Play Dates (2 page)

“the judge only signed the decree a few weeks ago allowing me to go back to legally using my maiden name.”

“How long have you been—?” Nina looks at Zoë and stops herself, deciding that the “D” word is a dirty one to say in front of my child, who has, herself just used it in a voice loud enough to carry in Yankee Stadium.

“Memorial Day. Fitting, huh?”

Nina points at herself with a manicured talon. “Last Valentine’s Day. Can you believe it? How’s yours coping?”

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Leslie Carroll

I watch Zoë’s little fingertip caressing a pair of size 61⁄2B Steve Madden platforms despite my previous attempt at admonish-ment. “Wishing she were an adult. I think she feels really out of control of things. I try to keep her busy so she doesn’t have too much time to mope. I’m hoping all the distractions will help her get past the divorce so she can begin to move on.”

“You’re so brave,” Nina says, eyeing Zoë.

“I don’t know about
that
,” I say, trying to laugh off the pain I still feel at having been abandoned. “It’s not like I had a
choice
in the matter.”

“I mean you’re so brave not to care about children’s fashion,”

she clarifies.

So that’s why she was sizing up my little girl dawdling by the funky ladies’ shoes in her Children’s Place sportswear. Her son is wearing Ralph Lauren chinos and polo shirt. Zoë and I are clearly N.I.O.L.D. (Not In Our League, Dear).

Horrid woman
.

“Xander is acting out,” Nina confides, no longer feeling pressured to sugarcoat her son’s behavior. “He really misses having his dad around. The jerk. Robert, not Xander. In fact I’d be the happiest woman in New York if I was able to find an
au pair
who could handle him. Xander, not Robert.
Robert
did that himself quite nicely.”

I do the math and surmise why Nina is now on the prowl for a new nanny. I corral Zoë and bring her back into the children’s department, steering her to a table with various navy and black oxfords and Mary Janes. “Okay. Pick something,” I sigh. “Please.

I’m not kidding.” I turn to Nina. “If an
au pair
works for a married couple, what would you call a nanny working for a single parent? An
au seul
?” She doesn’t appear to appreciate my efforts at levity. At least I’m amusing
myself
. Anything to try to re-tain a sense of humor this afternoon.

Zoë tugs on my skirt. “They’re boring,” she complains. With a desultory motion she pushes the sample shoes around on the PLAY DATES

7

table as if they were an unwanted plate of peas. “They don’t have a style.”

They do have a style, actually. Boring. The kid happens to be right. Still . . . “They’re not supposed to be stylish, Zoë. They’re school shoes.”

“Why can’t this year be like first grade? We didn’t have to wear uniforms last year.”

“Well, The Thackeray Academy, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that by the time you get to second grade you should concentrate on your schoolwork instead of showing off.”

“Oh, is Zoë at Thackeray?” Nina asks. “Xander, blue or black.

Not
brown!” She looks at me, her face at once grim and woe-ful. “Xander’s colorblind. Like his father.” She leans over and whispers, “I just hope he never inherits Robert’s male-pattern baldness.” Notwithstanding her previous confession about Xander’s “acting out,” Nina seems displeased that in such a public place her son has demonstrated something short of sheer perfection. “Xander is transferring to Thackeray this year.

He was at Ethical Culture for his first two years, but after Robert took up with Gretl or Britta or Caressa, or whatever the heck her name was—”

Xander pokes his mom. “Ula. Her name is Ula,” he says angrily. I get the feeling the kid kind of liked Ula, too.

“Ula,” Nina repeats acidly, elongating the first syllable of the nanny’s name as though she is in extremis. “
Ula
—and left us high and dry, Xander began acting like Dennis the Menace on speed. So, I wanted to find a private school that wasn’t quite as permissive. Xander needs structure. Thackeray’s insistence on uniforms from the second grade on somewhat eased my mind.”

I vividly remember the academy’s much-vaunted “discipline.”

