“I’d come pick you up in the morning and take you home at night,” says Judith.
“Why couldn’t Mom drive me in, since she works so close?”
“Because you wouldn’t be working at my store. You’d be working at my house.”
“You want me to babysit Lainie and Evan?” My voice squeaks. “As in, all day all week all . . . ?” The unspoken doom of
all summer
hangs like a bad smell in the heat.
“Lainie and Evan love you! You’re their favorite babysitter! And we’ve been in a crunch since Dan’s mom went back to Orlando.”
“Let me think about it.” Lainie and Evan aren’t the worst kids in the world, but I couldn’t imagine dealing with them regularly. Babysitting is a job that usually requires at least one day of recovery time.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” says Mom. “Most other summer jobs are taken by now, and last I checked, you were too young to have a driver’s license.” Thanks, Mom.
“I hear the Lotsa Tacos over in Nutley is looking to hire,” I say.
Mom snorts. I take her snort to mean there-is-no-way-in-hell-that-she-will-be-driving-me-all-the-way-out-to-Nutley. I’m not bad at interpreting Mom’s snorts.
“Why don’t you call me tonight after you’ve thought it over?” suggests Judith.
“I’ll do that,” I tell her.
I Do Not Get to Think It Over
MOM’S BOYFRIEND, ROY, used to be homeless, but for the past year or so he has lived at 711 Valentine Way with Mom and me. Mom likes the company of strays. Before Roy, there was Don the eleven-months-of-the-year-out-of-work Christmas tree dealer, and before Don came Bruno, a drummer for a band that had broken up before I was born. I have no idea what Roy was doing before he got dropped on our doorstep, but he seems happy enough about where he landed. He even cleans our house (not my room), does all the washing (not my clothes) and cooks us a hot dinner with bread crumbs every night.
I don’t have anything against bread crumbs, but occasionally I’m not in the mood for them and then they annoy me beyond anything. Same as Roy.
Tonight it is chicken cutlet marsala in bread crumbs plus a salad.
“That’s some look on your face,” says Mom. She imitates it. Roy haws with laughter.
“I apologize if my mood accurately reflects my grim destiny, spending July and August babysitting the Prior kids.”
“Gimme a break.” Mom ladles a spoon of bread-crumby sauce. “You scored. There you’ll be, out in the country, breathing fresh air instead of bleaching chemicals. Plus those kids are, what, eight and eleven? They can practically watch themselves.”
“Babysitting is more than just watching the kids.”
“That right?” asks Roy. “Like what?”
“Well,” I start, “you have to deal with all this personal stuff. There you are, in another family’s space, taking their phone messages and using their bathroom and—”
“Oh, please. Here’s a job like a hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground,” Mom interrupts, “and you’re worrying if you can break it into tens or twenties.”
I frown at Mom’s imperfect analogy, but decide against commenting on it.
“I like kids,” says Roy. “Kids say the darndest things.” Mom and I pause to smile at him. Roy requires politeness. A tiny thing like not smiling, or smiling at the wrong time, can fly him into a rage. Like once when Mom asked him to “put on the water,” meaning turn on the kettle for tea, and Roy turned on the faucet—when Mom and I started laughing, Roy went completely berserk and yanked the knob clean off the back door.
“Yeah, I like kids, too,” I answer carefully—no mocking undertone, “but I might go nuts if I have to hang out in the boonies all day. The Priors don’t even have a television. Anyhow, I’m sure there are other jobs.”
“I’m sure there aren’t,” says Mom, pointing her spoon at me, “and tomorrow when I’m at work slaving away to pay rent while you’re parked on your butt thinking over your career options, maybe the answer will become more clear.”
“And remember, there’s plenty of odd jobs around the house in the meantime.” Roy winks.
The Epic of
My Life,
helping Roy bread-crumb cutlets while Mom checks in to see if I’ve done the laundry yet, suddenly flashes before my eyes.
The answer, suddenly, becomes extremely more clear.
I Receive an Impractical E-mail, and Then a Better One
AFTER DINNER, I check to see if any messages have arrived in response to my dilemma. The two I’m expecting did.
