The Perpetual Motion Machine Read online

  Square Pizzas

  Every Thursday Skyler accompanies me to my ice skating lesson. He’s a much more advanced skater than I, as I am only six years old and can barely walk on the ice. I always begin my lessons by clutching onto the rails while the instructor holds up my tiny body. I fumble around on the wall until I find my balance. While I struggle to get through my lesson, Skyler skates along perfectly. His legs stretch out and graze the ice. But regardless of whether I learn a new technique, or even stay on my feet the entire time, I always get pizza from the snack stand after my lesson.

  The snack stand at the ice skating rink is old and dilapidated. A health inspector probably should have shut it down long ago, but I love that stand more than anything. I’m impressed by its glowing aura, the orange neon sign, the wafting smells of pizza and hot dogs and nachos. There is a small window for ordering your food and two separate lines, one that reads “Order Here” and the other “Pick Up.” The window is too tall for me, so Skyler becomes the designated lookout and shouts when the pizzas are ready. There is a large black marquee over the window that has contrasting white lettering. The snack stand has other things like pretzels, Italian ice, Coca Cola products, etc., but the only thing we are ever interested in is pizza. The pizza isn’t ordinary pizza. It’s square. It’s not Sicilian, though, just square. The edges are always crispy and burnt and there is more cheese than tomato sauce. It comes in a little cardboard box where we pile up our crusts for Mom to eat afterwards.

  The hot little pizzas cool down by the time we get to the car and we eat them on the way home. It’s warmth to us, the pizza. It may even be love.

  “Shouldn’t five-year-olds be able to lace up their own skates?” Mom asks. She has on her brown-and-white flannel fleece. It is early November in New York and the autumn chill is slowly turning into winter.

  “It’s okay,” says Jen, my instructor. “I don’t mind, really.”

  Jen kneels down and laces up my brown leather skates. Her blond ponytail sways frantically as I lick my lips at the sight of the snack stand. A little curly-headed girl is eating Italian ices and gives me an evil look while biting down on the wooden stick. I whimper and tug on Mom’s fleece, but she just pats my head and assures me I’ll get a treat after the lesson.

  Skyler watches as I tremble up onto my feet with Jen’s help. We walk over from the bench area to the rink and begin the lesson.

  “Wanna go get your skates?” Mom asks Skyler.

  “Why can’t I just play my Game Boy today?” He retaliates.

  “But you’re so good! You can play your Game Boy on the way home. I want to see you skate!”

  “Watch her skate,” Skyler says as he hears one of my fearful screams from the ice rink.

  “Sky,” she groans. “Get your skates.”

  Skyler laces up his skates. I imagine he hates that the only ones they had left were white, and they aren’t even his size. They must feel so pristine, he doesn’t want to get them dirty. Even though he ties them up as tight as he can, the leather wobbles around his ankles a bit when he tries to walk around. He is five years older than me, but he is still sort of small. He has dark brown hair, almost as dark and black as the color of his hat and gloves. He wears a big coat over a waffle-printed thermal shirt. His brown eyes stand out and the black pupils look like the little black beads in my Pretty Pretty Princess game. He takes his hands out of his gloves and walks over to Mom.

  “Can you at least hold my jacket?” he asks, presenting the jacket to her.

  “Keep that thing on!” she screeches. “It’s freezing in here. You’re not skating without it. You’re going to get sick.”

  “Ok then,” Skyler groans. “I just won’t skate. That’s fine.”

  His eyes are drawn to the one Pac Man machine that is unoccupied at the time. Mom holds the jacket out in front of him like a children’s paper snowflake project, as if she expects him to be elated with it. Skyler reluctantly loops his arms back through their holes and pulls at the collar.

