Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman

  We march into the Ramble, keeping far to the west of the area where I saw the homeless man. We climb a flight of stairs and cross one of the many small bridges over the stream that curves through the Ramble. There is a small field below us, and William holds on to a tree and leans out over the edge of the rocky path.

  “What're those?” he says. He points his stick at a cluster of what appear to be plastic milk containers hanging from the tree branches, decorated with Frisbees.

  “I haven't the faintest idea. Bird feeders, maybe?”

  He frowns, suspiciously, and we continue walking.

  “I can smell gold,” he says. “We must be close to the hut. Are we close to the hut, do you think?”

  “I don't really know. I can't remember what part of the Ramble it was in. We'll find it if we keep wandering around.”

  He stomps his foot into an icy puddle. “It's cold.”

  “If we pick up our pace a little, we'll warm up.”

  We cross a small, high bridge between two bluffs of schist. William hangs over the rail for a moment, and I move closer to him, ready to snatch him if he loses his balance. He coughs loudly, gathering mucus from his throat. Then he spits over the side. We watch his clot of saliva travel to the icy stream.

  I say, “Excellent aim.”

  He stands up and we continue walking. A few minutes later we somehow arrive on the same bridge; the path has switched back and led us in a circle.

  William clicks his tongue impatiently. “Why don't we just go to the Dairy and buy a map?”

  “Because that would be cheating. We have to explore until we find it. Did Coronada have a map?”

  “Coronado. Not Coronada.” He has stopped walking. His stick is leaning on the toe of his boot. “I want to get a map.”

  “We can't.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Just because. Come on. Pretend we're in uncharted territory, and there are no maps.”

  We walk on for a while longer, getting colder and colder. Soon I begin to realize that while it might have been fun to be explorers who find a little wooden hut in the Ramble, it is no fun at all to play at being failed explorers. It's no fun stumbling around the Azalea Pond when there are no azaleas and the pond is frozen, and it is no fun worrying about homeless men hiding under rocks. When I twist my ankle on a root I decide that Coronado was an idiot and it served him right not to find the Seven Cities of Cibola. I look at my watch.

  “Maybe being explorers isn't such a great idea,” I say.

  “The Ramble is boring.”

  “Okay, what about if we do something totally different. What about if we go to the very northern-most part of the park.”

  “And do what?”

  I waggle my eyebrows mysteriously and lead the way out of the Ramble. Unfortunately, this takes a while, because I am completely lost. Finally, through sheer luck and the force of my determination, we somehow end up on the far eastern side of the park. I spot the statue of the panther, crouching over East Drive.

  “Aha!” I shout, and grab William's hand. We run up behind the statue. It is high above the road atop a slab of rock, much too high for us to jump down, but a little ways past the statue the hill slopes gently enough for us to scramble to the street.

  “That was an adventure,” I say.

  “We went off the path.”

  “I know. How cool is that!”

  “My mother would be so mad, Emilia.”

  “So don't tell her.”

  While he is considering adding this to our litany of secrets, I drag him across the Glade to the exit at Seventy-ninth Street.

  I instruct our cabdriver to take us to the Conservatory Garden, near 105th Street. If I were on my own I would have walked, but I cannot imagine forcing a little boy to march nearly thirty blocks.

  I have not spent much time in the garden. It is a little formal for my tastes, the north end particularly, with its geometric rings of shrubs and its fountains. The south end is actually my favorite, an English perennial garden, but there is not much to see there in the winter; most of it is dried and shriveled, cut back and hibernating in anticipation of a glorious spring and summer. I will bring William back here in late April or early May, when the crab-apple allées carpet the paths with pink petals. It's ridiculously beautiful here in the spring.

  William, his mood salvaged by the warm cab ride and a soft pretzel, likes the garden. He asks at least four hundred and sixty questions about species of flowers. Even if it were the height of spring, even if the air was filled with swirling petals, I would not be able to identify enough subspecies of flora for William. I tell him that there are twenty thousand tulip bulbs planted in the garden and that we can return in May to see them bloom, and somehow the magnitude of this number appeases his curiosity, even though there is nothing to see of the slumbering flowers.

  When we come across the Secret Garden Fountain stuck in the frozen water-lily pool in the South Garden, William claims not to know who Frances Hodgson Burnett is, nor to have read the book.

  “That is appalling,” I say. “That is an appalling hole in your education that I am going to have to remedy immediately.”

  “The Secret Garden is a girl's book,” William says, aghast at the very idea of reading such a thing.

  Only when I inform him that it is probably much too difficult for him does he instruct me to purchase him a copy immediately.

  The hellebores fascinate William. I had hoped we would be able to see their drooping white, pink, green, and dark purple flowers but it is still too early. They will bloom next month, I suppose.

  “They're poisonous,” I say in a very dramatic, Creature Feature voice. “If you eat a blossom or leaf you'll die. Shall we take some to slip in someone's tea?”

  “We'll be arrested,” he says.

  “Only if you tell.”

  He ponders this. “Who should we kill?”

  I consider his question. He knows too many of the people on my list.

  “Let's walk back up to the North Garden,” I say, instead.

