The sun felt hot on the roof. We danced to Belle and Sebastian till our feet hurt and we gasped for breath (can the air be thinner just six stories up? or is it the unnaturally fresh air from the lack of traffic?) and laid flat on our backs, her head nestled into the hollow of my shoulder. Then round after round of red light, green light--her "car" kept hitting animals (not fatally, they'd recover in a row beside me, becoming her audience), a dog, a frog, an elephant and a raccoon. Laughing and using funny voices, and all the while my brain kept playing fuzzy movie reels of her falling, falling six floors below. And ambulance sirens wailed their way to New York Presbyterian. Again and again and again.
Later Jesse walked to the bodega for milk and a pack of ciders. We scrubbed each bottle down with hydrogen peroxide just inside the door. Then drank them on the fire escape in dazzling, tone deaf sun while she napped, sirens still filling the air.
As we were reading and praying with bambi at bedtime, an ambulance pulled up to the building across the street and left ten minutes later with a neighbor.
Can anyone's brains reconcile springtime horrors?
All this time we were doing tiny loads of laundry in a tiny machine washer we got delivered.
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