Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

“My doll. He’s in Mommy’s knapsack.”

  Terrell had a boy doll. “You finish the windows, I’ll get Malcolm,” Zach offered, glad for any excuse to return to Cleo’s bench.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you at the pyramid.” Terrell pointed to a wooden climbing structure with graduated steps that narrowed to its peak.

  When Zach explained his mission to Cleo, she smiled. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” She reached under the bench for her knapsack.

  “He seems really smart.” Zach shuffled his feet, waiting for her to throw him a bone of intimacy, a hint of her feelings. She just looked as if she was waiting for him to say something wrong.

  “He also seems kind of obsessed with your dad’s church.”

  “Really? That’s what you took from your time playing with him?” She sighed as if tolerating a very tedious person. “Terrell gets obsessed with lots of things. Three months ago it was dinosaurs. Before that, Big Bird.”

  “He said your mom took him to church.”

  “Why shouldn’t she? My father preached there for years.”

  “I was wondering if he’s been going to Sunday school.”

  “Are you crazy? You’ve just met him and you’re already worried that he’s been indoctrinated?”

  Zach couldn’t suppress a grin. “Point taken. May I have Malcolm?”

  Cleo retrieved a dark-skinned baby doll from her backpack.

  “Last name X, I presume,” Zach teased.

  “Terrell named him after we read a children’s book about Malcolm X; I argued for Mahatma.” She pulled a small yellow baby blanket from her satchel. “I’d better show you how to swaddle him or Terrell will make you keep redoing it.” She placed the naked doll on the blanket.

  Zach couldn’t help noticing Malcolm’s tiny tubular penis. “Not too well endowed, is he?”

  “He’s anatomically correct for his age. A boy needs a doll that looks like him.”

  The doll wasn’t circumcised. Did she mean the boy wasn’t either? Zach came at the issue obliquely. “His skin’s a lot darker than Terrell’s. Does that matter?”

  “What matters is Malcolm’s black and so is Terrell.”

  “Terrell’s half-white,” Zach said, maybe a bit too emphatically. He paused. “And half-Jewish.”

  Cleo sent him a sharp look. “He’s had no reason to know that yet, has he?” She handed Zach the swaddled doll. “Have fun.”

  Zach carried it over to the wooden pyramid. “Hi, Malcolm!” Terrell smiled and snuggled his baby close. “You certainly look nice and cozy.”

  “What do we do now?” Zach asked. Anabelle was never into dolls. “I don’t know how to play house.”

  Terrell patted him on the shoulder as if comforting a deprived child. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.” Under the boy’s assured direction, they acted out several scenarios—bedtime, breakfast, naptime, lunch, and so on—giving Zach both a sense of the boy’s personality and an idea of Cleo’s routine. Terrell had empathy. He was nurturing and affectionate with the doll and patient with Zach, who was quick to register his son’s intelligence and sweetness. Zach, less patient, was relieved when Terrell became distracted from playing house by a noise that sounded like a snare drum. It turned out to be pebbles skittering down the sliding pond. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Terrell ran toward the owner of the pebbles, abandoning Malcolm, who, moments before, had been promised a lullaby at bedtime.

  Like father, like son, thought Zach. Desertion runs in the family.

  As the afternoon sun made its slow downward arc in the sky, car horns and an occasional police siren wafted up from Central Park West, the only reminders of life outside the playground. Inside, a different life continued to hum. Women monitored children who ran, fell, climbed, cried, snacked, and fell asleep in their carriages. Cleo sat on her bench in her cornflower-blue dress reading, or pretending to. Zach watched Terrell play with the pebbles, then glide down the aluminum slide fifteen or twenty times, chase other kids around the paths, scamper up and down the pyramid, and play pretend with his friends in the tree house, which was variously recast as a ship then a locomotive then a fire station.

  Terrell suddenly came running toward him. “I have to pee!”

  “Okay, relax! I’ll take you to the men’s room.”

