The Half-True Lies of Cricket Cohen

by Catherine Lloyd Burns

  “Great idea,” Cricket said. “Maybe a bathing suit?”

  “I don’t swim anymore. But I’ll watch you swim. Remember when you were swimming in my pool in California and you almost drowned? I saved you.”

  Cricket remembered. She had still been learning to swim and had worked her way to the deep end of the pool by accident. Before Cricket had had a chance to realize she was in danger, Dodo had jumped in the pool, fully clothed, including her silk scarf and her sunglasses. She’d pulled her seven-year-old granddaughter out of the water to safety. They’d never told Richard or Bunny because they thought they’d get in trouble.

  “I do. You saved my life, Dodo, and now I will do anything for you.”

  “Oh! And I would do anything for you, sweetheart. I love you so much.” Dodo wrapped her freckled, droopy arms around Cricket.

  They were almost eye to eye. Cricket was getting taller and Dodo was getting smaller. It was the strangest thing.

  “I need a nice wrappy thing for the plane. A thing you put around. For the air-conditioning. You know?”

  “A shawl?”

  “A shawl! I have the most beautiful shawls. I don’t want to leave without them.” Dodo rummaged around on her bed. “I can’t find the one that’s my favorite. From Italy. From that very last trip with Dodie, before he died. But maybe if we look together.”

  “Okay. What color is it, Dodo?”

  “There are several. But the one I have in mind is very fine cashmere. It’s blue but it’s also peach. Abby wore it all the time.”

  It was hard to imagine Abby wearing anything of Dodo’s; the difference in their sizes was too much.

  “I’m not mad about it,” Dodo said. “It’s a beautiful shawl. It looks wonderful on everyone. I knew she’d steal it when she left. Everybody needs something for the road.”

  Cricket sat on the bed watching her grandmother engage in what looked like a game a very small child would play: a sorting game. Dodo carefully moved everything from her suitcase, very methodically, piece by piece, into a large canvas tote bag. Then when she’d finished, she took each of the things out of the tote bag and put them back, one by one, into the suitcase again. It was like separating an egg by carefully pouring the contents back and forth from one eggshell to the other. Dodo seemed endlessly busy with this task.

  “Let me tell you something,” Dodo said, carefully laying a pair of white pants in the tote bag. “I have tried to do everything in my life with a certain amount of grace and integrity. But aging gracefully might not be possible. Oh, Cricket, my biggest mistake was thinking I would never be old.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cricket said.

  “All right, enough of this dreary conversation. Let’s get out of here.” Dodo left the half-empty suitcase on the bed and went back to the living room. Cricket followed. They made themselves comfortable on the yellow couch. The one thing Cricket had begged her mother to let Dodo keep when she moved across the country was the yellow couch. Cricket had written a haiku about that couch in second grade:

  The way I feel on

  The couch with my grandmother

  Is bright bright yellow

  16

  ART AND SCIENCE

  The coffee table was from California, too, covered with art books and dishes of candy, like in its former life. Dodo loved treats, which meant that nearly any cabinet or drawer of hers had something sweet stashed in it. Art and candy, and a bright yellow couch: that was Dodo Fabricant in a nutshell.

  “Did you inherit my love of Matisse’s cutouts?” Dodo asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cricket said. There was a book about the cutouts open on the coffee table. Cricket moved it closer and looked through it.

  “What was so exceptional about the cutouts was his preoccupation with negative space. No one had done that before. It was like preparing for death,” Dodo said. “What I love about Matisse is that when he got old and was unable to move the way he used to, he just invented a new medium. The cutouts are a whole body of work, a whole style of expression that gives dignity and purpose to the time in life when most people quit and stop trying. Here, look at this one. This is one of my favorites.”

  Dodo showed Cricket a series of blue-and-white images. They were of women, or shapes like women, dancing in a circle. Cricket could see what Dodo meant. The white shapes in the picture were as prominent and as beautiful as the blue shapes were. Your eye focused on the background and the foreground equally. It was hard to tell which, if either, was supposed to register more in your brain.

