by Paula Bomer
One of the more strategic events of Sonia’s days involves picking the right park in the Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn. Her two main concerns are the crowd—who will be there? will it be too crowded?—and in the summer, whether or not there is shade. In the winter, of course, she searches out the sunny spots. But the last thing she needs today is to cook in some hot-as-hell, breeze-free, garbage-can-and-diaper-stink asphalt playground. She opts for Carroll Park, a long walk down Court Street, but worth it for shade and general anonymity. She carries her cell phone, thinking to call a friend, but rarely does. She is a cell phone hater for the most part. The closer parks, the parks on Henry Street built near the Long Island College Hospital, have become for Sonia unbearably full of women who know each other. Incestuous. They’re nice playgrounds and she feels lucky to have them just around the corner from her Atlantic Avenue apartment, but socially, they feel like high school. Sonia hated high school, for the most part. She liked her friends, and she liked certain classes, but the in-group, the out-group, the viciousness of it, repelled her. At Carroll Park she occasionally runs into women she knows, but mostly these are women she likes, and more often, there’s no one she knows.
Sometimes this is what she wants. Anonymity. No small talk. Or big talk. To be alone in a crowd, or just to be alone. To maybe chat briefly with some mother she doesn’t know, but to be able to sit and read, or sit and think, occasionally pushing Mike in the swing or cuddling and tussling her boys before they leap up to run around like the maniacs they are. Because they are maniacs, really. Just like every other boy she knows, and some little girls. Wanting never to sit still, not even at mealtime, thank you, turning everything into a gun: their little fingers, a stick, a carrot, a plastic spoon. (Sonia, on pressure from all the other Brooklyn mothers, doesn’t buy toy guns for her kids.) Tom even once pointed a tampon at her he’d fished out of her purse. Sonia loves all this boy energy, the mayhem, the straightforward aggression. Having grown up with one sister, a ladylike little girl who made Sonia feel clutzy and wild, and her domineering mother, she loves having her boys. She loves their lack of passivity, their lack of calculation.
When Sonia arrives at Carroll Park, it’s early in the day yet, and all but empty. The air is still clear and slightly cool and an abundance of shady benches lie outstretched before her. On a far bench, at the end of the playground, is one other person, a friend of Sonia’s, a woman named Clara. They wave at one another. Short, mousy hair; big, plain brown eyes; a ski-jump nose; a bow mouth; wearing a collared shirt always, Clara is the most conservative person Sonia knows, in both dress and politics. Right out of a prep-school, field-hockey-uniform catalogue. Living proof that Talbot’s still matters greatly to many. Clara runs in marathons, plays tennis (Sonia wants to learn now too), has a beige couch with a matching beige armchair and a beige rug.
And yet, something is off with Clara. Something is deeply off with her, and it is this fucked-upness that Sonia is really drawn to. The outward appearance so controlled, so perfect, flawless, unassailable, and yet Clara is crazy, Sonia knows it—she just doesn’t know exactly how crazy, or why. Clara is someone that Sonia is happy to run into today. Her son Sam plays fairly well with Tom, and little Mike will follow the big boys around, content to watch their intricate play scenarios. They won’t let Mike play, unless they designate him the pet dog or, as was once the case, the giant rat, but Mike doesn’t care, as long as he doesn’t get hit or left totally behind. Neither does Sonia. And Clara’s daughter, Willa, either sits quietly by their side, playing tea party games by herself or finds another little girl to play with.
They smile and wave and say hello. They don’t embrace or even kiss the sides of cheeks. No contact. Clara is not like that. Sonia is flexible, very kiss-cheeky with mothers who like to be kiss-cheeky, and physically distant from those who prefer physical distance. Clara prefers distance. But she’s warm and kind and Sonia, despite feeling unwell—her mouth is dry, she’s a bit dizzy, could it all be psychological? She couldn’t really already be feeling horrible from the pregnancy—feels better in Clara’s presence. All that lovely beigeness, the desire for beigeness at least, emanating from her bones. And, frankly, Clara doesn’t know her that well. Clara is a new friend. Sonia feels like a blank slate around Clara. She feels she can reinvent herself. She feels hopeful, new, attractive.
