Sleeping Out
This story is set in the 1970s.
I took to sleeping outdoors that summer, not because of the heat, but because I felt more secure there. I could watch the house and guard against intruders. Outside, at night, every little sound was magnified. No one could approach without my being aware of it.
At first, Jack thought I was sleeping outdoors because I was angry with him, although I assured him that wasn’t so. He behaved very solicitously, the way he does after we’ve had a quarrel.
The truth was I’d been feeling very anxious since early spring, when a prowler was seen in the neighborhood. People said he was harmless, but the thought that all that time someone could be out there watching us, watching the children when we didn’t know it, scared me. Looking out from inside, I could never be sure there wasn’t someone out there looking in.
To begin with, I’d set up our old tent, but I soon found that being inside the tent restricted my view. Within a few days, I gave up on it. I put my sleeping bag away and slept on a canvas cot which kept me up off the ground so the ants wouldn’t crawl on me.
I made a kind of cap out of an old flannel shirt of Jack’s and a piece of cheesecloth. It was like a beekeeper’s helmet, but soft and without a protruding brim which would have been uncomfortable lying down. I thought it might keep the mosquitoes from biting my ears. After that, I only used the tent as a place to keep bug repellent, a flashlight, a bottle of water, anything I might need. I didn’t want to risk disturbing the household by walking in and out.
At first I slept under just a thin sheet, but it sometimes slipped off, leaving a limb unprotected, and I’d wake up scratching. Because the cap was working so well, I decided to make myself a sleeping suit. I used old worn sheets. I thought they’d be cool and comfortable. When the suit was finished it resembled a toddler’s sleeper with detachable slippers and mittens. As I’d made it rather quickly and without any pattern, I must admit it had its comical aspects, a little like a clown suit, the feet and hands especially. I’d made them very large for comfort, and the elastic I used to hold them in place made frilly gathers around the ankles and wrists. Still, I was happier about the way that outfit turned out than I’d been about anything for a good long while.
Jack never complained about my sleeping out, but once, through an open window, I heard him say to Mitzie, “It can’t go on like this!”
Mitzie — everyone calls her that, even Jack, who’s her son — came for a visit not long after I’d moved outside, and she decided to stay on, although she usually visits her daughter in Oregon in mid-July.
“When the weather turns cold, she’ll come to her senses,” Mitzie said.
I felt a chill right then the way you do when a cloud suddenly obscures the sun. I felt weak and foolish, too, and a little panicky for having stupidly failed to think ahead. I began taking deep breaths, drawing the soft night air into me until I felt calm and even a little drunk. I repeated Mitzie’s remark to myself over and over, changing the inflection each time. It went on echoing in the darkness around me, but it was just words now. I knew when the time came, I’d work things out.
Not long afterward, Jack asked me, very shyly, as if we were just becoming acquainted, if we could have some friends over. He said it would be a cookout. Mitzie would keep the children occupied, and I wouldn’t have to do a thing. He wanted to ask the Lawrences and the Greens. He works with Peter and Ted.
Jean Lawrence is very sweet and pretty, and Hildy Green always makes us laugh. She says such outrageous things in that thrillingly raspy voice of hers! I was all for inviting them, but I insisted on doing my share. Everyone likes my salads. I make the dressing myself.
When Peter first caught sight of my tent he called over to Jean, who was pouring a glass of the wine they’d brought for Jack, “I suppose we’ll have to face this one day soon. Our kids will be wanting to sleep out, too!”
I was about to tell him he’d gotten it all wrong, when Hildy, who loves to tease, drawled, “Barbie and Ken face the perils of parenthood!”
That made everyone laugh. Jack, I thought, sounded a little nervous. I noticed he poured himself a second glass of wine, and I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough to go around. It turned out all right, though, because the Greens had brought wine, too.
When the steaks were ready and we were all seated around the redwood table, someone, I forget who, brought up the story of the Central Park Lady Godiva. I wasn’t surprised. It had been on TV, and that week all the newsmagazines had articles about the naked woman in the park. I think it was Ted who said they’d sunk to the level of the tabloids, and he was thinking of canceling his subscription to Newsweek. I wasn’t listening very carefully. I was thinking about the piece I’d read in the newspaper a day or two earlier. It was so vivid I could almost see what was taking place, and I remembered nearly every word.
The first report of the woman had come from officers in a patrol car. Two of New York’s finest, the article said, had endured “a merciless ribbing” from their cohorts when they called it in. I remember their names — Fred Barnett and Francis Birmeli — because they share the same initials, F.B. Heading west, they were rounding a curve just beyond the underpass when they saw her running toward them on the opposite side of the street. It was 2:40 a.m. They naturally guessed she was running from — “fleeing,” I think the article said — an assailant. They stopped to assist her, but she ran on by.
While Officer Barnett called the station house, Officer Birmeli took off in pursuit. He was within five feet of the woman when she eluded him by slipping through an opening in a hedge. The two officers searched the immediate area, calling out periodically to identify themselves, but to no avail.
The park is “like a maze there,” the paper said, and it was a very dark night. On advice from the dispatcher, they abandoned their search at 3:45 a.m., “reluctantly,” Officer Birmeli had said, “because that part of the park is nowhere for anyone to be alone at night.” He sounded kind to me.