  CHAPTER 19

  IMAGINE

  CLEO FELT LIGHT HEADED, HER TONGUE FURRY, AND realized she must be dehydrated. The small glass of cranberry juice she’d downed at dawn had been her last liquid. Though her bag was crammed with enough snacks for a week in the wild, she’d forgotten to pack a bottle of water and Terrell had finished the can of apricot nectar that she’d sent over with Zach when he came asking for the doll. There was a water fountain across the playground but the idea of drinking from it turned Cleo’s stomach. She had once seen a man coax his German shepherd up on its hind legs to slurp from the spigot and homeless people were known to use the park’s fountains as washbasins. Nonetheless, her wooziness left her no choice but to rehydrate at the public trough.

  She didn’t get very far before she was stopped by Sookja Lee, the mother of a four-year-old who wore leg braces and thick eyeglasses and spent his days in a pint-size wheelchair. Sookja sat on the same bench every day and never missed a trick. She pointed to Zach.

  “That your new beau, Cleo?”

  “Nope. Just a friend.”

  “Cute!” Sookja winked. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. When I find a beau, I’ll let you know. You do the same, okay?”

  “Me? Don’t hold your breath.” Sookja wiped her son’s lips and pushed his chair farther into the shade. “I bring a guy home, he takes one look at my boy, and he’s gone.”

  “Men!” Cleo said, an exclamation that, among women, needed no further elaboration. “I’m dying of thirst, Sookja. Excuse me.”

  Finally at the fountain, Cleo gripped the concrete bowl and drank copious amounts of cold water, careful to keep her lips from touching the spigot. The sorority of the playground never ceased to amaze her. Women who might never socialize outside the park shared the most intimate details of their lives once inside its fence. What else did they have to do? If you’re responsibly monitoring your kid, you can’t read or do sudoku. You have to stay alert—this was New York City, after all. But you could talk to one another and you could listen, hour by hour, day after day, which was how Cleo knew that Sookja’s ex-husband had been having an affair with his secretary, and Alison over there had breast cancer, and Sherry’s kid was starting therapy for her OCD.

  Walking back to her bench, Cleo stopped to say hello to Sookja’s little boy who couldn’t speak, walk, or feed himself. Ifs Scott used to say, “Love the lame and count your blessings.” Cleo berated herself for being insufficiently grateful that her son had been born with a working body, his cells and synapses intact, his molecules and atoms in proper alignment. She had endured morning sickness, depression, and insomnia—the pregnancy from hell—and in her eighth month was such a mess that her mother had to take a leave from the Bergmans’ employ to come up north and care for her. But her labor was brief, delivery without incident, and Terrell was—is—flawless. Father or no father. She ought to be counting her blessings instead of praying for her ex-boyfriend to come back.

  If by some miracle he said yes, she was going to demand a lot of him. He would help Terrell with his homework, serve as class parent, and attend teacher conferences, which was more than he had to do for Anabelle, who was never here during the academic year.

  Admittedly, Terrell could be a handful—stubborn, temperamental, sometimes irrationally fearful. To parent him well, you had to know how to get him to go back to sleep after a nightmare (lie beside him and sing “Love Walked In”), nudge his dawdling on the way to day care, quiet his tantrums when he was overtired. You had to indulge his “why” marathons, (Why is the sky blue? Sugar sweet? Mommy sad?).

  Being the December dad of a fun-loving Aussie may not have prepared Zach to father this particular three-year-old. What i
f he said yes and couldn’t hack it?

  Back on her bench, revived by the water, Cleo continued turning the pages of her book while stealing furtive glances across the playground. When she saw Zach’s body incline toward Terrell, seemingly listening to him, she felt confident that her son’s adorable charm and precocious vocabulary would make him irresistible. Then, she reproached herself: no child should have to audition for a parent’s love. Yet she couldn’t help rooting for Terrell to pass muster, especially after the Times recently reported that six out of ten black children in America grow up without a male parent. And fatherless children are much more likely than other kids to quit school and get into trouble, while those with fathers in the home—even inadequate, inept fathers—fared far better. On her Father’s Day show this Sunday night, she would open the phone lines for listeners to talk about the report and the inevitable would happen as it did every year: a few callers would extol their loving dads, but most would have sad stories of having been abandoned by their fathers and raised by overwhelmed and underappreciated single mothers.

