Play Dates (28 page)

When Fireman Dennis showed us how they slide down the
pole when they have to race to a fire I didn’t know how Fireman
Jim could get through the hole in the ceiling to slide down the pole
because his tummy is big. Fireman Dennis even made a funny
joke about Fireman Jim’s big belly. Fireman Dennis told us that
the firemen work some days in a row and then they have days off
in a row. When they have days off they go home to their own
houses. And when they are working they sleep in the firehouse upstairs, which is why they have to slide down the pole to the fire
truck, which is in the garage. The pole is faster than taking the
stairs. Fireman Dennis showed us the upstairs part of the firehouse where the firemen sleep. It looked like the
Annie
movie
where all of the orphans’ beds were in one big room.

And then Fireman Dennis asked who wanted to slide down the
pole and we all raised our hands. But he said we couldn’t all do
it, so there could be one boy and one girl from each second-grade
class. He picked me as the girl from Mrs. Hennepin’s class and
Bram got picked as the boy. Xander got angry because he didn’t
get picked and he started to throw a temper tantrum and Fireman
Dennis made a funny joke because he said Xander was acting
like a mean old dog and did he know what happens to mean old
dogs? And Xander said no and Fireman Dennis said that they
turn a fire hose on mean old dogs and get them all wet and splash
them and that makes them quiet really fast. Xander didn’t think
it was funny, but I did.

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I loved sliding down the pole. It was even more fun than the
slide at the playground. And Fireman Dennis let us climb up on
the hook-and-ladder truck and on the pumper truck and I got to
ring the silver bell, too. Ashley said I was being a hog because I
got to do lots of things at the firehouse, but I don’t think I was
being a hog and some of the times it was because Fireman Dennis
picked me.

Then Fireman Dennis showed us the big kitchen and told us
what kinds of things firemen like to eat for dinner. He said they
like chili a lot and he was the winner of a lot of contests between
firehouses to see which one had the best homemade chili. I had
chili once when Mommy made it. It was too spicy. Some of the
boys in my class thought it was a sissy thing to do, to cook. Fireman Dennis doesn’t look like a sissy. He looks very brave and a
little bit like Prince Eric in
The Little Mermaid.
His mouth looks
nice when he smiles.

We learned all about what happens inside the firehouse after
someone pulls a fire alarm somewhere and how the firemen know
what house to go to and how fast they can get ready. And Fireman Dennis told us how bad it was for somebody to call a false
alarm. Because it’s really dangerous because if there’s a real fire
when the firemen are off answering a false alarm, then they can’t
get to the real fire fast enough sometimes, and it means that people
could die. When I was little I used to be scared of fire truck sirens
because I thought the fire was in my house or maybe next door.

And I was especially scared when the sirens waked woke me up
in the middle of the night because I thought maybe our house was
burning down.

And I learned that being a fireman is a very dangerous job because fires are so hot and because of what is burning, sometimes
things explode during the fire or ceilings fall down on top of firemen while they’re trying to put out the fire. Or floors fall in, and
the firemen fall down all the way to the next floor.

Fireman Dennis said that all firefighters are like brothers of

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each other even if they aren’t really relatives. He showed us the
pictures on the wall of the firemen from his fire house who died
fighting fires. He said it’s called the Wall of Heroes. And there is a
purple-and-black swish of fabric on the wall above the pictures
that is what firemen are supposed to put up when a fireman dies.

There were I think nine pictures on the wall of firemen who died,
all of them from Fireman Dennis’s firehouse. I asked if seeing the
pictures every day was scary. Fireman Dennis said that it was a
little bit scary because it was a reminder of the danger of being a
fireman. And then I asked him if seeing the pictures every day
made him sad, and he said that looking at the pictures did make
him sad—he even sounded sad when he was saying it to our
class—because they were all his good friends and almost like his
real-life brothers. But then he said that he loved being a fireman
and his best friends died doing what they loved to do best, which
was helping people and it wasn’t going to change his mind about
being a fireman and that it was the best job in the whole world.

Chapter 14

FEBR U A R Y

I’m not a joiner—that’s not my thing—but like the right-handed diamond, the singleton’s statement that she doesn’t need to get a guy to get a rock, everybody’s doing it. Tur

The

ning thirty and letting the world know about it.

New Y

imes

ork T

now has a word for us. Trigenerians. The celebration’s like a wedding for singles, a sweet sixteen for grownups. Trends. This is everything
Claire
is trying to get away from.

The big bash. Keeping up with the Joneses. Or the Silver-Katzes.

Pay to play. But I had a breakthrough after I got back from Catalina. Okay, so I’m hitting the three-oh; I have no choice about it, obviously. But I chose to stop moping about it, and underline it in big pink neon streaks instead.

I can’t decide where to have it or what to do, but I think I’ll ask everyone I know to join me. I’m torn between all-out black-tie elegance somewhere or tequila shots and PB & J sandwiches at my favorite East Village bar. It’ll be way past Zoë’s bedtime, but I want her there.

There’s more to this, too. Mia Marsh is saying bye-bye to an old life. I’m fed up with relationships that aren’t much more than

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multi-night stands. I looked at that Excel chart I made. One bottom line was that none of the guys were in it for the long haul. I’m sick of that. Over it. And I noticed that a lot of the guys didn’t have real jobs. Or steady ones. And I never gave a shit about that because
I
had a job. A great one. And made good bucks and didn’t care what they did, as long as they seemed to be happy doing it.

But I think the commitment thing has to factor into every part of your life in order for it to work. You make the choice to commit to a job you love, as much as to a guy or girl you love. Do what you want, but do it a hundred percent. Hal, for instance, was a slacker. Luca went with the flow. He was mostly into the
idea
of Beauty in all its forms. Cowboy was . . . well, Cowboy was a disaster. Mia’s Big Mistake. And Robert Osborne was more committed to himself than anyone else. I can’t believe I just had a split second of pity for Nina. And then there’s Chris, the Navy SEAL I just spent a weekend with, who’s not much for maintain-ing even a post-coital correspondence.