The first is from my best friend Whitney, who is spending a glorious, glamorous summer at Star Point Tennis Camp up in Stowe, Vermont.
The second is from Sister Soledad, who taught eighth-grade English at Bishop Middle School for thirty-five years until this spring, when she left to go live at Our Ladies of the Holy Trinity Retirement Convent in Cape May. I was in her last class. She said God couldn’t have planned it better.
Reeny!
What is that a joke? Babysitting? Repulsocity. Didn’t you once tell me Lainie Prior pees her bed? I am weeping a thousand tears into my pillow for you. Guess what I got a belly ring! Mom said it was okay to get a piercing “so long as it wasn’t nose or nipple.” Ew from my own mother and it’s still sore. A bunch of us all went in and all did it together and the guy who did it was such a skeeve but once it stops hurting it’ll be so worth it.
I am getting way bored of Derrick and we’ve only been going out ten days! But there’s another guy Kyle Ganzi who plays semipro and he is turning seventeen and hottie hot hot. Whenever he walks on court kids yell “Oh My Ganzi” but in a good way. I can’t think of any news except our cabin’s got this joke going where you end everything with the words “according to the prophecy.” Kinda a have-to-be-there thing it’s hard to explain!!!
Also I switched cabins so I’m not bunking with that weird chick Darlene anymore. Did I ever tell you about her duck underpants? On the back across the butt it said Cheez ’N Quackers! Sexy! Now I’m rooming with Grace who is cool and reminds me of Britta. Did you
get a postcard yet ? She was sort of bragging about her Dad’s place
with the pool and everything but what kind of techno-bully is he to not have e-mail access!? Going on Brit’s postcard though Houston sounds kinda fun.
Anyhow I say: No job! Collect unemployment! Love ya!
—Whit
Dear Irene,
Unstructured time out in the country, a place to read and sketch and contemplate . . . what an opportunity.
Oh, who am I kidding? That’s the same junk Father Donovan fed me, and look where I landed. Farmed out to this glorified prison by the sea with nobody to complain to but six hundred squawking gulls and two hundred deaf old nuns. Irene, I am sorry your mother thinks you are bad for her business. But in your last e-mail, you had mentioned that you weren’t overly confident that you were “cut out” (excuse my pun) for the demands of her hair salon. You had mentioned wanting to work more on the research and development side. So perhaps you should think of this job as a paying sabbatical?
Right now I am reading
Love in the Time of Cholera
and Fermina Daza wears her hair in “a single thick braid with a bow at the end, which hung down her back to her waist.” Yes, another heroine braid, almost identical to Janie’s “great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume” from
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
I suppose you had better stock your salon with braided extensions. I’m not sure our modern day world is as splendidly hairy.
Sister Maria Martinez, whom I believe I’ve mentioned before, has been giving cooking classes. Today I learned how to bake a mean banana bread. The secret, apparently, is half a cup of dark rum.
With affection,
Sister Soledad
I Take Fate into My Own Hands
LATER THAT NIGHT, I call Judith.
“H’lo?”
“Judith? Did I wake you up?”
“Irene?”
“Give me a twenty percent pay hike,” I say, “and I’m yours for two months.”
“Your mom fired you,” she whispers. “You’re not in bargaining position.”
“I’ll go work at Lotsa Tacos.”
“Beth Ann would never drive you all the way to Nutley.”
“There are other jobs. Lawn work and . . . um . . .”
“Twenty percent! Irene, are my kids that awful?”
“Every mother thinks her own gosling a swan,” I quote.
There is a heavy pause.
“Fifteen percent,” whispers Judith. “But you start tomorrow, and you can’t tell Dan how much. Money’s tight.”
It’s my turn to pause.
“Do you have a TV yet?”
“We’ve always had one. It’s out in the barn.”
“You’ll need to put it back in the house. Otherwise, it’s just too unfair.”
“Fine.”
“And I’m on the clock from the minute I get in the car.”
“Okay, fine.”
There is nothing else to say, and I am all out of nerve, and so I hang up.
A Beginning
BEFORE I COULD
keep up with it, my summer had changed,
narrates my likable voice-over.
