She remembered how to ride. Coming down the far side of the island she stepped back on her pedal and the bike slowed. She did this again. When she slowed the bike she seemed to be daydreaming, to have forgotten everything except this. It came to him that she could be more free than her mother was.
A loudspeaker blared in the distance, and a lanky black boy coasted off the road into the upper end of the parking lot where he stopped his bike and looked over his shoulder. Then he brought a walkie-talkie up to his mouth. He had a first-aid kit on the back of his bike.
Two women—one fat, one thin—had come in at the near end across the pedestrian path and were trying their bikes out. Sarah passed the fat one who shrieked at her friend as Sarah came up and passed her very close. It was like a race with Sarah lapping the others. As she came up on them again, the women rode slowly out the far end of the parking lot into the road and he saw that the boy with the first aid and the walkie-talkie had left.
Near the exit Sarah slowed almost to a stop, but then she lost control. She tried to pedal as she and the bike went down hard.
He ran toward her. Her leg was under the bike. She was still headed away from him. He’d urged her to wear jeans instead of the shorts. She was tall for six. The loudspeaker seemed now to come from the whole city. Sarah wasn’t looking back.
He got to her. She frowned. He said, "O.K.?" He pulled at the seat and handlebar; her right leg was over the bike and when he lifted, she came with it; so he lifted the bike and her.
She wanted a Band-Aid, but the tar-smudged bruise beside her knee and along her thigh hadn’t cut through the skin.
"That’s how not to stop," he said. He was going to say take a break, but she was on her seat and this time she stepped on the pedal and got going herself. She now knew how to start. She passed the road exit, turned past the end of the island, came back along the far side of the island, and then, coming round toward him, passed a small black boy and a woman entering from the rental end with a bike. Sarah went around again and then she came right up, slowed almost to a stop, put a foot on the ground.
"That’s terrific. Now you know how to stop."
"How long have I been riding?"
She wanted a hot dog and a drink. It was too early for lunch, but he asked her if she wanted to turn the bike in before they went to the cafeteria. She looked off toward the bike road and asked if she could keep the bike while they had lunch. When he said O.K., she looked back over her shoulder at the boy standing beside his bike which was like hers.
The woman with him was sitting on the outer curb of the parking lot. She was much lighter-skinned than the boy. Her olive-green raincoat was open over dark blue slacks and pale blue turtle-neck. She was speaking in a low voice. He wore gray corduroy trousers and he had a baseball cap with a monogram.
Sarah said she would practice some more.
The boy did not straddle his bike, he put the wrong foot on the down-pedal and pushed with the other foot as if he had a scooter. Then he looked the bike over, turned it around and did his one-foot-on one-foot-off scooter push again. Then he fell.
He fell on top of the bike. He kept both hands on the handlebars.
The woman said, "You going to ride that bike?"
The boy, who was smaller than Sarah but seemed older because he seemed in the tilt of his head to have thought more about how he might be able to do this, straddled the bike and walked it along.
"Go on," the woman said.
"I will," said the boy.
Sarah passed the boy and gave her father a smiling shrug.
He thought he might get her to go to the museum restaurant. The park cafeteria had hot dogs, greasy hamburgers, frozen custard, Coke. He stood up as Sarah came by again. He swung his hand through to touch her the way he did when she was going high enough on a swing and wanted a push to go higher. Next Sunday they would ride together.
The boy tried something new. He ran his bike a ways as if to jump on it when it was moving; then he stopped and turned it around and ran it back toward where his mother sat. He turned it around again and looked it over. He had it, he could see how it worked.
But he was in a tight spot.
"I’m paying for that bike," the woman said. Her perfect curls were sprung out in a high bell-shape. The boy was not afraid of her. "You ride it now," she said. He was not afraid of her so much as of not doing what she said—or of not knowing how to.
He straddled the bike again. Sarah came by and called out, "That’s the one I had last time." She seemed to be racing the boy who was standing still. She made the turn and came down the back-stretch. The woman got up off the curb as if to enforce what she’d said. The boy saw her over his shoulder and tried to move the bike, stepping on the up pedal; and when the bike moved, the other pedal came up and hit the back of his leg and he almost slipped.
"What’s the matter?" the woman said. The boy got his foot on the up pedal, which was on the other side now. "Look how she rides her bike." And suddenly the woman gave the boy one tremendous shove and stood watching.
The boy pedaled four, five, six times without faith, and Sarah instead of overtaking stopped while the boy’s bike ran across from the outer curb to the inner one of the island as if in some trial of its own; but his frowning eyes found those of the only father present and the boy stopped pedaling and the bike went over with a clank.
