Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

There was a noise at his elbow and he looked over and it was Kate Oakenshield, the girl who was raised mute.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “There you are.”

She said, “I want to go home with Dad.”

“What, back to his house?” George asked. He saw her father coming close, and his own parents right behind.

“Yes, to my house,” said Kate. Her face was wounded, as if she knew she was no longer in the target position. George softened. Poor thing. She wasn’t Irene, but who could be Irene? No one. There was only one Irene.

“That’s not a good idea, Kate,” he said.

His mother interjected. “Let her go.”

“Yes, do,” said her father.

Kate warbled, “Broodle bree, deedoodle! Deeedoo!”

George wavered. On the one hand, there was the fact that Kate should not be in her father’s house. On the other hand, there was the fact that Irene said goodnight to him in such a charming way, almost as if to give him a secret signal that she was about to ditch Belion and swing back around to pick him up instead.

“OK,” said George. He bit his lip and put his hand protectively on Kate Oakenshield’s arm. “If you need anything, you call me. Or my mom. If I’m out. Or busy.”

“Push off, Dermont,” said her father, the heel of his shoe striking angrily against the sidewalk and echoing in the stillness against the other buildings.

Sally brandished her fist, “Hey, are you looking for more love, Padre?”

“You stay away from me,” said Father Oakenshield, shepherding Kate away from them. “You’re a monster.”

“You’re the monster,” jeered Sally. “Freak.”

Father Oakenshield and Kate, wrapped in her shawl, huddled off down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, tweeting and twittering at each other and producing rapid arpeggios. George turned to his mother and took her by the elbows.

“Mom,” he said. “Listen!”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I get so excited. I sound like a twelve-year-old.”

George said, “No, I don’t even care about that.”

Sally pulled her wrap around her arms more firmly, and a valet popped up at George’s arm, ready to retrieve his car. George produced a ticket and handed it to the man.

“Really,” Sally said, “Hmm? What then, darling?”

“It’s that girl! The black hole girl.”

Sally frowned, her finger tapping on her cheek, “Hmm … Irene Sparks…”

“Come on, Mom, isn’t she gorgeous? She’s not even very, ah, scientific looking. More like, oh, I don’t know, Aphrodite? Helen of Troy?”

“George, my son, my son,” said his mother, as her face pulled into a wry smile. “Has your attention really been captured by that little black cloud in a dress?”

“I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“How interesting. I don’t see it happening, George,” she said coldly. “But it is so interesting.”

“Do we know her, Mother?” said George.

“What? No, of course we don’t.”

“Because when I see her,” he went on, as if she hadn’t answered no, “I don’t miss anyone. I just feel happy that she’s near.”

“Speaking of near,” said his mother, “Where has your father wandered off to?”

They both recalled the existence of Dean, and looked around to discover that he had climbed a tree.

“Good grief,” said Sally, but with warmth and affection that made George happy. “I can’t take my eyes off him for a second.”

When Sally and Bernice were children, they were best friends. They met on a playground.

“Push me,” Sally had said to Bernice, who was just getting her own swing started. “Push me and then I’ll push you.”

Sally had long legs, and Bernice was smaller. Bernice was new to the school, but Sally had been there from kindergarten. They were in fifth grade, when the other girls were starting to say that swings were for babies. But Bernice had come to play on the swings because she saw Sally sitting there, ineffectually kicking those long legs around in the sand under her swing. Bernice hopped down and came to stand behind Sally. She put her hands on both sides of the hard rubber swing and pulled back, back, as far as she could go, scrambling for purchase with her heels on the scrubby grass beside the sandy pits. When she had lifted Sally as far as she could, she let go. Sally stuck her legs out and pumped, grabbing the swing chain hard and pulling against it. When she came back toward Bernice the smaller girl had to step out of the way fast as Sally’s big feet came toward her, clad in massive clogs. When she went whooshing forward again, Sally leaned back far, so her blond hair was streaming, and she laughed a big horsey laugh, her eyes squinched together, her body arcing and bucking with laughing.

“I love the swing!” said Sally.

“Me too,” said Bernice.

“I’m never giving it up!” Sally trumpeted.

“Okay,” said Bernice, although she was privately afraid of heights.

“I don’t give a FUCK what anyone says,” said Sally, her face turned deliberately toward a group of girls who were clustered around the monkey bars, their pleated skirts chastely clustered around their knees.

Bernice had no response to that.

That afternoon they started the playground club. The purpose of the club was to ritually perform all playground activities each recess period. They’d start with the swings on their long chains, always, Bernice giving Sally an enormous push and then jumping into her own swing to catch up. Then they’d leap from the swings and hit the ground running, and race to the slide. Sally usually got there first, with her long legs flying, unless she fell, which was frequently, and then Bernice grabbed the slide first. She pulled herself up the steep steps and flung herself onto the smooth metal, hurtling down and racing back around. Bernice found that in the company of Sally, she could grit her teeth and power through her fear, put aside the premonition that a fall was imminent, and just keep going.

Everything was a thrill for them: the bang of the teeter-totter, the dizzying whirl of the merry-go-round. The game always ended up near the monkey bars, where they would hang upside down on increasingly higher bars, grabbing on with their hands and then flipping off backward at increasingly greater risk to their ankles and heads. It was never fast enough, high enough, or hard enough for Sally, whose loud laugh rang across the playground even when she hit the gravel, or spun into a tree. Bernice met challenge after terrifying challenge with her teeth bared, her will determined. Sally was so uncoordinated, so gangly and unaccustomed to a body so rapidly growing, anyone would have thought it would be Sally that took a serious tumble and ended the game.

But instead it was Bernice. They were standing on top of the jungle gym that was shaped like a spidery dome. It had taken weeks for Sally to coax Bernice up to the top, and finally she had agreed. Now their feet were braced against each other and their hands were clasped together, and they leaned back against the connection. Sally was chuckling, trying to stare Bernice down, and make her laugh, make her forget she was so high up. Then somehow their hands separated, and Bernice went down through the bars, cracking her head on the metal pipe as she fell backward and passed through. Her hands seemed surprised to be empty, as if her very cells believed they were still connected to Sally, still holding hands on top of the gym. As the dull pain entered the back of her head and the lights went out on her consciousness, she found herself still reaching, grasping for Sally.

When she opened her eyes she was on the pavement under the jungle gym, and Sally was saying “Oh, no, no, my little purple bag!” Bernice was wearing purple overalls that day, and Sally had been teasing her, laughing as they rode the merry-go-round. Bernice blinked her eyes and looked up into Sally’s face, the big teeth hidden, the eyes full of tears. She had never seen Sally look this way before.