Play Dates (45 page)

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I’d been hanging back, letting them have the space to reunite—without me. For a woman who was bubbling over with apologies to her kid for not having her act together, Claire was the most together mom I’d seen. More than ours, even. Maybe
she
didn’t realize this, but I did: Claire had not only risen to, but met—squarely in the face—every challenge she’d been faced with since Scott walked out the door last year. I think I’d been kidding myself, too. Thinking I was maybe ready to handle a child for more than a few hours at a time. The time I spend with Zoë makes me sure I want to have a kid . . . just not yet. I don’t know how to do the things Claire does.
She
might think she lacks patience, but, compared to me, she’s got it in spades. From where I stand, not just right this minute, but all the time, observing, watching her to see how she does it, Claire’s a total pro at motherhood. In Zoë’s mind, maybe I’m the “fun” one, but I’m a rank dilettante at knowing what to say to a kid and when to say it.

How
to say it. And maybe it won’t be ’til I have one of my own that I’ll learn.

Zoë looked at me before answering her mother. From the look on her face, I felt like I’d failed her. Claire had taken a Wash’n Dri out of her purse and was cleansing Zoë’s skinned knee. When she finished, she put a Band-aid over the wound, kissed it, and pronounced the boo-boo all better. Zoë kept her eyes on me. I felt miserable, but I knew this little life lesson had to be learned, as much as it hurt both of us. For all the high heels and the dressing up and the glitter, MiMi isn’t really the Fairy Godmother who will always show up at the darkest hour and make the slight or the scrape go away with a graceful wave of her magic wand.

“So, what about my promise, Z? Think your tired old mother can learn to have fun again?” Claire stood, then helped Zoë to her feet. Zoë wrapped her arms around Claire’s waist. “I’m taking that as a yes,” she said.

I looked at my watch. “I should be getting back—”

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“Now I wish we’d left a trail of bread crumbs,” Claire joked. “I wasn’t paying too much attention to what turns we took.”

“Tell you what, Zoë,” I said. “As soon as we get to the makeup room and I make sure all the faces are done, and you get the chance to wash up, I’ll tell Lucky we’re good to go. So, do you still want to go upstairs to watch the fashion show? Or would you rather go home?”

She looked at me like I was nuts. “Upstairs!”

I came over and hugged her. “That’s my girl! Way to go! So let’s all find our way back. While I finish the makeup, your mom can run out and buy a pack of new undies and a fresh pair of tights at the drugstore. There’s got to be a Duane Reade within spitting distance. After you change clothes, I’ll get you both a special escort to take you upstairs to the front row. So you can’t get lost again, all right?”

I dashed ahead of them, but I could hear Claire’s voice res-onating in the narrow corridor. She was telling Zoë, “Let’s call it a do-over. You and me, okay?”

“Okay,” Zoë agreed.

“And you know something?” Claire added.

“What, Mommy?”

“This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

Chapter 24

JUNE

June is a lot like Christmastime. Everything winds down and heats up at the same time. Zoë is counting the minutes until school ends, and—I have to admit—so am I. The dry-erase board in the kitchen resembles some kind of Command Central. We’ve got Zoë’s year-end ballet recital, her final presentation for kinder karate, and parent day at bikram yoga, where the mommies and daddies are encouraged to sweat out their bad karma alongside their offspring. I’ve been finding a million excuses not to participate, but I’ve run dry of them. So, there goes a perfectly splendid Saturday morning in June.

Then we’ve got the round of graduation parties. Nina Osborne has already invited the class—and their parents—to a Yankees game. Box seats, naturally.

I suppose I should heave a huge sigh of relief at the fact that at least we have no double bookings or other end-of-term scheduling conflicts this time around. The prospect of summer camp hovers enticingly before me like the twinkly orb that announces the arrival of Glinda the Good Witch.

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Although, ironically, just as Zoë and I are beginning to set off on surer footing together and have a whole summer in which to hit our stride, she’ll be going off to camp for a month. But we both need the break. Zoë, particularly, needs to have the opportunity to run around outdoors, to chase butterflies, and to learn to sleep through the night after hearing a ghost story.

