An online course I once took on the history of New York City described the development of Brooklyn Heights, a promontory overlooking the harbor. The area began with an investment, a purchase of land by a blue blood named Hezekiah Pierrepont. Pierrepont immediately subdivided his property and offered the lots to others of his caste, who snatched them up. That’s because the richest New Yorkers desperately wanted to get their families out of town in the summer. Cholera, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, and yellow fever ran through the crowded streets of Manhattan during the long hot months from the end of June to September. The only protection was distance.
The epidemics are long gone, but not the heat and humidity that gave rise to them. Nobody moves to New York for the climate, and the hum of air conditioners in summer is almost as loud as the traffic on the street. Still, just as the January thaw brings out the multitudes in winter, so do the few pleasant days that turn up every summer. Days like today when the high temperature will barely clear eighty degrees and the sunlight is unbearably clean, when a breeze sensual enough to cool Eleni’s overheated libido ruffles the leaves of an oak on the other side of the walkway.
I’m sitting on a bench in crowded Prospect Park, not far from the zoo. The atmosphere is celebratory, every seat occupied. Two women across the way sit behind strollers, identical except for color: one pink, one blue. Their conversation is animated, though in a language I don’t recognize, and they laugh frequently. On the other end of my bench, a middle-aged man feeds a trio of gray squirrels from a bag of peanuts. In slacks and a blue shirt ironed well enough to meet Martha’s standards, he glances at me from time to time. I’m in a sleeveless dress that drops to the top of my knee, even with my legs crossed.
I’m thinking the man will strike up a conversation, but there’s no room in our lives for a close relationship, a fact Eleni complains about from time to time. She chooses to deal with the problem by engaging in the most casual of relationships, ignoring the obvious dangers. That’s not my way.
The man disappoints me by simply walking off, crumbling and tossing his peanut bag into a trash basket. Despite my lack of interest, my reaction is thoroughly female when I ask myself a simple question: what’s wrong with me? The question is so stupid that I laugh to myself, a laugh that dies abruptly when I see my father sitting on a bench fifty yards away.
Panic, rising in an instant, tears into my core, ignoring flesh and bone, the same fear that tore through Martha in Pathmark, that compelled all of us save Eleni to choose oblivion over confrontation. A shiver rises along my spine, vertebra by vertebra, to rattle finally through the small bones at the back of my neck. More than helpless, I feel already punished, already in pain.
I want to leap to my feet, to flee, but I remain frozen. I tell myself that I’m in a crowded public park and perfectly safe, but I don’t believe it. My terror is primitive, the fear of a peasant for the troll who lives under the bridge. The evil is physical, a presence, a hand already gripping my throat.
Time passes: a minute, then two. My father and I sit unmoving, our time stopped. I’m trying hard to become angry, but my rage vanishes, a drop in an ocean named despair. Hank Grand will come for his daughter, no matter the consequences. Even if I took his picture with a cell phone I don’t have, even if I proved it was Hank Grand sitting on that bench, it wouldn’t matter. Returning him to prison would only postpone our reunion.
What would Eleni do? What would Kirk do? I’ve trained myself to appear reasonable, to present a face the world is ready to see, a bearable face, almost professional. But I have no face for the beast, no posture, no expression that could possibly deter Hank Grand.
I raise my head as I finally draw a deep breath and again become aware of my fellow citizens going about their ordinary business, so far removed from my world they might have come from Mars. Our mental disorder—and we are, without doubt, disorderly—is considered a psychosis. We’re crazy and I’m willing to admit the fact. But the man on the bench isn’t a product of our psychosis. He’s blood and flesh and bone, and he means us harm.
I hear Eleni’s voice, her arrival so sudden I start. “Take the pepper spray in your purse and spray it into his fucking mouth.”
I have to bring my hand to my own mouth, the command so funny that I almost laugh. It’s funny, first of all, because I lack the courage and Eleni knows it. But the really hilarious part is that Eleni believes that macing Hank Grand will somehow stop him. It won’t.
The day ruined, I have only one recourse and that’s retreat. I rise and begin to walk north, toward Grand Army Plaza and away from Hank Grand. I tell myself not to look back, a resolve that lasts for all of thirty seconds. My father has also risen. He’s following, his pace matching my own.
And so we go, passing beneath the arch at the plaza, then along Flatbush Avenue, six lanes wide and bustling. Hank Grand comes no closer, but the separation is almost as threatening as an approach. I feel myself shrinking, my shoulders hunched, back bent, so that by the time I turn onto Sixth Avenue behind the Barclays Center I’m fighting hard against an urge to run. There’s construction here but no stores or apartment houses. As I glance behind me, a construction worker earns my eternal gratitude when he shouts, “Ay, mami, eres tan hermosa.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m further encouraged by a pair of whistles from two other workers. Harass me, please.
Ten minutes later, I’m in front of the door to my building, sliding my key into the lock, looking back at my father who stands in the shade of a young maple at the end of the street, still the same fifty yards away. I stare at him for a moment, unable to break off, and I see him, suddenly, as an old man. The bags under his eyes, the furrows above his brow, the swollen jowls, the faint man-breasts, the forward thrust of his gut. He seems almost harmless, just another senior counting the years.
Then he raises a hand and the muscles of his upper arms jerk to attention as he flashes a confident smile.