A Walk in the Park

“Can I help you sir?” The receptionist had perhaps the most triangular face Bernie had ever seen, with a tiny mouth pursed under noncommittal eyes and a thin, almost pinched nose.  The hair was full at the top of the head but cropped shorter and shorter until it feathered forward at the jaw, where strands of gold links, perhaps a dozen strands per ear lobe, dangled almost to her collar bone. All of this made a triangle which pointed down at the monumental ruins of what once had been magnificent breasts.

The scooped neck of the  sweater exposed a bit more of same than might have been advisable under the circumstances but he surmised that perhaps she thought that at age “about sixty something” she could, or needed, to get away with it.  On the other hand, the exposed skin bore the marks of sun damage which argued for a lifetime of such exposure.  Bernie’s guess was that she had reveled in the attention they brought for the better part of fifty years.

In trim, dark blue letters, her name tag which seemed vanishingly small in the environment, said Bernice.

A little too old and a lot too tired to be unduly stimulated, he said,”Bernie Thurston for a 4:30 with Graff”.  “6/6/40” he added in the service of efficiency.

“Bernie!  My name is Bernice!” Her eyes committed as she glanced down in the direction of her name tag.  “We must be kindred spirits; and my husband’s birthday is two days before yours Bernie”, she looked directly and willfully at him. There was a strong, contradiction between the eye language and the body language which was prim, almost tight. The mouth too, although seemingly on the verge of a smile was still held tightly in check.

Bernie who hadn’t checked for a ring in twenty years thought, “OK, good for you; establishing not only the game but the rules.  We think we like you.”

“Just have a seat, Mr. Thurston.  Dr. Graff will be right with you.”

Bernie looked around for diversion.  The magazines looked uninteresting and tired and the thought of many dirty hands thumbing through them made them even less interesting.

He turned his attention to the wall hangings, some of which were original paintings bearing, he thought, the mark of “someone’s wife” and some of which were professional photos.  The paintings had a “park” theme and the photos, an urban landscape theme, so he assumed both were local.

“Dr. Graff will see you now, Mr. Thurston.”  The phrase always irritated him and, as he followed the nurse through the maze to the examining room, he tried for the umpteenth time to think of a better phrase.  “Dr. Graff will see you”, sounded as if one had been granted an audience for god’s sake.  On the other hand, the inescapable fact was that one was “one of many”, and they had to have some way of getting the sheep into the chute for the fleecing.

After the appointment, Bernie made his way through the labyrinth of offices and hallways back to the front.  There, a different but equally flirtatious animal some twenty years the junior of the receptionist took his paperwork, also pursed her lips as she studied the co-pay schedule. Her name tag said Cecille. Her desk, sat almost touching Bernice’s at a right angle.

Specialist is a $35 co-pay Mr. Thurston.  Will that be cash or credit?”

“The lady who checked me in said it would be free” Bernie joked feebly.

“She checked you more than in” Cecile half sang.  “Oops, I’m getting the death stare.  I have a life expectancy of about five minutes right now.”

Bernie didn’t completely understand the dynamics on the other side of the counter but having begun the banter and feeling more than a little flattered, felt compelled to at least play his part.  “Well, that’ll get you to 5:00 and quitting time.”

“Yes, and then woo-oo” the tightly checked Bernice rose, put her arms in the air and did a graceful undulation from side to side.  It started at her ankle and traveled upward to the tips of her fingers by which time another had started from the ankle and was about knee high.  It was a beautiful gesture, much like the flame of a flickering candle responding to the vortex created by its own heat.  It lasted three or four seconds at most and for that three or four seconds Bernie could all but smell the summer heat and pungent haze of drugs her mother had warned of.  There would have been ear shattering noise and soul shattering revelations, none of it remembered the next day.  “Dear God—she must have been a thing of joy to see”.  At the end, Benice sat abruptly and resumed “checked” position.

“Well, you ladies have certainly brightened my afternoon” Bernie said and left, feeling a little disoriented.

“They sit there, five days a week, being efficient, serving the system, making a living, talking about patients, and in their spare moments, sharing their lives.  They are the given, the stable.  We patients, a long slide show which takes a few weeks or months to repeat   Jesus! What I wouldn’t give to know their stories. Oh well, just have time to meet Jeremy in the park” and, the sun behind him, he hurried east.

Half walking, half jogging along 72nd it didn’t take long to get to the fountain.

“Bernie…down here.”  Right below him he heard Jeremy call his name.  At the bottom of the stairs, Jeremy was watching a kid juggle tennis balls just for the fun of it.  The kid was obviously just learning but even though he dropped a ball occasionally he usually caught it on first bounce and kept right on.  He didn’t have a hat out or anything–just doing it for fun.

The sun was low enough to give the scene a warm glow. Soon it would be twilight.

“Hello Jeremy, a moment please” and for a handful of seconds he savored the scene without distraction.  For those few seconds the Angel’s image (the wings he’d never liked, nor truth to tell, the hair) swirled with thoughts of Olmsted and Stebbins, the picture of children, their feet in the water, the juggling lad and his idle admirers.  Would Olmsted like, did Olmsted like the Angel and was Stebbins’s commission an act of patronage, and what did it matter and what would they all have thought of the lad and the vendors and the noisy traffic.  It all swirled slow and sweet in his mind.

As he descended the stairs Bernie was conscious of landing on each foot with the little thud of an older person.  The lad juggling would probably have landed on each step with a little thud also, but it would have been for the fun of it, for the dramatization of it, the “just because” of it.

When he was a few steps from the bottom, directly above Jeremy who was leaning against the stair case, a young girl—maybe sixteen, maybe younger, came out from under the terrace.  She had lovely, brand new breasts with which she was obviously deliriously happy and which she was displaying in a blouse not unlike the one the receptionist had worn.  “Just taking the new tits out for a walk” he mumbled happily.  How many times had he met Helen here when they were students? She too, had reveled in her body.  They both had.  And so, on this very spot, on days very like this one, had generations before.

It all swirled so sweetly and for a moment, as he looked off to the north, past the lass, past the lad, past the fountain, and the redbuds, he misted up.

“Bernie—you okay?”

“Yeah Jeremy—Oh dear god, yes.”