Two Birds

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R.G. Mint

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When we moved to Hillside Park, we were unaware it included an actual park. Within our neighborhood, in fact. Mr. Rollins and I hadn’t expected such an amenity on the street where we introduced our firstborn, but we thought it a godsend. Our son was an able, restless thing, and a jungle gym, swing set, and other plasticine constructions were good vocations for him to spend all his energy. I mused about him one day becoming an Olympian, all that energy of his keeping him in motion.

But it was that darn staircase that gave me pause. Beyond the picturesque park—idyllically arranged to suit elementary-aged children and toddlers, with milder, safer structures and features—rested carved into the earth an obscenely long and, in my opinion, needlessly steep cement staircase slatted along the downward hill.

After we’d been settled in our home, when our Georgie was only six, I went straight to the neighborhood Homeowners Association, phoned the Department of Urban Planning, Parks and Recreation, extended it to the local municipal level of the city council, raised a petition, everything! I mean, I had become the punchline caricature of the obsessive, shrill, overzealous mother, all for wanting to protect my son. And not just him but for the other children in our neighborhood as well. My efforts were exhaustive, every stepping stone to success accurately trod, and yet the endeavor had meant nothing.

The most accomplished was a two-and-a-half-foot gate with a horseshoe latch. Any child of standing age could open the gate, which swings in and out, I might add. But congratulations to the local government—A newborn on all fours without the necessary grip strength or digit dexterity is now safe. Unless, of course, the gate is unlatched.

The unsafe eyesore needed to be removed, not only for my son and daughter Bethy, who I found was on the way shortly after my defeat, but for the other local children who adored the park as well, who had no reason for concern because their incomplete brain hadn’t registered the threat. And their parents, with seemingly-completed brains, barely cared about the lack of success, moving on to the agendas of the next block party and which houses were hosting for the Superbowl. I even wanted the staircase gone for Roman Clancy.

The insufferable lummox of a boy, two years, ten inches, and fifty or so pounds Georgie’s senior, Roman had been a menace from the day we moved in. When I heard his last name and the name of his single mother, Ruth Clancy, I immediately pegged him as a future serial killer. It may have been a presumption borne of my overprotective nature, but the name Clancy gave a sopped, steely feeling of cold-hearted apathy. But he’d certainly never be a calculated killer, of that I was certain. He was as bumbling and careless a fool as his mother.

On our inaugural day on Bleeker Street, Roman had stood in the middle of the road with a pocket full of gravel stones and lobbed them at our house. Not only was he reckless, slack-jawed, and obtuse, but he entertained himself with every possible novelty of destruction. The pinging off the car roof, the resonant thudding against our porch, and even the tumbling sound of the stones that missed their target skidding across our driveway brought the wet-faced brat enough pleasure to continue until I intervened.

“Now, stop that!” I had told him as I approached.

The sun was high, and its light was striking his face, so I’d like to assume the next stone he threw had not meant to hit me, but it did, and I felt undone from the bullet-like pain that roiled my arm. My keeled-over reaction told him his game was over, and he ran back to his house, two doors down and one across.

My husband was inside feeding Georgie when it happened. I didn’t want to trouble him, nor did I want to appear on my first day in the neighborhood as if I couldn’t solve my own problems.

I marched over to the front steps of his home, pounded against the door that looked far too worn for our neighborhood, and called for his mother. I didn’t even know his name yet, but she introduced herself and her son, holding Roman’s hand when she opened the door.

“What seems to be the problem with my boy Roman here? Roman Clancy, named after his father. Gets in just about the same amount of trouble, too.”

“I don’t need his life story. I just want to tell you what he did!”

“And what was that?” Mrs. Clancy said.

Roman looked dumbfounded at my anger, and I couldn’t tell through my eyes of rage whether he could have been acting or genuinely did not know what he had done wrong. But I was happy to inform his mother. Surely, she should have been embarrassed for how her son had behaved.

“Well, tell the nice neighbor lady you’re sorry.”

The little boy waddled forward and spoke like a toddler. “I’m sowwy.”

We paused. I didn’t know why until the boy’s mother began closing the door, telling me she thought the matter had been dealt with.

“He could have damaged our car! Our son could have been out and gotten hit!”

“Oh, you have a son! My Roman has been dying for another boy to play with. I’m sure they’ll get to know each other. Become fast friends, I bet. See you around!”

Mrs. Clancy closed the door, content with her lackluster parenting, and assured me of one thing—I would never let my son play with hers.

