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Old men sat in the park, old men in rows covering the benches with their coats and newspapers.
Across the grass a scatter of yellow leaves broke under the feet of people. Two children, boys in jeans, tramped with brown paper bags-their lunches-toward the rim of the park. The old men read their L'Italia and accepted the autumn sun. Beyond the park the Catholic church was tall, and it cast its shadow. A handful of pigeons strode through the gravel around the drinking fountain, seeking remnants of food. The San Francisco sky was a thin, brittle blue. Turning on her bench, Mary A
A bus, green and large, went along Columbus Avenue and was lost behind offices. On Mary A
He had no need of anything: he was plump and wrapped in warm clothes, clean and cared-for. He dozed. Against his mother he rested and heard the clang of the city. Above and around him, Mary A
On the park bench with her baby she was young and fresh. She wore a long white smock and low-heeled slippers, and her brown hair, still short, tangled over her ears and fringed her fore head. Earrings, copper and hooped, glinted. Her ankles, pale, bare, were lean above her slippers. Once she took a cigarette from her pocket and lit it with her lighter.
The day was peaceful. Overhead a gull wheeled. Now and then the gull croaked like the sound of dry ropes and wood. Presently a kindly middle-aged lady in a black coat came along the path and seated herself on the bench facing Mary A
Mary A
On the opposite bench the kindly middle-aged lady leaned forward, and, with a smile, said: "What a healthy little fellow."
Mary A
"What is his name?"
"Paul. He's eleven months old."
"What a nice name," the kindly middle-aged lady said. She waved at the baby and pantomimed faces.
"His father's name is Paul," Mary A
"Good heavens," the kindly middle-aged lady said, amazed.
"I'm just kidding," Mary A
The kindly middle-aged lady nodded sagely.
"His father," Mary A
"Music," the kindly middle-aged lady said. "I believe I haven't heard any music in the last few years, not since the war, that can compare to Richard Tauber."
"That's square," Mary A
"And Jeanette MacDonald," the kindly middle-aged lady said nostalgically. "I'll never forget her and Nelson Eddy in Maytime. That was such a lovely movie. I cried at the ending; I still cry at it, when I think about it."
"Go cry somewhere else," Mary A
The kindly middle-aged lady gathered up her purse and departed. Mary A
Beyond the park the rise of houses glinted in the afternoon sun. Cars, dark specks, crept up the narrow streets, up the hill between the houses. At Mary A
"See the big bird?" Mary A
She nudged at the pigeon with her toe and it flapped away. Almost at once it was back, again traveling in an aimless circle. Mary A
"Are you a lady?" she asked the pigeon. "Or a man'?"
She sat on the park bench with her son, holding him against her and watching the pigeons and the old men and the children. She was very happy. She watched people appear and go; she saw the leaves fall from the autumn trees and the grass glow with dampness. She saw the whole cycle of life: she saw the children grow old and become bent little men reading L'Italia and she saw them reborn in the arms of women. And she and her son remained unchanged, outside the birth and decay that went on around her.
They could not be touched. They were safe. She saw the sun go out and return, and she was not frightened.
She wondered where she had got this peacefulness. It had come with her baby; but where had he come from? She did not completely understand him. He was a mystery, a separation of herself, and he was her husband held tight in her arms. Perhaps he had come to her on the wind. The warm spring wind had plucked at her and brought her this, had filled her up with permanent life. Had carried off the emptiness.
Mary A
People hurried along Columbus Avenue, and Mary A
"There he is," she said to her son. "You're facing the wrong way." She turned him around to see. "See?"
"You sure look good," Paul Nitz said, arriving shyly.
"You don't; you look like a bum." She kissed him. "Let's go eat. Did you shop?"
"We can shop on the way home," he said.
"Don't you have any money?"
As they walked he searched his coat pockets, bringing up ticket stubs, paper clips, pencils, folded notes. "I guess I gave it to you." He squinted in the glare of the sidewalk. "To one of you, anyhow."
Lagging behind him, Mary A
"Tired?" he asked.
"Sleepy. Would you look good smoking a pipe!"
"I'd look like the wrath of God," he answered.
The light changed and, with the other people, they crossed.