  Skyler steps onto the ice. The large arena is illuminated by the daylight from windows on the roof. The ice is white with blue and red lines for hockey players and is scratched up pretty bad. His cheeks, flushed by the cold air, are the color of a faded red Lego brick found at the bottom of an old plastic bin. His small hands plop into each glove as they dangle over his fingers, the ring finger sliding awkwardly in the middle finger’s place. He rearranges the black fleece glove so that it is tightly secured, as if he is putting on his armor. Skyler looks for me on the ice. He sees all the skaters, some learning jumps with their instructors and some practicing a routine just by themselves. The afternoon is very popular for lessons and there is rarely free skating allowed.

  He finally catches sight of me. There I am, wavering on the ice holding dearly onto Jen. I’m learning how to walk backward on the ice. A skill, Skyler always told me, that he never even used when skating. But he notices that I seem to be better at walking backward than just simply standing up. Harder tasks are sometimes easier for me, and the easy things often seem impossible.

  “Over here!” shouts Mom. “Let’s see some skating!”

  Skyler does a few laps around the rink. He starts out gliding one foot in front of the other, the way he knows iceskating is supposed to look. An older man zips past him practicing a routine and startles him. He begins to skate a little faster.

  Mom motions Skyler over in the stands. He glides over to her.

  “What?” He asks Mom.

  “Why don’t you do some tricks?”

  “There’s a lot of people on the ice. I don’t want to get in anyone’s way.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You can practice and do whatever you want. No one is going to bother you.”

  “Look!” Skyler points. Jen and I skate backward past where they are standing. Jen points at Mom and I wave to her, then stumble, then smile again.

  “Come on,” Mom says and looks at Skyler. “Show me some tricks.”

  Skyler steps back onto the ice. His lips are a little chapped from the cold and he pulls up his fleece collar above them. He skates out into the middle of the rink. He balances himself on one foot with his arms out at each side. He catches sight of Mom’s smiling face and decides to continue. He does a jump in which he completes a single rotation and lands on the ice a little wobbly. Practicing this jump another four or five times, he becomes more at ease on the ice and less concerned with Mom watching him. He wants to master the jump.

  He pushes his left skate forward and the right one back, propelling him forward on the ice. He glides around the rink faster and faster. He knows that the only way he can perfectly complete the jump is if he skates really fast, which will give him enough momentum to turn in a full circle and land perfectly.

  Skyler picks up speed. Mom watches from behind the glass, eyes glued on her son.

  “Go as fast as you can!” she screams.

  The metal on Skyler’s ice skates dig into the ice. A sheer mist of frost spews out from the bottom of his skates. He stops and sees Mom standing there watching him, waving her arms around in the air. She looks so happy, but he wants to stop. I am nowhere in sight now and he thinks that my lesson might be over. He wishes that it were over so that he can step off the ice, get into the car, and play his Game Boy on the way home. He is getting tired and begins to feel the cold of the ice rink. He’s glad he put his jacket on after all.

  “Go as fast as you can!” she shouts again.

  Even though he wants to stop, he doesn’t want to disappoint Mom. He knows that if he doesn’t skate faster, she will just bug him to do it the next time I have my skating lesson. She won’t be able to forgive him. She wants to see her son do great things, amazing things, earn accomplishments, win certificates and awards, be the best. Mom wants him to keep going and he knows that it will never stop.

  His skates slice into the ice like a meat cleaver at the Riverdale Deli. He feels like an army man parachuting down from the balcony of our apartment, swift and agi
le. The rink is silent and all he hears is the swishing of his pants as his feet pass one in front of the other in a straight line toward where Mom is standing. He pictures himself on Mario’s Rainbow Road floating quickly on the ribbons of color about to reach the finish line. As he reaches his right foot forward, his feet shake because the skates are a size too big, causing the toe pick of his skate to dive into the ice. His small frame smacks right down into the ice and he hits his head, hard.

  A crowd forms around him. Skyler rolls over to his side and spits out splotches of blood onto the ice as his lip bleeds, profusely. A large gash on his forehead drips down his eyebrow and on his cheek. Tears well up in his eyes but he doesn’t cry.

  An attendant carries him out of the rink and lays him on a bench.

  “Skyler! Skyler!” Mom runs over toward him, shrieking. “This is all my fault,” she says picking up his head and examining his forehead and lip.

