Play Dates (5 page)

And I feel gypped. “This is your idea of getting me out of the house?” I ask Mia. I’m mighty cranky.

Defensively, she puts up her hands. “How was I to know?” she says. “I’m just as pissed off as you are. I thought tour guides had to be licensed.”

“Maybe she crammed for the test and after she passed, she just forgot most of it,” Gayle volunteers, peering into her empty thermos. “I’m that way with math. They taught me a bunch of stuff in school that all sounds like a foreign language to me now.

Algebra? Forget it! Co-sign is what you do to a bank check.”

Mia giggles. Mia rarely
giggles
. It must be the tequila. “All right, you two,” she says, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll find out if Happy Chef is giving one of his Chinatown tours before Gayle goes back to Houston. That’ll show you what a
good
sightseeing trip can be!”

Happy Chef is Mia’s “requisite gay best friend,” as she likes to put it. He’s a gourmet chef, a “master baker” (more giggles) and a fully credentialed New York City sightseeing guide. Before I PLAY DATES

29

dash up to West End Avenue to fetch my daughter from the Silver-Katzes, Mia phones HC and learns that he’d be happy (of course—he’s the Happy Chef) to add us to his roster for the following afternoon.

When I come to collect Zoë, I am greeted by a red-faced, puffy-lipped Tennyson Silver-Katz, her pugnacious little sister, and their mom, who reminds me—twice—that it’ll be payback time at Wednesday’s ballet lesson.

Zoë makes me a present of the little bud vase she’s made out of clay and decorated in her art class at school. She insists I buy a flower for it right away, so we stop at a Korean deli on the way home, where she becomes frustrated that all the single blooms are long-stemmed red roses. She wants hot pink. A ger-bera daisy meets her stringent criterion, so I buy the pre-wrapped bunch of three and we return home, playing Lines and Squares, a game I taught her from one of A. A. Milne’s volumes of poetry for kids.

At dinner, Zoë and I discuss our respective days. Mia and I grew up doing that. In the Marsh household, we all went around the table sharing with one another what we did that day.

You see, “Fine,” was an unacceptable answer to “How was your day?” No monosyllabic responses for the Marshes, unfortunately for Mia. With a dad who’s a poet laureate, iambic pentameter was more like it.

When Mia and I didn’t want our parents to know what we’d been up to, we became very adept at making things up. We invented a secret signal, which would indicate that we were about to tell a straight-faced whopper, but as we grew older, we discovered that blackmail was a very useful tool. When sibling rivalry was in its fullest swing, and we couldn’t even trust each other, we would just lie outright and neither of us would know whether it was true or not. Our parents, idealists that they were, insisted on an environment where the channels of communication were open and free; but honestly, would Mia really admit

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that after receiving a particularly miserable math grade she’d taken a nip of Sake from the bottle she kept hidden in her high-school locker? Would I dare share that I’d cut gym for the third time in two weeks to make out in the deserted science shed on the roof with tall, dark and handsome Neil Forlani, the first boy in my class to shave? I knew that science shed like I knew my own name. Better than I ever knew science, that’s for sure.

Of course there came a time when Mia and I began to wonder if our parents invented tales from time to time as well.

Tonight, Zoë was going first. I used to encourage her to go first all the time, saying the youngest had to go first, (which is how we did it when I was growing up), but she decided that wasn’t fair (Why didn’t I ever think of that?), so now we take turns.

“Mrs. Hairpin gave me a note for you,” she tells me, then jumps up from the table to hunt for it at the bottom of her yellow knapsack. “You’re gonna have to be class parent sometimes.

You get assigned it. Everybody has to.” She thrusts the note into my hands.

I open the envelope to read a form letter. It could have been worse. There could be a personal note written at the bottom like
my
mom used to get from Mrs. “Hairpin.” There was always some sort of second-grade infraction of which I was invariably guilty. Talking while on line for the cafeteria. Whispering in class. Passing notes during math. Giggling. Existing.

I sigh, relieved. “So are you getting along any better with Mrs.

Hennepin?” I resist using one of the students’ nicknames aloud, figuring I’d be setting a bad example. When I was in her class, the woman had been called “Mrs. Henny Penny,” “Mrs. Hairpin,”

“Mrs. Hatpin,” “Mrs. Henne-face”—and kids who knew about turtles called her “Mrs. Terrapin”—though nothing
too
awful could really be done with her last name. At least we hadn’t thought of it yet. Not so for poor Mrs. Lipschitz in fourth grade.

