Play Dates (41 page)

“Okay, Tinker Bell,” I say, “let’s pretend I’m a visitor to Zoë-

land. Why don’t you give me a tour of your city, okay?” Zoë doesn’t realize it, but this is a dress rehearsal—minus the fairy costume—for the oral presentation Mrs. Hennepin expects of her.

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“Okay!” she says, then runs out of the room.

“Hey! Where’d you go?” No response. “Zoë? I thought you’re going to give me a tour of your city!” I’m tired, and I want to be sure this project from hell is finally done. Besides, I can’t wait to get my dining room back. My parents’ mahogany table has more or less been transformed into Crafts Central.

Zoë skips back into the dining area with one of her dolls.

“Barbie is going to give the tour. Oh, it costs a dollar.”

Zoë takes me by surprise with this one. “Well . . . I’m not so sure the person who financed the construction of the entire city should also have to pay for the tour.”

“Nuh-uh,” she insists, “because . . . because . . . because it’s like if you build a museum, even if you builded it, you still have to pay to go see the pictures because the soldiers who guard the pictures so nobody steals them have to be paid so they can feed their families and you have to pay people to keep it clean and take the tickets and work in the gift shop like you do.”

As far as I’m concerned, she’s just aced the assignment with this little speech. I hope Mrs. Heinie-face is as dazzled as I am that Zoë Marsh Franklin has developed such a mature grasp of economics. Maybe she should forget the astronaut thing for a while and run for Congress. I locate my purse and pony up the dollar.

With a little help from her owner, the mini-skirted Barbie steps onto the giant slab of foam core and begins her tour. “Welcome to Zoë-land. Zoë-land is a city that’s ruled by a queen. The queen’s name is Zoë. There is a king and his name is Xander—”

Zoë drops the higher-pitched Barbie voice and looks me earnestly in the eye. “But that part’s a secret,” she warns me.

“King Xander isn’t here right now. He’s fighting a war with the wicked witch who lives in the next city.”

“What’s the witch’s name, Z? I mean—Barbie?”

“Evil Witch Heinie-face. But that part’s a secret, too. But you

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get to learn the secrets because you paid to build the city. But
only you
get to know them!”

She points to the double-decker central area with one large, fancy building, surrounded by smaller, modestly designed structures. The buildings on the upper level rest on another piece of foam core supported by dowels and former toilet-tissue cardboard cylinders. “This is where the main things happen in the city. This is the palace where the queen lives and these are the buildings where her favorite subjects live and all the people live who work for the queen and the city like the policemen and the firemen. Because they have to live right in the middle of the city so they can get someplace fast in case there’s an emergency. But there are hardly ever emergencies because everybody likes each other and there isn’t any fighting or stealing. But just in case.”

Zoë raises Barbie’s arm and has her point to the lower level.

“And where the buildings are, in the middle of the city, if it gets really, really, really, cold outside, and like if it’s snowing or it’s raining, the people can walk underneath the city so they don’t have to get cold.” She pauses for a moment. “See, I was going to make the weather warm the whole time but I like it when the leaves change colors a lot and I like it when it snows, too, except not when it snows too much unless it means we get a snow day.

So I had to make my city so you didn’t have to go outside when the weather was yucky, but you could still go places that were important and that you had to go to, like school or to your job.”

I’m so impressed. Really overwhelmed by all the thought she’s put into this. True, I’ve helped her build a lot of it, but she hasn’t really shared the ideas behind the construction concept with me until now. Just a few short months ago, this child was in hysterics because I had to get a job and go off to work. And now look at her! How aware she is of mommies and daddies who need to work to feed their families. Her urban planning even takes them into account in the event of inclement weather.

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Barbie finishes the tour of Zoë-land, and I congratulate both of them on such a terrific achievement. Certainly worthy of a celebration that calls for a glass of pink lemonade. If Mrs. Hennepin doesn’t give my little girl an E, I am personally going to strangle the woman with her stretchy white headband.