  A father’s absence was a presence, like an erasure forever visible on a clean sheet of paper. The feminist in Cleo was loath to pursue her ex-boyfriend but the mother in her felt a father was worth fighting for. Which was why she was sitting here, pretending to read, while she spied, prayed, worried, waited, and wondered what it would take to make Zach Levy say yes.

  “THE MEN’S ROOM’S too far away. I can’t hold it in!” Terrell moaned, clutching his crotch.

  “Well, you can’t pee here!” Zach said.

  “Yes I can. All the boys pee through the fence. But I need you to unsnap me.”

  Zach released the snaps along the inseam of the red plaid overalls and Terrell went clamming for his penis in his tiny Jockey shorts. Zach bent over to get a closer look and smiled to himself. The circumcision was probably performed by a doctor in a hospital a few days after Terrell was born. Cleo must have ordered it to inoculate her baby boy against sexually transmitted diseases. Zach didn’t care what her reason was. He didn’t care that it had not been done by a mohel as part of a ceremonial bris with covenantal blessings and a family celebration. The point is it had been done. And done well.

  FROM HER SON’S telltale stance—chin down, hips forward, back swayed—Cleo recognized that he was urinating. And from the man’s posture—arched over the boy like a huge comma—that Zach had a clear view of what, undoubtedly, he was looking for. A few minutes later, the two of them came bounding toward her.

  “I’m hungry, Mommy!”

  “Carrot sticks coming right up.” She reached for her bag.

  “Not carrots! Ice cream! He’ll buy me a vanilla pop if you say it’s okay.”

  Cleo licked her thumb and rubbed a sand smudge off the boy’s cheek. “It’s not okay, sweetie. You had two Oreos after lunch. That’s enough sugar for today.”

  “Oreos” was what Cleo used to call African Americans who denied their heritage—“Black on the outside, white on the inside,” Zach thought.

  “Ice cream is made from milk,” Terrell added, flashing his adult playmate a conspiratorial grin. “So it’s healthy.”

  Zach shrugged in mock innocence. “We were comparing notes on our favorite treats and I said some sweets had no nutritional value, like licorice, for instance, but some are made from dairy products, like ice cream which contains protein so . . .”

  “All right! You can get him a pop,” Cleo said. She would pick her battles when it mattered.

  Zach invited her to accompany them down the hill to the vendor’s cart, where he bought Terrell a chocolate-covered vanilla Popsicle, Cleo a bottle of water, and himself a giant pretzel. From there, they continued to the Sheep Meadow and plunked themselves down on the lawn to watch the Ultimate Frisbee game in progress among hard-driving players. Cleo noted Zach’s particular interest in the women athletes and wondered whether he had found his Jewish soul mate by now or was still searching. Either way, she suddenly realized, if Zach took the boy, his wife would become Terrell’s stepmother. Jesus. Talk about unintended consequences: Cleo wanted her son to have a daddy, not two mommies.

  Should the miracle come to pass and Zach became part of her son’s life, he would also, of necessity, be part of hers. Like other parents with shared custody, she would have to coordinate her schedule with him—and his now or future wife—arrange pickups and handoffs, playdates and vacations; consult, negotiate, and compromise. Holidays could get thorny given the demands of two households. Terrell might have to spend alternate Thanksgivings with “them” or else make an appearance at each parent’s table and eat turkey twice in the same day. Christmas would, by right, be Cleo’s holiday since it meant nothing to Zach—unless the first night of Hanukkah happened to fall on Christmas. That would present a problem. Passover, too. Suppose the seder fell on Easter Sunday and Cleo wanted Terrell with her? Perspiration beaded on her forehead. Once Terrell knew he had a daddy, he’d want both parents to see him in his school plays, music recitals, and ball games. A gallery of images flashed by: Terrell’s graduations, sitting side by side with Zach, the wedding—she and Zach accompanying Terrell down the aisle. Sharing grandchildren.

  “I need to take a walk. Okay with you if I stretch my legs for a little while?” she asked, rising from the grass.

  Without looking up from the Frisbee game, Terrell replied, “Sure, Mom.”