A two-wheeler takes confidence as long as you don’t have it; later— which is, after all, very soon—a two-wheeler uses the confidence you’re not conscious now of having. Bikes come and go, but if the sense of how to ride is constant, why should this be puzzling?
He picked the boy up. "Keep pedaling," he said. "Don’t think. Just keep pedaling."
The corners of the boy’s mouth were turning down against the equal but other force of this other adult.
"Get on, and this time never stop pedaling."
Sarah came by now, coasting, and she made the road-exit turn to come back along the other side of the island.
He started the boy. He ran him along holding the seat of the bike, feeling as if with his hands the boy’s narrow ribs and shoulders, and then the boy’s pedaling got away from him and he lost his footing and let go, but the boy was going. He hit the top turn pedaling like a cross-country racer and came down the back stretch just as a white motor scooter with a red-faced policeman upright in the seat buzzed in and stopped.
Sarah came by like merry-go-round music. "I like this bike," she said.
The woman had a paperback book in her lap. She was laughing as the boy made the bottom turn and came around toward her and Sarah’s father. "You got it, Mark." Laughing so hard that Mark started laughing himself. And as he came up with her he seemed to be thinking about an injury, an adult pain. The woman was seated on the curb; her legs were together, gracefully turned to one side as if she were picnicking in a field overlooking a valley.
The policeman had walked away toward the cafeteria.
Mark got himself out from under the bike, and the woman said, "You all right?" He sniveled. Then, seeing one adult coming and the other staying where she was, he watched to see what would happen next.
The woman put her book on the curb. "Don’t pull that crybaby number, I’ll slap your face." She got up and walked toward Mark. "You ain’t going to get your real bike till you know how to ride this one, now you get on that bike and ride it."
The other adult had stopped halfway, but he spoke to the woman: "Those rental bikes take a beating." She had looked up as the words were said, and she had to answer. She shook her head: "At least they don’t get ripped off."
"Oh they probably do."
She told Mark to get on his bike—did he expect to learn?
Then Mark said, just loud enough to be heard, "My daddy’s going to buy me my real bike," and the woman slapped him on the cheek as he was getting his leg over the saddle. She put her hands on her hips. Mark’s trousers were torn. She got her palm on the back of the bike seat and this time she gave Mark a running pus
h and she held on for a few steps, but she didn’t want to play in front of Sarah’s father, or so he thought, and she let go and stood leaning on one hip.
Mark veered over into Sarah’s bike and fell.
"See what you did," said the woman.
"That’s O.K. Let me give him a push."
This time Mark got going. She went back to where her book was and seemed to look only when Mark came around the bottom turn and pedaled past her to the top turn. Sarah rode after him.
"Stop pedaling and coast," she heard her father call to the boy.
The woman looked up at the words—not toward him but toward Mark, who was pedaling faster to keep up with the bike.
"Stop pedaling and coast."
"Like this," called Sarah.
The boy was staying in front of her and on the turn nearly went over into the pedestrian path where people were passing with a transistor.
What book was the mother reading? She would be just as well-dressed on the subway in the morning. She wasn’t comfortable with the book, but it wasn’t the book; it was how time that she was spending was occupying her. He tried to repeat the thought. Possessing her. He looked at his watch. Two dollars, two-fifty. Next Sunday, double that for the same amount of time.
The boy wanted to stop; he’d done many circuits and other people were in the parking lot now, and he wanted to stop.
"Sarah, want a drink?" He thought she called back yes. The boy now coasting up past his mother looked toward him; the boy had an idea how to stop; he slowed way down, way down, then let the bike go over and jumped clear.
He looked down at his machine. He came and sat down on the curb.
He was close enough to be spoken to quietly so the mother didn’t hear: "Say, you better get it out of the way there."
The boy shrugged.
"I’ll show you how to stop."
The woman was watching. Sarah called.
He held the bike with the boy on it and got him to balance with his feet on the pedals, then drop one foot to the ground. The woman watched.
"But you got to be moving," said the boy.
When the time came you didn’t really think.
Sarah was watching too, but she was in motion coming round the bottom turn by the cafeteria path; she wasn’t watching where she was going, yet he saw that she’d made the turn and was approaching slowly. The boy looked back over his shoulder like a motorist.
Two other kids racing each other came up behind Sarah and it was a sideswipe squeeze, close enough to bump her knees or lock axles—well hardly—and when they got past her she seemed released as if other hands had been on her handlebars, and luckily no one else was coming up behind her for she turned across toward her father just as—he didn’t believe it—the black boy he was holding up suddenly decided to take off—the face would have been worth seeing—he staggered against the absence. But Sarah had forgotten how to stop or was thinking of something else, or maybe had been aiming for the black boy who wasn’t there.
