when they and screwed themselves sore every night, but comfortable, pleasing, married, a checkpoint. (Is it still you? Yes, it’s still me.)

The water stopped; too late, Marlene. In any case, as she well understood, there was no time for anything that might upset the precise and scientific scheduling of the Karp amp; Ciampi Every Morning Railroad. Two bottles filled and warmed in the microwave (oh, blessed technology!), stuck into two little gobs, and then it was time for Lucy’s first wake-up kick.

“I’m not going to school today,” said a faint voice from beneath the Italian-flag-colored quilt. “I’m sick.”

“You are? Let me feel you.”

“No, I’m too sick to have a fever. I’m past the fever part.”

Marlene reached under the quilt and grabbed a skinny limb, which was warm but not abnormally so, and heaved.

“Ow! Child abuse!”

“It’ll be assault one unless I hear water running and dressing noises in two minutes.”

Marlene left her daughter’s room and walked down the long main hallway of her loft, as always experiencing a thrill of satisfaction with her home. She’d lived here over a dozen years, starting back in the illegal days, and for most of that time the place had been a barely habitable former wire factory. Two years of the big bucks had changed that; Karp’s career with a firm of downtown tortmeisters and a couple of immense wins had sufficed to convert the vast space into a civilized apartment with real walls and doors, central heating and A/C, Swedish-finish oak floors, two bathrooms, and a kitchen out of Architectural Digest with a Vulcan stove and a stainless steel reefer. The building had gone condo in the great So-Hoization of lower Manhattan, and Marlene now owned the place outright. She intended never to leave.

She passed the kitchen in time to see her husband, in his lawyer blue suit trousers, shirt, and boring dark tie, putting on a yellow rubberized apron with prop, bellevue morgue stenciled on the bib. Zak flung his bottle at her and yelled some happy gibberish. She fielded it neatly, wiped the nipple on her robe, and replaced it in its wet, pink hole. Karp extended one of his long arms and snagged the opening of her robe.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I wonder if you’ve seen the woman who gave me that really incredibly great piece of ass last night.”

“Oh, Estelle? She’s with a customer,” said Marlene as a remarkably long finger whipped out to tickle her crotch. She giggled and pulled away. Zak’s bottle flew again, and this time Karp caught it on the fly, and settled down to feed his two sons a jar of baby food each, in precisely alternating spoonfuls.

Showering under the antique brass shower head, nearly the size of a dinner plate, Marlene let the water beat against her face and soaped her body with patchouli soap, allowing herself her usual private ninety seconds for illicit sensual thoughts, making a short list of the men she knew who might serve if the opportunity ever arose, and imagining what it would be-no, time’s up. Off with the water, a quick dry, hair and face slapped together, then dressing in her court uniform: low-heeled boots, a tan calf-length full skirt with leather belt, a maroon silk blouse, a short, loose tweedy jacket. She plumped the pillows, threw a duvet over the marital bed, and left the boudoir, now in full high gear.

To Lucy’s second wake-up, a brief screaming match, while Karp swabbed down the twins and dressed them in determinedly non-matching outfits. Whip some food into Lucy, make her bag lunch. Feed the dog, walk the dog, scoop the dog, run up the stairs with the dog.

Then, the last thing, while her family clumped down the stairs, a walk to the gun safe under the desk in the office that occupied the opposite end of the loft from the master bedroom, and the extraction and donning of her Colt Mustang Pocket-Lite pistol in its black nylon sheath. She clipped it to her belt, reversed, on the left side. Marlene had a horror of someone sneaking up behind her and yanking out the weapon, and preferred to cross-draw if need be. The Pocket-Lite is an alloy.380 semi-automatic pistol that weighs twelve and a half ounces, which in Marlene’s opinion was twelve and a half ounces too much, but Harry Bello insisted that she go armed, given her habit of insisting to enraged men that they could no longer pound on their women. One last check in the mirror to make sure her fashionable silhouette was free of unsightly armament bulges, and then she clicked on the security system, told the dog to guard, and cleared the door, twenty-two minutes after her alarm had gone off.

