Parallel Play

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “Yeah. He didn't even observe he was marrying a lunatic. You know what I mean?”

  I was going to nudge her, to show I was joking, to show I could tell what she really thought of me, but decided maybe that was going too far.

  She gave a brief, pained smile. “Call, if you change your mind.”

  “About what?”

  “What we talked about. I know the names of some excellent people.”

  • • •

  Ann was in the Snugli. I'd sworn I would never wear one. Itwas the ultimate fashion blunder. I remembered thinking, You spend all that time trying to expel the little parasite from your body, then strap it right back on to your belly again and go around looking sixteen months pregnant? No, thank you. But it turned out to be essential for getting through the folding doors and up the steep steps of city buses. I rested my lips against the top of her head. There was a soft spot I was searching for— Harvey had showed it to me—where the panels of her skull slid together and left a little hole on top. Otherwise she couldn't have made it through the birth canal. It was my favorite area to nuzzle. But the bones were fusing together. It was harder and harder to find.

  I had lied to Mindy I still believed, just not in anything. Everyone said they weren't religious but still went through the motions; that's what I didn't understand. Religion is the motion, I felt like saying. The motions are the outward signs of who you are. But not for them, I guess. For them it was just social. For me, the world was still a crystalline place, even though the crystal itself had gone. That's what made it come into such incredible focus sometimes, like now, viewed from a bus, removed by height and distance. You could dip into people, imagine for whole seconds at a time being one with them, then slowly pull away, keeping a little of what you had experienced.

  A rider pushed the strip of rubberized tape and the NEXT STOP sign went on with a ding! The bus lurched. I came out of my trance, my lips still searching over the hard curve, tasting, feeling for a way past Ann's wispy hair into her brain, wanting to channel my feelings directly, bypass words, kissing her at each bump.

  Chapter Three

  Mornings started later and later. When the sun did come, all it showed was a white salty crust on everything, as if the last drops of life had been sucked out overnight, a life you didn't realize objects like sidewalks and cars even had until it went away The tree outside our window was bare. Close up, its sharp branches trembled and jerked, needles on a machine, recording some invisible event.

  It's 10 A.M., I reminded myself, watching my shadowy reflection. You're taking care of your baby. This is the most normal situation in the world. You're the most normal person in the world. You think you're weird but really you're not. That's what you can't accept: how ordinary both you and your situation are.

  I missed working, hunching over the sewing machine and losing myself for hours at a time, that vaguely sick feeling that came from staying up all night, until the tailor's dummy began to breathe, until I finally figured out how something worked, got inside the designer's head. It was practice, an apprenticeship, but for what? Not the life I was leading now.

  The phone rang.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Oh.” I looked down. I hadn't gotten dressed yet. “Nothing. I mean, I have no plan or anything. How did you get this number?”

  “You told me his name.”

  “I did?”

  “Harvey Gabriel, M.D.”

  “Because I'm not in the book.”

  “I know.”

  It was Mark.

  Neither are you, I wanted to say. In the book. I checked.

  “So I thought maybe we could go to Coney Island. The three of us.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “You always said you wanted to.”

  “Have you looked outside? It's freezing.”

  “That means no one else will be there. We'll have the whole place to ourselves.”

  “Don't you have some kind of contracting job to do?”

  “Pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  I hung up but didn't let go of the phone. It was typical Mark. He never thought about how anything might seem. Thought was supplied by the people around him. He just focused on staying in touch with his desires. Not that he desired me. It wasn't about me at all. I mean, yes, it was true, I had once talked about going to Coney Island. But the point was, he felt like calling so he did. He was sentimental or guilty or, more likely, bored. So why shouldn't I take advantage, especially since the alternative was shivering in a playground? He was using me and offering that I use him back. That was the only kind of relationship he understood.

  “We're going for a ride,” I told Ann, beginning to sketch out exactly what I'd need to bring. It was like planning for a military expedition. “A man is going to take us someplace. It's going to be fun.”

  There you go, I warned. Laying the foundation for a lifetime of disappointment.

  “Well, he's fun.”

  That was true. Mark was fun, even if time with him, in the long run, wasn't.

  I got us ready, still in a daze, concentrating just on what was right in front of me, the preparations. At the last minute, I decided to tell Harvey, in case we were gone longer than I thought. I dialed the hospital. He wasn't available, of course.

  “Could you tell him—?”

  The desk nurse was talking to someone else while she waited to write down what I said. There was all this activity in the background, a whole world, operating at a different speed, with different priorities.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind. I'll call back later.”

  I dug out some old jeans from the bottom of a drawer. Miraculously, they fit. Just the idea of going somewhere made me feel thinner, more energetic. In the mirror, I saw the opposite of usual: I looked older than I felt, but in a good way, more mature and wise and shrewd. A woman, whatever that was. And nothing can happen, I reminded myself, because I have Ann. She was this guarantee I could visit the past and not get stuck there.

