It was windy and gray, and for a moment the motion in the trees made it look like the rain had already started. The weather was supposed to hold until the early afternoon, which gave Oscar five hours to set up, pull off, and break down the party. His daughter Lucy was turning three. Their apartment was too small to host, even as her parties had dropped in size each year, and the park was the cheapest, most accommodating option, or at least it had seemed that way before the weekend forecast. Oscar had spent far too much time watching the tiny cloud iconography change since waking.
In front of him was a haul: a stroller with two collapsible tents, a pop-up puppet theater and puppets, a pallet of juice boxes, and a stout cooler filled with ice. Behind him was more: a wobbly Radio Flyer wagon carrying two industrial tarps, drop cloths, and tools (nothing would be left to chance). Tina, his mom, was going to bring Lucy over with the food and whatever else Oscar managed to forget, which was inevitable, she pointed out, since he refused her idea of asking for additional help. It shouldn’t all be on him, not after what he’d been through. She was staying with them every other weekend now, and Oscar was grateful, but he needed to do this alone.
He picked up speed at the crosswalk, gathering momentum down the modest slope. He locked his arms, pushing the stroller with one arm and dragging the wagon with the other—awkward and efficient in equal measure. Exiting through the park’s stone barricades was a dad Oscar recognized but didn’t know, a too-content ginger on his morning stroller-walk, a cold brew in his hand, its straw rising through his pale fingers like a cigarette. Oscar wanted badly to smoke. He’d quit, again, just weeks before.
Along with setting up the party himself, he was planning to stage a puppet show with a compelling, animal-themed parable he hadn’t yet thought through but that had to rivet an audience of three-year-olds for several minutes. He must pull this off for Lucy, and for himself. Lucy would laugh regardless, he knew—she did whenever he was silly—but he wanted the performance to impress. Not only his daughter but the other parents too. Recently, a mom of one of Lucy’s friends had said that Oscar epitomized the goofy-dad stereotype, as he often crouched down or scrabbled around in the grass to excite the kids. Getting dirty didn’t faze him; chasing and being chased by children was a perfect pretense to avoid tedious conversations with adults. It was brutal to watch them stiffen with pity once things turned personal. “It is what it is,” Oscar would say, excusing himself to follow the boy tugging at his fingers or attempting to snatch his hat.
A few cold droplets pricked Oscar’s face. The sky was a vast and neutral gray, without any detail besides the stitched seam of blackbirds in the distance. No more rain followed. He took a deep breath and surveyed the park’s greenery, which persisted despite the season. Along the narrow bridle path, several broad, leafless branches looked like hardened vasculature. A gust brushed a chill across his chest, and a feeling of sadness, of loss maybe, rose, albeit briefly, before settling in Oscar’s stomach.
A few large trees loomed along the grassy bank overlooking the ball fields. They were oaks, he guessed, though he’d failed to make much headway with the Sibley Guide to Trees his mom had gotten him last Christmas. Oscar wanted to cite leaf species effortlessly to Lucy, to nourish her curiosity. Ever since Lucy was an infant, he’d pushed her along these many paths, her mind just beginning to catalogue the world. She was getting smarter, and the park was so striking in its detail—teeming, Oscar had thought of late, less with natural phenomena than an index of his own ignorance.
Between two thick trees, he began to unload the supplies. Dense roots made the ground jagged and uneven; Oscar nearly tripped as he backed up to get a better sense of the available space. Another cold drop hit his neck, then the top of his head. When he looked up, the branches shook furiously at him, like an incensed crowd.
He undid the materials from the stroller, tearing his key across several pieces of plastic wrap. Unloading the wagon, starting with the white tarp. Oscar held the metal-ringed hoop at its corner to pull it out wide. He set it down and grabbed the opposite end, attempting to spread the tarp flat. The wind suddenly picked up and jostled the former corner. The tarp curled and crashed against him, his face and hands wrapped into a sudden glowing warmth. He would look like a ghost to someone else before getting free.
Somehow, nearly thirty minutes had passed since he’d left the apartment. He had more to do now than when he had arrived. He’d need heavy objects to weigh down the tarp’s corners, a contingency he hadn’t anticipated—everything he’d brought had a use. Down the hill, past the ball fields, was a small pond; the shore was made up of large flat stones. Oscar finished emptying the stroller and hurried down the grass with it. He remembered then, when Lucy was eighteen months old, and she’d been asleep in the stroller along the hill’s bank, next to the blanket on which he and Sheila lay, dozing as well. It had been nice out, then, patterned picnic blankets and sun flashing off the rippling kites. He’d forgotten to click the wheel’s lock, and when Lucy had woken up, her own motion had sent the stroller rolling, not quickly, exactly, but dramatically, down the hill. Oscar got up first and chased behind. Once he’d caught the stroller, Sheila rushed over to pull Lucy free, her hand cupping the nape of Lucy’s neck as she stormed back to their blanket. And her expression—the confusion in her eyes, rimmed with shock—as if Oscar were a stranger.
At the pond’s edge, he noticed a woman walking the path that curved along it. She was obscured by bushes, which he also couldn’t name, and when she came to a clearing she stopped and faced him. Her age was indeterminate—forties? sixties?—and she wore a wool hat. Atop black tights, she sported tech gear, a jacket that appeared waterproof, and this, he thought, did not bode well for the incoming weather or the party. She raised a pair of professional-grade binoculars to her eyes, which became two black discs.
Turning back, Oscar noticed the tarp; its free corners flapped as if trying to get his attention. He parked the stroller beside a bench and scoured the ground for heavy rocks, pretending to be unaware of the woman in his periphery. She was on the move now, toward him, and he continued to gather stones as she wandered closer, stacking them in the empty stroller seat.
“Whatever are you doing?” she asked, not in an unfriendly way. Now that she was closer, he pegged her for early fifties, and her beauty was fastidious, an iron in her spine that made her more attractive. A lifetime of Pilates, Oscar thought. Or yoga. He realized how bizarre the rocks looked in the stroller, how strange he must’ve appeared, though she didn’t seem deterred. “A party,” he said. “My daughter’s turning three.”
She pursed her lips, which lightened as they spread into a smile. She looked up the hill at his chaotic encampment. Strands of sandy hair slipped free of her wool hat, and she cleared these from her eyes—the latter a gray-blue color his mind couldn’t quickly settle on.
She’d felt something between them too, he realized. Breaking their gaze, she pointed across the pond. “I’ve been looking for this one egret for weeks.” He followed her finger’s aim. Along the water’s far edge, a fever of reeds rose from the wrinkling surface. “There,” she said. She stepped beside him, her nearness stunning, and carefully looped the binoculars’ strap around his neck.