A Happy Catastrophe

by Dawson, Maddie

  “So? Maybe that will change. Maybe you’re supposed to change in all this, too, Patrick. Get to know a different kind of love. You know? It’s possible. The fates . . .”

  “Nope,” he says. “I’m the one who gets to be in control of my fate.” And he pulls me over and starts kissing me.

  We really get into making out and are just starting to think about removing clothing, when we hear Bedford barking outside, and it’s time to go greet Tessa and Fritzie, who have returned.

  “Patrick! Patrick! Where are you?” Fritzie is yelling.

  “See?” he groans as he hauls himself up off the floor. “This is the kind of thing we’re not going to be able to do anymore.”

  “We’ll find ways, trust me,” I say. And he shakes his head mournfully.

  There’s just one little thing that flattens me, I think, after he’s left to go upstairs. Tessa is a total wreck and she may have a life that’s never going to work out the way she planned it. But, damn it, she did have a baby with Patrick. Her cells and his cells mingled and created this walking-around, talking human girl who is a perfect genetic combination of the two of them, and who looks especially like him.

  And I may never know what that’s like. I put my hands across my middle, where maybe, possibly, somebody’s in there, right now just a little ball of cells dividing and growing every day.

  But what if there isn’t? And what if there never is? Then what?

  “Marnie! Marnie!” Fritzie is yelling for me. “Marnie, come look at what Bedford found in the park! Somebody’s gross old boot!”

  I go upstairs. And I’m smiling by the time I get there because the truth is it’s been a long time since Bedford brought home an old boot and had somebody think that was great.

  A few days later, I take Fritzie with me to work. I’ve told her about the flower shop, of course, and also about the Frippery and all the fun people who come there, and the things they do. She marches along next to me, in torn denim leggings and a Purple Rain T-shirt and red flip-flops, and she oohs and aahs when we unlock the door of Best Buds and go in. I see it through her eyes: all the twinkling lights and the buckets and baskets of flowers, the cooler filled with roses and tulips and daisies, the long counter with its marble finish, and the sound of the alto flute music I put on. It’s a paradise in here, and I’m so pleased to see that she agrees.

  She immediately sees the Frippery for what it is: a place for cartwheels among the pillows and beanbags. Then she runs over and writes with the markers at the desk, decorating a piece of construction paper to say: FRITZIE’S FRIPPERY.

  “Marnie!” she calls while I’m talking on the phone to Patrick. “Can I call it Fritzie’s Frippery? Would you put up my sign? Fritzie’s Frippery! Because I never had a frippery before! I didn’t know anybody who has a frippery! We could put on the sign: ‘Come frip out at Fritzie’s Frippery!’”

  “Yes, we could,” I say, and Patrick on the other end says, “Oh, dear God in heaven. This morning she came into my studio and wanted to know if we could sit together and do some oil paintings. She’s taking over, isn’t she?”

  “What did you say to her? Please tell me you didn’t push her out of there.”

  “Do you have any idea of the extent of the damage one eight-year-old girl could do with oil paints?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s epic. So I gave her some watercolors. I let her paint. She lasted fourteen seconds, and then she was wandering around wanting to know if, when you and I get married, she could be the flower girl, and what should she wear in her hair that day. And also if Mister Swoony could be in the wedding, too.”

  I laugh. Mister Swoony is the stuffed animal she carries around with her, really just a piece of dirty, stitched-together fluff. “And what did you reply to that?”

  “I said there were no such plans, and she could wear whatever she wanted in her hair any day of the week. And that Mister Swoony can make his own arrangements.”

  After I get off the phone, she says to me, “It’s such a good thing you and my bio-daddy are going to keep me. Do you think he would mind if I called him Daddy? I always thought that Daddy sounded like a cool name. I never get to call anybody Daddy. Some people don’t have daddies. Of course I could use Dad or Papa or Father. Is he the type to like Father better? Maybe I should call him PapPap. That’s what my friend Asia calls her grandfather, but I think it sounds cool for a father, too. I think probably he’s going to have to get used to me before I ask him. Don’t you?” I’m at the counter trimming the stems of the flowers from the cooler, and she has the broom and is sweeping up, waving the broom rather dangerously around the counter area.

