Parallel Play

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “Nobody knows for sure. It does something to your retina. Elevates your mood.”

  “How long do you think you'll be gone?”

  “I don't know. A few days, at least. Maybe a week.”

  “A week!”

  The car service honked. I couldn't help notice the way he got up. He had a springy step, as if he was escaping. Well, with Ann whining along at 102 degrees, me crying hysterical tears, and the place reeking of cottage-cheese-colored puke, I couldn't really blame him.

  “I'll call as soon as I get there.”

  You do that, I thought, looking out the window. Ann was so hot. A little furnace. As soon as the drugstore opened I would get her medicine, and then what?

  He appeared, with that strange weightlessness people's movements have when viewed from above, like a bead of water on a griddle, riding its own steam, threw his bag in the trunk, and got in the back. You forgot your coat! I almost shouted, as if he could still hear me, through all the barriers that were already between us, then realized he was going to Florida. It hadn't really sunk in yet. He was trading being a little cold on his way to the airport for that feeling of stepping off the plane a few hours later, twenty pounds of clothing lighter, in bright sunshine.

  • • •

  “How terrible,” Iolanthe said.

  “I know.”

  I was staring straight up into the open wine bottle, which I'd snuck out of the restaurant in the bag with all the food. Why did they always have that dent at the bottom? It took up so much room, gave you a totally false idea of how much wine was really left. Less than half a glass, it turned out. The waiters had been sympathetic, packing everything in plastic containers, making us promise to come again. Oh, sure, I'd wanted to say, but just to use the bathroom.

  “I haven't talked to him. I guess he's still at the hospital, or the morgue, or wherever it is.”

  Io had called. I couldn't figure out why. I wasn't really paying attention. Ann had just sprayed another two tablespoons of the chalk cocktail Harvey so kindly prescribed all over my shirt. I was pissed at him for not checking in yet, even though it had only been ten hours. And now he couldn't because I was stuck on the phone with her, and there was no more wine, and I couldn't go out to buy more because I had Ann, and … just then a last drop of Château Whatever came out of nowhere and hit me right in the eye.

  “Ow!”

  “Eve, are you all right?”

  “I'm doing great,” I said, blinking furiously.

  “You know what? You should come to my book club.”

  Right, I thought. Book club. Parallel Play Group for women who don't have babies yet.

  “That's really nice of you, but I don't think I have the time right now.”

  “This is what I'm going to do: I already finished the book, so I'm going to send Mark over there with my copy. That way you don't have to buy it.”

  “No,” I said, very decisively. “Ann's sick, you see, so I won't really be able to read anything for a while.”

  The truth was, I hadn't read anything since Ann was born. It was one of the great losses of motherhood. I used to read so much. I even remembered starting some long novel right before my due date, hiding my head in the sand. I was so terrified of what was about to happen that I had lain there, luxuriously turning page after page. Would I ever be able to do that again? Just waste time?

  Iolanthe hadn't listened to a word I said.

  “Mark should get outside anyway. He's been hammering nails all day.”

  In nothing but shorts, I visualized lazily. Or overalls with no shirt underneath. It was so hot in that loft. Or a shirt with no overalls. Or … what were those things called? Ah, yes, in nothing but a loin cloth.

  “Wait, Iolanthe,” I called into the phone. “Please don't—”

  “Mark!”

  I could hear her shouting in a nagging, shrewish tone, part of some ongoing battle, making him go out because he didn't want to.

  “Hello? Hello? Please don't ask him to do anything.”

  Ann started to cry.

  “Oh, sweetie.” I forced concern into my voice. “If only you'd take your medicine instead of spitting it up all over Mommy. It would make you feel so much better. You don't know what's good for you, that's your problem.”

  “Eve?”

  “Mark.” I had her in my arms, the phone in the crook of my neck, wine dribbling down my cheek, and medicine drying on my chest. “Mark, don't come.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it's not a good time.”

  Her crying was that weak, pathetic, sick-kid kind. Every breath sounded like her last.

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “Talk to who?”

  “Ann.”

  I juggled them both and put the receiver next to her ear. She fought it, this alien piece of plastic, bumping against what she was trying to get away from, getting more and more agitated.

  “What's wrong?” I heard his miniaturized voice croon. “What's wrong with little Ann?”

  “Look, I can't—” She was wriggling too hard. I had to put her down. “I can't talk right now.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Don't come, Mark. The place is a mess.”

  “I could buy ice cream.”

  The question was, should I try giving her more medicine, since she rejected the last dropperful? But how much more? After all, some must have gone down. I didn't want to overdose her. Or should I just wait another three hours? I looked down at my chest and tried calculating. Was that one spoonful or more like two, staining my shirt? There was also some other, chunkier piece of dried-out gook there I didn't even want to consider.

  “I really can't talk now, Mark. I have to go.”

  “Where's Harvey?”

  “He's in Florida. His mother—”

  “Florida? You mean you're there by yourself? With a sick kid?”

  “Io will explain. Listen—”

  “You love ice cream.”

  He made it sound like an accusation.

