the Late Triassic
for chainedsiren
There is a small corner of the soul in all of us, often neglected, which sleeps an untidy sleep, waiting to awaken to the surety of life. Of all the luxurious trappings and bare necessities of a human heart, it has been argued that “Purpose” is the most essential, and it is this sustenance that warms and soothes these care-worn wrinkles in our minds. Purpose is believed (by a dwindling few) to be that indelible hand that reaches out of the core of the earth, takes hold of our own, and with a powerful centrifugal force reawakens the deepest part of us to the gravity of our life. It may hover subtly like so many molecules of air, sit tidily on a shirtsleeve, or perhaps swim in the murky dark, burning and biding time. Of course, more likely it is a naïve concern or a need we uncover within ourselves, a process which often requires a level of archeological skill which few, if any, have patience to apply. And yet, whether we bury our head or our hands in the sand makes no difference, for purpose is a function of Fate, and Fate always finds us one way or the other.
* * * * *
Alyssa takes her daughter to Riverside for the first time. She’s not sure yet how Samantha feels about the move, and in fact is not sure how she feels yet either. Certainly something about being back in the neighborhood is reassuring. They had started with an afternoon walk up the park, and shared a pleasant late lunch at the new café under the highway. Samantha had eaten her french-fries in silence, apparently taking it all in. Alyssa was pleased by the new café, and wondered why no one had kept one there before, bad times maybe. The keys to their new West Side Apartment jingle pleasantly in her pocket as she and Samantha stroll up a Hudson she has missed with a powerful ache in her chest.
Alyssa sometimes wonders if this is the life she would have chosen back then. As a girl, she’d imagined herself an explorer, an archeologist, an architect, a painter. Yet above all else, she had chosen wife and mother, a decision she never regretted but never felt fully comfortable with either. The sidewalk she walks now is the same as before, yet the texture is different with years and feet and life between. And she holds a small hand in hers.
In the late afternoon they make it to the Dinosaur Playground, which gleams through the tree-cover like an ancient ruin.
The dinosaurs are still there.
Even now, after so many years. The neighborhood had changed, the park had changed, a whole slew of invasive plants had come through and gone, and the children had grown - she had grown - but the dinosaurs remained.
There were two, as the mystery of the universe according to man consistently entails: a Tyranosaurus and a Tricerotops, perpetually unaware of one another. The disjointedness of the two figures, not engaged in mortal combat, always threw her, now that she thought about it; there was something surreal about two enormous, translucent chartreuse plastic dinosaurs mutually ignoring each other in the middle of a children’s playground. Playing nice was the general rule, and they’d managed longer than most.
* * * * *
Lyssa, six-and-a-half, strained her fingertips, pressing the pads into the smooth plastic as her legs scrambled for a foothold to propel her upward. The sweet angsty joy of the sheer impossibility of it was satisfyingly frustrating. She watched other children do it, time and again. The tricerotops was easy - even she could do that - you could reach the lowest horn sitting on the ground and still pull yourself up to the top of its enormous, pale green girth.
But the T-Rex. That one was fierce.
Impossibly vertical, it stood a massive six feet on its hindquarters, as she figured it, although it got smaller every year. She’d only ever seen one boy on top, and that was Avery. She liked Avery very much.
Avery Boyd was a small boy, waif-thin, and quiet.
His mother had tried to take him to another park, but to no avail. Avery could not be dissuaded. In Avery’s mind, the subtle balance of sameness was key. Sameness was key.
He needed the dinosaurs, he always had. They were his friends, they were the playground, they were guardians, challenges, vantage-points, eternal. He NEEDED them. He remembered when mom tried to take him to another park.
Avery had to hit himself when mom did things like that.
So every Saturday and Wednesday his mom packed up his snack-sized Honey Nut Cheerios box, his hand wipes and his extra socks and underwear, and she, Avery, and his shovel would go to the Dinosaur Playground. He needed his socks for when the sprinklers were on or he got sand in his other pair. He needed extra socks.
From the top of his T-Rex Avery could see everything. He could watch the whole playground, moms and dads and kids and all. He counted twelve to thirty-five kids a day, roughly. Depending on the day. If it was a Saturday and warm out it was closer to thirty-five. Much closer to thirty-five.
Depending on the day.
