by David Hicks
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones . . . and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head . . . .
He squinted into the sun and found a spot near those very stones. He tried to tune out the music and conversations, tried to imagine what the pond looked like without the coolers, the canvas folding chairs, the people. An orange Frisbee glided by, a dog dashing after it. Kids splashed around in the cold water. Nearby, a husband and wife carried on a hissing argument, while about a dozen overdressed academics strolled the perimeter, their conference lanyards hanging like albatrosses from their necks. Along the shore, wooden scaffolding braced the soil, to stave off erosion. Flynn wondered how strong the braces were. He wondered how much longer they would hold.
Could a pond be saved by faith?
He settled back, opened his bag, and took out the sandwich he had bought in town: roast beef with melted Muenster on a toasted hard roll. He took a bite and closed his eyes, chewing. Then he pulled out the batch of final essays he needed to grade. On top was Mark Pietrovic’s.
At first I thought Thoreau was a flake. Then I realized who else we called flakes: Christ, Galileo, Q Scirocco. As Emerson said, “To be great is to be misunderstood” . . . .
Thoreau believed we should advance confidently in the direction of our dreams. It’s hard to argue with that. So why am I a Business major? Because my father told me to be. Why do I want to get married and have two kids? Because everyone else does. Is everyone else happy? I don’t know anyone who is—not even my professors. So why do I want to be like everyone else? What’s my dream?
Then, at the end: This paper has no thesis.
Flynn took out his pen and stared at the essay, but his heart was pounding. He put away the pile of papers, stretched out on the ground, and put his bag behind his head, suddenly exhausted.
But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither?
Words arrived from far off and hung in the air, just out of reach.
Transience.
Starry.
Winged.
*
When he awakened, the sun was setting, and people were packing up. He had slept deeply. His head was lighter, and his forehead felt sunburned. He knew he should go back to the conference hotel for the keynote address, but he decided to stay a while longer, until the pond had cleared out. Then he would see it for what it really was: more trees than when Thoreau was there, the landscape lush and green, the water still bejeweled, still deep.
Still alive. Still a kind of temple. Still sacred.
By the time the last person left, it was twilight. Flynn stripped and stood on the shore. He looked down at his body, at his ribs, his skinny legs. He needed to put some flesh on his bones.
He stepped into the pond. Although the temperature had reached at least eighty degrees that afternoon, the water was still cold. It was even colder with the next step, as the bottom dropped out from under his feet. He resisted the impulse to climb back up to shore. Instead he treaded water, shivering but invigorated. To be awake is to be alive. For the first time in years, he felt aroused. He looked up at the appearing stars, stirring from his long slumber:
Heaving exuviae.
Carpe diem.
Resurrection.
He cast out toward the middle, knowing it was unwise. Hypothermia. Paralysis. Rigor mortis. He shivered violently, noting the water’s depth, its darkness. But he kept on, with smooth, careful breast strokes, the icy water bathing his body. He imagined the cells of his skin hydrating and awakening. His head had cleared; he felt a curious lightness in his brain.
Resolute.
He plunged down into the wet sky, the cool liquid stars.
OH MY MAN I LOVE HIM SO
If you knew us in college you wouldn’t have seen this coming. He was a nice guy then. Quite the charmer! He was on the baseball team, but he wasn’t a jerk like some of the other guys. The first time I saw him he was injured, he had a broken leg, he was sitting on the ground while his teammates practiced, and he was cheering them on, telling them to hustle and stuff like that. He had shorts on. Say what you will about Hawk, he has nice legs. Plus a flat stomach—back then. This was a long time ago. He was a sweet guy, or at least I thought so. That’s what we all thought! Not Mister Mope as I call him now. He drank a little too much maybe, but he did great in school, he got mostly A’s as I recall, except in Math. Statistics—that was the only class we took together, and we both got C’s I think. He hung out with the potheads too but he didn’t smoke much, or at least that’s according to him. Anyways the first time I saw him, out there on the baseball field, he waved hi, I waved hi back, and I felt my heart go pitty-pat. It was that thing you hear about, you know? I just knew it, I knew he was the one. His smile. The way he smiles, his eyes almost close up, it’s so adorable. I told Mickey, she was my best friend back then (these days she goes by her real name, Michaela), “I’m going to marry that man.”
