Parallel Play

by Thomas Rayfiel

  I laughed, thinking she was joking, but an hour later, alone again, found a pencil and opened the journal to the first page. I held the point right over the paper and waited for something to happen. Of course nothing did. Finally, I just made some marks, scratches, what a chimp would do or, worse, a child.

  • • •

  After the playground we went uphill, into the park. I loved the Long Meadow. It stretched so far your eyes unkinked their muscles, found resting spots—a grove of trees, a pond, the rise of a hill—then continued their journey until they got lost in their own perception. A yawn welled up and wiped out all your anxieties, expelled dirt and poison from your thoughts, so when you looked again you saw the world whole and fresh. You checked back in with some primal sanity.

  That's what I had come to expect, but when I got to the top of the path, yellow tape was wound across two trees, the kind the police use when marking off an accident or crime scene.

  “What's going on?” I asked.

  No one else was around. There weren't many people, this time of year. It had been cold for so long the rock-hard ground and scraped pavement looked raw, as if snow would be a blessing. Still, I was there to walk and didn't see why anyone should stop me. You couldn't close off such a big space. That was part of its beauty. I lifted the tape and ducked under.

  I was so tired I didn't even see the cables until I pushed the stroller right over them. Ann, who had just recovered from the changing incident, started to whimper all over again at being bumped.

  “Oh, sweetheart.”

  I was too exhausted to be angry. I parked us by a bench and rocked her in my arms. You slid from one emotion to the next. Colors, I thought drowsily. Your world was red, then green, then blue, like someone was turning a knob, a giant, unseen Hand. I sniffed back tears. The slats of the bench were leaving a pattern.

  “We are losing the light,” a voice complained. “And if we lose the light, we lose all.”

  You're hearing things, I told myself. First seeing colors, now hearing voices. But it was a strange voice to imagine because it had an English accent.

  Someone else spoke. I couldn't make out what he said but heard the same voice answer.

  “Doing it artificially never looks right. Besides, it is about to clear up. She is still a young girl, you see, despite all that has happened to her. All she needs now is a ray of pure sunshine on her features; then she will be saved. That, ultimately, is what we are after. Salvation.”

  I turned. Twenty people were behind me, a few yards off, in a place that, a moment ago, had been completely empty. A whole world appeared where the cables led, I saw now, with big lights on stands, wagons of what looked like pipe, boards of electronic equipment, and a card table set up with food. In the middle of it, a tiny man, very round and short, clearly the center of attention, watched all the activity going on around him. He was balding, with a small nose, sharp eyes, and hands sunk deep in the pockets of a beautiful green overcoat. The rest of the film crew were younger, regular-sized and casual-looking, wearing leather bomber jackets or down vests. They were all in motion, carrying out orders. He was perfectly still, the one in charge. You could tell. Even though he had the voice of a child.

  “Is everyone ready?” he asked, with just a hint of exasperation. “Is anyone ready?”

  By this point, I was twisted completely around. The director moved off to look at something and all of them followed. He was the sliding knot of the group's attention.

  Meanwhile, Ann's unhappiness had turned to tears. Not your garden variety boo-hoo-I'm-sad crying, more like she had just discovered the world had no meaning, a real existentialist-despair meltdown, which I ignored because it was nothing unusual. It happened two or three times a day.

  “Shush,” I said distractedly.

  “People,” the little man called, clapping his hands, “if each could just concentrate on his or her appointed task. There is a method to my madness, I assure you.”

  Portable heaters made a rippling wall of air so it was hard to follow his progress, to see past the border into the enchanted kingdom where he ruled. I blinked, trying to focus not just my eyes but my attention.

  “No, no, no, my dear. You must be surprised by Grace, not act as if it were some tuxedo-clad escort, late in arriving. Here. Stand like this.”

