got out of her father’s razor. Howard’s in his room when he hears his mother scream. His brother and father run through the apartment to the upstairs bathroom. He runs too but they tell him to go back to his room and stay there. The cut isn’t much and his mother bandages it up. A few weeks later, though his mother told him not to mention any of it around the house and never to Vera, he says to her “Please don’t let the folks know I’m talking about this, and if the question bothers you don’t answer it, but what did it feel like when you did it to your wrist and what in hell made you do it?” “First of all,” she says, “don’t curse. Second of all, doing it hurt very much. When the blood started shooting out I suddenly got scared and couldn’t go any deeper. I didn’t want to live, that’s all the reason was, because I’m sick of the ugly way I look and my body all crooked and that I know it’s all only going to get much worse. But all I got from it was a lot of gushy attention I didn’t want and a big bawling-out from Dad. I felt so dumb. I’ll never try anything like that again. Mom’s also said if I kill myself she’ll kill herself right after and then haunt me in heaven forever or just crack up in real life and never again be the same.” She’s fourteen when she goes to the roof of their building and sits on the edge of it looking down to the street. A man in a window across the street yells “Hey miss, hey miss, what are you doing up there, get down,” and when she turns away from him and just stays there, he calls the police. A policeman comes to the roof and says “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get too near you, but what are your parents’ names and where do they live?” and she says “They’re away for the weekend, my only brother at home’s at work, and the woman who’s supposed to look in on me went shopping downtown and won’t be back till much later today.” He moves nearer and says “Good, that’s a nice clear sensible answer, you sound great. Now come on off of there, kid, really, it’s no good for you and I don’t want to work hours past my duty,” and she says “Step a step closer and I’m sliding myself off. I don’t want to live but I don’t want to jump right away.” “Why don’t you want to live? — go on, tell me, I’ll listen,” and she says “Not to you.” “I can understand that; I’ve got a uniform; you’re afraid of it maybe. But will you speak to a minister or rabbi or someone from the clergy like that?” and she says “A priest. I like them best out of all those because they have time only for regular people and give everything they earn extra to the church and poor.” The street’s now blocked, lots of police cars and vans and fire trucks down there, lots of people looking up. Occasionally she hears her name called and a couple of times she thinks she recognizes the voices, but she stops looking down or at the windows across the street, almost all of them with people in them looking at her, and only looks at her hands or the people on her roof or a plane passing or just the plain sky. A priest from a local church comes to the roof and tries urging her down. “You have everything to live for. No matter what our state of mind or physical health, we all do. Think of your dear mother. Your brothers and father I’ve heard. There is never a good reason to take your own life.” She says “There’s no way I’m getting off here except head first to the street, so thanks but no thanks. It’s a long climb and you seem to have trouble with your legs like me, so I’m sorry for making you come up.” “Would you instead show your appreciation for what I did and your respect for my age and weak legs by accompanying me to my church where we can talk without being surrounded by all of this?” “No, but if you want to talk, do, so long as it’s from safe distance away,” and he says “Fine, I for one don’t like heights so if I have to be up here I’m happy where I am,” sits on a parapet separating adjoining roofs, takes a beret out of his jacket pocket and puts it on, “To protect me from the sun; I’m fair-skinned, so subject to its strokes,” and says “Now tell me, my dear, what brought all this on? And take your time and speak loudly, my ears from this far away aren’t good and I want to hear every word,” and she talks about her illness and childhood and operations and scars and that she has no friends, only people who feel sorry for her or are paid to do things or be with her, and some people the last two years have almost gagged at their first sight of her and nobody but nobody but her mother truly loves her, but that’s all right, why should they? she loves nobody but her in return, and don’t tell her God loves her too because she’s heard all that, she’s visited a priest to speak, maybe from his own church — is his the one a few blocks down between Columbus and Broadway? — and he says no, that’s a cathedral, his is farther uptown but he knows the one she means and its very fine head priest — and she says anyway, if he says something about how everyone isn’t perfect in life but is in the eyes of the Lord and so on, shell say everyone but her it seems to be like, and she forgot to say she of course doesn’t want to hurt her mother but she more than that doesn’t want to go on anymore like this which is worse than hurting ten mothers if they were all like hers, and she only wishes, so she could be sure to die and not just get a broken neck or leg, that this building was fifteen stories high instead of five or whatever it is when you count that open areaway her mother calls it you go four steps down into from the street. He listens, tries to reason with her at several points, finally says what looks beyond bearing today can suddenly be thought thoroughly bearable tomorrow and even a gift of sorts because it forced her to reconsider her existence which in the end will give her the essential spiritual subsistence to live, and then they are always devising new cures for everything, medicine is like that these days, the good news about her cure might even be in the mail now to her mother or doctor or being printed this moment on sheets at the newspaper plant so they can all read it later today, so he’s sure if she comes downstairs with him she’ll look upon this as one of the more capricious events of her junior years but not one to be ashamed of one bit, for she is only questioning deeply and acting fervently and being profoundly human and all that’s to be respected and even revered by all well-meaning intelligent men, death is tied to life as she must now see, she has made the connection that most people never make in their entire lives so why rush things, does she understand what he means? gives up after an hour, says it’s become too hot for him and he’d feel ridiculous sitting here under an umbrella when there’s no rain and besides that he’s not well himself, he doesn’t want to say with what but part of it is something very personal that most older folk get which now forces him to go downstairs, but if she wants to talk to him some more to have the police phone him, he’ll be by his phone the next few hours and will immediately cab over, and if she only wants to talk about other things on this or any other day, simply phone him and he’ll come directly to her home just as she is always invited to his. Her brother Alex comes, tells her he called the resort their folks are at but they’ve gone sightseeing for the day and can’t be reached. She doesn’t look at him, watches two pigeons nestled under a roof eave across the street, follows the path of a contrail and then stares at it till it disintegrates, every now and then stands on crutches and stretches, ignoring the oohs, ohhs and noes from below. During one of these stretches, when she’s watching an enormous orange sun set into the river, a policeman swings to her on a sling hooked up from the next roof behind her, grabs her around the waist and swings back with her to his roof. She cries and kicks, is given an injection, is unconcious by the time she’s put into the ambulance, Alex all this time never letting go of her hand. Howard doesn’t know how the sling worked. It would have had to be somewhat large and complicated, for safety reasons and because the police knew they only had one shot at it and there couldn’t be any mistakes. Wouldn’t she have seen it being set up and been wary of it? Maybe she wanted to be saved that way, risky as it was, rather than just giving in and going downstairs on her own. He never asked her. In fact nothing about it was ever mentioned between them. People from the street yelled “yay” and applauded, some shouted “Tarzan and Jane.” He was working as a guest waiter in a summer camp upstate. There was a front-page photograph of her sitting on the roof, legs hanging off it, in both morning tabloids. He learned of the incident when Alex sent him a letter a week later talking about lots of other things but which included about ten lines typed out with