The Slide: A Novel Read online

  “At least stay through the fall, honey. I know how much you love our falls in the Midwest.”

  “Mom.”

  “You were always saying on the phone how much you missed the seasons. There was that funny thing you said about smog doesn’t count as a season.”

  “You mailed me that box of leaves,” I said. “I loved that.”

  “You and your father will rake the yard,” she said. “Do you know what that would mean to your father? To rake leaves next to you, side by side?”

  “These allergies,” I said.

  “Christmastime around here is so special. All the energy, all the trees hung with lights, the decorations at the Botanical Garden. It’s going to be beautiful.”

  A pause lingered.

  “And who can resist the spring? I don’t have to tell you how nice our springtime is. All the green, the yards. The bulbs sprouting through the softening ground. The whole city blooms. Color everywhere.”

  “I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen.”

  “The other day, Potter, just the other day I had the oddest memory of your childhood. Right in the middle of lunch. Someone was saying something about some group of people down in the wine country, and then all of a sudden for some reason I remembered when you were first learning to speak. I was trying to teach you colors, but all you wanted to talk about was yellow. You loved yellow. I think you liked the softness of it. Gentle yellow. Only two colors mattered: yellow and not yellow. Except you pronounced it yayo. I’d point to something and you’d say yayo or not yayo. I held up a banana. Yayo. Outside in the grass. Not yayo.”

  As we sat in icy dark, the vents exhaling freezing streams that collided somewhere overhead, then settled downward, I pictured a world in which all things were so wonderfully reducible. By this point I was positive my mother had seen Freddy. The jurisdiction she held over this household, her deep knowledge of its most recessed nooks and crannies, she must have.

  “That message on the machine is from Audrey,” she said.

  “What? She called here?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago. I thought maybe the ringing would wake up your father so I sort of let it go until the machine picked up.”

  In addition to trying very very hard not to leap over the couch to get at the machine, I was also working to come up with an explanation for why Audrey would call my home over my cell phone. I pictured her clutching an international phone card, bent over the alien shape of some pale gray or blue phone terminal, handset resting horizontally in that European manner, poking the elaborate sequence of card number, country code, area code, and the final seven digits. She was sad, perhaps. Longing for some connection with a household, the anchor of home. Was she crying as she dialed? She might have been crying. Or laughing, Carmel’s fingers tickling her bald head.

  “She’s in Germany,” my mother said.

  It was amazing what this tiny bit of knowledge did for me. Germany, a smallish country, roughly, I approximated, the size of a middle-American state? I could now pinpoint her in a region. This was a problem for us, my habit of not exactly needing, per se, but very much appreciating knowledge of her location. She couldn’t stand when I left her messages with not sure where you are, but I’m . . . or some such passive query. And part of me was pleased that my little habit angered her. It showed that the finer points of our communication mattered, that our words counted in some larger sense. I stood and crossed the room to the little stand where we kept the answering machine.

  “Here. I’ll give you some privacy.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I mean you’ve already heard it.”

  She settled back into the couch, relieved and heavy, and I wondered if maybe there was something besides milk in her mug.

  Hello, Mayses, it’s Audrey calling from Heidelberg, this wonderful little German town on this wonderful German river. We’re near the Black Forest. Or wait, maybe we’re in the Black Forest? Carmel has a family friend at the university, so last night we had this meal, oh my God this meal, and I drank ale from the horn of some creature, some horned beast. What else? There’s a castle up on this hill we’re about to hike to. Oh man, card’s running out. But Potter! People here say there are faeries in the woods around the castle, actual real live faeries that will grant you wishes if you catch.Oh the lady is saying there’s no more time. Anyway, Carmel bought this net? Shut up lady! Okay so I hope everything is

  End of message. I replayed it once more, then pressed delete and went back to my father’s chair. I stared at my toes inside my socks. Carla sipped her mug and held it just below her chin. Never had I so thoroughly appreciated my family’s penchant for conversational minimalism. What could my mother think of this girl? Faeries said it all. What was there for her to ask? To answer? No, we opted for silence because it was what we knew best. And now something must have been altered or made somehow special, some new layer of noiselessness left behind by Audrey’s voice, because only now did I hear the faint nasally rips of my father echoing from back in the bedroom.

  “Sounds like a walrus dying,” I said.

  Carla leaned back so she could unfold her legs. She stood and stretched arms over her head with the mug hanging from one finger. Then she approached me in my father’s chair, leaned forward, and kissed my forehead.

  “I love you so much sometimes I wonder if it’s even fair.”

  When I awoke, still in my father’s chair, the first razors of dawn were slicing through darkness outside and everything looked a color right smack between yellow and not yellow. I heard the first cries of early-rising birds and the metallic, ratchet-like snores sounding from the master bedroom, where I imagined my exhausted mother lying, eyes open, staring at the ceiling above.

  It was almost time to go deliver the city’s bottled water.

  I worked. I went and loaded and drove and unloaded and reloaded and drove and punched my time card and came home. I showered. Each day I considered writing something to Audrey, and each day I did not.

