Chapter 31 ~ Walk In The Park
July 30, 2010
Ivvy watched Bella while I showered and got dressed. Pretty soon though, it was time for her to go to work. Bella and I gave her a hug goodbye and waved her off; perfect family kicking off another perfect day.
We closed the door on Ivvy.
The tension flooded out of me so fast and hard that I could have cried. It shuddered through me, shredding my breath, sending my heart racing.
Head bowed, tremors shimmered up and down my body, hairs stood to attention along my forearms. Tears pricked my eyes. A lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow past.
I sobbed. Once. Loud and clear and then covered my mouth with my hand, trying to hold it back, to stifle the burgeoning panic.
Eyes clenched shut, I fought not to think about what had just happened. What was happening right now. But the darkness was far more terrible than anything I could have looked at; it held demons. So I opened my eyes and there stood Bella. No halo, no ring of reflected sunlight, no angelic choirs. Just Bella, standing in the hallway of my parents’ apartment, that house of desolation, home to no-one. She looked at me, expression blank. Bottom lip pouting a little but nowhere near tears. Frightened, most definitely. It was in her eyes; all wariness and staring.
“It’s OK, Bella,” I whispered, my voice tremulous, “it’s OK.”
“It’s going to be OK.”
Me, the target of the reassurance; hollow promise.
I walked past Bella, through to the living room, sat on the couch unable to move, staring blankly at CNN.
Still nothing.
Nothing.
* * *
Finally, enough was enough.
I couldn’t sit in the apartment anymore, couldn’t sit and watch CNN cycle through the same piece of news, analysis and conjecture for another minute. Couldn’t listen to the flick, flack of the playing cards to which Bella had returned.
“Bella,” I said, “do you want to go out for a walk in the park?”
She looked at me, smiled slightly, no more than a twitch at the corners of her mouth, and said, “OK.”
We went out to the Park.
* * *
Central Park.
Its quietness dulled the energy of the city to a numbing throb.
Bella and I walked hand in hand into the park, past joggers and strollers and skaters and cyclists and fast-food uniforms and families and tourists. All of them enjoying this audacious simulacrum of nature.
Bella laughed as some squirrels ran up and down trees, fighting over acorns.
A rat ran through the undergrowth.
Bella laughed.
* * *
We sat in Sheep Meadow for a while, its broad sweep of grass calm beneath frisbees, soccer balls, baseballs, footballs. Couples lay on the grass, in each others’ arms. Acoustic guitars were strummed like it was the sixties again. Only it wasn’t; ‘Green Day’ and ‘Nirvana’ substituting for ‘The Mamas and Papas’.
I couldn’t help but scan the grass for cops. None to be seen. They would have been patrolling the roadways on bikes and little golf buggies, calling off joggers and in-line skaters.
I suddenly wondered which day of the week it was.
Saturday, I thought, it must be Saturday.
Bella’s mother had been going home from work when I’d stolen her car; dressed for the office.
The previous night had been Friday.
The weekend; New Yorkers out in force in the park.
Could only have been Saturday.
Bella picked at the grass.
I looked at her. Scanned for cops.
I had this role to play, this daughter. What did I do next? This role. What did a single father do in the city when he had his kid for the Saturday?
He…
He…
Went and bought some clothes because Bella was still wearing the gear she’d had on when I kidnapped her. So much for scanning for cops. Bella was a walking billboard, yelling loud and clear that here she was. Always on the news, it was the same line: “Last seen wearing…”, and I’d always thought to myself that the first thing anyone was going to do when they wanted to disappear was get changed, put on some different clothes.
Like my hip-hop disguise when stealing cars.
Here I was bringing Bella out into the park dressed fully in the same clothes that those news reports would be describing to the most exact details. What had I been thinking?
“Bella,” I spoke and she looked up from the grass, “I…”
“Yeah?” she said and in a split second, I wanted to explain everything that had happened since I’d done my gangsta stereotype across the gas station forecourt, hopped into their car and driven away. I wanted to explain that I didn’t mean her any harm, that I really, really wanted to go back a day but I couldn’t and I couldn’t because I didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t want…
* * *
Over to the Upper West, away from the apartment. If I was spotted, I didn’t want it to be in my home neighbourhood. Besides, I knew that there would be some kids’ shops there.