Marlene’s car, a bright yellow VW square-back of a certain age, was parked in a nearby alley. Her family was waiting around it as she approached, Karp carrying a kid on each hip, a briefcase dangling from a hooked finger, Lucy hunched and sullen. First a little peek at the telltale tiny magnets she’d left on the hood and all the doors, to make sure some naughty person had not left an explosive device. This done, they strapped the twins into their tiny astronaut seats, and Marlene said the little prayer she always said that the car would once again start. Answered. She drove Karp to the courthouse and Lucy to school, and then herself to Walker Street and work. She unbuckled the twins and hauled them out of the car, using the convenient handles of their carapace-like car seats. They were both snoozing, simultaneously for a wonder; they usually alternated naps, to make sure that nothing important escaped their joint eye. She staggered up the stairs to her office with one in each arm and her purse draped fetchingly around her neck, reflecting for the millionth time that rearing twins was not twice, but four times, as hard as rearing one child.

Marlene had now been up for over forty-five minutes without either coffee or a cigarette, and so it was with gratitude that she beheld the face of Sym, who ordinarily supplied her with the morning’s first hit of both.

“Coffee’s ready,” said Sym when Marlene came in, which is what she always said, and pushed forward her pack of Marlboro Lights so that her boss could take one. In the office Marlene pretended not to have cigarettes of her own, as she had officially stopped smoking.

Marlene plopped the car seats on the floor and poured herself a mug of dripped Medaglia D’Oro, tarry black, drank a grateful dose, and lit up.

“You got messages,” said Sym. “Tamara says she don’t want to go to court today. And some lady want us to whack her old man.”

Marlene laughed. “What, she just called up, like L.L. Bean, I want to order a hit, size XL? Did you get her VISA?”

“I told her we didn’t do like that,” said Sym primly. “Also this lady name Edith Wooten called again. I wrote it down.”

Marlene took the message slip and looked closely at the girl. Sym tended to be morose, which many visitors interpreted as hostility, but today she looked as if she was holding something in, or rather, that she was holding in even more than you might expect to be held in by a girl raped at age twelve and turned out as a whore by her daddy.

“Anything wrong, Sym? He hasn’t been bothering you again?”

“Nah. It ain’t, it isn’t me.”

“Who, then? Posie?”

A tiny shrug, which would have to do in place of a deposition. It was Posie, but Sym was not going to rat her roommate out.

“Okay, Sym, I’ll take care of it.” Marlene picked up the twins and headed for the door, which buzzed and clicked. In a low voice, to the closing door, Sym said, “You look real nice today, Marlene.” She was in love, something Marlene would never see and Sym would never reveal.

Marlene took the twins to the playroom and placed them on the rug. Posie came in from the kitchen, barefoot, in ragged jeans and an old sweatshirt of Marlene’s. She beamed at Marlene and the twins.

“They’re sleeping!” she said, as if it were a scientific discovery.

Marlene’s answering smile was stiff. “Yes, lucky you. Look, Posie, we need to talk about you running men in here at night.”

“Oh, no, Marlene, I wouldn’t do that,” replied Posie, lying with crystalline transparency.

“Yeah, you did. Look, kiddo, I don’t mind what you do on your off time, which is nearly every night and most weekends. Go ahead, knock yourself out, get laid, whatever. But not here. Who was it? Luke again?”

Posie had, as far as Marlene was able to observe, only two emotional states: beaming, all-encompassing love and mulish withdrawal. She now flicked into the latter. “Uh-huh, no,” she replied, hanging her head so that her long, lank black hair partially hid her face.

“Posie, listen to me. Our job is to protect women from men who want to get at them, just like when Luke was pounding on you-we protected you, we gave you a job and a place to stay. You pick up guys on the street, they could be anybody. They could get into our records, copy keys, burn the place down. It’s a breach of security.”

