Parallel Play

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “We should go home,” I whispered.

  At the edge of the pier, I watched the flakes dissolve in water. They weren't falling, they were returning. It could snow as much as it wanted into the harbor and the level wouldn't rise one inch. The steady breathing of the swells would take it in, restore it to some pristine natural state.

  You'd think the railing would be taller, part of me went on, trying to fill in the silence that reigned in my soul. To prevent people from jumping. Like on top of the Empire State Building.

  Instead, it was absurdly small, the way all barriers are when you're already past them, in your mind.

  The wind swung around. I slipped and righted myself. Everything was icing over. The storms here came from the south, dumped their moisture, then arctic air froze it in place and immortalized the mess.

  Even though the railing was low, I had a hard time getting over. Like climbing out of something, a bathtub or a pit. But I did it—and in that one little step saw more: what was hidden if you stayed safely on the other side. There were rocks, huge boulders shoring up the foundation. Water lapped at the spaces in between, filled and emptied all the gaps so unthinkingly, so invitingly.

  I stood there, entranced. What was this? The ocean, of course. I'd never been this close. The ocean that surrounded the frail outcropping of sanity we all clung to. I took another step. It was such a relief to leave flat surfaces, the boring predictable geography we paved over our dreams with. Here, everything was drastically altered. You really felt gravity pulling at you, and what you heard was the munch of waves, an unseen digestion eating away at the certainty of everyday life. I kicked a pebble loose and watched it bounce once, twice, then fly high off the final part of the jetty, disappear noiselessly out of time and space forever. Not even a plop. If only I could slip out of the world the same way, without making a tear in the fabric of things, find a secret opening in the surface that would close seamlessly behind, as if I had never been. I took another step.

  Something hit me. The force pushed us forward. My boots slid on the icy rocks. I reached back and found a hand to hold on to, but it gave and came with me. We both fell together, our combined weight sliding down onto the sharp rocks, each kicking, trying to dig in our heels, until we stopped, inches before the steep drop-off

  “What are you doing?” I screamed.

  I had one arm around Ann, who was half out of her Snugli, and one on what turned out to be the sleeve of Harvey's jacket.

  “Me?” he asked. “What am I doing?”

  “You pushed me.”

  “I was trying to grab you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I thought—”

  “You could have gotten us killed!”

  We couldn't move. We were close to the edge but tangled up so much that, even now, it was impossible to get free.

  “Is she all right?”

  I looked down my chest.

  “I think so.”

  “Good.”

  We lay there a minute, catching our breaths, trying to figure out what had happened. The city, that ever-present sense you had of it grinding you down, was gone. Urban life was behind us. I stuck out my tongue and let some snow melt on it, tasting the same taste I had just been remembering from before, almost metallic, more of an awareness. Harvey's leg lay across me. His hand was still gripping my forearm, which ached. I could tell I was going to be bruised all over.

  “Shhh,” I told Ann.

  “I thought you were going to—”

  “I was just looking at the water. You almost knocked me in. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Following you.”

  “Oh, great.” I thought back to all the time I'd been in the loft. “You mean for the last hour and a half you've been shivering in a doorway?”

  I tried to look over and see if he was all right, but even that made us slide a little farther down.

  “Stay still!”

  “All right, all right! You don't have to yell.”

  For the first time it occurred to me that we might actually be in trouble. It had all seemed so benign, the edge, even a foot away. But in our heavy wet clothes, and me with Ann, it would be hard to climb back out. And there was absolutely no one here.

  “Don't be afraid, Eve.”

  “I'm not afraid. I'm pissed off.”

  He gave a little laugh.

  “Didn't you trust me? It was a book club group, for crying out loud. I wasn't cheating on you. And even if I was, I certainly wouldn't take Ann with me. What kind of a sick twisted creature do you think I am?”

  “You thought I'd taken her with me,” he pointed out, “when you saw us together with Mindy, remember? I figured maybe you were doing the same exact thing. Just like you did before, that time you went to Coney Island.”

  He was right. Was that what we'd been doing? Testing each other? Punishing each other for imagined wrongs?

  “Can I take my arm away?” he asked.

  “You can try. But keep your leg there.”

  Slowly, he detached himself, just enough to turn so he could face me.

  “I thought you were going to fall.”

  “I told you, I was just looking.”

  “That's all it takes. You look too long, you fall in.”

  I tore my eyes away from the water. Yes, it was mesmerizing but not, ultimately, where I wanted to be. Some of the buildings were beginning to turn on their signal lights, the ones to warn off airplanes, even though it was early afternoon. The storm made it look later in the day. Harvey's cheeks were red.

  “You've been outside a long time.”

  “It wasn't so bad.”

  “You shouldn't be jealous. You've got nothing to be jealous about.”

  “I wasn't jealous. I was worried.”

  I wanted to reach out and touch him, touch his frozen face, but for that I'd need the third hand I kept imagining I'd grown. The other two were busy holding my daughter and myself.