My intuition paid off.
There were kids’ shops, all right, loads of them. Everything from national chains to little Mom and Pop outfits. It made my stomach ache with anxiety for about two minutes trying to decide which was least likely to pay me any undue attention, knowing that they would all have security cameras, that I was going to be caught on tape no matter what. How to do that without drawing attention to myself? How to…
In the end, I just walked straight into Gap, grabbed a couple of handfuls of clothes, estimating Bella’s size, and paid for them. As quick and as easily as I could; a stressed father unused to buying clothes for his kid and eager to be somewhere else. When I came to pay, I mumbled something about her mother being out-of-town and my having appointments; something hasty, something improvised. All the time I watched to see whether anyone paid too much attention to Bella. Aside from a little smile in her direction, that Bella naturally reciprocated, the shop assistants seemed more focused on counting down their shift.
From Gap, I walked a couple of blocks holding Bella’s hand, found a packed bar and stepped inside, cutting straight through to the restrooms, got inside, got Bella changed out of her clothes and into one of the dresses.
Flashback to a bloodied shirt.
To a burning can on the lower East.
Adrenalin fired again – I was growing accustomed to its rush.
Did I ditch Bella’s clothes here or somewhere else. The apartment? In the park? Could someone find them and trace them back?
Too many questions and an inevitable conclusion.
There was no way I could second guess the future. No way I could prevent what might happen, whatever it may be.
I could only act my role.
I stuffed her clothes in the Gap bag, deciding to ditch them in a trashcan in the park.
All the time, Bella was quiet, smiling every so often and keeping herself to herself.
Which was good because it gave me time to wonder what I was going to do next.
The park was a great option. Safety in numbers. And now that Bella was no longer a billboard, I guessed I could rest easier there.
But I had this role to play.
And I had a child to entertain.
What the hell did a parent do with a kid in New York?
* * *
We sat and watched weekend warriors feed bread to the ducks. On the lake in front of us, couples paddled by in rented boats, noisy teenagers courting and daring each other who could lean furthest out of the boat.
You don’t want to drop in the water, I thought, not knowing how many rats live in the park.
Bella pointed at the ducks and laughed. I watched the ornate bridge over the boating lake for police.
Joggers ran past on the path, shedding pounds, filling their lungs with all the particulates that float in New York’s smog.
Beyond the bridge, The Rambles, its square mile of undergrowth and twisted paths, the wildest place in the city; fun to walk in, an imagined forest.
My cell phone rang.
Ivvy’s number.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
“The Park. Boating Lake.”
“Near The Rambles?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You staying around?”
I twitched at the question, that morning’s paranoia kicking in again from where it had been lurking all the time, just below the surface.
“I might be,” I said, trying to sound casual, but just sounding guilty, “why?”
“I’m almost done for the day, thought I’d come and join you.”
“Caught any good Johns lately?” My anxiety put a bite in the words.
“Fuck you,” she laughed at the other end, easing me down.
“And the horse you rode in on,” I fired back.
“Well,” she asked, “are you hanging around there or do you want to meet me at your place?”
That made me think. Did I want her to come over? Did I want to spend any more time than necessary with her and Bella together?
But I was playing this role, I was a father. I had no choice. I couldn’t ditch the kid. Could I? No. I was a dad now. And Ivvy wanted to play happy families. And for all I knew, Bella’s photo was by then playing on every news channel across the city, people sitting in bars watching the news, people in shopping malls seeing Bella’s photograph tessellated across a hundred TV screens, all marching in synchronicity.
I could just give her to the police, I thought.
She laughed again at the ducks.
Got up to walk towards them.
“Where are you?” I asked Ivvy.
“SoHo,” she said, “just down from the Apple store.”
“What… Ready to leave now?”
“Just about,” she said.
“Well, we’re probably going to…”
A cop was walking across the bridge, suspended above squabbling teenagers and ravenous ducks.
“… uh… be here for about a half hour. Can you get here by then?”