  She suddenly does a cartwheel and when she stands up she says, “Can I tell you a secret? My mom and I came here the other day, before I met you. I didn’t know why we came here, but I think she wanted to see if you knew Patrick.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  She goes on to do five more cartwheels. “She’s kind of different from the other moms, did you know that? She isn’t really good at knowing how to do a lot of stuff. It’s because I am a surprise girl. She and my dad didn’t mean for me to happen, you see, and she told me she didn’t ever play with dolls so that’s why she doesn’t know how to be a mum. So she says we are really like friends in the world. That’s what she calls us: friends in the world.”

  I feel my hands shake just a little. “You know, your mommy is lucky to have you being so understanding and all. A lot of kids—well, when I was a kid, I would have had a hard time, I think. And I want you to know, it’s okay if sometimes you have a hard time. You don’t have to be brave all the time, you know.”

  She takes Mister Swoony out of her backpack and sets him up next to the cash register. She keeps licking her lips, like she’s nervous. “I’m okay,” she says and cartwheels herself over to the cooler door. “I think that cartwheel was my best one today,” she says, when she’s upright again. Red-faced and smiling.

  I tell her I once could do a pretty decent series of cartwheels myself. I think my record might have been twenty-two in a row, but that was on the beach, and I was ten years old.

  She regards me seriously. Then she says, “I need to see you do them! Let’s go to the Frippery!” and so I put down my cutting implements and the roses and we head to the back room, where she folds her arms and insists that I show my stuff. I do about two really, really lame cartwheels.

  She frowns. “Hmm. You need some practice. Straighten out your knees, and then you’ll be good. We’ll work on it.”

  Later, the Amazings drop in, and Ariana and Charmaine immediately take to Fritzie and show her how divine it is to put glitter on everybody’s cheeks; even Lola gets a dose of purple sparkles right across her cheekbones. Lola is knitting a long scarf, and she crooks a finger and beckons Fritzie over to ask how she likes Brooklyn so far. And if she’d ever want to come and live here.

  “I do live here now,” Fritzie says. “This is my new home because Patrick is my bio-daddy, and he gets to keep me now while my mom goes to Italy.” She says this and then she gives me a big smile. “I belong with Patrick and Marnie now. And Bedford! Oh, and Roy! Roy is still getting used to me. Actually, Patrick is, too.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” says Lola, startled, but then she turns her shock into a twinkle and smiles at me. “How interesting things are at your house these days, my dear. Where are you thinking of enrolling her in school?”

  Ah, yes, that. There will be so much to think about, but I particularly have to give some thought to this school business. Unlike where I grew up, enrolling in school isn’t an easy situation in Brooklyn. From what I’ve heard, you can’t just go down to your neighborhood school building and sign up. I’ve been a witness to enough passionate, ferocious discussions from Park Slope moms to know that there are about a million choices, and many of them are god-awful and some of them are bearable, while one or two might be absolutely perfect, but you don’t know which is which until you’ve researched and explored and tal
ked to everyone involved.

  I have not done any of this. I have a moment of being swamped with panic, but Lola puts aside her knitting and places her hand on my arm.

  “Dear, call Emily Turner,” she says. “She’ll know who you should talk to.”

  Emily Turner is known around here as Mom Extraordinaire. She sometimes shows up at Best Buds in the afternoons, often wearing magenta yoga pants and carrying a huge thermos of green tea and trailing a contingent of little girls. So I call her, and describe Fritzie as best I can, and she tells me that Brooklyn Kind School is the only place I should consider sending a child who is coming from elsewhere and who may have, um, tendencies toward shocking mic-drops and spontaneous series of cartwheels.

  “Also, she needs friends, like immediately,” says Emily, and so the next Monday I arrange for her to come in with her girls—Sierra and Autumn and Blanche, who are six, eight, and eleven—to meet Fritzie. I get some cookies from Cupcake, and some lemonade from Paco, and Emily and I stand in the doorway and watch as the four of them play. I feel the same way I used to feel on first dates, all that nervous jumpiness in my stomach. But Fritzie seems blissfully nonchalant.

  All I can think of is: What if this doesn’t work? What if they hate her?

  But it does work. Fritzie is a little bit bossy, but in a charming way if there is such a thing. She demonstrates her cartwheel technique, of course, and then shows off how cool it is to dust their faces with purple glitter, and then she sits down with her Little Mermaid suitcase and starts unpacking her treasures for their enjoyment.

