Play Dates Page 7

  With my scores in hand I do a little homework, stopping by the Times Square visitors’ center to snag a fistful of brochures from competing sightseeing companies. One in particular jumps out at me: Go Native! Tours, which advertises that it hires only native New Yorkers as guides. I phone them, get an interview, and am hired on the spot. Apparently, the holiday season, which officially starts on Thanksgiving, is a peak time for tourism. They’ll be needing extra people, so I’m in! My very first real job. I’m delirious.

  I flip open the cell phone and call Happy Chef to let him know that Go Native! was impressed by my “understated glamour.” Then I dial Mia to share the good news.

  “What’s up? My hands are full of foundation.”

  I’ve caught her in the middle of a gig. Well, I guess the same will be said of me, starting tomorrow. I apologize and tell her about my job.

  “Great news! Gotta run, though. I’ll call you later,” she says, then hangs up.

  I’m feeling so good about my very first job that I agree to take Zoë to the playground after school. Normally, I hate going there. I find it boring because I can’t do anything except watch her. I’m way too paranoid to just sit and read a book while she plays, or to become involved in a conversation with another parent, because I’m afraid if I look away for one second, she’ll either get stolen or go splat like the kid in Kramer vs. Kramer and I’ll never forgive myself. Zoë has no idea that this is why I don’t like the playground. I think she thinks it has something to do with dirt.

  I’m a lot younger than the other moms on the park benches. In some cases we’re practically a generation apart and they rarely seem inclined to include me, which is just as well. They gather in clusters. It’s very clique-y. In the past, Zoë’s had playground dates with some of her friends; when their nannies took them, Hilda would bring Zoë, and when their moms took them, I’d go along, but I never could relax when I was keeping only half my attention on Zoë and devoting the rest of it to my own “play date” with the other mom.

  But today I wanted to give Zoë a treat so I bit the bullet, and here I sit, kicking back and watching her shoot down the slide for the forty-seventh time. This is not hyperbole. I’ve actually been counting.

  “Mommy, will you push me?” Zoë runs over to the swings.

  “I’ll be right there!” I go over to her, step behind the swing, and give it a few gentle pushes.

  “Harder. I can’t go high when you push it like that.”

  Reluctantly, my pushes grow a bit more aggressive.

  “Nooo. Harder. I said harder.”

  “You know, you can go as high as you want when you pump.” I remind her how to kick her legs for maximum propulsion.

  “I like it better when you do it.”

  She seems a bit sullen this afternoon. “Is everything okay, Z?”

  She begins to cry. “I don’t want you to go to work.”

  I’m distracted for a second when a little boy I don’t know shouts “Ula!” He’s been shoved down the slide by a much bigger kid, an older boy who seems to derive great joy in sending a smaller kid crying to his nanny. Ula whips out the Kleenex and a wet towelette and immediately plies her young charge with a healthy snack (a box of raisins), while stemming the flow of tears and gently checking for any sign of bodily injury.

  If this is the Osbornes’ ex-Ula, she is a dish indeed. No wonder both Robert and Nina went nuts over her in their quite disparate ways. But if this is now Robert Osborne’s Ula, how come she’s still a nanny? There’s a nosy part of me that’s dying to go over and chat with her.

  “Mommy, are you listening to me?”

  I slow down the swing and stroke Zoë’s hair. “Sweetheart, I have to go to work from now on. I’m still going to try to be with you, though, as much as I can.”

  “But who’s going to pick me up from school?”

  “I will, sweetie. Most of the time. And if I can’t be there, we’ll work something out with Ashley’s mommy or with April and May’s mommy or with the mommy of another one of your good friends. And…maybe even MiMi can pick you up sometimes.”

  MiMi is apparently a magic bullet. “Really?” Zoë asks me, beginning to calm down.

  “Really,” I promise her, speaking for my sister, in absentia.

  “I want to go back on the slide, now.”

  “Not until he’s decided he’s had enough. You see him?” I ask Zoë, pointing to the playground bully.

  She nods. “Unh-huh.”

