Play Dates (21 page)

PLAY DATES

153

“Kids have always been cruel,” Mia commiserates. “Particularly the Thackeray crowd. You and I didn’t escape unscathed, you know. What about our clothes?”

Eek. We wore Tulia’s custom one-offs, which would now be considered funky and trendy. To have a mom that was a fashion designer?
Now
it might be the height of super-coolness, but back then, we were just considered weird. I guess we were, sort of. We were Mommy’s pint-sized guinea pigs—and she didn’t design children’s garments, so there we were, tricked out in ultra-sophisticated, offbeat clothes. Jump back several years and imagine Roberto Cavalli couture, worn by a couple of preteens.

Come to think of it, that’s how they dress these days!

I take a deep breath. “I’m going in to speak with Zoë before I lose my nerve. Don’t go anywhere yet. I may need you for moral support.”

My daughter is still in the den, mesmerized by the same ballet she saw just a couple of hours ago. The sound is up so loud, the orchestra might as well be sitting in the living room. I grab the remote and mute the volume, then kick off my shoes and curl up beside her on the sofa, putting my arm around her shoulder.

“Hey! Mom! I was watching that!”

“I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Can we do it later?” she whines.

“No, young lady, we can’t. As long as I pay the maintenance, I make the rules around here.” She wrenches away from me and pulls her knees into her chest, showing baggy little elephant wrinkles in her white tights, just around the ankles. I reach out for her again, but she shrugs away. She’s probably a bit over-tired.

“Well, it looks like I’ll be spending more time around here from now on.” Zoë’s face lights up and she launches herself into my arms, but when I tell her the reason and what it’s going to mean in the belt-tightening department, she doesn’t take it as

154

Leslie Carroll

well as I’d hoped. In fact she bawls as though a dam had burst behind her eyelids.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents!” she laments and a smile flits across my lips for barely an instant. In a few years, when she reads
Little Women
, she’ll know the reason.

“I didn’t say there weren’t going to be
any
presents, Z,” I reply, searching for words of mollification. “We’ll have a few really special ones, instead of—”

She vaults from the couch with the same intensity she’d used only a minute ago to hug me, nearly landing on her tush as she skids in her stocking feet across the slippery hardwood floors.

“It’s not fair!” she wails as she heads for the kitchen. “What are you trying to do to me?”

This is a phrase she heard me say all too often to her father when our marriage was in tatters, specifically after he’d confessed that he had fallen in love with someone else. She has mimicked perfectly the same moaning tone, with the emphasis and rising inflection on the word
do
. “Zoë . . .” I say, trailing her.

She’s not listening. “Zoë, honey, I’m not trying to do anything to you. Believe me, I’m not doing anything on purpose. I’m not trying to hurt you or punish you. Zoë, look at me.
Look
at me.”

She refuses. I try again, my frustration increasing. “Z,
look at me
.

We’ll get through this together. There
will
be Christmas. I promise.”

My daughter can go from adorable and docile to full-fledged temper tantrum faster than a Ferrari can reach its maximum mph. In this case she’d already been working up a head of steam. “I don’t want to live here anymore!” she sobs, throwing her arms around Mia’s waist. “I want to live with MiMi!”

Stricken, and feeling as though I’ve just been stabbed in the heart, thinking it would be better just to die quickly rather than know I’ll live forever with the pain, I look at my sister. We converse above Zoë’s head, through intense eye contact and by reading each other’s lips. “I can solve this,” I insist.

PLAY DATES

155

“Take a day or so of quiet time,” Mia says. “You need it.”

We spar for a couple of minutes. Mia thinks she’s helping. My head is spinning. Zoë continues to cling to her aunt, tossing in the occasional insult at me, who is, in her eyes, always taking things away from her, or a compliment, for Mia, who always gives her things, takes her great places, does “fun stuff,” and gives her treats “just
because
.”

And so . . . a half hour later, I am watching my only child and sole proprietor of my heart, Baa tucked under her arm, march out the door with her savior: my older sister. I wait until the yellow knapsack and wobbly Powerpuff Girls suitcase disappear into the elevator, listen as the car descends, then return to my empty apartment, locking the door and sliding to the floor, too blinded by tears to move.