The cop got to the near end of the bridge, stopped, looked around, spoke into the radio clipped to his lapel.
“Yeah, if I get a cab!” Ivvy sounded pissed off now. “Can’t you give me a little while longer? I just want to spend some time with you and Bella.”
The cop looked right at me.
“You just want to play happy families, right?” I hissed into the phone.
The cop stared at me. Sunlight glinting off his sunglasses. Looking straight at me.
“You are such an asshole,” Ivvy snapped back and I remembered what I’d just said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t go anywhere.”
She ended the call and I put the phone back in my pocket.
The cop was staring right at me and as I looked back at him, I grew aware of a great noise behind me, of squealing and screaming and moving bodies and I just automatically thought of Bella, of where…
Bella!
I couldn’t see her.
I heard the splash of bodies in the water and was on my feet and looking and hearing the screaming and shouting and seeing the cop, looking in my direction but beginning to run, to run in my direction and I was thinking that the game was up and where the fuck was Bella and I couldn’t see her and the cop was running. I span in circles, looking in all directions, seeing people look at me, past me, through me and I couldn’t see the child but everyone was moving towards the lake and the cop was running and speaking into the radio at his shoulder and I was still spinning but Bella was nowhere and nowhere and nowhere and my eyes were going red with the sun and the heat and where was Bella and…
I woke up flat on my back, staring at the sun. No crowd had gathered around me. No time had elapsed. The noise was still going on but it was by the water’s edge now and I wondered if they’d found her tiny body floating on its surface, dead because her new father couldn’t even keep an eye on her during a two minute phone call.
I hadn’t been ready to be a father.
But I’d had no choice.
I started walking towards the scene, seeing stars and blood pressure specks dance before my eyes, tears beginning to form.
The cop was at the water’s edge and as I drew near, staying towards the back of the crowd in case I needed to make a quick exit, I heard him talking into his radio.
“… right, there’s just two of them. I’ll bring them in.”
Stepping out of the lake, looking guilty and embarrassed but still unable to keep the grins from their faces, were a man and a younger – a much younger – woman; him about fifty and her in her early twenties. Both of them naked. He wasn’t doing so well with his years, she was yet to feel the gravitational tug of hers. He gave her a round of applause, politely, nodding his approval. She returned the compliment.
The cop got hold of them both and asked them where their clothes are.
The man pointed up the hill, to where they’d discarded them during their mad dash into the boating lake.
“Get dressed,” the cop tried to stay serious but even he was picking up on the infectious energy these two gave off. As were the crowd, laughing each time they laughed.
The love between these two was unmistakable.
They walked up the hill, followed by the cop, crowd parting before them like a field of corn.
Before they got to their clothes, they had linked arms and, aside from their nudity, could have been any couple out for a stroll in the park.
The cop fought hard not to look at her ass.
Me? I drank it in. Slightly embarrassed but still warm and fuzzy.
Watching her walk up the hill, in the company of the man she loved, the crowd dispersing around me, happy to feel the warmth again, the paranoia easing off because…
The jolt was severe.
Like electricity. Adrenalin surged through me, clenching my teeth hard.
I bit my tongue.
Bella was nowhere to be seen.
Nowhere.
I stood, looking around me.
Nowhere.
Not on the grass, nor in the water.
Nowhere.
Nowhere.
* * *
A wave of scotch breezed Sanderson into the trailer.
I sat and looked at the table. At the cards. At my fingernails. My five year old fingernails.
Whorls, knots in the veneer of the table top. Plastic detailing, a pretence to life.
Five years old.
He crossed to sit at my side.
* * *
I stared at the sky above the lakeside. Seeking divine inspiration or oblivion or a bit of both.
Wishing lightning would strike me.
Right now.
Knowing that this was an opportunity, as much as it was panic.
I could walk.
I could turn around and act like the kid hadn’t ever been a part of my life.
There. Then. Me.
I stared at blue sky rendered through the city’s heat haze and smog; humidity and acid rain in waiting.
My eyes burned. Close to tears. Watching the blue above me.
Knowing that there were teeth. That there were hunters.
That there were predators.
Knowing that I could walk away.
Wishing I could walk away.
Predators.