  There was a girl, waiting for him. I couldn't see her that well but she didn't seem particularly pretty. Her face was slightly bigger than normal, as if it had been magnified by all the attention placed on it. He started touching her, moving her body around, shaping it. The way he handled her was completely impersonal, not in a mean way, just the essence of unsexual, which I found weirdly attractive. The whole time, he was talking to her, pouring words directly into her ear, but of course I couldn't hear what, even though I was straining forward.

  “There.” He stood back to admire his work. “Now all we need is a little cooperation from the sky.”

  He gestured like a magician, and all of us—the people clustered around him, the actress standing in her unnatural position, me sitting on my bench—looked up to see the sun break free from a last shred of cloud.

  A shaft of light drenched the girl in liquid gold.

  My heart leaped.

  “Places!” another person yelled.

  The whole time, I had been using a set of long-dead muscles, dead so long I had forgotten what they were used for. Now it came back, as I felt them stir to life. I was willing him to notice me, that pathetic stare you put on someone that never works and only later you realize makes you look like a total idiot. But I couldn't help it. For some reason I needed this stranger's recognition the way your body decides it needs a certain vitamin or mineral. It was crucial to my health, to my mental well-being, and amazingly, miraculously, I got it. In the middle of the finely tuned chaos going on around him, he turned, drawn by my enormous all-consuming hunger. Cutting through the intervening fuzziness, not just the hot air of the heaters, the stubbly cheeks of all the would-be men, but through my own half-baked thoughts, my mixed-up wants and fears, he gazed directly into my eyes. It was a moment of utter connection.

  “Jonathon!” he called.

  The way he spoke was beautiful, so precise. Each word was a jewel. Each syllable was a facet on that jewel.

  A man with a clipboard trotted over to see what was wrong.

  He was still staring at me as he gave orders to the assistant, who nodded once and took off again, walking toward me fast, saying, “Ma'am?”

  He was summoning me, through his helper. I didn't know for what. It didn't really matter. I hadn't thought that far ahead. Just the fact that the look had worked, that he had noticed me, sensed my worth. I was still stuck back on that.

  “Ma'am, this is a reserved area.”

  The assistant was holding up his hands as he approached, shielding the scene from my prying eyes.

  “Hi!” I said stupidly.

  “We have a permit to film here. Didn't you see the tape?”

  “Me?” I asked, playing for time.

  “We're trying to shoot a scene, and your child is making so much noise that—”

  Other members of the group were staring too—not at me, I realized now, but at Ann. Even by her standards, she was having a classic fit. I was just so used to these displays that my response was to space out, which I guess was what I'd been doing, twisted around on the bench, picking some faraway object almost at random, in this case a fiftyish five-foot-short Englishman, and then concentrating on him, investing him with all kinds of phony significance, to take my mind off—well, my life. The alternative was to jam a dirty saliva-soaked Mickey Mouse mitten down her throat, so really I was doing us both a favor, but I could see how, from the outside, it must have made me look like the ultimate uncaring mother.

  “I'm sorry.” I woke slowly, painfully, out of a dream. “I didn't realize.”

  “If you could just take your child away now? Because we have a very short window of time to work in.”

  T
hen I heard the voice again, except this time it wasn't enunciating words of wisdom that mysteriously applied to my personal problems. Instead it had a neighing, braying quality, forcing you to listen.

  “—simply must do a better job of sealing off the perimeter. I cannot continue to work when you allow the presence of screaming infants to interfere with my cinematography. Now if we could hurry and refocus, people, before—”

  I got her into the stroller. She fought me every step of the way. I had to use brute strength, which I hated, forcing her little arms back.

  “She's colicky,” I tried explaining, “which you'd think was a real medical term but turns out to be a catchall word for a kid who screams nonstop and turns your life into a living hell.”

  “Great,” the man with the clipboard answered, not listening.

  “That's why I didn't realize what was going on. What you were doing. I was just resting here, and then I must have nodded off, because—”

  As soon as I got the last plastic buckle to click in place, she began arching her back and keening like a patient in a mental hospital.

  “Shut up!” I hissed.