Me, I didn’t drink or smoke pot or anything. Still don’t. Well right now I’m having a little wine, but that’s because I’m upset, understandably I’d say. Justifiably. Plus I’m an adult, but we’re talking about back then, back in college. So you know, from the beginning—I guess this is what I want to say—from the beginning, contrary to what you might think from the separation agreement, or what I like to call the “pack of lies,” I was the responsible one.
At first we were friends. I’d see him around campus, the school wasn’t very big. He called me “Mad Dog” because apparently there was some notorious Irish terrorist with the same last name as mine and that was this terrorist guy’s nickname. Him I called “Hawk,” because that’s what the guys on the team called him. Anyway, it was cute. I’d say “Hey there, Hawk!” and he’d say, “Mad Dog!”
Why him, you probably want to know. I’ve been asking myself that a lot. I had a boyfriend before him from back home, Sam was his name. Tall and preppy. But you know, you can’t make sense of these things. You either feel that flutter in your stomach or you don’t, right? And I certainly felt it with Hawk.
There was this time. He was in the cafeteria, loading up his tray of course, he was and still is quite a big eater, and Mickey and I were at the end of line, and the girls in front of me were talking about him, you know, kind of checking him out—he was a junior and we were freshmen—so I called out “Hey Hawk, save some food for the rest of us!” and everyone laughed, and he kind of leaned back, gave us a big smile and said, “Mike and the Mad Dog!”—which was apparently the name of some sports show in New York City. When we walked past his table, he handed me a little plate from his tray with a piece of coconut-chocolate cake on it and said, “Here you go, there was only one piece left.” I blushed like you wouldn’t believe, thanked him, and went to my table. And I know this is such a little thing, I’m sure it seems silly, but that, the fact that he had noticed that I liked that kind of cake, well that meant a lot to me, that’s all.
Not long afterwards he asked me out, and he was very sweet. He called me Rachel instead of Mad Dog or “Rayche” or “Ray-mac,” which is what everyone else called me. He said, “May I have the honor of taking you to a movie on Friday?” Well sure, mister smooth-talker! We saw Sleepless in Seattle, which is still my favorite movie of all time (I absolutely adore Tom Hanks!). We wound up back in his room, which I won’t get into right now, but let’s just say he was a gentleman and didn’t pressure me to do what I wasn’t ready to do. But after that night, nothing. No phone call even. I was pretty naïve back then. I thought we were a couple! But we never, like, agreed to that I guess, so to him it was just a casual date. I’ll never understand men. Mickey said well he’s from the city and remember, you’re an upstate girl. And she was right. I grew up in a very sheltered environment, the youngest of six, so I was the baby, and boy did I get spoiled, as my brothers will tell you. I was cute as a button, I was. Quite the
little tomboy. Bright red hair and red cheeks too. By the time I went to college I hadn’t done anything: no sex, no drugs, and not much rock and roll even, and I was commuting from home, which was just fifteen minutes away, so nothing much changed. Then when I was a junior, after Hawk graduated (we’re the same age, but I got left back a year when I was in elementary school and he skipped a year), I moved into Mickey’s apartment and then I went through some stuff we’re not going to get into here. All part of growing up, in retrospect.