I don’t know how long I stay there, my back against the door, hugging my knees to my chest, Zoë-style. It doesn’t matter.

Chapter 10

It’s been a great few days. I love having a kid around.

It’s so cool to see the world through Zoë’s eyes.

Though I don’t know how Claire does it. I’ve been working at Bendel’s helping to launch Lucky Sixpence’s makeup line, taking my lunch break later in the day so I can pick up Zoë from school.

If she’s got an after-school activity, she heads over there with another kid and its nanny and then goes home with them until I can get her. It’s a quick cab ride from the store, but it’s a bit of a haul from the Upper West Side, where all of her activities are, to the Lower East, where I live. There are times when I think I spend half the day in transit.

If Zoë’s stay lasts into next week, I don’t know how I’ll swing it. I’m doing the makeup for the popular, wildly un-PC, reality TV series called
Hissy Fit
, where Southern belles, Jewish-American princesses, and gays compete to see who can be more demanding—and get away with it. I’ll be at the studio day and night when I’m not following one of the contestants around trying to make them appear as natural as possible. Zoë can’t tag along. And she won’t go home yet. True, we’re both having a blast. She has no bedtime and we make PB & J sandwiches at midnight if the kid is up that late. Claire gags at the smell of

158

Leslie Carroll

peanut butter so they don’t keep it in the house. We go out for pizza—I hate to cook—and ice cream cones. My niece was fascinated by all the tattoo parlors along St. Mark’s Place and asked for one. We picked out a design together, then I went home and painted it on her arm. She tapes a baggie over it when she bathes so it won’t wash away too soon.

I haven’t talked to Claire since Saturday afternoon. She won’t call me. She could be pissed or she could be totally restructur-ing her life. Either one is in character for her.

In a way, I feel bad—a bit guilty—that Zoë isn’t homesick. Yesterday I asked if she wanted to call her mom and she got moody and pouty and said no, adding, “I’m still mad at her.” Stubborn kid. A true Marsh chick. The only time my niece mentioned anything having to do with home was when I took down my old Twister game from the closet and taught her how to play. She loved it and suggested it might be fun to play at her birthday party. I agreed and said I’d bring it.

This evening we had an appointment with Celestia for a reading; one for Zoë and one for me. We walked along 10th Street, holding hands. It was a scarf-and-mittens kind of night. I hate it when it gets dark so early. It makes me feel like, as the days grow shorter, I’m getting older. Which I am, I know, but the long nights emphasize the obvious and depress me. Maybe because I’ve had no one to share them with for a while—a guy, I mean. I’m doing this backwards. I should find the guy,
then
get the kid. I’m even surer now—from observing Claire and from six straight days with Zoë—I do not want to do this alone.

Zoë was wearing one of my floppy velvet hats, which is about ten sizes too big for her. But she told me that she’s supposed to wear a hat when it gets this cold, so we scrounged through my stuff ’til we found one she liked.

When we got to First Avenue and turned south, she suddenly broke stride and applied the brakes. “This is where my Daddy works,” she announced, as if I didn’t know it.

PLAY DATES

159

Eden’s Garden was pretty empty. Scott’s usually at the restaurant in the evenings to handle whatever Serena wants him to. Most often, he’s at the cash register, which is tucked away in the back, since Serena learned it was bad feng shui to have the money near the front door, where it can spiritually fly out. “Do you want to go in?” I asked Zoë. She nodded. So we did. A rail-thin waitress, probably an NYU drama student, greeted us at the door, asking if she could help us. “Yeah, drink a shake,” I muttered. Her skin was so pale, I would have used up half my box of cosmetics just to make her look alive. “Do you eat here?” I asked her.

“All the time,” she assured me.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. She took it as a compliment.

“Is Scott here?”

The girl looked a bit stunned, as though this was a strange question. “Yes . . . he’s here.” She seemed unsure why anyone would come to Eden’s Garden to see
him
.

“Tell him his kid is here to say hi,” I said.

She brightened up. “Oh, I’ll go get him. Hi, there,” she said to Zoë in the kind of singsong voice kids hate. “What’s your name?”

“Zoë.”

