holding a book in her hands. Then I see Officer Como walk out to the car and get inside. They sit and speak for a moment, but not for long. Theydrive off and I watch them go down the hill, and I lose them with the angle. But I see their brake lights again when they reach the main road, the two-lane that follows Middle Pete Creek to the west where it crosses over the parkway, on the other side of which begin the stately rises of trees and easy rolling meadows of Bedley Run. They’ll drive swiftly and quietly and without stopping until they cross the buffer zone of old warehouses and railyards, and they’ll see reflected in the reservoir the many-colored lights of working-class Ebbington, home of the fast-food strip and the multiplex, and as well to those who would never get to live in my respectable town, the policewomen and the candy stripers and then all the others in this world who would hardly be known.
5
SUNNY , if I recall, was particularly hard on Officer Como. At her worst, she would sit diffidently on the hood of the policewoman’s cruiser as it sat parked on Church Street, smoking a cigarette as though she were idly passing the time on a bench in the park, her favorite mirrored sunglasses perched on her head. I remember one incident quite clearly. It was one of those days of transitional warm weather in the late fall, when I had the door of the shop opened to the street. Sunny was one store down, in front of the stationer’s, and I watched her obliquely from inside. This was long after the time that I could say anything directive or even meaningful to her, for I would have if I had thought it would do either of us any good. She was clearly waiting for Officer Como to come back with her lunch. I felt I was witnessing a staged accident, awaiting the trial run of something that I knew would be terrible.
“Get off the car,” Officer Como said, perching the brown lunch bag near the lights on the roof. She stepped back toward the middle of the sidewalk, facing my daughter. Officer Como was stillvery youthful-looking then, sprightly and angular, and fresh of face like Veronica is now, which of course was partly what compelled Sunny to want to test her.
“Get off the car now!”
Sunny slid her hands behind her and pushed off the hood. She stood there on the edge of the sidewalk, inches from the fender. She wasn’t as tall as the officer but her presence was remarkably severe and stolid and it didn’t seem as though she were yielding any room. She was nearly sixteen and her body had filled out; she was just at the point when she was conscious of how to hold herself, how to gain a certain strength of repose by the set of her stance, her hips, her lofted chin. She wasn’t the kind of bad girl who cursed or talked back, there being little of that loudness and bluster to her (except on rare occasions with me, who somehow inspired her), but rather she was intimidatingly and defiantly quiet. She just looked at you, or more accurately, she made it that you looked at her. There wasn’t a hint of vanity or pride. The way she was facing Officer Como, you could tell she knew how to use her splendid appearance. For Sunny had always understood the cooler properties of her beauty, the ungiving stone of it.
“Now come over here,” Officer Como commanded, pointing down at a spot a half-foot in front of her. “Right here, right now.”
Sunny sighed and dropped her cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out. She acted more bored than anything else. And although she was but a couple steps from the officer, it seemed to take her whole minutes to reach the spot, enough so that I wanted to close the shop and rush out there and shake her to sensibility. But then I’ve always wanted to do that, and yet never have.
“You’re really wasting yourself, you know that?” Officer Como said to her, less angrily than anyone could have expected from herat that moment. “You don’t even know. Others have nothing, not brains, not money,
5
SUNNY , if I recall, was particularly hard on Officer Como. At her worst, she would sit diffidently on the hood of the policewoman’s cruiser as it sat parked on Church Street, smoking a cigarette as though she were idly passing the time on a bench in the park, her favorite mirrored sunglasses perched on her head. I remember one incident quite clearly. It was one of those days of transitional warm weather in the late fall, when I had the door of the shop opened to the street. Sunny was one store down, in front of the stationer’s, and I watched her obliquely from inside. This was long after the time that I could say anything directive or even meaningful to her, for I would have if I had thought it would do either of us any good. She was clearly waiting for Officer Como to come back with her lunch. I felt I was witnessing a staged accident, awaiting the trial run of something that I knew would be terrible.
“Get off the car,” Officer Como said, perching the brown lunch bag near the lights on the roof. She stepped back toward the middle of the sidewalk, facing my daughter. Officer Como was stillvery youthful-looking then, sprightly and angular, and fresh of face like Veronica is now, which of course was partly what compelled Sunny to want to test her.
“Get off the car now!”
Sunny slid her hands behind her and pushed off the hood. She stood there on the edge of the sidewalk, inches from the fender. She wasn’t as tall as the officer but her presence was remarkably severe and stolid and it didn’t seem as though she were yielding any room. She was nearly sixteen and her body had filled out; she was just at the point when she was conscious of how to hold herself, how to gain a certain strength of repose by the set of her stance, her hips, her lofted chin. She wasn’t the kind of bad girl who cursed or talked back, there being little of that loudness and bluster to her (except on rare occasions with me, who somehow inspired her), but rather she was intimidatingly and defiantly quiet. She just looked at you, or more accurately, she made it that you looked at her. There wasn’t a hint of vanity or pride. The way she was facing Officer Como, you could tell she knew how to use her splendid appearance. For Sunny had always understood the cooler properties of her beauty, the ungiving stone of it.
“Now come over here,” Officer Como commanded, pointing down at a spot a half-foot in front of her. “Right here, right now.”
Sunny sighed and dropped her cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out. She acted more bored than anything else. And although she was but a couple steps from the officer, it seemed to take her whole minutes to reach the spot, enough so that I wanted to close the shop and rush out there and shake her to sensibility. But then I’ve always wanted to do that, and yet never have.
“You’re really wasting yourself, you know that?” Officer Como said to her, less angrily than anyone could have expected from herat that moment. “You don’t even know. Others have nothing, not brains, not money,
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