Play Dates (18 page)

MiMi is the best aunt in the whole world! I love her so much.

Sometimes I wish I lived with her instead of with Mommy.

Mommy is always saying what I’m not allowed to do. And sometimes she even yells at me, even though she always says how
much she hates yelling. I don’t like it when she yells so I yell back.

MiMi doesn’t make me do my homework. And one time she took
me to a makeup store for grown-ups called Sephora and she let
me pick out a nail polish. I couldn’t decide what color I wanted
and they had all the colors in the rainbow. I thought yellow or orange or blue or green would have looked yucky and I don’t like
red polish and I wanted something special so I picked purple. We
went back to MiMi’s house and she painted my nails for me.

Mommy never did that. She doesn’t let me wear nail polish. She
says it doesn’t look nice on little girls and I can have it when I
grow up, but that’s a billion years from now and I don’t want to
wait that long.

I have another problem. Miss Gloo, my ballet teacher, says we
have to be at her studio right after school for final practice for our
recital, but final ballet practice is the same time as the whole
school’s Christmas pageant and Mrs. Hennepin and the headmaster, Mr. Kiplinger, said that nobody is allowed to miss the pag-

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eant. I’m supposed to sing in it, too. My class is doing “The Little
Drummer Boy” and I have a solo line and everybody else in the
class sings the “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum” part. In art class we
made torches with flashlights and red and yellow and orange tissue paper and we’re going to walk down the risers in the gym
down to the floor where we will sing, but we start the song at the
top of the risers. It will be all dark in the gym except for our
torches.

I really want to sing at school. I like singing and I don’t get
scared to do it in front of other people. But Miss Gloo says if we
miss the last recital practice or we’re late, then we can’t be in it.

And I really like ballet, too. We’re doing “The Waltz of the Flowers” from
The Nutcracker
with real costumes and everything. The
costumes are so pretty. We’re all going to be wearing different
flower colors. Ashley’s is blue and my friend Chauncey’s is pink.

My tutu is yellow. My favorite color. I asked for yellow and Miss
Gloo said yes. And we get to wear ribbons and flowers made of
silk in our hair.

MiMi is taking me to the real
Nutcracker
at Lincoln Center
for my Christmas present. This is another thing that Mommy and
MiMi got mad at each other about. Mommy said that SHE

wanted to take me to
The Nutcr
as a present for being in

acker

my ballet recital. And MiMi said she wanted it to be HER birthday present to me. Mommy told MiMi that MiMi is taking away
all the things that SHE wants to do with me as a Mommy.

There was a “police emergency” in the subway—which usually means a body on the tracks—so I barely made it on time to Zoë’s ballet class this afternoon.

As I sit in the waiting area, I suddenly remember that it’s my turn to bring snack this week. Fortunately, there’s a Korean grocer on the corner, so I rush back to grab some grapes and a PLAY DATES

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bunch of juice boxes. The Atkins devotees will just have to suck it up. Or not, actually. At the last minute, I pick up some peanuts and trail mix, too. Unimaginative, I know, but I don’t have all day to play dietitian and food stylist. This is the kind of snack that dads can get away with. Everyone finds it charming when a father shows up with nothing but a brick of Cracker Barrel and a box of Triscuits. That doesn’t cut it for the moms, however. We’re expected to Martha Stewart it.

The little girls are adorable, practicing their dance for the end of season recital. Some of them, my daughter among them—

ham that she is—really glow when they know they have an audience.

After class, Miss Gloo, the ballet mistress, gracefully crooks a slender finger and invites me to listen to whatever it is she has to say. “I hope you’ve taken care of Zoë’s scheduling conflict,”

she begins. “She’s such a bright light up there. I’d hate to lose her for the performance.”

Zoë is double-booked. Her Thackeray holiday pageant coincides directly with Miss Gloo’s recital. “I’m working on it,” I assure her, omitting the fact that I don’t exactly have Favored Nation status at Zoë’s school these days.

“Oh . . . and one other thing,” Miss Gloo says, her face coloring ever so slightly. She lowers her voice. “I still haven’t gotten your check yet.”

