Flashback

Hartford, Connecticut

“SURE, I REMEMBER HOW TO GET there,” said William Zett, sitting in the passenger seat of his sister’s car.

Greg Lainas drove while his wife MaryAnn sat in the back seat. It was late Sunday morning, a beautiful early September day with a big blue sky filled with sudsy white puffs of clouds. One of those days that reminded you of childhood.

“Yeah, turn up here,” William said. Then it came to him. “South Street.”

“Son of a gun,” Greg said. “You’ve got the memory of an elephant.”

“Told you,” William said proudly. “Then you take a … let’s see … a left onto Campfield Ave.” The name then opened up in his head like a flower. “Goodwin Park.”

“Heck, maybe you can get Dr. Habib to get some of those magic pills for me, too.”

“Yeah, ask him for the both of us,” MaryAnn said with a chuckle. Then she turned toward Greg in a voice loud enough that William could hear. “Do you know the other day he started reciting one of his physics lectures. Come on, tell him, William. You know, the Heisenberger something-or-other principle, or whatever.”

“Heisenberg uncertainty principle.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Come on, let Greg hear it.”

William hemmed and hawed then after Greg and MaryAnn’s prodding he said, “I don’t know, something like … the simultaneous measurement of two variables like momentum and position …” He closed his eyes as it all came back to him the way it did the other day, as if receiving instructions beamed to him from afar. “Energy and time for a moving particle entails a limitation on the precision of each measurement. The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.” Then he closed his eyes tight and thought. “Delta p times delta q is greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi. And delta E times delta t is greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi.”

And MaryAnn and Greg cheered, “Yeaaaaaa!”

“God, just a few months ago he couldn’t put a simple sentences together, now he’s doing quantum mechanics again.”

And William felt a warm glow of pride in his chest. He had taught physics at the University of Hartford for thirty-seven years before being forced to retire. He could have taught well into his seventies, but he had begun to fade.

“Speaking of pie, you’re going to love dessert. And nothing uncertain about that.”

They pulled into the parking lot beside the old watering hole, the playground off to the right through the trees. The original lot had been dirt, but it had been asphalted over and security lights now sat atop some poles. The area had not been expanded as had other town playgrounds—none of those fancy new wooden climbing complexes that looked like little fortresses with castellated towers, bridges, handlebars, and tubular slides, et cetera. The swings were the same, although they had been repainted a hundred times, and the monkey bars had been replaced, as had the sandy play area. The two slides, Big Shot and Little Shot, as the kids had called them, looked the same. And they sat maybe thirty feet apart.

“God, I don’t think I’ve been back here since the fifties,” said MaryAnn, who had packed a picnic lunch for the three of them. While William walked around the playground structures, she and her husband spread a tablecloth across one of the wooden tables and laid out the food and plates.

Meanwhile, William shuffled over to the swing, his feet kicking through the familiar fine yellow sand. He didn’t think it was the same old chain that held up the seats, but it was long and rusty as he remembered it. He could still feel the cold metal in his hands as he gripped it and sat in the seat. He could still smell the funny rusty iron odor that the chain left in a moist grip. He lowered himself onto one of the swings.

“Want a push?” MaryAnn hollered from the table. She laughed and waved.

William waved back. “I can handle it.”

He gripped the chain and it all came back to him in a rush—his feet pushing himself back against the seat until he was standing, then he raised his feet and felt himself swing forward, pushing his body forward and back until he established momentum and was swinging with the steady period of a clock pendulum.

Amazing, as if it were just a membrane away. He closed his eyes. It must have been sixty-five years since he had last done this. But it seemed like …

“Hey, Billy.”

Billy opened his eyes, and a hot flame flared in his chest. It was Bobby Tilden on the Big Slide near by. Bobby the Bully. And behind him were three other kids, including Annette, the girl up the street Billy was crazy about.

“Come on, or you gonna chicken out again?”

“Hey, William, you’re looking good, kiddo.”

“But watch your neck,” MaryAnn shouted. Then to her husband she said, “He’s got that slick jogging suit on, he could slide right off the seat.”

“He’s fine,” Greg said. “Hold on tight,” he shouted to his brother.

William nodded and looked toward the slide.

He was scared. Heart-banging, dry-spit scared, pants-wetting scared.

“Hey, Peepee Boy!” shouted Bobby Tilden, grinning with his broken-tooth smile and sly fox eyes and the baseball cap in a rebel slant. “Come on up. Or you ‘fraid of wetting your pants again?”

Other kids on the slide and at the bottom joined in the taunt to give it a try—the Big Slide, what the older kids did—kids ten and up. Billy had tried it before, but it was very high and fast, and he did chicken out and had to climb back down the ladder, which caused everybody to make fun of him, and Bobby called him Peepee Boy and knocked him down and gave him a knuckle haircut that made him cry while everybody hooted with glee.

Billy got off the swing and shuffled toward the Big Slide with the clutch of kids at the bottom— Philly, Michael Riccardi, Larry Ahearn, and Francine with the big yellow buck teeth and Snookie B. in the dirty sailor cap—waving him over and jeering, hoping he’d humiliate himself and chicken out again, wet his pants. At the top, Bobby Tilden snorted deeply and spit a clam that landed near Billy’s feet. Then he let out a whooping cry and slid down the slide with his hands and sneakers in the air. He landed on his feet, and the others let out a cheer.

Mikey Riccardi was next. He came flying down lying straight out. At the last minute he lifted his feet and came down on his backside flat. Two more kids came down, all pushing each other from the top of the ladder. Then Bobby raced back up, taunting Billy to join them. This time Bobby came down on his belly, letting out a yowl all the way. He smacked the yellow earth and got up spitting and covered with yellow sand on his front. And the other kids went wild.

“You’re next,” they said to Billy.

“William, lunch time.”

Billy’s heart pounded as he made his way to the ladder. The others formed a wall around him so he couldn’t run off at the last minute. Philly pushed him in the back to climb up. There was no backing off now, and he thought that if there was ever a time he wanted to die, this was it. One by one he climbed the rungs toward Bobby, who grinned down at him from the top, green-jelly snot bubbling in his nostrils, his chipped tooth flashing at him, his dirty face in a demon grin as he watched Billy climb.

“William, what are you doing up there? You’re going to break your neck.”

“Come on, Peepee Boy.” And Bobby slid down to give him room.

At the top, Billy looked down the long shiny metal slide that seemed to go on forever, the knot of kids below arms waving and shouting for him to do it, don’t be a chicken.

“Will-iam?”

“BIL-LY BIL-LY BIL-LY …”

Billy’s heart thudded painfully as he held his breath and said a silent prayer. Then eyes closed, he shot down the slide. At the last moment he caught himself and landed on his feet. And the kids cheered. For a