The notorious Marsh sisters were the scourge of many a Thackeray educator from preschool through twelfth grade. There was nothing that Mia and I thought we could get away with that we didn’t try. And for the most part, our parents found our teach-

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Leslie Carroll

ers’ exasperation to be a source of mild amusement. This was in the pre-uniform days and long before marriage and motherhood would round off most of my edges. About five years ago, when parents of scholarship kids made a huge fuss about the undue focus on brands and labels (people like Nina Osborne being Exhibit A), the Thackeray administration decided to take drastic steps to remedy the situation. Zoë has been enrolled since kindergarten, and she’s right—they don’t make the preschoolers through first graders wear uniforms. Actually, it’s more of a uniform
suggestion
, though it conjures up images of cold war fashion. Nikita Khrushchev for Kids R Us. There are a number of prescribed outfits, all in shades of blue and gray, and the kids are permitted to exercise their creativity by making their daily sartorial selections from this rather limited pool. Like Zoë said about the shoes: boring! But now I’m finding myself somehow grateful for the regulation. Now I’m a single parent.

Now I’m watching every penny.

I admit that for her first couple of years, Zoë owned more French fashions than I did. Her wardrobe tells the story of the financial state of affairs during my marriage. She wore Oilily and the Dior Baby imports. When our savings started to dwin-dle, we moved on to Shoofly and Space Kiddets for toddler togs, then to Gap Kids and Gymboree, and now it’s Daffys, Old Navy, and Children’s Place. There is no Wal-Mart in Manhattan.

And now I’m going to have to find a real job for the first time in my life. It probably seems weird for a twenty-five-year-old New York woman to be saying this, in this day and age, but straight out of high school I went from my parents’ home into marriage and pregnancy, not actually in that order. Then I attended Columbia while Scott worked from home and minded Zoë. During the dot-com boom, I didn’t need to work. Since I graduated, I’ve been in the—some believe—enviable position of full-time mommy for the past couple of years.

But what else am I good at, which, while I bring up baby, will PLAY DATES

9

bring in the bucks? I studied art history because it interested me, not giving much thought at the time to needing to use the knowledge as anything more than playing amateur museum docent to friends and family. Without a master’s degree, I can’t get a teaching job, and going to graduate school at this point is about as likely to happen as getting blasted by a comet while standing in the middle of Times Square or finding a man who won’t leave me. As Hilda the housekeeper is no longer in the picture, flexibility is key. I’ll still need to be able to collect Zoë from Thackeray every day and escort her to and from the myriad after-school activities to which she is committed, most of which, like the lion’s share of her stratospheric tuition, are now funded by her doting grandparents. Sometimes I wish they lived in the city. Their physical assistance would be as valuable to me as their generous financial aid.

I can’t help noticing that Nina is staring at me. In fact she’s been sizing me up during our entire conversation. I feel like a microbe.

“You’re so . . . so
perky
.” Funny, I’ve never felt less so in my life. “You remind me of someone,” she adds. “That actress from
Legally Blonde
.”

“Is that good?” I ask her. Her expression looks like she’s got a hair stuck on her tongue. I guess Nina’s got image issues with perky blondes. I take an educated guess at Ula’s hair color.

“I’m still trying to get used to seeing someone so . . . well, such a young mother. I had Xander when I was thirty-eight. I’d done everything I’d planned: college, grad school, total immersion in the corporate culture, golden parachute, married well—

the works—and the only thing I had left to fulfill was my biological destiny.”

Her biological destiny? I’ve never heard that one before!

“Who does she see?” Nina asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Her therapist. Xander’s isn’t working out. And I thought,

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Leslie Carroll

since Zoë was going through divorce issues, too, that you might have found someone you’re happy with. Xander’s been seeing a Freudian, and the last thing he needs to hear right now is that he’s got issues with his mother.”

How did I end up living in a world where six-year-old children routinely see psychotherapists? “We . . . we’re managing on our own,” I tell Nina. “And, to be honest, I don’t know of anyone. I’m sorry I can’t be of any help.”

She looks amazed, but elegantly covers her discomfort at having so boldly exposed her son’s emotional shortcomings to a mother with—how could it be possible—a kid who is relatively sane, or at the very least, not in need of professional counseling. She switches her focus to a stunning pair of pumps, she excuses herself, and saun-ters over to admire them. I note the designer name emblazoned in raised gold letters over the warmly lit display case. Illuminated with its own pin spot, the sample pair resembles a priceless treasure—

like something from the tomb of King Tut—in a climate-controlled, vigilantly guarded room at the Metropolitan Museum.

