Page 15 of On Fire Island

“Room for little humans,” the man at the mattress store had thrown in during our debate. We had both smiled nervously. As I swiped my Amex, I realized the salesperson was onto something. It was most definitely time to move on to the “little humans” stage of our lives. We had planned on having children but never got to the point of putting that plan into action. We werealways too busy with work. I wonder now what life would have been like if we had taken the hint at the mattress store and tossed my birth control before its delivery.

Instead, I said, “Did you hear what the salesperson said?”

“Yeah—about the five hundred coils—very exciting!”

“Ha-ha, and no.”

“Let’s talk about it after our next deadline?”

I agreed. I didn’t feel ready and was so happy with the way things were, but I think that was the day I first heard my biological clock ticking.

Now, as unexpected as it was seeing Ben asleep next to Shep (and Sally), I felt relief that he wasn’t alone in the king-size bed. I watched as the rays of early-morning sun crackled through the giant bay window, stirring him awake. His hand immediately shot to his belly as death sucker punched him good morning. It was just as Shep had described. Sally awoke with a moan, and Ben patted her on the head knowingly.

“I feel you, girl, c’mon, I’ll let you out.”

She followed him dutifully, heading to her favorite spot between the garden and the deck to relieve herself. The screen door slammed behind them both, waking Shep. He too wrapped his hands around his belly as his own reality pummeled him in the gut. He called out the window to Ben.

“Bring back a couple of bagels and some herring—in cream sauce.”

“I guess I’m going to the market,” Ben reported to the dog, letting her back inside. He slipped on flip-flops with the T-shirt and sweats he had slept in. I would take odds he would wear the getup all day, maybe even sleep in it again tonight, yet alas, no one to bet against.

Ben walked to the shed to get his bike and was immediately confronted by the thing that had haunted me more than the cavernous bed. My bicycle.

The bicycle is often a vehicle of romance in a car-free town such as ours, but today it was anything but. The first sight of my barely ridden, bright yellow bike with the matching plastic ducky horn and baby seat attached was as brutal as I had imagined it would be. Ben pulled it out angrily and dragged it to the back of the house, a little plot of dirt reserved for junk and firewood. He tossed it like an old horse put out to pasture and returned to the shed with a tear-stained face to collect his own bike. I had dreaded this moment for months, and even considered calling one of the local contractors to remove it before he arrived. But I worried that might have upset him more. Now I wished I had.

Ben bought the yellow bike with the baby seat as a grand romantic gesture in the fall when we were closing up the house for winter after our first obstetrician appointment. He had been slow to get on the parenthood train, and when he rode up our street, all smiles, squeezing the ducky horn, I knew he was fully on board. I had looked at it in awe. We were finally having a baby.

Watching other moms transport their children on the back of their bikes on Fire Island was one of the first things I thought of when anyone mentioned the joys of parenting. It was the first thing that Pam and I were able to bond over—maternally, that is—in the two minutes that we were actually pregnant together. The thought of us riding up and down the streets of Bay Harbor with our babies in tow had us both on top of the world.

I remembered our first summer in the house, asking Renee why she still had a baby seat attached to her bike. At the time, Matty was nearly eight, and certainly not climbing on for a lift,though I had seen tired kids that old squeeze their little butts in for a late-night ride home.

“I can’t bear the thought of taking it off,” she’d explained, and went into great detail about the joys of singing young Matty to sleep on it over the years with a medley of moon songs: “Moon Shadow” to “Moon River” to “I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me.” Renee was not naturally nostalgic, but even she couldn’t resist the purity of this fleeting act.

The bike was a great marker of the passage of time on Fire Island. In fact, one’s entire journey there can be distinguished by the state of one’s wheels.

The training-wheel years don’t last long, as the wheels’ removal is closely tied to the self-respect of both parent and child. The backbreaking (for the parent) and tear-inducing (for the child) ritual of learning to ride a two-wheeler has its rewards for all involved—freedom!

Freedom comes easily in a town with few cars and fewer strangers. By the time a kid is seven or eight, even the most paranoid parents allow their offspring to go it alone. They needn’t even come home for lunch, because as long as they can spell their name, they can charge a sandwich at the market and eat it on the dock with their friends, feeling like they’re at least twelve. By the time they actually turn twelve, it is on to a bigger model with pegs and giant baskets for summer gigs delivering pizza or transporting buckets of clams retrieved from the sandy bottom of the Great South Bay. That bike will eventually be passed down, stolen, or beaten up by the ocean air, and though that kid is really not a kid anymore, when they step on their next set of wheels and pedal the sidewalks of Fire Island, they still feel like one.

That sense of freedom lasts a very long time—often rightuntil the day they drag their wheels over to Steve at the hardware store and announce proudly that it is time to attach a baby seat to the back. A wonderful moment that, in our case, tragically backfired.

I watched Ben as he made his way to the market. He rode so slowly I wondered if he would fall over. I imagined he wasn’t ready for the outpouring of love and sympathy he was about to receive. When he reached the widened expanse of sidewalk between the ferry dock and the wagon park, he froze. Thankfully, after a few minutes, Matty pulled up, nose to nose.

“Hey, Ben,” he managed, not really knowing what to say.

Ben answered back with an indistinguishable sound, before looking down to hide the tears that had formed upon seeing him. Matty gripped Ben’s shoulder in sympathy. The two had been playing ball together for years, with Matty starting as somewhat of a team mascot before surpassing most in skill. Like Ben’s friendship with Shep, age was never much of a factor.

“Are you going to the market?” Matty asked.

Ben barely nodded.

“Want me to pick up what you need instead?”

The offer thawed him.

“Yeah, thank you. Some coffee, theFire Island News, a couple of bagels, and something to put on them.”

“Got it.”

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