Fathermucker (23 page)

Finally he comes up for air. “I'm o
kay
, Daddy,” he snaps. “Stop asking that. No more asking that.”

The bells in the phallus of the clock tower (bells which are, incidentally, digital and fake; the originals were lost in a fire decades ago and never replaced) awaken, whip into a frenzied tintinnabulary foreplay, and erupt in a three-chime climax.

Three o'clock? That's it? Shit. I thought it was later.

On the sidewalk, a voluptuous SUNY coed struts by, heading up the steep hill toward campus. Her Ringwaldian get-up—skin-tight dress with bright, wide stripes; engineer boots over ripped fishnet stockings; bottle-dyed red hair; a
Pretty in Pink
fedora—is retro-eighties, but with a 2000s twist: no shoulder pads or baggy blazer to obscure those sumptuous curves. Yum. As eye-candy goes, she's a box of Godivas. She's sashaying right by us, Lady Godiva, her hips swaying sinfully, so I can't
not
look that way. Because I'm wearing sunglasses, and because I'm a dad pushing his kid on a swing, and because, above all, she's too busy chatting with her boyfriend (one of those young punks with big, round, black buttons
the buttons Toad lost and Frog helped look for?
in each ear; a new Cincinnati Reds baseball cap, bill perfectly straight, set on his head at a just-so hip-hop angle; his underpants pouring out the back of his torn jeans like Roland's do after he uses the bathroom; cigarette between his black-nail-polished fingers; the sort of degenerate who congregates in front of the scuzzy coffeehouse on Main, blocking foot traffic on the narrow sidewalk, begging quarters off tourists) to take notice of me, I gobble up her image. If I were a Manhattan construction worker—heck, if I were me and it was fifty years ago—I'd wolf whistle. I'd hoot and holler. But Lady Godiva doesn't see me; I'm invisible to her, just some middle-aged loser at the playground; I don't register any more than the swing set does. The boyfriend
does
notice, though. Glaring at me, he takes a final drag on his cigarette, and flicks it menacingly onto the sidewalk.

“Ooh,” I say. “Tough guy.”

By then they are past me, well out of earshot. I watch Lady Godiva's glorious gluteus maximus wiggle its succulent way to campus, not even averting my eyes when Fall Out Boy shoots one last dagger over his shoulder.

A little girl—South Asian or maybe native South American; dolled up in a princess dress; probably adopted—comes over and sits on the swing next to Roland's. “Push me!” she yells, but whoever is in charge of her is nowhere to be found (her guardian's probably in the sandbox, where the action's at). “Mom! I need a push!” When this tactic does not get the desired results, she turns her attention to me. “Can I have a push, please?”

This puts me, as a grown man at a preschool playground, in a delicate position. I could, of course, easily grant her request. But to give her a decent push, I have to touch the small of her back; should I be touching the small of the back of a girl I don't know, whose parents, for all I know, may be litigious assholes who see pedophilia everywhere? What if they accuse me of molestation? Or another dire possibility: she falls off the swing, and I get sued. That I am actively worried about these outcomes, unlikely though both may be, does not reflect well on our society. What have we become?

And there I go, sounding like Andy Rooney.

I decide to compromise. “Do you know how to swing?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Hold on tight.”

Instead of pushing her, I reach well over her head
keep your hands where I can see 'em
, grabbing a chain in each hand. I pull the swing back as far as I can go, count three, and release. She pumps her legs—she wasn't lying about knowing how to swing. Same result, no physical contact. Problem solved.

“Daddy!” Roland calls. “I need a push!”

“Thanks,” the little girl says.

“You're welcome.”

“Daddy . . . ”

“I'm coming, Roland.”

Now I'm starting to get bored. And, as always happens when I come to the playground, I have to pee. There's no bathroom at Hasbrouck—after Labor Day, the Port-o-Potty they keep on the grounds during the summer, one of the more disgusting Port-o-Potties you'll ever donate bodily waste to, flies south for the winter—so I'll either have to take Roland across the street to the well-appointed men's room at van den Berg Hall, or just hold it. I decide to hold it. We won't be here that much longer.

