“What day is it?” The Girlfriend asks.
Usually I track by New York Times crossword puzzles, which get harder as the week progresses (capped by Saturday’s; the lengthy Sunday magazine’s is as hard as a typical Thursday). But yesterday I did last Friday’s, then Tuesday’s, then started a Saturday from a couple of weeks ago.
“I think Thursday. Yeah, Thursday.”
“I hate Corona-World.”
The Girlfriend is the cheeriest morning person I know. (Maybe my oldest sister gives her a run.) She gets a solid eight hours, greets every day chipper, raring to go. She’s nice even when I wake her in the middle of the night: she’ll prod me back to sleep, let me turn on the light, ignore late-night ballgames from the west coast. But being sick for 17 days, however mildly, has taken a toll.
“But physically I'm getting better," she says. "It’s more that I have no way to mark time. There’s nothing to look forward to. How long have I been at your house?”
I’m writing the blog every day and still get confused. Did that walk happen yesterday? The day before? Every day this week we do the 7 p.m. doorway/rooftop/open-window cheer for health-care workers and first-responders and common laborers. I love the gesture, but each now blends into the last. Everything oozes in corona-muck.
Plus I have a milder form of whatever’s ailing The Girlfriend. (We think it’s Covid-19 — a friend of hers, a week ahead with the same symptoms, tested positive; we can’t get tested.) The waves of torpor blur reality.
My parenting skills atrophy. On Sunday — was it Sunday? — The Kid and I walked in Prospect Park. I probably shouldn’t have gone: it was late afternoon, I was tired, chest tight, back achy. It was chilly, the sky gray, the park half-filled with the more industrious exercisers.
We walk around the lake’s eastern edge, turn west after the ice rink, hit a path that divides to high road and low road. We generally take the high, running uphill to one of the park’s two major east-west roads, which we usually take west to the perimeter road that takes us home: a 2-mile round-trip from The Co-Parent’s house. I’ve forgotten what happens on the low road; we take it. Instant regret. The lake narrows to a rivulet running northeast to the boathouse; with no way to cross it, the path doubles back to the park’s eastern half. I’m underdressed. I breathe into my lungs’ tightness. Rain begins to spatter.
Near the boathouse is the Camperdown Elm, a gnarled, bonsai-like tree that poet Marianne Moore saved in the 1960s. It’s fenced off, too precious to touch. But beside it is The Kid’s favorite climbing tree. Just last week — was it last week? — we spent a sunny 20 minutes there.
Now I think about the chicken I started roasting as I left; if we hustle I can be home in 30 minutes, eat in an hour.
“The tree!”
She climbs.
“Daddy, come up with me!”
“Not today.” My body feels unable to climb into The Girlfriend’s car, parked a tantalizing 20-minute walk away.
“Daddy, please! You never want to do anything fun!”
“Kid, it’s not going to happen.”
The squabble continues at increasing volume, for two, three, four minutes. Rain falls harder.
“Okay. I’m going.” I walk around a corner.
“Go ahead!” she yells at my back. “I can walk home by myself!”
She can. She’s taken subway and buses to and from seventh grade since September, traveled solo across Brooklyn. But we’ve entered Corona-World; no way I’m letting the 12-year-old walk a mile by herself through a rainy twilit park.
I wait around the corner, strategize. I’ve got nothing. All I can summon is anger.
I come back into view. “C’mon, Rabbit! Please!”
She sits, arms crossed.
“All right.” I take out my phone. “I’m going to time you. Every 30 seconds you’re up there will mean another day you’re at your mom’s and not coming to my house.”
“Are you kidding me?”
The tactic is absurd. The Kid has wanted to come to my house for two weeks; we’ve decided she’ll stay with The Co-Parent until The Girlfriend and I are healthy for at least 48 hours. But I can’t make this kind of command decision; it’s contingent on a dozen things I’ll need to discuss with The Co-Parent, with The Girlfriend.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Fuck it!” The Kid says, climbing down. She has sworn around me only once before, under similarly extreme circumstances. “I don’t want to stay with you anyway!”
We walk in silence for five minutes. Then, near the ice rink, I see an egret flying.
“Egret," I say.
I’ve seen them on the lake, never in flight. The phlegmatic flapping makes me think of geologic time. Birds developed in the Mesozoic Era, I think. Jurassic period? I turn as it flies north, watch until it disappears. Something shifts. We chat companionably for the walk’s duration.
Thursday I wake at 5 a.m., fall back asleep at 7 a.m., dreaming of a vacation house owned by friends that I keep trying to leave but can’t — instead I keep breaking things. I wake with a thought: I can make dinner for The Kid! We’ve eaten kale pasta every Monday night for years now. It’s a dish I can make without thought. I know she’ll like it. I grab my phone, send a group text to The Kid and The Co-Parent, say I can come to their house tonight and make it, either for everyone or just for The Kid.
The Kid responds immediately, with three texts. “Yum.” “Please.” “Yes.”
A few minutes later The Co-Parent calls, annoyed.
“Umm, aren’t you still sick? Should you be making food at our house?” She proceeds for a few minutes.
You’re right on every count, I say. I jumped the gun. I’m sorry.
“Now I have to be the one who tells her you’re not coming?”
I’ll tell her, I say. In fact, if The Girlfriend and I are sick, should I be seeing The Kid at all? We’ve been walking side by side, not six feet apart. She’s hugged me at least twice. Doesn’t it make sense for me to stay away until we’re better? I know, she was already sick. And odds are she’s been exposed to our sickness. But should we keep taking that chance? I couldn’t live with myself if she ends up with Covid-19 and it’s my fault.
We decide I should postpone visits until my household is healthy. The Co-Parent writes down the kale pasta recipe so her fiancé can make it tonight. I text The Kid, tell her I won’t be coming, to call me when she can.
A few hours later she calls. I try to explain.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” she says. “You don’t understand! I can’t stay here another day! You don’t even care about me!” She hangs up.
I text: “I do care. I just don’t think we can take the risk.”
“You’re overreacting,” she texts. “I’d rather get sick than stay here any longer.”
“We won’t take the chance. I’m sorry.” I suggest video calling.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I suggest a few activities we could do together remotely.
“I’m not talking to you about this.”
After dinner I make a video call. She picks up.
“I can’t even remember what day it is,” she says. “In the summer, it’s fun to take a day and say, ‘I’m not going to do anything but lie on my bed or in front of my bookcase and look at videos and social media. For the whole day!’ But now, that’s like all we have to do. All day, every day.”
“It’s like that Twilight Zone episode,” I say. “Remember? The one with the hood who gets shot in the first scene, then wakes up in a fancy casino where he’s got a great room and can order whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Steak, champagne — it’s all free. All the women love him. Every game he plays he wins, every time: blackjack, roulette, poker. For two nights, three, he loves it. After a few days he wants to see his friends, but the guide says the casino is for him alone. After a few more days he starts to go crazy, says he wants to go to ‘the other place.’ And the guide laughs a demonic laugh, says, ‘What makes you think you deserve to go to heaven?’ Then laughs the demonic laugh again: ‘Ha ha ha ha!’”
“Stop laughing,” she says. “I remember. So you’re saying we’re in hell?”
“I’m saying we’re in Corona-World.”
“I hate Corona-World.”
“Me, too, Rabbit.”
We talk for 45 minutes. Before we hang up I say, “Maybe tomorrow we can walk together. Six feet apart.”
“Maybe,” she says.
(New York state numbers as of Thursday: 92,381 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 10 percent, same percentage increase as Wednesday; 2,373 dead, up 22 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 5,821, up 23 percent.)
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