Chapter 18
LEO
I really need to stop letting Emma feed the ducks.
Logically, I’m aware of the ecological fallout.
Somewhere, beside a layer of algae and behind the weeping willows, there are signs explaining why processed carbs are the silent killers of the avian world.
I know I’m essentially handing my daughter a bag of slow-acting poison that bloats their little digestive systems and turns them into feathered junkies.
I am a willing participant in a carbohydrate-fueled duck apocalypse.
But emotionally? Emotionally, I’m a goner.
Watching Emma’s face light up as she rips off chunks of the squishy white bread—Wonder Bread, no less, the epitome of processed Americana—and flings them into the water is pure, unadulterated joy.
Her giggles erupt like fireworks when the ducks swarm, their webbed feet paddling furiously, beaks snapping with a mix of greed and entitlement.
And then there are the backstories. Emma doesn’t just see waterfowl; she sees a complex, bureaucratic society.
At this very moment, Emma’s perched at the edge of Conservatory Water, the late afternoon sun glinting off the ripples like scattered coins, the air carrying a faint, earthy tang of pond muck.
“That one’s George,” Emma announces, pointing a sticky finger at a mallard who looks like he’s seen too much. “He’s the Mayor of the Pond.”
Annie, crouched beside her in a pair of jeans that hug her waist just right—the ones I noticed this morning when she bent over to wipe a big chunk of mud off of Emma’s rain boot—tears off a fresh piece of bread, her smile indulgent but genuine. “The mayor, huh? That’s a hefty responsibility.”
Emma doesn’t miss a beat, her pigtails swinging as she tosses the crumbs.
“He’s very important. He makes all the rules.
Like, no fighting over food, and everyone has to share.
” George barrels in, shoving aside a couple of slimmer ducks with zero regard for her edict, his feathers ruffled in victory.
“Ah,” Annie says, her eyes sparkling with a wry amusement that always manages to pull me in. “A populist leader. Very democratic of him.”
“And that one over there,” Emma continues, pointing to a sleeker duck with an iridescent green head, “that’s Kevin. He’s George’s assistant. He does the boring stuff.”
Annie nods solemnly, playing along like a pro. “Like what? Paperwork? Scheduling beak-sharpening appointments?”
“Counting things. Making lists. Keeping the pond organized.” Emma hurls another piece, and Kevin darts in after it.
“Every visionary needs a Kevin,” Annie agrees. I have to look away to keep the laugh from breaking out of my chest.
The zoo was a total victory, albeit an exhausting one.
We’d navigated the sea lions (who lounged with the misplaced confidence of trust-fund babies at a beach club) and the polar bears (who looked like they’d just finished a very long, very disappointing board meeting).
Emma had documented it all on her disposable camera, guarding that little plastic rectangle like it contained the only known evidence of Bigfoot.
I’m fairly certain the developed photos will be sixty percent her own thumb and forty percent blurry pavement, but the pride on her face is worth the twelve-dollar processing fee.
Now, I’m doing a slow 360-degree scan for Park Rangers or those aggressively civic-minded New Yorkers who live to correct your parenting choices in public.
If I get booked for Duck Endangerment, it’ll be legendary family fodder.
My mother will find a way to weave it into every holiday toast for the next thirty years.
Maria will ensure my obituary reads: Leo Roussos: Beloved son, mediocre brother, and the man who brought down the Central Park ecosystem with a loaf of white bread.
I pivot, my hand instinctively reaching toward Emma—a reflex, even though she’s safe, giggling with Annie as they dole out the contraband.
It’s an older couple, hand in hand, the picture of enduring companionship.
The woman is petite, barely cresting five feet in her practical sneakers, her white hair twisted into a neat bun, her face a map of laugh lines etched deep from decades of stories, I’m sure.
Her husband towers beside her, stooped but steady, bundled in a wool cardigan despite the unseasonable warmth that clings to the air like a reluctant goodbye to fall.
She leans in, eyes twinkling with mischief. “I used to bring my little ones here to feed the ducks, too. Some of the best memories we have.”
My shoulders drop three inches. “Oh, thank god. I thought you were going to cite me.”
She waves a hand with a flourish. “Laws, shmaws. They’re only this small for a blink. Let them feed the damn ducks.”
“That’s the logic I’m using to avoid the guilt,” I admit.
The man smiles, his eyes crinkling. “How old’s your girl?”
“Five, going on fifteen.”
