When We Were Animals(71)

“Did you hear?” she says to me. “The coven caught a bad man.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Some guy. Apparently he was sitting on a bench near the playground, but he didn’t have any kids with him. Oh, also he was listening to music on his headphones, and he wore sunglasses. So we called the cops and had him escorted away. Now we are rejoicing.”

She flicks the ashes from the end of her cigarette.

Then Marcie Klapper-Witt spots me and comes over.

“Ann,” she says, “I’m sure Lola has filled you in on the situation, but I just wanted to let you know that we’ve taken care of the problem. And we’re forming a neighborhood watch to keep an eye on things from now on if you’d like to volunteer. I can order vests—as many as we need.”

“But what is he said to have done?” I ask.

“Who?”

“The man.”

She shakes her head.

“Ann,” she says, “what was he doing in a playground? He didn’t have any kids with him. It doesn’t take a genius to spot a pervert. You don’t know—my husband’s cousin is a police officer. The world’s not as nice as you think. Jennifer’s putting together a petition—and I think it’s a good idea that we all sign it—saying that we don’t want any adults without children within a thousand feet of the playground.”

“A thousand feet,” I say dreamily. “That’s a lot of feet.” Then I say, “Your daughter, she’s about to fall.”

It is true. Fancy Klapper-Witt hangs upside down by one bended leg from a domed metal latticework. Her frilly blue dress spills over her face, and her polka-dot cotton underpants are exposed.

Marcie Klapper-Witt runs and catches her daughter in the holy safety of her arms.

Later in the evening, after our boy has been safely enveloped between the sheets of his bed, I tell Jack about Marcie and her neighborhood watch and the man in the park.

“Well,” he says, “I think a neighborhood watch is a good idea. I’m glad they got him.”

“You are?” I am surprised.

“Ann, what’s a guy with no kids doing hanging around a playground?”

“That’s what Marcie said.”

He comes up behind me and puts his arms around me. We are in our nightclothes, preparing for bed, but the gesture is unsexual. His penis, flaccid in his pajama pants, is pressed soft and benign against my bottom.

“It’s how you’re supposed to feel,” he explains, “about your family. I never want anything bad to happen.” I can feel his sincere breath on my neck and ear. It tickles, and I writhe out of his grip.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I assure him. It isn’t a lie. I am quite sure of it. Every day I am quite sure of it.

Nothing is going to happen.

The world will keep spinning within its margins.

He cuddles against me, curled up like a baby in a bassinet, until he falls asleep. I listen to his breathing for a while, so placid and secure, in no way fearful—and then I come downstairs.

I sit at the kitchen table. I drink my chocolate milk. Soon the sun will rise, and the man who delivers papers will toss one from the window of his car onto our front walk. I will fetch it barefoot so I can feel the dew on the soles of my feet.

And in my ankles, and all up and down my calves and thighs, there will be the long-suppressed instinct to run.





Chapter 11




Cordial Moon came at the end of May, and I had been waiting for it. The first night, I sat at my window and kept myself from climbing out as long as I could. I wanted to feel the force of it, and I wanted that force to be excruciating. Sometimes these are the games we play with our own minds. I gripped the window jambs, and the tips of my fingers turned white. The smell in the air—I became desperately afraid that I would miss it. It was impossible that that spring nighttime should exist without me in the middle of it. I clamped my jaw on the skin of my upper arm—I bit down hard. I stopped short of breaking the skin—because I wanted the dull ache of compression rather than the sharp sting of pain. I chewed at my skin until it was slobbery wet and bruised purple.

And then, when it was all too much to bear, I flung myself out the window into the night.

Earlier in the day, my father had approached me. Did I need anything? Would I be careful when I went out? Did I want pancakes for breakfast when I returned in the morning? The questions embarrassed both of us. Finally he gave them up and went to read the newspaper in the living room with a mug of coffee. When next we spoke, he was jolly and amiable, everything having been tamped down neatly into place between us.

And now such exchanges seemed all the more ridiculous to me. There was nothing to talk about. There were only wildernesses to breach.

*



Do you know what it is to run wild? To lie naked on ordinary ground? To feel against the bare soles of your feet the force of the sunlit day disseminating from the concrete sidewalk? To be neither cold nor ashamed but rather luxuriant in empty space? It is a membership in something greater than yourself, a merging with the populace of insomniacs. There are two worlds, you realize, and you might leap between them and find yourself at home in both.

We are many things all at once. We mistake self-denial for character—or else why not join yourself to every and all custom?