Play Dates (9 page)

Yeah.
You’

going to be a better mother than I am
re

, I was think-

ing. They leave the room. I’m seething with rage and frustration.

True, nothing has changed in eighteen years. It’

my

s still all

fault.

Mrs. Hennepin folds her hands primly in her lap and looks at me, cocking her head like a spaniel. “Now,
else

is there anything

you would like to say?”

The events of the day flash like the Times Square news zip-per across my brain. “Ermm . . .” I begin tentatively, trying to keep my hands from anxiously fluttering, “I guess this might be a bad time to ask you for a character reference.”

Dear Diary:

Mommy wasn’t mad at me after all. I was afraid she would
be, because she had to stop taking the test to go come to school

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to talk to my teacher. But Mommy even let me watch a video
after we went over my homework. She said Mrs. Heinie-face
overreacted. When I asked her what “overreacted” meant, she
said it meant that Mrs. Hennepin and Mr. Kiplinger and Mr.

Mendel made too big a deal out of it and acted silly. Mommy
made me promise to tell her if Mrs. Hennepin says anything
more to me about when I asked Xander to elope. I think Xander overreacted.

After my video, Mommy brushed my hair for me 100 strokes
like her mommy did for her and Mia and like Granny Tulia’s
mommy did for her. That’s one of my most favorite things. I’m
glad Mommy wasn’t in a mean mood. I was afraid she would be
after meeting with Mrs. Hennepin and that she would punish me.

But she was like my old Mommy. She even told me a dumb
knock-knock joke.

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Doya.

Doya who?

Doya wanna hear another dumb knock-knock joke?

The world of the gainfully employed would like to welcome Claire Marsh to its ranks. I passed the sightseeing-guide test the second time around, snagged my three character references, thanks to Happy Chef and a couple of old friends, including an art history professor I’d briefly T.A.’d for until he located a willing and qualified grad student. Regina Hennepin had declined to help me out, and I regretted my moment of desperation, as it left me in a position of weakness with the old bat.

With my scores in hand I do a little homework, stopping by the Times Square visitors’ center to snag a fistful of brochures from competing sightseeing companies. One in particular jumps PLAY DATES

63

out at me: Go Native! Tours, which advertises that it hires only native New Yorkers as guides. I phone them, get an interview, and am hired on the spot. Apparently, the holiday season, which officially starts on Thanksgiving, is a peak time for tourism.

They’ll be needing extra people, so I’m in! My very first real job.

I’m delirious.

I flip open the cell phone and call Happy Chef to let him know that Go Native! was impressed by my “understated glamour.” Then I dial Mia to share the good news.

“What’s up? My hands are full of foundation.”

I’ve caught her in the middle of a gig. Well, I guess the same will be said of me, starting tomorrow. I apologize and tell her about my job.

“Great news! Gotta run, though. I’ll call you later,” she says, then hangs up.

I’m feeling so good about my very first job that I agree to take Zoë to the playground after school. Normally, I hate going there.

I find it boring because I can’t do anything except watch her. I’m way too paranoid to just sit and read a book while she plays, or to become involved in a conversation with another parent, because I’m afraid if I look away for one second, she’ll either get stolen or go
splat
like the kid in
Kramer vs. Kramer
and I’ll never forgive myself. Zoë has no idea that this is why I don’t like the playground. I think she thinks it has something to do with dirt.

I’m a lot younger than the other moms on the park benches.

In some cases we’re practically a generation apart and they rarely seem inclined to include me, which is just as well. They gather in clusters. It’s very clique-y. In the past, Zoë’s had playground dates with some of her friends; when their nannies took them, Hilda would bring Zoë, and when their moms took them, I’d go along, but I never could relax when I was keeping only half my attention on Zoë and devoting the rest of it to my own

“play date” with the other mom.

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Leslie Carroll

But today I wanted to give Zoë a treat so I bit the bullet, and here I sit, kicking back and watching her shoot down the slide for the forty-seventh time. This is not hyperbole. I’ve actually been counting.

“Mommy, will you push me?” Zoë runs over to the swings.

