Worlds Apart (5 page)
Of
Limitations
One: The Park
My name is Langston
Frolley
. Or at least, that’s what I think my name is. I reside in a park in a small Massachusetts town called
Williver
, which is situated at the exact midpoint of the state. From what I understand, Massachusetts is part of a greater region called the United States of America, but despite that fact and the knowledge that there are places out there called Delaware, Missouri, Mexico and Cleveland, I’m not sure I entirely comprehend what this means. I do know that Robertson Park is the name of my home, dedicated to the memory of an Earl F. Robertson, but of him I know nothing, even though he and I have shared memorial quarters for well over a century now.
I am a statue. And I only
think
my name is Langston
Frolley
because over the last hundred-plus years, enough people have read aloud the inscription at my base to impress upon me that this is who I
am
. I may not be the
original
Langston
Frolley
, but he is whom I represent on a permanent basis, so it might as well be
my
name, too.
A young boy named Jonathan had been the first to read this inscription to me. Or rather, he was the first person to whom I’d actually listened, since I’m sure that those proud words had been read aloud many times before, not to mention at the ceremony that must have taken place when I was installed here in Earl F. Robertson’s park. I don’t remember being brought here. I don’t have even the slightest recollection of having been anywhere before this, either. I wouldn’t have thought that a statue could suffer through what people call infancy, but I also cannot recall my earliest years in the park: my memories begin just a bit before Jonathan’s appearance.
I’d first taken notice of Jonathan when he was a toddler, a full one and a half years before he so carefully stumbled his way through the words that even now were my sole information as to who I, or rather, whom Langston
Frolley
, was. As a rambunctious three-year-old, Jonathan had drawn my attention by climbing, and then tumbling out of, a gnarled oak tree that had once hulked over a squat iron bench thirty feet directly in front of me.
Jonathan’s governess had momentarily turned her back on him to converse with a tall gentleman in a top hat. Jonathan had taken advantage of this to clamber atop the bench and ascend from there onto the bole of the oak. He’d climbed just a few feet higher, maybe a branch or two, and had then shrunk back into the leaves and peered downwards, obviously intending to surprise the governess with his light-footed agility.
Indeed, the governess had noticed her ward’s disappearance within a few seconds, and after a minute or two of frantically charging back and forth before me, her cries of “Jonathan!” growing more distraught by the furious footstep, Jonathan had emitted a single “
Oo
hoo
!” from the tree. She’d whirled
about,
her long black skirt stirring up eddies of agitated leaves, and placed her hands on her hips as she glared in the direction of the empty bench.
“JONATHAN!” she’d hollered.
“
Oo
hoo
!” came singing back.
I watched as her head inclined to discern the gleeful grin on Jonathan’s features.
And then the governess shrieked, so startling a shriek that an instant later, Jonathan swiftly fell from the tree, though thankfully onto the thin grass at its base instead of atop the far less pliant iron bench.
If I’d had the capability, I probably would have fallen off my perch as well at that scream from the never-again-seen governess, but I couldn’t. So I didn’t. I merely looked on as she grasped the scared, crying little boy’s arm, and unsympathetically yanked him to his feet before marching him in the direction of the Long Street gates.
Robertson Park is bounded by two streets and two
avenues,
Long and Front being the names of the streets, and
Williver
and Wellesley the avenues. The park is a perfect square, with a high stone-and-wrought-iron wall surrounding it. In the exact center of each side (I can only see three of these, but assume that the fourth wall is similarly constructed), there is an ornate pair of gates that are opened promptly at seven o’clock in the morning and closed at nine o’clock in the evening. I am at the very center of the park in the middle of a small paved courtyard. (
Which would place me at the
almost
exact midpoint of the state of Massachusetts, if what I’ve gleaned over the years about the town of
Williver
is correct.
)
Aside from knowing absolutely nothing about Earl F. Robertson, I also don’t have the slightest clue as to whether or not he has a memorial of some sort in the park – or if naming the park after him had been considered enough of an appreciation for whatever good deed it was he had once done.
As for
my
good deeds – as I’ve already stated – I only know what is written on my inscription, those few grandiose words that Jonathan took nearly five minutes to read, eighteen months after I’d watched him fall out of the oak tree.
