king lear in the park

a short story about the eyes, inheritance, and forgiveness

Mandy thought the great adventure would be to find her cousin, to wander the park until she spotted him; instead, Isaac was where his parents said he was, where he said he was when he talked to them not twenty minutes prior, sitting on the topmost of the wooden risers overlooking Washington Park’s playhouse stage.

He was dressed far too warmly for the day, a long sleeve shirt under a T-shirt that said ‘UPSTATE’ on it, a pair of jeans and work boots.

“Hey Isaac,” she called to him in a voice she hoped was soft in tone but loud enough in volume. He had been sitting with knees apart, elbows on thighs, head hung almost between his legs. He came to like his number was called in a deli line.

“Mandy,” he said, his tone warbling with surprise at seeing her within the context of the park. “What are you doing here? Today?”

“I was just on a walk. I live nearby, you know. Washington Park is practically my front yard. And I saw you sitting here and I was like, wait, is that guy my cousin Isaac?!” She said, stitching her face into a smile.

“Yeah I come here sometimes. Live nearby too,” he said.

“How you been?” She said as she approached, and sat on the grass next to him, bare legs hanging over the wooden ledge.

“Do my eyes seem red to you?” He avoided her question and segued into pulling his sunglasses down his nose.

They did look a little red, or at least veiny around their hazel irises. “I don’t think so,” she said. She inspected for other signs of drug use, but didn’t know whether the size of his pupils were indicative of anything—Isaac always had a strange look anyway. He flicked his sunglasses up and snorted.

“How’s work going? At the coffee shop, right?” She asked. “I keep meaning to go there and see you!”

“Got fired,” he said.

“Wha-ttt,” Mandy said, with appropriate incredulity.

“Yeah it’s alright. Not like being a barista is a career. I always wanted to be an actor, anyway. But that’s probably fucked by now too. Or at least, you’d have thought I’d have done something about it by now. Like, at least lived it. Moved away. Joined an acting company. Improv. Anything,” he said, looking down at the empty stage.

“Well, you can still be an actor. You’re still only 24. Your dad always showed everyone those videos of you anytime we went over, you acting in the school play or whatever.”

Isaac kept his head faced toward the stage but from beside him Mandy could see his eyes look downward. “Really? He did?”

“He was so proud. And you were so good! Remember when we were kids, our parents took us here to see Shakespeare in the park? You loved it.”

“Yeah. And you hated it, remember? You could never understand what was going on,” Isaac said. With a pulse of motivation, he popped up and bounded down the terraced lawn to the stage.

No one else was by the playhouse area to see his brief performance. He projected his voice with a grandiose hand gesture and recited from someplace between the viscera of the diaphragm and heart:

“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;

They kill us for their sport!”

He faltered, whatever energy amplified him gone, and put his hands in his jean pockets. Mandy had flitted down the risers to the front of the stage.

“See, that was good!” She said, with as much enthusiasm as she could spread upon her voice.

“I have trouble memorizing lines, though. That’s all I know.”

“That’s alright, though, you can learn and...”

“HA!” He guffawed, jumped two-footed off the stage without removing his hands from his pockets, and—still with hands in pockets—began to walk briskly enough such that Mandy had trouble keeping up with his long strides. “Actors, though—they’re always short and they have big heads. It’s good for the camera. Me, six-foot a million, gangly as hell, pinheaded,” he said.

“You must be the only man to ever complain about being tall,” Mandy said, following him over the bridge of the park’s pond.

“Really? The only man ever? That’s kind of shallow thinking, don’t you think? Tall equals good. Hmm, well, I don’t think so. Not in this case.”

“Okay, I guess not. I’m sure your girlfriend thinks it’s great.”

“Oh I would be sure too, but I’m not too sure anymore, considering we broke up.”

“Aww, I’m sorry Isaac...she seemed nice.”

“You met her like, what, once?”

“I mean, I see her on Insta and everything and...”

His head movement indicated a massive eye roll as he stopped in the middle of the stone bridge to turn and face her.

“Why are you being so nice? Why are you even here? You barely ever say two words to me at the family holidays, I live around the block from you and you go out of your way to not go in the coffee shop I work—worked—at and now you randomly run into me in the park—today of all days—and you’re acting like you care? What, did my parents call you or something?”

She answered by looking away, rubbing the heel of her hand on her forehead.

“They did, they did, didn’t they. What did they tell you?” He asked, hunching his shoulders, arching his stomach away from her and rocking onto his heels.

“Not much,” she lied. “Just that you could use a friend.”

She could still hear the desperation in her aunt and uncles’ voices on the phone.

“You can go, Mandy. Really. I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” he said, looking over the railing of the bridge. Something told her he was unimpressed by its height above the water.

“No, no, let’s go for a walk,” Mandy said, a new reticence in her voice.

“I’m fine, really. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Look, I live in the Corning Apartments, come with me there, Isaac. Just chill for a while. There’s air conditioning,” she offered, as a last try.

Isaac turned, eyebrows appearing above the rims of his sunglasses. “The Corning? You know, they used that as a location in Ironweed.”

“In what?”

He shook his head, and for a second Mandy thought she had killed him, really killed him.

“It’s an old movie, Nicholson and Streep, takes place around here. Shot it here, too,” he explained.

“You should come by then,” was all she could say.