But today there is also the question of whether to tell Clara that she’s pregnant. Although Sonia loves this new friendship, there is something to be said for knowing someone well before you tell them that you are pregnant and are not sure if you plan to keep the baby. Because Sonia is not sure. She has no idea what to do. There would be comfort in sharing the news of her state, and her ambivalence, with someone like Ginny, a woman who no longer lives in Brooklyn. Ginny, Sonia knows, has had a few unwanted pregnancies. Ginny believes in family planning. And regardless of the liberal posturing of many residents of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, almost everyone, or so it seems to Sonia, is really ruled by fear and hate. All the allegedly liberal mothers in her neighborhood—with the spiritual Eastern symbol tattoos and Crocs—really think being a mother is sacred. Children are sacred, and mothers should take care of them and be sacred, too. She met a Yoga instructor who once said that women with regular jobs deserved to have their children beaten by West Indian nannies because how could they leave their children all day? This, from a Yoga instructor! And then there was the actress, a friend she thought she knew, educated, hip, who had stared at her in disgust when Sonia admitted to having had an abortion and changed the subject immediately to stage acting versus film. No, Sonia could never tell what people were really thinking. And no one’s appearance guaranteed anything.
But that’s the thing about Clara. She looks so damn conservative. Yet lurking beneath the Izod and penny loafers is a mystery, something beyond conservative or liberal.
The boys run toward each other and then off to the jungle gym. Sonia sits on the bench, glancing down first to check for pigeon shit. A metal handrail separates her from Clara.
“Bill’s been out of town for a week now. I’m starting to go nuts,” Clara says. “Just a little bit. I mean, I’m fine. Sam and Willa are fine. But I find it hard sometimes when he’s gone on big business trips. He normally works late a few nights a week, but just to have him around a couple of nights, you know, and the weekend. I mean, Sam doesn’t even give a shit that his dad is gone. Isn’t that bad? What’s the point of having a father if he’s never around?”
“Dick’s been in Denver for two days and I can’t wait for him to return. It’s harder when they’re not here, for sure.” Sonia knows she’s a wimp in comparison to Clara. Dick hardly ever travels for business. Clara’s husband Bill is nearly always gone. At least two weeks out of the month. And yet, Clara has never complained to her before. She usually acts so nonchalant about Bill’s absences. “Why is this time different? With Bill being gone?”
“It’s not that this time is different. No, what I think is happening is that I’m realizing what our home is like. I’m newly aware of certain things, and I don’t know why that is. The weather? The beginning of summer? Something is making me see my home clearly and I don’t like what I see.” Clara looks over at Sam. He’s playing listlessly on the jungle gym. Sonia scans for her sons, too. The sun warms her head, and she’s feeling at peace for a moment. Sometimes, hearing other people’s troubles does this to her, gives her peace with her own shortcomings.
“Sam watches five hours of TV a day. Yesterday, for the first time, I kept track of how many videos I put in and how many times I turned on the cartoons and I counted, I goddamn counted how much TV he watched, and it was five hours. Five fucking hours of television. Now, maybe nothing’s wrong with that, but the truth is, he doesn’t talk very well for a four-year-old and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I tune out and stick him in front of the TV so much. He loves the TV on and I grew up with the TV on and I think I’m normal. But I just wonder if there was someone else around, if I weren’t so burn
t out all the time, if the TV would maybe be on less. And maybe Sam would talk better. And maybe I’d enjoy this whole motherhood thing more. I love my kids, you know that, but I just find the whole thing so damn hard. Why’s it so hard? And what if someone else were around, really around? Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Nadine, my babysitter. She’s a great babysitter, but she’s a babysitter. She’s not emotionally invested in my kids. She’s not. She cares for them, she takes good care of them, but she’s not their parent. It’s different. And Willa, bless her, she’s so easy on me, but I feel bad as a role model for her. I’m always tired. I sit around, tired. And she sits around me, looking tired, too. Like she’s trying to imitate me or something.”
Sonia nods. Willa stares at the two of them, her mouth set in a pout. She’s two, just like Mike, and yet nothing like Mike. She freaks Sonia out. Whereas with Mike, Sonia feels she can still say whatever she wants to in front of him, because he’s still in his little baby world, with Willa, she feels different. She feels spied upon. She feels judged. She feels like this little two-year-old girl is already sizing her up to see how she can bring her down. She feels like Willa knows how to be mean already. Not hitting on impulse, without thinking about it, like her boys do. Not that kind of meanness, not the behaving without thinking sort of spontaneous behavior. No, Willa, two-year-old Willa, who’s still in diapers, who still sucks on her thumb, already knows how to be a fucking bitch. She turns her brown eyes, eyes that look just like her mother’s, at Sonia and asks, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
Sonia hesitates. Could a two-year-old poison tea? Could she poison imaginary tea? Sonia takes her cup, but doesn’t pretend to sip, just holds it in her lap.
