1
CENTRAL PARK
Some people come to the Park because they want to fall in love for the first time, the twelfth time, the final time. Some have been used, widowed, or bored stiff. They have spent the past decade in deep introspection, falling in love with themselves—and no one else—first. Some come for a short respite—roughly twenty blocks west to east, east to west—from a spouse who will not help themselves or from no one home (she even took the dog; you can’t imagine the sudden quiet). The Park is a beating heart, an adagio, a dreamy parenthesis.
Abe and Jane come after chemo and because they never know when it might be the last time. There are six bottles of pills, two notarized wills, and a nebulizer in a tote between them. Jane can walk only a few steps without needing to rest, but you couldn’t tell that from the serene composure on her face. The Park is where the most important moments of their lives have taken place. The Park is their home away, homing device, pen pal, fifth season.
In the Park, romance is alive and well. Among the tulips, fritillaries, and anemones, juniors from Bronx Science make promises across the Whisper Bench—I want to exist in the same quantum state as you. An optometrist who has been married five times finds love again at the Rumi Festival in Shakespeare Garden. It feels like 20/10 eyesight. On Tuesday evenings from May to October, in Sheep Meadow, a small group gathers for Sensual Yoga (unauthorized; who’s going to stop them?). They move their bodies in ways that make them weep or giddy or ashamed. At Summer Stage, Bon Iver a capellas “Blood Bank.” The Public Theater produces
Romeo and Juliet for the sixty-second year. Everyone sweats. The cardiac surgeon writes a love letter to her husband on the same bench near the Center Fountain every Friday. She is in green scrubs and clogs. She couldn’t save him, but in her letters, she imagines that she can and that they have shrimp lo mein on the couch again. Watching the kids push their model boats at Conservatory Water, the entertainment lawyer offers to try one more round because her husband wants nothing more than a gaggle of kids and she cannot bring herself to tell him the truth. Perhaps it’s the body, she thinks, as referee. A group of divorcés—one a matchmaker with an acclaimed series on HBO, he signed an NDA, no one can know but this crew—gets their grooves back rollerblading at DiscOasis. Old love—we’ve been together since Eisenhower—recalls their vows, word for word, at the Inscope Arch. I promise to love you and your stamps forever. Margaux and Marc kiss every year for twenty-one years on the vernal equinox at Belvedere Castle. They have dedicated their lives to art and beauty. Belvedere meaning
good view. Oh, the blooms. The housepainter, so far from home, watching for a sign in the clear blue sky on his twenty-fifth anniversary, forgets the heartache of time and distance for the brief moment that two red-tailed hawks glide by, dip, and land across from Trefoil Arch no more than ten feet away from him.
Every year, there are nearly 250 weddings at the Loeb Boathouse. There are nineteen other suggested venues on CentralParkWeddingLocations.com within the Park’s 843 acres. There are hundreds of marriage proposals on Bow Bridge every year—we found each other on Facebook; we met last week; we have three kids and two dogs and a whole lot of chickens together. Most take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but there is an upward tick around Valentine’s Day too. There are thousands of engagement shoots, mostly in June and October because, arguably, those are the Park’s most standout times. The machinist wears all white. The personal assistant has been juicing for a week. In the Park, there is handholding, making out, blushing, the sharing of ham and cheese sandwiches, iced teas, double chocolate chip cookies, blazers, gloves, tissues, and headphones playing Billie Holiday. There is a lot of so‑called quality time. There are at least a dozen domestic disputes reported to the Park precinct a week. Oh yes, sir, I really did want to wring his neck.
Some people come to the Park when the red-eared sliders are mating or when they’re the best man at the
Swan Lake–themed nuptials at Wollman and hoping the bride’s aunt will be flying solo. They come to carve names into a tree—Lucy loves AF, Stella + Sass. They come to honor the one they will always love, especially on October 17 when it’s as if the leaves are singing HALLELUJAH AMEN and they can throw them in the air and feel them on their body like whispers. They come for Jewish speed dating with their best friend and kiss the friend on the mouth on the way home just to see. No dice. LOL! They come by the busload in white sneakers on a Romancing the Apple tour. Some people come to train for marathons: they are running away from their problems; they are racing for their wife’s cure. They come to learn holotropic breathwork in the Hallett Sanctuary as an antidote to trauma. It is my last resort. They come because there are long-stemmed red roses growing in a location that won’t be disclosed here. They have never been snipped. What kind of monster?