“What are you doing for today? Any special celebrations?” Isaac asked as they half-swam across the park through the thick humidity of the summer.

“Hanging out with friends,” she said, which was obviously no longer true. “Did you have any special plans?”

“Un-fucking myself, or something like it.”

Mandy riposted with silence. He pulled a cigarette from somewhere indeterminate in his pants and lit it with a Zippo lighter like he had seen a movie before. With a single inhale, he erupted into a coughing fit that only ended right before Mandy could ask if he was okay.

“You smoke now? Or have you always?” She asked, waving away the remnants of his single puff. “You know, that’s what killed grandpa. Lung cancer. He was a chain smoker.”

“Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing that calms me anymore,” he croaked, letting the cigarette burn between his fingers as they crossed the street, failing to take another sip.

“Sorry but you can’t...” Mandy said as they approached the awning of the building’s side entrance. “I’ll stay out here with you, if you wanna finish it.”

“Ah, uhm, no, that’s okay. I have a whole pack anyway,” he said, flicking the nearly whole cigarette into the curb.

“Mhmm,” she said, keying her way into the building.

They passed a demarcation of cool air.

“No air conditioning for me at my place. Fucking inferno. Must be nice, huh? Born with a pretty face and a big inheritance. Two kinds of inheritance, you might say,” he said as they got in the elevator. She pulled her lips to the far reaches of her cheeks, as tight and pursed as they could go within a smile, and hit the button for the sixth floor, the top one.

Isaac smelled, like the brief cigarette smoke had worked to pick up and intermix itself with the body odor of a hot day. Mandy winced at the thought of him luxuriating in her apartment.

The elevator door opened. “Actually, let’s go to the roof,” she suggested instead, releasing herself from the thought.

“You can get on the roof from here?”

“Yeah, it’s like my own private patio thing.”

He stuck out his bottom lip and flared his nostrils. Mandy knew him as a sucker for anything with a view and a story, air conditioning be damned. They went up a steep staircase at the end of the hall and burst out a metal door into unremitted sunshine.

“Grandma’s money, hard at work!” Isaac said, hands back in pockets, with a dedicated saunter as he inspected some potted plants and patio furniture. “This is pretty cool.”

“On New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July, you can see the fireworks from Empire Plaza right over there, just so perfectly. It’s amazing.”

“Yeah I know, I saw the post for the Fourth on your little social media channel, what’s it called...”

“Fort Orange Special. It’s local news.”

“It’s not local news, it’s clickbait garbage with a local bent.” He inspected the view Mandy had pointed out. “But anyway, thanks for the invite. Any fireworks for us tonight?”

“No, no fireworks tonight,” she said, as clipped as possible. Her lips could only pull so tight, and they finally unhooked themselves: “You know, I bought this apartment with my money. Not Grandma’s money. The money we make from sponsors. From ads. Local ones. Including from the coffee shop you used to work at, by the way.”

Isaac took off his sunglasses and twirled them in his fingers, stepping up and onto a sun-tanning chair and then off it. “Yeah, I mean I’d still call it influencing. What else do you call a profession that’s spent entirely in front of your phone?”

“Whatever. I mean, sure, if you want to call it that. Still my money.”

“No, no Mandy. Is it really though? It still comes from Grandma’s money. It’s derived from it. Indirectly, but still. Because Grandma’s money paid for college, didn’t it? Fancy private school, Saint Rose. And you met some rich kids there, didn’t you? Some rich kids who have the time and money to sit on their asses thinking up and shooting lame Capital District content, who needed someone to visit their rich uncle’s house in the Hamptons and get their tits grabbed.”

“Isaac. Stop.”

“Yeah, my mom told me about that. Don’t worry though, I’m sure someday I’ll see you on The Bachelor or something and it will all be worth it.” Through trembling lips, he still managed to say this with something like the same force he delivered Gloucester’s dialogue upon the Washington Park playhouse stage.

He had made his way to the edge, by a brick and cement wall as high as his stomach. Mandy had never seen someone so tall as Isaac stand beside it.

“All I can fucking say to that is happy birthday, I guess, Isaac. To both of us,” Mandy said.

Isaac laughed, first in a genuine manner then in an acted one, propagating and elongating the laugh for some effect he was not sure of and Mandy did not receive. He looked over the edge of the building.

Mandy knew his words were not him, he was not the same Isaac she knew. He was not the Isaac who was on her team when they played Thanksgiving football. He was not the Isaac who took her out on the lake in the kayak. He was not the Isaac who helped her bake cookies for everyone when Grandma in the hospital. That Isaac was gone, but this new one could yet, maybe, be saved.

Mandy was mortified to realize she had brought him six stories up, and in a hurry of guilt, wrapped her arms around him from the side and held him tight. Isaac didn’t turn, but Mandy felt a twitch, the smallest glimmer of muscle communicating his thankfulness and reciprocation.

They stayed a moment until Mandy’s leg vibrated and she looked at her smartwatch.

“It’s your parents.”

“I’ll go down and meet them,” he said, breaking from her.

She smiled, less tightly this time.

“I left my friends at the restaurant, we were going to go to the bars later. If you want to come. When you’re done with your parents or whatever.”

“No really,” he said, putting his sunglasses back on. “I’m okay.”

Thanks for reading fiction on Substack.