Anyhoo, it wasn’t until years later I saw my chance. Hawk was part of a group of guys called the Marathon Men, him and all of his buddies from Newing Hall. In their senior year they played softball for three straight days on Memorial Day weekend, dawn to dusk. They played a different team every hour, like the third floor Mountainview girls at one o’clock, the Athletics coaches at two o’clock, a group of professors at three—and they charged every team an entry fee that went to that charity that helps the kids with cancer, I forget the name. It was all Hawk’s idea. I think he missed being on the school team, because he quit after the year he had the broken leg, and this was his way to relive his glory or something. But it was a nice thing. They played softball all day and they drank all night . . . well what am I talking about? They drank right on the field, there was a keg at third base! Then at the end, on the last day, one of the kids who had cancer came to the field and accepted the check and I think there was a TV camera there. And so after Hawk and his buddies graduated the younger guys kept up the tradition, and five years later the younger guys invited the original Marathon Men to play them, like an Old-Timers Day, and the youngsters probably thought the older guys were out of shape but what actually happened was that the old-timers kicked the young bucks’ butts! Anyways I heard about this reunion game and I was already losing weight from my Pilates classes and I knew this was something Hawk would show up for, so I kicked it into high gear and by the time that weekend came I had lost a total of twenty pounds and I had a tan and I was looking pretty good if I do say so myself! When Hawk saw me he didn’t recognize me at first and then he did and he said “Wow, Mad Dog, you’re a knockout,” which is the kind of expression my dad would use. Part of his charm I guess. By the end of the night he was back at my apartment. Hey a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do! But I was so nervous and I hadn’t been eating much so what actually happened was before we could go all the way I got sick to my stomach and he took care of me all night. What a sweetie he was.
WAS.
Anyways I was hooked at that point. I took some pictures that weekend and I had them developed immediately. One was of him out in centerfield, his hands on his knees, looking towards home plate. His hair was kind of long, his forearms were tan . . . yep, I used to stare at that picture. This is going to sound silly but I used to kiss it before I went to bed. You know that Barbra Streisand song, “My Man”? I used to sing that in my room at night, I imagined singing it to him when we were married. I imagined dancing with him at our wedding, with my parents watching. What would they think of their little tomboy daughter then!
At the time, three years after graduation, I was back living with them in Binghamton, and he was in New York, living in the Village, so we did the long-distance thing for a couple of years, and I never told him about this but I actually started dating Sam again, just once in a while, nothing serious, but then 9/11 happened and Hawk and I decided to move in together. I had a huge fight with my mom over it. He always joked about it, but he had no idea how much that devastated me, how hard it was for me to be so bold to her. She’s a tough cookie, that one. So I moved into his apartment in the east Village, which is by the way a disgusting neighborhood. (Two words: rats and cockroaches!) But I kept pestering him about it, so we were only there a few months and then we moved up to White Plains, near where he grew up, and he took the train down to the city when he needed to and I found work at this great place called Body Fit where I helped middle-aged men with arthritic knees and taught a couple of Pilates classes as well.
Oh I forgot to mention how we got engaged! Best day of my life! Or was, anyway. He took me to a beach. There’s one not too far from White Plains, though you’d never guess because it’s so crowded there, absolutely stuffed with people, but if you drive a little bit you end up in a town called Rye and there you are at the Long Island Sound. The beach is right next to Playland, that’s where Hawk worked when he was in high school, and that’s also where they filmed my second-favorite movie “Big.” (Tom Hanks again!) So we were still living in the city at the time, and we took the train up to White Plains, I met his mom (no comment on that, she’s a bitter old coot) and his sister (she’s quite the pistol, we’re friends to this day), and he borrowed his mom’s car and we drove there. On the way we stopped at his father’s grave, and he told me a little story about how when he was little he loved to ride his banana-seated bike with the high handlebars, and one day the chain came off, and he didn’t think his father could fix it, but he did, and when Flynn went to hug him his father pushed him away and said, “You’re a big boy now, no more hugging.” Now what do you think of that? That probably explains a lot. For me it’s the opposite, my dad’s a big mush but my mom, good luck getting a hug out of her.
