The Mare

Ginger

I went to the park where we took Velvet those years ago and sat on a picnic table with my knees up and held close against myself. A short distance away there were little kids on the swings, their father pushing them, the mother getting something from the car, watching them as she closed the door with her hip, guardian care visible to me in her neck and jaw even though I could not make out her face. The light child-voices sounded so far away in the cold spring air.

Cheating. Of course I know why they call it that. I hate it, but I know. So much of what happens between people is comparable to a game. There is a deep, soft core that everyone longs for, too deep for games or even words. But to get to that, you have to play and play well. And I did not know how. Art, society, relationships, simple conversation — I couldn’t understand how to do any of it. I don’t know why; I don’t know what was wrong with me. I tried, and when I was young and good-looking it could at least sometimes seem like my failure was actually an interesting artistic version of some special game. But now the truth is so plain that even Velvet’s illiterate mother can see it. It’s clear even to her — somehow especially to her — that I couldn’t even do the thing every woman on the planet knows how to do. I can see her contempt, the question in her eyes: What is wrong with her? How did she even get a husband? And still, it was her child, the lovely girl that she doesn’t even want, the child I finally loved, who somehow allowed me a way in, who made me feel what everyone else felt; finally I could join, be part of the play — except everybody thought that was wrong too, that somehow I still wasn’t doing it right.

Everybody including my husband. I got up off the table and my movement caught the eye of the mother at the swing set. She waved at me and I realized I knew her; she was the aunt of one of the Cocoon Theater kids. I waved back at her and she came toward me.

Please God, I thought. Not now. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my face. She kept coming. But what is doing it right? What in hell can I do that’s right?

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Weren’t you in the Christmas Carol a couple of years back?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was.”

“I thought so! You were really good!”

“Thank you,” I said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Great, something I did right — act in a play for children.