  The assistant lifted the tape. I had to bend low to pass under. It wasn't until we were halfway home that I saw why I had gotten so mad.

  “Ma'am,” I remembered, glaring down at Ann. “He called me ma'am.”

  • • •

  Brooklyn wasn't Manhattan. There was no sense of mystery, noanswer waiting just around the corner. Things didn't happen for a reason, at least none I could see. They just piled up, a jumble of events. Of course it was me, my life, getting married and having a child, that caused this despair, not moving to a different part of the city. That's what I told myself. It wouldn't matter where I lived, under these circumstances. Still, I did feel I had taken a wrong turn. Every other place I'd lived in seemed so … biblical, as if the theology of my life was being acted out there. But now, whatever was due to happen had already come and gone. I was just another yawning, stupid member of the crowd, pushing home my daughter.

  During the day, Seventh Avenue had the feeling of a village. You saw the same faces. The street was lined with shops: an ancient hardware store, dark and packed with tools, or the butcher's, where I went now, with a sawdust-sprinkled floor and five or six guys behind the counter, all in bloodstained white aprons. There was a wooden chair on the customer side of the glass case, for neighborhood women to sit in and gossip with the owner. This time an Italian widow was there, dressed in black, as I squeezed the stroller past.

  “Mother,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

  I didn't know why I came. There was a supermarket one block closer that had ground beef wrapped in plastic. Here, you were a target the minute you walked in. Or else they ignored you completely. But I had a craving for meat. It was left over from my pregnancy. Something about the oozing displays fascinated me, made me salivate. Maybe how repulsive they were.

  “I got a nice pork chop.”

  “Wait, I have a recipe.”

  “She has a recipe!”

  He had white hair, a lot of it, brushed back and stiffened with some ancient cream.

  “It's here somewhere.”

  I fumbled for it in my pocket, coming out with a balled-up twenty-dollar bill, a pacifier, and a perfectly preserved Band-Aid. I could see, for the first time, the reason behind having a big ugly handbag. Before, I had always thought it was to hit attackers over the head with.

  “Are you a good girl?” he was asking Ann, while I searched some more. “Are you good to your mother?”

  “Here.” I smoothed it out and tried remembering why I wanted to make this in the first place.

  “What do you need, dear?”

  “Beef tenderloin,” I read. With blue cheese sauce? It sounded disgusting.

  “Filet mignon,” he told one of his assistants, who disappeared into the back. “How much? A pound?”

  “Three pounds.”

  “No, no, no. You throwing a party?”

  The terrified look in my eyes told him I wasn't.

  “You want a pound. This stuff is like butter.”

  I looked at the recipe again. Sure enough, it was for A Classic New Year's Eve: Serves Eight. What was I thinking?

  “I'm going to make it nice for you.” He took his knife and starting mincing away at the fat. “You stick this in the oven, put on a dress, some perfume …”

  He started humming. I watched the blade, with tiny movements, make all the white streaks, the bluish membrane, fall away, until there was nothing left but a cylinder of red.

  “You feeling all right?” he asked. “You look a little tired.”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Got to keep your strength up. You know what they say.”

  I waited for him to tell me.

  “It's a good life, if you don't weaken.”

  It was more expensive than I thought. I tried not to act surprised. Harvey wouldn't mind. Besides, it was worth it. I was paying for human contact, which I liked, the paying part. I tipped up the wheels to get past the lady in the chair. Her swollen elephant legs, with orthopedic stockings bunched up at the ankles, stuck out into the narrow aisle. She reached into the stroller—I hated it when people did that—and pinched Ann's cheek.

  “Cute,” she grunted.

  We lived downhill from Seventh, in an apartment building, not on one of the brownstone blocks near the park. Harvey wasn't sure if the neighborhood was a good place to raise a child. “Since when do we let her dictate our actions?” I asked, which must have sounded funny, since at the time she was pretty much all I was using as a guide. What did she want? What did she need? I saw the appeal, the seduction, of being a mother. You could just give up all your hopes and dreams, heap them on your kid. Devote yourself to her. It was so acceptable. Even though there were women on TV being police officers and presidents of companies, the real world you met day after day was full of encouragement to stop wanting for yourself and want, instead, for your child. Harvey felt none of this. Having Ann just made him more determined to succeed, to get ahead, to provide. He was big on that.

