Nina didn’t have a chance to say good-bye, only a blurted thank-you. She hung up and returned to her desk: the ghostly dress half drawn, a skirt about to billow.
What did I thank her for? Nina thought. Should I tell Eric? No. Father might refuse to visit.
She despaired of being able to concentrate. She had to have these sketches done by Monday.
If I call Father, it’ll be settled. One way or the other, it will clear my mind.
She got up again. The walk to the phone was self-conscious. She heard her shoes on the oak floor, saw her hands wave up and down with her stride.
She took hold of the hard receiver, leaned her head against the harder body of its mother, shut her eyes, and sighed. Breathed in. Then out. She had promised herself never to ask Tom for things. Asking darkened Tom’s lean, bright face; the pale blue eyes looked away, his thin lips vanished, and “Hmmmm” was hummed out.
Eric doesn’t want me to do this. He would be furious. She imagined what Eric’s rage might be: “You humiliated me! I don’t want your father’s money as a favor.”
No. This was Eric’s problem. She hung up.
ERIC WATCHED Barry listen to Luke. Barry was nervous in his attentiveness, his head tilted down, his body taut, every molecule magnetized toward Luke, to hear what his precious grandchild was saying.
“You know, Grandpa, I think it’s not such a good idea to eat out a lot.”
They were walking to Fort Tryon Park, the playground of Eric’s childhood, down the steep block from Broadway. Luke’s voice, at less than three feet tall, was more than three feet away from Barry’s ear. “Un-huh,” Barry said, but fast, so he wouldn’t miss Luke’s next syllable.
“For example,” Luke said, hand out, palm up, to illustrate the common sense of his point, “I like hot dogs. They’re not good for you, if you have them in a deli. But Grandma put them in a soup! And that’s good for you, right? I mean, soup is good for you.”
Eric laughed. He was sad. But he laughed anyway. His pleasure in Luke grew every day. He had never thought that would be possible. Eric had loved infant-Luke so much, kissed the sweet skin, gazed into the huge eyes, held the warm tiny body against his chest, next to his heart, and thought: I can never love anything more than this. But the growing and grown Luke, smarter and surer every day, his figure lengthening, the rounded fat of his cheeks evaporating, Nina’s strong chin emerging, the funny, clever, gentle boy-Luke cleaned a dusty corner of Eric’s heart and danced there in a brilliant and solitary light.
They took Luke to the old swings and slide. Now the park was taken over by Puerto Ricans and blacks. Eric didn’t like them. He listened to the way they addressed their children: irritation, suspicion, and command in every word. Just like the parents of his childhood. Those Jews and Italians and Greeks and Poles were no different from these people. Immigrants. People without money. People who had to do the thousands of errands the rich never do. It wasn’t the benefit of beauty that wealth brought; it was the absence of ugliness. No carrying groceries in the snow, no roaches in the plates, no rides on subways, no vacations on smelly rush-hour beaches, no shared rooms, no classrooms of forty, no denials of gifts to commercial-bombed children, no incompetent doctors, no disrespectful city bureaucrats, no washing dishes, no making beds, no cleaning toilets, no ironing, no noes. Anything ugly, anything repetitive and dirty, could be done by someone else, some anonymous black face.
I got out, Eric said to himself, watching them, their tired, harassed faces, hearing their loud, always angry or confused voices— even the laughter of the poor was unhappy: clanging bells, not happy peals. Their children fought over every toy, every activity, as if they already knew that there isn’t enough for everyone on this planet, and for those who don’t fight, there isn’t even sympathy, just lonely tears.
“What you want?” a young mother, not more than twenty, shouted at a pathetic two-year-old. She was a light-skinned black, probably beautiful, Eric thought, but her hair was angrily out of place, her skin was glossy with sweat, her eyes vacant with exhaustion.
The two-year-old cried out his answer. Eric thought he spoke in Spanish.
“He took it? Miguel! Miguel!” she shouted at a boy of six.
Also hers?
She screamed at the six-year-old Miguel in Spanish. Miguel watched her rage as if it had nothing to do with him. When she was finished, Miguel walked away. He had a bright ball in his hands, the object the two-year-old wanted.
That’s why I always take two of everything to the park, Eric thought. Then Eric realized she couldn’t afford two of everything, any more than he, as a child, had any recourse if he lost his pinkie early in the weekend and none of his friends had money for another. They would go to the park and hope to steal a ball or find a stray one. The fear of losing his pinkie meant that Eric never tried to hit a home run in stickball. One glorious moment of success brought all play to an end.
The two-year-old burst out with a fresh squall of tears as he watched Miguel walk off still in possession of the ball. “That’s what you get for not watching your things,” she told him. “Stop that,” she ordered her two-year-old after a long, cold stare at his misery.
He didn’t. He stood in front of her, his arms hopeless at his side, his features squeezed into formlessness.
“Stop it!” she ordered again.
Here it comes, Eric thought.
And she slapped him across the face. He screamed at this. She picked him up and walked away, her lean young body twitching with fury. She yelled and yelled, not looking at her son, complaining to the trees, to the other parents, to the sky.
Because she’s poor. Because she doesn’t have another ball. Because she has to do every little thing, change every diaper, wash every dish, make every bit of food, clean every piece of clothing—
“It’s horrible here now,” Barry said. “Remember how it was? With all the families? You knew everybody. All the kids knew each other … ” and he went on.
It was the same, Dad. The people were white. But it was the same.
LARRY WAS in his ear: “Look, I have to go. Please stop crying.”
The sweet perfume hugged Peter’s cheeks, hot and foggy in his nostrils. Peter put his hands between his legs and pressed. He pressed his eyes tight too. Get small. Get small.
“Jesus,” he heard Larry complain.
Calm down, he lectured. You’re all grown up now. You have your own apartment, you have a wife and child, you have credit cards. You have a job, you have a secretary. You can get up, go outside, and catch a cab. Maybe you need to nap.
“Are you having some kind of breakdown?” Larry asked. Peter opened his eyes a little, squeezing a look. An old man dressed in a gray suit was there.
That’s the horrible Larry, the gigantic man-penis, whispering, “You like this, don’t you?”
“Are you all right?” Larry asked slowly, saying each word with emphasis. “I have to go now. I can’t leave you here on my couch, crying.”
This is him? This is the monster?
Larry sighed, exasperated by Peter’s silence. “I’m sorry I said that about your mother. I’m sure she loves you.”
My mother? What did he say?
You’re all grown up now. You can get up and go.
“You look better. Do you want a drink? I’ve got some scotch here—” Larry moved toward a cabinet. “Jesus. Look at the time. Why don’t you have a drink? Relax. Take your time. You can leave when you want.”
“What did you say?” Peter’s voice was a child’s, a weepy child’s voice.
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have—”