  “Worried and jealous,” he admitted. “And everything else.”

  “Really? Because you always act like nothing's wrong.”

  “Of course things are wrong. I'm falling apart.”

  “You are?”

  “But when you're not around, I can't show it. I can't show anything.”

  “I've been around.”

  “No, you haven't. I would know, if you were. You're the pathway all my feelings come through.”

  “If I'm so important to you, then how come we never make love anymore?”

  He looked puzzled, as if he'd never connected the two, which I must admit I never had either, but as soon as I said it, it made sense. It was like he said: Sex was a ritual, an enactment of who we were, what we meant to each other. And for so long it hadn't been happening. I leaned forward, clutched Ann to my chest, and craned my head around her body to kiss him on the lips. I found that extra limb, which was just love, plain old boring love, and suddenly felt more secure, more stable.

  “I don't know why.” He was fumbling for an explanation, even though, to me, just asking the question had solved the problem. “At first, it was that you hurt, that you were so physically beat up from having her. And then you were so unhappy. I felt responsible, that I had gotten you into something you didn't want. I thought I had trapped or tricked you into becoming a—”

  “Oh, please,” I interrupted. “Into becoming a mother? You make it sound like it was all your idea. You didn't trap or trick me into anything. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

  “No, you didn't. It was an accident.”

  I shook my head. “That's what I've had such trouble accepting, these last few months. I wanted this.”

  “You did?”

  I could feel tears melting channels in the ice of my face. I started telling him everything that had happened, everything I had done wrong or imagined I had done wrong, although when I said it out loud it didn't really amount to much. It was mostly in my head. What else is there left to confess to? I wondered, as the anxiety
poured out of me. I described breaking up with Mark that last time and going right to the clinic—so much for trapping or tricking me into becoming a mother—through going to the Gramercy Park Hotel and practically throwing myself at Martin Cooper, to what had happened just now, at the loft. I didn't want to stop because he had gotten so quiet and still. He was listening hard and frowning.

  “I didn't even get you a present,” I sobbed, sprinkling over the mass apology with a few last petty regrets.

  “Eve—”

  “For our anniversary, I mean. I was going to, that day, but then instead I stole that piece of—”

  “Eve,” he said impatiently, “will you just stop talking?”

  He looked not old, not young, but his own age, precisely. And I probably did too.

  “What did you tell her?” he asked.

  “Tell who?”

  “Io. About having their baby.”

  “Oh. I told her … thanks but no thanks.”

  He looked at me.

  “Well, maybe I got a little angry. But that's all right. There's plenty of cursing in the Bible. You just have to imagine how things sounded back then. A generation of vipers.' ‘Godless heathen.’ Even ‘O ye of little faith,’ if you update it, is probably more like, You pathetic little excuse for a—”

  “I like it when you stand up for yourself,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “It makes me proud.”

  I thought about that for a minute. Or did the opposite of thinking. I let thought stop, for one blessed mini-eternity, and emerged refreshed. There was a blissful relief. An unknotting.

  “What I don't understand, though, is why you've been so miserable. If you say you wanted this all along.”

  “I did, but … the problem is, I don't know if I want the right things.”

  “Of course you do. You wanted me.” He said it like it was an accepted fact. “And I'm the right thing for you.”

  “And you wanted me,” I said slowly.

  He nodded.

  I moved her between us. The signals on the tops of buildings blinked on and off, their colors smearing in the snow. We held each other. A wave of exhaustion came over me.

  “I've been depressed.”

  “No shit.”

  “But I think I'm better.”

  He looked around, as if to indicate our surroundings didn't exactly support my claim.

  “Well, I'm definitely not going to get any worse.”

  “Prove it.”

  I brushed the snow from his thick eyebrows. Something stirred inside me.

  “Can we go home now?”

  • • •

  But we didn't do it right away. The cold and wet left us both sick for about ten days. We spent a strange, dreamy time, half awake, half dressed, taking care of each other and of her, locking the door, closing the bedroom curtains, shutting out the world completely. We shivered and coughed and starved. We were very careful and attentive. It was like after a forest fire, when the green begins to creep back.

  One day, I felt well enough to go to the corner store. Tottering up and down the aisles, my body instructed me what to buy. A vitamin deficiency guided my eyes, made me salivate uncontrollably at things I wouldn't ordinarily consider. I came home with a bag of oranges, two bowling-ball-sized grapefruits, and a pineapple.

  “Is this some kind of diet?” Harvey asked.

  “I think we're already on one, just from not eating.”

  “Fasting and prayer?” he smiled.

  We peeled oranges and watched the citrus oil from the skins burst into the air. They smelled so good. Ann was asleep. After we ate, we went into the bedroom.

  “I forgot to tell you. While you were away, I finally saw the cat.”

  “Fauntleroy? He came out?”

  “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Does that mean winter's almost over?”

  “He's a cat, Eve. Not a groundhog.”

