concentration or of writing. I pack the draft in my briefcase and leave the office at dusk.
The remainder of the day’s sunlight is blocked prematurely by Philadelphia’s new and improved skyline. Developers went crazy after City Council permitted buildings to be taller than William Penn’s hat, with the result that the city streets get dark too soon and there’s a lot of empty office buildings sprouting like mushrooms in the gloom.
The air cools down rapidly as I reach Rittenhouse Square. I’m shivering like all the other superannuated yuppies, except that I refuse to wear Reeboks. If my shoes were too uncomfortable to walk in, I wouldn’t buy them.
The square looks just like it does every evening this time of year. The old people huddle together on the benches, clucking worriedly about the young people, with their orange-striped hair and nose rings, as well as the homeless, with their shopping carts and superb tans. Runners circle the square for the umpteenth time. Walkers stride by in fast-forward, plugged into Walkmans. A pale young man on a bench looks me up and down, and then I remember.
Is someone watching me?
I look backward over my shoulder at the pale man on the bench, but he’s joined by a girlfriend in a black beret. I look at the other people as I pass through the square, but they all look normal enough. Is one of them the someone? Does one of them call me and do God-knows-what when I answer? My step quickens involuntarily.
I hurry inside when I reach my building. It’s quiet in the entrance hall, the kind of absolute silence that settles in when a big old house is empty. I’m the only tenant here. My landlords are an elderly couple who live on the first two floors of the house. They’re nice people, hand-holders after fifty years of marriage, off on another Love Boat cruise. I pick up my bills and catalogs from the floor and make sure the front door’s locked.
I climb the stairs, wondering if the telephone will ring after I get in. I unlock the door and switch on the living room light. I glance at the telephone, but it’s sitting there like a properly inanimate object. I breathe a sigh of relief and drop my briefcase with a thud.
“Honey, I’m home.”
The tabby cat doesn’t even look up from the windowsill. She’s not deaf, she’s indifferent. She wouldn’t care if Godzilla drove a Corvette through the door, she’s waiting for Mike to come home. In winter, the windowpane is dotted with her nose prints. In summer, her gray hairs cling to the screen.
“He’s not coming back,” I tell her. It’s a reminder to both of us since the episode this morning in court.
I kick off my shoes and join her at the window, looking out at the apartments across the street. Most have plants on their windowsills, starved for light in the northern exposure. One has a turquoise Bianchi bike hanging in the window, like an advertisement to break in, and another has an antique rake. Most of my neighbors are home, cooking dinner or listening to music. The window directly across from mine has the shade drawn; it looks dark inside. I wonder if the person who lives there is the one who’s been calling me. It’s hard to imagine, since Mike knew all our neighbors. He was the friendly one.
“Come on, Alice. Let’s close up.” I nudge the cat and she jumps to the living room rug, her hindquarters twitching.
I yank on the string of the knife-edged blinds, which tumble to the windowsill with azzziiip. I pad over to the other window, flat-footed without my heels, and am about to pull down the blinds when I hear the ignition of a car outside the window.
Strange. I didn’t see a driver walk to the car, and it’s not a car I recognize.
I let down the blinds but peek between them at the car. It’s too dark out for me to see the driver.
The car’s headlights blaze to life as it pulls out of its parking space and glides down the street. I don’t know the make of the car; I’m not good at that. It’s big, though, like the boats my father used to drive. An Oldsmobile, maybe. Before they tried to convince us that they’re not the boats our fathers used to drive.
I watch the car disappear, as the telephone rings loudly.
I flinch at the sound. Is it the someone?
I pick up the receiver cautiously. “Hello?”
But the only response is static-a static I hear on many of the calls. It’s him. My heart begins to pound as I put two and two together for the first time.
“Is this a car phone, you bastard? Are you watching my house, you sick-”
The tirade is severed by the dial tone.
“Fuck you!” I shout into the dead receiver.
Alice blinks up at me, in disapproval.
4
“Taste,cara,” says my mother, holding out a wooden spoon with tomato sauce.
“Mmmm.Perfetto.” I’m at my parents’ row house in South Philly the next day, playing hooky because my twin sister’s on parole from the convent. She only gets out once a year under the rules of her cloistered order, and isn’t permitted phone calls or mail. I hate the convent for taking my twin from me. I can’t believe that God, even if he does exist, would want to divide us.
“You all right, Maria?” My mother frowns behind her thick glasses, which make her brown eyes look supernaturally large. She’s half blind from sewing lampshades in the basement of this very house, her childhood home. The kitchen is the only thing that’s changed since then; the furniture and fixtures remain the same, stop- time. We still use the tinny black switchplate like a bulletin board, leaving notes among the dog-eared mass cards, a photo of JFK, and a frond of dried-out palm.
“I’m fine, Ma. I’m fine.” I wouldn’t dream of telling her I think I’m being watched. She’s like a supersensitive instrument, the kind that calibrates air pressure-or lies. She has a jumpy needle, and the news would send it into the red zone.
“Maria? They’re not treating you good at that office?” She scrutinizes me, the wooden spoon resting against her stretch pants like Excalibur in its scabbard.
“I’ve just been busy. It’s almost time for them to decide who makes partner.”
“Dio mio!They’re lucky to have you! Lucky! The nuns said you were a genius! A genius!” A scowl contorts her delicate features. Even at seventy-three, she makes up in the morning and gets her hair done every Saturday at the corner, where they tease it to hide her bald spot.
“Catholic school standards, Ma.”
“I should go up there to that fancy office! I should tell them how lucky they are to have my daughter be their lawyer!” She unsheaths the spoon and waves it recklessly in the air.
“No, Ma. Please.” I touch her forearm to calm her. Her skin feels papery.
“They should burn in hell!” She trembles with agitation. I wrap my arms around her, surprised at her frailty.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“Whaddaya two doing, the fox-trot?” jokes my father, puffing his cigar as he walks into the kitchen. He looks roly-poly in a thin short-sleeved shirt. It’s almost transparent, made from some obscure synthetic fiber, and he’s got the dago T-shirt on underneath. My father has dressed this way for as long as I can remember. When he’s dressed up, that is.
“Out! Out of the kitchen with that cigar!” my mother shouts-of necessity, because my father never wears his hearing aid.
“Don’t shoot!” He puts up both hands, then returns to the baseball game blaring in the living room.
My mother’s magnified eyes are an inch from my nose. “When is he going to stop with those cigars? When?”
“He’s been smoking cigars for sixty years, Ma. You think he’ll quit soon?”
Suddenly, there’s a commotion at the front door and I hear Angie shouting a greeting to my father. My mother and I hurry into the living room, where Angie is taking off her sweater.
“Hello, beautiful,” she says, with a laugh. She always calls me that. It’s her joke, since we’re identical twins.