  “Everyone is so thrilled about the accomplishments of modern medicine. But not me.” Dodo sighed. “My hero, Henri, cut through it, he got right at the substance. Aren’t they wonderful? Have you seen them at the museum?”

  This was the thing about Dodo: when you worried that maybe she didn’t know what was going on and was very forgetful, she’d surprise you by having the most interesting conversation with you.

  “Dodo, no offense, but when I go to a museum I usually go to the Museum of Natural History.”

  “I am not the least bit offended. Art and science are the most important conversations worth having. They should be taught together.”

  Cricket had no idea how Dodo was going to justify that remark. Science was understandable and provable. Art was something else entirely. In fact, the difference between art and science was at the root of all the great stories she had heard about her grandfather and her grandmother. Her grandfather had been a doctor and a scientist. Dodo was an artist and had become a collector.

  “You doubt your old grandmother. But I’m right. Why do you love rocks so much? Pass me that candy.”

  Cricket passed her grandmother a dish of gummy bears.

  “Because they’re always changing and they have so many stories to tell and people just walk all over them without noticing.”

  “Stories about what?” Dodo asked, chewing on a red bear.

  “The world, the way things were, I guess.” Cricket was used to Richard and Bunny. They ignored her love affair with rocks, hoping it would go away before turning into something more serious.

  Cricket put her head on her grandmother’s lap. Dodo’s fingers were bent in odd ways because of her arthritis. When Dodo put her fingers through Cricket’s hair it was like being stroked by a glamorous bird with talons.

  “The reason you look at rocks is why I look to art,” Dodo said. “Scientists and artists want the same thing, to make sense of the world. Religion wants that, too. But let’s leave that one alone. Your grandfather was a doctor, you know. But he was really a poet. You are a scientific artist. That’s wonderful.”

  “Talk about Dodie,” Cricket said. Cricket had never known him. She wished she had. She knew that he had loved ketchup. That navy blue was his favorite color. That he always picked out the chocolate-covered almonds from the bridge mix and ate them himself without sharing. But she hadn’t had any adventures with him.

  “He would have thought you were a miracle,” Dodo said.

  “Why?”

  “We weren’t the best parents, Cricket. I couldn’t wait to start over. You were a new beginning.”

  “I don’t think my mother thinks I’m the best daughter.”

  “Oh, darling. I wonder if that’s part of growing up. How tragic. I promise you, she loves you. She’s in awe of you.”

  “But I’m not organized and I like to pretend.”

  “Opposites attract. If everyone were the same, where would we be? The most boring place imaginable.” Dodo rubbed her arms with her hands. “I’m cold. Will you go get me a sweater?”

  Cricket wandered down the hall to the bedroom. The walls were lined with old photographs of her grandparents, Bunny when she was younger, Cricket as a newborn morphing into the eleven-year-old she was now. She’d been looking at these photographs her whole life. Like the yellow couch, these pictures made Cricket feel safe.

  Cricket ran her hands along the sweaters hanging in Dodo’s closet. She wondered what had happened to
all her other clothes. Were they donated to strangers? She used to have way more. Cricket picked out a soft blue cardigan and took it off the hanger. It would make Dodo’s eyes bluer, like cutouts in a Matisse collage.

  Cricket returned to the yellow couch and put the blue sweater around her grandmother’s shoulders.

  “Families are incredible inventions, Cricket,” Dodo said. “Dodie and I made Bunny. And she and Richard made you. Now I get to sit here with a little piece of all of us.”

  17

  A WALK IN THE PARK WITH DODO

  “Hey, Poopsie,” Dodo said, clapping her hands together. “Enough sitting.” She had the twinkle in her eye Cricket loved. “We’re on our own. Let’s go have an adventure.”

  “Oh, yes!” Cricket said. “Let’s run away!”

  Yesterday she’d abandoned the thought of running away. But now it seemed like a great idea all over again.

  The bag she’d packed yesterday was still ready.

