One Cold Night

gleaming windows, Dumbo became as strange and impossible and thrilling as it used to be: a flying elephant, magical thinking, an undisclosed secret.
    Lisa remembered their parents’ faces when they had first walked into Susan’s loft: unabashed shock and dismay. She remembered Susan’s twenty-year-old eyes flickering down to catch her little sister’s expression of enchantment, and the confidence that ignited in Susan’s face as she remet the astonished gazes of their parents.
    Much as Lisa now appreciated the luxuries of Susan and Dave’s rehabbed condo, she could still sense the raw discomforts of the original loft under all the polished wood and granite. The loft seemed a little bit sad now, for all its strident effort — like an overdressed maiden aunt, pulling out all the stops at the last minute — but the smell of it, the decades-old perfume, was still the same. If you closed your eyes and sat quietly in the middle of the posh living room, you were flung back a decade; it was chilly and exciting in the rough-hewn space; you were Spiderwoman, Cinderella and Little Green all rolled into one.
    Lisa hopped off the track at the entrance to the park. It was a peaceful time of night, with just a few people wandering by the waterfront: a couple with a dog off its leash, and a balding blond man, a loner. Susan and Dave never let her walk out alone at night unless she was returning from somewhere, and then every minute had to be accounted for; she had to show up at home exactly on time or her cell phone would start ringing. She was glad she had left her purse with her phone in it back at the loft. She walkedinto the park and took a deep breath. It was so easy to forget that New York City was an island, and such a happiness whenever Lisa remembered; back in northeast Texas, where they lived, you were landlocked in every direction.
    She sat on a bench and drew her arms across her chest, scant protection from the chilly air. The East River was calm, barely moving now; all the boats were moored for the night. The sky was clear and velvet black, pierced with tiny white stars. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. She began to cry; suddenly she wasn’t a child anymore, because she knew something that was simply true.
    Susan was her mother.
    Susan was her mother.
    Susan was her mother.
    The dog, an auburn terrier, bolted past her; the couple trailed casually behind. They didn’t look at her and she didn’t look at them. She stared at the water lapping gently against the stony beach. Big rotted beams of timber were stacked off to the side. A pling sound caught her attention: It was the loner guy, trying to skip stones into the river. Finally, one skipped twice before sinking. He tried again and this time it skipped three times, pling pling pling across the charcoal gleam. Lisa couldn’t help a smile; she would have called out to him — “Congratulations!” she would have said — if he hadn’t been a stranger.
    She wondered if that was how love happened, a pling in the night that made you look. She wondered if that was how Susan had made her: a few plings, and a sinking stone.
    Lisa realized she must have looked crazy, sittingthere crying and half laughing on a bench in a park at the rock-crusty edge of a river. Alone in a city, late at night. Crazy. So she got up and started walking, following the curved path out of the park and onto Main Street.
    The lobby restaurant at One Main was still busy and the street was well lit. The front of the building was encased in scaffolding and she didn’t like to walk under it — she was convinced that if she did, it would fall — so she followed the rails that made a seam up the middle of the street. Heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe. Past the Main Performance Space — a little church of a building with a lime-green roll-up garage door — and around the corner onto Water Street.
    All up the right side of Water Street were little brick town houses, the restored ones right next to the dilapidated ones, until you reached the old Empire Stores warehouse: a huge brick monster of a building that was stone-cold empty, for now. Needless to say, a splashy renovation was planned. Across the street were a theater, a gallery, a café closed for the night, and Water Street Chocolates — Susan’s shop.
    Lisa stood in front of the pretty European-style chocolaterie that her sister — no, her mother... that Susan had