Read Online The Last Good Night by Emily Listfield - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Emily Listfield
Ads: Link
smell the salt, the sea, the heat itself on his skin.
David gave a single final lurch, reared, and then collapsed against me.
Â
A FTER HE LEFT, I dressed quickly in jeans and a merino wool turtleneck and, as soon as Dora arrived, I tucked my hair under a baseball cap, put on sunglasses, and took a cab downtown to the Red Hat diner on the corner of Essex and Delancey on the Lower East Side where I met Shana Joseph every second Wednesday. She had been my little sister, as the jargon goes, for the past year and a half. In fact, she was seventeen, three inches taller than me, and weighed at least forty pounds more.
Shana wasnât there yet.
I sat down at one of the peeling linoleum tables in the back under a string of neon red hats and ordered a cup of coffee. The breakfast rush was over, and after the waiter brought me my coffee, he began mopping the stained gray floor. The smell of ammonia made my eyes water.
When I first volunteered years ago in Burlington for a similarprogram, I thought theyâd give me a sweet motherless nine-year-old whom I could make popcorn with on rainy afternoons and gossip with about boys. But most of the girls turned out to be teenagers, and their mothers werenât dead, just disinterested, or worse. Which was something I understood. Perhaps thatâs why I do it.
Or is it to prove something to myself, that anyone can change if given the right chance, that the possibility of redemption exists for all of us?
Anyway, it is part of my personal deal with God, my endless attempt to rebalance the scales I had tipped so long ago. If I try to be good now, really try to be goodâ¦
Shana came in fifteen minutes later. She walked slowly, as if to show how little she cared to be here, her wide thighs dimpled beneath kelly green leggings. As soon as she sat down, she called out her order of a bagel with extra jelly and two cups of hot chocolate. We both watched the waiter reluctantly put down his mop and go to the counter, where he opened twin foil packets of cocoa into mottled white mugs and poured hot water in.
Shana downed the first one in a single gulp and wiped the corners of her mouth before she looked across the table at me. Her long blond hair was frazzled and lifeless except for the oily black roots. Her pasty face was heavily rouged. Still, even with the sullen expression, there was a certain prettiness that another girl, an uptown girl, would have been able to do something with. I noticed she was wearing gold button earrings just like the ones Iâd worn on the broadcast two nights ago. It was odd, really. She often managed to find a scarf like one sheâd seen me wear, the fabric a little shinier, the colors too brightly acidic, but close. Or use a complicated word Iâd used, an expression. An intonation, even. She had lately begun to hold her hands as I did, interlaced and still.
We always start this way, her surly, withdrawn, every look designed to remind me that this is just a condition of her probationâgoing to school, meeting with me. But there are times when I break through and it feels like such a victory I keep coming back. Once, when I took her on a tour of the local studio, she was so shy and silent, so cowed, and her smile was so broad afterwards, that it made my heart ache. After that, she slowly began to release pellets of information about her life. Her mother had moved in with her boyfriend and his four kids a few blocks away, leaving Shana alone with her older brother, Cort. Cort was on crack again after four months in Rikers. There was no mention of a father. Shana never exhibited any surprise, any pain or anger, when she spoke of her family. She only shrugged as if to say, everyone has a story, after all.
She took a bite of her bagel and then looked under the table to see what I was wearing. She was disappointed it was jeans. Shana felt I didnât dress suitably for what she called my âstation in life.â I didnât tell her it
David gave a single final lurch, reared, and then collapsed against me.
Â
A FTER HE LEFT, I dressed quickly in jeans and a merino wool turtleneck and, as soon as Dora arrived, I tucked my hair under a baseball cap, put on sunglasses, and took a cab downtown to the Red Hat diner on the corner of Essex and Delancey on the Lower East Side where I met Shana Joseph every second Wednesday. She had been my little sister, as the jargon goes, for the past year and a half. In fact, she was seventeen, three inches taller than me, and weighed at least forty pounds more.
Shana wasnât there yet.
I sat down at one of the peeling linoleum tables in the back under a string of neon red hats and ordered a cup of coffee. The breakfast rush was over, and after the waiter brought me my coffee, he began mopping the stained gray floor. The smell of ammonia made my eyes water.
When I first volunteered years ago in Burlington for a similarprogram, I thought theyâd give me a sweet motherless nine-year-old whom I could make popcorn with on rainy afternoons and gossip with about boys. But most of the girls turned out to be teenagers, and their mothers werenât dead, just disinterested, or worse. Which was something I understood. Perhaps thatâs why I do it.
Or is it to prove something to myself, that anyone can change if given the right chance, that the possibility of redemption exists for all of us?
Anyway, it is part of my personal deal with God, my endless attempt to rebalance the scales I had tipped so long ago. If I try to be good now, really try to be goodâ¦
Shana came in fifteen minutes later. She walked slowly, as if to show how little she cared to be here, her wide thighs dimpled beneath kelly green leggings. As soon as she sat down, she called out her order of a bagel with extra jelly and two cups of hot chocolate. We both watched the waiter reluctantly put down his mop and go to the counter, where he opened twin foil packets of cocoa into mottled white mugs and poured hot water in.
Shana downed the first one in a single gulp and wiped the corners of her mouth before she looked across the table at me. Her long blond hair was frazzled and lifeless except for the oily black roots. Her pasty face was heavily rouged. Still, even with the sullen expression, there was a certain prettiness that another girl, an uptown girl, would have been able to do something with. I noticed she was wearing gold button earrings just like the ones Iâd worn on the broadcast two nights ago. It was odd, really. She often managed to find a scarf like one sheâd seen me wear, the fabric a little shinier, the colors too brightly acidic, but close. Or use a complicated word Iâd used, an expression. An intonation, even. She had lately begun to hold her hands as I did, interlaced and still.
We always start this way, her surly, withdrawn, every look designed to remind me that this is just a condition of her probationâgoing to school, meeting with me. But there are times when I break through and it feels like such a victory I keep coming back. Once, when I took her on a tour of the local studio, she was so shy and silent, so cowed, and her smile was so broad afterwards, that it made my heart ache. After that, she slowly began to release pellets of information about her life. Her mother had moved in with her boyfriend and his four kids a few blocks away, leaving Shana alone with her older brother, Cort. Cort was on crack again after four months in Rikers. There was no mention of a father. Shana never exhibited any surprise, any pain or anger, when she spoke of her family. She only shrugged as if to say, everyone has a story, after all.
She took a bite of her bagel and then looked under the table to see what I was wearing. She was disappointed it was jeans. Shana felt I didnât dress suitably for what she called my âstation in life.â I didnât tell her it
Similar Books