  “It's only for a few years,” everyone said.

  I held her in one hand, collapsing and snapping shut the stroller with the other, using my foot and the wall while shouldering open the door and somehow snagging my keys. I kept having these hallucinations I had grown another limb, an extra appendage.

  It annoyed me. Having a child appealed to Harvey's strengths, inspired him, while for me it just tempted my weaknesses, to weep and give up. I cried all the time now, for no reason, looking at a leaf or smelling fresh bread. I was so fragile.

  “A Classic New Year's Eve,” I announced, using my butt— which was threatening to become my real new appendage if I wasn't careful—to slam the door and barricade it.

  It was only early December, but I was counting so much on the New Year to solve all our problems that I wanted to try out the meal in advance.

  The place was still a complete pigsty. I kept having these fantasies someone would break in while we were away, pick up all the toys, vacuum, do the dishes, scrub the toilet, then leave.

  “You know, like a Dirt Thief,” I had tried explaining that morning.

  “It's called a cleaning lady,” Harvey answered. “Carmelita.”

  “Who?”

  “That's the woman we had, growing up. I could ask around, see if anyone knows—”

  “No.”

  “You just said how much you wanted someone to come in.”

  “I did not. I'm not getting a cleaning lady. Who do you think I am? What are you trying to turn me into?”

  “So do it yourself. It isn't that hard. What do you do the whole time she's asleep, anyway?”

  That was another reason I wanted us to have a nice meal, to make up for the pillow I threw at him right before he left. I hadn't meant to break his glasses. It must have hit just right. Now it was getting dark and, despite all my good intentions, I hadn't accomplished a thing.
<
br />   I slung her down on the futon, the one piece of furniture from my old apartment, coaxed her out of her jacket, sweater, mittens, and shoes. She took so long between breaths. Her whole body stopped, then gathered itself. What do they dream about, I wondered, with such little material to work with? Hardly any memories. Hardly any emotions either, compared to later. I watched her and waited for the valve in my chest to open. Slowly, it loosened. I allowed myself to feel. It was the vulnerability, her delicate eyelids, or maybe our being alone.

  This is what I do while she sleeps, I answered, defending myself. I practice loving her, but only in private, where no one can see.

  Of course what you really had to do while they slept was crash out yourself. You had to mimic their rhythms. It was the only way to stay sane. Instead, I “thoroughly oiled” the meat and “cut it into medallions.” I chopped, diced, grated, and peeled. I stooped to grab all the plastic toys and fluffy stuffed animals. There was no place to put anything. She didn't have her own room yet. We hadn't thought that far ahead. There was the living room, with the futon, some chairs, the table where we ate, and then, through a large opening, another space, where her crib and the changing table were set up. Her things spread to every surface. All I could do was arrange them in artistic-looking piles. Mounds of teddy bears, dogs, sheep, even a lobster. A whole corner of rattles, teething rings, and balls. Then I remembered the butcher's advice, took a shower, and put on a dress. Why not? I didn't have any perfume, so I smeared a few drops of Harvey's Pour l'Homme cologne behind each ear to confuse him, or to confuse myself.

  We hadn't made love in eight months.

  I stared at the mirror and thought, This is how you looked a minute ago. You're seeing into the past when you look at your reflection, light from a distant star. I was someone else now, not this person with too-long hair and a surprised wide-eyed expression, the pre-motherhood Eve. “Harvey's child bride,” I heard his friend Mindy say, when she thought I was out of the room. The girl peering back at me over the sink was just that, a girl. I was flooded with weepy regret, not for anything in particular, just a nameless formless longing looking to attach itself to whatever came along.