"Daddy," she called, and he found he couldn’t get out of the way, and they would both have fallen if he hadn’t braced himself and caught her head-on by the handlebars.
She got off the bike. He was holding it.
She showed him where the wheel rubbed against the fender. She wanted something to drink.
She asked if they could go on the road next time. He said sure if she thought she was ready. She asked when she could ride one of the bikes with thin tires. He said those bikes were too big; she said no; he said they had hand brakes.
Maybe, she said (making a joke), they would just go on renting a different bike every week.
The thought consumed him. All those bikes. A chain of bikes. The city’s endless claim. But Sarah’s childhood was not endless.
But which was the thought that consumed him?
Sarah’s mother, ten blocks closer to the park, would say—he knew what she would say—Be a hero, if you want to shell out the money; but why buy her a bike now?
Well, he wanted the kid to have her own bike. But she would soon outgrow it, wherever it was at this moment. Well, what was money? No— he meant, what was it exactly? Like time, it had a claim on him to be used and not to go unused. These rental bikes had no reflectors apparently. His Raleigh had three red, two orange. He saw himself lifting the wheels out of the frame, holding the chain off the rear wheel’s gears, flagging cabs until he got one to stop—disembarking uptown, fixing his wheels back in, and renting a bike for Sarah.
Money was time—or had used to be, when there was money, before money had disappeared into an expanding cloud whose only bearable promise was that money might vanish into psychic barter. Well, if time was money, time spent thinking without success about how to avoid wasting money was money wasted. The thought was worth something. A medium of exchange. But hold on—the black woman had stood up to stretch—her head went one way, her hips the other—if wealth was a claim on someone else’s labor, what was he able to claim here but somebody’s exertion getting a bike out of the shed, and what was he paying for but someone to take his money and his identifying credit card and make an enterprising note of the time? Dumb question. Inflated thought. He felt himself—it made no sense at all—the most silent person in a radius of fifty miles. Dumb feeling, he thought. But then he remembered he was getting also the labor expended in order to buy the bikes—house them—fix them. He felt the sequence. He fitted into it. The owner couldn’t ride all those bikes—now or someday or once.
"Let’s take the bike back first," said Sarah.
How about a long-term lease at a lower rate? Or a quitrent!
Sarah was saying she wanted—Sunday dinner, he thought—a hot dog, taco chips, and an orange drink. Mark’s mother had her hands on her hips— if she was his mother—as she watched Mark pass. "What the man say to you?"
Listen, the rental people exerted a claim on your labor; for your labor such as it was was where you got the cash to pay.
But Sarah’s claim was greater and she wasn’t paying.
In fact, he paid the rental people so that he would then be able to give Sarah his labor.
O.K. But give?
Say he rented her?
When good neighbor Sally had rung the buzzer last night and had said to Sarah, "Darling, might I borrow your father for ten minutes?" Sarah had said, "Nothing doing." Her new phrase.
He remembered that the park cafeteria had beer. Sarah wheeled her bike. He looked at his watch and Sarah looked up at him and he thought he knew what she was going to say, but he was wrong. She said, "We’re both walking."
What did it cost Sarah to rent him?
"You and Mommy would never slap me on the face," she said.
They were passing Mark’s mother when Mark came up and skidded to a stop.
"That’s great, man, you’ve done it all—ride, start, stop—all the first time."
"Well it isn’t the first time I forked out a dollar and a half an hour for a bike," said the woman. "Mark, you thank the man for helping you."
The book was a book of modern plays.
"Let’s go," said Sarah.
They crossed the pedestrian path on their way to the bike rental, and he got a whiff of mustard and meat. "You never forget how to ride a bike once you’ve learned," he said.
"That’s a likely story," said Sarah.
Sarah thought she would not go on the road next time after all but have one more time in the parking lot.
Good, if that was what she wanted.
And would he ride with her in the parking lot?
Sure.
THE HERMIT-INVENTOR OF NEW YORK, THE ANASAZI HEALER, AND THE UNKNOWN ABORTER
The grandson, who had refrained from asking if a certain skinny geezer that came and went one summer day was the man or weird character in question, would recall his grandmother’s remark—history, prediction, regret, relief—that there were things about the Hermit-Inventor not even she knew; for the grandson said, and at once recalled saying, that there was ma
ybe stuff the Hermit-Investor didn’t know about the Anasazi healefs discoveries.