Avery knew Alyssa. They had introduced themselves once, playing in the sand. He demanded she spell her name for him in the sand, and he spelled his. They looked nice side by side. Real nice. She always built things all wrong, but unlike lots of other kids she didn’t mind when Avery fixed her castles and prints and such. And she never made strange faces at him or walked away from him to play somewhere else. She never walked away. She was so green. She liked green, he remembered that. He liked green too, better than blue and pink. And she was shiny. Her hair, her eyes, her nose, her sneakers - she was shiny all over. He liked that.
“What are your favorites?” Lyssa asks today, as she works her fingers through the sand. Avery does not reply. Lyssa knows this means he does not understand. “You know, the things that are the “best”? Mine are Chocolate Ice Cream, George and Martha, Green of course, and Alice In Wonderland.”
Avery is still silent. He feels uncomfortable for Lyssa, she must have so much sand under her nails. Lyssa figures his quiet means he hasn’t decided yet. So she asks what Avery does all the way up there on the T-Rex.
“Write,” says Avery.
“Write?” asks Lyssa. “Like Writing?”
“Like Writing,” answers Avery.
“Well how do you get up there?”
Avery tries to show her how. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get the writing either.
It is not Alyssa’s fault. Avery is an autistic savant.
Avery tries to show Alyssa many things. He recites books he knows, tells her secrets. Lyssa listens carefully, as though it will be on a test. Their friendship is easy. Sometimes Lyssa’s mom notices her playing with Avery and comes over - then Lyssa smiles and waves goodbye, and she and her mother go home. Lyssa always smiles and waves. He thinks about it all the time. Today she smiles and waves in an olive-green dress. Now Avery must wait till Saturday.
Saturday finally arrives. The whole way to the park, Avery is very excited, in his own way. He counts up and down, takes pictures with his mind. His mother finds him adorably fidgety. Avery spots the park.
As they begin to descend the stairs, he spots Lyssa by the T-Rex. With a boy Avery doesn’t recognize. Lyssa struggles to climb the dinosaur by herself, valiantly, Avery thinks. Valiantly. She does as Avery instructed her, putting her foot on the dinosaur’s thigh and her hands on the arm, and tries to lift herself up.
Suddenly, the boy grabs her foot and yanks her down. Lyssa falls awkwardly on her arm and begins to cry.
Avery hurries over. Lyssa cries on the ground, holding her arm.
“Hi Avery,” she says miserably as he runs up.
The boy turns around. He is large, heavy, and wears a mean look. Avery knows enough about boys like this to feel his insides twist around.
“You got a problem?” says the boy.
Avery does not understand what this boy means.
The boys face darkens. “You want me to take care of it for ya?” the boy asks. Avery watches the boy’s knuckles tighten.
“Yes please.” Avery wonders if this encounter is that easy.
“Oh yea? You gettin’ smart with me?”
“I dunno,” Avery replies sincerely.
Without warning, the boy brings his fist into Avery’s face. Avery loses balance and falls to the ground.
Immediately his mother is on the scene, and she and the other boy’s father confer. Avery, still on the ground, rubs his cheek and spits out blood and his first baby tooth.
“Wow,” says Lyssa between sobs, “he really slugged you.”
Avery says nothing.
Lyssa is not there Wednesday, but the following Saturday she returns, very shiny. Avery asks about the thing on her arm.
“It’s a cast,” she says. “My friends all signed it.”
Avery looks. There is writing all over her bright green cast. He is envious.
“I brought you a marker, wanna write on it?”
Avery signs his name. This is enough for Lyssa.
On Wednesday, Avery returns with a band-aid and a marker. Lyssa laughs.
Forty One days pass.
Avery counts Two Hundred and Sixty Three days since he and Lyssa met. They’ve never had a play-date - Lyssa’s mom is very picky, and Avery’s mom knows better than to ask. There is sand in Avery’s second pair of socks - it is time to go home. Lyssa smiles and waves. She is going home too.
Avery dreams as he walks home with his mother. He dreams of the tall palms of Tampa, Florida where he and his mom used to live. The gentle sway of them in the salt breeze over broad boulevards, between marshes and the ocean. He remembers so strongly that he can feel again the sun press its lips firmly into his skin, his bones, which are no longer bound by his mandatory sweater. He misses the convertible mom used to drive, and when the top was down he somehow didn’t mind the wind whipping through his hair, crashing against his face and sending cool tears from the corners of his squinted eyes. When the top was down, they’d drive down the highway so fast that Avery could look up and watch the passing rows of palms above like a looping film. And he’d hear the sweet, obsessive rhythm of the tire on pavement… badum badum, badum badum, badum badum - - -
In an instant Avery Boyd flies Twenty One feet through the air. His mother and the startled cabby watch frozen in horror as in slow motion, he completes his graceful arc, and finally lands on his head on the pavement. The cabby, with the windows up, misses the sickening sound of Avery’s breaking neck, and the small rustling collapse of his frail and empty form onto Riverside Drive. His mother does not.