Clara says, “Run along, Willa. Go play with the boys. Mommy will play tea party with you later.” And Willa, after glaring at Sonia, sulks off, twitching her diaper-padded butt at them as she goes. “See what I mean? I’m so desperate for adult conversation! And I just push them away all the time. Because they’re always here. They always need me. Not Bill, and not Nadine, but me.”
Just then, Tom runs up, crying. “Mommy, mommy, Sam spit on my head.” Mike is close behind his brother, very curious. Sam hides underneath the jungle gym, in a shady spot. Indeed, there is a large gob of yellow snot on Tom’s head. Sonia can handle this. Frankly, she can handle her children getting picked on very easily. In fact, she finds it comforting. As long as they’re not being the troublemakers, she can shift into good parent mode. “Just use your words, Tommy. Tell Sam you don’t appreciate him doing that.”
Clara turns red. With rage, or embarrassment, or both, Sonia is unsure. She runs after her son, grabbing him from beneath the jungle gym with her buffed-up, marathon-running body and drags him by his shirt collar to the bench. “YOU APOLOGIZE TO TOM RIGHT NOW. YOU HEAR ME? NEVER, EVER, DO I WANT TO HEAR THAT YOU’VE SPIT ON ANOTHER KID. TOM IS YOUR FRIEND, SAM, AND YOU’RE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM WITH THE WAY YOU BEHAVE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” She pulls his little face up to hers, her hand grasping his chin roughly.
“I’m sorry, Tom, I’m sorry!” Sam weeps and holds on to his neck, from where the collar of his shirt scraped him. His chin is red where his mother roughed him up. He runs back under the jungle gym and cries, face in hands.
“Clara, don’t worry about it,” Sonia says, a little freaked out. But, also, this outburst, this complete failure to behave reasonably, is what Sonia loves about Clara. She kind of sucks, she really does. She loves her children, but she loses her shit all the time. Often, she’s so damn vulnerable, so not superior and smug like many of the parents Sonia knows. Not that Sonia enjoys watching Clara’s children suffer when she freaks out, no. The suffering pains her. But against her better self, she appreciates watching Clara fuck up. The mystery that is Clara, the flawlessly preppy clothes, the house on the right block in the best part of Cobble Hill, a thin gold wedding band her only adornment. All that outward modesty, togetherness, rightness, calmness, all of it seems so desperate. God knows what is hiding beneath it. It’s always been Sonia’s theory, from experience, that the most normal looking people are completely bonkers. Sonia wipes the top of Tom’s head with a wet wipe from her stroller bag and gives Mike, who stands there confused and intrigued, a kiss on the head and pats them both on the behind. “We have thirty minutes more of playtime, then we need to run errands.”
Clara breathes out heavily. “I just don’t know what to do, Sonia. I’m so sorry about Sam spitting on Tom, I am. He loves Tom. Tom is one of his only friends. He is always so happy to see him. You saw him run up to Tom when you guys got here.”
“Don’t worry about it, Clara. My kids aren’t perfect. No kids are perfect. They all do weird shit sometimes.”
“But I am really worried about Sam. I am. He’s so angry lately and I can’t help but think it’s because Bill’s not around enough. On the one hand, he’s fine, he doesn’t miss his father. And when his father is around, he doesn’t really care. Because they don’t know each other, or rely on each other. But it’s as if Sam knows something is missing, even though he doesn’t know what. And it makes him angry. And I just wonder if I were a little more patient with Sam, if he wouldn’t be so angry.”
“Hey, Clara.” Sonia gets up. “You want to corral the kids and go get an ice cream? Sometimes it’s good to just walk down the street a bit, get out of the park.”
Clara looks up, looks distracted. The mothers go through the ordeal of getting the children, which isn’t so difficult when ice cream is involved. They exit, carefully closing the park door behind them, and head down to Court Street.