Unfortunately, I can’t let Zoë rest on her laurels, because there are still forty math problems to solve before classes begin again tomorrow. And it’s 8 P.M. We’re both totally spent. This is nuts. She should be taking her bath and getting into bed, so she can get a good night’s sleep before the grind begins anew—like it ever stopped—in the morning. Neither one of us have had much of anything that can be called a vacation during the past week. I don’t remember getting assignments during the breaks when I was Zoë’s age. I know my parents would have been furious over it, if I had. Whatever happened to vacations as extended blocks of time so kids can, well, be kids? And so the
parents
could get some much-needed relief from all the homework, too!

Zoë and Barbie have danced off. I follow my daughter into her room and remind her that we’ve got to do her math. She’s getting out of her Tinker Bell costume and into the blue Cinderella gown.

“I can’t do it. I’m going to the ball now.”

“Zoë, don’t make me into a meanie over this. You know you have to do your math homework.”

“But I’ve been working so hard,” she moans.

“I know you have, sweetheart. And you’ve done such a good job. With your city and your spelling words. But I hate to say it . . . we still have the math to do.”

“I hate math!”

“I’m not so crazy about it either. But math is a necessary evil.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A ‘necessary evil’ is something that you have to do because it’s important for your development, even if it’s unpleasant. Like hav-

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ing to eat vegetables or drink a glass of milk with every meal when you’re a little girl, or doing math homework so you can learn arithmetic, which you’ll need to know when you want to buy things. So, please don’t make me yell at you. C’mon, let’s go.”

“Cinderella will do five problems.”

Well, it’s a start. I lead her by the hand to the table in the breakfast nook, where the math worksheet has been sitting for the entire week of vacation. No sooner does her tush hit the chair than she bounces up like she’s just sat on a tack.

“Zoë, where are you going?” I call after her.

“I forgot my crown,” she yells from the other end of the apartment.

She returns to the table four times as slowly as she left it. We start to tackle the first problem. “Okay, Z, we’ve got one hundred and sixty-five plus three hundred and forty-seven. So, we start with the column all the way on the right. Five plus seven is . . . what?”

Bang! She’s off again. “What is it now?!”

“I need my wand!”

She dances back into the room a few moments later.

“Sit. Please.”

“Okayyyyyy,” she whines.

“Let’s pick up where we left off.”

“I can’t do it without my wand.”

“Fine. But there’s no need to whine about it. So, let’s make

the answer appear like magic. The right hand column. Five plus seven. Wave the wand over it. What’s five plus seven?” She counts it out on her fingers. I don’t think this is how they’re supposed to be learning to add three-digit numbers.

“Twelve.”

“Good! Good girl! So, how do you indicate that?” She regards me like I’m speaking in tongues. Finally she writes a twelve below the sum line. “Well . . . sort of. A twelve is a one and a two, right? Right?”

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She’s nestling her chin in her clasped hands. Her folded arms rest on the tabletop. Her eyes are bleary. “Zoë, please pay attention,” I beg. “We’re only on the first problem. After this one, we’ve got thirty-nine more to go. We’ve had a whole week to do these; we could have done a few of them every day, but you kept putting it off. Now, five plus seven is twelve. So you put the two part of the twelve at the bottom . . .” I draw a two, mimicking her handwriting. “And you put the one part of the twelve on top of the next column over to the left. It’s called ‘carrying.’

So in this case, you write the two and you
carry
the one over to the next column and you write it—in smaller handwriting, enough so you remember it needs to be there—just above the six, which is the top number on the second column. Are you with me?”

“Yes.” Her voice is so sleepy. Despite my extreme frustration, I still feel sorry for her.

“Okay, then. Watch what I’m doing, so you can figure it out all by yourself on the next one. So, you’ve
carried
the one over, and written it above the six. Now, you have
three
numbers in that column because you have the one that you just carried over and you have the six that’s the middle digit of the first big number and you have the four that’s the middle digit of the second big number. That’s one plus six plus four—which is how much?”