Lyssa’s mother, yards away, puts her hand to her mouth. Lyssa notices her mother has stopped walking and looks around. Her mother immediately takes her hand and pulls her rapidly away from the gathering crowd ahead. The whole way home her mother is silent, and Lyssa can hear only birds, and sirens in the distance. Lyssa scuffs her shoes and wonders why. It is twenty-nine years before she returns to the Dinosaur Park.
* * * * *
The neighborhood is safer these days. Tax dollars have helped in this regard, but the death of Avery Boyd was the chief catalyst, prompting an uproar and boycott by parents in the neighborhood.
Alyssa, now 35, watches Samantha race ahead in enthusiasm towards the dinosaurs. She smiles with relief as Sam shouts back to her mother to watch her climb. The playground is quiet as the summer afternoon gathers itself coolly into evening, and Alyssa sits on the nearby bench.
She runs her hand over the painted wooden beams beneath her, still warm from the afternoon sun. She scuffs her shoes over the cement pocked with gravel. The smell of the air, the textures are haunting. She begins to cry silently, warm tears running down her smiling cheeks and into her blouse. Samantha plays on.
“Mommy! Mommy look,” yells Samantha.
“I’m looking, honey.”
“No, come over Mommy!”
Alyssa chuckles, impressed. Her daughter has climbed the T-Rex. As she approaches, she finds to be about six feet tall, and her esteem for her daughter grows.
“What’s up hon?”
“Mommy, there’s writing up here.”
“That’s the city for you, Sammy.”
“No Mommy, look.”
Alyssa sighs to herself and places her hands on the arm of the beast. Immediately her touch recognizes the plastic, and she instinctively braces her foot in the hindquarters and hauls herself up.
She takes a moment to admire the view. Something inside of her softly uncoils, releasing a heavy weight.
“Mommy, look,” Samantha reminds her.
There, on the head of the dinosaur, letters had been gouged deeply and confidently away.
Bests: Lyssa 35 Kids.
-Avery
There is a small corner of the soul in all of us, often neglected, which sleeps an untidy sleep, waiting to awaken to the surety of life. Of all the luxurious trappings and bare necessities of a human heart, it has been argued that “Purpose” is the most essential, and it is this sustenance that warms and soothes these care-worn wrinkles in our minds. Purpose is believed (by a dwindling few) to be that indelible hand that reaches out of the core of the earth, takes hold of our own, and with a powerful centrifugal force reawakens the deepest part of us to the gravity of our life. It may hover subtly like so many molecules of air, sit tidily on a shirtsleeve, or perhaps swim in the murky dark, burning and biding time. Of course, more likely it is a naïve concern or a need we uncover within ourselves, a process which often requires a level of archeological skill which few, if any, have patience to apply. And yet, whether we bury our head or our hands in the sand makes no difference, for purpose is a function of Fate, and Fate always finds us one way or the other.
* * * * *
Alyssa takes her daughter to Riverside for the first time. She’s not sure yet how Samantha feels about the move, and in fact is not sure how she feels yet either. Certainly something about being back in the neighborhood is reassuring. They had started with an afternoon walk up the park, and shared a pleasant late lunch at the new café under the highway. Samantha had eaten her french-fries in silence, apparently taking it all in. Alyssa was pleased by the new café, and wondered why no one had kept one there before, bad times maybe. The keys to their new West Side Apartment jingle pleasantly in her pocket as she and Samantha stroll up a Hudson she has missed with a powerful ache in her chest.
Alyssa sometimes wonders if this is the life she would have chosen back then. As a girl, she’d imagined herself an explorer, an archeologist, an architect, a painter. Yet above all else, she had chosen wife and mother, a decision she never regretted but never felt fully comfortable with either. The sidewalk she walks now is the same as before, yet the texture is different with years and feet and life between. And she holds a small hand in hers.
In the late afternoon they make it to the Dinosaur Playground, which gleams through the tree-cover like an ancient ruin.
The dinosaurs are still there.
Even now, after so many years. The neighborhood had changed, the park had changed, a whole slew of invasive plants had come through and gone, and the children had grown - she had grown - but the dinosaurs remained.
