This Is a Love Story

Chapter 1

Central Park

Some people come to the Park because they want to fall in love for the first time, the twelfth time, the final time.

Some have been used, widowed, or bored stiff.

They have spent the past decade in deep introspection, falling in love with themselves—and no one else—first.

Some come for a short respite—roughly twenty blocks west to east, east to west—from a spouse who will not help themselves or from no one home (she even took the dog; you can’t imagine the sudden quiet).

The Park is a beating heart, an adagio, a dreamy parenthesis.

Abe and Jane come after chemo and because they never know when it might be the last time.

There are six bottles of pills, two notarized wills, and a nebulizer in a tote between them.

Jane can walk only a few steps without needing to rest, but you couldn’t tell that from the serene composure on her face.

The Park is where the most important moments of their lives have taken place.

The Park is their home away, homing device, pen pal, fifth season.

In the Park, romance is alive and well.

Among the tulips, fritillaries, and anemones, juniors from Bronx Science make promises across the Whisper Bench—I want to exist in the same quantum state as you.

An optometrist who has been married five times finds love again at the Rumi Festival in Shakespeare Garden.

It feels like 20/10 eyesight.

On Tuesday evenings from May to October, in Sheep Meadow, a small group gathers for Sensual Yoga (unauthorized; who’s going to stop them?).

They move their bodies in ways that make them weep or giddy or ashamed.

At SummerStage, Bon Iver a capellas “Blood Bank.”

The Public Theater produces Romeo and Juliet for the sixty-second year.

Everyone sweats.

The cardiac surgeon writes a love letter to her husband on the same bench near the Center Fountain every Friday.

She is in green scrubs and clogs.

She couldn’t save him, but in her letters, she imagines that she can and that they have shrimp lo mein on the couch again.

Watching the kids push their model boats at Conservatory Water, the entertainment lawyer offers to try one more round because her husband wants nothing more than a gaggle of kids and she cannot bring herself to tell him the truth.

Perhaps it’s the body, she thinks, as referee.

A group of divorcés—one a matchmaker with an acclaimed series on HBO, he signed an NDA, no one can know but this crew—gets their grooves back rollerblading at DiscOasis.

Old love—we’ve been together since Eisenhower—recalls their vows, word for word, at the Inscope Arch.

I promise to love you and your stamps forever.

Margaux and Marc kiss every year for twenty-one years on the vernal equinox at Belvedere Castle.

They have dedicated their lives to art and beauty.

Belvedere meaning good view .

Oh, the blooms.

The housepainter, so far from home, watching for a sign in the clear blue sky on his twenty-fifth anniversary, forgets the heartache of time and distance for the brief moment that two red-tailed hawks glide by, dip, and land across from Trefoil Arch no more than ten feet away from him.

Every year, there are nearly 250 weddings at the Loeb Boathouse.

There are nineteen other suggested venues on CentralParkWeddingLocations.com within the Park’s 843 acres.

There are hundreds of marriage proposals on Bow Bridge every year—we found each other on Facebook; we met last week; we have three kids and two dogs and a whole lot of chickens together.

Most take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but there is an upward tick around Valentine’s Day too.

There are thousands of engagement shoots, mostly in June and October because, arguably, those are the Park’s most standout times.

The machinist wears all white.

The personal assistant has been juicing for a week.

In the Park, there is handholding, making out, blushing, the sharing of ham and cheese sandwiches, iced teas, double chocolate chip cookies, blazers, gloves, tissues, and headphones playing Billie Holiday.

There is a lot of so-called quality time.

There are at least a dozen domestic disputes reported to the Park precinct a week.

Oh yes, sir, I really did want to wring his neck.

Some people come to the Park when the red-eared sliders are mating or when they’re the best man at the Swan Lake –themed nuptials at Wollman and hoping the bride’s aunt will be flying solo.

They come to carve names into a tree—Lucy loves AF, Stella + Sass.

They come to honor the one they will always love, especially on October 17 when it’s as if the leaves are singing HALLELUJAH AMEN and they can throw them in the air and feel them on their body like whispers.

They come for Jewish speed dating with their best friend and kiss the friend on the mouth on the way home just to see.

No dice.

LOL! They come by the busload in white sneakers on a Romancing the Apple tour.

Some people come to train for marathons: they are running away from their problems; they are racing for their wife’s cure.

They come to learn holotropic breathwork in the Hallett Sanctuary as an antidote to trauma.

It is my last resort.

They come because there are long-stemmed red roses growing in a location that won’t be disclosed here.

They have never been snipped.

What kind of monster?

The assistant producer comes to the Park before filming.

She is in the gray spandex she bought with the guy on the six-mile loop in mind.

She wonders about his name: Brad, Jake? Or maybe he’s Australian? Luke? Martha and Marilyn come after work; it is the only time they have to themselves before the kids demand a different dinner, no bath, twelve stories, told in corresponding voices, a lot of songs.

I fucking hate Raffi! A feng shui consultant comes from West Virginia once, in the spring, to meet an old lover.

He never shows.

He shows; what a disappointment.

Stephen and Mitch walk to and from work every day at eight and six, holding hands, planning dinner.

Caraway salmon with rye berry and beet salad.

Elaine and Jack come with their two old Labs because their therapist said it was a good idea.

It was! It was not! The sanitation worker comes to work; but he also comes for the gray catbirds’ love songs, particularly in the morning in April near Shuman Track.

They remind him of his first ex-wife, who sang in the shower first thing.

Leena, the new vegan—she promised him she’d try—comes because there is no one waiting at home anymore.

Some people come because, at home, the yelling has gotten worse.

Some because, at home, they don’t touch; they haven’t in years.

Some because the touching has become too much.

Some come only when the sun is out.

Some come only in the dark.

For those who feel it, there is nothing like the warm embrace of the Park.

North of the Lilac Walk, they’re playing Chaka Khan, wearing short shorts, and grinding.

Outside the Swedish Cottage, carnations are sold by the stem.

See the nuzzling rollerbladers on Center Drive, the kids in nursery school at the Hans Christian Andersen statue, kissing each other’s chins.

There is a Oaxacan woman by the Mall who sells mangoes with chile and limon, cut into hearts, singing “Espérame en el Cielo”

like she means it.

The Ancestor sculpture at the Park’s Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street entrance represents fertility and the masculine and feminine at once (though the sculptor’s husband has faced allegations of sexual misconduct).

There are Roy and Silo, the gay penguins at the zoo who attempted to mate for half a decade before giving up.

It can be said: there is no greater ecstasy than reaching the pinnacle of Cat Hill on bike.

No purer pleasure than holding hands, watching the ducks flap flap flap.

Even as raging wars, another mass shooting, Me Too, hostages, hateful graffiti, youth cyberbullying give us no reason to have faith in passion, the brown-belted bumbles are rapturous, pollinating beardtongue and American wild columbine.

For some, the Park’s branches are arms stretched up and out, abating hate.

It is possible to see them as that.

Perhaps, for some, to love the Park makes seeing them as that essential.