The Woman in the Park

by Teresa Sorkin

  She continued several blocks down Fifth to the Metropolitan Museum. She loved the big building, filled with the beauty and culture and history of the world; just the sight of its massive columns and gracefully ascending steps put her mind at ease. When she was a little girl she’d dreamed of being able to visit the museum just once; now she visited regularly.

  The exhibit of Michelangelo’s drawings was still up, and she wandered through the museum to peruse it again. Her eyes had to adjust to the darkness and the rhythm of the exhibition—twisted bodies, beauty in ugliness, heads and hands, Mother Mary, the infant Jesus, attending angels. Whole worlds from nothing: eternal beauty from a piece of paper and a chunk of charcoal, a canvas and color, a slab of stone.

  How could a man living in Florence 500 years ago bring such calm to the chaos of her mind. And yet that beauty, that Florentine perfection, felt so familiar to her. She had lived in Florence for a semester in college, in a small apartment on a narrow street behind the Uffizi, a five-flight walkup. The stone steps were high, and she’d be sweating and winded when she reached the top. But then, as she opened the door, she would see Florence spread out above the rooftops, breathtaking and serene.

  Living among the old buildings and the old ways, she had felt free and at home. Her decisions had been smaller, and she’d felt braver because of it. She’d bought an old, rickety bicycle and found that people noticed her less when she was riding it. They were, perhaps, the moments she had been most at peace, riding her bicycle over the cobbled streets and soaring bridges. Silently she’d flown through town, observing everything from just the right distance, hiding in plain sight.

  It had been a mind-opening, exhilarating time for her—but also lonely. Michelangelo, Botticelli, Giotto and Leonardo Da Vinci had kept her company. She wanted to share the experience with her kids, someday: she would take them to the top of top of Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s town hall, so they could see the view of the city below. She would tell them about the prisoners who had been held in the tower and about the sinister power of the Medici family, so deadly and yet so essential to the legacy of the city. She would point out the hills around the city where the wealthy families had summer villas. She might even tell them about the descendant of one of the ancient Florentine noble families with a murky past, whom she had dated for a few months.

  Maybe not.

  Continuing through the exhibit, she entered a long dark room and saw the back of a man with a gray jacket. Her hands felt sweaty, and she held her breath as he turned to look at another drawing. She sighed in relief. It was not the man from the park.

  Later, alone at home, Sarah sat at her laptop, a glass of pinot noir—Eric’s favorite—close at hand. She took a long gulp, letting the wine warm her throat and insides as she worked her way through emails, making notes on her to-do list.

  Dr. Robin. Country house. Summer plans for the kids. The summer break was long, almost three months, and she could spend so much of her time planning the activities they needed to fill it: lacrosse, soccer, tennis, dance, guitar and piano lessons, chess, choir, horseback riding. With so many things to do, Sarah worried that her kids would be spread thin. But they never seemed to be.

  Busy little bees, she used to call them, and she’d been the queen bee for a while herself: head of her tennis team, hostess of a book club and art club, volunteer at MOMA, chair of the School Outreach program at the Guggenheim, member of the Parents’ Association. Keeping busy had always made her feel complete. What had happened to slow her down? Her eyes traveled eagerly to the next item on her list.

  Deal with Eric.

  Sarah looked at the words, confused. Had she written them?

  Deal with Eric.

  She said them out loud, startled by how ominous they sounded. What on earth could she have meant? Confront her husband on his philandering? Gather irrefutable evidence of it? Accept it and move on? Was it another blackout? Sarah wondered.

  She felt a presence behind her and froze. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a shadow, moving past the doorway. Had someone passed behind her? She felt a coldness engulf her as she heard a noise from the living room, a sound of shuffling papers. She shut her computer and got up from the chair.

  “Hello?” she called out, not expecting an answer. She looked around the doorway in the direction of Eric’s study. Perhaps he’d felt badly about their fight and had come home early.