  I noticed he was staring at me.

  “What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Did you get a haircut?”

  “You finally noticed. Yes. About three weeks ago.”

  He took my hands and lazily pinned them to the bed. I had forgotten how strong he was. His full weight, his soft brown eyes, poised over me.

  “It looks good,” he murmured.

  I struggled, hard, just to luxuriate in how firmly I was caught.

  • • •

  Mindy's waiting room was worse than usual. There were children with fevers, runny noses, hacking juicy coughs. One horribly deformed boy had an earlobe blown up to the size of a small balloon.

  “Eve.”

  She cut through it all, in her white lab coat. No baby's going to throw up on me, her manner seemed to say.

  “We're running a little late. I had them give you the last appointment of the day, so we can talk, after.”

  “Why? Is everything—?”

  “Everything's fine. I just wanted you to know it's going to be a little bit of a wait. Is that all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Even a month ago, I would have been filled with dread at the prospect of having to entertain Ann for so long, but lately either she had gotten easier or I had gotten better at dealing with her.

  “How old is your daughter?”

  It was the mother of the boy with the ear. I tried not to stare, but could see another place now, on his cheekbone, that had the same gross puffy area, a bubble of flesh so stretched out it sagged and jiggled, then a third, farther down, on his chin.

  “Nine months. What about him?”

  “A year and a half.”

  She touched his head, proud. He would take a few steps and fall after every third one, then pop up again. So it wasn't just on the surface, whatever had happened. It was deep down and unfixable.

  “Alan,” she said, “see the little girl?”

  I tried not to clutch Ann, although that was my shameful instinct, to protect her from whatever he had.

  “You're waiting to see Dr. Cole?”

  I nodded.

  “She's wonderful, isn't she?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “We moved out of the city but we still come in to see her, because Alan likes her the best of all the doctors, doesn't he?”

  The boy's expression was a cruel parody of thought, a deep puzzlement that never went away.

  “She's so giving. Don't you think?”

  “Right,” I said.

  We talked a bit more, the usual empty politeness, which was even more obscene since it was really about ignoring the heartbreaking tragedy right in front of us. They got called in last. She let him walk down the hall by himself. He hit the floor as if it was part of his natural motion, popping back up again each time, a rubber ball. It took too long, though. Halfway there, I caught just a hint of exasperation, what her life was really like, as she whisked him off his feet and carried him the rest of the way.

  • • •

  “Any problems?” Mindy asked.

  “I don't know.” I was determined to sound more responsible than last time. “She seems a little low energy.” “Lethargic?” “I guess.”

  She shone a flashlight in Ann's eyes, then each ear. “How about you?”

  “Me? I'm fine.”

  “Hold her.” She placed Ann in my lap, then started listening to her heart, pressing different parts of her body.

  “I mean, I guess I'm doing fine. As far as I can tell. What about Harvey? How do you think he's doing?”

  I tried to make it sound like a casual question, filling up the small space of the room with talk while she did her exam.

  “Harvey?”

  “You guys still run into each other, don't you?”

  “Not lately.” She took off her stethoscope. “I owe you an apology.”

  “No, you don't.”

  “I'm sorry about that whole … misunderstanding, before. I thought I was acting in your best interests, but clearly I wasn't. I should have told you right a
way what was going on.”

  “Maybe not. I was pretty screwed up.”

  “Not as screwed up as me.”

  She unclipped her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, then gathered it up again and pulled it back tight.

  “You? Mindy, you're the least screwed-up person I know.”

  “I was really crazy about him. All through school.”

  “Harvey? You were?”

  She nodded.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be.”

  She went back to looking at Ann. There was an awkward silence.

  “What about her?” I tried ignoring what I'd just heard, even though I knew I'd treasure it, later, as proof that I had not been totally insane, that there was a germ of truth in even the most paranoid suspicions. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “Not that I can see. It's possible her ‘low energy’ is just you coming to accept the fact that it's finally stopped.”

  “What's finally stopped?”

  “The colic. That often happens around now. They quiet down.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean you don't even know what it was in the first place, and now you're saying it's gone away? For no reason?”

  “Children are mysterious creatures.”

  She smiled and ran a finger down the middle of Ann's chest. I'd never seen her show affection toward a baby before. Usually she just had a sort of clinical interest.

  “I got to get me one of these,” she said.

  It was dark in the hallway. The receptionist must have forgotten about us. We were beyond the last patient, in a post-medical world. The empty office was spooky. No more screaming. No more cures, either. Mindy walked ahead to turn on a light.

  “That boy who went in before us. With the ear? Is he going to be all right?”

  She didn't answer for a moment.

  “It depends on what you mean by ‘all right.’ But the simple answer is no. That's a very serious condition.”

  “How could you live with something like that?”

  “The mother, you mean? You'd be amazed.”

  “At what?”

  “Oh … love. Where people find it. What incredible reserves of strength it gives them. It's one of the neat things about this job. Seeing that.”