  She turned to Zach. “Unless you’re planning to leave now . . .”

  “No, no, go right ahead. Meet you back at the playground.”

  Cleo headed up West Drive to Strawberry Fields, where she always retreated when she needed to chill out. The sunburst of terrazzo tiles with the word “Imagine” at its center was hallowed ground to Beatles fans. Tourists approached the circle with a hushed reverence, depositing their tokens of esteem—a photo, an origami bird, a bunch of flowers—as they knelt before the word. Some sang. Some wept. That it could be so freighted with feeling, that it could simultaneously inspire hope and grief, rebellion and pacifism, dreams and disillusion, made Cleo marvel at the power of a single word.

  Imagine. Her son, a Jew.

  She couldn’t.

  Imagine. Her son, fatherless for the rest of his life.

  She couldn’t.

  Back at the playground, she located Terrell, wearing only his Jockey shorts. He was running back and forth through the rainbowed spray of the sprinkler and squealing with glee, while Zach, smiling from the sidelines, held his shirt and overalls.

  “Time to go,” she called. Cleo pulled a towel out of her bag. Terrell ran to her and she wrapped him up like a bundle. With a glance at Zach, she added, “I’ll hear from you by Friday.”

  It was a declarative statement with just the hint of a question mark. “You will,” he said. He handed her the boy’s clothes and she dressed him.

  “Thanks for playing with me, Mister,” Terrell called out.

  As they turned to go, Zach saw Cleo surreptitiously wipe away a tear, then watched her take the boy by the hand and lead him through the gate and down the hill.

  CHAPTER 20

  ADVICE AND COUNSEL

  TODAY WAS THE TOMORROW HE’D WORRIED ABOUT YESTERDAY and now there were three more tomorrows ahead before he would decide his and Terrell’s future. When he got home, M. J.’s door was wide open.

  “Well, am I an uncle or not?” A beaker of iced gin, a bowl of olives, and two martini glasses materialized on a silver tray. “Take a load off and tell me everything! What’s he like? How’d you feel?”

  “He’s terrific. You would love him.” Zach plopped down on the velvet couch. “He’s got an incredible vocabulary for a three-year-old. Amazing imagination. Fearless. Cute as hell. And you should hear him sing.”

  “I didn’t ask if he was a promising candidate for Yale. I asked how you felt about him.”

  “Good. Great.” Zach popped an olive. “A little overwhelmed by how great, frankly. I kept wanting to touch him. I couldn’t believe he was actually there . . .�
��

  “And? But?”

  “I still can’t imagine being his father.”

  “You are his father.”

  “So far, I’m just his sperm donor. If I become his father, I’m afraid I’ll betray my—”

  “Halt! If this is gonna be one of your Holocaust monologues, I’d rather go sit in an outhouse breeze. I’ve had a hard day’s night—drama queen on the prep line, bread ran out before the second seating. Can we talk about the future of the Jewish people tomorrow?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?” M. J. emptied the martini shaker into the two glasses. “Walk me through it: exactly what’s involved if you take him? What’s the worst?”

  “Shared custody could be a hassle.”

  “Manageable.”

  “Cleo would have to be flexible on weekdays. My caseload is unpredictable, I can’t always be home at a certain time—”

  “And you’ll have to be dependable on Sundays so she can get to the studio on time,” M. J. countered. “You might have to cut short those bachelor bacchanals in Westport or East Hampton or wherever randy straights go for fun. Your social life might flame out for a while.”

  “What social life?”

  “Those sexy at-home seductions. With a toddler around, you can’t have women in sheer nightgowns turning up at the breakfast table.”

  “Okay, you got a giggle out of me.” Zach kicked his loafers under the coffee table.

  “I’m just saying—you already keep your sex life under control when Annie’s here. If you take Terrell, the other eleven months would be G-rated too. Is that a problem?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what’s left to worry about?”

  “Do I have to spell it out?”

  “The J-E-W-S?” M. J. rocked his head back in mock fatigue. “The last time you asked Cleo if she would convert, she was pregnant. Maybe she’s changed her mind.”