“Roland, should we go see what your sister's doing? And the twins?”

“No, no sisters. No twins. No girls.”

“Five more minutes,” I tell him. “I want to talk to Meg.”

“Oh, okay . . .” he says, drawing out the word like a long sigh. “We can go see Maude.”

He drags his feet along the ground, his toes sliding through the mud, until he slows down sufficiently to jump off. Then he races into the playground proper, tumbling once in a hole in the grass but catching himself before falling. By the time I catch up to him, he's already in the sandbox, mud-caked Merrills off, right in the middle of the entryway. Brooke—who, while only four, operates as the leader when the kids are all together—has integrated him into the game, which involves piling sand into a broken orange bucket. Maude, her legs practically buried, rakes up big piles of sand with a miniature rake that was once bright yellow but is now the color of watered-down lemonade. Beatrix is in the far corner, pouring sand from a broken green bucket into a hole some older kid—or, more likely, some overzealous dad; maybe the corporate-bald guy—must have dug. Too advanced for this crew.

“You made it,” Meg says.

“At long last.” I pick up Roland's shoes, clomp them together to get the mud off, set them beside the other three pairs. “How's Maude doing?”

“Oh, she's having fun.”

“Maude, honey. Give me that passie.” I snatch the thing out of her mouth—it makes a pronounced popping noise like after the third
lollipop lollipop oh lolly lolly lolly lollipop
—and put it in my pocket. She makes no move to resist.

I collapse into the bench next to Meg.

“Oh my
God
,” Meg says. “
Wait
until you hear the latest gossip.”

“Is this about Dia:Beacon? Because Jess told me that this morning.”

“Dia:Beacon? What about Dia:Beacon?”

I tell her an abbreviated and euphemism-laden version of the story: Cynthia Pardo and Bruce Baldwin, her pants down, his dork up.

“Sheesh. You know, she didn't use to be this way,” Meg says. “But nothing she does surprises me anymore. Especially when
he's
involved.”

“He” would be Bruce, Meg's prom date, the charmer who forcibly groped her at the post-prom party. If he hadn't been so drunk, he might have raped her. Does Meg know that I know that story? I lose track of what I'm supposed to know and what I'm not.

“So what's your gossip?”

“Well,” she says, “I had lunch with Cathy DiLullo this afternoon. She'd just come from Cynthia's office, and
she
told me Cynthia's
pregnant
. Can you
believe
that shit? Like this isn't going to be hard enough on her kids.”

“Bruce knocked her up already, huh? No big shock, I guess.”

“No. That's what's so crazy.
Peter's
the father. She's, like, sixteen weeks, and she's only been with Bruce for a month.”

“Didn't Peter Berliner get a vasectomy?”

Vasectomy: a fatherly rite of passage. Fourteen minutes of discomfort, a day of ice-packed boxers, and you're home (and condom) free. I've been snipped; so has Soren, and Dennis Hynek, and Chris Holby, and pretty much every other dad I know. The choice between vasectomy and another kid is no choice at all.

“Yes! That's the other crazy thing.
God
, those two are fertile.”

“Wow.” I kick a hole in the sand with the heel of my Doc Marten. “What a mess.”

“I know, right? Brooke! Knock it off.”

Brooke, who had been flinging sand at her sister, grudgingly complies.

“And—get this—
Peter
doesn't
know
. She doesn't want to tell him. She knows he'll want to keep the baby, and she wants to get rid of it. That's why she told Cathy—she wanted Cathy to get her the morning-after pill. Like that would work!”

“That's . . . man. I don't even know what to say.”

“Brooke!” She turns back to me. “I know, right?”

“We just saw him. At Lowe's. He looked so . . . sad. So defeated. He
must
know something's up.”

“Brooke! I mean it!”

“So is Soren recovered from his big night out?”

“I guess. I haven't talked to him all day, the fucker.”

At the curse, the only word in our entire exchange that Meg does not mumble, the other adult in the sandbox area, a slovenly middle-aged woman with a pot-gut and a faded tattoo of indeterminate design on her bicep—incarnate proof that the tattoo fad is on its last legs (and arms); it's over, people! really, if you're going to get inked in the tens, the only appropriate design is of Fonzie jumping a shark—gives us the Evil Eye. This is the same trucker grandma who was smoking a Newport Light when we first arrived—and probably the negligent guardian of the little girl I pushed on the swing.

