The boy was taking off his jacket. That’s what caught Darryl’s attention. Otherwise, he would have continued his calisthenics and read about it later in the newspaper. Darryl stopped and watched from under the old half shell auditorium between the freeway and the river. There were no chunks of ice on the Lower East Side, but the west side had frozen over. The boy took off his jacket as he walked, and his little sister followed him to the railing. The boy was fourteen, so he knew what he was doing. At fourteen we are everything we will ever be which is why it’s then that the world attempts to so drastically improve us.
Everything in Darryl’s mind stopped as the space between the children widened beyond reason. The little girl watched as her brother moved farther away than she was used to. She followed, as little sisters do, but stumbled on his flattened First Down coat. She was looking down at her feet, so she probably didn’t see when her brother scaled the handrail and jumped.
The boy disappeared under the water and didn’t resurface. Did he struggle after that? Was he clawing at the sea wall downstream? We don’t know because there was no sign of him after he went under.
Darryl ran down the hill to the river’s edge and hung himself as far over the ledge as he could, his palms hovering over the water as if electrified, scanning the surface with wide, frantic eyes. Behind him, the little girl began to cry. Darryl scooped her up inside her brother’s still-warm jacket and held her.
After the boy went under, Darryl had started to scream. He sounded very much like his father then. He couldn’t hear the words that came but he heard the anger, the disappointment, the stern reprimand inside the anguish. How could you, he might have said, how could you? He paced up and down, holding the girl.
Photo by Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash
