Play Dates (23 page)

A

ake since 6 .M., has changed

her outfit at least three times, and has been bouncing off the walls to such an extent that I sat her in front of the TV for nonstop Powerpuff. I’ve never cared much for cartoons. I dislike the violence and the cavalier attitude toward using it. Whenever I voice my opinion, Zoë insists that she knows it’s “all just pretend” and that it’s not nice to hit people, throw acid at them, push them through plate-glass windows, down manholes, and off cliffs.

However, from watching them with Zoë, I’ve learned that

170

Leslie Carroll

the Powerpuff Girls, like most cartoons geared for kids, does contain a few inside jokes to delight the adults, with the Girls tossing off words like “angst” and phrases like “witty retort.”

And, given our current household demographic, promoting Girl Power probably isn’t such a bad idea. The counselor I visited during and after my divorce suggested that I “journal,” (it makes me cringe when people turn nouns into verbs), but I think the Powerpuff Girls might have been more therapeutic.

Methodically, I run through my party checklist. Furniture moved aside and shoved against the walls (thereby exposing dust bunnies there hasn’t been the time to vacuum up since my former housekeeper Hilda manned the Electrolux): check. Ex-termination of previously mentioned neglected dust bunnies: check. Small throw rugs rolled up so they will not become anointed with mustard, ketchup, and lemonade: check. Gallons of same lemonade chilled: check. And on it goes with the paper goods, the cocktail franks, the goody bags (Zoë and I filled them last night), and pinning the tail-less donkey to the front door.

T minus two and the clock is ticking.

I’m on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor trying to corral the contents of a bowlful of Jelly Bellies that took a tumble off the counter in my haste to create order out of the chaos. It’s a commodious room as far as New York apartments go, but I’ve never tried to throw a party for sixty. Even at our most socially ambitious, Scott and I never came nearly that close. And I’m a bundle of nerves, as anxious as a Miss America contestant who discovers she has cellulite just as she’s about to strut the runway in her swimsuit.

Zoë skids in, panic stricken. She’s wearing her Dorothy outfit: white blouse, gingham pinafore, ruby slippers. “You have to make ponytail braids!” she insists. “I can’t do it!” Her little hands splay in frustration. Her hair is a knotted mess.

I look up from the terra-cotta tile. “I thought you were wearing that pretty red shorts outfit that Granny Tulia gave you.”

PLAY DATES

171

She shrugs. “No. I want to wear this. Braid me!”

“It’s not nice to demand. What happened to ‘please’?”

“Braid me,
please
.”

“As soon as I finish picking up the candy, I’ll take a look at your hair.”

“No,
now
!” she says obstinately. “I need it right for the party.”

“Zoë, the party is two hours away from now. I’m in the middle of something. You can see that. Now, it’ll go faster if you come down here and help me.”

Her eyes narrow. “No. I’m the birthday girl and the birthday girl doesn’t have to help with her own party.”

“You think so, huh?” I wipe my forehead and toss a dustpan full of jelly beans into the trash can. My knees hurt. I just turned twenty-six and my knees hurt. “Well, the birthday girl isn’t going to
have
a party if she behaves like a little selfish brat.” It’s an empty threat and I know it. I thought we both knew it, but I was evidently mistaken.

Instant tears. Bawling. Wailing. Keening. You would think someone had been murdered in front of her. “It’s not faaaair.”

I’m in no mood for melodrama. “You know what’s not fair?”

I snap. “What’s not fair is Mommy doing all of this by herself.”

I’m fully aware that I’m referring to more than this afternoon’s gala event. “And you know something else? I’m learning that sometimes life just
isn’t
fair and there’s not much we can do about it. But you know what helps a lot when it comes to getting over the ‘unfairness’ part of it?” She looks at me, surprised and inquisitive. “Teamwork,” I tell her. “Teamwork makes things go faster, it makes them more fun, and you don’t feel like you’re the only one in the whole world who thinks things are unfair.” I watch her mulling over this notion for a few moments, tugging on her hair. “So, how about you help me pick these up. And as soon as we’re done, we’ll wash our hands and I’ll fix your hair.”

After a few seconds, she descends, although her method of

172

Leslie Carroll

eliminating the jelly beans from the floor involves putting them in her mouth. “Zoë, those are dirty. Throw them away, please.”

