“They got roller coasters?”
“Not yet,” I said, “but I’ll put in a suggestion to management.”
She hoisted herself up on the chair across from me and put her untied sneakers on my chair. “Okay,” she said.
“Mae,” I said as I tied her sneakers, “I have to go see a friend, though, and I can’t take you with me.”
The momentary look of confusion and abandonment in her eyes broke my heart in quarters.
“But,” I said hurriedly, “you know my friend Angie? She wants to play with you.”
“How come?”
“Because she likes you. And she likes playgrounds.”
“She got pretty hair.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“It’s black and tangly and I like it.”
“I’ll tell her you said so, Mae.”
“Patrick, why we stopped?” Mae said.
We were standing on the corner of Dorchester Ave. and Howes Street. If you looked directly across the avenue, you saw the Ryan Playground.
If you looked horizontally down Howes Street, you saw Angie’s house.
And, at this moment, Angie. Standing out front.
Kissing her ex-husband Phil on the cheek.
I felt something clench in the center of my chest and then just as suddenly unclench and fill with a gust of chilled air which seemed to hollow out my insides like the flick of a spade.
“Angie!” Mae said.
Angie turned, and so did Phil, and I felt like a voyeur. An angry voyeur with violence in my heart.
They crossed the street and walked to the corner together. She looked, as usual, stupendous in a pair of blue jeans, purple T-shirt, black leather jacket slung over her shoulder. Her hair was wet and a single strand had come out from behind her ear and clung to her cheekbone. She tucked it back as she approached and waved her fingers at Mae.
Phil, unfortunately, also looked good. Angie’d told me he’d quit drinking, and you could see the effects. He’d dropped at least twenty pounds since I’d last seen him, and his jawline was smooth and hard, his eyes devoid of the puffiness that had all but swallowed them over the last five years. He moved loosely in a white shirt and pleated charcoal trousers that matched the color of the hair swept off his forehead. He looked fifteen years younger and his pupils carried a spark I hadn’t seen since childhood.
“Hey, Patrick,” he said.
“Hi, Phil.”
He paused at the curb and clutched a hand to his heart. “Is this her?” he said. “Is this the one? Is this the great, the unforgettable, the world-renowned Mae?”
He squatted by her and she smiled broadly.
“I’m Mae,” she said softly.
“It is a pleasure, Mae,” he said and shook her hand
formally. “I bet you turn frogs into princes in your spare time. You are definitely something to see.”
She looked at me, curious and slightly confused, but I could see by the flush of her face and the charge in her pupils that Phil had already worked his magic.
“I’m Mae,” she said again.
“And I’m Phillip,” he said. “This guy taking care of you all right?”
“He’s my pal,” Mae said. “He’s Patrick.”
“No greater pal to have,” Phil said.
You didn’t have to know Phil when he was younger to recognize his ability with people, no matter what their age. Even when he was drinking too much and abusing his wife, it was still there. Phil, since he climbed out of the crib, had had this gift. It wasn’t cheap or vaudevillian or contrived or consciously manipulative. It was a simple but rare ability to make the person he talked to feel like he or she was the only person on the planet worthy of attention, as if his ears were placed on his head specifically so he could listen to what you had to say, as if his eyes existed only to see you, as if his sole reason for being was to have his encounter—whatever its nature—with you.
I’d forgotten that until I saw him with Mae. It was so much easier to remember him as the drunken asshole who’d somehow managed to marry Angie.
But Angie had remained married to him for twelve years. Even while he beat her. And there was a reason for that. No matter how unforgivable a monster Phil had become, he was still—somewhere inside of him—the Phil who made you glad you’d met him.
That was the Phil who rose from his place by Mae as Angie said, “How you doing, pretty girl?”
“I’m great.” Mae reached up to touch Angie’s hair.
“She likes your hair,” I said.
“You like this mess?” Angie dropped to one knee as Mae ran her hand through her hair.
“It’s very tangly,” Mae said.
“That’s what my hairdresser says.”
“How you doing, Patrick?” Phil held out his hand.
I considered it. On a bright autumn morning with the
air so fresh it felt like a tonic and the sun dancing lightly on the orange leaves, it seemed silly to not be at peace with my surroundings.
I let my hesitation speak for itself, then reached out and shook the hand. “Not bad, Phil. How about yourself?”
“Good,” he said. “Still taking it day by day and all, but, you know how it is, everyone’s life has static.”
“True.” I looked some of my own static dead in the face.
“Yeah, well…” He looked over his shoulder at his ex-wife and a child playing with each other’s hair. “She’s a prize.”
“Which one?” I said.
He smiled, a rueful one. “Both of them, I guess. But I was talking about the four-year-old at the moment.”
I nodded. “She’s something else, yeah.”
Angie walked up beside him, Mae’s hand in hers. “What time you have to be at work?”
“Noon,” he said. He looked at me. “Guy I’m working for now’s an artiste in the Back Bay, got me ripping up his entire duplex, ripping up nineteenth-century parquet floors so we can inlay it all with black—black—marble. You believe that?” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
“I was wondering,” Angie said, “if maybe you wouldn’t mind pushing Mae on the swings with me?”
“Oh, I dunno,” he said, looking at Mae, “my arm’s kinda sore.”
“Don’t be a big baby,” Mae said.
“Can’t be called a big baby now, can I?” Phil said as he scooped her up with one arm and settled her on his hip and the three of them crossed the avenue toward the playground, waving brightly to me before they walked up the steps and headed for the swing sets.