Paradise, Piece by Piece

by Molly Peacock

  Flopping out of my ratty bathing suit, I padded toward the medium lane at the Fourteenth Street Y during Women’s Only swim. It was a joy to sport a worn-out suit—it meant I was a swimmer for real. The members complained so loudly when the pool was cold that I expected it to be warm as a bath, and it was. The caps of the other swimmers glided up and down the lanes of our turquoise nirvana. Oh white tiles and echoes! The pool was a temple with its own high priestess, our lifeguard. Deep in the rectangle of chlorinated water I cast off conscious thought and swam, counting, till my laps were done. Beached like a seal among other seals at the rim of the shallow end, I breathed damp air and found my flip-flops. We swimmers probably all passed each other on the street without saying hello. We’d never recognize ourselves in street clothes, without our caps and goggles. At Women’s Only swim we showered without pulling the curtains, hung our suits up to dry and lolled naked in the sauna, where, to my surprise, a sleek young woman spoke to me: “Miss Peacock?”

  I opened my eyes, but the lights were kept low in the sauna.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s me, Hazel Zimmer!”

  I grabbed my breasts. “My God, Hazel,” I said, “is that you?”

  “Am I interrupting you?”

  “No, Hazel, it’s just that teachers are supposed to meet their former students for tea in lace collars, not nude in the sauna, honey.”

  The red halo of hair was still there on top, and I noticed, on the bottom. I realized I’d seen this stunning woman before, but never thought to connect her with the child I knew, hair hidden under a swim cap.

  “It’s great to see you!” she chirped.

  “It’s wonderful to see you, too, Hazel,” I said. She threw eucalyptus oil on the sauna rocks and they steamed as I clambered to pull my towel around me. “It’s a bit weird to meet you like this, though.”

  “Yeah?” Clearly she didn’t think so.

  “How long have you been swimming here? I heard you came back to New York after college. I heard from Fionula. She’s finishing her Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy,” I said. “She told me Niles is a Resident now, specializing in psychiatry, like his dad.”

  “I know, I’m his roommate!”

  “What kind of roommate?” I exclaimed.

  “The together kind,” she murmured.

  “Hazel, I’m going to drop dead from the heat. Let’s move.”

  Our clothes were in different rows of the locker room, and I dressed in peace, shouting occasionally over the metal barrier, finding out that she worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, that Philip Wu ran a theater company. Friends Seminary grads didn’t turn out to be CEO’s. When we were dressed we made a date to have tea, and I left it up to Hazel whether to bring Niles. Thus we wrapped ourselves in the light, silvery scarf of talk that many students share with many teachers, and at our tea I will gossip with her and be glad to hear all she says, and she will tell me her scandals and ask me cautiously about my life, and I will freely tell her in the way of ex-teachers who become like great-aunts. I love this ersatz aunthood. And we may fall out of touch, in the way of students and teachers, and then be in touch again. After all, when I taught her—when I learned something about how to be from her—I knew she was not flesh of my flesh. The intimacy in the sauna shocked me so much I considered switching to Early Bird swim. But I told myself to relax. We’re only bodies.

  New York Cake has no sense of chic display. The store consists of tray after tray of decorations, and expensive items like sugar-coated violets. The whole store is so sugary it is almost dusty. Maybe that is dust on the plastic packages of Halloween spiders and Santa faces and birthday candle holder rosebuds. People wander the cramped aisles with the look of horror and wonder that belongs to the overwhelmed. Of course, I like this place because it reminds me of the store at La Grange, the jumbles of Necco wafers and Welsh’s Fudge Bars next to newspapers, flour, and 3-in-1 oil. It’s a sanctuary of sorts, a collection of poems.

  On this day I am making a love poem for my husband to eat. The Belgian chocolate is home in the fridge. Now all I need are the silver hearts. La! Ten bucks for more than I will ever need. There is nothing, not one thing in all the world less necessary than what the ten dollars I spend now buys. And there is no effort less essential than beating and pouring a batter into the brownie pan and blocking off where the cut marks will be when the ultra-brownies are done, then placing, so gingerly, the edible silver hearts.

  “Hey! They’re ready!” I call from the kitchen of our little apartment, whisking them out of the oven. Here…they…are. The hearts apparently dove into the batter, seeking shelter. Or the batter grew up around the hearts, urging them to dive inside. But they didn’t dive quickly enough.

  “So what are those silver measles all over them?” my tactful husband asks. “They look like little pancreases!”

  “This is not a pancreas! This,” I stoutly inform him, “is a silver heart.”

  “Well, it looks like a pan—” He stops when he looks at my face. Bowing to the maxim that effort counts more than product, he grins and shuts up.

  The brownies are delicious, and the melted hearts are edible, after all. I think, of course, that they were supposed to melt. You can’t hold on to their original shape forever, only their original love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest thanks to

  My indefatigable agent, Kathleen Anderson, for faith and steely judgment.

  My Riverhead editor, Julie Grau, for her firm grip as catcher on the other side of the trapeze; and publisher, Susan Petersen, for netting a firefly at first flash.

  My McClelland & Stewart editor, Ellen Seligman, for her graciousness and insight, and my Canadian agents, Bruce Westwood and Hilary Stanley, for their guidance and panache.

  My American friends, the steadfast Nita Buchanan, the sparkling Barbara Feldon, the dreamer Katie Kinsky, the complexity expert Phillis Levin, the crusty William Louis-Dreyfus, the sure-footed social historian Georgianna Orsini, the hopeful Peggy Penn, and the wild encourager Anne West, for years of cheerleading and love.

  My Canadian friends in The Sisters of Perpetual Motion Book Club, the savvy Susan Downe, the zesty Ann McColl Lindsay, and the lyrical Thelma Rosner, for their loving tolerance.

  My poetry editor, Carol Houck Smith, for understanding, and Joan Stein, for her compassion.

  Condé Nast House & Garden editor in chief Dominique Browning, for giving me the chance to write prose; and editors Cathleen Medwick and Katrine Ames, for showing me how to do it.

  And to Mike, for his fortitude, his advice, and love.

  About the Author

  Molly Peacock is a poet, essayist, and nonfiction writer. Her latest work of nonfiction is the #1 bestseller The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72. Her most recent collection of poems is The Second Blush. Her first foray into fiction is Alphabetique: 26 Characteristic Fictions with illustrations by Kara Kosaka. She serves as the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and as a Contributing Editor to the Literary Review of Canada. One of the creators of New York’s Poetry in Motion program, she co-edited Poetry In Motion: One Hundred Poems From the Subways and Buses. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World, and the author of a book about reading poetry, How to Read a Poem & Start a Poetry Circle. Widely anthologized, her work appears in The Oxford Book of American Poetry, The Best of the Best American Poetry, and The Best American Essays. A dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, Molly Peacock is a former New Yorker who makes her home in Toronto with her husband, two cats, and a jam-packed terrace garden. Visit Molly at www.​mollypeacock.​org.

 

 

 
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