Ah, a third state: confused alarm. “Aw, Marlene, Luke wouldn’t do nothing like that!” Posie protested, and then blushed and stammered, “I mean-I mean, if he was here. Not that I saw him or anything.”

“Posie, not only did you see him, but you smoked dope with him.”

“Uh-uh!”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Posie, I can smell it on your clothes. No, just be quiet and listen to me. I told you, I don’t care what you do on the outside, although I can’t believe you’re seeing that little shit again-”

“He was nice to me, Marlene. No kidding! He’s really changed. He got a job and all-”

“… that little shit again, unless you want to give him a shot at knocking the rest of your teeth out, but not here. Never again, Posie, I mean it! And no dope here either.”

The twins started to wake, whining. Marlene walked out as Posie’s pathetic excuses and apologies blended with their more appropriately infantile wails. She looked into Harry Bello’s office and found him on the phone. Waving a greeting, she went into her own cubicle, took off her coat, sat down, lusted for another cigarette, regretted yelling at Posie, yearned for a child-care worker who was not a street person, felt guilty about this, briefly considered the alternatives (sullen third-world types, day-care centers with restrictive hours), dismissed these, thought about how marvelous Posie was ninety-nine percent of the time, sighed, and dialed the number Sym had written down.

The voice that answered was light and youthful sounding, decked with the long, multi-toned vowels favored by the New York upper crust and made famous by the late FDR and his Mrs. (Yea-es? How gooo-od of you to cah-all!)

Marlene inquired as to why Ms. Wooten required the services of a security firm.

“Well. As to that, Ms. Ciampi, I would rather not discuss it on the phone. But, briefly, I have been getting disturbing letters. And other tokens.”

“This is someone you know?”

“No. It’s, um, I suppose one could call him a fan.”

“You’re a performer?” asked Marlene, and then mentally kicked herself for not finding out who Edith Wooten was before calling. There was a pause on the line, and then the voice, which now was tinged with amusement.

“Yes, I am. Do you suppose you could visit me at my home. I have quite a busy schedule and-”

“No problem, Ms. Wooten,” said Marlene quickly. She got an address on Park in the seventies and ended the call.

She immediately punched in a familiar number, one that, if answered, would connect her with the only person in her acquaintance who might conceivably know someone with that sort of voice at that sort of address.

“V.T.? Marlene.”

“Hello, Marlene,” said Vernon Talcott Newbury. “This is remarkable. I am abandoned by the Karp clan for weeks on end, and now I get calls from both of the principals in one day. I have a message from Butch. Is this about the same thing?”

“I doubt it, V.T. This is a private thing. I was wondering if you knew the name Edith Wooten.”

A laugh. “You need to get out more, dear. This is the cultural capital of the world, you know.”

“I know. I took Lucy to see The Great Muppet Caper just last week. Who is she?”

“Ah, well, where to begin? She’s a Wooten, of course, of the Wooten Island Wootens. Only two privately owned islands in the Sound, the Gardiners have one and they have the other. Her mother’s a Temple, of the Sag Harbor Temples. Her brother, who I think is named Rad or Had, went to Harvard with Foley Maynard, who-”

Marlene interrupted. V.T. could go on. “She’s a friend of yours?”

“Not a friend, exactly. She went to Brearley with my cousin Sniff, though, I think for a couple of years, and then switched to Juilliard; she was probably about twelve or thirteen. You really don’t know who she is?”

“A musician obviously. I doubt it’s rock and roll.”

“Quite. Well, I’m no expert, but Mother, who is on the Philharmonic board, says she’s another Jacqueline Du Pre, potentially in a class with Rostropovich. I’m sorry, maybe those don’t ring any bells either?”

“Don’t be snide, V.T., I’m just a dumb guinea from Ozone Park. So she’s a cellist, huh?”