I’m sitting on a bench in Central Park anxiously watching her cavort on the monkey bars. Part of my new promise to be more

“fun” was to agree to these playground excursions. The clever minx had proposed a compromise. “You can talk to the mommies about your jewelry,” she said, “while I play.”

A couple of weeks ago, we started making kid-jewelry, daughter versions of the mommy pieces, but with plastic and glass beads instead of semi-precious gemstones. Actually, Zoë helped design a number of prototypes, which I then whipped up. We’ve got three collections now: the adult jewelry, a Mommy and Me line, and a Completely Kids collection, com-prised of the kind of stuff I created for her birthday party goody bags and for her Ariel Halloween costume—the mermaid necklace of blue and green beads and shellacked Goldfish crackers.

I continue making pieces well into every night, long after Zoë has gone to sleep. She thinks I should peddle my wares in the playground, going from bench to bench with my sample case.

I’ve been very hesitant about this approach, but I give it a try today, and net one immediate sale, two special orders, and four nannies who ask for my business card.

As I wrap up my transactions, Zoë demands my attention.

She’s now sitting in the mud, playing with, I believe, earthworms. It rained last night and the ground is still very damp in patches.

“Mommy, come look!” she says. I join her, juggling my purse PLAY DATES

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as well as the sample case. “No, closer!” I bend over. “No, you have to
kneel down
.”

“Zoë, sweetie, this afternoon I came straight from work to pick you up, and I’m dressed all nicely. And there’s no clean place to put my bags. I can see very well. It’s okay.”

She sighs, fed up with me, and realizes she’s lost this round.

Now she knows how
I
feel most of the time. She’s using a twig to cut the worms in half. I only hope she learned this in science class and not from Xander Osborne. When she bisects them, the two halves wiggle independently. “See! When you cut a worm’s tushie off, it makes it come alive again!” She’s delighted with her discovery. I hate creepy-crawly things and I feel, somehow, like an accessory to murder.

“Do you have a jar?” she asks. “I want to take some of them home with me.”

I finish our bottle of Snapple. “Will this do the trick, Z?”

She regards it, frowning. “A mayonnaise jar would be better, see, because it’s fatter.”

“Well, you’re welcome to give it a shot, but my best guess is that you won’t find any of the nannies or mommies out here who happens to have an empty mayonnaise jar in her purse, so we’ll have to make do with this, okay?”

“Okay,” she sighs, with all the regret of an NIH scientist forced to make do with inferior materials. She rinses the bottle in the water fountain, a freestanding structure that always looks to me like a sandpaper-coated birdbath, then yanks a few leaves off a low branch and stuffs them into the bottle. Satisfied with their feng shui, she then drops three earthworms in after them.

I look at the inert bodies lying on top of the leaves. “Z?

They’re not moving.”

She studies her new pets for a few moments. “They’re just sleeping,” she says, in a teacher voice. “They haven’t gotten up

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yet.” Her focus is distracted when something near the edge of the playground catches her eye. She runs over to a landscaped patch of grass and plucks a buttercup. “They need a flower to decorate their room,” she announces, an expert in interior design now. Carefully, lovingly, she washes the yellow petals in the water fountain, then introduces the flower into her makeshift terrarium.

“We have to punch holes in the cover so they can breathe, Mommy.”

The corkscrew element of my Swiss army knife may never be the same after this.

“So, are we done with the playground for today?” I ask her.

She nods. As we start to head home, she mentions that her year-end ballet recital will be given in the park, instead of at Miss Gloo’s studio. “We are celebrating the coming of summer, because June twenty-first is the . . . it’s the . . . the . . .” She searches her memory for the phrase the ballet mistress must have used.

“Solstice?”

“Yes! It’s the summer sol-stitz, so we’re going to be like the lady who used to dance in scarves—”

Dance in scarves?
“Not Salome?”

Zoë gives me a funny look. “No! Who’s
Salo
-may?”

“A lady who danced in scarves. Or without them, actually.”

“Not Salo-may. Another lady. We’re going to wear white costumes like Greek statues. Like she wore.”

“Aha! Do you mean Isadora Duncan?”