  “So you have a purpose,” I explained, cramming her into a sweater. “Isn't this exciting? You'll actually be performing a function.”

  We waited upstairs until his pickup truck appeared. Outside, it was even colder than I had imagined.

  “Shouldn't you have a child seat?” he frowned.

  “Where would we put it?”

  The cab only had a trough in back with two fold-down benches on either side, nothing you could attach it to.

  “I thought there was some kind of law.”

  “Don't worry. We'll be fine. How do you even know about that?”

  “Know about what?”

  “Child seats and stuff?”

  “I don't want to get stopped.”

  I hugged her to my lap and strapped the one belt over both of us.

  “Let's go.”

  He took off and, I swear, I felt this husk, the dried-out nutcase of my sad self, get left behind. I could see her, in the passenger-side mirror, standing in front of our building, waving goodbye.

  • • •

  “She was looking for space; I was having trouble with the rent.”

  “So she started out being your sublettor?”

  “No. We were already together by then.”

  “But she was paying you?”

  “It's not like that, Eve. It just evolved from knowing each other to a monetary situation to this space-sharing, and then finally …”

  “You got married.”

  He shrugged, not necessarily agreeing, listening to someone else's version, not his own.

  “It's more like we were just acknowledging what was already there.”

  The morning light, or maybe just seeing him for the second time, made him look older than that day at the playground. But his face, even though it was beginning to show small signs of wear and tear, still hadn't changed from within. Some people arrive at a stage in life and stay, let nature do its worst. He was twenty-four and always would be. That's where his
features had decided to make their stand.

  “How come you moved?”

  “Io wanted to. She said we should buy. She has money, a little.”

  Ann was in a constant state of reaching, for the evergreen tree–shaped air freshener card, the loose change in the cup holder, for the outside world: houses now instead of brown-stones, some with shrubs, and then suddenly a high-rise project surrounded by a barbed-wire parking lot. I felt her body, still so much my own, straining, grabbing….

  “So are you going to have kids?” I asked, keeping up this relentless prying, afraid to talk about us.

  “I don't know. Should we?”

  “If you want.”

  “What's it like?”

  “Great,” I replied automatically. I was so conditioned. And of course it was great, in the sense of huge, like the Great Fire of … whenever.

  My mind drifted off. He stopped the truck.

  “This is it? This is Coney Island?”

  “We have to walk from here.”

  “But we didn't cross anything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a river. Or a canal.”

  “It's just called Coney Island. I don't think it really is.”

  “I know it's just called Coney Island, but still I thought there'd be some kind of border. Or at least a sign.”

  “I'm surprised you've never been, being such an explorer and all.”

  I didn't want to say this was the one place I'd made sure to never go, because I was afraid of running into him.

  He got the stroller out of the back and set it up. It was strange to be a couple again, even in the playacting sense. We crossed a road and went up a ramp, onto the boardwalk. The wind hit us full in the face. Mark was from Wisconsin. I was from Iowa. That was one of our points in common, coming all the way from the Midwest, reaching the end, the ultimate end. It was something I'd always pictured us doing together. And we had finally made it, except it was a joke. We weren't together, and the child wasn't ours—wasn't his, at least. It was like we had rented her for the occasion.

  “There's the Ferris wheel,” he said. “And the roller coaster. Of course they're closed now.”

  I had to walk fast to keep up with his long strides. The wind was purifying. It blew away unnecessary thoughts. We shouted over it, so our words were stripped down too. Even the one tear in each eye was a drop of distilled sadness, your heart realizing it couldn't afford to weep.

  “Wait, where is that?” I asked, squinting across the ocean. There was land on the other side. It was impossible. Land beyond land. A thin strip of buildings.

  He stopped. The wind lifted his hair. He had an earring I didn't remember.

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  “Who?”

  “Her.”

  “How should I know?”

  “You're her mother.”

  I bent down and looked. Ann had gone into a shrunken old-ladyish hibernation, only her eyes peering out. I should have brought one of those heavy-duty plastic covers, but then it always looked like you were suffocating your child, not that freezing her was any better.

  “There's a pier too. People fish off it in the summer. It's nice.”

  He looked around helplessly. Everything he wanted to show me was gone, closed for the season.

  “But where is that?” I insisted.

  I had thought there would be nothing but emptiness, an edge you could fall over the side of, like when the earth was flat. But instead there were buildings and trees, more ordinary life, this insistent presence, ruining the view.

  He gave up pointing out tourist attractions and stared with me, really applying his mind to the problem.

  “Japan, maybe?”

  I sighed. It wasn't the majestic vision I had been expecting. The city never really ended, just curved in on itself.

  We walked, leaning forward into the wind. He tried holding my hand. I coughed and knelt to tie my shoe. That put me at eye level with Ann, who was staring at wave after wave. It didn't seem as cold down here, in childhood. She was content—or in a coma. I passed my fingers in front of her. She didn't blink.

  “Maybe we should get her inside,” Mark said. “I know a place. If it's open.”

