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Severe pain inflicted judicially, either as a punishment for a crime, or for the purpose of extorting a confession from an accused person.” Ha! Even they said it was judicious.
    â€œ3. The act, operation or process of inflicting excruciating physical or mental pain.” He groaned with pleasure. Perhaps, he relented, tossing the heavy book aside, a little self-abasement, once or twice again … in this sentimental hollow, just for old times’ sake … ?
    Claire
    In Queens, I answered my cell phone. No doubt it would be Enoch. He’d chase me down now. But it wasn’t him after all; it was my sister Carmela. “Claire,” she said, “you’ve got to help me.”
    â€œI can’t help anyone right now, I’m afraid.” I performed what I hoped was a tearful snort to emphasize the seriousness of my distress. “It’s Enoch. You won’t believe what happened.”
    â€œIs he dead?” she said.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    Because she grunted with what sounded like disappointment, I hesitated and she made use of the moment. “Claire. Please listen.”
    She’d said please , which was a word she never used, and because she was not impressed by my anxiety, I let her go first. But she always went first. I call it the sense of entitlement the firstborn utilize constantly, but it’s more than that. It’s a mechanism of timing they have, the selfish ones. There is no courtesy moment ingrained in them. They just plunge on because feeling has nothing to do with it—unless it’s their own. You find my attitude cold? Wait. Let me explain.
    Back when I’d first started going out with my husband, Johnny, the detective, part of the attraction I’d had for him was that he never really looked at Carmela. His way to put it was a disinterested shrug. Then he’d say, “Too many years doing vice to get caught up with a girl like that.”
    This I’d found utterly charming. Imagine: a man who hardly noticed when my glamorous sister would walk in the room! Perfect. Or so I’d been fool enough to believe.
    Because now, after years of being left out of pertinent information, I knew why.
    When she was fifteen (and I was eleven—years before I’d even thought of dating), Carmela, with her excellent fake ID and all gussied up to look like a bombshell, latched onto a bevy of flight attendants and snuck into the local cop hangout in Kew Gardens. Who should be sitting at the bar but rookie Johnny Benedetto? From what I understand, he took her to the band shell’s parking lot in Forest Park in his convertible. Johnny always had a great car. Over her head and under the influence of three gin and tonics, Carmela surrendered her virginity. She’d been looking for someone to lose her virginity to, she’ll tell you. But she was just a girl, a foolish, miscalculating girl, and she got pregnant. That was not part of her plan. To be fair, Johnny didn’t know this, what with her going off to Ireland to have the baby. He’d chalked the episode up to a one-night stand and hadn’t even seen her again until years later, the night he’d come through the door of my parents’ house to court me. Neither of them had batted an eye. And I’d been definitely watching for signs of interest. Every guy I’d ever brought home went gaga for Carmela. And they’d recognized each other, all right. Carmela wouldn’t forget the man who’d cost her five months of her junior year at school and put her on a trip to rainy Ireland—a trip where she’d given up her daughter before she’d even seen her. As for him, well, no one would be able to forget Carmela’s bewitching face. But in our living room that night the both of them had simultaneously chosen to feign uninterest. Oh, they stayed far apart all right, sidestepping carefully away from each other the entire duration of my marriage. It wasn’t until