We learned later that I was pregnant with Bethy, due a month after her brother’s birthday, right in the middle of summer. A perfect arrangement, not too close for one child’s birthday to overshadow the other and equidistant from the bigger holidays, like Halloween and Christmas. My first delivery with Georgie had been a dream, but Bethy’s wasn’t nearly as smooth. And something about this pregnancy gave the chilled, shivering, weighted blanket of postpartum depression when we brought her home nine months later.

I had been fatigued with Georgie. Exhausted, even. But never was I depressed. And it wasn’t aimed at my darling daughter or her brother or father. It leeched itself onto me like a parasite, sights aimed only at me, and I couldn’t shake it.

Days passed, and as the beginning of school drew nearer, the rest of the neighborhood children grew antsy for what was to come. Georgie had made better friends with his classmates than the neighbor kids, but I was open initially, except for Roman being the closest and most obnoxious. It only took one other boy being pushed down to the ground by Roman that summer, knees bloodied and shirt torn, for me to prefer Georgie to stay inside. It was his mother’s fault, I told myself. He’ll slip up once with the wrong person, and whoever they are, they’ll teach him a lesson.

And the playground, with that staircase still sitting there like a caution sign, was out of the question. Besides, I enjoyed having my boy and his sister inside to distract me from this slimy unease I still felt postpartum.

Nights were the hardest, for, unlike my post-birth exhaustion with Georgie, this go-around left me wide awake at the most inopportune times. I’d wake at three in the morning, nap at noon for what was not nearly enough, and when the house rested after nine, Georgie asleep in his racecar bed, Bethy just as soundly dozing across the hall from him in the nursery, and Mr. Rollins out like a light after his day’s work, I’d go out and walk. Most nights, my husband never noticed I was gone. If he ever did, it never seemed to bother him.

My walks extended through the winding residential sidewalks of our street, rounding dead-end cul-de-sacs and passing by the always-empty Hillside Park with its god-awful staircase—the monument of my failure. That sight would always be the catalyst for my return home, where I’d toss through middling sleep and rise with my husband to help him prepare for work and feed Georgie and Bethy once he was off.

On the very last night walk I took, the day before Georgie started second grade, I realized I’d be alone for much of the day, my only company being my infant daughter. Don’t think Mr. Rollins wasn’t comforting. I’ll not have anyone think that of my husband, but he couldn’t understand. He had his purpose, and I had mine. The inevitable bumps in the road were bound to happen, and I just happened to bear the brunt of them.

My thoughts ended with a pivot to what I heard as I approached the home stretch of my walk—stones tapping, ricocheting off of metal, wood, and other materials, all growing louder as I neared Hillside Park.

In the dim light of a late summer night, Roman reenacted our first meeting by throwing rocks at cars parked across the street from the park. My pace quickened, and I approached, more weary of the volume I was making than he was.

“Roman!” I spoke in whisper-yells. “What are you doing? Stop that right now!”

“I’m trying to see how far back I can go and still hit the cars.” No acknowledgment of wrongdoing, just a similar, cavalier ambition of wrecking what wasn’t his. Inching further from the street toward the back park fence, Roman’s pitches became rougher and lost any semblance of precision.

“Roman, you have to stop! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’ll damage cars! People’s property! Would you want someone throwing rocks at your belongings? And you could seriously hurt someone! I mean it, you—”

The rock had been bigger than the others, but I doubt Roman had a methodology for rock collecting. It struck my leg, and I swallowed the pain without a sound, picking up the jagged, cumbersome thing in my dominant hand. And when I looked back at him, what was he doing? Still throwing his rocks. At that point, how many more rocks could he even have left in his pockets?

“Seriously, Roman! You have to STOP!”

Roman could have learned a thing or two from my overhand because, by my hurl, the stone hit its mark. Mid-throw, Roman twisted when the rock struck him on the cheek. Or was it his temple? I couldn’t see very well with only the streetlamps illuminating the space. Either way, he fumbled backward, surprised that I had rebuffed his actions and had shown him what it was like. It was possible that I had intended for him to feel a bit of that same frustration I felt, to have that fear creep in of an adult accosting you, causing you pain, without a respite.

This is nothing, I wanted to tell him. Deliver a baby, screw up your brain chemistry, do it all and still prepare the lunches, sit in the house all day, and don’t forget to lose that pregnancy weight! But I never had the chance to tell him, as I decidedly hadn’t intended what happened next.

Someone truly inconsiderate had left the gate to the staircase unlatched. In quick succession, the gate gave a near-silent screech open, Roman’s weight and clumsiness led him through the opening, and the rest…I don’t relish recounting. I will say this, however—Roman Clancy would never throw another rock again.

