The Shattering Clarity of the
Irreplaceable, Yet Again

The day before the momentous Election Day of 2008, in that lull of time when it’s no longer afternoon but not yet evening, the sky was washed in opaque indigo blue and, standing at the living room window, Bunny was overcome by an emotion she could not identify. Whatever it was, she thought she might drown in it. She put the palm of her hand, her left hand, flat against the cold glass. An early arctic chill was blowing in from Canada, and just like that, Bunny got inspired. Ice-skating, to go ice-skating, to have fun.

Fun not shared is not fun. You can derive great pleasure alone, enjoy yourself enormously, experience bliss, but fun requires someone else, like a friend or a dog. Jeffrey is not a dog, and Stella is gone.

When she called Lydia, to ask if Lydia wanted to go ice-skating, the phone went straight to voicemail, but Trudy picked up her phone on the third ring.

“Ice-skate?” Trudy asked. “Since when do you ice-skate?”

“I don’t,” Bunny said. “But I did once. I mean, one time.”

At that age, nine or ten years old, girls had ice-skating parties, bowling parties, or played twelve holes of miniature golf; activities followed by a hot dog, a Coke, and a slice of Carvel ice cream cake. At one of the bowling parties, Bunny bowled a zero. She pretended to do it on purpose. Better the girls on her team be mad at her for deliberately failing than for all the girls to goof on her for being a spaz.

In the days leading up to the skating party, Bunny imagined gleaming white skates with pom-poms dangling from the aglets of the laces like a pair of fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror of a car. But the rental skates were the same shade of white as pee-stained sheets. There were no pom-poms, and when she stood up, her ankles turned inward, as if to kiss each other on the nose. While everyone else whizzed past her like they were Hans Brinker and his sisters, Bunny clung to the rail, inching her way around the rinky-dink rink. When she dared to let go, she fell. A fish out of water, Bunny on ice.

“It’s not about ice-skating ice-skating,” she told Trudy. “It’s about falling down.” Bunny effused on the fun of foolishness, the fun to be had flopping and falling on the ice at Rockefeller Center. Her voice sounded as if her eyes were glittering.

“Hardly my idea of a good time,” Trudy said. “And at Rockefeller Center, no less? Where do you get such ideas?” Rockefeller Center is for tourists and adolescents who over-identify with Holden Caulfield. Moreover, there was a documentary about Stockhausen on at seven that she really wanted to see.

“Who?” Bunny asked.

“Stockhausen,” Trudy said. “Karlheinz Stockhausen.”

“Right. Right. Stockhausen.”

To replace lost love, the way you can replace your broken computer with a new one or replace the battery in your watch, is not an option.

Bunny hung up the phone and googled “Karlheinz Stockhausen,” whom, she learned, was a pioneer in aleatory music. Then she googled “aleatory music,” and after that she sat there staring at the computer screen as late afternoon turned into night.

When Albie got home, he wanted to know why was she sitting there in the dark staring at the computer screen.

“For fun,” she said. “I’m having fun,” and then she said nothing.

Bunny doesn’t talk about Stella.