Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

So now this second Sunday she wanted the same bike she’d had, a blue one with balloon tires.

The man was saying, "So aren’t you glad you didn’t take training wheels?"

"Daddy, you can take a bike if you want," Sarah said.

He thought he wouldn’t; he’d watch her — it was only her second time.

He and Sarah were practically the first here. His eyes were indirectly connected to her hand, which he held. But also between eye and hand he felt a gap, a nothing, and his gaze slid from one responsibility to another thought.

To his gaze the bikes gave a collective promise. Bright steel equipment, moving parts beveled, balanced, cogged, and slotted, polygonal, tubular, ringed, invisibly greased and able to lend power independently. So in the shadow of the shed they had that glimmer of many motions that you saw in the spokes of the racing bikes in the sun when you looked beyond the parking lot through the trees to the road that went through the park. It was a different road on weekends. The road with the cars was somewhere else. A road for bicycles and joggers went through here on weekends. It had been substituted for the other, and it went past the parking lot. It seemed temporarily unrolled through the landscaped rises and falls of a city park by the advance guard of serious bicyclists whose spokes spun in multiple superimposed illuminations and who always seemed to be racing those fine bikes of theirs, taking possession of what the city offered on the weekends, some with goggles on, and caps with the bills turned up, thick socks contained in striped shoes that looked like track shoes or bowling shoes, toeing ahead pumped by heavy piston thighs.

Sarah looked up at him when a blue bike with balloon tires was wheeled out. She said it wasn’t the one she’d had, and he remembered that in this place they had the nerve to hold your ID along with the deposit, and he asked the man to look again. He pointed out to Sarah that this bike had a bell. She rang it. The man took a quick look and said last Sunday’s bike must be way back in the shed — he didn’t have many of the small bikes. Sarah said she liked this bike, the seat wasn’t so high.

They wheeled the bike across the path that led off down to the cafeteria. Sarah said, cT’m not sure I remember." He didn’t smile, but she didn’t look at him. Distances multiplied between them and he was very far from her and very close to her. He looked at his watch and thought he’d like a container of coffee.

She remembered how to ride. Coming down the far side of the island she stepped back on her pedal and the bike slowed. She did this again. When she slowed the bike she seemed to be daydreaming, to have forgotten everything except this. It came to him that she could be more free than her mother was.

A loudspeaker blared in the distance, and a lanky black boy coasted off the road into the upper end of the parking lot where he stopped his bike and looked over his shoulder. Then he brought a walkie-talkie up to his mouth. He had a first-aid kit on the back of his bike.

Two women — one fat, one thin — had come in at the near end across the pedestrian path and were trying their bikes out. Sarah passed the fat one who shrieked at her friend as Sarah came up and passed her very close. It was like a race with Sarah lapping the others. As she came up on them again, the women rode slowly out the far end of the parking lot into the road and he saw that the boy with the first aid and the walkie-talkie had left.

Near the exit Sarah slowed almost to a stop, but then she lost control. She tried to pedal as she and the bike went down hard.

He ran toward her. Her leg was under the bike. She was still headed away from him. He’d urged her to wear jeans instead of the shorts. She was tall for six. The loudspeaker seemed now to come from the whole city. Sarah wasn’t looking back.

He got to her. She frowned. He said, "O.K.?" He pulled at the seat and handlebar; her right leg was over the bike and when he lifted, she came with it; so he lifted the bike and her.

She wanted a Band-Aid, but the tar-smudged bruise beside her knee and along her thigh hadn’t cut through the skin.

"That’s how not to stop," he said. He was going to say take a break, but she was on her seat and this time she stepped on the pedal and got going herself. She now knew how to start. She passed the road exit, turned past the end of the island, came back along the far side of the island, and then, coming round toward him, passed a small black boy and a woman entering from the rental end with a bike. Sarah went around again and then she came right up, slowed almost to a stop, put a foot on the ground.

"That’s terrific. Now you know how to stop."

"How long have I been riding?"

She wanted a hot dog and a drink. It was too early for lunch, but he asked her if she wanted to turn the bike in before they went to the cafeteria. She looked off toward the bike road and asked if she could keep the bike while they had lunch. When he said O.K., she looked back over her shoulder at the boy standing beside his bike which was like hers.

The woman with him was sitting on the outer curb of the parking lot. She was much lighter-skinned than the boy. Her olive-green raincoat was open over dark blue slacks and pale blue turtle-neck. She was speaking in a low voice. He wore gray corduroy trousers and he had a baseball cap with a monogram.

Sarah said she would practice some more.

The boy did not straddle his bike, he put the wrong foot on the down-pedal and pushed with the other foot as if he had a scooter. Then he looked the bike over, turned it around and did his one-foot-on one-foot-off scooter push again. Then he fell.

He fell on top of the bike. He kept both hands on the handlebars.

The woman said, "You going to ride that bike?"

The boy, who was smaller than Sarah but seemed older because he seemed in the tilt of his head to have thought more about how he might be able to do this, straddled the bike and walked it along.

"Go on," the woman said.

"I will," said the boy.

Sarah passed the boy and gave her father a smiling shrug.

He thought he might get her to go to the museum restaurant. The park cafeteria had hot dogs, greasy hamburgers, frozen custard, Coke. He stood up as Sarah came by again. He swung his hand through to touch her the way he did when she was going high enough on a swing and wanted a push to go higher. Next Sunday they would ride together.

The boy tried something new. He ran his bike a ways as if to jump on it when it was moving; then he stopped and turned it around and ran it back toward where his mother sat. He turned it around again and looked it over. He had it, he could see how it worked.

But he was in a tight spot.

"I’m paying for that bike," the woman said. Her perfect curls were sprung out in a high bell-shape. The boy was not afraid of her. "You ride it now," she said. He was not afraid of her so much as of not doing what she said — or of not knowing how to.

He straddled the bike again. Sarah came by and called out, "That’s the one I had last time." She seemed to be racing the boy who was standing still. She made the turn and came down the back-stretch. The woman got up off the curb as if to enforce what she’d said. The boy saw her over his shoulder and tried to move the bike, stepping on the up pedal; and when the bike moved, the other pedal came up and hit the back of his leg and he almost slipped.

"What’s the matter?" the woman said. The boy got his foot on the up pedal, which was on the other side now. "Look how she rides her bike." And suddenly the woman gave the boy one tremendous shove and stood watching.

The boy pedaled four, five, six times without faith, and Sarah instead of overtaking stopped while the boy’s bike ran across from the outer curb to the inner one of the island as if in some trial of its own; but his frowning eyes found those of the only father present and the boy stopped pedaling and the bike went over with a clank.