  “I shouldn’t have listened to you,” Skyler replies, his eyes beginning to close.

  I am standing by the snack stand, completely unaware of the events. My lesson ended a while ago and I am ready for my treat. I stand on my tippy toes and watch the snack man with black curly hair use a big wooden paddle to extract pizza from the oven. I watch him take a round metal slicer and cut the pizza into individual squares.

  “I want that one!” I whisper as the man cuts an edge piece, which contains two corners worth of crust and maximum cheese. I know Mom will like all the extra crust.

  The man puts the pizza slices under a heat lamp on display for all the customers to look at. My eyes water from looking at the pizza so long and being so close to the heat.

  “We have to leave right now,” Mom says firmly as she strides by and plucks me away from the snack stand. Skyler stumbles behind, holding an ice pack on his head.

  “But what about the square pizzas?” I whine, as I get taken farther and farther away from the snack stand.

  “It’s my fault,” Mom repeats. “It’s all my fault.”

  The three of us walk outside to the parking lot and head for Mom’s white Cadillac. I cry as I reach back to the snack stand. Skyler holds up tissues and ice packs to his bloody and bruised face, which makes me cry harder. My brother is a mess and I don’t get my pizza. I have no idea what’s going on and why. It’s so unlike our routine to leave somewhere in a rush, without all the treats, without the things we both want. I wonder if we’ll ever even come back. When something horrible happens to a family are they allowed to go back to the places where it happened? Will my brother be okay? Will my mom stop yelling? Will I ever get my square pizza again?

  “Why . . . can’t I . . . just get . . . pizza?” I cry, hyperventilating.

  “We need to get Skyler home,” Mom says, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

  I let out a scream. Mom places me in the backseat of the car and buckles my seatbelt. Skyler gets himself into the front and pulls down the mirror. His face is completely black and blue mixed with the red-crusted blood on his eyebrow and the streaks down his face. He wipes up most of the blood, but has to hold the ice pack in place so that his forehead won’t swell up.

  “How am I going to tell Dad?” Mom is frantic.

  Skyler looks out the window with his swollen eyes and sees the large building that we always pass on the way home. We were never really sure what it was for, but on the side of the building is a giant splatter painting that is blue, red, and yellow. Every time we pass it when driving, we always fight over who had painted it. “I painted it!” I would demand. “No, you’re too young to paint anything that big, I did it!” Skyler would proclaim. Then Mom would simply turn to both of us and say, “You both did it.”

  Today, only Skyler sees the painting as we drive by. Mom is too busy rehearsing how to tell Dad about disfiguring their son and I am too upset, still hollering and crying hysterically.

  Skyler turns to me in the backseat. I am crying with my head down in my purple puff coat, unable to move my arms because the coat is so big. He tries to offer me his Game Boy, but I won’t stop crying. I don’t know how to play it yet anyway. I’ve only watched him press the buttons, the faded purple A’s and B’s, the little plus sign switch, but I’m not sure how it all works and I’m not interested now. Tears splatter onto the nylon fabric as I breathe heavily, whispering incoherent cries about the pizza I didn’t get. Only he can understand.

  Escape from the Bottom

  We come to Aruba every year for Christmas. We spend fourteen days here, which seems like a lifetime, and it is. Buffet breakfast every morning. Bingo every afternoon by the pool. Hors d’oeuvres every night in the concierge lounge. I love to fill myself up with all these things. I eat strawberry ice cream in a cup, white chocolate swans float in puff pastry boats. I count paper bills from a bingo win, spend them in the game room, win a plush toy from the grab machine, do cartwheels down the hall, out of breath, get back before curfew, set the stuffed animal on the cot, brown blanket over white sheets, line up all the little guys, put them in a row, make them all look nice, count them one by one. These are the winnings, these are the treasures, this is what matters now. Tomorrow there will be more, but never enough.