  “Eric? Eric, is that you?”

  In the living room, she found the window open. The wind blew through the curtains, flapping them violently. She couldn’t remember having opened it. It was the medication, it had to be; there were so many things she didn’t remember nowadays.

  She closed the window, returned to the bedroom. It seemed like something lurked there still, though she knew that she was alone. Her to-do list lay where she’d left it and that inexplicable line spoke to her, a stranger’s words in her own handwriting.

  Deal with Eric.

  She crossed the words out.

  It was appointment day again.

  Back in her therapist’s office, Sarah was no longer interested in being silent. She needed to talk—and today she felt as though she’d been talking nonstop and taking off one piece of clothing after the other until she stood almost naked in all her ugly glory in front of the doctor.

  Sitting there naked might actually have been easier. The doctor’s office felt airless and sticky. Sarah’s dress felt too tight around the waist, the elastic band pulling at her and reminding her that it was time for a new cleanse. Spinning, running, rumble boxing, Zumba, Pilates—she’d tried them all. Each one had seemed like a cult to her, and a boring cult at that. When she’d told Dr. Robin about her feelings toward group exercise, the therapist had nodded and told her it made sense—telling her that she was running from something, not towards it.

  “Have you been drinking?” Dr. Robin asked suddenly, worry in her voice.

  “No.” She knew the therapist was just doing her job, but she wasn’t in the mood to deal with accusations from anyone.

  “Sarah,” Dr. Robin chided her lightly. “Please—if you’re not going to take our work here seriously—”

  “Then what?” Sarah took a deep breath. Defensiveness. Brittleness. Rigidity. She stood up from her chair. She liked to stand sometimes during her sessions; it gave her a feeling of self-command.

  “All right,” she admitted. “Fine. I had a glass at lunch, maybe two.” In truth she couldn’t remember how many she’d had. “That’s not such a big deal, is it?”

  “You know we can’t do any proper hypnotherapy if you’ve been drinking,” the therapist sighed. For an instant Sarah’s anger flared, and she wished she’d stayed quiet like last time. “Sarah?”

  Sarah shrugged, defiant. “I don’t care if we do or don’t. It doesn’t seem to me that it’s working anyway.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s simple,” Sarah said. “Nothing is changing. I do the same exact thing practically every day. I get up, have tea and yogurt, go to yoga, go to the park, go to the market, make dinner, see the kids for the weekend, see my husband never. I’m getting sick of this fucking routine. And I’m getting sick of these useless sessions. Once in a while they make me feel better, but it never lasts. It never brings me any resolution.”

  Dr. Robin didn’t flinch but sat studying Sarah calmly, as though she were an insect. She was pretty but so serious; her auburn hair was always tied back neatly in a tight bun or braid, never long and messy like Sarah’s often was. Did she ever scream or yell or cry?

  “What would count as resolution for you, Sarah?” she asked.

  “Goddamn it,” Sarah hissed, turning her back in disgust. The therapist’s calm questioning infuriated her. Maybe she needed to up the ante—do something really crazy, but what? What would it take to startle her?

  “I’m seeing things,” she said.

  That brought the journal out. “Seeing what?” the therapist asked.

  “I t
hought I saw someone in my apartment. A shadow, I don’t know. A person maybe, and at the event the other day. It felt like something was there. Lurking.”

  “Something?”

  “Yeah, like something watching me.” Sarah sat back down.

  “Was anyone else home?”

  “No. Everyone’s away. It was just me in the apartment.” Sarah’s face darkened. “It often is, nowadays. Maybe I should move. I don’t really need all that space anymore.” Sensing Dr. Robin’s imminent question, she got back on topic. “It must be lack of sleep. I haven’t been sleeping.”

  “What about Eric?” the therapist asked.

  “What about him?”

  “You’re sure it’s not him?”

  “He’s gone again. Business. Or at least that’s what he says.” Before Dr. Robin could take issue with that as she always did, Sarah let it drop: “I met a man in the park.”

