That first day in Central Park

SOME DAYS, YOU WANT TO TELL ME everything that you remember.

You remember when we met. Tavern on the Green, July 1967. You were waitressing to pay for books at Cooper Union. I had just grad­uated from Wharton and was taking my father’s clients to lunch. It was my era of “at least it’ll make a good short story.” They were Italian milliners on their first trip to America. It would.

You remember my pants were too short, my jacket was too big, but there was a leather notebook in my lap that heartened you im­mediately. You remember that every once in a while, I would jot down some words, urgently, furiously, as if they were house keys on the shore, at risk of being whisked out.

You remember when you brought us Bloody Marys and deviled eggs, I gestured to the blue paint on the latent part of your wrist and said, I bet you’re very good. You remember recognition like a night-light. I remember I missed every word of that lunch. Some­times, I think, the stories write themselves.

You remember mid-meal I found you – rushed, red wine down your front – by the kitchen and said, Excuse me. I had sweet eyes, you say. Like a horse by a fence.

You remember that I didn’t speak. Instead, I reached for your hand and squeezed it. It was as if I was telling you something about safety, you say. Until then, you hadn’t realized you’d felt unsafe.

Or something like that, you say. You can change the wording later.

You sit up taller in bed as if the remembering is an IV of something. Life or life twice.

Sure, I say. I nod. I do not tell you the truth: I haven’t written in three years. It is not for lack of effort but focus, stamina, drive. I’ve been with you at all of your appointments. I go to the supermarket, pharmacy, acupuncturist in Springs. Sometimes, I come home, stare at the windshield, unable to mobilize my legs. I don’t want to come in and you’re not painting, clicking on a lamp for reading, making blueberry crumb pies in my wool socks.

Still, today is a good day. Your eyes are clear as a temple. The red asterisk of your mouth is far from slack. Your voice is whole as a bell. I can do better. Your voice is a match, lit.

I write that down.

Do you remember those awful shoes they made us wear at Tavern on the Green? you say. And the hats? It really was misogyny, wasn’t it?

I remember the plant life of your eyes, you smelled like spring, moved like a bird, but you were steadier and lighter than the rest of us.”

You shake your head but now you are smiling. When you are like this, it feels like hitching my wagon to your horse. I want to follow you raspberry picking, listen to you contemplate fish and sun and shadows in oil on driftwood. I try to attribute the clarity to something specific: a change in medication, sugar, sleep, the moon. I cannot.

I remember, from the day I met you, you lit up a room, put everyone at ease. I remember how you crouched down with the Italian guests so that when you repeated yourself – che cosa? che cosa? they kept saying – you could tell them the specials as though they were a secret gift.

I remember that whenever I saw you, it seemed, somehow, as if you’d just been swimming. I remember the plant life of your eyes, you smelled like spring, moved like a bird, but you were steadier and lighter than the rest of us. That has remained true, decades and decades later. I remember the gap between your teeth, the dimple under your nose, how your hair was lighter around your face. It might be overkill to call it a halo, a frame, an immutable, immaculate light. I remember I wanted to do everything over again when you were around – be bolder but also more still.

You remember falling leaves in Central Park, and as we walked, radio somewhere, gray clouds like ribbons in wind. I’d never noticed till you. I remember your back ten steps ahead of me. You were looking for acorns, rocks. You were planning to make sculptures with wax. I remember your deer bones, the way your steps were intentional, as if you were composing a song with your feet. What was that scent you wore? What happened to that polka-dot dress?

You remember sometimes, we’d stand under lamplight near Bank Rock Bridge or the Obelisk or we’d take the M7– down and then up – just to ride. You remember my hand on your knee, your hand on mine. You remember the Chinese restaurant that was next to a cleaner’s, and on the other side, a church where we read each other’s fortunes, though you don’t remember any exactly. You remember the smell of soy sauce and old tea, white napkins knotted into swans, sauce always getting on my shirt.

I remember sitting across the table from you, how I felt flattered just being with you. I remember how people always gazed at you not just because of your beauty but because of the way you were quiet both before you spoke and after – and also because of what you said. I remember how light always found your cheekbones, butterflies flocked to your hair.

You remember, in the beginning, we walked everywhere together: the Park’s Outer Loop, Upper Loop, from Columbus Circle to Har­lem mostly parallel to Central Park West. You remember listening to the saxophonist under the trees, pignoli cookies from Ferrara, counting convertibles on Fifth. You remember pistachio ice cream and espressos, a black cat in a tree and a fire truck, a man who only walked backward – to and fro, singing Bob Marley, on the Seventy-Second Street Traverse. You remember I kept my hand on your back as if you were a stray egg – and that we never stopped talking, laughing, telling each other everything.

from This Is a Love Story (Serpent’s Tail, £16.99)

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Jessica Soffer was born and raised in New York City and earned her MFA in Fiction at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Saveur, Wall Street Journal and Vogue, and she is the author of the novel Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (2013). This Is a Love Story is published by Serpent’s Tail in hardback, eBook and audio.
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Author photo by Sasha Israel