Kendyl Daley - On Love and Pastries Exponentialis
- Apr 13
- 6 min read
We sit together in the park, as we often did in those early days: white legs, green grass. On my lap there is a Rubbermaid box of three dozen Portuguese pastries, the misfits unfit for sale at work. He lights a cigarette and smokes it. He tells me he is schizophrenic. With a habit of making himself comfortable, he has stretched out leisurely; a cat in a sun spot; the way he’d sprawl in other grasses in other parks; on benches; on my couch, the first time he came over. The man and the pastries are both from the market where I’ve worked for the summer, my first in the city. He is Chef and Writer and Painter (retired); a lover, and at present, a fishmonger a few merchants down from my bakery.
The sun slouches west, glazing the park in honeyed yellow sunlight. Honey settled in a cup of tea, before it meets the spoon; softly, freely, it hangs in a haze over the scene, a mirage over tarmac in July. He had this phrase, pisser sur son soleil. He has indeed just pissed over the sun of my honeyed park. This park was strategic, he later explained, its towering trees and a pond sea glass green; babies dipping cattails in the water like dutiful diapered fishermen; humans strewn about the lawn like toys. Other parks were trop austère, he said. I suppose he thought soft scenery might dull the blow of schizophrenia revelations. To me he has only flawed a flawless park, now marred by sour memories.
As we speak, Sadness makes a home of my bones again; in my leaden joints, cast in bronze and filled with mercury. There she is, in the swelling of my eyes, pitching a tent of plum-coloured eye bags. A squatter on the zygomatic bone. Here we are, two squatters on the rolling green, as he describes the rolling hills of his mental illness; good days and bad days and psychosis; why he’d never last long-term or have children or a wife. Only the first concerns me but all sadden. Like the sun his words mill over my head, but unlike the sun they hang limp between us like a wet wool sock. He cannot commit—with girls like me he opts for the strictly physical. I was going to try, he says, I thought I could be different, but I know how it will end. There are times the Earth is a snow globe and I look down on myself like a child, pudgy hands, nose glued to the orb, hot breath an ozone patch over the glass ball world. This is one of those times. Montréal in pudgy palm. I look around the park; perhaps at the geese; perhaps for hidden cameras; perhaps for a director to emerge from behind those maples over there to shout CUT, letting me in on the sick joke. But there are no cameras and no directors, only me and my pastries and the geese and the man I fancy.
I lay down in the grass and the blades brush my ears, filling the gaps between my arms, my legs, my fingers. It’s not the first time I’ve found myself at such crossroads, rich in sadness and in sweets, by some sardonic stroke of divine intervention. Years ago, I made peanut butter cookies for a boy, and in the hours between my mad baking frenzy and class the next morning, he broke my tiny heart. I never gave him his cookies (very best, they were undeserved). They idled in a Tupperware on my dresser before I ate all twelve myself. Seventh grade, thirteen. At least I’m moving up in the world; I’ve graduated from the terrors of Tupperware; I now house my sadness in Rubbermaid, premium stock, cream of the plastic crop. Though the places, names, and pastries have changed, I find myself alone again, failed pursuits and sweets by the dozen. In seven years, the number of sweets has tripled; more to eat and more to mourn. I imagine the exponential growth of the relationship between pastries, years passed, and loves lost in my life, and I plot a lousy curve on the blue-sky graph above me, like Descartes and the fly would’ve wanted. Later I’d find it can be modelled by this equation.
The general form for exponential growth is P(t) = P0 ekt.
P(t) is the value of the function at time t, where P represents the population or Portuguese pastries or peanut butter cookies.
P0 is the initial value, when t=0.
k is a constant, the growth rate.
t is time in years.
e is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately 2.718.
I will use the points (13,12) and (20, 36), referring to Age of Sadness and Number of Sweets on the X, Y axes, respectively.
Substitute (13,12) into the general equation:
12 = P0 e13k
Substitute (20, 36) into the general equation:
36 = P0 e20k
Solve for k by dividing the second equation by the first to eliminate P0:
3612 = Po e20kPo e13k
Simplify:
3 = e7k
Take the natural logarithm on both sides to solve for k:
ln (3) = 7k
k = ln (3)7
Solve for P0:
12 = P0 e13k
Substitute k = ln (3)7
12 = P0 e13ln (3)7
e13ln (3)7 = 3137
Thus:
12 = P0 3137
P0 = 123137
Substitute P0 and k back into the general exponential growth form:
P(t) = 123137eln (3)7t
Therefore, the formula for the population or Portuguese pastries or peanut butter cookies in my life,
over time t years is:
P(t) = 123137eln (3)7t
This equation is troubling news. Heaven forbid I get divorced at 55, should this pattern continue. See below.
If t=55:
P(55) = 123137eln (3)7 55
P (55) = 8748.
8748 Portuguese pastries or peanut butter cookies or whatever sweet will pair with my future sorrows. I will eat myself to death.
Still I lie, a taxidermy butterfly, stapled to the Earth; a target lady pinned to a blue-green wheel, while my knife-throwing circus-going lover takes aim and the blades brush my ears, filling the gaps between my arms, my legs, my fingers. Many knives I have dodged. This knife has left a mark. With his eyes, he seeks out bystanders: she could be schizophrenic he could be bipolar she could be autistic and on goes the list but the point is proven—people and their peculiarities. Then comes another revelation: any relationship would be sporadic and strictly physical; he knows this is the end.
Lighting another cigarette, he says I’ve broken many hearts. C’est mieux de prévenir que guérir. My grandfather, my father, we all have it. It’s in the eyes. On our first date, he asked me to tell him psychology facts. I said babies born in the winter months are more likely to be schizophrenic, too nervous to recall much of substance. I said I was born in February, to be funny. He’s born in December. It’s not so funny anymore. I wish I could take it back.
One of my (many) qualms with the age of twenty is that the men are twenty, too. Frontal lobes are lacking and egos are large and they bring me watermelon, warmed by market sun; sober they sing like a drunken Dylan, with a smile they play the blues; an adder’s tongue between their teeth they tender Italian nothings, rambling about Rococo, the Gothic and Morrice and Riopelle. They make espresso when the day is new and show how a Turk would read my fortune from the grounds in my cup; though they dump it out into an ashtray and all my future holds is dust and wet cigarette butts and I should have known then, it was over. Still, they’re sweet and it deceives. Again, I’ve been deceived. Perhaps there’s an equation for that, too; the men who have wronged me; my ability to choose them, impeccably.
Much of it is out of his hands, that I can bear—the unimaginable difficulty of mental illness, the roots far-spreading and embedded in all areas of one’s life. Other parts are his: vignettes of honey memories, since curdled in that weary cortex of mine. He might’ve spared me the museums and the melon, the sleepwalk through the grocery store, me the starry-eyed shadow over the tiles of aisle nine. He might’ve spared me the Kundera and his records, the readings of my dearest poems, the dreamless sleep in a damp basement. Most of all, he might’ve spared me the heartache—however fleeting. Sing another song, boys. This one has grown old and bitter.
The man is tired (it’s a bad day today) and he’d like to go home. I’m eager to leave too, not because I’m tired, but because I prefer to cry in private. The strawberry blonde in the snow globe cycles home, clumsily, a Rubbermaid bin of pastries between her handlebars, teary-eyed and a spine like melted candle wax. Three-dozen-and-one rejects on a bike.