  “Well, he just likes to be mean to other kids, and I know you want to play on the slide, but I don’t want you up there when he’s there.” This is another one of my big fears about going to the park with her. The big bullies who get away with menacing the smaller children on the equipment. There are a lot of things for which I will march willingly into battle, but when it comes to situations like this, I’d just as soon avoid confrontation. And the emergency room.

  Ula is now back among the other nannies, au pairs, housekeepers, and otherwise non-parental caregivers. I notice they appear to be snubbing her a bit. True, she looks like a swan amid a bunch of ducks, but beauty alone shouldn’t be grounds for ostracism. Maybe they know she’s a homewrecker.

  The nannies themselves are sub-clustered by geographical and ethnic points of origin. From one bench wafts the cadences of thick Irish brogues; from another, the musical lilt of the Caribbean. Other benches, too, host representatives from additional regions, both domestic and foreign. A United Nations of nannies.

  One of the Irish caregivers is a nice-looking young man whose name is pronounced “Bree-an.” Brian is ending up, so I’m overhearing, in much the same predicament as my Hilda did. Divorce spells the end of his job. His colleagues are eager for all the juicy details (do au pairs have to sign confidentiality agreements?) But mostly, they want to know what effect his employers’ divorce will have on his immigration status. Brian fears getting deported.

  “Aren’t you chilly?” I ask Zoë. The sky is turning dusky. “Mommy’s a little chilly. Let’s head back so we can start your homework before dinner.”

  “Okay.” Reluctantly, she begins dragging her feet toward the entrance to the park.

  “C’mon, slowpoke. Wanna race?”

  “Unh-unh. I’m tired. I don’t feel like running around anymore.”

  “All right. But we’ve been here a long time. I want to get home before it really starts to get dark out. Okay? What do you have for homework today?”

  “We have to…we have to…umm…we have to make a natural habitat.”

  “For what?”

  “We can pick. We can do fishes or we can do lions or we can do bears.”

  “That’s quite a big range of habitats to pick from, Z. How about we do teddy bears and just make a model of your bed.”

  “Very funny, Mommy.”

  There’s always a trade-off. Or a sacrifice somewhere down the line. My Go Native! work schedule is such that I won’t be able to make it to Zoë’s class’s Halloween party, which starts at 11 A.M. on Halloween itself. Both of the Thackeray second-grade classes—and their parents—are participating, so it’s quite the event.

  She’s hysterical. “You promised,” she sobs.

  “I know I did, sweetie, but that’s before I got my work assignments for this week. I have to work until two thirty. They were very accommodating when I told them I need to pick you up from school every day.”

  “What’s ‘accommodating’?”

  “It means that they very nicely gave me a work schedule that fits around your school day.” I start at nine thirty and work until two thirty on weekdays. Beginning the week before Thanksgiving, they’ll give me weekend tours as well. Then I’ll really have to hold Scott to his end of the bargain. I’m sick of his excuses for not being able to see Zoë on a Saturday afternoon or on Sundays.

  She starts to wipe her nose with her forearm, then catches my eye and reaches for a tissue. “Can’t you call in sick on Halloween?”

  “I think that might be suspi
cious.” She looks at me quizzically. “They just might get the funny feeling that I’m not telling them the truth. Especially since I wouldn’t be sick the day before Halloween.”

  “So, be sick the day before.”

  I chuckle at this. “Then how will I make any money to take care of us? Besides, I could get in trouble for pretending to be sick or for asking for time off just a few days after I started working. You don’t want me to get in trouble and lose my job, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Because I want you to come to my school Halloween party.” She’s refusing to wipe away her tears, opting to let them roll dramatically down her rosy cheeks.

  “We’ll have a really fun Halloween together afterwards. An official Halloween with trick-or-treating and everything in the evening. You can even wear something different from what you wear to the party. You can have two costumes and dress up as whoever you like.”

  “Hermione,” she sniffles. “I can just wear one of my school outfits. And we can make a red and yellow Gryffindor robe.” But she’s still not sold on the compromise. “Everybody’s parents will be at the party,” she insists, bursting into tears again. “And they’ll all make fun of me because my mommy isn’t there.”

  “They’d better not or I’ll come beat them up,” I say, trying to get Zoë to smile. I fail.

  “Come beat them up on Halloween, then.”

