Between You and Me

by Scott Nadelson

  He feels sick as he writes these things, disgusted with himself and ashamed. But he can also sense the relief that comes with confession, the absolution to follow, shame and disgust already beginning to disperse as soon as the words are down. He wonders if he would have been more pious had he been raised Catholic, with the promise of dispensation and release every week. Jewish uncertainty has never suited him. This time he doesn’t refer at all to Kyle’s past transgressions, only to his own. He apologizes. He begs forgiveness. He imagines Kyle reading the letter on the frayed couch of the filthy apartment he shares with two other boys, neither of whom has much future, as far as Paul can tell, one an education major, the other doubling in Spanish and American Studies. He pictures Kyle’s face as he gets to the letter’s second page, where Paul promises to think only optimistic thoughts from now on, the skeptical lines of his stepson’s mouth easing, eyes blinking and going red.

  And before he finishes Paul is wiping his own eyes. Pride has returned, now in equal measure for himself as for Kyle. It’s a brave thing to have written this letter, he knows it, and coming to the end he feels that he can now be brave in other things, too, he can live with hope and anticipation as he’s never allowed himself before. He signs off confidently, “Love, Paul,” and recaps the pen. His only regret is that he didn’t use blue ink, which itself might have been a hopeful act, more open and vulnerable. He considers calling Cynthia and showing her the letter but then decides it’s braver not to seek her approval, not to have her tell him how proud she is of his growth. The letter means more if it stays between him and Kyle.

  He reads it through, from beginning to end. There are a handful of spelling errors he would like to correct, a few places where the wording could be more concise or elegant. But overall he is satisfied. Moderately so. Except that now he wonders if it might not be brave after all to burden Kyle with his feelings, to ask for understanding he may or may not deserve. Wouldn’t the most courageous thing be to keep all this to himself and wrestle with his shortcomings on his own? If so, then the letter, he begins to suspect, is just as selfish and cowardly as his past behavior. Only more insidious, because of its façade of humility. Yes, he is now sure of it. How could he have fooled himself into believing otherwise? He folds it in thirds, tucks it beneath a stack of papers at the back of his desk, and rips a smaller sheet from a pocket notepad.

  “Big congrats, pal,” he scrawls with his blue pen. “Well done. Knew you could do it. Yours, P.” Then he makes out a check for two hundred and fifty dollars. On the memo line he writes, “For celebration or moving expenses.” He tucks the note and check together in an envelope, addresses it, stamps it, and closes his desk. Outside, a breeze rustles the young oak leaves. He is reasonably content.

  Wha’ Happened

  1995

  Paul could hardly believe he was sitting in the middle of Bryant Park eating lunch. Three years after the park re-opened, following a massive renovation and much public celebration, he still considered it forbidden territory, off-limits to him and everyone he knew. In his mind it remained the place he’d walked past as quickly as possible, twice a month through much of the seventies, on his way to the library. Back then the park was set higher off the street, with tall hedges blocking most of the view. He’d occasionally catch a glimpse of bodies curled on the pavement—sleeping, he supposed, or worse; who knew?—or a barrel of burning trash, or a prostitute in a sequined skirt beckoning with sultry eyes. He read news stories about drug pushers taking refuge among the old London plane trees, about ineffectual policing and outraged citizens.

  Those were the city’s darkest days, of course, when most of his colleagues fled to the suburbs—those, that is, who hadn’t done so a decade earlier. But until he met Cynthia, Paul had never considered leaving. Even with the crime and the filth and the blackouts, he couldn’t have imagined spending his days or nights anywhere else. As far as he had been concerned, Manhattan was the heart of the universe and always would be. Maybe its pulse beat with an uneven rhythm, and the blood pumping through wasn’t always pristine, but from it life flowed outward.

  But like most people who weren’t degenerates, he didn’t miss the crime and the filth, and he didn’t mind seeing Midtown reborn. He wasn’t sad to see the peep shows and porn theaters closed down, the men in sleeping bags cleared from Penn Station and Port Authority. Still, he thought of Bryant Park as a necessary void, a holding pen for seediness and vice and unspeakable acts. Where would those things go once you lowered the entrances and took out the hedges and exposed the benches to open air?