“Yes. Why the interest?”

“Oh, just checking something. Anything else about her? She married?”

“No, but she’s not more than, say, twenty-four. She’s Ginnie Wooten’s sister, of course.”

“Of course. V.T., who the fuck is Ginnie Wooten?”

“You do need to get out more, Marlene. She was on Life once. The Avedon shot, buried in sand, tits sticking out, with the sweat?”

A vague memory tugged. Like most native working New Yorkers, Marlene did not pay much attention to the antics of celebrities, most of whom were out-of-towners who came to the City to get famous, got famous, and then disappeared like the dirty snow on its streets.

“That’s it? She’s a model?”

“Not quite. A professional naughty, Ginnie, like what’s her name in the sixties-Edie Sedgwick. Screws artists and rock stars, a major supporter of the pharmaceutical industry, like that. So, my curiosity is boiling over. What’s going on?”

“It will have to turn into steam, then, dear. Thanks a million for the info. I owe you a Coke.”

Marlene put the phone down and went into Harry’s office.

“You still mad at me?”

Harry looked at her and shook his head, a millimetric negative. Harry Bello was fifty-seven going on ninety, a solid, cylindrical Italian-American man with a tan, wrinkled face like a grocery bag left out for a month in the sun and rain. His eyes, deeply socketed, were still, black, holding no hope, void of compassion. A hard case, Harry. He didn’t drink anymore, but on the other hand, as far as Marlene knew, he had not done any of the Twelve Steps either. Harry had until recently been a detective with the N.Y.P.D. There are around four thousand of these, of whom somewhat over a hundred occupy the highest rank, detective first grade. Harry Bello had been one of them, elite of the elite, for which reason, when Harry’s wife had contracted a particularly miserable form of cancer, and Harry had started to drink heavily, and been drunk when his partner of fifteen years had gone into a building alone on a routine canvass and been killed, and Harry had drunkenly hunted down and executed a kid who may or may not have been the murderer, the Department had pulled a cloak over the affair and assigned Harry to a meaningless job and waited for him to drink himself to death or eat his gun. At that point, however, Marlene had casually extended a hand, which Harry, for reasons Marlene had never quite understood, had gripped with a dead man’s grip. Harry was Lucy’s godfather, a role he took with sometimes frightening seriousness, as if this antique commitment represented his sole remaining link with the human community, a reason for not becoming in actuality what he often resembled around the eyes, a corpse. During the period when he had worked for Marlene at the D.A.’s Rape Bureau, they had called him the Doberman. Before that, when he was still a cop, he was known as Dead Harry.

Meanwhile, there was that remarkable brain at Marlene’s disposal, and a protective will that, while focused mainly on Lucy, spread its penumbra also over the mother, in a way that often pinched, as now.

She said, “I don’t see why we should change anything, Harry. Honestly, you worry too much. We’re doing okay.”

“Marlene, I went over this,” said Harry in his tired voice. “Domestics are poison. Either you got some guys want to whack out their women decide to punch your ticket while they’re at it, or you keep on trying to reason with the same kind of guys, and things heat up, and you whack them out, which puts you up in Bedford on a felony.”

“None of that has happened, Harry.”

“You don’t have cancer either, but I notice you’re trying to quit smoking. I’m thinking of the kid here, Marlene. Leave that kind of shit to the cops, is what I’m saying. That’s what they get paid for.”

“God, between you and my husband!” Marlene cried. “Okay, you want out? You’re getting nervous in your old age? Good! I’ll work it by myself.”

Harry held up a mollifying hand. “Marlene, I didn’t say that. Look, this is getting to be a broken record. I got no problem with the protection program. Tennis players, the loonies and the celebrities, fine, okay. The others, help with protection orders, moving them into apartments, the shelters. You want to keep doing that, we can handle it. It’s a business. But …” Here he paused.

“But, what, Harry?”

“No more setups. That’s out. And no more Polaroids on the assholes.”