  “We eat frozen yogurt now,” I said. “It's better for you.”

  “Frozen yogurt?”

  “After a while you can't even tell the difference.”

  “You used to eat Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, remember?”

  I remembered. Mining the flat pieces of Heath Bar, that hard toffee bonding with the enamel of your teeth so you'd be sucking at it for hours after. How the coffee flavor reached the very back of your throat, where almost nothing else did. How it trickled down without your even swallowing, hit some spot, scratched a very private itch …

  “Eve!”

  I had spaced out again, the way I always did with Mark. This time he sensed it, that fatal hesitation. “I'll be there in fifteen minutes.” “No!” He had already hung up.

  Chapter Seven

  Great. Harvey's gone less than twelve hours and you're already entertaining ex-boyfriends.

  Mark is not an ex-boyfriend. He's more of a boy X-friend.

  What does that mean?

  It means I don't have to explain what I mean anymore.

  No, this could be useful, a third me argued, trying to make peace between the other two. He could be my play husband.

  What's a play husband?

  I don't know. One you can have sex with?

  I was fluttering around, tidying up, changing clothes, brushing my teeth, all at the same time.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked Ann. “Don't worry. Uncle Mark is coming.”

  This is sick, Eve, I thought. But why shouldn't I have a little fun? Did I have to veil myself from the dreaded Male Presence?

  Yes, I liked Mark. He made me happy, more in anticipation than by his actually being here, but so what? I'd take that tradeoff. And he was bringing ice cream. It's not that I wanted to be single again. Far from it. He was right. Being married gave seeing each other an entirely new significance. Everything was charged. For example, if we kissed (the notion, appearing suddenly and uninvited, was more powerful, mo
re sensual, than the act itself had ever been) it would be full of danger, lighting up the walls of a dark and unknown cavern we found ourselves standing at the entrance to.

  “Calm down,” I said sternly, splashing my face, examining the remnant of my former self in the smudged mirror. What was going on? Everything was moving in different directions. My feet were on ice floes that were drifting apart. My legs were straining, doing a split.

  Of course he didn't come in fifteen minutes like he'd said. He came in an hour, by which time whatever enthusiasm I had was wilted to peevish resentment. Ann was burning up. I'd tried taking her temperature, but holding her down, sticking that little baby thermometer up her butt, and then watching the clock was more than I could handle. I kept doing a gesture I remembered from my mother, feeling first her forehead, then mine, as if I could make some kind of objective comparison that way. Finally, I resorted to willing her fever away, passing my hands over her body like a faith healer.

  “Hey,” he said, when I opened the door.

  “Could you take her?”

  I was holding her just the way I did the first few months when Harvey came home. I would hear his key and then, before he could even finish turning it, undo the lock, yank open the door, and thrust his baby at him. I couldn't tell if doing the same thing to Mark meant I was already missing Harvey or if it was just the only way I knew how to greet a man anymore: Hand him your child and start to complain.

  “She's been driving me crazy. She won't stop crying. I tried giving her medicine but half of it ended up on my shirt and now I don't know if I should give her more, or wait another two hours, or call her doctor, except I can't call her doctor because the doctor, it turns out, was lying to me about—”

  “Shhh.”

  He was saying it to her but it had the same effect on me. Her stubby little arms were pushing against his flannel shirt. A new one, I noticed. Green. But underdressed, as usual. He hadn't shaved, either. There was a light stubble on his cheeks. Or maybe it was just late in the day.

  “I think I'm cooling her down. Just from being outside.”

  I tried remembering what it was like when he didn't shave. What it felt like.

  “So it's cold out there?”

  Now that he'd actually showed up, I felt awkward. What exactly was he doing here? My fantasies crashed up against the fact of his physical existence, the horror of doing something wrong, something I couldn't take back.

  “Io said if she's really hot, to put her in a tub with cold water.”

  “Io said that? How does she know?”

  “She reads books.”

  “About child rearing?”

  “That reminds me.” He reached into his shirt—another thing about Mark was he didn't use pockets, he liked storing things closer to his body—and pulled out a thick paperback. “She said to give this to you.”

  It was warm, probably fragrant, from having nestled against his chest. I resisted the urge to smell it.

  “Thanks.”

  “It's for her book club.”

  “Right.”

  I looked at him there, still frosty but warming up, those light brown dreadlocks framing narrow cheeks and bright eyes. His features were so delicate, nose like a blade, mouth like a … mouth like a …

  “What?” I asked, sensing a question had flown by.

  “So you think we should give her that bath?”

  “Sure.”

  I started the water, then took her back and set her on the changing table. He watched.

  “I've never been up here before. It's nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  It occurred to me, with a mixture of disappointment and relief, that nothing was going to happen for the simple overlooked reason that I was so unattractive. I had been focused on Mark, on his arrival. I hadn't really imagined what the scene would look like through his eyes. But now that he was standing here in the middle of the room I realized that me dealing with my screaming sick baby must be the ultimate sexual turnoff, worse even than those subway ads warning about teen pregnancy (IT'S LIKE BEING GROUNDED FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS). I mean, if this didn't make his penis go soft, nothing would.

