The Fun Parts (2 page)

“Can I help you?” said the salesgirl.

She seemed, but didn’t look, fifteen.

“Who comes in here?” Tovah asked.

“People looking for hats.”

“That is twisted.”

Tovah felt funny. Maybe she hadn’t really bounced back from last night’s death feast.

Maybe what she’d been on the couch was pregnant, though only ignorance could make it true. You could reckon the dates, track the cycles, but then certain facts press down. You couldn’t be pregnant if you hadn’t been laid in three years. A devout Catholic could still hope, but not Tovah. She’d never even considered herself the maternal type. She didn’t believe there was such a temperament, unless one assembled it in the culture factory along with images of women as radiant white creatures traipsing through summer fields with their tanned, though still white, spawn.

Those were the old lies. The newer ones claimed that all committed mothers could also manage begemmed careers, that only the weak or untalented had to choose. But even the mothers at Sweet Apple, not to mention her former school, could not disguise their struggle. Instead they sought catharsis in their comic monologues about the slog, or the sick joke of being marked as both mediocre mothers and lousy colleagues.

Some mothers at Sweet Apple had gleaned an even greater shift: the shame in procreation. People glared at families, at mothers. Nobody got up for pregnant women on the subway anymore. The planet couldn’t sustain more mouths. So stand, greedy lady.

Tovah had picked her side years before. No peace-shredding hominid would find shelter in her womb. She loved to play with the pre-K kids, but live with one? Then something embarrassing and maybe purely chemical occurred. She wanted a baby. That was all. She still believed everything she believed, cultivated privacy and solitude, and, despite her attachment to the Sweet Apple tykes, believed childlessness the noble course (yes, your kid might cure cancer, but probably he’d grow up to play video games or, if the world followed its current path, huddle in a gulch slurping gulchwater and recalling the magnificence of video games). But she wanted a baby. That’s what her body was for, in the cruel scheme of things, and she craved the bleakness of biology. It didn’t matter if the baby was hers, except it absolutely did. She wanted to carry it and give birth to it and breast-feed it and live in a natural cocoon with it for as long as possible, with somebody on the outside slipping everything she needed through a slim vent. In this way life would be joyful instead of nearly unlivable. The part of her that she’d always trusted knew this was crazy, but that part had also, one had to admit, led her to this grim limbo.

Tovah started across the street for a cleansing smoothie. Somebody shouted her name. Mr. Gautier strode toward her. He had a sharp-boned swagger and wore a hat, a baseball cap, stitched with the words
GLYPH SYSTEMS.

“Mr. Gautier,” she called.

“Randy.”

“Hello,” Tovah said.

Mr. Gautier put a hand on Tovah’s shoulder, took a few hard breaths. He dipped his head and spat something pebble sized onto the pavement. Tovah noticed the tiny hearing aid that lurked behind a shrub of ear hair.

“You played hooky today,” he said.

“It was a day off. I’m only part-time.”

“Did you hear what happened over there?”

She could picture only worst-case scenarios. Fires, floods, a collapsed ceiling in the lunch nook, a child pincered in that window sash the caretaker still hadn’t fixed. Or maybe Laura had finally snapped, kicked one of what she liked to call the Future Date Rapists of America in the skull. Boys, Laura had told her, were bad for schools, bad for society.

Which wasn’t to say, Laura added, that she didn’t love the cuties to death.

“Dezzy was in the climber room,” Mr. Gautier said, “and she fell off the … whatever it is.”

“The climber.”

“The climber,” Mr. Gautier said. “They could just say jungle gym. What’s the big diff?”

“Is Dezzy okay?” Tovah asked. “Those pads on the floor are pretty soft.”

“She’s fine. That’s not the point. She freaked out, and she cried for you. I’m convinced she feels more comfortable and confident with you around.”

“That’s sweet. She’s so delicious. Really.”

Tovah had heard other teachers use “delicious” this way. It seemed natural, but also strange, which maybe described cannibalism in general.

“A delight,” she amended.

“Of course she’s a delight,” Mr. Gautier said. “She’s my daughter. So anyway, I worked it out with Laura. You’ll be changing your days so you can be there every morning Dezzy is.”

“You what?” Tovah said.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to do a thing. I took care of it.”