The assistant producer comes to the Park before filming. She is in the gray spandex she bought with the guy on the six-mile loop in mind. She wonders about his name: Brad, Jake? Or maybe he’s Australian? Luke? Martha and Marilyn come after work; it is the only time they have to themselves before the kids demand a different dinner, no bath, twelve stories, told in corresponding voices, a lot of songs. I fucking hate Raffi! A feng shui consultant comes from West Virginia once, in the spring, to meet an old lover. He never shows. He shows; what a disappointment. Stephen and Mitch walk to and from work every day at eight and six, holding hands, planning dinner. Caraway salmon with rye berry and beet salad. Elaine and Jack come with their two old Labs because their therapist said it was a good idea. It was! It was not! The sanitation worker comes to work; but he also comes for the gray catbirds’ love songs, particularly in the morning in April near Shuman Track. They remind him of his first ex‑wife, who sang in the shower first thing. Leena, the new vegan—she promised him she’d try—comes because there is no one waiting at home anymore. Some people come because, at home, the yelling has gotten worse. Some because, at home, they don’t touch; they haven’t in years. Some because the touching has become too much.
Some come only when the sun is out. Some come only in the dark.
For those who feel it, there is nothing like the warm embrace of the Park. North of the Lilac Walk, they’re playing Chaka Khan, wearing short shorts, and grinding. Outside the Swedish Cottage, carnations are sold by the stem. See the nuzzling rollerbladers on Center Drive, the kids in nursery school at the Hans Christian Andersen statue, kissing each other’s chins. There is a Oaxacan woman by the Mall who sells mangoes with chile and limon, cut into hearts, singing “Espérame en el Cielo” like she means it. The
Ancestor sculpture at the Park’s Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street entrance represents fertility and the masculine and feminine at once (though the sculptor’s husband has faced allegations of sexual misconduct). There are Roy and Silo, the gay penguins at the zoo who attempted to mate for half a decade before giving up. It can be said: there is no greater ecstasy than reaching the pinnacle of Cat Hill on bike. No purer pleasure than holding hands, watching the ducks flap flap flap. Even as raging wars, another mass shooting, Me Too, hostages, hateful graffiti, youth cyberbullying give us no reason to have faith in passion, the brown-belted bumbles are rapturous, pollinating beardtongue and American wild columbine. For some, the Park’s branches are arms stretched up and out, abating hate. It is possible to see them as that. Perhaps, for some, to love the Park makes seeing them as that essential.
2
ABE
Some days, you want to tell me everything that you remember.
You remember when we met. Tavern on the Green, July 1967. You were waitressing to pay for books at Cooper Union. I had just graduated from Wharton and was taking my father’s clients to lunch. It was my era of “at least it’ll make a good short story.” They were Italian milliners on their first trip to America. It would.
You remember my pants were too short, my jacket was too big, but there was a leather notebook in my lap that heartened you immediately. You remember that every once in a while, I would jot down some words, urgently, furiously, as if they were house keys on the shore, at risk of being whisked out.
You remember when you brought us Bloody Marys and deviled eggs, I gestured to the blue paint on the latent part of your wrist and said, I bet you’re very good. You remember recognition like a night-light. I remember I missed every word of that lunch. Sometimes, I think, the stories write themselves.
You remember mid-meal I found you—rushed, red wine down your front—by the kitchen and said, Excuse me. I had sweet eyes, you say. Like a horse by a fence.
You remember that I didn’t speak. Instead, I reached for your hand and squeezed it. It was as if I was telling you something about safety, you say. Until then, you hadn’t realized you’d felt unsafe.
Or something like that, you say. You can change the wording later.
You sit up taller in bed as if the remembering is an IV of something. Life or life twice.
Sure, I say. I nod. I do not tell you the truth: I haven’t written in three years. It is not for lack of effort but focus, stamina, drive. I’ve been with you at all of your appointments. I go to the supermarket, pharmacy, acupuncturist in Springs. Sometimes, I come home, stare at the windshield, unable to mobilize my legs. I don’t want to come in and you’re not painting, clicking on a lamp for reading, making blueberry crumb pies in my wool socks.
Still, today is a good day. Your eyes are clear as a temple. The red asterisk of your mouth is far from slack. Your voice is whole as a bell. I can do better. Your voice is a match, lit.
I write that down.
Do you remember those awful shoes they made us wear at Tavern on the Green? you say. And the hats? It really was misogyny, wasn’t it?
You shake your head but now you are smiling. When you are like this, it feels like hitching my wagon to your horse. I want to follow you raspberry picking, listen to you contemplate fish and sun and shadows in oil on driftwood. I try to attribute the clarity to something specific: a change in medication, sugar, sleep, the moon. I cannot.
I remember, from the day I met you, you lit up a room, put everyone at ease. I remember how you crouched down with the Italian guests so that when you repeated yourself—che cosa? che cosa? they kept saying—you could tell them the specials as though they were a secret gift.