  I didn't want to leave, though there was really nothing to see.

  “You're probably right,” I admitted.

  He turned the stroller.

  Men, I had noticed, were really into driving baby strollers. They made tight turns, did S's around obstacles, like it was a bicycle or their first car. I half expected him to pop a wheelie as I followed, not trying to keep up this time, lingering far enough behind to imagine what it would be like to go past that last strip of houses, to reach the pounding surf on the other side. My toes scrunched up, gripping imaginary sand.

  We ate at an ancient hot-dog place that was trying to be fast food but somehow screwed up and tasted good instead. The hot dogs were more like sausages and the French fries were cut so thick they reminded you of potatoes. Even the cardboard trays the cups of soda came in were gray and solid. You could actually make out wood chunks in the process of becoming pulp.

  “You ever go home?” I asked Mark.

  “Sure. A couple of times. Can I do this?”

  He was trying to feed her a French fry.

  “When did you start liking kids so much?”

  “I always liked kids.” He was searching her face, as if it held some secret. “Why? Are you thinking of going back to that weird place where you grew up?”

  “It wasn't weird, just different. Did you ever think about having kids with me?”

  He shrugged.

  “I'll take that for a no.”

  “You haven't changed.”

  “Don't be silly. I've done nothing but change.”

  “Not really.”

  There was a silence. We were awkward, wondering what we were doing, having trouble looking at each other, which was why we both focused on Ann. Maybe that's what children are for, I thought. Maybe they're sponges, to soak up excess emotion.

  “So honestly,” he asked, “what's it like?”

  “Parenthood? I don't know. Once, I heard a guy say, ‘I have muscles in places where other people don't even have places.' It's kind of like that. You find yourself getting strong in areas you didn't even know existed before.”

  He was waiting for her to eject a wad of half-chewed potato. He had a quiet way of listening without responding, as if he was taking in what you said on a deeper nonverbal level, really getting it. Although at other times, I remembered, when I was mad at him to start with, he had acted the exact same way and just seemed dumb. All he did now was very delicately put one French fry in his mouth and slowly bite down, showing her how.

  “Who'd you come here with?” I asked. “Before, I mean.”

  “No one.”

  He was still looking at Ann.

  “You came here by yourself?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “That's not like you.”

  … because even though he acted very aloof and self-sufficient, Mark hated to be alone.

  “After you left, I'd just come here and hang out.”

  “Why?”

  “You talked so much about this place. I thought I might see you.”

  “After I left?” I echoed stupidly. “Wait a minute, I never left. You're the one who—”

  “Let's not talk about it.”

  To make sure I wouldn't say any more, he reached out and ran his fingers through my hair. They caught against all the snarls and tangles, giving my head a sharp tug.

  • • •

  On the way home, I picked a fight with him. I could feel it coming. We had walked more. He played with Ann, which I appreciated but also found irritating. I saw her responding, eyes shining, waving her arms, all in this crude imitation of how I had once been, falling for his charm. Not that there's anything wrong with charm, I thought, watching. Immediately, I corrected myself—yes, there was something wrong with charm
. I just couldn't remember what—as he mesmerized her, hiding his face with his hands, pretending to disappear and then popping up just when she didn't expect it.

  “Peek-a-boo!”

  She stared at this new planet that had loomed into view, blocking out everything else in her sky.

  Back in the truck, he looked around, decided it was safe, and pulled out a half-smoked joint. That's when I got mad, or what I chose to get mad about, although I didn't say anything, just rotated my lap so she couldn't see.

  Ann sensed I was taking her away from him and strained to get back. She was hooked.

  “You want me to open a window?”

  “No.”

  He did anyway, a crack, blowing the smoke out each time and then closing it up. We were in that part of Brooklyn where Orthodox Jews lived. Men, all in black, with hats made of dark waterproof-looking fur, walked alongside women who had four, five, even six children. The older girls helped out with the younger ones. The progression was so gradual you couldn't see, driving past, where daughter ended and mother began.

  “Io's worse than you are, about this.”

  He was holding his breath.

  “Good.”

  “She won't even let me do it in the loft unless we're having a party or something. I have to go up on the roof.”

  “Why did you call?” I demanded. “I mean, what did you expect to happen today?”

  “I thought it would be fun to get together.”

  Ann was a gyroscope, veering back to the source of her pleasure, getting agitated when I tried redirecting her gaze.

  “Sure you don't want any?”

  “No. Thank you. It's just weird to me that you're still doing this.”

  “Getting high?”

  “Playing with people's minds.”

  “I'm not—”

  “It's the perfect situation for you, isn't it? I'm home alone with a kid, and you can just call me up and be this white knight on his pickup truck who takes me off for a few hours of escape from my dull depressing life and then drops me off right back where I started from, while you—”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “And, no, you shouldn't still be smoking pot.”

  I turned to him now, in Full Nag Mode. Ann, who probably thought he'd gone away, started making awful wanting noises, these asthmatic grunts.