May We Be Forgiven

there with it.”
    “Well, what do you want me to do?”
    “I don’t know—you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to take your dogs and your cats and be gone for eight hours, longer if you have asthma.”
    “Well, can you at least pause? Can you give me a few minutes to get it together?”
    “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” one of the guys says. “It’s not even nine-thirty and now we’re screwed for the day. Late. Late. Late.” He turns to me. “Well, don’t just stand there, get it together!”
    I put Tessie on her leash and some biscuits in my pocket. I catch the cat. I can’t find a carrier for her, and so somehow wrestle her into a canvas bag and run out to the car with her howling. I bring her litter box out and set it up on the passenger seat, let the cat out of the bag, set up water, food, crack the windows, and go back for Tessie. I figure we’ll walk around for a while, and if need be I’ll come back and drive both the cat and the dog somewhere later. It’s not like a lot of planning went into it.
    Tessie and I set off down the street; it’s a bright, clear morning, unseasonably warm for a winter day, a day full of promise, of hope, of possibility.
    The park is empty. It’s a place that exists simply to contain the trees, to oxygenate the village, a green expanse to drive past while gesturing to visitors: Don’t we have a lovely park, a beautiful village green? At the far edge there is a parking lot, tennis and basketball courts, a set of swings, a climber. I run Tessie across the park; on the other side, I tether her leash to the swings and then, to prove I still have the possibility of play left in me, I jump on the swing, the thick rubber seat matching my childhood memories. I rock back and forth, back and forth, climbing higher and higher, and then, at the peak of both height and motion, I throw my head back, the sky opens up, filling my vision, blue, rich bright super-blue with thick white clouds, clouds of perfection, and for a moment all is beyond perfect, it is divine. And then, as I sail forward, the velocity is overwhelming, my stomach rises to my throat. I am whirling. I close my eyes—worse. I open my eyes—worse again. I throw myself forward, tumbling off the swing, landing in the dirt on hands and knees. The swing slams me in the back—as if to say, “Take that, you idiot.” A vestibular impossibility? I go for the slide, climb the ladder; the smooth curl of the handrails feels the same now as it did forty years ago. At the top I push off and glide down to the bottom. As I get up, the button on my pocket catches, tugs, rips. Despite the allure, the echoing memory of swinging from bar to bar, of hanging from my knees, I don’t attempt the climber or the monkey bars. I firmly believe I still could do anything and everything and want to keep it that way.
    I’m thinking of days that never were, the perfect childhood that existed only in my imagination. When I was growing up, the playground wasn’t so much a well-coiffed green as an empty lot. Our families had no desire for us to have a safe, clean place to play—as far as they were concerned, playing was a waste of time. Supplies were limited; one guy might have a mitt, another guy a bat, and the rest of us caught barehanded, sucking up the incredible sting, hands smarting not only with pain but with the thrill of success at having plucked the ball out of the sky, having interrupted the trajectory and likely spared someone the cost of replacing a window. The bottom line was, if you had time to play, you didn’t tell anyone, because if your parents knew, they would find something for you to do.
    So we played quietly and out of sight, making toys out of whatever happened to be nearby—my father’s shoes made a most excellent navy, his size-nine wing tips gliding in formation across the carpet, the smell of leather and foot sweat. And what did I use as the aircraft carrier? A silver platter that I borrowed from the dining room. And when my mother discovered the platter surrounded by shoes, she accused me of having mental problems. Why wasn’t it obvious to her that the carpet was the ocean, the battleground? She called me a nogoodnik, and I remember crying and George thinking it was all so funny.
    Two women in spandex walk in circles around the outside perimeter of the park, waddling as fast as they can without breaking into a run. They stare at me. They actually point, as if asking each other to confirm that I am