Surely, it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t intended to hit him. And if I had, it didn’t kill him. It simply opened the door for that. Or gate, rather. His mother wasn’t blameless, either. Much of the responsibility landed on her. If she had kept her son better behaved like my Georgie, he never would have developed such nasty habits. And further, why didn’t she care that her son was out and alone? She was a single parent with only one pair of eyes. Honestly, her rashness was truly at fault. And even more so, had the staircase been removed and the park secured as I had advocated, nothing of the sort would have happened to anyone.

I took a long breath and whirled around slowly, scanning the garages, front doors, and any window shades pulled open, or lights turned on. But nothing changed. No one had seen.

A weight lifted when I found the rock that had hit me and then Roman, and it showed no evidence of blood. Still, I pocketed the oddly shaped rock and would throw it in the backyard or in the ocean on a trip to the beach with the family. No one else was in sight, and I hovered at the entrance to the park, hesitantly scoping the street a second time for commotion, for families spilling out to see what had just happened.

But still, not a single house stirred. With school starting the next day for families, it made sense to employ an early turn-in. Unable to bring myself to look down at the bottom of the staircase, I made one final gaze around the neighborhood and walked back home, more briskness in my step.

I didn’t realize why until the next morning when the ambulance and police sirens wailed up the street, but the whole interaction had been a proverbial knot untightening. One less thing to trouble me while I longed for recovery. Feeling nearly weightless at the thought, I considered the implications of all the hard work I had put into removing that staircase. With one stone, I had solved two distinct yet somehow interwoven problems.

It was a tragedy. I don’t deny that in the slightest. But I knew my ardent fighting would no longer be ignored. It couldn’t be. This unpleasantness would give way to better things, to a community rallying behind a collective cause, and making positive change out of the incident, I was sure of it. Georgie going off to school wouldn’t be so bad. I’d rekindle my efforts and would be the strong arm righting the wrong for the benefit of the community and the poor mother of the boy who was taken too soon by this senseless oversight.

There was even the benefit of commiserate grief, Mrs. Clancy having lost her son, and I battling my postpartum. Sadness is always a burden better shared. Her shock and grief hadn’t been quite approachable for me the day after, yet I felt I’d know just when the right time would be to reach out. Until then, I decided I would sink all my time, exacerbate all spare energy, into getting rid of that goddamn staircase to show the neighborhood, even the town, how serious I was and how right I had been.

My efforts were a success. Within a month, the staircase had been bulldozed, a new fence erected, and the land behind slightly flattened to avoid the harmful tumbling of teenage fence hoppers. Mr. Rollins went to Roman’s funeral, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I had broken the news to Georgie after his first day of school, and that had been trialsome enough. And I had Bethy to care for. I couldn’t very well leave her alone. The community had learned all too well what can happen to an unattended child.

After the park had been made safe, spearheaded by my efforts, our neighbors embraced my leadership more than I had expected. I was nominated to lead the Neighborhood Watch and was told to consider running for city council when Bethy was old enough to go off to school. With a touched heart, I accepted the position to head the Neighborhood Watch, an activity that gripped me so fittingly that I hardly noticed my postpartum until it was gone. Out of courtesy, I contacted Mrs. Clancy and offered her a co-chair role, but the weepy thing declined, and she recused herself for the following months.

The forward trajectory of that one night was in no way emblematic of myself as a person. I was the woman who fought hard for a cause, and no one listened until it was too late. I’m the woman who fixed the park and made it safe for everyone. I was the woman who undid the stressor, the dangerous element in our neighborhood. And who knows, it’s possible Roman Clancy would have turned out just as violent and barbaric as his name had sounded to me. I could have saved lives. All with that one stone.

Years later, I’d learn to let Bethy play in the park without my constant eye and even let Georgie go without me, no neighborhood ruffian to plague him. And funnily enough, he’d eventually have his first kiss there with a girl from his middle school without me knowing. But it was good. Good memories in that park were what I wanted from the start, not the tragic ones. Still, with my victory came the bittersweet. Of course, every necessary precaution had been taken in remaking the park, even with some new structures donated on behalf of Mrs. Clancy’s son. It was that name that I couldn’t escape. They’d never change the town’s name of Hillside, but Roman Clancy Memorial Park still rang in my ear with annoyed distaste. It was a waste in my mind, as Mrs. Clancy had moved away to be closer to family before the park was even renamed. So, still, I wonder—what was the point of that?

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R.G. Mint is an English teacher in the greater Seattle area and is looking to explore the realm of publication. He has had a short story published in the fifteenth issue of the literary arts magazine The Ana, and another published in the fourteenth issue of Gold Man Review.

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