Dr. Good and Mr. Lucky — Swingers
On a weekday, the warning sign above the crosswalk would have been flashing yellow, and early in the morning and again in mid-afternoon, there would have been a uniformed guard on hand for added safety, but as it was a Saturday, they were obliged to negotiate the crossing on their own. On the other side, an asphalt pathway wended its way into a small wood of oak, hickory and beech. In the undergrowth, bits of trash could be spotted among last autumn's leaves: here, a pencil stub, a scrap of candy wrapper, a dented soda can, there, a fuzzy hair elastic, a shard of plastic ruler, a crushed juice box. They emerged finally onto the crest of a small hill, at the bottom of which sprawled a one-story elementary school, red brick throughout but, as the different style of windows attested, an original building extended by a later addition.
Booth would have chosen this school for Christine if they'd offered full-day kindergarten, but as that was not an option, they'd enrolled her elsewhere. When the weather was fine and Bones needed a break, he often packed their daughter into the SUV and brought her here to enjoy the school playground. Sometimes they shared the space with other thoughtful husbands and their children, but mostly they had the place to themselves. Now, as he and Bones approached, he could make out two little boys tearing wildly around the fenced-in area, and at the curb, a disheveled young woman loading a tote bag full of plastic toys into the rear of a hatchback. It was a promising sight.
Although it proved no easy feat, the boys had been rounded up and wrangled into their car seats by the time he and Bones reached the parking area. They exchanged nods of greeting with the woman as she drove away past them and up the hill. In her hurry, she had left the gate standing open. Booth escorted Bones in, guiding her around the open trash barrel where he knew, from experience, a platoon of yellow jackets would be foraging among the discarded drink cups and empty snack packages. On the edge of the play area, she stopped and looked around her, nodding approvingly at the numerous and well-spaced pieces of equipment on site. The play structure with its elevated walkways, climbing walls, miniature club house and chute-like slides was a recent installation, new-looking still, its primary colors cheerful and loud. The monkey bars, merry-go-round and ride-on toys showed more wear, but were well-maintained and perfectly safe. Three park benches had been ranged for the comfort of visiting adults at intervals along the perimeter, and he gestured toward the nearest in silent invitation, but, with a brief smile and shake of her head, she moved deeper into the playground, toward one of the far corners where two rows of swings hung motionless in full sun.
As one row of swings had been destined for the use of the older children, she was able to find a seat that wasn't too low to the ground for comfort. She dropped into it with a sheepish look up at him, and digging the toe of her boot into the loose sand below, set the swing barely going. He crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned a shoulder into the beam support, content to watch her glide gently back and forth. Her arms wrapped round the metal chains, she looked so adorable, he was tempted to get out his phone and snap a picture, already imagining the sensation such a shot of the celebrated Dr. Temperance Brennan would cause on Instagram, but he remembered, in time, a certain picture she possessed of him cooking buck-naked in the kitchen, and the urge died a quick death.
"Hodgins took Angela to a playground on their first date," she offered, breaking into his thoughts.
"Seriously? That's what millionaire Bug-Boy did to impress his dream girl?"
"It seemed an odd choice to me as well, but Angela reported it was the best date she'd ever been on. Apparently, they had a lot of fun."
"Squints and artists," he said, with a shake of the head, "there's just no telling with them."
"No telling them what?"
Someday he'd learn. "No telling them anything they don't want to hear," he improvised, abandoning his support and moving behind her. "Hold on to the chains."
She shot him a glance over her shoulder. "Why?"
"Don't argue for once." For a wonder, she did as she was bid. When she had the links firmly in hand, he twisted the chains together until there was no more slack. "Tuck your legs up as high as you can," he told her, and let go.
A startled cry escaped her as the swing spun rapidly around, playing the twist out, only to jerk to a sudden stop and twist back on itself, turning her in the other direction. Eventually, all the potential energy was spent, and the swing rocked side to side one last time, and was still. He had come round front to check her reaction, and was rewarded with a bright, beaming face. At this juncture, Christine would have said "Again!" but as Bones didn't, he put it to her as a question. Her widening smile was all the answer he needed.
The novelty wore off much more quickly with his wife than it ever did with their daughter. After the third time round, she was happy just to sit and sway. He was leery of taking the swing next to her, not trusting the hardware to hold his weight, but when he put the matter to the test, he found he need not have worried: neither he nor the equipment suffered any harm.
This time alone having been specifically set aside for him to share what he'd learned in therapy, he suspected she would not be satisfied with the little he had volunteered already, but he was enjoying the respite from navel-gazing and would not, he decided, be the one to bring the subject up again. Instead, he asked, "Did you have a swing set in your yard when you were a girl?"
"Hmm?" She had tilted her chin up to the sky and closed her eyes, the better to feel the sun on her face. "No, but there were swings at a nearby park. I'd forgotten until now, but that spinning brought it back to me: Max used to twist the chains like that for me, too. I'd go around so fast, the trees and grass were nothing more than a green and brown blur. It was terrifying… and exhilarating."
"I can just picture him, explaining torque, rotational velocity and angular momentum as you were being spun dizzy."
"Of course," she said, as if such behavior were completely natural. Well, maybe it should be. "How about you? Did you have your own dedicated swing set?"
"Nah, we used the public swings, too. And, they didn't have flexible plastic seats like these, either. No, sir. Those babies were old-school: planks of solid oak at least two inches thick. You could plant your feet on those seats and swing standing up, and when it got crowded, you could take another kid on your lap, and swing doubled up. But the very best thing was swinging as high up as you could get — pumping, pumping, pumping — and then at the very highest point…"
"… the apogee," she supplied.
"… the.. ah .. apogee, right, you'd let go and launch yourself in the air." He smiled to himself, reliving in memory that awesome sensation of being in flight and the awful challenge of preparing to land.
"That strikes me as a most reckless and foolhardy behavior, nearly certain to result in fractures to the tibia, fibula, ulna and radius at the very least. And, the possibility of concussion, too, cannot be ruled out. I'm astonished that the supervising adults in attendance allowed this to happen."
"It was a different era, Bones," he said, surprised to find himself feeling nostalgic.
They sat on in companionable silence, each lost in his or her own thoughts. He was remembering the enormously-tall, to him at the time, metal slide and the inventive ways they had put it to use: the daring head first, or backwards slides, the trains of interlocking bodies sliding down together, the running up the slide, agile as monkeys, the pouring of sand down from the platform when the metal got too hot. Good times.
Coming back from his reverie, he saw she had resumed sun-worshipper pose. As if she could sense his gaze, she said, "The heat feels good."
"Mmm," he agreed, leaning back to catch some rays. "It's time like these I'm glad I'm not a vampire."
She looked at him out of the corner of one eye, a slight frown creasing her forehead. "What in the world are you talking about?"
"Vampires. You know, blood-sucking creatures of the night, can't go out by day without being burnt to a crisp? What?'" he said, when she turned to stare at him as if he'd gone mad. "You can quote obscure lines from Shakespeare at me, but I can't make a pop culture reference?"
She opened her mouth to deliver a no-doubt-blistering retort, but abruptly shut it again, and leaned back, closing her eyes once more. "Tell me about Victor."