The Park Bench

By Kira Heisler

The falling auburn leaves of brisk November reminded Mr. Hilcox that he was far from his lavender-scented oasis. He watched the heavily sedated couple on the park bench stare into each other’s empty yearning souls. He saw the man who was infamous for fondling pigeons, grimace as the young woman allowed the tines of her fork to gently stab the carcass that resembled her $7 lunch. The anticipation for the buoyant youngster to stop rollerblading to Funkytown never ceased as the night slowly submerged him in fear and confusion. He aimlessly journeyed to his shelter that effortlessly fit into the disgruntled atmosphere of pining souls.

It was 7:45. He gaped at the electronic box that blared cries of maleficence and consumed the happy minds that were in sound slumber. Two bowls of Capt’n Crunch subdued any chance that Mr. Hilcox was gong to venture from his cocoon of a legion of tie-dyed pillows and blankets. Mr. Hilcox began to question the enigma of life while watching old reruns of Lost in Space. Dr. Zachary Smith’s baleful eyes compelled him to the dark side. He fell, bereft of any consciousness. Darkness flooded any reason left in Mr. Hilcox ’s mind. He started to run. He couldn’t breathe. He felt everyone’s darting eyes gawk at him. Everyone was a risk. Everyone could see the transparency of his aspirations. His futile attempt at life mapped out before him. He sat on the cement blocks of solace. His cobalt blue sweater morphed into a thousand throttling threads.

The flock of geese strutting before him baffled him. They were so content with uniformity and blind trust. He wanted a leader that could guide him as he followed absentmindedly.  He wanted the comfort of conformity. An ounce of stability in his life would have pacified him. Four hours escaped.

The elderly couple’s argument clouded the melancholy dusk.  Now, the air was fraught with notes of cynicism and spiteful insinuations over the altercation of whether the salad dressing was expired. He continued to romanticize dotage and his future of bickering and butterscotch candies.

A maudlin night of sidecars and black Russians consumed him. Erratic sentiments and dourness soon became innate in the persona of Mr. Hilcox. But then, he saw her. She whispered notes of desire in his ear. Her corvine nose protruded from the wan complexion that filled the black fringe dress.  Her eccentricities adorned the corners of his mind. The wires of her hair clung to his blazer. They quivered with thrill and elation. The world looked down altruistically at the couple. Days of nebulousness and exhilaration followed them. The glass panels reflected the sunrise onto their flushed skin resting on the wooden floorboard.

Rose Avifauna was a failed candle maker from Oklahoma. For some reason, the aroma of glue and burnt bean casserole did not appeal to the masses. She became a refugee of the desolate city that thrives on despair and isolation. The frigid beast of the metropolis robbed her of all ambitions. The tone of despair in her voice disrupted the oblivious content of the atmosphere. Mr. Hilcox was concerned that he was flytrap to broken souls. A sepulchral silence fell on the room. The fluorescent sun mocked their pitiful attempt at civility.

The plaid futon of Mr. Hilcox’s studio apartment began to subsume their denim outerwear.  Words of his past began to cascade from his mouth.  He was a survivor of suburban innocence. A chipping yellow house harbored nights fraught with family sitcoms and block parties. In a shelter of a delusion, Mr. Wilcox learned the lessons of idealism and elitist orientation. A seminar on righty-tidy left-loosey was only one of the many attempts at the trite parallel world where unreasoned euphoria was a reality. 

He fled to the urban monster seeking adventure and a chance at the pain of actuality. He wanted the fervent world of a struggling artist. But he was only a wanderer. He gazed at mankind and their daily struggles on planet earth. The park bench became an observatory for the bystanders. Their anxieties and fears became his only excitement. He lived vicariously through the lives of peach-flavored yogurt and their frivolous fixations. Everything passed, yet he remained on his park bench. Mr. Hilcox became a fixed point in time. He was a necessity for the contemplation of man’s complex nature.

