Parallel Play

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “Fauntleroy”

  He'd only come out that once, but the bowl was always empty. I got up again, filled it, and set it down just beyond the bed. He must be starving. Sometimes, after leaving, I would stand outside the door and listen to his footsteps pitter-patter down the hall, hear the metal shove of his little cat snout driving itself deeper into the stainless-steel dish, pushing it along the floor, his tongue frantically lapping up clean water.

  I missed having the dress to work on. Even though it had only taken a week, I felt a deep connection to it. What would I do now, make another? I shook my head. Something fell away and I saw I wasn't a “designer” and never would be. I didn't have it in me. That's what I'd been proving to myself all along. What I couldn't do. Beginnings, what felt like beginnings, were really endings. The real beginnings you didn't even notice.

  “Fauntleroy,” I asked, “where are you?”

  I got down and lifted the ruffle that ran around the box spring. Even here, Marjorie had storage containers, wide and flat, with big lids that snapped and sealed shut. Summer sheets. Pillowcases. Something shifted, two eyes, glowing warily, trying to get farther away from me, crouched low.

  “Fauntleroy?”

  I held out the food dish and rattled it like a beggar.

  I was in Ann's world, the underside of objects hitting my head, labels hanging down, surrounded by struts and casters and rug pads.

  “Fauntleroy, come out. Here, kitty.”

  When I looked back, which I was being forced more and more to do, it all seemed inevitable, everything that had happened to me, not like I had any choice at all. And so would this, in twenty years. I'd wonder why I spent all my time being anxious when whatever I was destined to become was just that: destiny. My fate.

  “Come here, cat,” I said sweetly, and got even lower, on my back, so I could extend my arm as far as it would go. But that wasn't far enough. The bed was huge and I was a small person, stretching my fingertips, realizing there was still an enormous distance left, to where a ball of terrified gray fur plastered itself even tighter against the wall.

  It was four o'clock. I brushed myself off and sat again. I had to go. I had to meet the train. I looked down and decided, Starve, you dumb creature.

  Just then, I saw his tail. He had come to the edge, drawn by food, and stopped, afraid, thinking he was still safe. But his tail was sticking out, a gray rope. I reached down and grabbed. Instantly, his claws tried to anchor themselves. I hauled him out, hand over fist. He made horrible little meows and hissed at me, but I just shoved him in the box and closed the gate. Then I peered in, trying to for the first time really look at him. But he had made himself invisible, shrinking as far back as he could into the corner.

  There was a crash.

  I hurried out of the bedroom, lugging the case. Ann had knocked over a box. She was crying, scared by the noise. I picked her up in my other arm and nuzzled her.

  “It's all right, it's all right,” I murmured.

  It hadn't fallen on top of her. She wasn't hurt, just scared. I poked the cardboard with my toe and heard the sickening sound of broken crockery. Marjorie's china.

  “It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong.” I twisted to look at a clock. “But now we have to go.”

  • • •

  The elevator was out of service. I held the carrying case away from my body to balance myself while working the stroller down the stairs one step at a time. Fauntleroy kept changing which side of the box he was crouched in, making the three of us sway and tip.

  “Isn't this fun?” I said to Ann. “We're at the train station.” I had never been to one with her before. The subway didn't count. Even though it was just a commuter line, there was something about the lit-up board, with its changing destinations, the lines branching out, and all those precise times, that made it special. I loved the announcements, the Arrivals and Departures, the way the places were intoned by an unseen voice.

  “Train leaving for Babylon on Track Four, making stops at …”

  “Babylon,” I told Ann.

  People flew by. A train pulled in and stopped, completely stopped, blasting air out its brakes. It would never move again. All the doors opened at once. An empty platform was full. We were part of a protected, enclosed, underground world.

  “It's OK,” I assured both cat and child.

  It was one of those rare moments of being very in control and earth-mothery I had made it to where I was supposed to be, on time, and now all I had to do was wait.

  “Well, don't act too excited to see me.”

  A woman was standing in front of us with dark glasses. She had a scarf on. It covered her hair and knotted under her chin like she had gone out with curlers.

  “Hi, Annie.”

  She knelt down. I wanted to say something, but I was too shaken by her appearance. She had aged, all at once. At first I thought maybe it was her mother, whom I'd never met, a frosted version of Marjorie, with graying hair and powder packing the lines of her face. Even her expressions, what I could make out past the dark glasses and paisley scarf, were an old lady's. The way her mouth cracked open, how her nose seemed pasted on.

  “Where are the boys?”

  “They're safe. You got your hair cut.”

  “Is there anyplace we can go? I mean, do you have time, or do you have to…?”

  She was staring past me. I turned and looked with her. There was the ticket booth and then a newsstand. A man in a turban stood inside. All the magazines clipped over his head had women in bathing suits.

  “Nobody followed me, I don't think.” Of course I hadn't been checking. “I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to follow me. Even I wouldn't follow me if I didn't have to. And I'm me! Know what I mean?”

  “I'm sorry to freak you out like that,” she said. “I know I've been a little crazy.”