  We meander to the fountain of the Three Dancing Maidens. The fountain is turned off, of course, because of the cold. We look at it for a moment. “It's prettier with the water running,” I say.

  “Hey,” William says, “look at that.” He points to the far side of the concentric rings of low shrubs surrounding the fountain. “They're making a movie.”

  Across the bank of flowers is a little huddle of people, two men and a woman. For a moment, I think the men might be identical twins. They are both bald, with tiny soul patches under their lower lips, and thick-rimmed glasses. They are wearing complementary puffy down jackets, one black with orange piping, the other orange with a black racing stripe. The woman is neither bald nor bearded, but also seems to be part of their fashion family, in her red acrylic ski cap, torn hip-hugger jeans over heavy boots, and rhinestone cat's-eye glasses. There was a time when I tried to affect a version of this hip-hop East Village chic, although the digital movie camera, beat-up leather cases, and light meters heaped around the ankles of this trio lend them an air of artistic authenticity I always lacked in my club-hopping days. Somehow I usually ended up looking like what I was: a girl from New Jersey, with an unfortunately tenuous grasp on what constituted style.

  I say, “My favorite movie of all time, Where's Poppa?, was shot in the park. George Segal puts on a gorilla suit so he can run across the park at night. I love that movie because George Segal's mother pulls down his pants and kisses him right on the butt.”

  William has been leaning over to break a dried twig off one of the hedges, but he is halted in mid-bend. “That is so gross, Emilia.”

  “Haven't your parents ever kissed you on the butt?”

  “No!”

  “Remind me to tell your dad to kiss you on the butt today.”

  “No way!”

  “Or maybe I should kiss you on the butt right now.” I lunge in his direc
tion and he shrieks, tearing around an ice-frosted, low-clipped shrub. I chase him and then catch him in my arms, scooping him up in the air. I make loud kissing noises in the direction of his rear end and he shrieks, laughing so hard that he can barely breathe. I am laughing, too, almost as hysterically as he is.

  The movie-making team desultorily swings the camera around, as if distracted from their work by our boisterous games.

  I set him on the ground and William tries to divert my attention from his unprotected rear end. “Tell me some other movies that were filmed in the park,” he says.

  “Let's see. Hair. And Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman jogging around the Reservoir. Don't see that one if you ever want to go to the dentist again.”

  “I like my dentist. He's a friend of my mother's.”

  “You like your dentist? That figures.”

  He ponders this for a moment. “My dentist is my mother's special friend.”

  “Her special friend?” I repeat.

  “You know. Her boyfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  “Any more?”

  “Any more what?” I say.

  “Movies. In the park.”

  I force myself to dismiss Carolyn and her special impregnating dentist from my mind. “Well, When Harry Met Sally. Oh, I know one you must have seen. Ghostbusters. You've seen Ghostbusters, right?”

  “No.”

  “I'll rent it for you. Next time your father lets us get a DVD.”

  “I wonder what movie those guys are making,” William says.

  “Why don't we go ask them?”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  We cross the garden. One of the twins is busy removing the camera from the tripod and packing it away in its case. The other is folding up a round, white reflecting screen.

  “Excuse me,” I say.

  The woman in the red stocking cap looks up.

  “We were wondering if you were making a movie.”

  “We're scouting shots for a film.”

  “What film?” I say.

  “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.”

  William gasps. “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, like the book Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile?” he says.

  The woman laughs. “Supposed to be. We'll see.”

  William is so excited that he is bouncing on his tiptoes. “I love that book. My mom read it to me, and then I read it to myself. I love it. I love Lyle.”

  One of the bald men says, “The first Thursday in March we're going to be shooting crowd scenes at the Children's Zoo. For the scene where Mr. Grumps sends Lyle to live at the zoo.”

  “I love that part,” William breathes.

  “You should come,” the woman says. “They'll need plenty of extras. Check-in is at around two PM.”

  “Can we, Emilia, can we please?”

  “I don't know, William. I'll have to talk to your mom. Thursdays you're at your mom's.”

  “Switch with her. Just switch with her! Please! I love Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. It's my favorite book. It's the best book I've ever read in my whole life.”

  There is no chance that Carolyn will let me have him on a Thursday. She will say no, but somehow contrive things so that I end up looking like the wicked stepmother for promising something I cannot deliver.

  I say, “First of all, The Amber Spyglass is your favorite book. I've never even heard you talk about Lyle. And I would remember, William, because The House on East 88th Street was one of my favorite books when I was a little girl. My father used to read it to me all the time. You even have it on your bookshelf, and I swear I'm the only person who's ever opened it.” When my father would read me the Lyle stories he would do all the voices, including that of Hector P. Valenti, Lyle's former owner and dance partner. My father does a terrible South American accent.

  William shakes his head. “The Amber Spyglass is my this year's favorite book. You just don't know me very well, Emilia. If you knew me you'd know that Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is my very favorite book of all time. It's better than The House on East 88th Street. Much better. I just haven't read it recently, Emilia, because I'm reading other things. But that doesn't mean it isn't my favorite. It is.” And then he gets an idea. He pastes a winning smile to his face. A large, crocodilian grin. “And since it's your favorite, too, don't you want to be in the movie?”