  She ran down the hall to her apartment, changed out of her pajamas, and threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and put on sunblock to make her mother proud. But she was running away from Bunny, so who cared?

  With her duffel bag slung over her shoulder and the door securely locked, she went back to Dodo’s.

  “Are you ready?” Cricket asked.

  “Hello,” Dodo said, smiling. Her expression was one Cricket had never seen before. Like Dodo was either deep in thought or lost between ideas. If her eyes hadn’t been open, Cricket would have thought Dodo was dreaming.

  “I’m ready for our adventure,” Cricket said, hoping Dodo would return from wherever she was.

  “Oh, yes! I was waiting for you,” her grandmother said. She got up and put on her trench coat, her scarf, and her sunglasses. Cricket put down her duffel bag in the hallway and fetched Dodo’s rolling suitcase from the bedroom. They locked the front door and went to wait for the elevator. The beauty of this day was that Bunny couldn’t stop them. If Bunny were here, instead of being an hour away, stuck in the usual traffic on the Long Island Expressway, she would be putting an end to this escapade. Dragging her mother and her daughter over to the calendar. Showing them that no one was going on any adventure anywhere because it didn’t say so on the calendar.

  When they reached the lobby, Cricket saw that Nosy Pete was not at his post. She heard him rummaging about in the package room next to the mailboxes. Sneaking out was no problem.

  In just a few moments she and Dodo were standing a half block away, deciding where to go.

  “I love the park,” Dodo said.

  “Me, too,” Cricket said. “Wanna start there?” Most of Cricket’s adventures began there.

  “Absolutely,” Dodo said. They entered the park where Cricket usually did, between Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Streets. The small wheels of Dodo’s suitcase occasionally got hung up on the uneven pavement. The noise of the wheels was like a musical introduction to their impending arrival.

  The walking paths in Central Park were a series of loops—lovely, but not very direct. It was like the designers hadn’t been interested in efficiency. When Cricket was in a hurry to reach a particular destination, she often went off the path. But Dodo, sensible walking shoes or not, was no spring chicken and the luggage would be more of a nuisance off the pavement. Today Cricket would stay on the paths. The weather was very pleasant and the park was quite populated.

  Cricket soon felt encumbered by carrying her duffel bag and pulling Dodo’s bag. So she stopped at a bench to consolidate the luggage. The duffel fit inside Dodo’s suitcase easily, and now she had one fewer thing to carry. “Aren’t you clever?” her grandmother said once they set off again.

  Columbus Circle was just a few blocks south on their right. Cricket disliked the traffic and the subway being so close by. She guided them straight ahead, deeper into the park.

  “I just love the energy. Don’t you?” Dodo said. She stopped at a hot dog cart and pulled her wallet out of her small handbag. She and Cricket shared a pretzel, and they watched the runners and bikers streaming by on West Drive, which was closed to cars. “So many different kinds of people. Fitness types, dog walkers with their yapping animals, mothers and the nannies, so many babies. So many birds. So many people using one place in so many ways. It’s terrific.”

  Cricket went to the park, for the most part, to avoid people, but out of respect for Dodo she acknowledged all the people that Dodo was enchanted by. She felt like a tourist in her own city. If she was a tourist, maybe she’d just flown in from Istanbul. Or returned from a long, cold winter in the Canadian Rockies.

  “Dodo, can I show you one of my favorite spots?”

  “Sure.”

  Umpire Rock was a place Cricket mainly went to with other kids. She hoped Dodo would like it as much as she did. She was about to introduce two very good friends who’d never met. Dodo would definitely appreciate the crowd assembled on top. The sun worshippers in various states of undress, the people napping, the man sketching, and all the kids climbing, pretending the rock was somewhere else.

  Cricket could see her favorite rock behind the baseball fields. But getting Dodo there took a long time because Dodo wanted to spy and listen to a man playing his guitar. Cricket handled the introductions when they finally got there.

  “This is Umpire Rock. Umpire Rock, this is Dodo.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” Dodo said.

  “This rock has had quite a life. It lived through an ice age.”

