Storytelling

Heeb‘s critically acclaimed Storytelling series presents Jewish stories from an ever-changing crew of performers across the country. We now give you Heeb _Storytelling in its online incarnation. Check back here each Thursday for a new story. This week’s installment is “The Park” by Alex Carnevale._

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go.” My son is playing on the swings, propelling himself higher and higher. I am picking grass from green and throwing it in the air, like nothing is going on. He’s looked at a lot of flashcards, pictures of cars, dinosaurs, closets.

I sit down on a bench and read The Diary of Anne Frank. I’m just to the part where she’s almost getting caught, later I will learn there’s plenty of such parts.

I cannot tell if he can hear me as I write this, and try to tell what happened; a small fly buzzes past my ear, and reminds me he cannot hear high sounds, because I was ill during pregnancy. For now, I think of the time when he was just a baby. I was breastfeeding him in an eerily similar-looking park, and he was refusing to suck on my left nipple. That was then. The birds were out, pecking and bobbing around for seeds, seeds, seeds.

A crowd of children tosses Triscuits into the catfish pond.

He is dancing in front of me, tilting his head to the sky. I squeeze my eyes together. He punches me in the elbow. “Why didn’t you name me Tyson, Mom?” Like the chicken. I am wondering if I am also beginning to suffer from hearing loss. I give him The Diary of Anne Frank to read. It is his second book of that length and he finishes it that night by flashlight.

“Do you want to hear a story about grandma?” I say, patting his head.

My blond-tressed and conclusive mother and I were seated on a stone couch in a graveyard, waiting for the sun to come up, so that the flowers can be laid down. My brother Nic was telling us about his trip to Greece. I said to my mother, we should have brought sandwiches. She didn’t respond, though a sandwich might have reduced the gloom of us going to my father’s grave on an annual basis.

I was alive for my father’s funeral. I was 7. The funeral, its dirges and strange potato chips set out in bowls, as if there was anything at all in that. The arrangements were generous. I thought of nice moments I’d had with him. My father’s name was also Nic. An earring pierced through cartilage, a way of saying ‘hey’ and leaving it at that, and a wide open mouth like my son’s, who says, “Can I bounce on that moonwalk?”

Though there is a little sign that dissuades someone of his height from bouncing too high or at all, I tell the man running it, “It’s OK. He needs to learn to fly so he can learn how to walk.” He bounces on the moonwalk. When he falls off awkwardly, I pick him up and dust him off. “Nothing a band-aid won’t fix,” someone says.

In the park on the following Saturday, shaggy ladies walk miniature dogs. He says, you could step on those dogs and probably snap spines, and with my eyes I see tantrums for which I will have no antidote. It seems he is not that old after all. I wonder if I am raising the leader of the Fourth Reich, and, of course, I wonder about the father specifically, and what genetic role he might have played, because I don’t know who he is. I am not looking for the father, though I know many who are. I’ve got to cope with the son.

In the park, artists sketch portraits of what the next Saturday will be like. Now he is reading and trying to summarize chapter twelve of The Ground Beneath Her Feet. It’s important, I told him, to be able to summarize it all succinctly, even though I’m glad he’s reading the book when he’s unable to fully understand it, like my mother giving me Schindler’s List as a birthday present.

On that day we eat strategically, and feed the rest to the grass. The chapter is called “Transformer.” I ask him to read his favorite part to me. He says, “Boom! Boom! The boy dreams of destroying the world. You know?” he says. “You bet,” I say.

At the same time next afternoon, I am flipping through the summer camp section of the Times. This one looks nice, I say, and peaceful. It is somewhere in Maine on a river. There is, presumably, a girl’s camp across the lake. A summer replete with awkward dances. But he doesn’t have that preconception. It’s something that’s been in my head, but not in his. I try to remember this moment, for fear it could occur again.

He wanders off, around, maybe to the swings. I try and think of things for him to read that will make him realize he’s only one element in a world of too many, but I can’t think of a book that isn’t either about him—the male psyche—or the end of the world, neither of which I think he needs to learn anything about. I go down to the bookstore which is about a block away, and come back with a calculus textbook.

I find him sifting through a sandbox with children much younger than him. He is removed from the scene, and his glassy eyes and ghostlike face tell me he’s not there at all. He has no presence, he’s not individuated, and he doesn’t know how to type.

You don’t know how to type, I say, so we go home and I teach him on my old typewriter, because his greasy fingers would harm my computer. He spends most of the time in his room, but in two weeks he’s learned the name of every U.S. congressman. “So who’s the Surgeon General?” I ask. He turns his back on me.

I take him to the seafood market that’s one exit off the dirt highway, sweeten his voice with the Jewish men my father always hung around, worried he will catch colds, rocking back in chairs as I prepare for yet another one of his birthdays. My hip did not fare well this year, and I was in the hospital at odd times, for days. Unable to sleep on my side, I spent nights without rest, trying to get the slightest hint of how he will treat women.

With a year of bartending courses under my belt, I give him a polo shirt for warmth and tell him I decided we’re leaving tomorrow, for the day. The country air feels better, he tells me, and the rented car seats, new with leather, are good for him as well. He is not, I hope, thinking anything, anything about the end of the world, anything bad about me. It’s crushing, sure, I sleep with it when I can, but during no other important time is it so close to me.

When he wakes, we’re stopped at another park. We love them, the grass, the feeling that, really, no time passes while we’re here. He crawls onto me. I ask him, “How was your car nap?” He tells me that he feels the books he’s reading are influencing his dreams. “I know,” I say. I say I know. And years pass.

“Is everything right?” he asks.

I don’t hear him. I don’t hear a thing. Within my head, the words come together. So wise, they say. For God’s sake, if nothing else, he’s wise.

What do you think?