Marlene took a deep breath. Another. “Okay, fine, Harry, you made your point. I won’t involve you.”

Harry stared at her for a moment and then nodded once. He had made his point, and Marlene would do what she was going to do. She might keep doing setups, which was where she used a stalked woman as bait and when the stalker came after her, armed, performed the justifiable homicide, which was the only way to make sure some (admittedly, a small fraction) of men engaged in this activity would never do it again. Or she might still get some other people she knew to pay visits to guys who pounded their wives, and show the guys Polaroids of what the women looked like at the emergency room and then work them over so that they looked just exactly like the Polaroids. But he thought it would slow her down, at least. He was thinking of Lucy.

Karp had expected Roland Hrcany to blow up when he told him that he, not Roland, would do the Rohbling case, and he was not disappointed. Crying, “Why!” Roland sprang from his chair and slammed his hands down on Karp’s desk, beetling his brows, rolling his mighty shoulders, bulging his seventeen-inch neck, tightening his jaw, exhibiting, in fact, the full repertoire of anthropoid male aggression, and causing him to resemble a blond gorilla even more than he normally did.

“Sit down, Roland,” said Karp in a calming voice. He had seen the display before.

“What, did I screw something up? What?” “You did fine, Roland. Sit down and I’ll explain.” Roland glared and then flung himself back into his seat, making it creak dangerously.

Karp said, “The reason is, this is the biggest and most politically important case we’ll get this year. I planned to take at least one, and this one is going to be it.”

“Oh, it’s too important for me, is what you’re saying,” said Roland in a tone that approached petulance.

“And since I’m taking the case,” continued Karp, ignoring the comment, “I need someone to watch the bureau, which has to be you. You’re the most experienced guy on the staff, and the best.”

“Next to you,” Roland growled.

Roland glared when he said this and rolled his jaw. Something must have happened to my testosterone, thought Karp, reflecting that a couple of years ago he would’ve snarled right back and the two of them would have been screaming and throwing things at each other. Now, however, Roland just looked silly, like Zak when he wanted a toy. Maybe, he thought, it was the result of having two male babies in the house. The real thing spoiled you for the imitations.

Pitching his voice low, he said, “Actually, Roland, to be frank, yes, in this case, which is what we’re talking about. And I’ll give you two reasons: one, an insanity defense is highly likely here, a serious insanity defense, and as it happens, I’ve tried three major cases where that defense was offered and you haven’t tried any. Okay, they’re rare, but there it is. I’m familiar, you’re not, and going against Waley we need all the edge we can get.”

“I’m not afraid of Waley,” snapped Roland.

“You’re not? Mazeltov, Roland. But he scares Jack Keegan, and anyone who scares Jack Keegan scares the shit out of me. You want the second reason? This case is dripping with racial politics, white defendant, black vies. I don’t like it, but I have to deal with it.

Jack has to deal with it. You are not the first person I would pick for a situation like that.”

“What, now I’m a fucking racist?” Roland’s neck grew dangerously crimson.

“No, Roland, of course you aren’t, but the prosecutor in this case is going to be under a microscope, and you got a mouth on you. You are free with racial expletives-”

“What, you mean nigger?”

“… and you spend much of your time with white cops, cracking the kind of jokes that if a black juror heard about them, they would be less than well disposed toward the People-”

“For crying out loud, Butch, you been down the jail recently? The fucking niggers call each other nigger.”

“I rest my case,” said Karp.

Roland opened his mouth; it stayed open for a couple of beats, and then he let out most of his air and said, “This is fucked, you know that? I was pumped for this case.”

“Great, then I’m sure your prep and notes are in terrific order. We’ll do the grand jury together and then you’ll phase out. Could you let me have them as soon as possible?”

Roland stood, snarling. “Yeah, boss, and fuck you very much!”

“Thank you for your support,” said Karp genially as Roland slammed out.