  He was taken aback when his firm moved its offices from a building just south of Columbus Circle to one on West 39th, a block and a half from the park. It was one thing to pass by, to sneak a quizzical peek, but another to spend eight to ten hours of every day a few hundred yards downwind. For several months after the move Paul stayed away, taking the long route around Grand Central if he wanted to head uptown for lunch. His co-workers talked about the surprisingly good food at the grill abutting the library’s west façade, about sitting at umbrella-shaded tables around the fountain. But still he kept his distance. He hadn’t used the city library since getting married, and though he recalled the grandeur of the reading room, with its enormous chandeliers and soaring ceiling, he was satisfied to check out books from the branch in Morris Plains and return them on his way home from the train station.

  Why, then, on the first warm day in April, did he find himself walking due north on Fifth Avenue? Was it curiosity that spurred him? Or nostalgia for the guilty little thrill with which he’d glance to the side as he passed the hedges? As soon as he turned onto 40th, the odd mixture of fear and wonder returned to him, and he recalled how often he’d had to fight the impulse to climb the steps, to follow the tilt of a hooker’s head, to duck under a gate and disappear down one of the twisting paths. What he’d understood at the time was how easy it would be to lose himself, to give in to the draw of those unimaginable spaces where even armed policemen wouldn’t set foot. Back then, when he had no significant attachments, nothing but will or dignity or simple restraint to keep him from abandoning himself to whatever ugly desires lurked inside, the park served as a reminder that his life could take a very different shape if he chose. A caution or a taunt or a beacon, depending on his mood.

  Of course he knew it would be different now. He’d read and heard enough to be prepared for the open view across the central lawn, which was dotted with half-naked college students and foreign backpackers exposing pale limbs and flat bellies to the bright sky. He wasn’t surprised by the office workers munching salads under umbrellas and dribbling dressing onto their suits. But the details he couldn’t have imagined, and the effect of the whole was dizzying. Garden beds tossing up color between concrete paths. A statue of hunched, bosomy Gertrude Stein, looking disappointed, it seemed, to find herself in New York rather than Paris. Another of Goethe, jowly and stern, staring at children squealing on the carousel. Pigeons fluttered from the library’s roof onto William Cullen Bryant’s bald, bronzed head. All around, new office towers rose like cliffs, Sixth Avenue cutting through like a canyon, and in the distance a crane swung so gently he thought for a moment it was being moved by the breeze.

  In his office he’d left behind a banana and sandwich—lean turkey and light mayonnaise—thinking he couldn’t possibly stay here long enough to eat. But now, though there were plenty of healthier options, he lined up at a hot dog stand. He shook his head no to each of the vendor’s offers of extra toppings—onions, sauerkraut, chili—but the vendor didn’t see or didn’t understand, and he came away with a bun so loaded he had to ask for a second paper sleeve. The whole thing, along with Ruffles and a Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry he’d first told himself he shouldn’t buy and then told himself he should drink only half of, cost over ten bucks.

  He tried to find a spot near the chess tables and was disappointed when none were open. But when he crossed to the opposite promenade he was glad not to have settled in too so
on. Of all the things he could never have imagined, this ranked highest: ping-pong tables just a few yards from 42nd Street. He took a seat in view of them, under the shade of a London plane. At the far end of a green table, a wiry guy in his thirties danced from one foot to the other. A red headband like the one John McEnroe wore in the seventies cut across his forehead, though his hair stuck up less than an inch from his scalp. Baubles of sweat hung from his earlobes, and his shirt stuck to his chest. He held his paddle like a cleaver and crouched low, and when the ball came his way he heaved forward to bat it back as soon as it ricocheted off the surface. Or else he dove to catch it on the corners, grunting or crying out, sometimes rolling on the ground and springing up just in time for the next volley.

