Playmate

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© Kit
Reed 2001, 2011

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"Playmate" was first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction
(2001).

The
moral right of Kit Reed to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Playmate
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Look at them, Karin
Fowler thinks, two round heads bent in the sunlight. Adorable.
Danny, her testy three year old, is playing nicely for once,
squatting happily in the sandbox with his new best friend.

Denny, she thinks the
child's name is. Sounds like Denny, but with that lisp, it's hard
to tell. So what if he lisps, he's really sweet. And so easy to get
along with! No matter how horrible Danny is, he can't seem to scare
this one off the way he does every other sorry excuse for a
playmate.

Denny, is it? Could
his name be Danny too? Not likely, it's just too coincidental. It's
enough that they look alike. The difference is that Karin's Danny
is, OK, difficult, while Denny/whoever, the neighbors' child, is
perfect. If he comes over often enough, maybe some of it will rub
off on Danny here. She thinks Denny's mom could probably teach her
a thing or two about parenting, but hey. She's a working mom. It's
enough to throw the ball or make brownies with the boys, life is
too short to go knocking on other mothers' doors. Besides. The last
thing a careerist like Karin needs is advice from some candy faced
professional mom.
Perhaps if you were around long enough to
exercise a little discipline
...

So what if the woman
does do it better? Denny always knocks politely and comes in
smiling, amazing manners for somebody a narrow notch above toddler.
It's as if he tries to stay small, so she won't trip over him and
send him home. Doesn't fight, always shares. Never cries even when
Danny bops him. Trots off to the toilet without being reminded and
if there's a problem over a toy, Denny laughs and hands it
over.

Karin never has to
worry about what they are doing when he gives her that ravishing
smile and the two of them trot off into Danny's room. At the end of
the day every single toy will be shut back in the toy chest and all
Danny's stuffed animals will be back on the shelves, staring at her
with military precision.

Unlike her own
personal dirt tornado, Denny always has a clean face, shining hair,
cute OshKosh overalls and coordinated Tshirts, no food stains that
Karin can see. Ever. It's clear the child's mother takes good care
of him.
Right
, she thinks with a twinge of guilt.
Like
he's a fulltime job
.

And if she's never met
her? Hey. People keep to themselves here in Cadogan Hills. Nice
neighborhood, there are some lovely people here. But. Sometimes
Karin thinks it would take a quake or an explosion to make them
open the regulation white drapes in their uniform picture windows
and a firebomb to bring them out of their front doors. Cadogan
Hills is so exclusive that except for a couple she met at preschool
and cute Denny here, she hasn't seen any of her neighbors up close.
Oh, chronic gardeners wave as you drive by in the nightly attempt
to find your own house, but you'd better not stop to talk. After
all, you haven't been introduced. And she hears children playing at
twilight sometimes but she never sees them.

A gated community was
never Karin's idea of a good time – up market, manicured "homes"
and yuppie neighbors cut from the same social cloth – but she
understood what big Dan was buying when he moved them in. "Life's
too short to deal with downscale neighbors," he told her. "We both
work too hard to waste time hunting suitable friends for our
kid."

So what if it's
lonely? Dan is right. With everything going on at the ad agency,
Karin's hard pressed to get in all her mothering before work and
early evenings, when she drags herself home so tired that she's
walking on her knuckles. She's spread too thin to check out every
little friend Danny tries to make. During the week, Blanca copes.
Even though Blanca is from Ecuador and not too good at English,
she's terrific. Danny adores her, which is both necessary and a
source of jealousy. She cooks, cleans, manages play dates; she
carpools to the community preschool where Danny is supposed to get
socialized. Which is what the Fowlers are paying the five K for,
according to the brochure. But Blanca also gets the best of his
smiles and those cute new words. It's the only reason she hasn't
quit.

Listen
, Karin
tells herself.
That's weekdays. The weekends are mine.

Denny comes over
Saturdays and every Sunday. If he's there weekdays, Blanca doesn't
say. He picks the best time – after Karin's had her kid fix and
before Danny starts whining, "I'm bored."

Danny lights up.
"Doorbell!"

"I bet I know who it
is." Smiling, Karin opens the door and looks out at eye level. At
his giggle, she looks down and pretends to be surprised. "Why, it's
Denny!" She does not say,
again
.

Green OshKosh overalls
today. Canary yellow shirt. Blond hair, bowl haircut just like
Danny's. Karin thinks that's why she likes the child so much. They
look like brothers. Who wouldn't like a neighbor child, looks a lot
like one of her own? She thinks sentimentally,
the second child
I ever had
. "Can Danny play?"

"Benny?" she tries. He
blinks those green eyes. "Or is it Lenny?" He murmurs in that
little kid way. With a
frisson
she leans closer. Why does
this part creep her out? She tries, "Danny?"

He blinks. Doesn't
exactly evade; he says "Denny," or something like it – she thinks.
Then, clearly, "Is Danny here?"

"Of course, sweetie,
come on in." When Karin bends to hug him, he clings so she has to
pry his fingers off.
Poor kid
, she notes.
Full time
mother and starved for love
. With a darling smile, he trots off
to Danny's room.