  I sat on the front porch sipping a beer, listening to the come-and- go drone of cicadas. One house over, the Hoyne daughter emerged from the front door and began the walk to a silver Jetta parked in the street. I followed her blond hair against the background of prevailing green, like some halo accompanying her frame, and her name came to me: Zoe. She drove the twenty yards to the front of my house, then sat there with her left arm hanging out the window. She didn’t look at me. And there was something about her arm, a nonchalance, call it a poetic carelessness, hanging there, hand patting the beat to whatever music she had on. I finished my beer at what I pretended was my own pace, then set the bottle down and approached her car in deliberate steps, stretching my forearms as I went. She wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  “You should get in.”

  “Into the car, you mean. Where you headed?”

  “Anywhere. I had to get out of my house. Mom is on the phone with my brother because something’s wrong, or his version of wrong, so she had to console. My mother consoles loudly.” She smiled, and something I kept inside ceased to exist. “Come on.”

  “Tonight’s a big night. The mother’s got some kind of roast going in the oven.”

  “How about you just get in the car.”

  A woman in a minivan passed by and waved, while a squirrel sat motionless on the power line directly overhead, nibbling at something in its paws, watching us all. I walked around the car and got into the front seat. The music was old, staticky reggae. The interior was littered with the normal bits of teen-girl livelihood. Magazines full of bad advice. Those cheerleading shoes with the removable plastic-triangle colors. Things I wanted to call trinkets. I was pleased to see a standard transmission. I pulled a cigarette from the pack in the emergency-brake divot and examined the song list from one of the blank CD cases scattered around the front seats. I put the cigarette back. We still hadn’t moved.

  “I’ll admit a small amount of relief that even your brother needs consolation.”

  “H
e’s probably eight times more pathetic than you’d ever imagine.” She picked up the pack of cigarettes. “He calls with weekly law school updates on his class rank. And Christ help us if it ever falls below three.”

  “How long have you been a smoker?”

  “Been a smoker?” she said. “Oh God. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I started in sixth grade to make sure none of my friends would disown me.”

  I formulated a plan to avoid any and all references to age, grade, or temporality in general. Which I knew was impossible since this immaculate girl was a full six years younger than me, meaning right now the ratios of age disparity over personal age (6/22 and 6/16) were too significant to shrug away. I had already run through the usual extension of relativity: at my thirty, she’d be twenty-four, and so on. But these thoughts worked regressively as well: the deeply disturbing image of a six-year-old me like some wolf, fangs dripping drool onto the newborn girl below.

  “Are you aware that the songs on these CDs are horrible? This is a concern my generation has about your generation. This comes from a complete certainty that our own music was crap, and therefore yours must be even crapper.”

  “You can’t judge someone based on something given them as a gift,” she said. “A gift only speaks of the person giving it.”

  “I remember one Christmas being given two different Jane Goodall biographies,” I said. “The ape woman.”

  “And what’s this generation nonsense?”

  “Are we still sitting here?” I said. “I was sure we’d begun moving by now.”

  Zoe laughed and pulled us away from the curb. I could see this little girl at her fortieth birthday party, taking the number in stride, stepping over it like some sidewalk crack.

  “The boys I know seem to think a mix CD is this like ultraperfect present. And I’m supposed to gush thanks and think of them every time I play it. Since they require upward of five entire minutes to make.”

  “There was a time when a mix tape meant a lot of clicking noises. Holding your finger above the pause and record buttons of the tape deck. My God. You don’t remember any of this.”

  “Old man sitting next to me,” she said. “Dear old man in my car.”

  I felt her downshift into a curve and accelerate out in second gear. The kids who’d thrown toilet paper at her house might have had no other option. They were only doing what they could to keep up. I clutched the rubberized handle above the window so I wouldn’t have to think about where to put my hands.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You and I are going for a drive because we’re neighbors. Stop being suspicious.”

  My legs were crossed tightly enough to hold water. She had one hand on the gearshift, the other draped over the steering wheel. Hair ponytailed neatly. I wiped a palm on my thigh.

  “Left,” I said.

  “Well then.”

  The evening was cool enough that we didn’t need the air conditioner. The odor of barbecue hovered thick and smoky everywhere we went. Grilled MEAT. Zoe ejected the CD and tossed it into the backseat. I chose a case from the floor mat and quickly scanned its song list. Once again I was appalled. What nature of person would combine these songs? I slid the disk into the player and went to track four.

  “Go right,” I said.

  “I like this one,” she said. “Who is this?”

  “Johnny Cash, one of a select few men who could get away with doing Taco Bell commercials. Apparently one of your suitors has good taste. I say pick him.”

  “I’m not picking any of them. These CDs don’t represent a catalog of potential mates. They give them to me. Sometimes I listen.”

  There were very few cars on the road with us, and those we passed seemed energized in a way I wasn’t used to. They were more determined in their goinghood, drivers eager, I guessed, to get home and cook meat. Summer nights like this can be counted on fingers in St. Louis, they are the exception to the rule of mug and weight.

  “I got my license from the DMV in that strip mall over there,” I said.

  “I don’t think that branch exists anymore. It’s been closed for a few years.”