“That’s very pretty,” the chick said, now out of conversation.

“I’ll go get your dad, okay?”

“Okay.”

I glanced down at Zoë, who was swinging back and forth from my arm. Her face looked anxious.

The restaurant is pretty small, so it was a minute or less before Scott came out to greet his daughter. “Hey, kiddo! How’s my girl?” Zoë gave him a huge hug.

“Are you growing a beard?” she asked, tickling the graying stubble on his cheek.

“Maybe. But only if my best girl likes it. Do you like it?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know yet. It isn’t a real beard yet.”

“So, whatcha doing down in this neck of the woods?”

160

Leslie Carroll

Zoë giggled. “Woods don’t have necks!”

Scott pretended to think about it. “You’re right, they don’t. It’s a silly saying. Made up by a grownup. So what are you doing in . . . Eden’s Garden?” He looked at me. I figured I’d let Zoë say whatever she wanted to. “Hey, Mia.” He gave my cheek a quick peck. “I haven’t seen you in . . . about two or three weeks!”

“You’ll see me in another two or three, if you’re not going to fink out on her,” I said, my voice a low threat, my face a smile.

“We’re . . . We’re . . . We’re going to see MiMi’s astrologer,”

Zoë told her dad. “It’s for my birthday.”

“What’s she gonna do? Tell you you’re going to be a year older?” he teased.

“I don’t know. I
will
be another year older.”

“Do you two want something to eat?” he asked, gesturing to an empty table.

Zoë made a face. “No. I don’t like the food here. It tastes funny.”

“That’s ’cause it’s good for you.”

She stuck out her tongue like she’d tasted something foul.

“No, it’s not.
Roast beef
is good for you.” It’s one of her favorite foods. “And cherry vanilla ice cream ’cause it has fruit in it.”

“Would you like to say hi to Serena?”

What a jerk
.

“No! I hate her. I want to say hi to
you
. Will you . . . will you . . .”

She fought for the words, looking like she was afraid to learn the answer. “Will you come to my birthday party?
Pleeaaaaaase
.”

“Of course I will, pumpkin.”

“And don’t bring
her
.”

“Yes, please don’t,” I added. It was worth saying twice.

“Daddy?”

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“I miss you.” She looked back at me, over her shoulder. “And Mommy misses you, too.” I wondered if she would tell him where she’d been for the past few days . . . and why. “Why did you and Mommy have to get divorced?”

PLAY DATES

161

I was waiting to hear it from his lips, too.
Yeah, tell her. Tell your
kid you fell in love with someone else—who, by the way, couldn’t
hold a candle to my sister if it were hot-glued to her palm—and
ran away from home.

“Was it because I was bad sometimes?” she asked, tears rolling down her cheeks. “And if I’m never bad again, will you come back and live with us?”

“You weren’t a bad girl, Zo,” he said, using the single-syllable nickname he came up with for her when she was an infant. Claire calls her “Z.” Funny, how they couldn’t agree on a pet name for their only child.

“And, even when you misbehaved from time to time, I didn’t move away because of that. I promise you.”

“Then what was it?” she asked, looking at him with the sad-dest Bambi eyes I’ve ever seen. She was breaking
my
heart.

Scott took her hands in his and smoothed them over with his fingers. “It’s a long story, pumpkin.”

“I have time,” said the wise-assed little pragmatist.

I watched Scott to see how he’d dance out of this one, thinking how much scorn I felt for a man I once admired, the guy who’d rocked Claire’s world—and “Zo’s.”

“You know something?” he said, looking into her huge eyes, “I don’t even know
how
to tell it. And that’s the truth. But can I have some time to think about how to do it? I mean a lot more time than five minutes,” he added, guessing where his own kid would be going. He’s not dumb. In fact he’s brilliant. Frequently clueless, often insensitive, but never dumb.

“I guess so,” Zoë sighed. “We have to see Celestia anyway.

You
are
going to come to my party,
aren’t you?
” she said, just to be sure he remembered. “You. Not
her
.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” he grinned. “Just me. Promise.” He hugged her and bid us both goodbye.

“He
better
come. And he
better not bring her
,” she said as we crossed the street.