“Look, I’m flattered, but I picked my days already. I think Dezzy is great, but so are the other kids, and I’m all set in my schedule.”

“Do a search,” Mr. Gautier said.

A low snarl threaded his voice. There was something birdlike about his face, she noticed now, specifically a big scavenger bird, maybe a turkey vulture. But a handsome turkey vulture. It was confusing.

“Excuse me?”

“When you get home, open your browser and do a search on me.”

“Okay.”

She couldn’t believe she’d agreed. What a bastard.

“Then you can do a search on me,” Tovah said.

She hoped her snideness bore no hint of tease. She hoped she sounded young enough to make him feel old.

“I did,” Mr. Gautier said. “When they aren’t mired in postmodern feminist crap, your poems are really good. Couldn’t find anything recent online. What happened?”

“Life,” Tovah said, startled.

“I’m thinking maybe the opposite. Look, we should be friends. I like the effect you have on Dezzy.”

“It’s been two days,” Tovah said.

“Those first few are the ones that count. Anyway, thanks for rejiggering your schedule. It means a lot, and you shall be rewarded.”

“Rewarded? I’m a professional.”

“No, you’re not,” Mr. Gautier said. “That’s why you’re good.”

*   *   *

She figured she’d have to be patient, but the Goat popped right up on her computer search and dominated the many pages of results that followed. Math prodigy Randolph Gautier had dropped out of a North Jersey high school in 1973 and hitched out to Palo Alto. He would have seized a silicon throne but for some purloined software here, a botched algorithm there. Still, he’d done just fine. He’d sold his company, Glyph Systems, for tens of millions, though in interviews he seemed bitter about it. He told
RadTech
magazine that Bill Gates had an IQ of seventy-four.

The man had made money in computers. Was this fact the object of her search? There were plenty of rich oldies in the neighborhood. Then she noticed another branch of search hits, sites that mentioned Gautier in relation to artistic foundations, to his funding of a poetry journal called
Glyphonym
. She’d never heard of the journal or any of the poets listed in the index, but the bound editions looked swank. Photos of a launch party in a grand ballroom featured charitable omnipotent people chuckling over cocktails. No real poet would want a poem in that journal, but the party looked like vulgar fun, or at least better than a night on the couch locked in a frigonometric fugue state, sour sweet-and-sour sweat soaked through the cushions, although Tovah did, to her surprise, look back on that evening with fondness. “Needing the Wood” had a few lines now, borrowed, perhaps, and in Sanskrit, but indelibly on the page.

*   *   *

The shock about Sean was his shock of white hair. It looked regal but incongruous with the dark-locked boy she’d known. He stood and seemed to bow as she approached the table, a fairly formal gesture for a place that specialized in artisanal scrapple.

“Sean!” she called with cheerful volume, as though to cover for her disappointment in his follicles.

“Tovah!” Sean said. “Awesome!”

They hugged, and Tovah’s chin grazed his collarbone. That zap, the hot, sweet charge of the party long ago, tingled. She wanted Sean to save her and screw her and give her a baby. After that, maybe he’d have to leave.

“You look great,” Tovah said.

“If that’s true, I owe it to the mighty sport of handball. I play with the Spanish gentlemen at the playground. It’s an epic workout. You look really good, too. Seriously.”

“I never exercise and I rarely eat. It’s a winning plan.”

“I think you’re meant to be a little heavier, though. You’re tall and skinny with big, beautiful bones.”

“Big bones?”

“Totes. I know it’s a euphemism for chubby girls, but you just happen to be hot with slightly extra-large bones. I always wanted to jump them. That night we talked. That was an epic night.”

They hadn’t even heard the specials and he’d already mentioned their magic moment.

“Man,” he said. “What’s it been? Twenty years?”

“Sixteen.”

“Oh, that’s better.”

“How’s your sister?” Tovah asked. “I haven’t spoken with her in a long time.”

“She’s good. I mean evil. She works for this huge rape-a-licious law firm.”

“Is she still married?”

“Totes.”

“What’s ‘totes’?”

“Sorry, I work with a lot of young people. I pick up their lingo. Anyway, man, Tovah, you do look really good.”

Was it possible he could be a moron and still be her savior?

“Where do you work?”