And Mr. Dong, who taught chemistry in the Upper School.

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31

“She still hates me.” Zoë shakes her head emphatically. “And yesterday she called me
Claire
by mistake.” I laugh. “It’s
not
funny!” Zoë insists, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. “And she doesn’t want me to make my
Z
s the way you showed me. In script. She wants me to print them.”

I take a deep breath. “Why?”

“Because she says we’re not supposed to start learning script until the spring. But I can write script
already
.”

“Tell you what,” I say, “we’ll keep practicing script here at home.”

“But I want to do it in
school
.” Her eyes brim with tears. “And Mrs. Heinie-face won’t
let
me.”

Silently, I award her cleverness points for “Heinie-face.”

Why didn’t we ever think of that one back in my day? It’s so obvious! But back to the business at hand. How dare this woman hold my daughter back? For some reason most of the parents have always adored her, so Mrs. Hennepin will un-doubtedly remain in her second-grade classroom until the day she suffers an embolism at the blackboard. “Okay, then,”

I tell Zoë, “go ahead, write script in school. And you know what?”

“What?” she sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

I give her a dirty look and she picks up her napkin, cleans her hand, and wipes her nose properly. “This is what. I’ll deal with Mrs. Hei—your teacher, if she sends another note.”

My daughter beams. A gap-toothed smile that melts my heart. She’s proud of herself for getting her way. For being ahead of the class. For feeling very grown-up. “And how was
your
day?” she asks in perfect imitation of my own singsong de-livery of The Question.

“Well, I went on a tour of New York with your Aunt MiMi and her friend Gayle.”

I provide a few more details, omitting the tequila, which is

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now no more than a memory, and Zoë scrunches up her face.

“Why did you do
that
?” she says, as though I am a total idiot.

“You
live
here.” I explain that Gayle doesn’t live here, she lives far away, and MiMi thought it would be fun if I joined them on the sightseeing tour. I can tell from her expression that Zoë is not quite satisfied with my answer. “Then why didn’t you and MiMi give her the tour? Why did you have to get on a big yellow bus with a stranger giving it?”

She’s got a point. So I tell her that tomorrow MiMi and I will be taking Gayle to Chinatown on a walking trip with MiMi’s friend Happy Chef. This is a bad move. Practically catastrophic.

Zoë bursts into spontaneous—and spectacularly loud—sobs, as though she’d left her favorite toy (Baa, a cuddly lamb, now significantly less woolly than he was when my parents gave it to her for her first birthday) on a subway.

“What’s the matter, honey?” I reach out to stroke her hand, but she dramatically yanks it away, placing it in her lap.

“I want to go!” More wailing. The words themselves are a slurred mess of tears and fury and betrayal.

I try gentle pragmatism. “You’ll be in school, sweetie.”

“No!” Zoë repeats her demand. “And I don’t
want
to go to school. I
hate
Mrs. Hennepin. And I already know script!”

I didn’t realize she’d find such a convenient excuse for her cursive precocity so quickly. I should have known. Mia and had I tried similar tactics whenever possible. Now come the attempts to reason with a six-year-old; that there are more things to learn in second grade besides the ability to make curly letters.

She’s worked herself up to full-fledged hysteria. “You. Never.

Take. Me. Anywhere,” she sobs, each word choked with torment.

“Zoë, you know that’s not true,” I soothe, then launch into a litany of her after-school and weekend activities. I do nothing
but
take her places. Ivy League pre-med students have a lighter program.

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33

“But. I. Want. To. Go. With. You.
Tomorrow
!” she wails, a tacit concordance that Mommy is right, at least on some level. She hurls a Belgian baby carrot as far as she can toss it. It bounces off the wall opposite the dinette table and lands on the kitchen counter.

“All right, that’s it!” I take her by the arm and lift her off the chair. “In your room! Now!”

“Noooooooooooooo.” She’s struggling to release my grip.

“Time out, Zoë. We do not throw food.” I manage to get her into her bedroom amid a sea of protests.

“I want to watch Ariel,” she whimpers.

