Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Read Free Page B

breathe, as if every molecule is weighted down with something extra—some kind of liquefied dust that sticks to your lungs and the inside of your nostrils. I took the train from my apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and when the doors opened at Fifty-ninth Street, just two, too brief stops in cool, dry, air-conditioned air, it was almost more than I could do to get to my feet and leave the car.
    Jack and William were waiting for me at the entrance to the zoo. Jack had William up on his shoulders, and even at three years old, William's legs dangled down halfway to Jack's waist. Jack is a handsome man, compact and well built, like my father. He hovers somewhere between five foot six and five foot seven, depending on his mood. He is optimistic and cheerful, and when he is happy seems much taller. On the rare occasions when he succumbs to depression, he shrinks, sort of folding in on himself, as if he is willing himself to disappear. Jack once said that one of the very first things that attracted him to me is that, while I am small, I never disappear. On the contrary, I seem always to be doing what I can to be visible. Jack has never seen me doing my mouse act at William's preschool.
    Jack's mother is a Syrian Jew, and he looks like her side of the family. He has a straight, sharp nose with delicate nostrils, his hair is very dark, nearly black, and his eyes have navy blue irises. It is a color that manages to look piercing and deep and velvety soft all at the same time. This is not an eye color I have ever seen before, and from the moment I first saw it I have wondered if it is unique to him, or if it will be reproduced in his children.
    William's eyes are just plain, everyday blue.
    Jack is a runner and a mountain climber and though he is small, perhaps
because
he is small, he is very strong. His muscles are flat and hard, and his waist is slim. He looks wonderful in a suit, and possesses a casual, almost instinctive grace and elegance. For instance, although he cares little about clothes, he never wears ventless, double-breasted jackets. He says that they make him look like a midget. Weeks before we met, when I had just graduated from law school and had gone shopping for a life for which I possessed no wardrobe, among the pile of marked-down suits and dresses I bought was a black, double-breasted Tahari coatdress. After Jack explained his philosophy of double-breasted jackets, I could never again wear that dress without feeling like I was auditioning for the part of a munchkin in
The Wizard of Oz
. I donated the dress to a charity that supplies clothing to women trying to make the transition from welfare to work.
    As I waded through the sluggish heat toward my lover and his son I saw Jack grab William's feet and tip backward, making as if to dump the boy off his shoulders. I could hear William's squeal of delight all the way down the path as he grabbed fistfuls of his father's hair and struggled to right himself. If it had not been so terribly hot I might have turned and run back down the path, across six blocks, and down to the chill of the subway train. They looked so happy, this father and son, standing underneath the Delacorte Clock outside the zoo. They looked so happy, and all they needed was a mother to complete the perfect picture of familial bliss. The mother, however, was in her apartment at 1010 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Eighty-second Street, maybe soaking a tissue with her tears, maybe prescribing herself double doses of Ativan or Xanax. The mother was maybe combing through old photographs and letters, trying to find some clue to the betrayal that had laid waste to the perfect triangle that had once been her family. The mother was gone, and in her place was me, a hopeful smile plastered to my lips, a crumpled FAO Schwarz bag stuck to my sweaty palm, trying to bribe this small boy to forget that I had thoroughly and comprehensively ruined his life.
    Falling in love with Jack was so easy that I had assumed that