Play Dates (25 page)

186

Leslie Carroll

Xander was mad at me because he didn’t win Pin the Tail on
the Donkey but I told him he couldn’t win because he cheated. He
smushed the blindfold up over his eyes and peeked out from it
and MiMi caught him cheating so she DISQUALIFIED him.

That means she kicked him out because he didn’t play fair. He
wanted to win the baseball. But he said if he kept asking his
mom, she would buy him a baseball and she would get people
who were even more famous to sign it. Xander said his mom says
that if you have enough money you can get anything.

Xander pulled Ashley’s hair during duck, duck, goose and
made her cry and Daddy ended the game. And MiMi disqualified
Xander from musical chairs, too. He pushed my friend Ben from
yoga class off his chair so hard that Ben broke his glasses and got
a cut on his face. MiMi was funny. She said it was good that Ben
knows how to do yoga so he didn’t break himself. Xander’s mom
thought that MiMi was not being fair but MiMi said that it was
Xander who didn’t play fair. It was a surprise that Mommy let
me have a play date with Xander because Xander’s mom doesn’t
like her. But Mommy told me that was exactly the reason that she
said I could go over to his house. She was smiling a lot when she
said it.

While we were playing castle Xander’s mom came home
with a present for him. She bought him a puppy. I wish I could
get a puppy. My daddy said that dog hair made him sneeze so
we couldn’t get one. He didn’t like it when we went to visit
Granny Tulia and Grandpa Brendan because Ulysses would
jump on him and give him doggy kisses. Xander’s puppy
doesn’t look anything like Ulysses. It’s brown and sort of ugly.

His mom said it was a “rotten” dog. It’s a boy dog and Xander
named him Draco.

Draco was barking a lot. I think it’s because he wasn’t used to
Xander’s house. His house looks like a museum with beautiful
paintings on the walls. There is a painting of his mom that is as
big as she is. She’s wearing a beautiful black dress and she looks
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like a princess. We were only allowed to play in some of the
rooms. Xander’s room is much neater than my room. He said that
Frida puts all his things away for him every day. Hilda always
wanted me to put my own things away when I was finished playing with them. I didn’t like that but mommy said if I took something out to play with it I should be the person to put it away
again when I was finished playing.

I wanted to play with Draco because a puppy is much more
fun than Legos. I wanted to pet him the way I pet Ulysses.

“It’s always something with you Marsh girls, isn’t it?” This afternoon Mrs. Hennepin is wearing her reading glasses, little rectangles that make her resemble the unfortunate though

,

mercifully hypothetical, progeny of Ben Franklin and the Peanuts character Sally Brown. We’re in the parent-teacher conference room, which is tastefully decorated for the holidays with a poinsettia plant and a menorah (at least it’s not one of the electric ones), resting on top of a runner made of kente cloth.

In my corner of the couch I tuck my legs underneath me, re-verting to curled-up, childlike body language. I’m about to pull a lock of hair in front of my face when I remember Mrs. Hennepin’s previous comment about my hair-chewing habit. “You talk as if there’s a whole raft of us,” I say. “Actually, eighteen years has passed since I had you, and Mia was never in your class.”

Like a campaigning politician caught in the glare of the media headlights, Mrs. Hennepin chooses to ignore the facts, preferring to maintain her revisionist version of events. “You and your sister always expected special treatment, which your parents not only encouraged, but championed. And if I make an exception for Zoë, then I have to make exceptions for other students and then exceptions become the rule.”

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Leslie Carroll

“Zoë’s a special kid,” I argue. “And she happens to have a scheduling conflict with the Thackeray pageant and the final dress rehearsal for her ballet class recital. She’s been practicing for weeks.”

“Then she shouldn’t need to attend the rehearsal,” Mrs. Hennepin counters, using teacher logic.

“If she doesn’t go to the rehearsal, she’s pre-empted from performing in the recital,” I explain. I feel like Sisyphus pushing that huge boulder up the side of the mountain, ready to re-joice when he nears the plateau, only to slip even further backward down the slope, forcing him to begin anew the arduous labor.