“I’ll be right there!” I go over to her, step behind the swing, and give it a few gentle pushes.

“Harder. I can’t go high when you push it like that.”

Reluctantly, my pushes grow a bit more aggressive.

“Nooo. Harder. I said
harder
.”

“You know, you can go as high as you want when you pump.”

I remind her how to kick her legs for maximum propulsion.

“I like it better when you do it.”

She seems a bit sullen this afternoon. “Is everything okay, Z?”

She begins to cry. “I don’t want you to go to work.”

I’m distracted for a second when a little boy I don’t know shouts “Ula!” He’s been shoved down the slide by a much bigger kid, an older boy who seems to derive great joy in sending a smaller kid crying to his nanny. Ula whips out the Kleenex and a wet towelette and immediately plies her young charge with a healthy snack (a box of raisins), while stemming the flow of tears and gently checking for any sign of bodily injury.

If this is the Osbornes’ ex-Ula, she is a dish indeed. No wonder both Robert and Nina went nuts over her in their quite dis-parate ways. But if this is now Robert Osborne’s Ula, how come she’s still a nanny? There’s a nosy part of me that’s dying to go over and chat with her.

“Mommy, are you listening to me?”

I slow down the swing and stroke Zoë’s hair. “Sweetheart, I have to go to work from now on. I’m still going to try to be with you, though, as much as I can.”

“But who’s going to pick me up from school?”

“I will, sweetie. Most of the time. And if I can’t be there, we’ll work something out with Ashley’s mommy or with April and PLAY DATES

65

May’s mommy or with the mommy of another one of your good friends. And . . . maybe even MiMi can pick you up sometimes.”

MiMi is apparently a magic bullet. “Really?” Zoë asks me, beginning to calm down.

“Really,” I promise her, speaking for my sister, in absentia.

“I want to go back on the slide, now.”

“Not until he’s decided he’s had enough. You see him?” I ask Zoë, pointing to the playground bully.

She nods. “Unh-huh.”

“Well, he just likes to be mean to other kids, and I know you want to play on the slide, but I don’t want you up there when he’s there.” This is another one of my big fears about going to the park with her. The big bullies who get away with menacing the smaller children on the equipment. There are a lot of things for which I will march willingly into battle, but when it comes to situations like this, I’d just as soon avoid confrontation. And the emergency room.

Ula is now back among the other nannies,
au pairs
, housekeepers, and otherwise non-parental caregivers. I notice they appear to be snubbing her a bit. True, she looks like a swan amid a bunch of ducks, but beauty alone shouldn’t be grounds for ostracism. Maybe they know she’s a homewrecker.

The nannies themselves are sub-clustered by geographical and ethnic points of origin. From one bench wafts the cadences of thick Irish brogues; from another, the musical lilt of the Caribbean. Other benches, too, host representatives from additional regions, both domestic and foreign. A United Nations of nannies.

One of the Irish caregivers is a nice-looking young man whose name is pronounced “Bree-an.” Brian is ending up, so I’m overhearing, in much the same predicament as my Hilda did.

Divorce spells the end of his job. His colleagues are eager for all the juicy details (do
au pairs
have to sign confidentiality agree-

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Leslie Carroll

ments?) But mostly, they want to know what effect his employers’ divorce will have on his immigration status. Brian fears getting deported.

“Aren’t you chilly?” I ask Zoë. The sky is turning dusky.

“Mommy’s a little chilly. Let’s head back so we can start your homework before dinner.”

“Okay.” Reluctantly, she begins dragging her feet toward the entrance to the park.

“C’mon, slowpoke. Wanna race?”

“Unh-unh. I’m tired. I don’t feel like running around anymore.”

“All right. But we’ve been here a long time. I want to get home before it really starts to get dark out. Okay? What do you have for homework today?”

“We have to . . . we have to . . . umm . . . we have to make a natural habitat.”

“For what?”

“We can pick. We can do fishes or we can do lions or we can do bears.”

“That’s quite a big range of habitats to pick from, Z. How about we do teddy bears and just make a model of your bed.”