There were two, as the mystery of the universe according to man consistently entails: a Tyranosaurus and a Tricerotops, perpetually unaware of one another. The disjointedness of the two figures, not engaged in mortal combat, always threw her, now that she thought about it; there was something surreal about two enormous, translucent chartreuse plastic dinosaurs mutually ignoring each other in the middle of a children’s playground. Playing nice was the general rule, and they’d managed longer than most.
* * * * *
Lyssa, six-and-a-half, strained her fingertips, pressing the pads into the smooth plastic as her legs scrambled for a foothold to propel her upward. The sweet angsty joy of the sheer impossibility of it was satisfyingly frustrating. She watched other children do it, time and again. The tricerotops was easy - even she could do that - you could reach the lowest horn sitting on the ground and still pull yourself up to the top of its enormous, pale green girth.
But the T-Rex. That one was fierce.
Impossibly vertical, it stood a massive six feet on its hindquarters, as she figured it, although it got smaller every year. She’d only ever seen one boy on top, and that was Avery. She liked Avery very much.
Avery Boyd was a small boy, waif-thin, and quiet.
His mother had tried to take him to another park, but to no avail. Avery could not be dissuaded. In Avery’s mind, the subtle balance of sameness was key. Sameness was key.
He needed the dinosaurs, he always had. They were his friends, they were the playground, they were guardians, challenges, vantage-points, eternal. He NEEDED them. He remembered when mom tried to take him to another park.
Avery had to hit himself when mom did things like that.
So every Saturday and Wednesday his mom packed up his snack-sized Honey Nut Cheerios box, his hand wipes and his extra socks and underwear, and she, Avery, and his shovel would go to the Dinosaur Playground. He needed his socks for when the sprinklers were on or he got sand in his other pair. He needed extra socks.
From the top of his T-Rex Avery could see everything. He could watch the whole playground, moms and dads and kids and all. He counted twelve to thirty-five kids a day, roughly. Depending on the day. If it was a Saturday and warm out it was closer to thirty-five. Much closer to thirty-five.
Depending on the day.
Avery knew Alyssa. They had introduced themselves once, playing in the sand. He demanded she spell her name for him in the sand, and he spelled his. They looked nice side by side. Real nice. She always built things all wrong, but unlike lots of other kids she didn’t mind when Avery fixed her castles and prints and such. And she never made strange faces at him or walked away from him to play somewhere else. She never walked away. She was so green. She liked green, he remembered that. He liked green too, better than blue and pink. And she was shiny. Her hair, her eyes, her nose, her sneakers - she was shiny all over. He liked that.
“What are your favorites?” Lyssa asks today, as she works her fingers through the sand. Avery does not reply. Lyssa knows this means he does not understand. “You know, the things that are the “best”? Mine are Chocolate Ice Cream, George and Martha, Green of course, and Alice In Wonderland.”
Avery is still silent. He feels uncomfortable for Lyssa, she must have so much sand under her nails. Lyssa figures his quiet means he hasn’t decided yet. So she asks what Avery does all the way up there on the T-Rex.
“Write,” says Avery.
“Write?” asks Lyssa. “Like Writing?”
“Like Writing,” answers Avery.
“Well how do you get up there?”
Avery tries to show her how. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get the writing either.
It is not Alyssa’s fault. Avery is an autistic savant.
Avery tries to show Alyssa many things. He recites books he knows, tells her secrets. Lyssa listens carefully, as though it will be on a test. Their friendship is easy. Sometimes Lyssa’s mom notices her playing with Avery and comes over - then Lyssa smiles and waves goodbye, and she and her mother go home. Lyssa always smiles and waves. He thinks about it all the time. Today she smiles and waves in an olive-green dress. Now Avery must wait till Saturday.
Saturday finally arrives. The whole way to the park, Avery is very excited, in his own way. He counts up and down, takes pictures with his mind. His mother finds him adorably fidgety. Avery spots the park.
As they begin to descend the stairs, he spots Lyssa by the T-Rex. With a boy Avery doesn’t recognize. Lyssa struggles to climb the dinosaur by herself, valiantly, Avery thinks. Valiantly. She does as Avery instructed her, putting her foot on the dinosaur’s thigh and her hands on the arm, and tries to lift herself up.
Suddenly, the boy grabs her foot and yanks her down. Lyssa falls awkwardly on her arm and begins to cry.
Avery hurries over. Lyssa cries on the ground, holding her arm.
“Hi Avery,” she says miserably as he runs up.
The boy turns around. He is large, heavy, and wears a mean look. Avery knows enough about boys like this to feel his insides twist around.