  I don’t know what to do. I feel miserable. “Zoë, sweetie, Mommy’s about to cry, too. Let’s try to solve our problem together, okay? Like big girls.” She nods, sniffling some more. “Should we see if Daddy can come to the class Halloween party?”

  She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. He hates dressing up and costumes, remember?” We think about it for a few moments. Zoë’s taking my suggestion quite seriously, her earnest little tearstained face really giving the situation her full attention. I try not to let her see how intently I’m watching her. Suddenly, the dark cloud passes and she breaks into an adorable grin. “I’ve got it!” she announces gleefully.

  Excel isn’t getting any easier, but I’ve thought a lot about Miamore cosmetics. I blend so many colors and products anyway when I work, I might as well start my own line. And socially, I need to spread my net wider, since everyone is a potential customer. I used to turn down gigs if the pay wasn’t great or if I had to get up too early in the morning. I don’t do that these days. And I’m headed to kind of a cool one. Zoë’s class is having a Halloween party. That’s Claire’s crowd and they have bucks. The downside is that I have to spend two and a half hours face-painting forty-two second graders on a sugar high. The flipside is that their parents are encouraged to chaperone them, so it’s a prime opportunity to scope out the eligible dads. I’ve dated enough men with piercings. There, I might meet one with a portfolio instead. And there’s this, too: in my line of work, an unattached straight man is about as rare as a pink diamond. On second thought, bad analogy.

  Boy, I’d forgotten how well Thackeray spends money. I guess the parents want to see their dollars at work. Right now, those bucks have been invested in blacklights, acres of faux cobwebs, and full-sized puppets of witches and ghouls. There was even a cauldron of something steaming, sending chilly wisps of smoke drifting across the classroom. I know that dry ice costs a damn fortune.

  At first, I couldn’t spot my niece amid the purple gloom. She found me first, making her presence known by launching herself into me, grabbing me around the waist. “MiMi!” she yelled, trying to be heard over the recorded haunted-house sound effects. Then she dragged me around the room, introducing me to everyone. Mrs. Hennepin was in a good mood; she thanked me, glad I was pinch-hitting for Claire. Someone must have spiked her cider.

  They brought up the lights so I could work my magic. I figured it would be more fun for the kids if I showed up in a costume, so I dressed as a witch—my idea of one, anyway—which was a bit more Elvira-ish. Long black wig, tight black mini, black fishnets, lace-up patent-leather spike-heeled boots, also black, of course. The pointed black hat was a concession to tradition.

  I set up shop at the end of a long table. I’d also forgotten how low everything was in grade school. My butt was practically on the floor, my knees up near my chin. I opened my paint box, laid out the colors and the brushes, and was ready for business.

  Zoë muscled right to the front of the line. “MiMi is my aunt so I get to go first,” she announced, her tone of voice suggesting no alternative. She plopped down in front of me. “I want a mermaid,” she said. “With blonde hair.”

  “Hey, I like that,” I said, pointing to Zoë’s necklace. It had been fashioned out of a chain of blue plastic beads and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, strung together and shellacked.

  “Mommy made it,” Zoë proudly said, “to go with my Ariel outfit. A school of fish…because I was going to wear it in school!” She giggled. “And see this?” she added, pointing to the real scallop shell that hung like a pendant from the center. “We found this on the beach last year near Granny Tulia and Grandpa Brendan’s house. A seagull dropped it.”

  “It’s great,” I said, admiring it again. “Your mommy’s really clever. You know, she used to make jewelry out of all sorts of things when we were little. We would have fashion shows at home and our mommy would put together the outfits and Claire would do great stuff with all kinds of bangles and necklaces—we were too little to wear earrings, then—and your Granny Tulia would let me play with her makeup. We called it playing ‘runway.’”

  Zoë pouted. “I wish we could play ‘runway’ now. I mean at our house. Mommy doesn’t have time to play stuff with me anymore. I only get to play dress-up when I go to your house. Can I come to your house soon?”

  I nodded. “You bet!” I finished Zoë’s mermaid, painting the fishtail so it followed the curve of her jaw, the fins sprouting right in the center of her chin.

  “It tickles,” she giggled.