  Of course, nothing much did, I remembered, cautiously undoing the diaper. He once admitted to me, genuinely embarrassed, how boys on his high school track team used to call him Prod. He was so innocent he hadn't even figured out what that meant until years later.

  “Are you a member of the book club too?”

  “No, it's only for—”

  “Only for women.”

  “I guess.”

  “So what do you do when they meet?”

  He shrugged. He'd never thought about it.

  I carried her past him, holding her away from my body in case she peed. He fell in behind me and we all trooped to the bathroom. The phone rang.

  “Let the machine get it.”

  “No. You go ahead. I'll take her.”

  “You have to hold them.”

  “Don't worry about it, Eve.”

  “She drowns if you don't—”

  “I can handle it,” he said. “Get the phone.”

  It was hard to let go. It hadn't been, before, when he just wanted to see what she felt like. But this time she was naked and helpless. Before even saying hello, I stretched the wire far enough so, by tilting forward on one foot, I could peek around the corner into the bathroom.

  It was Harvey.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Mark was carefully lowering her with both hands. There wasn't much water. It didn't go above her belly button.

  “I just got in,” he began. “I meant to call you earlier but I went right to the hospital. That took forever. And then, when I got back here, no one could let me into the unit.”

  “The unit? You mean the apartment? What about your mother?”

  “I haven't even seen her yet. I got involved in this nightmare bureaucratic runaround. First they told me to—”

  “Could you just wait a minute?” I jammed the receiver against my side and hissed, “What are you doing?”

  Mark looked surprised. “She said to splash water on her head. It helps bring down the fever.”

  “Since when is your wife such an expert on sick babies?”

  “She's studying to be a therapist.”

  “I know. I thought you said she was a dancer.”

  “That's what she is.” He frowned. Apparently I'd insulted her. “Therapy is what she's going to do.”

  “Eve?”

  I could feel Harvey as a vibration, a disturbance, just under my rib cage.

  “What's going on?” he asked. “Is someone there?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but no one you know. Just a friend.”

  “How's Ann? Is everything OK? Who's there with you?”

  “A girlfriend,” I elaborated, wincing. I never thought I'd use that word, not in that way. It sounded so Parallel Play Group. “Alison.”

  “Alison?”

  “She's from the playground. Ann is fine. We're giving her a bath to bring down the fever. Is it OK to pour cold water on her head?”

  “It's not only OK, it's recommended.”

  “Well, don't sound so surprised. I know how to take care of a sick baby.”

  “Of course you do.”

  There was a silence. We both let that mutually-agreed-upon lie dissipate into the air.

  “I'm glad you've got someone there with you,” he tried going on, casually.

  Then he choked up.

  I could hear it, across all the wires and miles. I wanted to be there with him so badly, picturing him alone, surrounded by the suddenly dead possessions of someone he had loved. I retreated down the hall, uneasy leaving Mark with Ann but not wanting to betray Harvey anymore than I already had.

  She had been moved, her body, twice, and whenever he got to each place it was too late. By the time he tracked her down to the third sub-basement of the hospital, it was closed for the day. He had to go back the next morning. Then there was the problem of getting
into her apartment. I listened numbly, letting him talk, nodding nods he couldn't see, huddling on the futon, hugging myself against dark and cold, against the winter night, which no amount of light or heat could chase away. It was our first time apart.

  “The worst thing is, I feel nothing.”

  “Of course you don't. It's too soon. You're in shock.”

  “You felt,” he pointed out. “You cried.”

  “I cry all the time. It's like I have a leak.”

  “No, you don't. You don't have a leak. You're built perfectly.”

  “Built,” I smiled. “I'm not built at all.”

  “You are,” he insisted. “You're perfectly constructed.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. Maybe I should be. Is that what you're supposed to do in situations like this? I wouldn't know.” I could hear him look around. “There's probably nothing. Maybe some wine.”

  “I wasn't serious.”

  “I'm going to take her out,” Mark called. “OK?”

  “Shhh!”

  “I'll let you get back to your friend.”

  “Don't be silly.”

  “No. I'm beat. I'll call you tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  After he hung up, I sat there, wanting to put space between these two parts of my life. But Mark came in, looking for me, holding Ann wrapped in a white towel. He was very proud.

  “I think it worked. Feel her forehead.”

  She was cooler—and quieter too. We got her powdered and dressed. Then it was time for her medicine again. With Mark holding her, I managed to coax it all down. Soon, she was asleep.

  “Good work.”

  “Everything all right?” He nodded to the phone.

  “That was Harvey.”

  “What's going on?”

  I didn't want to discuss it. I didn't want to contaminate what I just had on the phone with him, more a moment of true connection than anything we'd managed to achieve in the flesh lately, by talking about it with anyone, especially Mark.

  “How about that ice cream now?”

  “I think I'm tired, actually.” I tried looking at him. Directly at him. I had to do this head on. “I really appreciate your coming. You were— I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come.”

  “You would have been fine.”