  The player nearer to Paul looked about sixteen, except that he wore charcoal suit pants and a white button-down, his jacket and tie folded against the trunk of a nearby tree. He was Asian, no taller than five-foot-four, so of course Paul automatically rooted for him. In big cities, small men thrive, his father had always said. Skyscrapers had a leveling effect. Beneath sixty, eighty, a hundred stories of swaying glass and steel, what did a few inches in one direction or another matter? At five-four you could stride down Broadway with as much pride as a seven-foot giant, and on the subway you were far better off: no stooping beneath handrails, no shuffling oversized feet to keep them from getting trampled. From your office window you could look down a hundred feet onto the sidewalk and feel no humbler than any of the tiny figures scrambling below.

  But Paul also liked the Asian player’s style. He held his paddle with a thumb on one side, four fingers on the other, the handle against his wrist, and he stood a good three feet back from the table, hardly moving anything other than his arm when the ball came streaking toward him. He didn’t smile or grimace or make any noise. His only eye contact was with the ball. He’d unbuttoned just a single button of his shirt and hadn’t rolled up his sleeves, and yet there were no signs of sweat on his forehead or under his arm. Even in the middle of a long volley, he breathed evenly, while his opponent wheezed and gasped. Paul dubbed him Takuro, after a shrewd business associate in Tokyo, always polite, never smiling, ruthless in negotiations.

  The crowd clearly favored the wiry guy, an easy hero, with his courageous tumbles and melodramatic sighs, and every time he took a point cheers went up all around. But Paul knew what Takuro was up to when he let a few tough shots go without making much effort to return them. He was pacing himself, letting his opponent wear down, overextend, make mistakes. He was calm, unruffled, icy—adjectives Paul wished he could use to describe himself, instead of those he knew were more accurate: anxious, sensitive, equivocating. Go Takuro, he thought, leaning forward in his seat, so focused on the back and forth that he gobbled half his chili dog before remembering to open the chips. His can of Dr. Brown’s was already two-thirds empty.

  Only when the score reached five-all, Takuro serving, did he notice the child. Maybe two years old, barefoot, wearing a little white dress with a pattern of red cherries and green stems. From the flower bed separating the tables from the crowd, she watched the game as intently as Paul did. Because her hair and skin were dark, he guessed she was Takuro’s daughter, here to support her dad, and she was just as silent and impassive, eyes fixed on the ball, skinny arms linked behind her back. The only movement she made was to lift a foot and scratch a toe against the calf of the opposite leg. When Takuro served, and the wiry guy—he had height, so why should he get a name?—made a breathless backhand, the ball skittering at an angle seemingly impossible for Takuro to reach, she didn’t show any sign of distress, any emotion whatsoever. And when, against the laws of physics, Paul thought, Takuro did manage to reach it, legs moving so fast Paul couldn’t be sure he’d seen them, and sent a shot with so much forespin it skimmed the net and bounced twice for a point, she didn’t clap or cheer or raise her hands, didn’t do anything but continue to stare. Not like the fans of the wiry guy, who groaned and held their heads, nor like Paul, who jumped out of his chair, spilling the last swallow of Dr. Brown’s onto the concrete pavers, and cried, “Yes! Beautiful!”

  His cry did catch the child’s attention, and she half turned to him without shifting her feet, which were planted squarely in a geranium, exuberant pink blossoms rising up to her shins. She was a lovely child, he thought, though he never found kids younger than seven anything but terrifying, and in general had never taken much interest in other people’s children. But he felt a swell of affection for her, and for Takuro, too, who took his daughter to the park during his lunch hour, when most men would have happily left theirs in daycare.

  The score was now seven to five, and Takuro was in control. The wiry guy was out of breath, drenched, struggling despite the headband to keep sweat out of his eyes. On Takuro’s next serve he blew an easy return, sending it straight into the net. Paul sat down with satisfaction, happy to let the tension of the moment ease, to give up suspense in favor of inevitability. The child was still looking at him, turned fully to face him now, the geranium’s blooms trampled under her heels. She had two fingers in her mouth, but not the ones you’d expect: the middle and pinky, with the ring finger tucked down against her chin. He gave her a little wave and when she didn’t react, a wink. She stared and sucked her fingers. Her features weren’t quite what he expected, either, not distinctly Asian like Takuro’s but a mix of genes from at least two continents. If Takuro were married to the beautiful slim woman in short skirt and designer heels sitting a few feet away, the two of them might have produced such offspring, and for this, too, Paul envied him—all his youth’s potential, all the unfilled years ahead.

