Playground: A Novel

Todd describes life with dementia. He feels his personality changing and worries that he’s losing his ability to think abstractly.

Rafi remembers little about the time after the orange-coat incident and his parents’ separation except for his teacher’s astonishment at his reading talents. He grew up in a poor neighborhood, but his father, Donald, was determined for his son to excel at education. Thus, he drilled Rafi from a young age on how to read books far too advanced for him. Donald felt humiliated and mistreated by the world because of his race. Rafi became the vehicle for Donald’s revenge against white America, teaching Rafi to be “faster, stronger, and shrewder, too, just to get by” (64). Rafi struggled with sports, so Donald focused his tutelage on reading. Rafi’s intense education and “lack of manliness” made him a target for bullying and mockery (69).

After he skipped ahead a grade, his mother accused him of failing on purpose to avoid attention, not realizing that Rafi needed glasses. When he tried glasses for the first time, “all was light” (70). His father’s public behavior embarrassed him, his grandmother (who had alcohol use disorder) chastised him, and he was terrified when his teacher recommended that he attend a magnet school called Green Classical. He’d get a scholarship, the teacher said, since “a smart black boy who can read like Rafi will be gold to them” (74). His mother, a bus driver, wanted the best for him, so Rafi went to the school in the white neighborhood his father warned him about.

Rafi struggled to settle at Green Classical until he discovered the library. He commuted the long distance to his new school while his younger sister, Sondra (‘Dra), attended the neighborhood school. When Rafi wasn’t in school, he bonded with his sister. They were close, especially since their mother brought home a man Rafi referred to as Moody Boyfriend. Inspired by family rivalry, Donald enrolled Rafi in the prestigious Saint Ignatius College Prep school, sacrificing his own well-being for Rafi to attend the Jesuit school. When Rafi’s mother told Moody Boyfriend about Rafi’s acceptance there, he didn’t understand the reasoning. ‘Dra confronted Moody Boyfriend, accusing him of being too unintelligent “to recognize the smartest person [he’ll] ever meet” (84). She ran out of the apartment and, as Moody Boyfriend chased her, fell down the stairs. She died because of the accident. At that moment, Rafi chose “to live in the truth forever” (84).

Todd recalls his first year in Saint Ignatius, where he noticed Rafi Young for the first time. Rafi’s “solitary stoicism” made him stand out. In their sophomore year, Rafi won the Keane Fellowship. Todd’s father funded the fellowship, so Todd felt compelled to congratulate Rafi in person. Through their conversation, Todd introduced Rafi to chess. Todd’s competitive father had drilled him in chess; Rafi, who had never played, felt compelled to learn the game to beat Todd. He studied chess intensely and, after Todd easily beat him, insisted that they continue playing. He told Todd never to “patronize [him].” Todd cared only about chess and computer programming, but Rafi became a worthy opponent fast. As Todd set up a burgeoning software business (with his father’s help), he played chess after school with Rafi. Todd admired the logic of the game, but Rafi admired the drama, referring to the game as “an epic work in progress” (92). To Todd, recounting these memories feels like talking about characters in a novel that he hardly remembers.

Evelyne grew up learning to dive alongside her father. She refused to be hindered by “the self-appointed male authorities” who ran the diving and oceanography worlds (94). When she submitted field notes to an academic journal, she signed her name E. Beaulieu, allowing the editors to believe that her father wrote them. The notes were published, vindicating the young Evelyne’s belief in the need for camouflage. She knew that she must dedicate her life to diving, so she applied for (and was accepted to) Duke University in the US in 1953. Though surrounded by men, she quickly adapted to the new environment. In class, she wasn’t afraid to challenge male professors. For her final project, she was paired with a quiet young man named Bart Mannis. Their friendly rapport was “free from rivalry or expectation” (98). Together, they studied a stretch of beach. As they drove home in Bart’s car, Evelyne felt “some shift toward intimacy” (100), which she didn’t expect. She shared with him an old French-Canadian idiom that she often repeated: “Put on your little beanie cap and don’t release the potato” (101). Bart found this quite funny.

In her last semester at Duke, Evelyne applied to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography diving program. Her application was impressive, but she was rejected. Furious, she demanded an interview with the application panel. For the 20 minute interview, she drove across the country. Bart agreed to take her, and they spent 72 hours manically driving to California. When Evelyne sat for her interview, the Dean confessed that he assumed she was “lying” on her application. However, her passion impressed him, and he made a counteroffer: He’d admit her to next year’s program if she proved herself by serving aboard a research dive boat for several months in the Coral Triangle. Evelyne immediately accepted.

As she shared the news with Bart, she realized that he was in love with her. She had to leave soon for the expedition, but all her possessions were still in North Carolina, and a woman’s presence on an all-male expedition would be controversial, so she suggested that they get married. Bart accepted. The marriage didn’t dull the controversy, but Evelyne handled journalists’ questions via robust, direct defense of her credentials. Onboard the boat, she was treated as “one of the gang” (111). She wrote to Bart, though he couldn’t respond since the ship was often on the move. When the expedition ended, she returned to his “long-deferred passion” but struggled to adjust to life on land. She immediately accepted an offer to join the next expedition, assuring Bart that she wouldn’t be away long. Despite his threat to leave her, Bart knew that he couldn’t leave. Their life settled into a pattern: Evelyne left on diving expeditions, and Bart remained at home, working on his academic career.

On Maketa, the elderly Evelyne dives again with the manta rays. She’s accompanied by Wai Temauri, a local guide, and she defies his instructions to not dive too deep. Evelyne is amazed by Wai’s ability to read the ocean. He’s “the best human navigator in the world” (121), she says. Wai’s daughter Kinipela often accompanies them. Evelyne teaches her about oceanography, and she’s as enraptured with the ocean as Evelyne was at a young age. When Wai pilots the boat back to Makatea, three young boys meet them on the pier and share the news that Americans are coming to Makatea.

Todd recounts his memories of his burgeoning friendship with Rafi. They shared a precocious intelligence and a disruptive, tragic family background. Rafi loved literature with a passion that Todd never quite shared, as he focused more on writing software programs and games that he then sold. Even as a school-going teen in 1986, he began a business. After a summer vacation in which Rafi expanded his reading, he came across the game of Go. The ancient game, Rafi told Todd, is infinitely more complex and strategic than chess. They became obsessed with the game and they “played a thousand matches that year alone” (131).

Rafi graduated with a doctorate in educational psychology, yet he’s an assistant schoolteacher on Makatea. Ina watches him with their two children and thinks about her own childhood. Shaking her from her thoughts, the schoolteacher, a local woman, asks why “[Ina’s] people are trying to take over” (133). Ina is shocked to be associated with the Americans (and their promises to use Makatea to build a floating city). Their “seasteading” project intends to escape the regulation and limitations of US society. The conversation unsettles Ina, who returns home to work on her art project. Using the bundle of plastic taken from inside the dead gull, she allows the materials to guide her in constructing something that she doesn’t yet understand. Later, she talks to Rafi, who prays that nothing happens to the beautiful island where they have made a home.