“Lang-tons
Fol-ley
,” he had enounced rather cautiously. If I could have smiled, I would have. I knew my name already. I knew that wasn’t it. Jonathan’s latest governess (he ran through nine or so between the raucous ages of two and twelve) corrected him, and then he began again: “Lang-
ston
Frol
-ley
.
Lang-
ston
Fol-rey
.
Langston
Frolley
!”
“Yes. Exactly,” the governess replied, a mite dourly considering that this was a five-year-old actually reading words here. I’d been a few years older
than five myself
back then, and I
still
can’t read today!
Jonathan was garbed in a navy blue sailor suit that morning, including a yacht cap and a silver whistle on a lanyard, with which he kept toying as he eked out the syllables of my inscription.
“Call-o-
nell
of the…”
“Kernel,” corrected the governess.
“But it’s c-o-l-o-n-e-l.”
“I know.
Kernel.
That’s how it’s pronounced.”
Jonathan began once more. “Langston
Frolley
. Colonel of the three four…”
“Thirty-fourth.”
“Thirty-fourth
reggimen
of…”
“Regiment.”
“
Reg-i-ment
of Massachusetts.”
I was proud; he’d needed no help at all with the tongue twister of a state in which we both resided.
And Jonathan went on. There were some bits about ‘bravery in action’ and ‘cheerful amid privation,’ whatever
that
meant, and then the governess somberly intoned the following: “He lived from 1821 until 1897, Jonathan. Can you tell me how many years ago that latter date is?”
I tried to beam helpful thoughts in Jonathan’s direction, but this didn’t accomplish much – primarily because I doubted that I had the capability of achieving this, and secondarily because I didn’t at all understand how to figure the problem myself.
“Eleven years!” Jonathan exclaimed after a minute.
“Very good, young man,” the governess replied, her words of pleasure exhibiting a bare minimum of pleasure in their presentation.
I watched as Jonathan grew up. I anticipated his visits to Robertson Park with much impatience, and took extraordinary delight in observing his steady maturity. Other than Dahlia, I’d rarely developed a fondness for anyone so much as I did for that little boy who had fallen out of a tree and then remained nearby until he was a very, very old man. Why he hadn’t left
Williver
, why he hadn’t ever moved away from the neighborhood in which he’d grown up were not questions that concerned me. Wars came and went in the outside world, even beyond the borders of the imponderably large behemoth called the United States of America, but Jonathan steadfastly remained in his hometown, too young or too old to go off and demonstrate his bravery in action or cheerfulness amid privation. Other young
Williver
men turned eighteen and briskly took off, headed to college or jobs or the armed services or states with shorter names that were more abundant with opportunity. Not Jonathan: he stayed.
He met a young woman named Petunia; the two of them took leisurely walks together along the winding paths of Robertson Park. Jonathan did dearly love his Petunia – so much so that when she gave birth to first a girl, and then another girl, and then another and another, they named each one after a different flower in honor of their mother. Lily, Rose, Iris and Marguerite all grew up coming to Robertson Park with their own governesses, and I watched with warm interest as they all became adults as well.
Dahlia was the daughter of Marguerite, and was Jonathan’s youngest grandchild. She had entered the world just as Jonathan was beginning to slow down, and it was perhaps because of this, that instead of a governess (or a nanny as they were starting to be called then), it was Jonathan who took little Dahlia to Robertson Park in the middle of the morning, Jonathan who watched her as she played among the trees and the flowers and the raked piles of leaves that must have been so irresistibly appealing to such a precocious child.
I watched Dahlia, too. And at one point, many, many years later, I actually fancied myself in love with her. Not that a statue could truly know what love was, but it did seem to be a subject of which
people
never tired!
Seated on benches, standing in pairs, walking about while agitated motions afflicted hands, arms and demeanors, love provided an endless wealth of conversational fodder within Robertson Park.
Politics, business, what was occurring in the outside world – these issues came and went, with consistently new scenarios, a constantly revolving cast of players. The talk about love always remained the same, only with different protagonists involved.
Or as was more likely, antagonists.
It was as steady a dietary staple for confabulation as that
slumbrous
old standby, the weather.
