Rotary Park

They had come to the lake many times this past summer. She wanted to see the ducks, and he wanted to see how far it would be to cross the lake, to cross into another country, to disappear.

He felt safe letting her run ahead. He knew she would not get too close to the water. It took her half an hour to wade in on even the warmest days of summer. It was late October, a clear, sunny day but not a swimming day. He called out to her anyway.

“Be careful Chloe. Don’t go near the water.”

Tom paused within the long shadows of the tree line bordering the beach. His arms prickled with the October chill, and the lack of sun within the thicket, but he stayed where he had stopped. His photographer’s eye framed the image before him; an eight year old little girl, in a purple windbreaker and red jean pants; one of the Great Lakes spread before her, sunlight sparkling off gentle waves, a wide beach beneath the child and a cloudless sky above her, the wind snapping her brunette hair taunt, she crouching forward, hands on knees, and although he could not see it from where he stood, he knew the deep frown of concentration that stretched across her brow as she studied something within the sand. The naked branches of a maple tree, generations old, and the yellow leaves of a young birch tree framed the water, the beach, the child; the branch cradled her and the leaves cuddled beside her.

“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God we are free at last. Our sweet, little daughter, all 15 Barbies and 397 Barbie outfits, have been safely delivered to Sarah. My duty done, I will now pour myself a coffee and read the sports section. Would you like another cup, my lovely bride?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

It was back. Not that it ever went far. He wished he could have some peace, a chance to just enjoy the now without that conversation ruining every hour, of every day, for the last four months.

“ I think it would be best if we separated.”

Go away. Leave us alone. Let me enjoy this beautiful afternoon with my daughter. Leave me alone.

“It would make more sense if you found a place, then for me to uproot Chloe.”

But this is our matrimonial home. We bought this house when Chloe was still a baby. We agreed even though it was a fixer-upper, that it was the perfect starter home. It was our home. It was Chloe’s home.

He had promised he would fix it up. He had promised he would make a beautiful home for her and Chloe. He had kept his promise. He had kept his word. They had worked on it together. Each week they had spent $20.00, or $40.00, or whatever they had left after groceries, and mortgage, and utility bills, on building supplies. Every Saturday morning, they had bundled Chloe in her car seat, picked up a coffee from the drive-through, and walked the aisles of the home improvement store, dreaming of the day when they could afford a new kitchen, or a new, whatever was falling apart that week?

“But I just put in the new front door you asked for.” Gone was the solid, seventies style, door she had always hated, and in went a new, colonial door. He had made the trip to the home improvement store alone.

“This isn’t about something you have done, or not done. I guess it’s about me. I guess it’s been coming on for a long time. I guess I thought it would get better, or maybe morph into something I could live with. I thought it was a stage of marriage we just had to get through, but it’s not.”

How many times did he have to relive this June morning? A hundred, a thousand, a million times? It never changed. It never ended differently.

The incessant conversation continued on inside his head, but he was no longer listening. He did not have to. He knew it by heart. It was no one’s fault. It had just happened. No there was no one else, absolutely, no one else. Yes she promised. She was sorry, truly, truly sorry. She hoped one day he would forgive her.

He hated her. He loved her. He hated what she was doing to him, to Chloe, to their family. He hated her. He hated the secret lover he knew she must have. He did not believe her. She must have a lover. He loved her. She was a woman every man wanted but she was his. She was his wife. He hated her. She was sexy, kind, patient and his own. He would never forgive her. He hated her. He loved her. What about Chloe? When she was a baby in her crib, he used to wiggle her mobile to make her smile. What about Chloe?

“I think the sooner you find a place, the better it will be for Chloe.”

How did she figure that? How did she figure seeing her father every other weekend would be better for Chloe?

“I think we should tell Chloe together, when she gets home from Sarah’s.”

Sue did all the talking. Chloe pressed her dimpled palms against her ears, stuck her elbows high in the air, and stared straight at him.

“You promised Daddy. You promised you would never leave. You lied. I hate you. You lied.” He had promised. She had needed reassurance after two of her friends had watched their families fall apart. He had promised because he never imaged he would ever have to break his promise.

