In such a heightened state, as I wandered past abandoned storefronts, they looked like 1840. I don’t know why—in the eerie orange glow from Falls’s new futuristic streetlamps—I noticed one particular window. But, breathless with the footsteps’ odd pursuit, a bit achy from tonight’s overly athletic rock-and-roll dancing meant to show everyone how hip and spry I’d remained, I pressed one hand against plate glass, steadying myself.

Here, displayed among bits of fallen pink fiberglass wool, still improbably vertical before a scrap of pegboard dropped from some lowered interior roof, one filthy figurine stood.

She yet wore a sling, a truss quite perfectly miniaturized. Wedged under one arm, the tiny oak crutch angled just so. Her neck brace looked squirrel-suitable. This small goddess’s temple had crumbled around her. But all the 1950s gear dedicated to keeping “Blanche” standing had somehow left her—these several decades later—miraculously upright. An inspiration still.

Thousands of days of sun had turned her pinky skin to a surface tan, then charbroiled gray, then on toward chalky black-brown. Her hair had once been painted yellow marcelled waves. That tone had whitened toward seeming some old, pallid rubber swimming cap. Her eyes cast upward with a long-suffering mulish patience. Blanche still helplessly presented herself—a devotional figure in this deserted yet monitoring little town.

And I—drunk from four atypical “what the hell” martinis, feeling overwhelmed with years of thwarted postponed sentiment, too aware of being back here and unhappily haunted two blocks from Janine’s former American Grill, not sure yet if I were technically a white man or a black one, as unwilling as my dad to surrender either option—now mashed both palms against Blanche’s greasy glass. With no kind woman waiting at the hotel, I was somehow going down before her. On my knees, on the sidewalk, I stooped before our poor, dear mascot—mercilessly immortal. No one now strolled Main. Not a car moved. No tricky footsteps sounded now.—This far from the two decent malls, who’d care, who’d notice me?

I knelt, in penance, mock-defeat. And yet, hands joined in some mimed prayer only half comic, I gazed up and in at her. I understood why Falls had given her that name. From the start, Blanche had stood right here in plain view, fading, blanching clear to the shade of tar.

And I let myself, sloshed, hoping unsuccessfully for Dad, practice—if silently—those actual Hebrew words the guy should use to eventually enter Paradise. Might not Clyde, on tiptoe nearby, overhear me? Shouldn’t he finally benefit from my education that’d cost him dearly? I mimed his passwords to a platinum doll our holy sun had worshiped for so many bright decades, it had loved her black.

I called through filthy glass, “Forgive us, Blanche.”

VI.

… no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.

Ephesians 5:29