He was lapsed in a spiral of discontent. He never fulfilled the distressing life of an artist or a dreamer. He was merely a minute imitation of a fugitive of suburbia. Rose swept his hazelnut curls and rested her head on his shoulder.  The asbestos reeked ceiling protected them from the crippling truths beyond the crimson tinted window.

The funky stench emerging from the haze of unwashed clothing and entwined bodies propelled them to the dusted road overwhelmed with advancing figures that learned the power of speech. The ivory snow saw their impurities and left them with a sense of inadequacy. After studying the creatures of the avenue, Hilcox and Avifauna reeducated themselves in the art of walking. They strode through the post-apocalyptic world of recycling bins and two for one coupons. They stared at a drained woman with a pixie hair cut. Mr. Hilcox became paralyzed as he realized she was his mother dearest. Her ruddy complexion echoed the distemper surrounding the cantankerous climate. The plastic bags of sallow faces with vacant smiles expressing gratitude began to score red lines on her wrist. As she turned from the kiosk, Mr. Hilcox appeared in the corner of her eye. She trampled him with questions and demands while hundreds of tears darted at him for making their host unhappy. Her determined hug knocked over his only shred of stability, his portable black coffee mug. May 19 of 1982, young Hilcox had fled his lavender-scented oasis. Milk cartons consumed awkward profiles only to vomit hopelessness and despair. She pressed her hand on his cheek in disbelief. Rose disguised herself in a cloud of nicotine. They sat on the park bench encircled by 20 years of nihilistic rage.

The morning of May 19, 1982 began with young Mr. Hilcox’s rigorous routine.  The smell of burnt toast followed him to senior Hilcox starting his morning harangue about the soviet threat. He returned to his room and allowed his poster of Joan Jett to spur him into a spiral of revolution.  As his little sister offered tea and crumpets of plastic orientation to Professor Cornelius Squirrel, he started to cry. Two summers prior, his brother, Tim, had entered a state of depression and anxiety.  Stimulants numbed his cries for salvation. He was found in a pool of vomit and blood. Rushed to the hospital, accompanied by tears and panic attacks, Three’s Company echoed in the background. He was revived by awkward tension and lectures on family unity during times of crisis. Tim Hilcox was a poet, but now was immured in his room, haunted by the memories of the past. He never found his path back to blind happiness. He watched as everything around him became subject to debasement and chronic disappointments. Death hung over him and gave him a tour of the world’s corruption. His mother fixated on the next social luncheon rather than his brother and his father blamed everything on the moral indecency of the future generation. Further into the shadow of death, Tim Hilcox fell. People afraid of the pains of reality could no longer surround Mr. Hilcox. He needed to escape.

As she began to inquire of his state of being, he tried to run back to the abyss of delusion. But her dogged tears pulled him back. Her incessant monotone speech produced juvenile eye-rolls and obnoxious humming. The balance of snide helpful hints and chanting mantras was crumbling. Mr. Hilcox reverted back to his 10-year-old’s realization that his mother was the reincarnation of the devil. He tried to explain his infamous pilgrimage to a new life, but every time he tried to empathize with his mother, he began to question every one of her life choices and he didn’t want to create any more family strife. 

For six minutes, the Hilcox pair sat on the park bench watching the world. Mrs. Hilcox rose and vanished into the array of streetlights. All that was left to her memory was a stretched out piece of plastic belonging to guilt and anxiety. A bewildered Rose gripped his clammy hands. Mr. Hilcox transmuted into a series of heavy pants, as the horrors of the past reemerged in the form of trepidation and self-reproach.

Every one of Rose Avifauna’s relationships has been with those suffering from mommy issues. However, as the man resembling Mr. Hilcox sat bare and stark, she refused to continue the psychoanalysis of her brief incidents with the opposite sex. She rid herself of the pseudo-intellectual prattle that umpired every minor decision of her life.

As they sat on the park bench, the lavender oasis floated off into heedless disregard. They found each other in the smog of the past. They slowly walked into a new life, filled with the beauties and wonders of truth and pain.