  “I’m pretty old, but I’ve never lived through an ice age. Did you get this from a guidebook? Your grandfather always liked to read from the guidebook,” Dodo said.

  “I’ve read about it in geology books,” Cricket said. “This rock is, like, four hundred and fifty million years old. It’s been underground and then came back up. It’s kind of famous.”

  She wanted to show her grandmother the different kinds of erosion on display. Since they couldn’t climb up and look at the top, they’d have to examine the sides. She nestled the suitcase in a little nook in the side of the rock and led Dodo around to another part.

  “Where are we going?” Dodo asked. She followed Cricket carefully and slowly on a wood chip–covered trail. The ground was uneven from roots and stones. For the first time Cricket could understand someone being afraid of another person falling.

  “Here,” Cricket said. She placed her grandmother’s hand on the splintered façade of her favorite rock. “This is what I wanted to show you. The top of the rock, where all those people are sitting, is very smooth from glacial drag. But this part isn’t.”

  “Glacial what?”

  “Glacial drag. It takes thousands of years for ice sheets to melt. As they do, they travel, dragging tons of debris with them. The Wisconsin Ice Sheet reached New York City, right where we are standing, about twenty thousand years ago. The ice weighed tons and tons. Can you imagine how much pressure bearing down that was? That’s a lot of scraping and smoothing. But right here is a different kind of erosion. A more subtle kind.”

  What they were touching didn’t feel very subtle. The jagged pieces were sharp, like the work of an ax or an ice pick that had hacked away at the side of the rock.

  “Every day,” Cricket continued, “especially during an ice age, water seeps into tiny little holes on the surface of a rock. The water expands when it freezes and contracts when it melts. After a few million years of pressure from constant stretching and shrinking, the rock starts cracking from the inside out, until pieces start falling off.”

  “Cricket, that is fascinating. It occurs to me that what you are describing is so true. No good comes from exerting too much pressure, or from dragging anyone anywhere. You’ve got to just leave people alone.”

  Cricket had been referring to erosion, but she had a feeling Dodo might be talking about Bunny. Same principle, either way.

  She helped Dodo back along the dirt to the paved path and then she retrieved their suitcase.

&nb
sp; Where to go next? This was her park, not Dodo’s. She surveyed the surroundings. They had Heckscher Ballfields nearby. But she knew watching a ball game wouldn’t be appealing to either of them. As a West Sider, Cricket spent less time on the east side of the park, so naturally that seemed like the best direction for adventure. They made their way along the path toward the drive, which looped across the bottom of the park and ran up the east side. Strangely, the drive seemed more dangerous with all the bikes and the Rollerbladers and the joggers instead of the cars that usually traveled across town. Cricket took Dodo’s hand. They’d always held hands before crossing streets because Dodo was the grownup. Now it felt like Cricket was.

  As they walked alongside the drive, the sound of calliope music coming from the carousel was undeniable. As far as Cricket was concerned, three dollars still bought one of the best things in New York City. Cricket didn’t think she’d ever stop enjoying riding the carousel, but she never went if she was alone—it would be embarrassing. It wouldn’t be embarrassing with Dodo, and it would give Cricket a rest from pulling the bag. The bag was getting cumbersome. They bought two tickets and climbed on deck. They were the oldest patrons. All the kids wanted horses, preferably the ones that went up and down, so Cricket and Dodo had their pick of either of the two carriages. They arranged themselves on a forward-facing seat of a carriage pulled by two black stallions. If only these horses and this carriage could take them the rest of the way.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What?” Dodo said.

  “It’s loud,” Cricket said.

  “What?” Dodo asked again. The minute they started spinning, Cricket was surprised by the speed of the ride. They were flying. Had she been scared on it as a child? Or just excited? She didn’t remember spinning this fast.

  She held on to Dodo, who smiled and seemed to be enjoying herself. Cricket had no idea if they’d been sitting in their carriage for five minutes or fifteen before the music wound down and the spinning got slower and slower. When they got off, Cricket asked the man at the ticket booth how long the ride was. Four and half minutes, he said.