We lived on the first floor of a railroad flat on Coney Island Avenue. Below us was a vacant store; above us lived the Jensons, whose happy, clamorous lives I watched for years with shy yearning and silent envy. Mrs. Jenson was the heart and hub of the family. Stocky and stalwart, she possessed seemingly boundless energy. Every morning a man honked his horn from the street below, and she would dash across the avenue to drive with him to the downtown office where they both worked. I was particularly sensitized to acoustic details because I experienced so much of the Jenson routines in terms of the muffled sounds which came through our ceiling. When Mrs. Jenson returned at suppertime each evening, there would be running steps, metallic kitchen clatter, a drift to high and brighter volume.

Mr. Jenson was a quiet, unsmiling sort with a vaguely distracted air about him. He seemed content to let his wife run the household, and she did so with a gaiety that contrasted oddly with his staid demeanor. In addition to Mrs. Jenson and her husband, there were two daughters: Gloria and Frances, and a black dog called Tippy, named, I was sure, for the sound his little toenails made upon the linoleum when he walked. Gloria and Frances were both in their teens during the days when I remember them. Gloria, the elder of the two, was lanky and tall, with dirty blonde hair the color of straw. Frances wore glasses, which gave her a more serious look, but she had a quiet way of being pretty.

Most of the older kids in the neighborhood saw me as the insignificant scrap of humanity that I was, but Gloria and Francis treated me like a person, even a friend. I would climb the stairs, knock on their door, and ask, "Can I stay up in your house for awhile?" They would usher me in with warm, benevolent smiles and talk to me with not a trace of sarcasm, pity, or disdain.

Gloria would seat me at her dresser and brush my long, unkempt hair. I would play with beads and barrettes heaped like treasure on the vanity, and fondle an elegant bottle of amber cologne. Gloria showed me how I could see the back of my head by holding the hand mirror just a certain way, and I would admire my new braid with pleasure and surprise. We snapped together strings of salmon-colored poppy beads to adorn ourselves, lounged on the chenille-covered beds like a couple of Egyptian queens, and leafed through movie magazines.

With Frances, I was more likely to be treated to a trip to church. Not just for Sunday mass, but anytime. Holy Innocents on East 17th Street was always open, and Frances loved to pray. We would pull open the great mahogany doors and enter a lobby with stones so cool I could kiss them for refreshment. The rules did not permit bare heads; I never did ask why. Frances would place upon her head a kind of black lace doily, and she would hand me a napkin or hanky for mine. A hundred candles flickered in little red glasses, and Frances would light one, and kneel to pray. I didn't know how that girl found so much to pray about. All about us were the echoed murmurs of mortal prayers and elusive angel voices. I watched Frances and followed her lead and wished I knew the secrets.

There was a small tray of holy water on a post inside the lobby of the church. Frances always touched the water and crossed herself as we left. She said the water was holy because it was blessed. I gingerly put my finger in the water, smelled it, and touched it to my forehead. It seemed ordinary, but I imagined that God loved me a little more while its vague wetness still glistened on my skin. One torrid day Kevin Keating removed the tray and placed it on the sidewalk for a stray dog to take a drink. "That's holy water," I said in horror. But Frances thought it was okay to use the water for a kindness. That's the way Frances was.

One gaunt November morning, as I was getting ready for school, there was an abrupt knock on the door. It was an alien knock, an authoritative, rhythmic rap. I could tell it was a stranger. My mother answered, and there stood a policeman, tall and grim. His voice was low. My mother shot a sideways glance at me, where I stood in the corridor listening at the edge of things, as was my way. She called my father.

I heard her name. Mrs. Jenson. She had been struck by a car as she crossed the street to meet her ride to work. She had been thrown several feet by the impact. I remember that word -- thrown. It made her sound like a rubber ball. And I thought senselessly how big she was, and how hard she'd fall. She was dead. I had never before known anyone to become so suddenly and inexplicably dead.

My parents did not want to be the ones to tell the family upstairs. They sent the policeman next door to the O'Briens'. "They're Catholic," I heard my father say, "they'll know better what to do." I thought it was a bit cowardly of him. But mostly, I felt sick and scared. I could not understand how God could have allowed this. It was disturbing to consider a heavenly father so unreasonable or inattentive. None of us was safe. I was nine years old and had suddenly bumped head-on against the iron randomness of tragedy.

As I set out for school, I passed the place where Mrs. Jenson had been hit. There was a crumpled kleenex in the street, tossed about by a half-hearted wind, and I wondered morbidly if it had come from her purse. Already, the little ordinary artifacts of Mrs. Jenson's life were becoming supernatural. In class, I could not focus on Mrs. Olinger's strident tones. I drew a pencil moon in my notebook, shrouded by clouds. I thought of Gloria and Frances and wondered how this event would change them.

The next morning there were many footsteps up and down the stairs. Doors were shut snugly and decisively, as though to protect those within, and human sounds merged into a river which rose and fell and flowed. There was so much movement, so much hum. Almost like a holiday. Years later, I read a poem by Emily Dickinson and I knew that I had been hearing what she described as "the bustle in a house the morning after death...the solemnest of industries..." That night, I heard Mr. Jenson sobbing softly in the hallway. His daughters shepherded him back inside.

Frances and Gloria belonged now to their sorrow, to a universe beyond my grasp. What could I say to them that would not seem trite or unworthy? Never again would I bound up those stairs seeking refuge and friendship. It did not occur to me that I might go up and offer these to them. I understood nothing. My love never found a name or a voice.

I watched them from a distance over the next few months. They were like elusive movie stars to me, tragic and beautiful. I saw Gloria striding off to school sometimes, a kerchief over her sandy hair, carrying her books against her chest. I knew that Frances still went to mass. If she was angry with God, it didn't show. I noticed that she'd cut her hair. It made her look much older. If we met on the street, we exchanged a few words and parted. Our smiles were always sad. And then they moved away. I don't remember the actual move, only its aftermath, for there was silence upstairs now, a great stillness folding over itself. Layers and layers of empty quiet.