As for what it was changing into, I had a feeling that it would be an adventure.
Foreshadowing happens in
My Life-
style Epics, but never in real life. In real life, I knew exactly what my summer was changing into—unrelenting hours of playing I Spy with Lainie Prior and telling Evan for the umpteenth time to wash his muddy sneakers, feet or legs before coming indoors, while counting off the days until school started. Which would then begin a whole new countdown to the last day of school. I wonder when I can stop my countdowns? I guess not until the day I take off.
But things could be worse. Five hundred years ago, I’d be babysitting my own kids.
Judith drives a purple Hybrid, which I think is pretty cool. I don’t know many adults who drive purple, earth-friendly cars, or who, for that matter, have lucky colors. When she pulls up to the house and I open the passenger-side door, she presses a make-believe stopwatch. We smile at each other. Truce.
She smiles again when she sees my new book,
Lolita.
“How’s the hair?”
“So far Dolores Haze has warm, auburn hair, but no hairstyle—yet. And her mom wears hers up, but I don’t think she’ll be a heroine of the book. Actually, I don’t think this mom’ll be in the story much longer.”
Judith nods. She likes that I read a lot. She’s not too into hair—she told me she cuts hers herself, and it looks like it, but she’s always hopeful my reading sets a good example for her kids. It hasn’t yet.
“Lainie still plays with those
Little Women
paper dolls you drew for her,” says Judith, as if she’s guessed what I’m thinking and wants to remind me that, while her kids might be illiterate, they are appreciative. “I’m warning you, she’ll be asking you to make some more.”
“Sure.”
“And Dan dragged the TV out of the barn. The reception seems to be working if you do the ears just right. But I’ve laid down the law. One hour of computer or one hour of television per day, and that’s final.”
“Okay.”
Then we are quiet. I watch humble Valentine Way scale up into elegant Clarendon Drive, and then we get onto the highway that will deposit me into the middle of nowhere. I feel my throat constrict. If only I could wake up tomorrow and be twenty-four instead of fourteen, and no longer have to count down the days until my real life begins. A quick note to Mom and I’d jump the first plane from Newark to Los Angeles, where I’d rent a garden apartment and host weekly dinner parties, regaling my guests with my chocolate martinis and ice-pick witticisms.
Judith has been talking. I tune her back in.
“. . . because Dan and I don’t want to be too strict. But we don’t want the kids to get mush on the brain, either.” Judith turns to me, heart-to-heart, as she pulls up to the house. “You know, Irene, I’m hoping that you might use all this time to sort of nudge Lainie and Evan. Creatively, I mean.”
All this time.
Like a prison sentence. “Uh-huh.” I open the car door. “So, are they asleep?” Please, please.
“No, they’re around back with Poundcake. We just adopted him from the animal shelter. Lainie tends to hug him too hard. So watch that.”
“Yep.”
“And no ice cream in place of meals.”
“Right.”
“Also, remind Evan that if he wants to take apart any alarm clocks or radios, he has to put them back together before we come home. If you decide to go to Larkin’s Pond, use my bike, it’s out in the barn. There’s some pocket money for the Shady Shack on top of the fridge. Juice only, though. No sodas or foods with dyes.”
“Okay.”
I wave good-bye until Judith’s car is smaller than a purple jelly bean on the green, neighborless horizon. I try not to think about Whitney on the grass courts or Britta baking poolside at her dad’s bachelor pad in Houston, Texas.
The haunting soundtrack to
My Life,
a tremulous cello, almost moves me to tears.
Little Lainie
POUNDCAKE IS A thirty-pound bulldog with an overbite worse than Eleanor Roosevelt’s. He is so excited to meet me that he throws up all over the kitchen floor.
“I’ll clean it!” Evan runs cheerfully for the paper towels.
If I had known about the dog, I’d have stuck to my original raise of twenty percent.
I take the carton of soy peanut butter ice cream from the freezer while Lainie gets the bowls. Ever since I walked in the door, Lainie’s fiercely adoring eyes refuse to let go of me.
“You grew out your bangs,” she tells me. “Your hair’s almost to your shoulders.”