Play Dates (32 page)

“Organize my whole life, why don’t you?”

“Mia, be nice,” my mother said. “Owen’s just trying to be helpful.” She formally introduced herself and the rest of the Marshes.

Zoë was still crawling around on the blanket, hunting for sparkly things, her patent leather Mary Janes shining in the streetlight’s amber glow.

The cops didn’t seem to want to do the paperwork, but Owen thought we should take a field trip to the station house to give statements. After all, more than two dozen of us had ID’d the thieves. The one we’d nabbed would turn in his accomplice, most likely. And I sure as hell was going to prosecute.

“Before we go, we’ve got a little ceremony to attend to,” my father said. He launched into his little speech about the Marsh tradition of annual birthday poems.

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“But her birthday cake is back at the bar,” Zoë said. “She has to blow out the candles.”

Charles went across the street to Starbucks. He returned with a giant muffin. “This is just for show. A stand-in. We’ll go back and do this for real later.” He’d made me an amazing cake. There was no way we were going to forget to eat it. Even if it would end up being one in the morning and no longer my thirtieth birthday.

He found a votive in an ugly glass that had been sitting on one of the Thieves’ Market blankets, took out the candle, and shoved it into the top of the muffin.

“Wait, you can’t light it until Grandpa Brendan has read the poem,” Zoë insisted. “It’s tradition. And anyway, the candle is so big that the muffin could catch fire while MiMi is holding it waiting to make her wish.”

“Yeah, and then we’ll have to call the fire department,” Claire added, looking at Dennis. Her face was glowing.

My father pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. What a spectacle we all made. Charles scrounged up a few more beat-up candles from the Thieves Market and my friends and family stood around, holding them. We looked like a bunch of Christmas carolers who had gone seriously astray.

Dad cleared his throat. “For My Older Daughter (who chose to dress up like a bride on her birthday),” he added parenthetically.

“On Turning Thirty.”

Elf or gamine, woman, child,

Feminine, by love beguiled,

Wistful wraith or working wench,

Who dares say in what dimensh

Your carefree heart and mind abide
Or where your secret dreams reside.

Wherever they may choose to rest,
On this day may they all be blessed,
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Sublime, delightful, worry-free

For now and all eternity.

“Blessed, huh?” I interrupted. I gestured at the mess surrounding us.

“You are blessed. You got most of your stuff back,” Claire said.

“You’ve got all of us,” Charles said. “Don’t forget.”

My father gave us a dirty look and told us that he’d just delivered only the first stanza.

“Oops. Sorry, Daddy.”

He shook his head and chuckled, then resumed reading.

Youth’s a time that’s yours for spending,
As you walk along life’s ramble,

Rising sun to sun’s descending

Every moment is a gamble.

Any dream with heart behind it

Could be that big, solid winner,

Life could be as you designed it

(with the luck of a beginner).

Youth was given you for spending,
A fortune’s all you’ve got to lose,
What the years may hold is pending.

Youth is when you pay your dues.

Dennis used his lighter to fire up the muffin votive and they all sang Happy Birthday. I made a wish—without saying it out loud of course—that my life could indeed, be as I designed it, from now on.

Chapter 16

MAR CH

“Oh. My. God.”

“Don’t laugh at me!” I warn Mia. It’s bad enough as it is. She stops hawing into the phone as though she’s turned off a faucet. “That laugh of yours can sound pretty mocking sometimes, you know? Have men ever told you that?”

She’s given herself the hiccups. “Wait. I can’t talk until I can . . . breathe.”

“You did it to yourself. At my expense. So I can’t feel sorry for you.” All I did was call her up and beg for some sisterly advice. I’m about to embark on my first one-on-one date since . . .

well, literally since high school, and I’m terrified. And she thinks it’s hysterical. “Honestly, Mia, I don’t know what to do.

I’ve gotten myself completely stressed out over it. Do I offer to pay, at least for my part of dinner? If he pays for dinner, should I offer to pay for the movie? Should I not offer, but just take out my wallet and pay for the movie tickets? And the Sex Question.”

“First of all, you do know I’m ecstatically happy for you, right? I’m just having fun giving you grief ’cause you sound so

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wired. And you know, you’ve gone from asking about first date rules to a hop in the sack in, like, less than one sentence.”

“Fuck you!”