My mouth begins to water.
If only . . .

But not anymore. Those are trophy-wife shoes, and that’s no longer my life. Making sure Zoë’s got everything she needs is my priority. A new pair of Stuart Weitzmans can wait. Besides, when am I going to wear them? When I take Zoë to that hor-ridly overheated bikram yoga studio on Saturdays? Or ballet class on Wednesday afternoons? Or the kinder karate program she begged to try this year?

I convince Zoë to settle for a pair of navy T-straps, promising her that maybe next year I’ll allow her to wear the grown-up-looking slip-ons that she clearly prefers. I do admire the fact that she’s already developing her own sense of style. Even if it usually means that she wants to dress like a grownup. Or like her aunt Mia, who, for a woman about to turn thirty, still dresses like a rebellious teen, in precipitously high platforms, low-riders, and belly tees.

PLAY DATES

11

Tomorrow. Tomorrow Zoë will start school again and I can begin the job hunt. I’ve been unable to focus on it, what with her being home all summer, and the divorce so new, the hurt so raw for all of us. This would have been the first year she’d have gone to camp, but given the upheaval of our lives, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. My parents offered to foot the bill if Zoë really wanted to go. But I chafed at the idea of accepting any more charity from them and thought it would ease the transition into single parenthood if Zoë and I spent the summer together.

My mom and dad sent a check anyway. I insisted on it being only a loan. They didn’t want me to have to job hunt during the summer. There were too many drastic changes already. They convinced me that there’d be more time to look, and, hopefully, a better market, after Zoë went back to school.

I did take her to a couple of the municipal swimming pools—

both of which she pronounced “icky”—and I thought she might like it if we went out to Coney Island. But the long subway ride made her cranky, the amusement park overwhelmed her—too noisy—and she was scared to set foot in the ocean. We spent a few weekends at my parents’ house in Sag Harbor, where she got to play with their Irish Setter and visit a quieter beach on the Long Island Sound. I think that was the last time I’ve had the chance to exhale since early August.

We’re having to learn to cope as a twosome, Zoë and I, and it hasn’t always been easy. Maybe I should log onto Amazon and see if they sell something along the lines of
The Complete Idiot’s
Guide to Single Parenting.

Dear Diary:

This is the last good day of my life. I’m starting second grade tomorrow. My teacher, Mrs. Hennepin, is the meanest in the world.

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Leslie Carroll

Mommy had Mrs. Hennepin when SHE was in second grade and
Mrs. Hennepin hated her. There are two second-grade teachers at
school. My Aunt MiMi had the NICE second-grade teacher but
she’s not there anymore. Mrs. Hennepin is still there. Mommy
says she’s a dinosaur. There is a different nice second-grade
teacher now, but I didn’t get her. Mommy tried to get me switched
into the nice teacher’s class but Mr. Kiplinger who is the headmaster said no. He said if he did it for Mommy he’d have to do it
for everybody. Mrs. Hennepin looks like Alice in Wonderland from
my video but she is really old. She has blonde hair and wears
white hairbands a lot. I think her head would fall off like Nearly
Headless Nick if she didn’t keep it on with her hairbands.

This diary is a secret. Daddy went away and Mommy cried all
the time. She went to talk to a lady who told her to make a diary
because it would help her feel better. So I’m doing it, too. Mommy
used to not get mad at me so much. We had more time to play
when Daddy was around. We had a nice housekeeper named
Hilda. She wore blue bedroom slippers to do chores and stuff and
picked me up at school sometimes and took me to the playground.

But now we don’t have Hilda anymore so Mommy has to do everything. Mommy hates the playground so we almost never go there
anymore. It’s okay because I like to color and watch videos but I
like the playground, too. I like climbing the monkey bars and I like
the slide, except when it’s really hot outside because then it burns
my tushie.

I wish I could help Mommy. She always looks sad. I was in
first grade and then I had graduation and then Daddy moved out
of our apartment before the summer started. The place he worked
for, even though he worked at home, went out of business last
year. He got really angry because it was hard to get a new job. He
and Mommy fought a lot. Daddy yelled. He yelled “money doesn’t
grow on trees!” I have never seen money growing on trees, not even
in Central Park. There are so many people in New York, maybe
they took it all a long time ago and there’s only leaves now.