Marie-Helene Bertino - 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

Mrs. Santiago bravos out of her chair and pulls Madeleine into a hug. Her apron smells like warm chicken and cranberry candle. She releases Madeleine and grasps the counter. Her feet leave her shoes and hover several inches off the ground. She returns to them. Her ears turn the color of autumn leaves. She jolts upward again, this time with her shoes. Madeleine can see her own frightened face in the woman’s watering eyes.

“I feel strange.” Mrs. Santiago throws open the front door and staggers outside. Madeleine follows. The woman takes a few steps and ascends, as if climbing an invisible staircase. She turns her bulbous head — it is shiny like the counters of the Red Lion Diner — and her features are at sea on it. Her small mouth has become the balloon’s cinched knot. One of her apron strings breaks with a sharp thwack!

“Mrs. Santiago!” Madeleine snatches at the woman’s skirt.

“For Pete’s sake, you’re almost ten, call me Rose.” She rises over the carousel horse. She attempts to bank but cannot steer down. Thwack! The other apron string. A gust of wind takes her higher. She has almost reached roof level.

“Come down. Rose!”

“I can see everyone’s laundry!” Mrs. Santiago cries. “All of their shirts and pants, hanging. What a funny thing.”

“Are you in pain?” Madeleine says.

The force of the woman’s giggling carries her sideways and surprises a wire of wrens. She grows serious. “Start the coffee. Make sure the sausage doesn’t burn. Wipe the cases. When I come back, I want to be able to see my face in them.” She wags her arms toward the loitering stars. Under her, Pedro barks and makes erratic circles. “Oh, hush. I’ll be back in a while.” One clog loses its grip on her foot. It claps against a neighbor’s patio. “I can see everyone’s holiday lights! I can see the ships at the dock!”

She drifts farther away from Madeleine and the dog who, stunned by her rebuke, calms. Her other clog falls and clatters against some unseen hard thing. It’s a landmark morning, she tells the stray cat hiding in a bank of chopped evergreens.

Madeleine watches until Mrs. Santiago is hundreds of rooftops away, then she and Pedro go inside. She extinguishes the burner under the sausage and starts the coffee. Pedro circles into a resting position on the floor and falls asleep. Madeleine retrieves her notebook from her backpack and borrows the baking timer.

She starts the shimmy. Shoulders, shoulders, shoulders.

The timer beeps. Madeleine marks down thirty seconds . The shimmying was spirited and even. Not bad, she decides, and allows herself a B plus.

Don’t get cocky, Madeleine. It’s been a good night but you are still a poor, motherless girl in old stockings .

The room fills with the smell of coffee. The pencil is poised at her lips. An outside dog barks. In sleep Pedro answers a small woof. She erases the mark and writes, A . After a moment, she adds— minus .

She resets the timer.

“Again,” she says.

It is dark at seven A.M. on Christmas Eve but the sun, having no options, is returning to the city. It’s asking the wrought-iron fire escapes, the hydrants— What’d I miss? It’s occurring like a memory to the buildings of the financial district. It’s lighting half of Mrs. Santiago as she rises — Mrs. Santiago waxing. She points out a tugboat in the river, dew-colored jalousies. She can see the rooftop murals only the El riders can see.

IF YOU WERE HERE I’D BE HOME NOW.

Can she imagine a better morning? Would she change any part of it, even if she could? She tells the birds, the cat, the love letter, the stubborn sliver of moon that she cannot, she would not. A voice that seems to swell from the earth’s core delivers the happy news — her husband is dead but she is alive! Like the pale ashes that curl and launch from the barrel fires on Ninth Street, she is fettered by nothing.

A crosswind retracts her and another voice intrudes: Who are you to dream beyond the skyline, Mrs. Santiago? You’re no better than anyone else. Go back to work, Mrs. Santiago. Freeze the fish, make the sausage, scrape scum off the plates. Freeze the work, make the work, scrape work off the work .

This is the voice of the city. This is your tireless doubt. The rope that tethers you to the hydrant. Your half permission. Your limiting, maddening jawn. This voice comes from the Northwest pocket, the Roxborough, of your soul.

Mrs. Santiago swims to make up ground and flaps higher. Above the mural, exulting out of the brick. Above the dead rooftop gardens, trowels paused in dirt. Beyond the indescribable alloy the fire escapes make with the sun. Mrs. Santiago soars. Above the hard-backed stadiums, scowling in the dawn. Toward the slivered moon and loitering stars, now fading. Beyond the sill of William Penn.

Not today, Philadelphia. Bring your sorry shit back tomorrow.

I ask the forgiveness of the following people for, after they’ve given me so much, borrowing their names: Mrs. Michele Hofner (née Altimari), my sixth-grade teacher; Dr. Vincent Sherry, my college mentor; and in memory of Alexandra (Alex) Rubenstein; Mrs. Margueritte McGlynn, my highschool English teacher; and the incomparable Sandra Purcell.

These people are, literally and figuratively, The Cat’s Pajamas: my relentlessly elegant agent, Claudia Ballard, and her fortuitously turned ankle; Laura Bonner; Julie Chang; everyone at William Morris; Alexis Washam, my wise, dream-making editor; Rachel Rokicki, Sarah Bedingfield, and the kind, tireless team at Crown Publishers, who made such a special book.

Many years ago I moved to a new city and found a writer’s group. Years passed as in cramped apartments with snacks we shaped ourselves into adults. To the Brooklyn Blackout Writers Group — Tim DeLizza, Aisha Gayle, Jesse Hassenger, Yuka Igarashi, Jennifer Leamy, and Alea Mitchell, thank you for being my first friends in New York.

A bouquet of sharpened Dixon Ticonderogas to: Brooklyn College’s MFA program, especially Joshua Henkin, Lou Asekoff, Michael Cunningham, and Ellen Tremper; the Center for Fiction; Hedgebrook Writer’s Residency; David Horne; The Imitative Fallacies Writer’s Group, members active and inactive; Adam Brown, Elizabeth L. Harris, Elliott Holt, Amelia Kahaney, Helen Phillips, and Mohan Sikka; University of Iowa Press, Scott Lindenbaum, Chris and Mary Austin Marker; One Story , especially Maribeth Bacha, Adina Talve-Goodman, Chris Gregory, Michael Pollock, Hannah Tinti, Karen Seligman, and Julia Strayer; Emily Rosenthal, Phyllis Trout and Brian Brooks; and Ken L. Walker.

These people have supported me since I was a lowercase m : Cindy Augustine, Dana, Nana, Eileen, and Ron Bertotti (thank you for the rides); Karen, Linda, and John Buleza; Tim Carr, Nicole Cavaliere, Diana Waters Davis, Brendan Gaul, Charles Hagarty, Craig Johnson, PJ and Jenna Franceski Linke, Ginger and Charlie McHugh, Scott Wein, and Sadie Ray; with special thanks to Ben Cohen, Laura Halasa, Beth Vasil, and Maryrose Roberts, who never sees why not.

The following man is the bee’s knees: Jim Shepard.

The following musicians helped compose the tune of this book and in the process wove themselves into its melody: Rocco DeCicco, Brian Floody, Lester Grant, Brian Merrill, Aurelio Pacilli, Chris Pistorino, Jason Rabinowitz, Denise Sandole, and my fellow unicorn Shawn Aileen Clark.

I’d like to symbolically adopt a star for the following people: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, David Ellis, Cristina Moracho, Anne Ray, Tanya Rey (thank you for the “salsa lessons”), and my first and last reader, Tom Grattan.