“You wanna hear the story or you wanna practice your curse words?”

It’s like Quincy is trying to be herself. Trying to be funny. But Natasha sees fear in her mother’s face. And it’s horrifying to witness.

“Go ahead. Sorry.”

Quincy goes ahead: “There used to be a candy store on Willoughby. The kind of place little shits like me begged to go. There was nothing like Sandy’s Candy when you were growing up. We’re talking bright-pink façade, gold-trimmed windows, displays to make those under four feet tall salivate. You had to be beneath this height”—she held up an arm—“for it to sink into your soul like religion, and whoever was in charge of marketing ought to be shot for subliminal warfare. I didn’t leave my grandparents alone about Sandy’s. I dreamed of Sandy’s. Sometimes I even pretended I wanted to visit other places in town just so I could get a clean look at Sandy’s. Even on the days I was told no, I still needed a fix. A glance at the gilded boxes in the windows. It got to the point where people in Samhattan were worried about Sandy’s. Felt like a pusher had moved in. Or like a topless dancer was parading about town, tassels twirling. It was just too much, Nat. Tailor-made. We were nuts for it the way people are nuts for television shows, only you couldn’t just turn on the set and tell the kids to shut the fuck up. Nobody was shutting up about this place. And so…your great-grandparents, God bless them both, took me there regularly. And while it was small enough to roam free inside, it was also designed a bit like a maze; short rows upon rows of technicolored packaging, all glossy plastic, the ceiling lights no doubt angled intentionally, the whole place with an unforgettable otherworldly glow.

“But, most important, the rabbit suits.

“Man-sized, mind you. In the four corners of the shop, these giant pastel rabbits had individual characteristics; one was cross-eyed, another was winking, one was candy blue, another caramel brown, another sugar pink. When I think now of who was in charge of Sandy’s (there was no woman named Sandy), I think of those fucking rabbits. I think of where they stood, so that at about the exact moment you got completely lost in all that confection, you found yourself facing one of them. They weren’t quite under the lights: they were positioned to be partly in the shadows, so that there was a sense the rabbit was in motion, too, or had just arrived at the same time you did. This was breathtaking stuff for a little girl. These sentinels guarded the candy, see? They were the good guys, no matter how bad they looked. My grandparents laughed about how cruddy they were, their matted fur, their cracked-egg eyes. My God, I can still see Grandma touching the arm of the green one, her head inches from the fat tongue hanging from its crazy face. I can still see Grandpa pretending to be afraid of the pink one. The more I think about it (and I haven’t thought about this in quite some time), these images are iconic to me. My grandparents laughing in unison the way they used to, the reason everybody to this day talks about them like they were Romeo and Juliet.”