She tsk-tsks. “Language, Claire!”

“And I know you’re making fun of me, but don’t get all prud-ish all of a sudden. Given our histories, it doesn’t suit either one of us.”

“Where’s Zoë? She’s not in the room with you, is she?”

“Would I be using the S-word—let alone the F-word—if she were? She’s in her room, working quietly . . .” I cock my head for a moment. Maybe too quietly. “She’s supposed to be working on a special St. Patrick’s Day project for school. In addition to their usual curriculum, this month Mrs. Hennepin is giving them all-Ireland, all the time. Kind of like an immersion course for second graders. I’m sure if the hag knew Gaelic, Zoë would be coming home bilingual.”

“So, when are you finally having The Big Date?” Mia wants to know.

“In a perfect world, Saturday night. So I’ve got six more days to panic. I got a baby-sitter from Thackeray, a fifth-former named Annabel Rosenbaum, whose references are terrific. You know there’s a bulletin board now where the kids can post Help Wanted ads. There are a couple of entrepreneurial computer-geek kids offering their services if you need additional hardware or a new program installed. And they’re not cheap! But I guess they know their market. Anyway,” I add, feeling the butterflies rise in my stomach, even though I’m only speaking to my older sister, “things were great between us at your birthday party, but I’m freaked about being alone with Dennis. I mean not
freaked
freaked. Just . . . freaked. It’s like being a virgin again or something.”

I confess to Mia that I need the scoop on the Sex issue because I want to know what the rules are these days. After all, it’s been nearly eight years since I’ve been on a date, and Scott and PLAY DATES

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I didn’t exactly have a traditional ritual courtship. It all happened pretty fast. Well . . . do I want to jump Dennis’s bones and fuck his brains out, she asks me in exactly those words.

“On Saturday? Or at all?” I ponder my own questions. “Well, this definitely isn’t a mercy date. I mean if I weren’t attracted to Dennis, I would have said ‘Zoë and I thank you very much for saving my life,’ and then he would have given a Gary Cooper shrug and said, ‘Aw, shucks, ma’am, I was just doing my job,’

which is more or less what he said anyway, before he obtained Zoë’s permission to ask me out, and we would have left it at that.”

I cover the phone and listen again to ascertain whether Zoë is all right. I hear sounds of activity in her room, and she seems to be having a conversation with the imaginary Wendy, so I guess everything is still copasetic down there.

“He kissed me good night after your birthday party,” I tell Mia. “So, we’re past that hurdle. Although, since he gave me mouth-to-mouth when he rescued me, that probably counts as the first kiss. Sort of. Even though I can’t remember a thing about it. The good-night kiss was really good, though. His lips were very soft and he tasted like chocolate. So you can tell Happy Chef that your birthday cake was an aphrodisiac.” I realize I’m about to chew my hair. “Listen to me, I sound like a tenth grader. It’s like my dating growth is stunted.”

“Stop panicking,” Mia says. “Let go a little. And stop playing with your hair.”

“How did you know . . . ?”

“I’ve known you since you were born, remember? You asked me for advice, I’ve got three words, okay? It. Never. Changes. I hate to say it, but the puppy-love crushes at Zoë’s age, teen angst, adult second-guessing—it’s all the same. First, we used to count daisy petals and made those stupid folded fortune things and asked the Magic 8-Ball . . . you know, ‘Sorry, forecast hazy,’

and stuff like that; then we sat by the phone and waited for it

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to ring. Now, we just stay online all day and wait for today’s three magic words: ‘You’ve Got Mail.’ ”

Zoë wanders into my bedroom. “Mommy, I need help.” She’s holding a can of Play-Doh. “It’s all hard and it has white stuff on it,” she frets.

It looks like we have a craft emergency. “Mia, I need to run.

Zoë needs me for something. But thanks, anyway. At least I know my fear is normal.” I get off the phone, not much wiser or more enlightened about current dating protocol than I was half an hour ago.

I examine the crusty yellow Play-Doh. “I don’t think we can resurrect this, sweetheart. Do you have other colors you can use?”

“What’s res-sur-wreck?”

“Resurrect means bring back to life. I think this can is about as dead as Play-Doh gets.”

“But I need yellow. You can’t mix other colors to get yellow.