I was so nervous the whole time we were at the beach. It was cold out, this was in the winter, so absolutely nobody was there. In fact I was worried he was going to break up with me! But instead what did he do? First we played the penny game, which is when we both toss a penny in the air and if they both landed on heads we kissed and if they both landed on tails the game was over, but if it was split then the one with heads got to ask a question and the one with tails had to answer truthfully. To be honest, it usually ended with a fight, he’s really stubborn and he always thinks he’s right, his mother spoiled him rotten if you ask me, but a little fight once in a while never scared me, no sir. But he was sweet that day, that whole day was sweet, so when he got heads and I got tails he dropped to one knee, reached into his pocket and held out the cutest little diamond ring you’ve ever seen, and I just started bawling. Dreams do come true—that’s what I always tell my Jane, my daughter, my mini-me, she’s such a dreamer, that one. So we put together a wedding, he took out a loan for it because he was still a graduate student, and it was a wonderful wedding if you ask me, at Saint Mary’s, my little church where I used to be in the choir. I have a huge family and they were all there. Father Bart said I was the most beautiful bride he ever saw, and that’s certainly how I felt.
After we were married, everything changed. Not obviously, mind you. It was subtle. He would make fun of my upstate accent, of the way I dress—everything was sarcasm with that man. Constantly making fun of me or making jokes that weren’t really jokes if you know what I mean. One time we were out with his professor friends, the most boring people on earth, and his buddy Kruger was saying something about a TV show and Hawk said, “Well Rachel watches eleven hours of TV a day so I’ll let her answer that question.” Yep, that’s when I stormed out, and he came outside and apologized left and right but Jeez, that hurt, you know? Then afterwards all he talked about was how I made such a scene in front of his friends and he was totally joking, why did I get so upset?
I would like to say this to him and to all New Yorkers: sarcasm is mean.
Long story short: I’m the one who supported him all through his PhD, or the last part anyway, and his horrible defense, all that stupid stuff. So phony. So intellectual, these people talking about things that have no basis in reality. Plus I gave that man two beautiful children! And what does he do? Our little girl wasn’t even two years old when he up and left us. Just left! God, it makes my ears burn just thinking about it.
Still, I’m holding out hope. I know he’s having an affair. I can see it in his eyes, I can smell it on his clothes. Once he gets that out of his system, he’ll come back. If not for me, then for the kids. He is, I’ll say this, he is a great dad. I can’t see him living without them. But in th
e meantime, I’m hedging my bets, as they say. I’ve been on a few dates with Gary, my sweet garage mechanic over at Quality Auto Care, and let me tell you, it feels GREAT to be treated like a lady again. A little flutter in the stomach. Not a big one, but it’s enough for now. Just in case this doesn’t work out.
DIAMOND DASH
During the long wait in line with thousands of children and their parents and guardians, a line that wrapped all the way around Shea Stadium and then some, I had twice resolved to leave, had twice determined that whatever this promotional gimmick was it couldn’t be worth it, standing for over an hour like this in the heat and humidity after sitting through yet another three-hour Mets loss, and I was also aware that in order to establish a trusting co-parenting relationship with my soon-to-be-ex wife I needed to bring our son back on time after such special outings; but Nathan, who was six, kept insisting it would be worth it, whatever “Diamond Dash” was, so we hung in there, shuffling forward, Nathan holding the back of my tee shirt from behind me, occasionally burying his face into the small of my back as he matched his steps with mine.
*
Nathan was five, Janey not even two, when I had left my marriage, following the Most Miserable Christmas of 2007 when my son and I shared a stomach virus and took turns vomiting. I waited until after the holidays because I didn’t want everyone to have such a lousy memory attached to that time of year. A few days after New Year’s, after putting the kids to bed, I spent an hour in the basement, sitting on the concrete floor with my head in my hands. I couldn’t bear to hurt Rachel, couldn’t fathom what this would do to the kids—I guess you could say that being a father was who I was—but I had lost over fifty pounds, I was crying every night, I had ferocious migraines, and I had been utterly unable to revive or manufacture any feelings of love for my wife. I had resolved to hang in there until Janey turned eighteen—Only sixteen more years, man, you can do it—but when I found myself standing on the side of the Bear Mountain Bridge, staring at the Hudson River rushing under me, I knew I wouldn’t survive that long.