“My check?”

“For Zoë’s recital costume. We rent them from a professional costume house. The seventy-five dollars covers the cost of the rental, plus the fee for shipping and for dry-cleaning the costume after the performance.”

I will my eyes not to pop. “And she’s going to wear this costume for . . . ?”

“Her class’s dance runs about ten minutes. And of course, there’s the final dress rehearsal and run-though the same afternoon.”

“I’m sorry—I must have . . . Zoë must have forgotten to give

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me the permission form. This is the first I’ve heard of it.” I open my purse to look for my checkbook.

“You . . . you can charge it instead, if you prefer,” Miss Gloo says. I think she’s figured out my situation and is trying to help me handle it gracefully. I do appreciate her compassion.

“Thanks very much. I’ll do that, then. At the front desk I fork

”

over my credit card. It buys me another month to worry about paying for a little yellow tutu that will be worn for all of twenty minutes.

Whatever I do turns out wrong these days. I love taking Zoë out—I feel like a modern-day Auntie Mame—but it’s pissing off Claire. We had a huge blowup over it last week. For months, she’s done nothing but schlep Zoë from place to place and I know she’s burned out. So, I figured I would step in and help her.

But she’s not making it easy; I say I want to take my niece somewhere, Clair

she

e says

wanted to do that. But she
didn’t
do it.

And now that she’s working so hard, when was she going to get to it? She’s running herself ragged just to be sure she’s got the money for her co-op’s monthly maintenance payments. Mommy and Daddy offered to help her out but they already pitch in a lot.

They pay for most of Zoë’s education. And Claire hates hand-outs. It’s a lose-lose deal. So what’s the trade-off? Do I say,

“Okay, I won’

you

t bring Zoë to the places

want to take her to?”

Great. I can live with that. But then the kid doesn’t get to go at all, because Claire can’t swing it.

I love my time with Zoë. And I have a great job, really feel blessed to be making a living doing what I love. Each job is an adventure. But the more I get to know Zoë, the more I see what I lack. A piece of me is missing. Maybe I’m beginning to acknowledge that I want to be a mom. I
do
want it all. Three decades of feminist history tell me it’s possible. Do-able. To at least want it.

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Although right now I want to wring Claire’s neck. I don’t know how she does it as well as she does. I know this: I could not be a single mom. I’m hitting a crossroads in February—the big three-oh—so I’ve been searching my soul a lot. And I can count up what I still want on one hand. Two fingers, in fact. Husband. Child.

I think it’s time for a trip to my astrologer. Celestia Schwartz lives near St. Mark’s Place, and like a good table at Balthazar, it takes weeks to get an appointment. But you can’t be allergic to cats, if you plan to go there. They’ll climb all over you during your session. She gave me a kitten once as a gift, many years ago, and the poor thing turned out to be incontinent. It also clawed its way through a one-of-a-kind design by my mom. Tulia was not too cool about that and it takes a lot to knock her off-balance.

The kitten went back to Celestia. She told me it had been homesick and its karma had gotten messed up by leaving her, and she should have foreknown that might happen. She gave me a free session to make up for it.
That
was a gift, too; she charges two hundred and twenty-five bucks for a reading. It might be a fun birthday present for Zoë, too. My niece is a Capricorn. An old soul in a little body. Sometimes I’m amazed by what the kid is thinking. She’s way ahead of me in some ways. Like with men, for instance. I bounce from guy to guy, hoping each will turn out to be The One. She’s got her One all picked out. Xander Osborne, holy terror of Thackeray’s second-grade classes. He may yet beat the Marsh sisters’ record in the hell-raising department.

With Christmas around the bend, Zoë’s already learned about mistletoe. Now,
that’s
a Marsh woman!

“What about ‘July in Christmas’?” I ask Zoë. She makes a funny face. This is, at a conservative estimate, probably our thirty-ninth conversation regarding a theme for her upcoming birthday party. “There’s an expression—‘Christmas in

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July,’ ” I explain, telling her what it means. “So, what if we do the opposite?”