And you need yellow to get green.” She tugs at my hand. “We need new Play-Doh. Now. Or I can’t finish my project.” She pulls me into her room. On her giant pad of newsprint she’s drawn a big picture of an old-fashioned village, with thatch-roofed houses that remind me of the illustrations in some of her books. On top of a hill stands a man holding a stick. Usually, her portraits of male figures tend to resemble her father, inasmuch as a child her age can create that kind of likeness. The man with the stick looks like someone else. It might be my imagination, but there’s a bit of a resemblance to a certain fireman who has charmed his way into our collective hearts.

“This is ain-shen Ireland,” she explains, pointing to the picture.

“What?” For a moment, I think she really
is
speaking Gaelic.

“Ain-shen. It means old.”

I correct her pronunciation. She tells me she learned the word in school, so I guess she’s parroting what she thought she heard. I wish Mrs. Hennepin, for all her devoted attention to de-PLAY DATES

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tail, would write the new words on the board when she introduces them in contexts apart from spelling vocabulary.

“So what do you plan to do with the Play-Doh?” I ask her.

From the looks of it, the homework project will be a mixed-media extravaganza. We may need to back the flimsy newsprint with cardboard or foam core; I can see that now.

“Don’t you know about Ireland and St. Patrick?” she asks me.

She looks confounded that Mommy seems so uneducated. “I need the Play-Doh because I’m making snakes.”

I can’t wait for Mrs. Hennepin’s reaction to this!

“So we need to get Play-Doh
now
. Before the store closes. So I can finish it because I have to hand it in tomorrow. If I don’t I’ll get in trouble and I
need
the Play-Doh to
finish
it.”

“Why is this the first I’ve heard about this assignment, Zoë?

And don’t whine. It’s not the way to get what you want.”

“But I
neeed
it.”

“Don’t just tell me to do something. It’s not polite.”

“But you tell me to do stuff all the time. So
you’re
not polite.”

“I’m the Mommy. I get to tell you to do things, because it’s part of my job. And I do usually ask you nicely, in fact. The first three times, anyway.”

She starts to put her shoes on. “So, can we go?”

“Let me get my jacket and my purse. Get your coat on and ring for the elevator.” I was going to sit in the breakfast nook and do my nails while she was finishing up her assignment, but I guess they’ll have to wait. I examine my hands. Not dreadful.

Not a total, embarrassing, pressing emergency. I’d just wanted to take a little me-time.

We run into a friend of Zoë’s at Child’s Play, the chi-chi little neighborhood toy store. New York is much worse for the demise of five-and-ten-cent stores like Woolworth’s and Lamston’s—the urban equivalents of Kmart, where you could go to pick up just about anything for less than you’d pay in an art store or toy shop. Lissa Arden is my daughter’s friend from

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her Museum Adventures program. The two of them do artsy-craftsy projects after school, like go to Our Name Is Mud and make and decorate pottery. Lissa’s mom, Melissa, is a charming Englishwoman. They’re looking for goody bag treats for Lissa’s upcoming birthday party.

While Zoë tracks down her Play-Doh and the little girls ooh and ahh over half the items in the store, Melissa tells me how difficult it is to find the appropriate birthday venue, the right party favors, unusual invitations—the works. I commiserate.

“I’m really in a twist about all of this,” Melissa confesses. “We discovered this marvelous little place over on Eighty-third Street; a bead shop that does children’s parties. But their space is limited, so I can’t possibly invite all of her friends, let alone Lissa’s entire class at Ethical Culture. And we’re bound to end up ostracized for it.”

Melissa’s woes strike a chord. Suddenly I realize that our social circle isn’t much more than a twenty-first-century version of the Regency
ton
. Women like Nina Osborne and Jennifer Silver-Katz set the standards by which everyone else is harshly judged. And if you flout convention, whether deliberately or accidentally, you are “cut,” and your child suffers for it. I share my epiphany with Melissa and she agrees. “Of course, they think my accent is charming,” she chuckles, “so I can squeak by, sometimes. But it really is dreadful. There are days when Lissa comes home in tears because the snack I provided has too many car-bohydrates in it. Would you believe no one in her class eats Nutella? The first time it happened, the mothers forgave me because I was ‘European,’ but of course when my husband Simon goes to pick her up from her programs with wrapped cheese slices or a box of Yodels, they’re practically gagging for him.”