Cinderella is sound asleep over the breakfast table, her right arm now outstretched, still clutching her magic wand.

I slide my chair away from the table as silently as I can manage. I’m about to make a deal with the Devil; it sets a dangerous precedent and goes against every ethical bone in my body.

But the alternative is to inflict mental as well as parental cruelty on my child. It’s nearly 9 P.M. on a school night. She’s seven years old. She has to be awake at six tomorrow morning. How can I possibly
force
Zoë to stay awake long enough to do thirty-nine and a half math problems, when she can’t even understand this one and her concentration was kaput at least an hour ago?

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I open the kitchen utility drawer and remove the calculator, then tiptoe back to my chair. I pick up Zoë’s number-2 pencil.

I’m familiar enough with her handwriting not to need a sample in front of me, but just in case, I take a look at her last completed worksheet. By nine thirty, the new set of problems has been solved, thanks to the calculator. I slip the worksheet into Zoë’s math book and zip her backpack closed.

My daughter sleeps the sleep of the innocent.

I, on the other hand, am a forger.

Chapter 22

MA Y

Dear Diary:

Mommy and MiMi are fighting again. And it’s because I got
an E on my city. Actually, I got an E-minus. Mrs. Hennepin
gave me an E for my presentation but she made it a minus because it started to fall apart but it wasn’t my fault. Mommy
helped me carry it to the school but there was a thunderstorm.

And we had my city covered up with big plastic bags like we
use for garbage and we taped them to the bottom of the big
board so my city wouldn’t get all wet. But some rain must
have got in it anyway because it was really windy and when I
got my city inside and I pulled off the plastic bags, some of the
paint runned ran a little bit and some of the glue got unsticky
and some of the cardboard poles got sort of mushy so they
didn’t hold up the top level as good anymore. June Miller,
April and May’s mommy, was the class parent on the week
when we had to hand in our cities and when she saw that
mine got a little smushy from the thunderstorm she said I
shouldn’t worry. She said the mushy parts looked like it was a

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picture in a Dr. Seuss book. But Mrs. Heinie-face wasn’t nice
about it like June was.

Lily Pei got an E-plus. She had moving sidewalks for people to
walk on that really moved! She showed me how it worked. The
sidewalk was like a fat black rubber band and underneath her
city was a motor that made the rubber band go around and
around. She said it was called a belt but it didn’t look like the
kind of belt you put on to hold up your pants or to make your
dress look prettier.

Xander got an E on his city and it wasn’t as good as mine
was. I think all the teachers are nicer to him because he gets
angry and throws tantrums when he doesn’t like something. Ashley thinks so too. She’s my best friend again. Her mommy and
Xander’s mommy told their friends about the pretty jewelry
Mommy made and they all want to have some and they all want
to be her friend. Before she started making jewelry, Mommy
wasn’t really friends with them the way she is with some of my
other friends’ mommies like with June and with Mrs. Arden,
Lissa’s mommy.

Our cities were on show at the school in the cafeteria for two
whole weeks. When Mrs. Hennepin gave them back, some of the
kids wanted to keep them because we worked really hard to make
them. But Xander and some of the other boys didn’t care and
they threw them in one of the garbage cans outside the school but
they were too big and they took up the whole can and they stuck
out from the top. Xander said, “I know how to make them fit,” and
he took matches out of his pocket and he lit the top city on fire. I
thought we would have to call Fireman Dennis but Mr. Spiros, the
shop teacher, was outside and he saw it and he and two of the
other teachers got fire extinguishers from off the walls of the school
and they put it out by themselves. Then the teachers took the boys
to Mr. Kiplinger’s office. I think they got in big trouble.

I brought my city home because I worked so hard on it that I
didn’t want to throw it away. It’s in my room now but it’s so big
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