Kyle sat on the picnic table at the corner of the playground, feet on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees, smoking a cigarette while we swung. Kyle had grown up with the boys we were visiting. We met him the night before when we all went out for beers. His blond bangs were flipped to one side, laying across his forehead, forcing him to throw his head back occasionally to move them from his eyes. He had unbuttoned his black over-shirt, revealing his black t-shirt underneath. It was the same shirt from the night before, probably still smelling of smoke and booze; the smell of the pub. The print on the front of his tee resembled a skull and cross bones, but instead of crossbones: bacon, and in place of a skull: a ferocious looking sunny-side-up egg.
He watched us through his sunglasses as we quietly swung. The hems of our cocktail dresses danced around our thighs as we glided up into the air. Pammy swung with her legs out straight in front of her, ankles crossed to help ease the awkwardness of having the hips of a woman on the swing made for a child.
Ashley, having already kicked off her black heels, rocked with her whole body. Her long, straight, brown hair and the ribbon tied around her waist hung down toward the earth while she reclined back in the swing.
While he smoked, while the kids played in the sandbox behind us, while we all waited for Paul and Mike to get back to the church, we swung. The three of us swinging out of unison, leaned back, throwing our feet up, refreshed by the air flowing over our hot, sweating skin.
"I remember when I was in first grade," I started to tell my sisters who swung on either side of me. "At school we would swing high enough to make our butts lift out of the seats."I gained speed and height as I spoke, pumping my legs back and forth, faster and with more force. "Then when our butts would slam back into the swing, it would shake the whole playground. We called it goosebumps." By then, I was swinging high enough to recreated the effect. Pamela and Ashley laughed while telling me to stop as I flew past them; faster and harder and farther from the ground; closer to the sky and farther from the pain of the day, from the heartbreak of the reason we were in Michigan. We hadn't been back there in over a decade, it was like being back in the past, to catch up with the present and mourn the future. Kyle sat on the picnic table, still smoking with a smile.
It was the first time all week I hadn't felt like I would cry. I swung until I was back on the playground in first grade. I swung back 16 years to when we lived on Marengo Drive, to when there were four Crewdson boys living across the street from us. I swung up till I had goosebumps, my body leaving the swing for a moment of weightlessness, like nothing could pull me toward the ground.
Where gravity doesn't exist, neither does sickness or heartbreak or the image of three Crewdson boys, now men, lined up on one side of their youngest brother's casket, carrying it- carrying him.
After Kyle smoked another cigarette, we got off the swings to walk back across the field, through the hot Michigan sun. I turned around when I got off the swing, to see one of the children from the sandbox standing up, watching us. She stared like 6-year-old girls do, while her older brother kept playing in the sand behind her and her dad involved himself in his phone conversation.
I wondered if this would be one of those images she would keep with her until adulthood: four adults, dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and swinging on a red and green swing set. Maybe for the rest of her life she would wonder about that moment, or maybe her mind would discard the image of us, leave it there in the sandbox with the questions she might have had. And maybe she'll never understand the heartbreak we carried across that field with us, the heartbreak we'll always carry for the heartbreak of a family's loss- a loss you can't ever escape. The goosebumps of life, slamming you back into your seat, shaking the whole playground.
whoa that was great
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