tomorrow

I speak to her over the crackling phone line, her tiny voice choking in her throat with emotion. I will ask her again when I take her tomorrow, but I know what she is saying. 

She is scared there. 

But that is tomorrow. 

Today I fill the hours with the scattered details of Pasha (Easter), Passover, Spring. There are great loaves of sweet bread to slice into on Sunday morning, dotted with raisins and perfumed with cardamon. N's mother has made a cake for us. The top glistens in the late morning sunlight of her tiny kitchen. We sip black tea sweetened with honey. I take pictures of N and her. I am always fascinated by the way their faces look next to each other. The shocks of black hair, the eyes set wide apart, hands moving slowly in the bright air as they speak.

And then a box of matzoh makes its way into our bags as well. The pale, powdery crisps make me want more tea. I have not eaten matzoh in years.

The streets are choked with people. Lines extend in long curls from the churches, as people wait for bread to be blessed, as they stand in the flat sun in new coats.

We visit the neighborhood where my office used to be. I have not walked these cobblestones in more than five months. I feel nothing. No sentiment. No loss. No welling of emotion.

There is an art museum open now, after two years of construction. The same man sits on a bench outside, begging for change. His face a great drooping mass of red skin, he mutters the same speech to me that I heard every time I passed him.

Inside, Fellini's drawings, rare production stills and video loops of famous scenes play out across a series of rooms and corridors. The Saturday crowd travels randomly through the exhibit. We take our time. N knows everything about these films, these mythical Italian stars. We see them caught topless on the beach, holding babies, in quiet moments between shooting famous scenes. I want a hat like one of Fellini's. Maybe a straw one.

We go to the car wash, as N thinks being clean on Pasha is especially significant. The line goes all the way around the block. No, not today. Maybe early tomorrow morning.

On the way home, traffic comes to a complete stop. We are practically home and wait for minutes. There are sirens, flashing lights. It must be a car accident, another fender bender between fancy cars swerving and passing too quickly as they do here. The police always arrive, even for the smallest scratch to write up evidence forms, to make a record.

A great green trolley bus is next to us, laboring and wheezing in the right lane. N lets it pass in front of us. Then we see the black garbage bag on the ground, the long lines of blood running to the curb, the hair on the top of the head that is not covered. There is a crowd on the sidewalk. Silent. There are paramedics and an ambulance doing nothing. A white SUV stands closest, empty of passengers in the street.

We find our way inside. I balance the bread and the matzoh and groceries in my hands. It is quiet here for once. My blood rises into my ears. I can hear my heartbeat. My skin prickles. I ask myself if it was a child under that sheet of black plastic, the body was so small. Maybe an old woman. I want to know, selfishly. I think to find out, and then let the question fade. It matters, but it doesn't matter. The specifics mean nothing. Someone is dead under that bag. No one on the sidewalk is crying. Just grim faces that are already leaving in groups of two and three.

I go to the balcony in the bedroom and look down. The white SUV has a huge dent across the right front headlight. The bag and the body are still there.
N stands next to me.
"The police must have taken the driver away." She explains. "It was a murder."

On Sunday I collect E. We take a walk in the bright sun along an empty sidewalk, our shadows running far in front of us. We will go to a friend's apartment and decorate eggs. E will tell me that she has only eaten lunch, not breakfast, not dinner the day before. E will tell me she is tired. She will sit on my lap and squeeze my arms, resting her cheek against my chest. Her head is suddenly warm. Yes, she is running a temperature and we are going home, the eggs still wet, carefully wrapped in a paper towel. Purple, yellow, blue, decorated with hearts. A tiny crayon house with smoke curling from the chimney.

She cannot walk, even to go to the bathroom, so I carry her.

I hold her until she sleeps, checking her temperature, nesting her with stuffed animals in her bed. Her cheeks are red. She sleeps, her eyes half-open. I know she will be fine somehow, but I sit and watch her for a long time.

the life of pigeons

She cries. I hold her, ask her questions. She clings to my neck, tears hot against my neck. Twisting her fingers in my shirt, she does not stop. It goes on for some time. It is always for the same reason. I know why. I want to be ignorant. For just once, I wish it was because of something that happened on the playground. Just once because something broke, or spilled, or was lost.

Well, she did lose something. Something she never had.

