by Mark Critch
I could feel the time draining away, second by second. I wouldn’t just be late. I’d be late by a good half-hour. What if she didn’t wait for me? My hair was starting to win its fight against the Dippity Do and individual strands were popping back up like a burned-out forest finally offering up new growth. A ding went off each time a passenger pulled the rope to indicate their stop, and each ding was like a bullet in my heart, further slowing my progression toward…whatever her name was.
Finally I spotted a line of buses up ahead. This was the transfer spot where the various routes met up. This was where I’d get the second bus and start the next hour of my journey. I was like a salmon, desperately swimming upstream to spawn. I fervently pulled on the rope. Ding! Ding! Ding! This was my stop. I needed the bus that was headed to puberty.
As the driver pulled in behind two others I noticed the last few passengers filing onto the Route 10 across the street. The Oracle of the Bus Routes was right: I could make my transfer here, but if I didn’t hurry I’d miss it, delaying me even more. The doors flapped open and I jumped from the step to the sidewalk. The sudden gust of wind freed a few more strained strands of hair from their gooped-down prison. I ran between two stationary buses as the doors of my only hope at love shut behind the last rider. I dashed across the street without looking for traffic.
I waved frantically to the driver as the bus slowly pulled out. He didn’t see me. I felt the front of the bus lurch forward, knocking me in the chest and sending me flying backward to the pavement.
Riders screamed and the driver hit the brakes, sending passengers hurtling toward the front of the bus. I looked up, stunned. I could see the driver looking down at me in horror. He’d just knocked over a kid, with dozens of witnesses. But when I patted myself down to check for broken bones or gushing wounds, I felt fine. The thick helmet of gel had come through.
I was more embarrassed than anything else. I couldn’t get on my bus now. It had knocked me down; it was dead to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of people asking me if I was okay and where I was going and why I’d been running. I had to get out of there before anyone offered to take me to the hospital. I had no time to heal.
But I couldn’t wait for the next bus, either. That would take a half-hour and it was already pushing five-thirty. So I hopped up, waving my apology, and ran off between the buses and down the road. I had no idea where I was going. I was late for a very important date. I was the white rabbit on his way to meet the queen of hearts. This was a page from Alice in Newfoundland.
I had to keep running. And I did. This was by no means my end of town. But I knew the general direction of the park and kept heading toward it, hoping that the sheer force of hormones would lead me to her. I could feel my asthmatic lungs start to tighten; I ignored them. This was not a day for lungs. It was a day for the heart and my heart beat loudly in my chest. A little too loudly. I might have been having a heart attack.
My shirt began to feel wet and sticky as sweat poured from every pore. The Dippity Do began to mix with my sweat to create a petroleum slick that slid down my face from my temples like molasses from a jar, stinging my eyes. My run became a jog. The jog devolved into a waddle. The waddle turned into a sweaty, greasy, wheezy crawl.
I pushed through stinger nettles and rose bushes, fighting my way into a clearing. Finally, I saw her. She was on a swing, all by herself on the deserted playground. The last vestiges of sunlight painted long shadows across the field. She sat there, in a white windbreaker and tight bubble-gum jeans, twisting the chains of her swing just as I had twisted the phone cord during our silent conversation the night before. When she could wind herself no further, she let herself go and the swing twirled her around as it straightened itself out again. She looked to me like the ballerina in a child’s jewellery box, spinning with an eternal grace. I wanted to watch her spin like that forever. She was perfect.
“Hell-hell-HACK—Hel-hhhheeeeeeeeee-ehhhhhhhhh…” I wheezed. I tried to say something, anything, to get her attention. I went unnoticed as she spun like a top, the waning light catching the blond highlights in her hair as she turned. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and I didn’t want her to notice me. What was I doing? I was sweating and rasping, my hair was melting, I was covered in foliage. I looked like the Disney character that eventually wins the heart of the princess. I was the Hunchback or Beauty’s Beast. It was too early in the movie for true love, though, so I decided to bolt before she screamed. I headed back toward the bushes like Bigfoot in a grainy film reel.