  “A little?”

  I was so relieved I wanted to drop everything and give her a hug. She was back, the old Marjorie, my friend. Except it was just a flicker, a reminder of how she used to be.

  “Did you get everything?”

  “I think so.”

  She flipped through the files, totally absorbed. We were still standing in the middle of the station. People parted on either side of us. I watched her face. I'd never seen Marjorie look so intently at anything. Her lips were moving. She ran her finger along a line and found something she liked.

  “Joint returns,” she explained. “A lot of good stuff here.”

  “Great.”

  “He doesn't know I made copies.”

  “So you didn't think you were leaving, the first time. Or you would have taken all this stuff with you, right?”

  “The less you know, the better. You may be asked about it someday and I don't want you having to lie.”

  “I like lying.”

  “Not under oath, you wouldn't. I can't stay too long.”

  “What's going on, Marjorie? You seem so different.”

  “I'm not.” She was stuffing the files into a soft briefcase I'd never seen before. It wasn't new, though. It was battered and broken in, with a wide flap and little straps that fit into buckles. It looked like it could expand indefinitely. “I'm actually the same. That's what I've discovered. The same as I was before I had kids. I'm back to being me.”

  “I never knew you then.”

  “I was a real ball-cutter. That's what Sherman used to call me. We worked at the same firm. Of course he made partner and I didn't. This I don't need.”

  She handed one file back to me. It was recipes. Typed out. Never used. I must have taken them because they looked the same as the others, all numbers and code. 2 tsp. 4 T. 11?2 C.

  “Well, I don't want it.”

  There was a litter basket next to us. She threw it in.

  “So what have you been up to?”

  Losing it, I wanted to answer. A million different news items presented themselves.

  “First of all—”

  “I can't let them find me,
” she went on. “It's crucial, as long as I'm fighting this action in court. It turns out there's a whole network of women who help abused wives.”

  “Were you abused?”

  “Of course I was abused.”

  It made sense. The sunglasses. The makeup, even. And her fear of being spotted, of my being followed. Although wouldn't her bruises have healed by now?

  But she was so much quicker. She saw what I was thinking before I could even put it into words.

  “He didn't hit me, Eve. I was emotionally abused.”

  Coming from her mouth, it was so ugly-sounding. I still pictured her at ease, lounging on a playground bench, eating teething biscuits, unflappable.

  “What's that?” She nodded down at the cage. “Are you coming from the vet?”

  “No. He's yours.” I had forgotten all about Fauntleroy Now I held him up, so they were at eye level. “Don't you remember? Look.”

  “You brought the cat?”

  “I couldn't leave him there.”

  “I can't bring a cat. Not where I'm going.”

  “You mean they don't allow pets?”

  She gave the same long sigh the train had made, as if she would never take another step. That's what I was hoping for. I didn't want her to leave. I wanted us to pick up where we left off. Her features, which had been so hard and masklike, softened. She held up the files.

  “You did me a real favor today. Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “I'm going to draft a motion from Hell. And when Sherman reads it—”

  “He's going to die?”

  “He's going to love it. He used to lie next to me and read my motions in bed. After a full day's work. And laugh. See, when I stopped working, I think he lost respect for me. I know he did. Because I lost respect for myself.”

  “So you want him back?”

  “I haven't even thought that far ahead,” she mused. “It's just something to do, right now. Something she can't do. It's my way of communicating with him. He doesn't even come to the phone anymore, he's so angry at me. But I know he'll read my briefs. He has to. They're legal documents.”

  A train was announced. She paused, listening to the long string of towns. I thought I saw her eyes widen, just for a second, at one, but then she concealed it.

  “Is that yours?”

  “I really don't want you getting involved. How's Harvey?”

  “His mother—”

  “You know what you need?”

  “What?”

  “A kick on the ass.” She was checking the straps on her bag, preparing to go, jamming the files down. There were a lot more papers. She must have been reading them on the train. Hundreds of them, it looked like. “You don't know how good you've got it. I mean, basically nothing's wrong with you, right? You've got a kid, a husband, you're young—” She looked me over. “I could never figure out why you were so miserable.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I just lugged your cat about twenty blocks.”

  “I didn't ask you to bring him. I told you, where I'm going—”

  “Where are you going, anyway? Why won't you say? You think I'm going to tell?”

  Her face was all twisted up. She listened to a train announcement, a final call.

  “Marjorie?”

  “Listen,” she sighed. “This isn't working for me. It never was.”

  “What wasn't working for you?”

  “The whole mother-in-the-park thing. I wish it had, but … The point is, it is working for you, whether you believe it or not. I don't want you to look at what I'm doing as some kind of option.”

  “I missed you. That's all.”

  “Well, don't.” Even though the bag was meant to go over her shoulder, she hugged it to her chest. “And stop—”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop worrying so much,” she said kindly.

  “That's it?” I asked. “You're going?”

  “Wish me luck.”

  She got on a train. I watched her find a seat. By the time it pulled out, she was already laying papers all around her. She didn't look up to wave.