Leaving the kindergarden I look out the window. There, spraypainted on an aluminum covered passageway is the word "CTAPT" (start). It has been there for as long as I have been bringing E here. A message in a bottle. A nudge. A suggestion. An order. 

Like most graffiti, I suspect it is read and misunderstood, or read and ignored. It has an exclamation mark, like those signs that say DISCOUNT! or SALE! All caps, in letters almost three feet tall. The children can see it every day from the playground. Maybe it was meant for them, not me or any adults.

People here do not smile very much. Every day in the street I see the same expressions. I find myself acting the same sometimes, then catch myself. There should be a snap in my stride, especially now that the streets are dry from snow and ice. I strut, walk fast, weave in and out of the shufflers. I have been walking this way since I was a boy. Sometimes the other kids asked me where I was going, and why so fast. I would stop, spin towards them with a flourish, raise my eyebrows and say, "I don't know, but I'm gonna get there before YOU do."

The day to day comings and goings are a constant struggle. We have been here more than four years now. Sometimes it feels like all we experience is some version of pigeons fighting over a scrap of bread. And the crows are just waiting to swoop in and steal it from the winner.

There is light. There is laughter. There are moments of romance and joy. There are mornings when I wake up next to the kindest, sweetest, funniest woman I have ever known. The sight of her naked back while she sleeps makes me feel peaceful like nothing else in the world. There is love here, amidst the grit and the danger, between the cracks in the sidewalk, in the tight grip of my daughter's hand, in a bowl of pasta in our tiny kitchen, in the middle of the night when the moon looks pregnant.

tonight

She is not here. Just her toys frozen in mid-play. Dolls asleep in makeshift beds. Lego worlds hibernating, waiting for E to return. I have her six days a week these days, a huge spread of time. We make music together, learn the English alphabet, enjoy a galaxy of overlapped moments. I answer a thousand questions a day now - like what the soul is, what air looks like, where babies come from.

On the one day she is not here, the silence is deep.

Five minutes away and I miss her already, the snow still wet on my coat from bringing her downstairs. I find a half-eaten chocolate on my chair. She left it for me.

the sculpture garden

Emerging like a white slug, its pale underbelly translucent in the afternoon sun. That is how Spring came. Soft, pathetic, vulnerable. I see creosote black chunks of snow on the dead grass. I sense the dust in the air, not early flowers, just a burnt chemical smell, of ozone. Spring is late, with a half-baked apology in its coat pocket.

The windows are open. Stray dogs are sleeping in loose groups in the mud, no longer fighting over bones from the trash, no longer running up and down the icy sidewalk looking for handouts. Their vacation has begun.

I feel uncomfortable, lost.

In the back pocket of my jeans is a piece of paper that went through the wash. Pages fused together, unrecognizable, but clean. That is how I feel. Peel me apart and you will find nothing but some scribbles that were soaped and spun into nothing. A few letters to trace, a receipt for some vegetables.

I get E to school on time. I pick her up like a Swiss clock, turning the corner of the playground at 6 every day. She loves her birthday toys so much. They keep her awake late, until she is exhausted.

N comes and goes like a little bird, chirping jokes in my ear. She grows more beautiful to me every day.

But when I look in the mirror, my face looks thousands of miles away.

Last night I dreamt about a sculpture garden. It was a memory crammed full of details. I think it was in Munich, about 15 years ago.

The place is lush and green. Great trees throw long shadows across thick grass. People move in small groups. Women's arms are draped through the elbows of men. Hushed conversations are shared. There is a faint smell of lilacs. We move on a great rise overlooking the city - but what city? It is not Munich. It looks more like Rome now. The sculptures are bronze - patinaed and smooth. I rest my hand on one, feeling the chill of Spring now. A guard comes towards me, waves me off. You are not supposed to touch them.

The sculptures are realistic, perfectly proportioned - all caught in perfect gestures. Dolphins, dancing maidens, a lion, a wedding. I wander the place, doubling back across small paths, seeing and re-seeing them. Music is swirling around my head - Claire de Lune by Debussy, playing over and over. It is a magnificent place. It gives me goosebumps. I spend long afternoons here, eating some lunch on a bench. The silence is intoxicating.

I wake up, and try to remember visiting this place. I search for it on the computer, and understand I have never been there, because it does not exist. 

But I know the park. I have surely been there.