Let’s go, says my father.

No, she says.

But he is pulling her away, away from the man, this room, this house. She is fighting him, fighting him and the old man both as he pulls her away, and then she slips out of his grasp.

She slips out of his grasp, grabs the box from the old man, swings it back, and slams it into the old man’s head.

The old man falls to his knees.

She swings the box again, a corner plunges into his scalp, blood spurts. She swings the box again.

By the time my father is able to make sense of what he has seen, is able to gather his wits enough to grab her at the waist and pull her away, throw her to the other side of the room, the old man is sprawled dead on the floor, the bloodied box is lying by his side, and her skirt, her blouse, her hands are stained red with the old man’s blood.

What have you done? he says, staring now at the devastation before him.

She rises from the floor, slowly, carefully, weaving back and forth as she rises, and when, finally, she is standing, she makes her way to her lover, my father, her lover.

I didn’t mean to, she says. He drove me to it.

He steps away from her, backs away until his shoulders are against a wall and the corpse is between him and the girl, his love, the girl in the pleated skirt. But she steps up to the corpse of the old man until she is facing my father, close to my father and she says, It will be all right, Jesse, won’t it?

My father is paralyzed with loss as she reaches her bloodied hands to touch him, leaves a trail of blood on his arm, his shoulder, his collar. She places her hands at the back of his neck and stands on tiptoes and pulls him to her as she pulled him to her just moments before in the darkness.

We’ll be forever together, like we said, Jesse, like we promised. Together forever, you and me, like you told me was all you ever wanted, like you made me promise.

And then she kisses him, while they stand over the old man’s corpse, she promises my father everything he ever wanted just moments before, and she kisses him, and my father, God forgive him, kisses her back.

“Kissed,” he said in the softest of whispers as I leaned so close the plastic of his mask brushed against my ear. “Kissed her back.”

It would have been nicely symmetric if the poison of the story had its way with him right then, sent him into respiratory failure, clanging the alarms, bringing the army of doctors and nurses and technicians rushing to that room to battle for my father’s life as I stood by and watched with a horrified silence. But it didn’t right then, not right then. My father whispered, “Kissed her back,” and then his eyes closed and he drifted off to some finer place. And his respiratory rate eased, and his heartbeat slowed, and somehow the level of the oxygen in his blood started to rise. Eighty-eight percent. Eighty-nine percent. Ninety percent. I left my father in the hospital that night with a slight sense of hope that maybe the worst had been revealed and so the worst was behind him.

But it was a feint, hope with my father was always a feint, and the alarms were sounded not long after I stepped out the hospital’s front door.

Chapter 41

TRAFFIC COURT. ’NUFF said.

“All rise.”

About time.

We’d been waiting an hour for the judge to show his face, all of us assigned to Courtroom 16 in the large brick building on Spring Garden Street. We had stood in a line that stretched well out the door, we had raised our arms through the metal detectors, we had checked our cell phones at the information booth, we had clutched our summonses and found our courtrooms and taken our places on the hard black benches. We were there against our wills, we had better things to do, like root canal and the Jenny Jones Show, but there had been no choice for us, we were required by law to atone and atone we would, for against the traffic laws of the City of Philadelphia we all had sinned. We had driven with suspended licenses, we had driven without insurance, we had driven the wrong way down one-way streets, we had failed to yield, we had parked where we had no business parking, we had driven drunk, God forgive us, for MADD never would. We had run through red lights, we had run through stop signs, we had sped, yes we had, and it had felt good, shifting our gears as the tachometer flared and our hearts sang and our rate of speed flew above the legal limits. But believe us, Judge, the cops were out to get us, the radar guns were off, we didn’t do it, and we won’t do it again. We were good drivers, all of us, despite what our records said, and we were willing to pay the fines, but please, judge, please don’t give us the points, not the points, please.

“All rise.”

We rose as one.

The judge was a creased old man with a sun-lined face and yellow hair combed back over his skull. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. If you saw him on the street you’d feel sorry for him and offer to buy him coffee and an egg sandwich, but here, standing now behind the bench in his black robe, even unzipped as it was, you saw not the face of a homeless vagrant but instead the weathered face of justice. He sat. We sat. His name was Judge Geary, we all knew that because of the plaque on the edge of the bench that read JUDGE GEARY. He took a deep breath through the unlit cigarette, cocked his head like Dean Martin before a song, and said in his croak of a voice, “Let’s go.”

The gray-haired clerk took the first file off his pile, called out a name in a voice sharp and loud, walked the file to the judge, and Traffic Court began.

It didn’t take much crushing insight to figure out how Traffic Court worked in Philadelphia. The first names called were all of defendants represented by counsel. The judge would read the offense and shake his head with dismay. The lawyer would say a few rote words in defense. The judge would reduce the fine, order no points be given, admonish counsel to explain to the client what he had done wrong so he wouldn’t do it again. It seemed, in those first few cases, that the judge was in a fine mood at this session and lenience would hold sway. We, all of us, sitting on our benches with our summonses in our laps and our licenses on the line, we, all of us, felt the stirrings of relief. And then the first case was called without representation of a lawyer and things suddenly turned.

“What were you doing going the wrong way down Locust Street?” said the judge.

“I was on my way to the doctor,” said the defendant.

“Answer the question,” barked the clerk.

“I didn’t know-”

“Pay the fine, full points, court costs. Next.”

“But Judge-”

“Next.”

“Move along,” said the clerk before he called the next name.

“You know you can’t drive without insurance, don’t you?” said the judge to the next defendant.

“I couldn’t get it. No one would give it and I had to get to work. I got a kid-”

“But you can’t drive without insurance. Here you are running stop signs without insurance. What would have happened to the pedestrian you might have hit?”

“I didn’t hit no-”

“Answer the question.”

“I slowed down at the stop sign, I did. The cop was-”

“Give me your license, Ms. Jenkins. Give it right up. You’ll get it back in six months.”

“But Judge, I got to-”

“Take the bus. Pay the two hundred, three points, license suspended, and not to be returned without proof of insurance. Next.”

“But Judge-”

“Move along,” said the clerk.

And on it went. And on.

It was a killing field in there, all manner of defenses shot down by old Judge Geary in the rigid pursuit of fines and points and the gleeful seizure of licenses. Except for those represented by counsel. Because, for some reason, the mere fact of having counsel by your side severely ameliorated the harshness of justice, and not just any counsel, but lawyers who make their living in Traffic Court, lawyers whose practice depends on the kindness of judges, elected judges, judges who must raise money every five years as they run for reelection.