“Very funny, Mommy.”

There’s always a trade-off. Or a sacrifice somewhere down the line. My Go Native! work schedule is such that I won’t be able to make it to Zoë’s class’s Halloween party, which starts at 11 A.M. on Halloween itself. Both of the Thackeray second-grade classes—and their parents—are participating, so it’s quite the event.

She’s hysterical. “You promised,” she sobs.

“I know I did, sweetie, but that’s before I got my work assignments for this week. I have to work until two thirty. They were very accommodating when I told them I need to pick you up from school every day.”

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“What’s ‘accommodating’?”

“It means that they very nicely gave me a work schedule that fits around your school day.” I start at nine thirty and work until two thirty on weekdays. Beginning the week before Thanksgiving, they’ll give me weekend tours as well. Then I’ll really have to hold Scott to his end of the bargain. I’m sick of his excuses for not being able to see Zoë on a Saturday afternoon or on Sundays.

She starts to wipe her nose with her forearm, then catches my eye and reaches for a tissue. “Can’t you call in sick on Halloween?”

“I think that might be suspicious.” She looks at me quizzically. “They just might get the funny feeling that I’m not telling them the truth. Especially since I wouldn’t be sick the day
before
Halloween.”

“So, be sick the day before.”

I chuckle at this. “Then how will I make any money to take care of us? Besides, I could get in trouble for pretending to be sick or for asking for time off just a few days after I started working. You don’t want me to get in trouble and lose my job, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Because I want you to come to my school Halloween party.” She’s refusing to wipe away her tears, opting to let them roll dramatically down her rosy cheeks.

“We’ll have a really fun Halloween together afterwards. An official Halloween with trick-or-treating and everything in the evening. You can even wear something different from what you wear to the party. You can have two costumes and dress up as whoever you like.”

“Hermione,” she sniffles. “I can just wear one of my school outfits. And we can make a red and yellow Gryffindor robe.” But she’s still not sold on the compromise. “Everybody’s parents will

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be at the party,” she insists, bursting into tears again. “And they’ll all make fun of me because my mommy isn’t there.”

“They’d better not or I’ll come beat them up,” I say, trying to get Zoë to smile. I fail.

“Come beat them up on Halloween, then.”

I don’t know what to do. I feel miserable. “Zoë, sweetie, Mommy’s about to cry, too. Let’s try to solve our problem together, okay? Like big girls.” She nods, sniffling some more.

“Should we see if Daddy can come to the class Halloween party?”

She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh.

hates

He

dressing up and cos-

tumes, remember?” We think about it for a few moments. Zoë’s taking my suggestion quite seriously her earnest little

,

tearstained face really giving the situation her full attention. I try not to let her see how intently I’m watching her. Suddenly, the dark cloud passes and she breaks into an adorable grin. “I’ve got it!” she announces gleefully.

Excel isn’t getting any easier, but I’ve thought a lot about
Mi
♥
amore
cosmetics. I blend so many colors and products anyway when I work, I might as well start my own line. And socially, I need to spread my net wider, since everyone is a potential customer. I used to turn down gigs if the pay wasn’t great or if I had to get up too early in the morning. I don’t do that these days. And I’m headed to kind of a cool one. Zoë’s class is having a Halloween party. That’s Claire’s crowd and they have bucks. The downside is that I have to spend two and a half hours face-painting forty-two second graders on a sugar high. The flipside is that their parents are encouraged to chaperone them, so it’s a prime opportunity to scope out the eligible dads. I’ve dated enough men with piercings. There, I might meet one with a port-folio instead. And there’s this, too: in my line of work, an unat-PLAY DATES

69

tached straight man is about as rare as a pink diamond. On second thought, bad analogy.

Boy, I’d forgotten how well Thackeray spends money. I guess the parents want to see their dollars at work. Right now, those bucks have been invested in blacklights, acres of faux cobwebs, and full-sized puppets of witches and ghouls. There was even a cauldron of something steaming, sending chilly wisps of smoke drifting across the classroom. I know that dry ice costs a damn fortune.