“Hey,” she said, freezing me in my tracks. She’d stopped herself swinging by skidding her sneaker against the dirt, and now the dirt floated up from under her feet. She looked like an angel on a cloud of dust. I slowly turned back and her eyes met mine, unravelling me. Her eyes were blue, like a Malamute’s. And, like a strange dog, I felt unsure whether she’d bite me or befriend me. She was a woman of few words, but when she spoke, it sounded like church bells. “Where the frig were you at?”
“I…never…tried…to get…this far…from home…before,” I panted. “Got run over…by my bus.”
“You’re weird. Sit da frig down, b’y,” she chirped, like a sparrow singing a joyful song as her mate returned to the nest. I sat on the swing next to hers and regained my breath. We were alone there among the swings and slides as day casually slipped into night. During the day a playground echoes with the sounds of all that is good about childhood. Finders seek hiders. Pushers push swingers. Sliders slide and make way for the next child to take their turn. The air is filled with skipping ropers’ songs and the joyful cries of children playing.
At night, though, a playground becomes a very different place. A few hours transform its purpose just as a few years transform a young person’s reasons for seeking it out. In daytime it’s an innocent place of childish fun. At night it’s the domain of the teenager. First kisses are stolen. First beers are drunk. Graffiti is carved or sprayed. The games are very different at night.
But games must have two players and both must know the game. And that they’re even playing one. I’d never been in a playground at night and had no idea of its after-hours seedy underbelly. We sat in silence. It was not an awkward silence. She seemed to live in the gaps between words, as though she were hiding under a blanket and came out only when absolutely necessary. I was more than happy just to sit next to her. Having to come up with something to say would have been overwhelming.
She reached out and took my hand. Her hands were softer than the most expensive toilet paper in the grocery store. They were almost as soft as mine. We sat there, in silence, in the darkness, holding hands as we gently twisted on our respective swings. I’d never felt so sure of being exactly where I was supposed to be. I had travelled all the way across town and been hit by a bus. And it had been worth it.
“I got to go now,” she said after about ten minutes. I nodded and she stared at me expectantly. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and if I had known I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do it. Thankfully she turned and left me then, disappearing into the trees like a moose that suddenly appears on the highway. I skipped back to the bus stop as if I had all the time in the world. No way would I make it home before ten, but I didn’t give a damn. When the bus arrived I hopped on, to the shock of the driver, the same one who’d almost killed me. He refused to take my change. None of the passengers were the same, so his accidental near-homicide was our little secret.
It was an eternity before I finally got home. As I climbed the steps to the house I could hear the telephone ringing. The old man was standing in the hallway in his pyjamas and plaid bathrobe, shouting, “Who the hell is calling at this hour!” loud enough for me to hear from outside. Something told me that it was my Juliet calling her Romeo, since parting had been such sweet, sweet sorrow and she couldn’t wait till tomorrow to talk again.
“I got it,” I declared, swinging open the screen door with a dramatic flair.
“Where the hell were you at t
his hour?” the old man demanded. But he could wait. My love wanted to whisper sweet nothings to me, which in her case were probably literally nothings.
“Hello,” I said, expecting to hear her voice or the silence that would indicate it was she. We were moving quickly now and I intended to ask her the big question right then and there: What’s your name?
“Is Mark there?” a strange female voice asked. It wasn’t her. Was this yet another suitor? Had word of my romantic potency spread so quickly throughout the female population? I confirmed that this was indeed the teen idol speaking. I really needed to start using gel more often.
“I’m Jennifer’s friend,” she said, giggling.
“Jennifer?” I asked. “Who’s Jennifer?”
“Is that who’s calling at this hour!” the old man bellowed in the background. “Jennifer? Tell Jennifer this isn’t a train station, hey?”
I ignored him and turned, pulling the receiver toward the living room for what in my mind gave me more privacy. I’d put an extra full foot of tangled phone cord between my father and me.
“Jennifer is your girlfriend, dummy,” she said, erupting into laughter. I could hear another female voice in the background, also laughing. I thought I recognized my true love’s laugh, although I couldn’t imagine her laughing. Up to this point she hadn’t shown any emotion whatsoever.
