Mother and daughter stop a couple houses down from mine and stare skywards. The rest of the group approaches them, but the mother’s eyes don’t move, so the daughter speaks for her.
“She used to live in this building, on the top floor.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“When she was twenty years old.”
Her voice is wispy and matter-of-fact, like she’s speaking from a Hallmark card, like no one can imagine this woman when she was twenty-years-old, what she looked like with her heels clicking down the brick, turning the key in the lock, climbing the stairs to number 11.
I see myself all too clearly, staring up at the austere stucco, the black paned windows of the fifth floor, in twenty years, forty years, and I walk by quickly, causing the daughter to cast me a glance as my heels click past.
Two Years Before the Mass. 