Phantom of Riverside Park by Peggy Webb

was a
certain comfort in ritual.

Chapter Five
    Thomas was making sugar cookies in the shapes
of stars, and every time he pressed the cookie cutter into the
dough he thought of Lola Mae.
    Back when they were first married, she had
done all the cooking. He didn’t know pie crust from pizza dough. If
she sent him to the store for self-rising flour he was just as
likely to come home with corn meal instead.
    Now he’s as expert in the kitchen as Julia
Child. He can tell you more about seasonings than Paul Prudhomme,
and he’s determined to perfect cookies to the point that he’ll be
elected room mother, hands down, when Nicky starts to school.
    He cut the last of the dough into star
shapes, then shoved the cookies into the oven. They would be ready
by the time he and Nicky left for the park.
    “Wait till they all get a gander at these,
Lola Mae.”
    The curtains stirred...the whisper of a
breeze, the laughter of angels, and Thomas joined in, picturing how
it would be, thinking of the delight of Nicky’s classmates, not to
mention his teacher. He imagined how she’d look, somebody settled
and comfortable, wearing sensible shoes and a dress that hid her
knees. She would be so appreciative of his cookies she’d nominate
him for room mother herself.
    “Don’t get your hopes up, Papa.”
    Elizabeth walked into the kitchen, already
dressed in her uniform for the bakery.
    “What are you all of a sudden? A mind
reader?”
    “I don’t think they select men to be room
mothers.”
    “If a woman can be a soldier, why can’t a man
be a room mother?”
    “You’ve got me there, Papa.”
    Elizabeth ran her finger around the rim of
the bowl and licked off the dough. He was glad to see her acting
more like herself. Since she went off to the Delta, she’d been a
different person - pensive and jittery. Before that check entered
their lives she was the sunniest person he’d ever seen, rolling on
the rug laughing with Nicky as if she was no more than four
herself, whistling while she dressed for work, always planning for
the future they’d have after she earned her degree.
    “We’ll move to a place in the country, Papa,
and you can have animals again,” she’d told him just last
Tuesday.
    Or was it Wednesday? Sometimes he loses track
of the days.
    “What do I need with a bunch of animals? Just
something to feed and clean up after.”
    He’d die before he’d let her know how he
missed the farm. After five years you’d think he’d get over it, but
sometimes when he wakes up in the morning he still hears the
rooster crowing and smells the pine coming through his window on
the morning breeze. Anxious to set about his plowing he hurries to
the closet to find his overalls and gets confused when all he finds
are his khakis.
    He’d never told his granddaughter all this.
She has enough to worry about without having to worry about him
getting senile. He’s not about to get in the same state his daddy
got in before they buried him: for the last six years of his life
Hank Jennings didn’t know his shirt from his shoes. He couldn’t
tell you whether it was June or December, and the last two years he
didn’t even know his own name, let alone the names of his children
and grandchildren.
    To prevent such a catastrophe from overtaking
them, Thomas keeps a little notebook under his mattress. Every
night before he goes to bed he records the day’s events, and when
he gets up in the morning, instead of going to the closet and
looking for stuff that’s not there, he slips the notebook out from
under his mattress and familiarizes
    himself with his own life.
    Lately he’d added a new twist to his routine:
when he comes into the kitchen to make coffee, he sneaks the check
out of the cookie jar and stares down at a million dollars.
Sometimes he gets giddy imagining all the possibilities, but other
times he gets as scared as if he’s looking at a rattlesnake.
    That check had changed all of them except the
boy. Thomas glanced over at the