2131,
ttle firecracker. Her dad call her Miss Big Mouth. He loved her very much.” Kimy turns her head, surreptitiously touches her hand to her eyes. I remember Mr. Kim as a taciturn man who spent most of his time sitting in his armchair watching sports on TV.
“What year was Min born?”
“1949. She died 1956. Funny, she would be middle-aged lady with kids now, herself. She would be forty-nine years old. Kids would be maybe in college, maybe a little older.” Kimy looks at me, and I look back at her.
“We’re trying, Kimy. We’re trying everything we can think of.”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
Kimy bats her eyelashes at me like she’s Louise Brooks or somebody. “Hey, buddy, I am stuck on this crossword. Nine down, starts with K―”
CLARE: I watch the police divers swim out into Lake Michigan. It’s an overcast morning, already very hot. I am standing on the Dempster Street pier. There are five fire engines, three ambulances, and seven squad cars standing on Sheridan Road with their lights blinking and flashing. There are seventeen firemen and six paramedics. There are fourteen policemen and one policewoman, a short fat white woman whose head seems squashed by her cap, who keeps saying stupid platitudes intended to comfort me until I want to push her off the pier. I’m holding Henry’s clothes. It’s five o’clock in the morning. There are twenty-one reporters, some of whom are TV reporters with trucks and microphones and video people, and some of whom are print reporters with photographers. There is an elderly couple hanging around the edges of the action, discreet but curious. I try not to think about the policeman’s description of Henry jumping off the end of the pier, caught in the beam of the police car searchlight. I try not to think.
Two new policemen come walking down the pier. They confer with some of the police who are already here, and then one of them, the older one, detaches and walks to me. He has a handlebar mustache, the old-fashioned kind that ends in little points. He introduces himself as Capta
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