“She wants me to tell you she doesn’t want to go out anymore. She’s breaking up with you.” The words hit me like a bus. No. Getting hit by a bus wasn’t that bad. Her words hit me like something bigger than a bus.
“But why?” I pleaded. “We just had a date. We held hands on the swings.”
“Mark! YouHadADate? MyGod! IsThatWhereYouWereAtThisHour? Mike! MarkWasOnADate!” My mother had emerged from their bedroom, and I was now bookended by two howling bathrobed parents as I felt the pain of a broken heart for the first time.
“Her name is Jennifer,” my father declared, bringing Mom up to speed. “And she’s calling at this hour!”
“I’m having trouble hearing you,” Jennifer’s friend said. “Why is everyone screaming at your house?”
“That’s the TV,” I lied. “Wrestling’s on. Why does she want to break up?”
“MyGod,Mark! JenniferNeverBrokeUpWithYouDidShe? AndYouOnlyJustStartedDating. LetMeTalkToTheLittleTrollop.”
“What did you do to Jennifer?” Dad demanded to know. Five minutes earlier none of us had known her name and now it was being batted around like a tennis ball at Wimbledon.
“She says you’re slack,” Jennifer’s friend told me as she and Jennifer exploded into laughter again. Slack? What the hell did slack mean?
“How come?” I asked, careful not to repeat the word for fear my parents knew what it meant. I’d learned not to ask too many questions when I ate the condom.
“You know,” she continued, “you never put out. You never kissed her or tried to reach under her top or nothing. Slack.” Reach under her top? What were we? Fifty? I was a gentleman. I wouldn’t reach under her top if we were married. I couldn’t imagine such a thing. I’d never even seen my parents kiss, and I assumed they’d been married since they were born. Having reached the end of the cord, I placed the body of the phone on the floor and pulled the receiver’s cord to its absolute limit, stretching its Slinky-shaped spiral until it resembled a clothesline.
“I can do that,” I bargained. “I can kiss her. Just put her on. Can I talk to her?”
The emissary pressed the phone against her body and I could hear her muffled voice say, “He wants to talk to you…” and then a dial tone. I wondered briefly if she’d hung up on me, so disgusted had she been by my slackness. Instead my desperate overstretching had pulled the phone from the jack, freeing me from the wall and sending me spiralling to the floor. Breaking up hurt worse than being hit by a bus, both emotionally and physically. And now I had a carpet burn, too. I tried frantically to get the jack back in the box at the feet of my parents as they shouted questions at me in a post-phone-call press conference. My heart pounded in my chest, and each time I nervously tried to reconnect I missed. My head had proven too small for the dark cloud that now grew inside it.
My father took the cord from me and reinserted it, telling me to go to bed and that there’d be no more phone for me tonight. I lay in my room, unable to sleep, awaiting a ring that never rang.
* * *
—
The next day at school, each girl giggled as they passed by me. I knew I’d been marked as slack. It didn’t matter. I vowed never to date again. I’d become a priest and live a chaste, devout life until one day Jennifer would return to me, older and wiser. She’d have realized that she didn’t want some sweaty-palmed boy pawing at her. She wanted the kind of man who was content with sitting next to her and holding her hand in the park. She’d show up at my church to confess her sins, engendered as they were by a life filled with regret over that very phone call. I would recognize her voice and toss my collar into the corner. I would throw open the door to the confessional, breaking the sanctity of the sacrament, and take her in my arms. I would not make the same mistake twice, and this time I would kiss her. I was going to play the long game.
Two weeks later, I saw her on the playground with a grade nine boy. He looked big enough to be a teacher and had a thin wispy moustache that made his upper lip resemble a kiwi. He did not look slack. Brokenhearted, I gave up my dreams of love and buried myself in my work. I had a job.