  “Sit still. I can’t work when you wriggle.”

  “Okay,” she sighed, and wriggled some more.

  Mrs. Hennepin passed by the table, a Dixie cup of orange soda in her hand. “You Marshes all have such artistic temperaments,” she observed.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I replied, ready to loan her my witch’s hat. I finished up Zoë’s mermaid and sent her off to snag me something to eat, while I got to work on her friend Ashley, who has a thing for butterflies. My niece returned with a paper plate loaded down with a chocolate cupcake frosted in the most garish shade of orange I’ve ever seen, a few fistfuls of Cheez Doodles, and a bunch of orange jelly beans (the only other color they had was black and Zoë knows I don’t like licorice, another trait all the Marshes share).

  “Oops, forgot the chocolate,” she said, then skittered off in the direction of the mini-Hershey bars.

  Ashley fluttered away from my table to join her, although I warned her not to touch her face, because the paint wasn’t dry yet. Not a minute later, while I was creating an ugly scar on the face of mini-pirate Xander Osborne, Ashley ran up to me in tears with smudged cheeks.

  “Fix it,” she wailed.

  “Fix it, please,” I corrected.

  A mother, eavesdropping, beamed at me.

  “Fix it now,” she insisted. She gave Xander a push, nearly toppling him into my lap. Good thing my brush was nowhere near his face.

  “Go away! It’s my turn,” Xander said, shoving the little girl. Ashley lost her balance and ended up on her butt. I was surprised at what a scrapper this blonde fairy princess was. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed Xander by the bandanna he was wearing on his head, an Upper West Side interpretation of a buccaneer’s do-rag.

  They were going at it like two alley cats. I laid my paints and brushes aside and tried to separate them, but I realized I was getting the worst of it, buffeted by both sets of tiny fists in their attempts to clobber each other.

  “Hey, that’s enough!” A large male arm clad in blue serge swooped down and collared Xand
er, lifting him out of the fray. “We don’t hit girls, son,” the man scolded, yanking the boy to one side.

  Ashley looked around the room—for her mom, I guess. When she didn’t see her, the kid threw herself on my mercy. “He pinched me! And he pulled my hair, too!”

  I crooked my finger at her, like I was going to tell her a big secret. She leaned forward while I took up the paints again to repair her butterflies. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” I whispered.

  “Don’t tell what?” Ashley whispered back.

  “That you started it,” I said. “You’ve got a mean right hook.”

  She broke into a huge grin, showing a gap between her front two teeth. “I take boxing after school,” she lisped, then hopped away to find Zoë.

  “You handled that really well.” Xander’s dad extended his hand to me and pulled me out of the pint-sized chair to my feet.

  “You weren’t so bad, yourself,” I said, noting the strong jaw-line and the thick, dark—though receding—hair just beginning to turn an elegant shade of pewter around the temples. “I’m Mia Marsh, by the way. I’m Zoë’s aunt. The little mermaid over by the popcorn.”

  He shook my hand. “Robert Osborne. And…you’ve met my son, Xander. So, if you’re hungry for something more substantial than sugar later in the day, how ’bout I take you to dinner?”

  Chapter 5

  NOVEMBER

  “You are coming here for Thanksgiving, sweetheart?” my mother asks, the response a forgone conclusion. We gather at the family clapboard in Sag Harbor every Thanksgiving. The East End of Long Island, particularly the little seacoast villages, have a New England-y atmosphere that feels especially appropriate to the observance of all things Mayflower-y. “We know you don’t have much to spend on a party for yourself this year, so your dad and I thought we’d make a birthday bash out of it.” Growing up, I felt that being born around Thanksgiving was inordinately unfair because I never seemed to get a separate celebration of my own—though Zoë probably has it even worse. She was born on Christmas Eve. I’ve always had to share my special day with Pilgrims, Native Americans (weren’t we all native after the first generation of Johns and Priscillas?) and other assorted travelers making the annual trek over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s House. An added inequity was a birthday dinner inevitably composed of turkey and all the fixings, as opposed to a celebratory meal of my choice. At least a homemade, frosted layer cake, topped with buttercream roses—my favorite part of the confection—usually replaced the requisite pumpkin pie.