I remember that whenever I saw you, it seemed, somehow, as if you’d just been swimming. I remember the plant life of your eyes, you smelled like spring, moved like a bird, but you were steadier and lighter than the rest of us. That has remained true, decades and decades later. I remember the gap between your teeth, the dimple under your nose, how your hair was lighter around your face. It might be overkill to call it a halo, a frame, an immutable, immaculate light. I remember I wanted to do everything over again when you were around—be bolder but also more still.
You remember falling leaves in Central Park, and as we walked, radio somewhere, gray clouds like ribbons in wind. I’d never noticed till you. I remember your back ten steps ahead of me. You were looking for acorns, rocks. You were planning to make sculptures with wax. I remember your deer bones, the way your steps were intentional, as if you were composing a song with your feet. What was that scent you wore? What happened to that polka-dot dress?
You remember sometimes, we’d stand under lamplight near Bank Rock Bridge or the Obelisk or we’d take the M7—down and then up—just to ride. You remember my hand on your knee, your hand on mine. You remember the Chinese restaurant that was next to a cleaner’s, and on the other side, a church where we read each other’s fortunes, though you don’t remember any exactly. You remember the smell of soy sauce and old tea, white napkins knotted into swans, sauce always getting on my shirt.
I remember sitting across the table from you, how I felt flattered just being with you. I remember how people always gazed at you not just because of your beauty but because of the way you were quiet both before you spoke and after—and also because of what you said. I remember how light always found your cheekbones, butterflies flocked to your hair.
You remember, in the beginning, we walked everywhere together: the Park’s Outer Loop, Upper Loop, from Columbus Circle to Harlem mostly parallel to Central Park West. You remember listening to the saxophonist under the trees, pignoli cookies from Ferrara, counting convertibles on Fifth. You remember pistachio ice cream and espressos, a black cat in a tree and a fire truck, a man who only walked backward—to and fro, singing Bob Marley, on the Seventy-Second Street Traverse. You remember I kept my hand on your back as if you were a stray egg—and that we never stopped talking, laughing, telling each other everything.
What exactly? you say.
When we met, you’d been seeing a Turk who wore turtlenecks, had lived at an ashram, collected art. Yours. You remember yoga in a temple, discovering the sutras, how you spoke them to yourself when you almost got mugged in the Park. You remember getting mugged, not in the Park. You remember even now: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. You remember the painting wasn’t going well. Your father kept calling and asking if you’d finally come to your senses yet. Yet?
I remember our first picnic in Central Park, somewhere north of Sheep Meadow. I remember we ate tuna sandwiches, dill pickles, Linzer tortes with raspberry jam. I remember you packed extra and gave it to two men with no shoes and a shopping cart filled with cans. I remember we lay on a blanket, our sweaters rolled up under our heads, and watched the sky. I remember how you made time expand.
I remember you turned to me and said, Isn’t this something? Just being here? It is, I said. I remember, with you, the reel stopped running. Like: I am. You are. This is enough. Please stay.
You remember we were at the Sixty-Fifth Street entrance or by the carousel. You were peeling an orange or purple grapes with your teeth. You were in a green dress with long sleeves or short denim with rips, paint on your ankles. You remember it was your phase of flowers and bugs, mostly pastels. You could draw anything: a bird, a plane, the United States. You were learning hue, spheres, and hatching. You were so focused. I was in awe.
You remember I was writing short stories about a Mafia family in New Jersey. What did I think I was doing? I say. We both laugh.
You remember, in the beginning, how much we talked about art. How it felt. Wild in the head, calm in the body. Like having just sneezed or just yawned. I remember that before you, I’d never called it art to anyone. I admitted to loving it to you before anyone else. And though it was different for me, especially then—I had never imagined writing full time, it was a cherished hobby, a tic even—I knew that feeling of protection, satiety, you spoke of. It made me feel seen. You did.
I remember you’d ask me if I could see that blue bud, sparkle on pavement, schools of fish and coral in the clouds. (No.) I remember you imagined art out of everything: straws, water, mints. We’d sit on a bench and even if you didn’t have paper, you’d make a crown out of twigs, twist leaves into perfect figurines. I remember you narrow-eyed, tight-jawed, always composing something in your mind.
You remember, from that time, nightmares, night sweats, waking up, calling out. You remember dreaming about your mother, the urge to show her a painted stone, city lights, a burn on your forearm from hot glue. When you woke, the longing for her was something physical. You lost her when you were twelve. Every day, you wore the gold bangles she had hidden on her upper arms when she came to Ellis Island from Baghdad. Your father was a geography professor but always getting lost. They met at a country club when your mother had just arrived. She cleaned the club kitchen at night. Ten months after she died, your father remarried a Croatian woman with parrot-colored hair and you went to boarding school. He couldn’t be alone and you couldn’t be alone with him. From then on, you took care of yourself.
Copyright © 2025 by Jessica Soffer. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