A few evenings later, the woman had been seen near North Meadow by a cabdriver and his passenger who didn’t wish to be identified. After that, the story went on, reports of sightings had come in thick and fast. Many of them, the article said, were “undoubtedly spurious.” However, the writer concluded, as far as anyone knew, the woman was still out there and still nude.
I shuddered at that word “nude.” So often it’s followed by “body,” and then it means a woman has been found dead.
“I suppose that explains all those college boy streakers!” Hildy said sharply, bringing me back with a jolt.
“Oh, come on!” Peter said. “Women have always been exhibitionists. Who invented the striptease?”
“Some sultan, sucking on his waterpipe, no doubt!” Hildy said.
“People, people!” Jean interrupted. “It’s too nice a night to argue.”
It was getting dark, and the mosquitoes were beginning to come out. Jack suggested we move indoors, but Jean decided it was time for them to leave. I think she was cross at Peter, although she said it was because they’d promised the sitter they’d be home early.
After they left, the four of us went inside to play bridge. Jack made coffee, and I put out some cookies I’d baked that morning. I was sorry when Ted and Hildy stood up to leave around eleven. We were walking them to their car when Hildy said to me, almost in a whisper, “Is there anything wrong, sweetie?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled to show her I was fine.
That evening was the last time I heard about the woman in the park for some time.
One day — it was after Mitzie went home — I was watching television when a psychiatrist appeared on one of those morning shows. He’d just written a book. It didn’t sound very interesting to me, but it seemed a lot of people were talking about it, and that made him famous in a way.
“If the Phantom Nude were apprehended, would you be interested in examining her?” the host, a dapper little man, asked the writer.
She was always the Phantom Nude or the Park Phantom. Later they began to call her Lady Godiva, and some people thought she was horseback riding, but it wasn’t so.
“Hmm . . . ” The doctor seemed to be considering.
“I meant her state of mind, of course,” the host added, putting on a mock serious face. People in the audience laughed.
Then the doctor said very soberly, “It might be interesting.” He had a voice like Henry Kissinger’s.
“What would lead anyone to run through Central Park without a stitch on?!” the host asked. “Wouldn’t you call this a rather extreme form of exhibitionism?”
He was dancing around now, so the doctor had to turn his head to answer, and you could see where he was losing his hair in the back.
“It could be a manifestation of severe repression,” he ventured.
“Repression?!” the host exclaimed. “If only the women I dated were half so repressed!”
He winked at the camera and again people laughed.
“But seriously, doctor,” he began again, but I stopped listening. I could see then that he wasn’t serious at all.
A few days later I bought The Daily News. I know they sometimes exaggerate, but if she’d been seen recently, I thought they’d surely know it. And there it was, right on the front page:
Godiva Rides Again!
Eyewitnesses have so far failed to agree on a detailed description of Central Park’s celebrated nocturnal nude. The first report, that of Patrolman Birmeli, was of a fair-haired woman. A cab driver thought she was “more or less brunette,” and a third party, an off-duty fireman, was sure he’d seen “a naked redhead.” Patrolman Birmeli suggests the disparity may be due to light conditions at the time and the location of individual sightings. Local wags have come up with another explanation: No one looks at her head!
I didn’t finish reading the article. Instead I turned to the Roving Reporter feature on page 3. The question for that day was: “What’s the story behind the Phantom Nude?” They’d put pictures of the people who’d answered above their responses.
“She’s beat up on,” a Brooklyn housewife said. She had a thin face and dark circles under her eyes. “Some creep probably keeps her shut up somewheres. He don’t give her no clothes so she can’t go out. But she gets away sometimes. That’s why she’s always running.”
“I seen a lot of kooks in my time,” a subway guard said, “but nothing like that. Wouldn’t mind, though. Tell her to try the subway next time!”
A Manhattan accountant, the only man wearing a suit and tie, said, “It’s a publicity stunt, pure and simple! A major motion picture studio’s major bomb, no doubt. So they ballyhoo it with a naked woman running through Central Park, and all the media pick up on it. They’ve probably got a trailer stashed somewhere for her to change in.”
“I don’t know why she does it,” a stenographer said, “but I pray for her to come to her senses. She’s shaming all women. Read what God says in the Bible.”
I felt ashamed myself, reading all this. No one seemed to understand, and only the housewife seemed to care.
It went on like that for the rest of the summer. Every week or so she’d be seen somewhere in the park and there’d be a flurry of stories, then nothing. The silences made me anxious. I was always afraid one of them would end in her being apprehended.
In the middle of October, when there’d been no sign of her since Labor Day, one headline asked, “Has the Phantom Nude flown south for the winter?”
After that, there was nothing.
When it got to be November, I told myself everything was alright. I was sleeping indoors again, though not because of the cold. Except for snow, I could have managed very well with a comforter. Mitzie had complained that my sleeping out reflected poorly on Jack, but I didn’t see how that could be. Even Dr. Carr said I shouldn’t worry about that. The doctor talked to me about stress a lot. She was so nice I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d never felt so free.
It was the children’s constant teasing that brought me in at last. They just couldn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to sleep out, too.
I never heard another thing about the woman in the park after that fall. We moved away from Jersey soon after, and I didn’t know what to expect from the papers in our new hometown. I kept looking through them anyway. Occasionally there were Central Park stories, most often about concerts or plays. Over the years some awful things happened there, too, but never to her. I’m sure of that, just as I’m sure she took off her clothes and ran because it was what she had to do. I only wish that back then, when all those mean and silly things were being said, I’d found a way to tell her that someone understood.