“Yes, her! And we’re going to do a worship-nature dance.

And also in June it’s Arbor Day, which celebrates trees, so it’s for Arbor Day, too. Not just the sol-stitz. Miss Gloo said that in the olden days, like when Granny Tulia and Grandpa Brendan were little, we celebrated Arbor Day like other holidays, like we celebrate the Fourth of July, but we don’t do that anymore.”

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I slip my arm around Zoë’s shoulder and draw her towards me as we continue to walk. “And it’s a real shame, too.”

“I think we should all celebrate Arbor Day again, just like we do on Thanksgiving,” Zoë says. “Because we have a lot to thank the trees for.”

Zoë is in her room reading and I’m taking five minutes to relax in the tub, soaking away sore muscles and the day’s emotional tensions. Busy mothers should never underesti-mate the power of a few drops of aromatherapy. Maybe not as mood altering as a hit of peyote or an LSD tab, but certainly safer.

My daughter knocks on the bathroom door and enters without waiting for permission. “Can you make me this dress?” she asks, showing me an illustration in her storybook. “In the
exact
same colors.”

“Sweetheart, Mommy’s taking a bath now. You can see that.

I can’t make you a dress—
that
dress or
any other
dress—
right
this very
minute
. Now you
know
that.”

“Okay,” she says and shuffles out of the room.

“Close the door, please!” I call after her. She takes a long time, at least a minute, before she obliges. I lean back in the tub and inhale the lavender. In my flight of fantasy I am floating on the water amid fragrant petals, like Elaine, the Lily Maid of As-tolat, in the Arthurian legends—except I’m not dead, of course.

My hair spreads and splays over the surface like a mermaid’s golden tresses. The water supports my weight like a strong pair of unseen magic hands, an aqueous lover caressing me.

The door opens once more and my eyes spring open as well, my idyll interrupted. I sit bolt upright. My wet hair splashes the tiles and the little throw rug before settling lankly around my shoulders.

Zoë brings her book tubside again. “Then can
Granny Tulia
make me this dress?”

I slide back into the water; a total immersion.

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Leslie Carroll

Dear Diary:

Mommy was a good sport, today. She went to my yoga class with
me in the morning and in the afternoon she watched my kinder
karate demonstration.

Grown-ups get to go to the grown-up yoga classes when they
feel like it but kids have to sign up for a bunch of classes at a time
and because this morning was the last class, we were supposed to
bring our mommies or our daddies. Mommy said to me that
MiMi might like the yoga and maybe she should go with me instead, but I told Mommy how much I wanted her to come with
me and do the yoga with me, so she went. Mommy likes exercising
but she likes to do it outdoors. She doesn’t like to do it indoors at
all because she says there’s not enough air and it makes her feel
like she wants to throw up.

Even though there were a lot of people in the room which made
it even more hot and squashy I think Mommy didn’t have such a
bad time after all. She got all sweaty and she said to me that she
saw how it needed to be so warm in the room because it was easier that way to turn yourself into a pretzel. Afterward, she said
she was really hungry, so she took me to E.J.’s Luncheonette and
we had pancakes for lunch. That was a treat because we never
have pancakes for lunch, only for breakfast.

Then we went back home and Mommy said I had to take a bath
before we went outside again to go to kinder karate for my group’s
big demonstration. I was excited and a little bit scared about it.

Sensei Steve told us we should just have fun and concentrate
like it’s a regular class but he unfolded the bleachers so people
could have a place to sit and watch. I didn’t tell Mommy, but
part of the demonstration was like a test to see what level we
are. The levels in karate are called kyus. I started kinder karate
last September in the 10th kyu which is the very bottom one
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and you get a white belt. Every three months I took another test
and I passed them, so I got a yellow belt and then I got an orange belt. There were two different tests I could take today. If I
took the easy test I would still be an orange belt but I would get
a new belt with a stripe on it, which makes it a little bit more
special. The hard test is the one where I could get a green belt,
which is the next one up after orange in Sensei Steve’s dojo. But
he said if I felt scared about doing it in front of a lot of people
that I could take the easier test and I could wait until September to take the harder one as long as I kept practicing over the
summer.