If Meg notices, she does not react. “I don't care what he does,” she says. “I really don't. Soren can suck it.”

I'm reluctant to disclose the truth about her husband—that he wasn't out drinking with Peter Berliner, that he lied to her—because the last thing I want to do is unleash the Headless Whoresman upon Meg's mind, too. Then again, if she really
doesn't
care what he does, there's no harm in telling her. Tall, ruggedly handsome, and blessed with a Danish accent, Soren was quite the ladies' man in his bacchanalian bachelor days—he once confessed to me, nonchalantly, that he'd bedded seventy-two women before meeting Meg—so an affair is certainly in the realm of possibility, but if he'd been out with a secret mistress last night, chances are, he wouldn't have come home that knockered. And even if he was, then the sting of betrayal is something Meg and I could go through together. Misery loves company.

“Listen, I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Soren wasn't out with Peter Berliner last night.”

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't react at all. Shit. I should have kept my mouth shut. In situations like this, messengers turn up dead. But I already opened the can of worms, so now I have to empty the damned thing. “Yeah, Peter was at HoeBowl. Tournament game. He bowled like crap, he said, but they still won. I just . . . I don't know. I thought you should know.”

Finally, Meg makes a face. “That little
shit
.”

With another grimace in our direction, the trucker grandma scoops up the plump toddler she's presiding over
Come on, Jakey, let's go
and hightails it to the baby swings, leaving in her wake an invisible cloud of burnt menthol.

“Christ,” Meg mutters, once she's safely past. “Large Marge.”

“I'm sorry, Megs. I probably shouldn't've . . . ”

“No, it's fine. I know where he was. He was out with fucking Bruce Baldwin. They're, like,
friends
. Which of course is not something I'm thrilled about. So when he goes out with him, he doesn't tell me.”

She shakes a few Late July cheese crackers out of their red box, then tilts it toward me.

I grab a handful. “Thanks.” The crackers taste good. Really good. “Soren is friends with Bruce Baldwin?”

“They met at the gym. They hit it off. I guess he's a pretty cool guy,” she shrugs, “when he's not drunk and horny on prom night. I just think it's disrespectful, you know? I don't want to make a big stink about it, but the guy did things to me that were not very nice. My husband should want to slice his balls off, not buy him a beer. Fuck Soren.”

I'd never looked at Sharon Rothman in a sexual way before this morning, and my feelings toward Meg are even less libidinous. She's pretty (a younger, curvier, crunchier Michelle Pfeiffer), she's smart, she's funny, she's cool, I love her, sure—but I could make the same claims about my sister. Hooking up with Meg would feel like incest . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . if Stacy rode off into the sunset with her Headless Whoresman, and Meg and Soren broke up, wouldn't it make perfect sense to . . .

“Would you ever, you know, leave him?”

“So I can be a single mom, consigned to a life of poverty, with sleazy men marking me for easy nookie? No effin' way.”

Not that I'm eager for this to happen. I'd prefer to dance with the lady that brung me, and keep Meg in the
CLOSE FRIENDS & FAMILY
column, where she belongs. But if the towers collapse, something must be built at Ground Zero.

“What if there were a better alternative?”

“Who? David Rothman?”

She laughs, but the mention of Sharon's husband makes my stomach lurch.

Across the playground, the corporate-bald dad is now overcompensating for his endless cell phone call, chasing after his kid, his arms up over his head Godzilla-style, making too-loud monster noises, running too fast. He's having
QUALITY TIME
, or thinks he is. He'll go back to work tomorrow—a guy like that works on Saturdays, too, probably spends sixty hours a week in some office where the secretaries are leggy and willing—and feel good about himself, that he kicked off after lunch to spend a nice afternoon with his kid. Never mind that the boy looks legitimately terrified.

“You know,” Meg says, “this place would be perfect if there were a tiki bar. I could really use a mai tai right about now.”