“The opposite?” She’s still looking at me as though I’m six letters shy of the full alphabet.

“Yeah!” From concept to realization, my brain is working at a furious pace. I share my epiphanies as fast as they come. “It’s really cold and yucky out in December, right?” Zoë nods. Duh.

She’s with me so far. “Remember when we talked about Tennyson Silver-Katz’s birthday with the barbecue?”

“And with the ponies?” she asks, wide-eyed. This is too good to be true.

“No ponies, sorry. But what if we had a real picnic? Underneath their winter coats, everyone could dress in shorts and dresses like it’s summertime. And we could have checkerboard tablecloths on the floor and pink lemonade and hot dogs and hamburgers and macaroni salad—”

“Granny Tulia’s recipe?” she asks, sensing that maybe Mommy isn’t such a dullard after all.

“Absolutely! And since we’ll invite her and Grandpa Brendan to come in from Sag Harbor, maybe she’ll make it for us herself.”

“Yum!”

“It’s even orange!” My mother adds Kraft Catalina dressing to the recipe. Her now not-so-secret ingredient.

Zoë rolls her eyes. “I’m over that. I don’t
have
to eat just orange food anymore. Remember?” She gets another idea and starts bouncing up and down on the dinette chair. “Oh, oh, oh, can . . . can . . . can Happy Chef make me a special birthday cake? Something July in Christmasish.”

“I bet he will, if we ask him nicely.”

“I want a mermaid. Who looks like me. With blonde hair. But she has to be birthdayish and Christmasish too.”

“I’m sure Happy Chef will think of something super-special that fits all your requirements.” I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my chest. We can have the party at home and PLAY DATES

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a little creative thinking can transform the place from an Upper West Side apartment into a Fourth of July picnic. Under a tinseled tree.

“I know something else Julyish. Fireworks!” Zoë chirps.

The oppressive weight rolls back into place. “I don’t think so, sweetie. But . . .”
Let’s go, right brain, kick it up another notch or
two
. . . “What if . . . what if we made decorations that look like exploding fireworks with colored streamers? We can make it an arts and crafts project we do together. How does that sound?”

My daughter is not taken in by my extra-wide smile. “Why can’t we have real fireworks?”

“How ’bout you answer that one yourself? Look up. What do you see?”

“The ceiling.”

“So?”

She laughs. “They’ll have no place to go and we could have a fire. But . . . but . . . but . . . but . . . we could have them outside!”

“Where? We don’t have a terrace.”

“No, silly! In the park!”

“Fireworks in Central Park?”

I’m getting the Mommy-is-an-idiot look again. “They do it all the time, remember? We look out the window and see them in the summertime with the concerts at night and when it’s the New Year.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But you need to get a special permit from the police department to set off fireworks in Central Park.”

“So, get a permit,” she says, as if I’m still missing something.

“Zoë, your party’s going to be in the daytime, anyway. You wouldn’t even be able to see the fireworks.” I watch her working on another counterattack. This is not going to be as easy a sell as I had hoped. “Why don’t we talk about the guest list,” I suggest, trying to make a clean segue.

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“Everybody. But not Mrs. Heinie-face. I have to invite everyone from my classes and some of their moms and dads and I want my daddy and MiMi and Happy Chef because he’s making my cake and Granny Tulia and Grandpa Brendan.” Her eyes are shining. “At least if we have the party here we won’t have to worry about how to get all the presents home.”

Though I’m pleased that she’s become excited about this homemade July-in-Christmas party idea, I frown. “You know it’s not all about the presents. Birthdays are supposed to be your chance to share your own special day with all the people who are important to you.” What am I blathering? The kid has to invite all her classmates, including those she rarely speaks to, has never gone on a play date with, and would not ordinarily see outside of school, were it not for Thackeray’s attempt to level the playing field. The inclusive exclusive-private-school version of No Child Left Behind. However, given the kinds of lavish affairs hosted for grammar schoolers by their moneyed parents, the parties themselves have become a competition, not between the kids, but among the adults.
You’re
right, Zoë,
I’m thinking.
It is about the presents. Damn it.