  But the slim woman wasn’t the child’s mother, nor Takuro’s wife. Before the game was close to being finished, she tucked her salad tub under an arm and walked away. The actual mother, he could see now, stood a few yards down the promenade, talking to a woman wearing a baseball cap over badly dyed red hair. What he could see of her was a lumpy backside in capri pants and an ankle covered with either a birthmark or a blotchy tattoo. From her hand dangled a pair of tiny sandals. She paid no attention to the child, who was drooling onto her fingers, nor to the ping-pong table, though she blocked the view of at least three people sitting behind the shrubs. Shouldn’t she at least cast an occasional glance to make sure the child was safe? This was still Midtown after all, not the pit it had been fifteen years earlier, but no place to let a kid run free. And why not put on her sandals if she was going to stand in the dirt?

  Of course it was none of his business, and even more, not his responsibility. He shouldn’t have waved or winked at a strange child. If the mother had caught him at it, she would have taken him for a creep. The last bite of chili dog clung in his throat, and he had no more soda to wash it down.

  Game point. The wiry guy had no fight left in him. An angry scrape ran from forearm to elbow. The color had drained from his face. Paul worried he might pass out before finishing. But he managed to get into his crouch, bobbing from one foot to the other. His spirit was admirable if not entirely dignified. Paul wanted Takuro to give his opponent one quick glance, a little nod of recognition, but he only straightened his sleeve, adjusted fingers on the back of his paddle. Go easy on him, Paul thought, feeling the chili dog, the onions and sauerkraut, sitting heavily in his stomach, his mouth dry from the salty Ruffles. He was ready to head back to the office now, though he had another hour before his next meeting and had planned to visit the library. But he was no longer in the mood for soaring ceilings and grand chandeliers. Takuro raised the ball to serve.

  It ended quickly. Two volleys and a hard forehand right down the center line, where it short-hopped against the wiry guy’s paddle. Then the ball sailed straight up, a high arc above the net. Everyone watched it, waiting, holding breath—everyone that is, except for the child’s mother, still talking to her friend in the cap: “I never said I would. I said I might.” The wiry guy hadn’t quite given up. He was still in his crouch, holding the paddle in front of his ches
t with both hands, a pose of humility, of prayer. Takuro stood aside, gazing up with his usual indifference, as if it were all the same to him where the ball landed. Paul’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he would have given anything for another sip of Dr. Brown’s. The drops he’d spilled pooled next to his chair. He was standing again, though he didn’t remember having pulled himself up. He wanted the game to be over, but he also wanted the ball to stay in the air for as long as possible, lost against a backdrop of sunlit leaves.

  It missed the table by two inches and landed with hardly a sound in the gravel by Takuro’s feet. The wiry guy lowered his head. Takuro laid aside his paddle and adjusted his sleeves. Paul was no longer sure he’d rooted for the right person. Weren’t there other considerations than height? He was pleased, in any case, that Takuro was the first to round the table, hand raised. The wiry guy grasped it firmly, and for the first time their eyes met, one head tilted back, the other angled down. A gentler end to the David and Goliath story, Paul’s favorite as a child. Maybe he missed the violence, the upsurge of triumph that could come only with a giant laid out dead on the ground. But this version was more appropriate to the new, civilized Bryant Park: Goliath accepting David’s superior skill and leaving him in peace.

  Already a new pair of players had picked up the paddles and taken their place at either end of the table. Fresh arrivals from nearby office towers replaced those who’d moved on. Paul reached down for the empty hot dog sleeves and Ruffles bag, and only then realized he’d stepped into the puddle of Dr. Brown’s, which had splashed onto his toe. And it was while trying to wipe it that he saw the child moving farther away from her mother, deeper into the park. If the mother noticed she gave no sign. She was still talking to her friend, gesturing with both arms, the little sandals flopping against her wrist.