“Langston
Frolley
! What kind of a name is that, Grandfather?” Dahlia had brightly asked when she was about seven. I’d looked down at her, so cute and earnest in a short checked skirt and a fluffy white blouse – if I’d truly loved Dahlia as an adult, if I’d managed to experience something even remotely similar to what men call love, it began when she was still a child, it began when she started to say hello to me.
“I’m not sure, honey,” Jonathan responded.
“Maybe Scottish?
English?
His last name might have been spelled differently before he came to this country, and then some immigration officer mangled it. If they
had
immigration officers back then, that is.”
Dahlia looked askance at her grandfather. Even
I
had known that this wasn’t what she’d meant! “I mean, it’s a
silly
name, Grandfather. It’s funny!” she stated seriously. “What kind of name is that for a man? Why would they name this statue ‘Langston
Frolley
?
’”
AHA!
I would have crowed if I’d been blessed with the gift of voice. ‘Why would they name this
statue
Langston
Frolley
!
’ Finally, after umpteen years, someone who confirmed that my name was indeed my name! And I wasn’t offended in the least by what others would have considered a slur against their appellation. If anything, I wholeheartedly
agreed
with Dahlia – it
was
a silly name! It
was
funny! I had overheard many hundreds of last names being tossed about in conversations, and not once had anyone thrown in a
Frolley
. And as for Langston, it was hardly a ubiquitous first name! Robert, Charles, David, Daniel, Steven and all of their companions, not to mention the truncated versions of these standard names, had strolled past me for decades, tens of thousands of them. But not one Langston! Not one
Frolley
! Dahlia was right. How could I hold her guileless comments against her?
“Why don’t you ask him about it?” Jonathan answered, gesturing in my direction.
“Oh, you’re silly too!” Dahlia chortled. “He can’t talk!”
But then she suddenly looked up and directly at me. “Hello, Langston
Frolley
!” she called. “Will you tell me about your name?”
I would have frozen at this brazen effort at communication with me, but I was already completely immobile.
Dahlia continued to look up at me, smiling and innocent and playful. And I looked down at her, experiencing the first throes of something entirely new to me, something strange and distinctive and quite wonderful.
I took in the expression on Jonathan’s face as well: he was bemused as he held his beloved granddaughter’s hand. And as he gazed up at me, I wondered what he was thinking as he considered his old friend Langston. Did he remember his careful oration of my inscription so many years before? Did he recall singing “
Oo
hoo
” from just across the courtyard as I impassively looked on? And come to think of it, could he bring to mind the annoyed visage of that long-ago governess who had so efficiently whisked him away after he’d tumbled out of the oak tree?
“He didn’t answer, Grandfather,” Dahlia somberly announced, breaking into my reverie.
“No. But you never know – he might have heard you,” Jonathan said kindly, taking his eyes off of me as the pair moved leisurely on.
And from that day forth, Dahlia never once failed to cheerfully call, “Hello, Langston
Frolley
!” as she ran by, or strode by, or bicycled by, or was escorted by. And if I’d looked forward to seeing her grandfather in days of old, when he and I had both been wet behind the ears, it was nothing as compared to how much I yearned for the presence of young Dahlia.
Yes, yearned. As odd an emotion as that may seem for a statue to experience, I spent
years
yearning for Dahlia. She was perpetually delightful, unchangingly sweet. While the world around her grew unkempt with scraggly hair and angry protests and hideous clothing that did all but unmake the man, Dahlia remained herself. Not aloof from all else, for she was always surrounded by friends, besieged by admirers from the minute she physically surmounted her girlhood, but unaffected by the angst of the times. Her personality defied what had soured, swept up, or “freed” so many others.
“Hello, Langston
Frolley
!” she would cry in the morning, swinging by with a pair of teenage girlfriends.
“Hello, Langston
Frolley
!” she’d sing out as she scooted past in the evening, on her way toward someplace that held more interest for a girl of that age than Earl F. Robertson Park.
“Hello, Langston
Frolley
!” she would call out with a smile as she ambled through the park on a Saturday afternoon with one of a string of earnest young beaus, earnest because they probably felt that this was the best means of making a good impression on the wonderful, splendid, beautiful Dahlia whom I so adored.