“I’m only eating the Marshmallow-flavored ones,” she lies.

“And the buttered popcorn-tasting ones because they have spots on them so I can’t see the dirt.”

“Well, stop it,” I say, tugging her fingers from her mouth. She exhales in a dramatic show of dissatisfaction and flounces off.

“You’re not poking through the loot bags, are you?” I add, hearing the crinkling of paper.

The rustling stops. “No.” Her voice is sheepish, as though she believes for an instant that maybe I
do
have eyes in the back of my head.

I locate the last jelly bean, scrub the surrounding area, and wash up. “Okay, Z! Hair time. Let’s go, because Mommy still needs to take a shower.”

She comes back into the kitchen wearing a beguiling smile.

“Can I have this?” On her wrist is one of the pieces of jewelry I made, pilfered from a goody bag.

“No, I’m sorry sweetheart, I made that for one of your guests.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. If she weren’t about to turn only seven, I’d swear she was premenstrual. “Tell you what.

I’ll make you another one just like it tomorrow.”

“But . . . but . . . I want
this
one. Make another one for the guest.”

“Zoë, you know I don’t have time to do that right now.” Her tears flow, but I’ve just about had it. “You’re being very unreasonable,” I tell her, as though this will actually have an effect. “If you want a bracelet like that one, I’ll make it when the party’s over. Now tell me which bag it came from, and we’ll put it back.”

“No!” I try to remove it from her wrist. She tugs back and the bracelet breaks. Now I’ve got a new mess to attend to. She becomes hysterical, I become livid.

“All right, Zoë, go to your room. Now.
Now
!” My out-of-PLAY DATES

173

character explosion startles her. She flinches as though she’s afraid I might smack her, which I wouldn’t ever do, but am sorely tempted to at the moment. “I am
this
close to calling off your birthday party,” I shout, bluffing, and not indicating with my body language exactly how close “this” is. “Now I mean it.

Go to your room.”

“I still need my hair in ponytail braids,” she insists.

“Yes, I see that. Your room, Zoë.
Now
.”

“I’ll do it, but it won’t change anything!” She stomps off, rattling some of the china in the breakfront with her angry footsteps.

Once she’s gone I replace the broken bracelet from my secret stash of spares that I made, anticipating the possibility of a last-minute emergency.

The doorbell rings and I admit my parents, laden with food and gifts. My mother kisses me on both cheeks because she admires continental affectations like that, then immediately bustles off to the kitchen to refrigerate the perishables. My father busies himself with what he always does when they come to visit. He scans my bookshelves for new acquisitions. He always wants to know what I’m reading, as though it’s a window into the current status of my soul. I’m waiting for him to spot the well-worn volume of
Overwhelmed and Abandoned: Divorced
Mothers with Kids Vent Their Spleens
. Not quite the page-turner one might be led to believe.

I ask my mother if she wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Zoë while I take a much-needed shower, and if she would please do her granddaughter’s ponytail-braids. Mission accomplished, I head off for the bathroom and a few minutes of blessed solitude and self-prescribed aromatherapy. To dispel some of the steam, I keep the door open a crack, and while I’m in the shower, I hear the doorbell again. We’ve still got an hour to go before lift-off; who else could be arriving this early? I told Mia that showing up fifteen minutes ahead of time would be fine, and she tends to run late, not the other way around. I holler for one of my par-

174

Leslie Carroll

ents to please get the door, since I’m dripping wet and naked, except for a towel wrapped unattractively around my head. But the ringing persists, as do my repeated requests. Do I have to do everything myself? I don my terrycloth bathrobe and create a path of wet footprints toward the front of the apartment.

“Anybody home? It’s me. Open up!” The familiar voice on the other side of the door is not one I care to greet in my present state. I peer through the peephole to make sure he’s alone, at least, then open the door.

“You’re early, Scott.” It’s an observation, not a critique. He leans over and gives me a cordial peck on the cheek. “Are you growing a beard?”

He hands me a bouquet of Korean deli roses and strokes both sides of his face. “Why? Do you like it?”