  • • •

  Harvey arrived home a robot. He was distracted. Passive. I tried to act as if everything was normal. By ten, we had run out of things to say. He came to the bedroom and stood there. I was watching TV.

  “Do we own a cat?”

  “Of course.”

  I could see him searching his mind, trying to remember when he had agreed to that.

  “What's his name?”

  “Fauntleroy”

  “Fauntleroy? You know what Fauntleroy means, don't you?”

  “No.”

  “Enfant-le-roi. Child of the king.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  He was still staring. “Do I get to see it?”

  “He's under the bed.”

  He started to get down on his hands and knees.

  “Don't bother. He doesn't come out. Except to eat.”

  He accepted that too. I could have told him anything.

  “You know I'm allergic?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I did remember, vaguely, now that he brought it up. “But all guys say that, don't they? That they're allergic to cats? It's the same as women saying they like jazz.”

  “You don't like jazz?”

  “It's all right,” I shrugged.

  He nodded.

  He was still in shock. I wanted to say, How do you feel? But something in his manner stopped me. He approached everything with a strange deliberation, learning the simplest tasks over, unpacking a suitcase, kissing his daughter. He didn't even notice what was wrong with me. His concern had evaporated. He was too busy mapping out his own hurt.

  “You shouldn't change the litter as long as you're still nursing.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “There's a virus that can be passed along in the milk,” he said, back in the hallway now. “I'll do it.”

  “But I was doing it the whole time at—”

  Then I realized I'd never told him about the cat at Marjorie's. It was our little secret, mine and Ann's.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I stopped nursing,” I lied, deciding, at that very moment, to wean her. I was already giving her a few bottles a day. If not now, when? “While you were gone.”

  “Oh.” I could picture him out there, frowning. “You know once you stop, you can't go back.”

  “I know.”

  There was a new distance between us. We had agreed, without saying a word, not to mess with each other. We were being polite.

  “My breasts are my own,” I announced quietly, still watching.

  The weatherman was talking about a snow advisory

  “Are you aware there's a large hunk of meat in the refrigerator?”

  “That was going to be dinner, but I didn't have time. It turns out you have to cook it for hours. I didn't realize.”

  “No problem.”

  “I'll make it tomorrow.”

  “I'll be here.”

  So this was it? After everything that happened while he was away, had I ended up becoming even more of a wife than before? Maybe craziness was just a way of blowing off steam so I could act relaxed and composed when it counted. Past the hysteria and paranoia of the past few months, we had reached a low-level stability. We could go on like this forever, existing side by side. And it wasn't so bad. I could handle it. In a sense, it was what I was made for. I changed the channel. I could do two, three, ten things at once. They were all the same. That's what having a kid had taught me. Everything got done, or didn't, and none of it mattered. Like he said, he'd be here tomorrow. And so would I. We were stuck.

  “Stuck,” I repeated, testing the acoustics.

  A quiet came.

  But it was all happening too soon! This was premature middle age. The way some people got Early Onset Alzheimer's at fifty or fifty-five, I was already showing signs of the dreaded Zombie-Lardbutt Syndrome before I even hit
thirty.

  There was one way out. It was really out, though, as in beyond the range of rational human behavior. But I didn't care about losing my mind. Maybe there was something better than my mind, underneath. What scared me more was the possibility of losing my soul, of becoming a glazed reflection in the TV's eye.

  I remembered the story he had told at the restaurant, about the woman who had been raped. Raped and then hypnotized. “When,” Harvey called, “did my underwear turn pink?” I reached for the phone. I didn't need to look at the slip of paper in my pocket. I had memorized Mark's number.

  Chapter Nine

  This doesn't change anything, I practiced. I mean, of course it changes everything, but don't think I'm expecting much. We could just meet from time to time, the three of us. You could even take her on outings, I guess, if you want. And then, every once in a while …

  No. That was wrong.

  Let's go back in time, I tried again. You and me. Let's rewrite history.

  The storm was different from what I was used to. In the Midwest, it got cold days in advance. Air swept down from the north, gained strength over Canada. It arrived with a special smell, froze the hairs in your nostrils, made a pain behind your forehead. The snow was almost an afterthought. It was the cold that got you.

  Here, the wind was warm and wet.

  “What is this?” I asked Ann, looking straight up at swirling furry flakes.

  They were wormy bugs with a million legs, tumbling out of the sky, disappearing instantly on the sidewalk, where they became a brown-black sludge.

  Of course. The eighth plague. Locusts.

  My heart was thumping. I was walking faster and faster, making the biggest mistake of my life so far. And yet I was excited. You say something's over. You prove, by making an ass of yourself, that it really is over, then you wake up the next day and it's still there, not over at all.

  “I am Dumbo,” I realized, finally finding the address.

  I remembered our last time in the elevator, on New Year's Eve, how she had been strapped in her stroller. Now, in the Snugli, her little legs kicked to be set free. Soon she would be staggering. I'd seen other kids do it, take their first steps. Soles that barely touched the ground before, never felt the full weight of their body, with its strange shifting center of gravity, take on that lifelong balancing act.