  “We'll talk about it,” I say. “Let's go over to the Harlem Meer now. We can fish. They have fishing poles at the discovery center that they let people borrow.”

  “I don't want to go fishing. I want to be in the movie. Please, Emilia. Promise me you'll take me.”

  “I said we'll talk about it. Come on, let's go to the Meer.”

  “But . . .”

  “We'll talk about it, William,” I say.

  He grudgingly follows me out the garden gates and around the Meer. The Dana Discovery Center on the far side is beautifully renovated, a tiny brick jewel at the farthest north point of the park. The contrast from the time I visited here with my father when I was only a few years older than William could not be starker. However, when we arrive, the dour-faced park employee is incredulous at our request. Why would anyone want to fish in February?

  “The Meer is full of ice,” she says.

  “But the fish are still there,” I point out to her. “It's not like you removed them.”

  She will not indulge such foolishness. Neither William nor I is particularly interested in her alternative suggestion of exploring the ecology exhibits in the discovery center.

  “Well, we can always go look for fish,” I say. “Who needs to catch them anyway?” I want so desperately to resume our high spirits, but the cheer in my voice is plainly false and William isn't having any of it.

  “It's too bad we don't have any of those hellebores,” I say. “We could drop them in the Meer and poison us some fish.”

  He doesn't laugh.

  It has started to drizzle when we walk out the door of the discovery center. Once again I have left the house without an umbrella.

  “It's raining,” William says.

  “Only a little. Let's go pretend to kill some fish.”

  “I think we'd better go home. It's cold, and I don't want to get wet.”

  “Do you know what Meer means? It means ‘lake' in Dutch.”

  “I don't care.” He is sulking now.

  “Oh come on, William. We came all the way uptown, we can't leave without seeing the Meer up close.” I grab his hand and start running toward the water. The raindrops are cold on my face but I am trying to have fun. I can see us in my mind's eye, how we must look to an observer, a mother and her young son, laughing and running through the rain. Except only I am laughing. William is slow and when I try to speed up he resists. When we get close to the water's edge he jerks his hand, trying to wrench free. I slip and fling my arms forward to keep from falling. I am still holding William's hand, though, and with a splat, he falls to the ground, his feet and legs splayed before him. His butt is planted firmly on the muddy curb at the water's edge, but his feet and legs crash right through the brittle membrane of ice into the freezing water.

  “Oh shit,” I say. “Shit, shit, shit.” I pull him to his feet. “Are you okay? I'm so sorry, William.”

  “You threw me in the lake! You threw me in the lake!”

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. This is the second time you made me fall down. Once ice-skating and now you threw me in the lake. I'm soaking wet again, and my jeans are all dirty and muddy. My mom is going to be so mad at you, Emilia! She is going to kill you!”

  “It was an accident, William. I slipped. I'm sorry.”

  “I want to go home now,” he says. “I hate this place. It's dirty and cold and I hate it. I hate it.”

  “Okay, just calm down. We'll go home right now. Come on.”

  William does not even look up as we pass under the Duke Ellington Memorial. I try to point out the columns with the nine nude caryatid figures representing the muses. I say, “Look, Sir Duke is j
ust standing there on top next to his grand piano. He's not even playing.”

  William stumbles along next to me, refusing to lift his face.

  “It's twenty-five feet tall,” I say, desperately.

  William is silent.

  “Stevie Wonder made up the nickname Sir Duke. I think he might be the only one who called him that. You know who Stevie Wonder is, don't you?” I try to do a Stevie Wonder imitation, waggling my head back and forth and plonking on imaginary piano keys while I sing, but the only song I can think of is “Ebony and Ivory.”

  William makes a sound like an angry cat, half hiss and half snarl. I shut up and stare at the hideous memorial. The columns reach between the muses' legs into their pubic clefts like massive phalluses. What have poor Duke Ellington and Harlem done to deserve such an ugly memorial?

  There are, of course, no taxis to be had and soon I am almost as frantic as William. I cannot believe I'm getting this kid wet again. I cannot believe I have no umbrella. I cannot believe this is all happening one more time. Finally, when we are soaked through, our hair plastered to our heads, I wave down a gypsy cab. William balks but I push him into the backseat. There are no shoulder belts but the car is clean and dry.

  “Central Park West and Eighty-first,” I say to the driver.

  We ride in silence for a while, then I say, “William, I think maybe this should be another secret.”

  William says, “No way.”

  Chapter 22

  When we arrive at our building we find Jack standing in the lobby, talking baseball with the new weekend doorman.

  “Sometimes, Mr. Woolf, I get a little jealous of those Yankee fans. I hate to admit it, but—”

  “You're killing me, Rodrigo.”

  “I could only admit it to you.”

  Jack shakes his head. “I'm losing respect for you very quickly, here.”

  “Daddy!” William calls from the front door. He spreads his arms wide, but not in an invitation to an embrace, rather to exhibit his befouled little self.

  “Hey Will! What happened to you? You're a mud ball.”

  “Emilia threw me in the lake. She threw me right in the freezing lake.”

  I do not stop. I simply shake my head, walk by, and punch the call button for the elevator.