* * *
—
For as long as I could remember, my brother had been a workingman. He mowed the large, deep fields of grass that surrounded the radio station next door, toiling after school and on weekends to keep it looking immaculate. This was especially impressive when you knew that Mike was terribly allergic to grass. He’d break out in hives, his eyes would water, his lungs would tighten, and still he would plow forward behind his lawn mower. His silver Sony Walkman would glisten in the summer sun as Chicago blues blared loud enough to dull the roar from the mower. His work ethic was awe-inspiring, but mowing the lawn was also a great way to get out of our tiny bungalow for a bit, so really, it was half and half.
Now Mike was moving out on his own and my father’s bosses looked to me to fill the gap. I was in the radio business. I didn’t start off cutting the grass right away, though. I had to earn my position at the bottom by climbing underneath it. Insects had infested the station like a biblical plague and they’d been forced to call in an exterminator. He was good at his job; dead bugs were now falling from the ceiling in clumps. I was instructed to sweep up their carcasses. And because I was small enough to squeeze into the crawl spaces, I soon had the place looking clean enough to pass any health inspection. This was all the validation needed for the station manager to agree to hire me, and I set out to fill my brother’s grass-stained shoes.
There was just one problem: I was lazy. Mike was a dutiful hard worker who needed the money to buy cool clothes and records. I was perfectly happy with my allowance. It was just enough to buy a Mad magazine and all the comics on my must-read list. I had no real need of much clothing other than my school uniform. Where the hell was I going to go? All I needed were lounging outfits.
I faced another hurdle. I lacked the necessary strength to start the gas mower. I’d pull the cord once or twice and get nothing but a gasping goo-ga-da, goo-ga-da sound, so I’d wheel it back to the garage where the station’s patient engineer would give it a good pull and get it started for me. Then I’d wheel it, roaring away, across the parking lot to the grass and push it forward for as long as I could until it cut out again. Then the process would repeat. The station manager would send the mower in to be serviced and I’d head back home, down over the little hill that marked the boundary between the station’s parking lot and our backyard, to watch some TV and eat whatever culinary delight from Chef Boyardee that the can opener had prepared that day.
Invariably, the mower w
ould come back with a note attached to it saying “There’s nothing wrong with this mower” and the cycle would continue. The more I stalled, the longer the grass grew and the more frustrated my boss became. Being the baby of the family, I was encouraged to rest by my overprotective mother. “MyGodMark,You’reNotGoingBackOutToMowThatLawnAreYou? YouWereJustOutForAWholeHour! You’llHurtYourself.” My brother would be gone seemingly for days when he mowed the lawn, but he was older. I was a young man with an artist’s soul. My hands were like fine leather gloves so soft they must have been made from cow fetuses. I was not meant for manual labour.
Eventually the old man came home in a panic. “Good God,” he said as he hung up his raglan, “are you out of your mind? The brass asked me what the hell is going on with the lawn. Haven’t you got that cut yet?” I was dragged out of the house and put to work. The grass was now high enough to match my sneaker tops. It swayed to and fro in the breeze as if it were waving at me, saying, “Hello, old chum. Come to wander awhile in my lush greenness? How could you cut this?” I pulled the mower, starting it in a single tug.
“No, old chum. I am here to kill you.” I pushed through the depths of this wilderness of my own creation. I beheaded dandelions, the king of the jungle. I butchered buttercups, the flowers I once placed under my chin. If a yellow hue was reflected back it meant you liked butter, or so I’d been told. Ah, science! But this was no time for nostalgia. This was a man’s job. I worked for what seemed like hours before returning home, covered in the damp slime that spat from the mower’s powerful blades. I had conquered nature and expected to be welcomed after a hard day’s work.
“Good God!” the old man exclaimed. “You’ve only been gone fifteen minutes. Get the hell back out there.” I looked at the lawn. There were two small passes made, each one the length of the field. I had not conquered the jungle. It had conquered me. Like the thousands who’d come before, I had failed to find my El Dorado. Now I would leave home once more. I bid my mother farewell, asking her to feed the cat in my absence. I shook hands with my father and told him I bore him no ill will. I wished I could say a few words to my absent brother; in particular, “Would you please mow the lawn for me?”