  The doctor remained stoic. “What man? A friend of yours?”

  “No. I mean, maybe. He was sitting across from me at the park. I’d never seen him before. It turns out he’d noticed a book I was reading, and… it’s silly, really.”

  “Hardly!” the therapist said. “It must have been important enough for you to mention it. What book were you reading?”

  “Thérèse Raquin.”

  “I read that in college myself. Interesting book.”

  Sarah could hardly believe it. A crack in the ice—a tangible piece of information. She wondered if she could turn it into more.

  “It seems interesting enough,” she said. “What do you remember about it?”

  “Nothing good comes of their relationship, does it?” The doctor smiled. “I mean, the affair turns into a disaster.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t have to.”

  “How do you mean?” Dr. Robin asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s probably not important anyway, not in a real life sense. But I don’t know.” She paused. “It’s just like there was this glitch in the routine,” she went on after a moment. “He disrupted it, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, we only spoke for five, maybe ten minutes. But it wasn’t anything significant.” She exhaled loudly. “It’s not like I’ll ever see him again.”

  “Did you want to?” Dr. Robin’s voice had reassumed its impossibly calm, I-can-question-you-for-hours tone. “See him again?”

  Sarah considered the question. Now was when she really needed to be silent. But she couldn’t be.

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  Dr. Robin cocked an eye at her. “I won’t judge you.”

  Sarah looked out the window, not sure she should say anything more. Dr. Robin waited.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.” Sarah hadn’t honestly considered it until now, but now that she said it, she knew she did want to see Lawrence again. It had felt good just to talk to someone who didn’t know her.

  “I just—I felt like I had a purpose, that day in the park,” she said. “It felt as if I knew this guy, even though it was the first time I had ever seen him. Like things were already somehow… in motion there.”

  If there was anything that could surprise the therapist, this wasn’t it.

  “Tell me all about it,” Dr. Robin said calmly.

  ENTRY, OCTOBER 18, 2018

  Patient: Sarah Rock

  Age: 39 (Dob: 12/7/1978)

  Sarah is reporting seeing and hearing things, apparently frequently. Could be related to lack of sleep or the trauma. Still, she seemed clearer today and less angry. She talked about a man from the park, Lawrence, quite a bit. His presence is important to her, even though she doesn’t want to admit it to me or to herself. She is drinking noticeably more and may not be taking her medications as instructed.

  Some of her facts were contradictory. Eric is still an issue for her. I have been trying to get her to face the situation more clearly. Her fear of separation is more prevalent. She looked well but was hiding her hands quite a lot; I suspect that was to keep me from noticing how far down she’s been biting her nails.

  CHAPTER 5

  In the sudden change that had come over her heart, she no longer recognised herself.

  THÉRÈSE RAQUIN

  The next morning she left the house early and headed to her yoga studio, a tiny neighborhood place on the second floor of a small building on Madison Avenue that smelled of essential oils. You couldn’t see it unless you were looking for it—a quality she liked. It was obnoxious the way women seemed to want to announce their fitness habits to the world. To her, it reeked of the desperate need for attention, the desire for approbation. No hip yoga pants and high-end mat for her; she liked to enter in street clothes and change there, feeling the corresponding shift in herself as she suited up for wellness.

  As usual she went through the class at the very back of the studio. The teacher was unlike most she had encountered, with their forced-calm voices and thinly veiled judgments. He liked to dispense droplets of a dour sort of wisdom in between his more usual litany of sarcastic remarks and inappropriate jokes. Despite his gruff demeanor, listening to him made her less depressed. He seemed a living reminder that plenty of people didn’t have it together but could be healthy and happy anyway.

  After the class, she changed again and walked back over to Central Park. She wondered for just a moment whether he would be there. Being there was enough; just crossing over Fifth Avenue she could sense an opening, a broadening-out of spirit in herself, like arriving at the beach on a hot day and feeling the sea’s respite only a breath away.