Now he saw her every other weekend and one night a week. He lived in a basement apartment. On weekends he took her places like the beach, fast food restaurants, parks. Everywhere they went they saw other fathers alone with their children, single dads, no wives, out of their homes, part time parents. He knew them, just as he knew, they knew him. They looked like him. He wanted to hug each of them, to tell them he understood what they were feeling but he could not do that. Only men in support groups hugged, their pain and torments shared and understood. Even though he knew what these men were going through, they, the fathers of the park, had not declared themselves a support group. They did not meet once a week, to cry over bad coffee, or to whine about their sad, pathetic lives. The men Tom knew did not hug strange men in the park.

Tom pulled his ball cap further down his forehead, and blinked several times before stepping out from the shadows, and joining Chloe on the bright, open span of beach. The wind charged unobstructed across the Great Lake and slapped against his faces. He swallowed deep gulps of the cool air; grateful the hot, dry, relentless summer was finally over. Four months of miserable, sweltering days, and pungent nights, were over.

Needles and pins pricked at his shoulders. This was his weekend with her, he could not afford for her to see into the fog of anger that clung around him. He could not afford to upset himself. That would come later, when he had to bring her home. After her inevitable squeeze and “do you have to go”, he would carry her backpack and walk her up the interlocking brick pathway, he had lain, and knock on the Hunter Green Colonial door. He would bite down hard on his back teeth.

He knew his routine once he arrived back at his basement apartment. He had four months of practice. He would clean the apartment. He would strip the bed, clean the bathtub and toilet, wash up all the dishes, wipe down the countertop and sink; he would clean away all traces of Chloe because finding a ‘scrunchy’, when he least expected it, might be the one thing that would unravel his fragile sanity. Cleaning also prolonged the dreaded bedtime. He knew that once the long, thin, layers of moonlight reached down into his window, and across his sofa bed, there would be no escape from old conversations, and fragmented memories. There would be no peace, no rest. His thoughts during the day were always of Chloe. During the night they were always of Sue, the sound of her whisper in the dark, the sweet perspiration as she pressed against his chest, of her getting up all to quickly after lovemaking. When sleep did come it was with incoherent dreams, filled with warning signs that read DANGER, STOP, WINDING ROAD AHEAD. When his alarm clock rang, unsettled feelings enveloped him, never leaving the entire next day.

“Look Daddy.” Chloe’s call, over the melodic sound of the waves and the screech of sea gulls, returned him to the present. Children have a way of doing that.

“What have you found baby?” He stopped beside her, and thrust his fists deep inside the pockets of his track pants. She was growing up, but now there were holes. Some weeks, when he picked her up, he would notice a tooth missing that he had not known was loose, or that her ankles had suddenly appeared at the bottom of pants that had fit two weeks earlier. She was growing up, but not right before his eyes. Stolen time he could never get back.

“Look Daddy. It’s a butterfly. It’s dead and there’s sand all over its wings.” A motionless torso, wings of brilliant orange, black veins intersected in a stain glass pattern, crowned by a band of white polka dots, a Monarch Butterfly, lay splayed across a gritty background, a crayon drawing on beige construction paper. The wind had sprinkled fine grains of sand over its torso and wingspan. One wing was folded under itself, the other partially buried, both antennae bent downward toward its tail end. Uninhabited shells lay shattered on either side of the insect. The butterfly was dead all right.

“So it is.”

“How did it die?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it just got old.”

“Maybe something killed it.”

“I think he just got old, laid down here in the soft sand, and the warm sun, and closed his eyes. Sometimes things just die. They have done everything they were suppose to do, and now it’s time to move on.” Children needed to be protected from the truth. “Maybe we should bury him.”

Chloe held her pensive pose. He waited. He ran his fingers through his hair. When she continued her silence, he asked again. “Do you want to bury him?” He heard her breathe a heavy sigh, before she raised her right foot and brought it down hard on the dead butterfly. Sand, shells and the butterfly, crunched beneath her foot.

“Nope.” She raised herself back up to standing and looked around. “There’s a bridge over there. Can we cross over on it?”