The child's mother
would speak clearly – real name, nickname, might even reel off a
pedigree and a list of food fetishes, but Karin has decided not to
like her. If she was that good a mom, Denny wouldn't be over here
all the time. The woman seems to drop him on the doorstep, ring the
bell and go. Unless, since Cadogan Hills is so quiet and ultrasafe,
he trots over on his own. Unlike hellacious Terry McGonnigle, whose
parents are brokers, Denny is an ideal guest. With Terry, Karin has
to be on the phone with Patti McGonnigle every living minute –
hitting, fights, better come over, Terry started it, but he's going
to need stitches.

She never, ever has to
discipline Denny. It's a little eerie, but he's never bad! And
bless him, he never overstays. Comes after lunch so she won't need
to feed him or phone his mom about allergies, and just when she
starts wondering whether to call and ask if he can stay for supper,
he lisps "Fsthangs" and goes.

"It's pizza," Karin
offers at suppertime, even though she's glad it will be just the
three of them – her, Danny and Dave.

"I mvf piffm," Denny
says.

"We'd love to have
you, Denny."

He says – it sounds
like, "Mwenny."

"Lenny?"

"Fwenny."

"Oh, Kenny."

Little mite standing
there with fur in his mouth and sweet, blind love shining in his
eyes. "Nwmenny."

"Do you know your
phone number?"

He shakes his
head.

"I can walk over with
you, ask her myself."

"Nemf." Smiling, he
shakes his head.

Safe as a theme park,
Cadogan Hills is completely silent at twilight, happy families
sitting down together behind locked doors. The late afternoon light
is thinning and Karin says in a moment of apprehension, "Will you
be OK going home, or shall I get Mr. Fowler to walk you?" She
imagines marauders in the bushes, coyotes swarm ing down out of the
hills. "Just a minute." Calls. "Dan?"

"Nmmne," Denny says. A
little agitated. Lenny? Kenny?

And when she comes
back with Dan, the child is gone. "He's so little," she says to her
husband. "I hope he gets home all right."

"Perfectly safe." Dan
slides his arm around her waist. "That's what we're paying for. For
all we know, he lives next door."

"Danny, stop that!"
The kid is elbowing and gouging between them. He hates it when they
touch. Karin worries. "I should tell his mother he's on the
way."

Dan draws her back
into their warm kitchen. "Believe me, if he doesn't make it, you'll
hear soon enough. Danny, stop that!"

"I don't know," Karin
says uneasily, "these houses are tight as drums. Anything could
happen out there and we'd never know."

"If anything bad could
get past the gate," Dan says. "Which it can't. Security."

She sighs. "Security."
And notes peripherally that Danny is wearing Denny's shoes. "Danny,
where are your shoes?"

"Mwenny," he says.

"Top of the line Ralph
Lauren 4Kidz and you swapped them for K-mart sneakers! Danny, what
were you thinking?"

"Nmmne." Past the
point of no return on this Saturday, her son wrenches the joystick
off his Nintendo and starts jabbing her.

"Stop that. And speak
clearly!"

A round-the-clock mom
would probably max out on a chronic guest whose mother never
invites back. A professional mother would resent this,
Is this
unfair or what
? Thing is, Danny is such a handful that half the
time Karin wants to beg Blanca to stay all weekend, but no.
Wouldn't be motherly. Besides, two days, she ought to be able to
handle it and Denny makes it tons easier. Always handy, and he
never makes her say, "Don't you have a home?" or, "Won't your mommy
worry about you?"

Still, they may be
playing together too much. The shoes. And Danny has picked up the
lisp. She comes home one day to find him in an outfit she never
bought. Green OshKosh overalls, canary yellow shirt. Cute. Fresh,
as they say, as paint, but not what she put on him this morning
before she left for work.

"Danny, where did you
get these?"

"Mwenny."

"Stop it with the
lisping. You can talk, so drop it. Where did you say they came
from?"

But Danny smiles an
angelic Denny smile and says through fur, "Fwerhnm."

"Don't make me get a
speech therapist for you." She sighs. "And look what you did to his
clothes! Better let me put these in the machine, If we send them
back dirty, Denny's mom is going to think we're terrible."

Doesn't think much of
it until she comes home from work Monday and finds him wearing
Denny's clothes again. Green OshKosh overalls, canary yellow shirt.
Wrecked, of course. When she peels them off, Danny begins to
cry.

"Sweetie, what's the
matter?"

"I want them. He
promised." Danny's bawling so hard that it's all he can manage.
Never an easy child, he grapples her to the mat over the outfit:
"We're swapping, Mom, we're SWAPPING."

"All right. Shit.
Fine. But let's do this right." Grimly, she phones Macy's and
orders a dozen canary T-shirts and a dozen pairs of OshKosh
overalls. FedExed, priority. No explaining to Denny's mom. When
Danny wrecks one set, Karin will damn well replace them.

A failure, that
effort. Even before the clothes come and Danny rips, spots and/or
stains every item, Denny's mother has changed him into engineer
striped OshKoshes with little white polo shirts. No matter what
Karin puts on Danny in the morning, when she comes home at night he
is wearing Denny's outfit.

It's not as upsetting
as the hair. Bowl haircuts one day, buzz cuts the next. Denny is
first. He arrives on a Sunday morning with that sweet grin and
fresh OshKoshes – blue! her heart sinks – and a buzz cut. "My," she
says, making a mental note to take Danny to the barber – the kid
screams like a demon every time she tries to comb his hair so this
is a Good Thing – "don't you look nice."