Clara continues on as they maneuver their strollers through busy sidewalks. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the money Bill makes,” she says. “And, I’ll be honest with you, he makes a lot of money. And that is very important to me. We get the great ski vacations. I shop a lot and I love to shop. Soon, we’ll buy a house in Connecticut. I really, really want that house in Greenwich. Not sort of or kind of, no—” and here Clara throws her arms up, “I really, really want that house. And if it weren’t for Bill working like he does, that house wouldn’t be a possibility. It’s just sometimes I feel no different than some ghetto, single mother raising her kids. Yes, I can afford help. But the help, the immigrant women I hire, are from the ghetto, essentially. And like I said, I love Nadine. I got a real good one this time. She’s a good, caring woman, and that’s not always the case, you know. And yet I feed the kids noodles five nights a week, they watch TV nonstop, our house is full of cheap plastic toys they ignore, and they don’t know their own father. So what is the difference between me and some single mother from the housing projects? Tell me? Sam watches Pokémon just like them. And he eats the same shit they eat. And they hang out with burnt-out women day and night. Tell me, am I different? I love that he makes a lot of money. But he’s not around, you know?”
“Maybe you need a vacation, Clara. Some time to yourself. Next time Bill comes back, go away for a weekend alone.”
Clara looks shocked. “I’d never leave my kids overnight. I just couldn’t do that.”
And here is where Sonia wants to yell at her, to shake her muscled shoulders and say, “But you’re being mean to your kids! You are around them too much and you’re being mean to them and that’s not OK! Leaving them to gain your sanity might be the best thing for them!”
But instead she says, “Clara, I’m pregnant. And I don’t know what to do.”
When Sonia arrives, Clara sets the table for two and moves back to the stove where she’s cooking rice. The top of the pan pops around nicely, steam barely escaping, the smell of salt and grain and butter rising, a comforting smell for Sonia’s still delicate nature. For the kids, Clara made a big vat of macaroni and cheese. Paper plates and plastic cups sit on a lower table, a kid’s table, in the living room in front of the TV. Sonia watches her as she then gets out a chopping board and dices ginger, sweet onion, and oranges and strawberries.
“I’m making a chutney for the red snapper,” she explains to
Sonia and Sonia thinks, oh no, not fish, but says nothing.
Clara’s kids are upstairs in the bath. She left the door open, so she can hear what’s going on. Sam makes boat noises. She can’t hear Willa.
She screams in the direction of the bathroom, “WILLA? ARE YOU OK? DARLING? ANSWER ME!”
There’s no answer. Again she screams, “SAM? SAM? IS YOUR SISTER OK UP THERE?”
The boat noises stop. Sam says, “Willa’s fine, mommy. She’s just sitting here. She’s got her finger up her nose.”
“YOU SCREAM DOWN TO ME HERE IF WILLA GOES UNDER WATER OR SOMETHING. YOU HEAR ME, SAM?”
“OK!”
Sonia asks, “Do you want me to go check on them?”
“Oh no, I’m sure they’re fine.” Clara gives her the once over that Clara sometimes gives her, examining her quickly, but very closely. This makes Sonia uncomfortable, but it’s always a brief thing, and then Clara is back to being Clara—loud, self-absorbed even when talking about other people or her children. But she’s got a heart. Sonia knows this, appreciates this. Because not everyone has a heart. And it wasn’t as if Sonia didn’t notice things about Clara.
ONCE, WHEN THE TWO were coming back from a movie in a cab—they’d managed to get their husbands to watch the kids on a Sunday night so they could go see Girl, Interrupted—Sonia felt so much taller than Clara. She felt like Clara was a little girl, really. And then, as soon as they got out of the cab, they were the same height again. This strange confusion of bodies, the same size but for the opposite reason, as Clara is all legs. Clara, resembling an ostrich, or really, some kind of fast African plains animal. Something that’s built to run. And Clara is built to run. She ran marathons while Sonia got winded chasing her sons. Clara had played field hockey in high school while Sonia was smoking weed and having sex. Sonia’s endorphin highs came from drugs and getting laid while Clara’s came from running for as long as she could, as fast as possible. The altered state, the endorphins, the just breathing, just moving, of running marathons. The idea of it, the sheer mindlessness of it boggled Sonia. Clara runs every marathon she can get to, even now, with the two kids. When Nadine comes to watch the kids, she goes running. And she long ago gave up the idea of a career, despite her master’s degree in health administration. Sonia wishes she could be so content. She even thinks maybe Clara will rub off on her.