Philip shudders and gurgles. And then all at once, it’s over. There’s just a body with its head in the toilet.
The three of them back away, looking at what they’ve done. Everything is still. The only sound is the water running in the toilet tank. Jake feels his wife and son watching him, like they’ve never really seen him before. He senses their presence differently too. Something has changed between them and will never be quite the same. But slowly and cautiously, they move together again.
SPRING
84
A solitary man wearing a green Parks Department uniform on a windy April afternoon.
He stands by the entrance to a playground with a rake in his hands.
Through the gate, children are laughing, crawling in and out of the mouth of a steel hippo, and going around brightly colored pretzel-shaped slides. A yellow-haired girl in green overalls, about the age his daughter would have been, goes running across the asphalt, her hands flapping helplessly in the wind, into the arms of a black woman in a gray hat.
An elderly lady, her face creased and mapped with blue and green veins, sits by herself on a swing, as if she’s been waiting years for someone to push her.
Grief, John Gates has realized, is not a song with a beginning, middle, and end, but an endless symphony playing infinite variations on the same theme. One part fades and another starts. But somehow the sun keeps moving across the sky and trains keep running underground.
He pulls the rake through the grass and sees a cache of empty red-and-yellow-topped crack vials by a flower bed. The daffodils and tulips are starting to bloom. The apple and cherry trees are bursting to life along the cracked old concrete walkways. Crocuses are pushing their heads out among the discarded cigarette butts and used condoms.
God is not merciful, he thinks.
God is not cruel.
God is not forgiving.
God is not vengeful.
God is not fair.
God is not unfair.
God just is.
Like a heart beating or a tidal wave or a summer afternoon or terminal cancer or a child laughing.
He looks across the river and sees the sun glinting off the Jersey shoreline, turning the buildings gold. A cool breeze ruffles his thin and graying hair. A dark-haired child stands ten feet away, watching him with a trembling lip. A little girl in pigtails, a purple dinosaur T-shirt, and pink sweatpants.
“What’s the matter, honey. You lost?”
Her trembling lower lip threatens to pull the rest of her face down into tears. “I want my mommy.”
He puts down his rake. “You want me to help you find her?”
She turns her body, shying away, not sure what she wants with him.
“It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
He holds out his right hand. She looks at his face again, trying to find something past the scars and the hollow eyes. The grass shivers and the sun moves a shadow, changing the field’s color. The past is the past. Somehow she connects with his sadness. She slowly takes John’s hand and lets him lead her back into the playground. Inside, the other kids are screaming, scraping knees, flinging each other to the ground and picking each other up with brutal disregard and ill-considered tenderness.
God just is, he thinks. God just is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Blauner is author of the novels Casino Moon and Slow Motion Riot, which won the 1992 Edgar Allan Poe award for best first novel of the year. His books have been translated into twelve languages. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Peg Tyre, and their two sons.
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