When someone has spent the better part of the past half century in a room full of seven-year-olds, it can’t help but severely limit their ability to speak to adults without the cadences of condescension creeping into their voice. “Claire, in the eyes of the Thackeray faculty—and most assuredly in the eyes of every parent who has a child enrolled here—each one of them is special. Exceptional.”

“Then if it’s widely accepted that every kid in this school is exceptional, then the exceptions
have
become the rule, haven’t they?” This is Marsh logic. If my father could see me now! Brendan would be so proud.

“I didn’t agree to this conference in order to argue semantics with you, Claire.”

“Too bad,” I mutter.

“My point is, that if I give Zoë permission to leave the as-sembly early—after the second-grade presentation—I’ll have to acquiesce to every other parent who wants to color outside the lines.”

“You never did like it when we did that, did you?” I ask her.

“Color outside the lines, I mean. It made you very anxious, didn’t it?”

Mrs. Hennepin steeples her fingers and leans forward, resting PLAY DATES

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her elbows on her knees. “What I am about to say to you does not leave this room. Do you understand?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I don’t like you, Claire.”

Considering I can recall in glorious Technicolor every graphic detail of my own miserable year of second grade, this news does not come as a revelation. Nevertheless, it stings like a slap on sunburned skin. “I don’t mind telling you the feeling is more than mutual,” I reply. It wasn’t a diplomatic thing to say, I know, and it probably sunk Zoë even lower into her predicament. Give me a demerit for a lapse in judgment. If circumstances were different and I wasn’t going to bat for my daughter, I would have savored the moment, having waited nearly two decades to tell this paragon (not!) of pedagogy what I think of her.

Mrs. Hennepin removes her eyeglasses and blinks a few times. Then she leans back in her chair. “Well, I commend you on your candor, if nothing else.” She still sounds like she’s talking to a schoolchild, only using bigger words.

“Tell you what,” I say, “I never made you the promise you requested a few minutes ago. But I’ll make sure the unprofessional behavior exhibited in your explicitly stated opinion of me does not leave this room if you can see your way toward accommodating Zoë’s heavy schedule on the twenty-third.” I wait for Mrs. Hennepin’s reply, unable to recall the last time
I
had competing social engagements on the same afternoon.

She stands up and looks like she is about to extend her hand to me when she notices a blinking light on the conference-room phone. At Thackeray, parent-teacher confabs are considered consecrated time, so the phone doesn’t ring obtrusively. It sparkles tastefully. Mrs. Hennepin punches the lit button and picks up the receiver. She listens for a few moments, then covers the phone with a liver-spotted hand. “Claire, do you know a Frida Nomar?”

The name rings a bell, so to speak, but I can’t quite place it.

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Leslie Carroll

Yet, if someone knows enough to reach me here, it must be important. “What is this in reference to?” Mrs. Hennepin asks the caller. She listens for the response. “I think you’ll want to take this,” she says, handing me the phone, her face paler and more agitated than I’ve ever seen her. “It’s Xander Osborne’s nanny.

Zoë’s been bitten by a dog.”

Zoë is a brave little girl. And a resourceful one, too, since she figured out fast how to do things with her left hand until the wound on her right one healed. And at least Nina had purchased a puppy that had had all its shots. Zoë was hysterical when I rushed her to the pediatric emergency room. Xander wanted to come along and refused to take no for an answer, and the last place Nina wanted to visit was a hospital. She actually had a few choice words for
my
mothering skills because my daughter had tried to do what dog-loving little girls do, and pet a puppy. Of course the baby Rottweiler did what it does, too.

They’d each obeyed their natural instincts, but Draco, like his boy-owner, wasn’t one of the more socialized creatures on the planet; and perhaps, like his Harry Potter namesake, was just hell-bent on malevolence.

So Xander and Frida tagged along.

The emergency-room doctor was a young, blonde woman who put both Zoë and me at ease. Until she took out the big needle. She said she had to give Zoë a Tetanus shot as a precau-tionary measure, and my poor little girl howled herself hoarse.