  She walked the park’s curving paths for a while, denying her curiosity as long as she could. Before she knew it she was back on her favorite bench, responding to emails on her phone. No sign of the man—of Lawrence. It was all right; everything was all right. The leaves trickled down around her, life and death continuing in its cycle.

  The thin autumn sun felt good, a slight warmth melting through her hair and down her body. She wanted to hold onto it, to hide it inside like a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter. For a moment, she closed her eyes and let the warmth fill her. The moment slipped into minutes—she lost track of how many.

  A cold wind woke her, and she opened her eyes. Her heart skipped.

  Lawrence was standing there, even more handsome than he’d been the other day. A strange, sudden happiness engulfed her at the sight of him. She caught his smile, flashed it back at him.

  “It’s a good place to relax. Or maybe you were just looking for this?” To her amazement, he handed her the book she’d lost. “I didn’t know where to find you, so I thought I’d try here again. Guess I got lucky!”

  “I—wow, thank you,” she said, and took it from him. “I looked for another copy. I thought I’d lost it.” She flipped through the book idly, as though checking to see that all the pages were still there.

  “I like the notes and dog-ears you left in it,” Lawrence said, gesturing toward the book. “Even in that little bit, you like to reflect on what you read.”

  Sarah felt a sudden embarrassment, not remembering what she’d written in the margins.

  “It’s so untidy, isn’t it?” she laughed. Like my nails, she thought. “I should start using a bookmark.”

  “Not at all!” He smiled. “It means you enjoy what you’re reading and want to feel a part of it. Not everything needs to be so tidy. I get that.” He pointed to the empty space next to her. “May I sit?”

  Sarah moved over. “Sure,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her excitement. He sat down beside her. She thought he would turn to face her, but instead he leaned back, looking up at the trees.

  “I like it here. It’s peaceful.” He smiled at her again, a boyishly charming smile.

  “Don’t you have a job? I mean, during the day.” It came out sounding impossibly rude, and Sarah immediately regretted it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  Still looking up at the trees, he chuckled. “Even if you did mean something by it. I’m a writer, so part of my jo
b is to be out observing people like you.”

  “So you’ve been observing me?”

  “I guess I have.”

  She wasn’t sure how to take that. “What do you write?”

  “Articles, mostly,” he said. “And I’m in the middle of my first novel.”

  Sarah leaned back, his relaxed vibe rubbing off on her, and she laughed.

  He looked at her quizzically. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A handsome stranger, who just happens to be a novelist, too.” Sarah smiled. “A bit clichéd, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe so. But I am. The novelist part, anyway.”

  “What’s the novel about?”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to share that just yet,” he replied. “I mean, it’s very personal. But let me get to know you and I’ll open up about it. Maybe I’ll even let you read it.” He smiled. “If you’re lucky.”

  Sarah laughed again, in spite of herself. “An arrogant writer, at that!” she teased. “Not at all a cliché.”

  “I’m just a bit shy about my work,” he said, and then he stood. “Do you want to walk with me?”

  To her surprise, she found herself actually considering it. “Walk where?”

  “Well, walk and take the train, actually. I want to show you something—a place downtown. Have you been to The Cat and the Owl?”

  “No. What’s that, a restaurant?”

  “No. It’s a shop. I think you’ll like it.”

  She furrowed her brow, surprised she was still entertaining this idea. “How would you know what I like?”

  “It’s just a hunch,” he admitted. “It feels like a sign, running into you again; a little adventure. What do you say? I’ll have you back before dinner, I promise.” He held out his hand.

  The idea was completely crazy. Going somewhere with a stranger—on the subway? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even taken the subway; she found it too noisy and crowded to be worth the stress. But now it seemed to beckon her, along with this handsome stranger; exciting and dangerous, like that night with Eric in Cartagena. A little adventure, as he said.