  Mom is excited to lie out on the beach; she wakes up at six to claim lounge chairs, enough for our whole troop, all the families we’ve made friends with over the years. Dad goes snorkeling and scuba diving, usually with my brother, sometimes with the other dads, and enjoys Clam’s Casino or steak with us at night. Skyler likes the arcade room down by the pool and expensive cabanas. It is where all the kids go to exchange coins for moments of joy. Our parents wish he would play in the sand all day like me. I take a shovel and scoop wet sand from near the water and put it in a pail. Then I move it to the jungle gym near our lounge chairs and tiki huts and unpack it into the dry sand. I’m accomplishing something big in my mind. The dry sand needs wet sand and I’m the mechanism that supplies it. The other little kids understand the importance of this. We work all day until we get called for bingo.

  I leave the pool early to go upstairs and dry my hair before cocktail hour with all the kids and their parents. I blow dry my hair upside down like in the commercials and then fluff it up as I walk down the long hallway. The older girls tell me I’m pretty as they pet my hair and I eat sugar cookies off a dessert plate. I figure if I can get in with them I can finally get a boy to notice me. All the kids are growing up. When the older kids talk, they gather in circles and discuss plans for the evenings, plans I won’t be a part of because I’m too young. They talk about taking turns getting out of control, something about no drinking age and fake IDs, and I figure it’s something that happens once you get bored with Beanie Babies and Barbie dolls.

  The girls are teenagers now, breasts coming in and bodies fuller, more appealing. I run around in my leopard print one-piece and take a strand of hair out of my ponytail, string it beside my face and pose sexily by the jungle gym, trying to get Jake, a boy I am in love with, to notice me. He is playing Ninja Turtles and wants me to play too. I’m supposed to be April, but I’m Brittany, hand on my hip, waiting for something to happen. Jake hides behind a pillar and another boy lurks around the corner. Jake yells “Splinter’s gonna get me!” and the two chase each other in circles. I don’t have a role in this game other than to be happy when Jake, as Michelangelo, finally shoots Splinter with a water gun and wins.

  When the boys tell me I can’t be a Ninja Turtle, I suggest we try kissing and bat my eyelashes like I saw before somewhere. He grabs the other kid and they walk toward the water. I watch them walk away, little boys on the beach in baggy shorts, tiny tan shoulders, I watch them leave me.

  I walk over to Mom knowing that she will make a suggestion I don’t like, but hoping that this time it will be different and I will be allowed to do whatever I want.

  “Can I go to the arcade?” I ask. Mom is in her prime. She’s got golden hair that she pulls back with a tie-dye scrunchie. She’s surrounded by all of her friends, gossiping in a circle
underneath the tiki huts and playing Scrabble, her favorite game. She’s winning, but it’s close between her and Jake’s mom. She’ll win though, she always does.

  “No, shayna maidel. You need to stay outside during the day.”

  “But I’m bored.”

  “Just relax. This is vacation.” She puts down the word “Jo” and everybody questions it. I know it means “friend” because she told me once when we played alone in our apartment in New York. I was home sick from school and she tried to teach me the game but I didn’t understand. She helped me find the words among my row of letters.

  “Where’s Skyler?” I ask.

  “He’s with Jodi,” she says. Jodi is Janice’s daughter. Janice is my mom’s best friend. They’ve known each other forever and we’ve known their kids forever too, who are no longer really kids now I guess.

  “Go find Beth, she’s bored too!” Janice chimes in, rearranging her letters, looking for something good. “Pre-teens have it the worst.”

  I say okay, but I don’t find Beth or even try. Instead, I walk down the sidewalk path adjacent to the beach, all the way toward the lighthouse. We used to always walk as a family to the lighthouse every year, but it’s too far to go alone. I want to go though, and because it’s too far is good enough reason to want to walk somewhere alone. I only make it a few hotels over though and see a group, a kid’s club perhaps, racing tiny turtles in rectangular wooden boxes with little colored lanes set up and a finish line. You need two dollars to bet, and I don’t have any money, so I watch. The girl in charge lets me pet a baby turtle. I hold it in my hand like an Oreo cookie.