It was breaking my heart. Even Xander, who at first thought the needle was “really cool,” freaked out when Dr. Greenzeig began to administer the injection. This, of course further traumatized Zoë, so Frida had to remove her charge from the room and bring him back home.

It only took four stitches to close the wound, but Dr. Greenzeig bandaged Zoë’s entire hand so she couldn’t get at the su-tures. The poor kid had to go through her last day of classes PLAY DATES

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before Christmas vacation writing as a lefty. She was the only second-grader to hold her flashlight torch aloft with the opposite hand during their performance of “The Little Drummer Boy” in the holiday pageant—from which Mrs. Hennepin excused her, following the second-grade presentation. Maybe the teacher really was concerned that I’d rat out her indiscreet insult. Or maybe she just admired Zoë’s post-dog-bite attitude and decided to cut us a break. When it came to the recital and

“The Waltz of the Flowers,” Zoë said something so clever that I can’t remember when I’ve been prouder of her pluck. Of course all the little girls wanted to know why her hand was covered with gauze, and she told them, with the most charming air of authority, “I’m a flower. And a bee tried to pollinate me. But he stung me by mistake.”

Her indomitability made Zoë even more popular. She was a walking, talking show-and-tell. But she turned down two invitations to New Year’s Eve parties—yes, her set hosts kid-friendly extravaganzas, even though the ball drops in Times Square well past a second grader’s normal bedtime. My only

“friends” these days are the mothers of Zoë’s friends, and I’m not very close with any of them. So, Zoë declined the invites because she wanted to usher in the New Year at home with her mommy (who had been feeling a little sorry for herself that Zoë had twice as many invitations as she did and that carefree Mia was heading off to Lucky Sixpence’s glitzy soirée). My daughter’s move wasn’t entirely altruistic: from our living-room window we have a fantastic view of the midnight fireworks over Central Park.

We now have our silly hats and our noisemakers and, having ordered Chinese food from Zoë’s favorite restaurant, have finished our celebratory meal with homemade hot fudge sun-daes (I know, I know). Zoë starts to get sleepy at around nine-thirty, even though she enjoyed an extra-long afternoon nap,

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but she soldiers on, insisting on staying awake long enough to see the fireworks. I’d splurged on a split of good champagne, and just before midnight, I pour Zoë a flute of ginger ale and pop the cork on my Piper-Heidsieck. We turn to face the TV

set as if to toast it, while we count down with viewers everywhere, with millions of New Yorkers crushed against one another in the midtown streets, and with a man who was a legend in the music industry back when my parents were young. Dick Clark shouts into his microphone “ten . . . nine . . .

eight . . .” and we yell right along with him. My right arm is around Zoë’s shoulder; her left grazes my waist. There are tears in my eyes. I become more sentimental than usual on New Year’s Eves.

“Three . . . two . . . one . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Elsewhere, lovers and strangers are kissing one another, corks are popping, streamers and balloons are cascading toward crowded dance floors.

Zoë and I clink glasses and take our first sips, while outside we hear a
boom
, signaling the start of the annual Central Park footrace and the fireworks display. We rush to the window to enjoy the glorious free show. I look down at my daughter, the flower of my heart, fruit of my loins, and, occasionally, the bane of my existence. “You know, the very first person you kiss in the new year is supposed to bring good luck for both of you.” She outstretches her arms and I kneel so that we’re about the same height. Zoë kisses me softly on the mouth and throws her arms around my neck. I realize I am crying. I start to wipe away my tears with the back of my hand and Zoë runs off to get me a tissue.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?” she asks, her little face a picture of confusion and concern. “Are you sad?”

I am sad, actually. But it’s different from an ordinary sadness.

It’s not the kind that’s easily pinpointed or explained to a seven-year-old. “I’m just thinking how lucky we are already,” I tell her.

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“You know what they say on New Year’s Day?” She shakes her head. “Out with the old and in with the new.” I grab my champagne glass and raise it in a toast.

“Out with the old and in with the new!” Zoë echoes. “Happy New Year, Mommy,” she adds with shiny eyes.

I give her a hug and our glasses meet behind her back.