Oh that must be so, the grandmother averred, with a pensiveness not humorous this time, yet embracing but never equal to a knowledge they both had that the grandson would know things about these her fabled history and lands that she herself did not. Wasn’t this because she had always been so near to him, he to her?—yes: down the street of a New Jersey town’s seasons from the late-spring morning when light shared itself with him, shored from the tiers and banks and steep slopes of foliage seen from his own third-floor room when he would stay with his grandparents, or seen from his grandmother’s own second-floor bedroom (where once he had learned to whistle), prime green-sea mass of waves of maple-bough leaves that crowded the porch as if the trees were mysteriously withheld, all but their leaves, which so surrounded the dining-room windows of his grandparents’ house that lawn and dirt-ground and driveway and the raised sidewalks of Throckmorton Street where it crossed West Main all just flickered as if through the fine wings of butterflies known by name or as if precipitating the broken motions and real flow of these sidewalks’ own brown and slate lozenges, on, on to autumn’s first intuition that winter had been in its mind all along (we mean chill) when the boy, who was like a man and felt somewhat that way, left his own house for school; left always later than his kid brother always in haste yet with the leisure of those young years no matter what the weather (while the kid brother curiously hated and could burst with rage at the lunatic winds that visited the street during just six or seven January days, unlike the tougher elder brother), who came out of their now motherless house a hundred yards down the street from their grandparents’—and, on instinct that morning as he was turning at the end of the flagstone walk toward downtown, he glanced back in the direction of his grandmother’s house to find her there—a watchman or, in the midst of everything, a live eye—there diagonally up the street on the far side as if something in his head way in advance had been seeing her there but she hadn’t gotten the message until now, a figure who waved like a mother seeing him off to school, where he was a regular person and a husky, friendly guy, etcetera, nothing odd about him, he’d leave that to others in and out of his family: yet now seeing his grandmother standing by a pillar of her porch, her hands clasped, he registered some rift in the scheme as an extension of it, economy of scale long before he knew those words (which years later like many others seemed to have been waiting for him inside him)—only that that grandmother woman, whom he had fallen out with after recently doubting for the first time her old but secretly always mounting stories, doubting because they began to flicker as more than stories and to bear queerly upon his life so that he had to think that if an event then that was so like here and now wound up like that, things here will too—ugh ugh ugh and shoot and shit but it sounds silly!—was waving him ("downstreet," as you said in that town like "downwind") off to school from that home of hers that he loved and sometimes lived in, and not this other home of his own at the other end of this flagged walk less than a regulation championship pool’s length behind him his father’s house, his departed mother’s undervalued house, and his own (an early real-estate insight belonging to him as freshly and clearly as in later years the house never seemed to), from which he had just emerged (for yes he did feel the exposure), with a gray-with-white-trim porch one step lower than the porch of his grandparents’ white house, "his grandmother’s," up the street: yet his own porch had dark, earth-damp, min-erally aromatic room under it to store two or three (in fact two and a half) rakes and some crates and a litter of forgettable junk and an occasional eavesdropping boy and a lawnmower that you made into a congenial machine between your force and the sweet sluggish-grown growth of the grass that didn’t feel very grassy green when you were pushing through it: a house with, above that porch, a ruffled tangle of dry, dark, indestructible ivy running up and around the porch posts sticking by some adhesive, some type of time, and pretty only at a distance, but a porch not with the everlasting paint smell in one specific corner of his grandparents’ porch, the corner behind the all-weather wicker-white chair (with kind of webbed legs, roostery-furred legs, if you know what we meant at the wordless time this was thought) in which his grandfather sometimes but not in this weather or at this hour of the day sat with a tome of the Century Dictopedia (as he said it, open under a pearl-handled magnifier which he fingered and looked less through than at, murmuring that this way you could see double:) while this school morning, whether because alone and watched, or from a mental wind from her, to her, a very grandmother-wind if you will, the opposite of that supposed ill wind (yay) Danny Kaye sang of in one of those nutty movie numbers as the identical-twin celebrity-extrovert—or in fact mistral (of the largely unknown boy-man’s later years when we lived to Change or talk non-judgmentally of Change late into the night show and mistral became miztral); but did this grandmother-wind, like nor’easter or sou’wester (also a rain gear in the overall weather machine’s sluice-drive continuum), come from? or did it "go to?" (as Shakespeare in high school said, while Jim and friends snickered, "Go to"—"How now, Gratiano?"— "How now, my lord, wilt hear this piece of work?"—"Come hither, sit by me"—"Go to, thou varlet")—for this wind, grandmother or ill or other—or mother—moved this morning across his broadening shoulders from left to right pushing him to turn squads-right upon achieving the main sidewalk which he was going to do anyway toward school which is beyond the other, far end of town, and he thereupon turned against this momentum, only to find, up the street, his grandmother on her own porch waving, as his mother sometimes more slowly would from her window if she was awake and in position to and had she now still been among the living if in all probability suicidal:
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