  “I’d be happier if we didn’t think about that.”

  “You’re really not all that old, you know. Also I wish you’d realize how little it matters.”

  I replayed the Johnny Cash song and said, “Turn into here.”

  It was a small parking lot for a small public park, empty but for a dark blue station wagon tucked alone in the back corner. At one end of the lot was a group of picnic tables beneath a kind of wall-less barn. Beyond were baseball diamonds and soccer fields. To our right was the reason I’d brought us here, the Rocket Slide. Zoe parked us facing the playground area, and for a moment we sat in silence, taking it in. There was the red, white, and blue spire painted to look like a rocket, the system of ladders and bridges that spiraled around it, the three slides and unsteady wooden bridge and jungle gym components at its base. The swings and other attractions were off to the side, several gravelly steps from the heart of the Rocket Slide.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  “My parents used to bring me every week. For a long time this slide was the single scariest thing in my life. The rest of the park I loved, but that main slide, so steep and final. Pure childhood mortification.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve never been here.”

  We got out of the car and approached slowly, stepping heavily through fine, crayon-brown gravel. I felt my feet sink and drag as Zoe and I split from each other. I ducked through a short archway into the base of the main tower and climbed the lower rungs of a narrow ladder, cautious with my head and elbows. I was far too big, but I kept going. She went to the opposite end of the thing, away from the rocket portion of the slide. I heard echoes of her bouncing loudly across the bridge. I reached the top of the ladder and stared down the long, skinny, steel walkway, flanked by an enfilade of whitewashed chain-link. Just above was the biggest of the slides. Soon Zoe was crouched next to me.

  “Each slide has its own character,” I said. “The really short one is more for ascent than anything, a ramp. The mid-level one off to the side of that ladder that just bruised the hell out of my knee is where kids begin. See the gentle bumps? Perfect for your novice slider. Once you mastered that one, you’d move up to this one here, which is really the focal point of this place.”

  Next to us was the dark mouth of the curving, partially covered slide. Cicadas went skee-her, skee-her beneath or beside the sound of Zoe’s little breath.

  “I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to get the nerve to go down this thing. I had no problem with the medium one, which is actually steeper and faster than this one. I think it was the darkness that scared me. The tunnel curves around the pole so you have no idea where you’re going once you’re in. Jesus, it used to scare me.”

  “There’s definitely a metaphor there. Scared of the dark future.” She patted my elbow.

  “You’re not allowed to patronize me.”

  “Oh no. I’m with you on the scariness thing. If the hot older neighbor is scared, I’m petrified.”

  She looked at me, her eyes a blue like Stuart’s lighted pool at midnight, then swung herself neatly into the tunnel. I followed close behind, but lost momentum before I reached the bottom. She laughed and made her way toward the swings while I squirmed down the last few feet of slide and followed.

  Once she was seated on the swing, her smile turned immense.

  “I love to swing. Love it.”

  I nodded and took the swing next to her. The simple fact, though, was that I was a very bad swinger. I had never successfully worked out the physics of it, and this made me mad. It was gravity, after all, and yet I was hopeless.

  “In fact I can’t think of a single thing to compete with the reckless joy of swinging,” she said, and suddenly it was as if she had entered a new plane of existence. Two quick steps and she was going like kitchen fire, soon eclipsing three and nine o’clock
while I plodded slowly along like an old pet. Her chain slackened as she reached an apex, then stretched taut with downward acceleration.

  “I don’t understand how you’re so much better than me.”

  “You’re trying too hard,” she said. “Or not enough.”

  Her hair streamed behind, paused, then collapsed around her face. And again. I felt that semi-aquatic form of small astonishment that comes during the early stages of a new relationship, when every small lesson of a person’s wonder turns the air between you more viscous. I hopped from the swing for a better view of the miraculous swinging angel, taking a seat in the gravel. The sweep and arc of her movement, the leaning, how her body’s shifts worked in perfect concert with natural law—these her gifts to the world. She went on for quite some time before riding one upswing to its peak and leaving the swing behind, briefly flying, then landing back in the gravelly earth with its rules and constraints. She joined me in the gravel.

  “How’s the studying?” I asked.

  “Words, words, words. I like natation. The act or skill of swimming. My mom says she’ll pay you to tutor me. She and your mom have already discussed it. Wheels are turning.”

  As cars passed by, we heard bits of stereo against the underlying and constant cicada buzz. Just south of the Rocket Slide, Hanley Road changed to Springer Road where it entered into Webster County and became more residential and curvy and tree-lined. Roads did this in St. Louis, spontaneously switched names without warning. Zoe smacked a mosquito that landed on her arm, then showed it to me on her palm, bloodless.

  “Ebullience will be on there. I personally guarantee.”

  “Oh, I like that,” she said. “Eb-boo-lee-ents. Another one, please.”

  “Marasmus. A wasting of the body associated with insufficient intake of food.”

  “See, this deserves pay. You could be on the clock right now.” She threw a handful of gravel at my legs.

  “I don’t have any sort of teaching certification,” I said. “There could be surprise inspections. Who knows what sort of trouble I’d be in.”