“Right now I’m involved with a new start-up,” Sean said. “It’s hard to explain. We make apps for apps, basically.”

“So that pays well?”

“No, not yet. Meantime I’m working with organic food materials. Mostly flour items.”

“Like a muffin shop?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“I’m a part-time preschool teacher right now.”

“Sounds epic,” Sean said. “Little kids.”

“I love kids,” said Tovah. “But the politics…”

Or could she be the moron?

A young waiter arrived without menus and explained the ordering process, which involved a few crucial decisions about sides and beverages but a surrender of volition in the realm of entrées. Tonight was Thursday, which meant Pennsylvania-style scrapple.

“What exactly is scrapple?” Tovah asked.

“It’s Mennonite soul food,” Sean said.

The waiter rolled his eyes.

“It’s everything from the pig except the meat,” he said. “Organs, hooves, eyelashes, lips. It’s all pressed together in a loaf. I, personally, love it.”

“Sounds kind of tref,” Tovah said.

“
Très
tref, dollface,” the waiter said. “After dinner you can join a settlement and redeem yourself.”

“Whoa there, buddy,” Sean said.

“It’s okay. I’m a Yid,” the waiter said.

“Really?” Tovah said.

“Totes,” the waiter said.

“Look, I think I’m going to leave,” Tovah said. “I actually prefer pig eyelashes as a separate dish.”

“Of course,” Sean said. “Let’s go.”

They walked the streets for a while, laughed at the shitty waiter and the perspectival complexity of time. It reminded Tovah of those play scenes from eighth grade. Lovers by the creek or at the carnival. Something about the moon. Now they leaned on a playground fence. Beyond it, in the last of the light, children stalked each other with neon water rifles.

Sean looked at Tovah, pinched the collar of her shirt.

“Twenty years later, and I still feel attracted to you.”

“Sixteen years,” Tovah said. “I had no idea you liked me. I was so smitten. You were the genius. You were going to do all the wonderful things.”

“Yeah, well.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Sean said. “I’ve had all sorts of adventures. Good times, bad times. You know I’ve had my share…”

“Seriously,” Tovah said.

She must have clawed out of the womb saying that.

“Seriously, I wasn’t measuring myself against a prophecy of me.”

“We were,” Tovah said.

“Well, then, fuck you, Big Bones. That’s your problem. And what are you doing that’s so great? Anybody can play with kids.”

“I’m also a poet.”

“And you have a blog, I’m guessing?”

“I’m sorry,” Tovah said. “You’re right. I’m being abrasive. I get scared of intimacy. I flail.”

“That’s so cool.”

“Let’s start again. No more scrapple.”

“I don’t think so,” Sean said. “Whatever the opposite of compatible is, that’s us.”

“Incompatible?” Tovah said.

“If you say so, wordsmith. Thing is, we both need the same crap. Somebody with money, and security, and also did I mention money? To shore up our egos. To nurture our unrealistic dreams.”

“Yes,” Tovah said. “That’s actually true. That’s an insight.”

“Thank you,” Sean said. “I used to be very promising.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Are you going to ask whether my hair turned white slowly or overnight?”

“Do you want me to?” Tovah said.

“Well, let me tell you a story. I was working on a guide boat out of the Solomon Islands.”

Sean spoke into the darkness for a while, telling a mesmerizing, no doubt spurious tale. Tovah realized that she didn’t care about him or his saga or the whiteness of his hair one whit. She could never mate with a man who called her Big Bones, even once, even in jest. She could never expose her eggs to such a jerk.

*   *   *

The climber room admitted six kids and one teacher at a time. The other children had to wait in the next room at their sand tables and clay stations. Tovah stood near the varnished wooden bars and watched Dezzy scale the ladder. This day had once been her day off.

Laura had called her soon after she’d talked to Mr. Gautier.

“Is this standard at Sweet Apple?” Tovah had asked. “Letting a parent dictate schedules?”

“He’s not dictating. He made a request.”

“What’s the diff?”

“Tovah, I understand how this might seem concerning to you. But you’re just here temporarily. Mr. Gautier has been part of the school family for many years. His yearly donation keeps us afloat. I don’t want to disappoint him. That would be concerning to me. I don’t want to say that if you don’t abide by his request, there’s a chance you might not be able to continue with us.”