Valentine’s Day looms large and lacy and pink and red on the calendar’s horizon. And I don’t expect so much as a card from any of the guys who’ve been in my life for the past several months. This sucks. What happened to true love?

When Claire and I were young, Thackeray had no rules about giving out Valentines. In other words, if you had a crush on one kid, you could act on it—if you were brave enough—and not have to bother about bringing a Valentine for each guy in the class. Not anymore, evidently. Nowadays, you bring one, you’d better bring ten. It kind of dilutes the purpose if you tell
everyone
you love them. Makes you sound either promiscuous or like you’re prose-lytizing for Jesus.

So, I’m looking at being loveless on Valentine’s Day and date-less on my birthday. I called Claire to commiserate and she didn’t want to hear it. No one’s beating down
her
door, either. But Zoë’s gotten Valentines mailed to the house and Claire says the kid has PLAY DATES

215

a secret admirer

Finding Nemo

. Seems like the

generation is hav-

ing a much better time than the finding
me
generation.

Dear Diary:

Valentine’s Day is going to be so fun! Mommy is class parent this
week and so she gets to be at the Valentine’s class party and we
get to go to school together. Mrs. Heinie-face is not very nice to
Mommy the way she is to the other class parents when it’s their
turn. Mommy says she feels like she’s back in second grade for
real again.

We made Valentine heart cookies when I got home from school
today. We used a cookie cutter that’s shaped like a heart and we
have more than one and they are different sizes so we can cut
out one heart and put it on top of the other one. Mommy even let
me help roll the dough. Before we put them in the oven, we sprinkled them with red sugar and then the sugar melted on purpose
because the oven is so hot. Some of the cookies we didn’t put
sugar on. We left them naked. And when they came out of the
oven and they cooled off, we put icing on them. Mommy made
pink icing but I don’t want to give the boys in school pink because it’s a girl color. I put the bestest best cookies in a little box
and I’m going to give it to Xander when no one else is looking.

He likes cookies a lot.

Mommy told me that when she and MiMi were little they used
to give valentines at school and Mommy got a lot of valentines always but sometimes MiMi didn’t get any. And then Mommy said
one Valentine’s Day MiMi didn’t want to go to school because she
thought everyone was going to get lots of valentines and she
wasn’t going to get any ones and it would mean that nobody
loved her. So she pretended to be sick so she would have to stay
home and miss school.

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Leslie Carroll

Mr. Kiplinger made a rule that for tomorrow because it’s
Valentine’s Day we don’t have to wear our uniforms. So I have a
new dress that I am going to wear to school tomorrow. It’s bright
pink and Granny Tulia made it just for me. It has long sleeves
and a red heart on one of the sleeves. And it has a big pocket
that’s shaped like a heart and I can put my valentines inside the
pocket. And it has a special purse that matches it and it’s a big
red heart, too. I have hair barrettes that look like hearts. Mommy
said I could wear my Dorothy ruby slippers to school.

I can’t wait for tomorrow. I was supposed to go to sleep at 7:30

because it’s a school night but I wasn’t tired after my bath. I’m
still not tired. I thought writing in my diary would make me tired.

My HAND is tired, but I’M not.

“It’s not the function of the class parent to offer an opinion,”

Mrs. Hennepin tells me. “You’re here to help maintain and en-sure their daily routine. And, of course, to experience, firsthand, how your child is being educated.”

I figure if Thackeray expects me to participate, even if only for a week, in the quotidian conducting of lessons, I should do more than bear witness to them.

involved

I should become

. So,

as an example, for the past two days I’ve encouraged—or let’s just say I ha

dis

ven’t

couraged—some of Zoë’s classmates from coloring their homemade valentines in any hue they wish, not just in the traditional spectrum of red to pink. One kid made his heart a lurid shade of purple. Mrs. Hennepin confronted him and asked him to redo it. The brave child defended his creation and told the old bat that “there are, too, purple hearts,” because his grandfather got one in Vietnam.

I’ve done a lot more than come home coated with flour after accompanying the kids to a cooking class (blueberry muffins) run by the Industrial Arts teacher. A lot more than helping them PLAY DATES

217

safely handle scissors and palette knives in art class; more than ending up with clay caked under my nails and dried paint in my hair. More than troubleshooting during math, English, and social studies and being startled out of my skin when I suddenly found myself holding Iggy, the school’s iguana, so the science teacher, Mrs. Peabo, could demonstrate something that I’m still too freaked out to remember.

This is the third consecutive day that I’ve borne witness to Mrs. Hennepin’s attempts to squelch their creativity and young imaginations. I can feel my blood seething in my veins. Zoë writes “I love you” in
script
and the old witch glares at her. Privately I wonder about the identity of the future recipient of my daughter’s valentine card. Me? Her father? MiMi? Xander? I have a guess about the identity of her “secret admirer.” I’ve caught Bram Siborsky looking at her, spaniel-eyed, on more than one occasion.

“What kind of message are you sending these children?” I demand of Mrs. Hennepin. “Love comes in all colors, not just pink and red.”

She sighs, exasperated with me, clearly counting the minutes until Monday, when a new class parent, preferably someone far less difficult, fulfills the obligation.

It’s stifling in here; and not just because the classroom is overheated. I find that I can’t wait for recess. The air is cold and crisp today, with the promise of spring around the corner. The groundhog didn’t see his shadow this year, but I can’t remember what that means. Either way, according to the calendar, there’s six more weeks of winter after February 2. Four weeks and change still to go.