“I don’t know yet. It isn’t a real beard yet.” Not that it’s any of my business either way anymore. I pull the robe more tightly around me, ashamed of my
dishabille
. Amazing . . . I used to walk around this apartment mostly naked, in front of this man, and now my state of mid-toilette undress feels wildly inappropriate. And I’m mortified that the former love of my life is seeing me without makeup. “I asked my parents to answer the door,” I continue, stammering a bit. “They were here before I went in to take my shower.”

“The birthday girl is freshly coiffed,” my mother says gaily, emerging from Zoë’s room. “Oh, Scott, I didn’t know you were here.”

“Evidently,” I reply.

She gives me a funny look, as though there’s some post-marital reason I am romping in my robe in front of my ex-husband.

So, she’d been at the other end of the house, in Zoë’s room, probably with the door closed, doing my daughter’s hair and dispensing some grandmotherly advice, which is why she didn’t hear, or was disinclined to answer, the door. “Where’s Daddy?”

“You don’t have enough ice,” Tulia says. “So I sent him on a PLAY DATES

175

quest. He was all curled up with a volume of e.e. cummings. It’s good for him to be useful. From the sound of things, I’m guessing he’s not back yet.” She retreats to the kitchen, her heels, (having swapped her snow boots for a pair of hot pink mules), clicking across the parquet.

Uneasy, I shift my weight. “How’s . . .”

Scott reads my mind. It’s remarkable that after several months of being divorced from me, he still can do it. “She’s fast-ing. One of those ritual fasts. She does it four times a year. Every solstice and every equinox. Her whole staff fasts with her, so she closes up the restaurant for a week each time.”

“Doesn’t sound very good for business. Are you . . . ?”

Scott shook his head. “You know I’m not a fanatic. Oh!” He reaches into his breast pocket to retrieve a red envelope. “This is for Zoë. It’s a check. Buy her whatever she wants.” He studies my expression, then adds, “It’s for her birthday and for Christmas.”

I nod. I thought as much. Hopefully, it’s enough to get her something meaningful for each occasion that’s bigger than a set of pierced earrings (not permitted for
my
seven-year-old) and smaller than a pony. For a moment, I look at my former husband and think back to exactly a year ago. There was no Serena Eden.

We Marsh Franklins were one happy family. Three peas in a fixed mortgage, low-maintenance pod. Wait, who am I kidding?

If familiarity is said to breed contempt, then nostalgia must beget insanity. A year ago, we had a bank account lower than Death Valley and were continually fussing and fuming at one another. A little rhyme pops into my head and I end up smiling at the sardonic catechism that sums up my adult life: Matri-mony, Acrimony, Alimony.

The iceman cometh, shoves his bounty into the freezer, and I foist Scott upon him and my mother so I can go get dressed. I suggest to Scott that he take advantage of the last few minutes of calm before the storm to visit with his daughter. As I pass Zoë’s bedroom on the way to mine, I knock to let her know that

176

Leslie Carroll

her dad’s here. She bursts through the door and races down the hall to the living room.

Mia and Charles arrive, we set the cake aside, and I get them started on blowing up balloons. Soon, with the Christmas tree in the corner, the mistletoe hung in the foyer, the red, white, and blue streamers and the tri-colored foil pom-poms that are meant to resemble fireworks, plus the balloons that Mia is affixing by static electricity to the walls of the living room, dining area, and den, it looks fantastically festive. My mother is in the kitchen popping corn and the apartment smells like a carnival midway. My father, true to form, is checking over Zoë’s birthday poem to see if he needs to add any further ruffles, flour-ishes, and syllables.

Like a stage manager, at five minutes to showtime I let everyone know that the guests are about to arrive. Zoë is so pumped, she’s behaving as though she’s on an invisible pogo stick.

Now comes the deluge of second graders bearing gifts. I set aside a corner of the den where they can be deposited and direct everyone to Zoë’s bedroom where they can shed their coats. I’m delighted that the guests took seriously the directive we printed on the invitations: to dress for a picnic in July. Outside the window snow is falling, blanketing Central Park West with a blissful quiet, while up in toasty-warm apartment 7D, the guests, attired in shorts, tank tops, and sundresses, are enjoying tall glasses of lemonade or short ones of eggnog. The living-room fireplace is the apartment’s most wonderful feature and we actually
do
have chestnuts—and weenies—roasting over an open fire. The spareribs are being reheated as well. Happy Chef and my father are taking turns playing King of the Grill.