The phone rang. It was V. T. Newbury returning Karp’s call.

“I need a friend,” said Karp. “Everyone hates me.”

“With some justification, I might say. You’re really going to take on Rohbling?”

“You heard already? What is it, on TV?”

“No, Keegan was unloading to Zepelli and some of the other bureau chiefs about your loose cannon-hood, and Z. mentioned it to me at a Fraud Bureau staff meeting.”

“He was really pissed, was he?”

“Mmm, not as such. I gathered he was irritated but ruefully admiring of your chospeh.”

“Chutzpah, V.T. You have to try to generate more phlegm with the Yiddishisms: chhhhhutz-pah.”

“I’ll try, but as you know, my people are phlegm-impaired.”

“True. Look, why I called, let’s have lunch, soon.”

They made a date for the following day. Unlikely as it might appear from their respective backgrounds, V.T. Newbury was one of Karp’s best friends and probably the smartest person Karp knew. Just now he badly needed both friendship and smarts.

A knock on the door and Connie Trask came in pushing one of the wire-basket carts used to transport case files around the halls. It was stacked with red cardboard folders, one for each of the murders for which Jonathan Rohbling stood accused, plus additional files Roland had assembled since the arrest.

“That was fast,” said Karp.

“Yeah, he seemed upset,” said the secretary. “He said he peed on them. You might want to check that out before you take them home. Oh, Lieutenant Fulton called. I told him you were in there with Roland giving him bad news. He laughed and said you could call him back.”

“Thanks, Connie,” said Karp, reaching for the phone.

Lucy Karp sat in spelling, morosely waiting for her turn to come around again. Resemble had been her word last time. Briefly, it had flashed through her mind to say, when using it in a sentence, “Mrs. Lawrence’s face resembles a snotty kleenex,” but had chickened out. Spelling was not a problem. Math was the problem. Math and Mrs. Lawrence, what she did in math class.

At the next desk, Robert Liu stood up and misspelled surrender, and sat down blushing. Lucy stood and spelled it right and said, “The general promised he would never surrender,” looking Mrs. Lawrence in the eye as she did so. The teacher gave her that phony smile and called on the next kid, and Lucy knew she was plotting her revenge when math class came along.

As it would, inevitably. There would be a recess at ten-thirty. They would stream out to the schoolyard, and Lucy’s friends would set up the long ropes to dance double Dutch, chanting, and Lucy would leap among the strands, best of all of them, having learned to jump rope from her mother so far in the past that she could barely remember acquiring the skill. But then they would have to return to the orange-peel-smelling, hot-paint-smelling school building and have math, and Mrs. Lawrence would return the homework, Lucy’s marked with shameful red crosses, which she folded quickly and hid away in her backpack. None of her friends, not Janet Chen, or Franny Lee, or Martha Kan, who could barely speak English, had the slightest problem with long division, with problems that made Lucy’s brain freeze up and sweat start from her forehead. Then after the passing out of the homework, Mrs. Lawrence would chalk four problems up on the board, and of course she would pick Lucy for the hardest one, and Lucy would march up to the board, her face blazing, her stomach roiling, with three other kids, and the others would all do their problems right away and sit down, and Lucy would be up there trying to remember seven into sixty-four and what over, and the whole class would be silent, waiting, and then Mrs. Lawrence would say sweetly, “Lucy needs some help,” and then she would talk Lucy through the whole problem as if she were a tiny little moron, with many a sarcastic aside about “somebody didn’t pay attention when we were learning how to carry the number into the next column,” and the sweat would run down her sides, and her vision would go gray from loss of face, and no, she could not stand it, not even one more time.

So, when recess came, Lucy put her coat on with the others and lagged behind with the fat kids who didn’t like recess and, when she saw that the teachers weren’t looking, dashed through the open gate, slipped between two parked cars, and was gone, a fugitive from long division, running up Catherine Street toward the Bowery, her mind as blank as a washed blackboard.