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maybe older—but not much older—he was wearing a satin kind of jacket like a sports jacket like high school boys wear—I think that’s what I saw—I couldn’t remember the color of the jacket—maybe it was dark—dark purple?—a kind of shiny material—a cheap shiny material—maybe there was some sort of design on the back of the jacket—Oh I couldn’t even remember the color of the van—it was as if my eyes had gone blind—the colors of things had drained from them—I’d seen everything through a tunnel—I thought that the van driver with the knife was dark-skinned but not “black” exactly—but not white—I mean not “Caucasian”—because his hair was—wasn’t—his hair didn’t seem to be—“Negroid hair”—if that is a way of describing it. And how tall he was, how heavy, the police were asking, I had no idea, I wasn’t myself, I was very upset, trying to speak calmly and not hysterically, I have never been hysterical in my life. Because I wanted to help the police find the man with the knife. But I could not describe the van, either. I could not identify the van by its make, or by the year. Of course I could not remember anything of the license plate—I wasn’t sure that I’d even seen a license plate—or if I did, it was covered with dirt. The police kept asking me what the men had said to each other, what the pedestrian had said, they kept asking me to describe how he’d hit the fender of the van, and the van driver—the man with the knife—what had he said?—but I couldn’t hear—my car windows were up, tight—I couldn’t hear. They asked me how long the “altercation” had lasted before the pedestrian was stabbed and I said that the stabbing began right away—then I said maybe it had begun right away—I couldn’t be sure—I couldn’t be sure of anything—I was hesitant to give a statement—sign my name to a statement—it was as if part of my brain hadbeen extinguished—trying to think of it now, I can’t—not clearly—I was trying to explain—apologize—I told them that I was sorry I couldn’t help them better, I hoped that other witnesses could help them better and finally they released me—they were disgusted with me, I think—I didn’t blame them—I was feeling weak and sick but all I wanted to do was get back to Princeton, didn’t even telephone anyone just returned to the Holland Tunnel thinking I would never use that tunnel again, never drive on West Street not ever again.
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    In that late winter of 1980 when Rhonda was four years old the story of the stabbing began to be told in the Karr household on Broadmead Road, Princeton, New Jersey. Many times the story was told and retold but never in the presence of the Karrs’ daughter who was too young and too sensitive for such a terrifying and ugly story and what was worse, a story that seemed to be missing an ending. Did the stabbed man die?—he must have died. Was the killer caught?—he must have been caught. Rhonda could not ask because Rhonda was supposed not to know what had happened, or almost happened, to Mommy on that day in Manhattan when she’d driven in alone as Daddy did not like Mommy to do. Nothing is more evident to a child of even ordinary curiosity and canniness than a family secret, a “taboo” subject—and Rhonda was not an ordinary child. There she stood barefoot in her nightie in the hall outside her parents’ bedroom where the door was shut against her daring to listen to her parents’ lowered, urgent voices inside; silently she came up behind her distraught-sounding mother as Madeleine sat on the edge of a chair in the kitchen speaking on the phone as so frequently Madeleine spoke on the phone with her wide circle of friends. The most