“No. No video tonight.”

The bawling increases. “But. I. Want. To.”

“Tough. Do you have homework from Mrs. Hennepin?”

She nods and wipes her sniffles away with a bare arm. I hand her a Kleenex. “Ladies use tissues,” I say, sounding like . . .

who? My mother—Tulia—never talked like that. She let Mia and me act like hoydens in the privacy of our own home, until we figured out on our own that such primitive behavior wasn’t the way to get what we wanted. But I’ve got no male authority figure to back me up here. My parents formed a mutual support system, a safety net I no longer have. If Mommy couldn’t handle us, she’d turn to my father, arms akimbo, and plead “Brendan, it’s your turn.” And Daddy, who never, ever raised his voice, would speak to us so softly and steadily and sternly, his deadly placid manner far more terri-fying than any amount of yelling and screaming, particularly since, from an early age Mia and I had recognized that high volume was a sign of parental weakness. This doesn’t seem to work with Zoë. Not since I’ve become a single parent, anyway. I think I used to be pretty good at being a mom. Now I feel like a slumping major leaguer who’s being forced to try a whole new batting stance.

I hate this. I hate fighting with my daughter. I don’t want her

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to grow up resenting me. On the other hand, I’ve got to be the one to rule the roost, or chaos reigns.

“I’ll be in to check your homework in one hour,” I tell Zoë firmly, then close the door, leaving her to her own video-less de-vices. I return to the breakfast nook and pilfer the remaining baby carrots from Zoë’s plate. No more wasting food in the mini-Marsh household.

Dear Diary:

Mommy is being mean to me. I hope she snoops and reads this so
she knows that I think she’s being mean. She’s going to China
Town with MiMi tomorrow and they won’t take me. I have to
learn the times table with Mrs. Heinie-face instead. We have to
draw a chart to make our own times table and fill in all the numbers. She gave us up to five for homework today. Mommy helped
me make the chart with a ruler because she’s better at making
straight lines than I am. Mine are wobbly and they don’t look
pretty and Mrs. Heinie-face will give me a bad grade if the lines
are wobbly. Who cares what five times ten is? I hate math and I
hate Mrs. Heinie-face and I almost hate Mommy. I don’t want to
do any math. Ever. For homework we also have to write a story
about a good memory we have and draw a picture to go with it. I
don’t know what to write about but I like to write stories and I
love to draw and I know that Mommy and Daddy and me will
all be in it and we will all be happy.

“Did we ever give mom and dad the silent treatment?” I ask Mia, as we trundle along Canal Street behind Happy Chef, bound for the heart of Chinatown.

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“I did,” Mia reminds me. “You could never shut up long enough.”

“Thanks. Zoë’s being sullen. She’s punishing me for being the mother. For insisting that she go to school today instead of playing hooky and joining us.”

Mia laughs. “I would have let her come along. Tell Mrs.

Henny Penny to get over it. Life experience is more important than a day of second grade.”

I consider her point, which isn’t a bad one, but that’s the kind of stuff that works in a two-parent household with a good cop/bad cop system of checks and balances. For every “sure, why not-er,” you’ve got a “stop-wait-don’t-er.” With Zoë, these days, all I seem to do is “don’t-ing.” When do
I
get to be the good cop?

We’ve got a nice little group for Happy Chef’s Chinatown food tour. Me, Mia, wild-and-crazy-Gayle, and a delightful couple from Colorado, Bud and Carol Tate. Bud’s a Mets fan, believe it or not, so I take an immediate shine to him. And Carol throws pots—I mean, she’s a potter, not someone with a violent temper—so we’ve got some common ground in art appreciation. Zoë, who loves playing with clay, would throw a fit if she knew. Although she’s got her own ceramics activity after school today. I check my watch and realize I’ve got only a little over two hours before I have to pick her up at school and then drop her off at Our Name is Mud to make pottery with one of her friends from the Museum Adventures program.

Gayle seems to be the kind of person who would get along well with anyone. She’s refreshed her tequila thermos this afternoon, but Happy Chef, a.k.a Charles, reminds her that everyone but me will be walking for nearly four hours and the pit stop locations may have negligible sanitary conditions, so Gayle stashes the thermos in her purse, after graciously offering everyone a round, nonetheless.