“You got a problem?” says the boy.
Avery does not understand what this boy means.
The boys face darkens. “You want me to take care of it for ya?” the boy asks. Avery watches the boy’s knuckles tighten.
“Yes please.” Avery wonders if this encounter is that easy.
“Oh yea? You gettin’ smart with me?”
“I dunno,” Avery replies sincerely.
Without warning, the boy brings his fist into Avery’s face. Avery loses balance and falls to the ground.
Immediately his mother is on the scene, and she and the other boy’s father confer. Avery, still on the ground, rubs his cheek and spits out blood and his first baby tooth.
“Wow,” says Lyssa between sobs, “he really slugged you.”
Avery says nothing.
Lyssa is not there Wednesday, but the following Saturday she returns, very shiny. Avery asks about the thing on her arm.
“It’s a cast,” she says. “My friends all signed it.”
Avery looks. There is writing all over her bright green cast. He is envious.
“I brought you a marker, wanna write on it?”
Avery signs his name. This is enough for Lyssa.
On Wednesday, Avery returns with a band-aid and a marker. Lyssa laughs.
Forty One days pass.
Avery counts Two Hundred and Sixty Three days since he and Lyssa met. They’ve never had a play-date - Lyssa’s mom is very picky, and Avery’s mom knows better than to ask. There is sand in Avery’s second pair of socks - it is time to go home. Lyssa smiles and waves. She is going home too.
Avery dreams as he walks home with his mother. He dreams of the tall palms of Tampa, Florida where he and his mom used to live. The gentle sway of them in the salt breeze over broad boulevards, between marshes and the ocean. He remembers so strongly that he can feel again the sun press its lips firmly into his skin, his bones, which are no longer bound by his mandatory sweater. He misses the convertible mom used to drive, and when the top was down he somehow didn’t mind the wind whipping through his hair, crashing against his face and sending cool tears from the corners of his squinted eyes. When the top was down, they’d drive down the highway so fast that Avery could look up and watch the passing rows of palms above like a looping film. And he’d hear the sweet, obsessive rhythm of the tire on pavement… badum badum, badum badum, badum badum - - -
In an instant Avery Boyd flies Twenty One feet through the air. His mother and the startled cabby watch frozen in horror as in slow motion, he completes his graceful arc, and finally lands on his head on the pavement. The cabby, with the windows up, misses the sickening sound of Avery’s breaking neck, and the small rustling collapse of his frail and empty form onto Riverside Drive. His mother does not.
Lyssa’s mother, yards away, puts her hand to her mouth. Lyssa notices her mother has stopped walking and looks around. Her mother immediately takes her hand and pulls her rapidly away from the gathering crowd ahead. The whole way home her mother is silent, and Lyssa can hear only birds, and sirens in the distance. Lyssa scuffs her shoes and wonders why. It is twenty-nine years before she returns to the Dinosaur Park.
* * * * *
The neighborhood is safer these days. Tax dollars have helped in this regard, but the death of Avery Boyd was the chief catalyst, prompting an uproar and boycott by parents in the neighborhood.
Alyssa, now 35, watches Samantha race ahead in enthusiasm towards the dinosaurs. She smiles with relief as Sam shouts back to her mother to watch her climb. The playground is quiet as the summer afternoon gathers itself coolly into evening, and Alyssa sits on the nearby bench.
She runs her hand over the painted wooden beams beneath her, still warm from the afternoon sun. She scuffs her shoes over the cement pocked with gravel. The smell of the air, the textures are haunting. She begins to cry silently, warm tears running down her smiling cheeks and into her blouse. Samantha plays on.
“Mommy! Mommy look,” yells Samantha.
“I’m looking, honey.”
“No, come over Mommy!”
Alyssa chuckles, impressed. Her daughter has climbed the T-Rex. As she approaches, she finds to be about six feet tall, and her esteem for her daughter grows.
“What’s up hon?”
“Mommy, there’s writing up here.”
“That’s the city for you, Sammy.”
“No Mommy, look.”
Alyssa sighs to herself and places her hands on the arm of the beast. Immediately her touch recognizes the plastic, and she instinctively braces her foot in the hindquarters and hauls herself up.
She takes a moment to admire the view. Something inside of her softly uncoils, releasing a heavy weight.
“Mommy, look,” Samantha reminds her.
There, on the head of the dinosaur, letters had been gouged deeply and confidently away.
Bests: Lyssa 35 Kids.
-Avery