The woman’s whole face lights up. “Oh, five! Five is the best age. My kids—and my grandkids, too—that’s when they really started showing me who they were, you know?
It wasn’t just crying and eating and sleeping, the tiresome stuff.
They have opinions all of a sudden.” She emphasizes “opinions” like it’s a gourmet treat, her hands dancing in the air.
“Emma definitely has opinions in spades,” I say with a grin.
“Cherish it. Time goes so fast.” She shakes her head. “I swear, I was just here in the fifties, chasing five kids around this park, and I blink and it’s the nineties! Where did it go?”
“Five kids?” I let out a whistle. “I can barely handle one.”
“Five. All under seven at one point. I don’t know how I survived.” She laughs. “But you do, don’t you? Somehow you just do.”
“You just do,” I agree.
She glances over at Annie, who’s now helping Emma throw bread in a way that ensures Kevin gets his fair share. “You and your wife make a lovely pair. She’s a gorgeous girl.”
The air in my lungs hitches. I hesitate, my mouth opening to clarify—it’s new, it’s complicated, it’s not quite that—but she barrels on, leaning in with a conspiratorial whisper.
“Between you and me, if I were forty years younger, I’d have given her a run for her money.
You’re quite the catch, dear.” She winks, utterly shameless.
Her husband sighs, tugging her hand gently. “Gloria, leave the gentleman alone before you scare him off.”
I laugh, I can’t help it. “It’s quite alright. Flattery from a gal like you? I’ll take it.”
“You’re a good egg,” Gloria says, patting my arm with a grandmotherly squeeze. “Savor these days—they slip away faster than you can chase ’em.”
“I will. Thanks for the wisdom.”
They amble off, still linked, a testament to decades weathered together, and I watch them go, a pang twisting in my gut. Your wife. The assumption lingers, not entirely unwelcome, stirring up visions I hadn’t let myself entertain.
I look over at Annie. She’s laughing at something Emma said, her chestnut colored hair catching the late afternoon sun, looking like she belongs exactly where she is. The old couple saw us and didn’t see a complicated history or a series of ‘what-ifs.’ They saw a family.
I should know better than to let that word sneak into my head—family.
It’s like inviting a Trojan horse into the fortress of my carefully constructed cynicism.
It’s a noun that suggests a permanent, structural integrity I’m not sure I believe in anymore.
I treat the concept of a “permanent unit” the way a theoretical physicist treats a black hole: I can observe the effects it has on the bodies around it, but I’m fairly certain that if I get too close, I’ll be shredded by the gravity of it.
I had what I thought was the real deal once, or at least a convincing facsimile, and it didn’t just crumble; it went nuclear, leaving me picking shrapnel out of my ego for years.
That rejection I experienced from Rebecca does more than hurt; it reconfigures your hardware.
And yeah, I can nerd out on the neurology of betrayal because that’s my wheelhouse—how the amygdala hijacks the prefrontal cortex, the cortisol spikes—but I can’t articulate the visceral sensation of feeling fundamentally…
unlovable. Like there’s something broken in you that you can’t see but everyone else can.
It makes you second-guess everything. Was that anniversary dinner real? Was the way she laughed at my jokes just a practiced reflex? Was she just a very talented actress playing the role of a woman who wasn’t currently counting down the seconds until she could be anywhere else?
It makes starting over feel impossible. Because how do you trust again when the person you trusted most looked you in the eye and lied for months? How do you believe someone when they say they want to stay when the last person who said that didn’t?
But then there’s Annie.
Annie, who exists in a completely different genus than Rebecca ever did.
With Rebecca, our connection was purely logistical.
We were a series of spreadsheets and shared calendars, a partnership based on grocery lists and whose turn it was to handle the recycling.
We never stayed up until 3:00 a.m. debating the creation of the universe or love being something transcendent or whether “fate” is just a word humans invented to feel better about the terrifying randomness of our own existence.
Rebecca never saw me at my worst—frantic, desperate, trying to physically remove someone from a taxi because I was too desperate to wait. Annie did. And she’s still here.
She’s seen the mess, the utter disaster my life became after Rebecca left, and she didn’t run.
She didn’t try to fix it; she just sat in it with me.
She made pancakes with slightly burnt edges.
She folded laundry. She bought my daughter a disposable camera.
She built an entire municipal government out of Central Park waterfowl.
She stays, not out of pity or politeness, but because she chooses to.