  There’s a hair clasp that looks like one that Taylor Swift once wore, and an empty tube of Ridiculously Red lipstick that Tessa once let her try on when she dressed up like a witch two Halloweens ago. There’s a two-dollar bill that her friend Gaia gave her, and a penny that got flattened by a train, and a love letter a boy named George wrote to her in first grade that just says “I thik you R GRAT.” She has a fuzzy pink fur notebook with a lock on it, and a tarnished gold earring that her grandmum gave her. And then, at the bottom, a bottle of candy sprinkles.

  The other girls pass everything around and seem to understand the value of each of these promising treasures. But when she pulls out the bottle of chocolate sprinkles, Blanche says, “What do you carry that around for?”

  “Duh!” says Fritzie. “Because what happens if you run into some ice cream, and you don’t have any sprinkles?”

  “Wow. This sums her up perfectly,” I say to Emily Turner.

  “I love this kid. And poor thing, it looks like she’s really dealing with her abandonment issues so bravely,” Emily whispers—which is when I have to whisper back that I’m not really sure Fritzie is aware of any abandonment issues. If I had to characterize her, I’d say she is mostly relieved to be getting free of her mom. She’s mostly the kid carrying around candy sprinkles in case she happens upon an ice cream cone.

  “Oh, she has them all right,” Emily says. “You don’t get to skip abandonment issues if your mom is going to Italy and leaving you with virtual strangers. You just don’t. I’m talking to Yolanda at the Kind School. We’ve got to make sure this girl gets in.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARNIE

  My period does not come on time, and so I buy seven pregnancy tests. As any person might do. I am now entering a new phase of life, and I want to be prepared.

  Well, to be clear, first I buy only the one, and I dash into the bathroom between customers at work and test it out. I am stunned—beyond stunned—when no line appears in the little window. This test is obviously defective because, although I have many irregular things about me, my menstrual cycle is not one of them. It is spot-on. On time. Every twenty-eighth day by nine a.m.

  And now my period is a day late. Clearly, therefore, I am pregnant. But just the same, I would like some outside confirmation.

  So, at lunchtime the next day, still with no period, I go out and buy another, much more reliable, truth-telling test. This is the kind of test that spells out the words, either PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT, in case hieroglyphic line-reading isn’t doing it for you. In case you have the kind of hormonal system that wants everything spelled out.

  NOT PREGNANT, it says, like a slap in the face.

  Okay then, I think. This is not going to be as easy as I thought, navigating the world of pregnancy testing.

  I consult the internet, which thinks that sometimes in early pregnancy there’s not yet enough of something called hCG in a woman’s system to register as a pregnancy. So, fine. The internet thinks I could still be pregnant and suggests that I do the test in the early morning, when this hCG is in abundance.

  So I buy another brand of pregnancy test for test number three, and I get up extra early the next morning and creep into the bathroom to check.

  Negative.

  So this is war. My body and the pregnancy test industry are at odds.

  It’s stress, says the internet. Wait a few days and take the test again.

  Sure enough, I do have some stress. Besides the stuff that’s obvious—Fritzie cartwheeling through my life, Patrick looking more and more like a shell-shocked accident victim, Tessa mooning around the house like a lovesick teenager who’s been grounded from seeing her true love—my mother has also called again and reported that she and my father went away on a trip together at her insistence, and he fell asleep in the hotel by seven o’clock every night. “It wasn’t even dark outside yet!” she yells. She wonders if this is grounds for divorce.

  Pregnancy test four: negative.

  I buy three more tests for good measure, and I space them out, trying one every day. New stressors show up: Tessa tells me that she may simply leave for Italy without waiting to see if Fritzie likes her new school. Patrick says that he’s lost the will to paint with so much turmoil in the house. Bedford throws up on the rug three mornings in a row, and each time I find mangled plastic doll shoes in there.

  Ariana teaches me a new yoga pose that supposedly brings all the chi into a person’s body. Kat serves me raspberry tea, for no other reason than she heard raspberries are good for pregnant women. Lola tells me to put my feet up and stop worrying about whether or not Fritzie will be admitted to the Brooklyn Kind School.

  Patrick says maybe the tests are correct, and I’m not pregnant and that I should count my blessings since our lives are crazy enough right now, aren’t they? Because I really do love him, I don’t hit him. By deep breathing, I’m able to control myself by not looking in his direction.

  After he leaves, I go over to the toaster and consult with Blix. I tell her I want a baby so much. That I am insane over the need for a baby. She is silent for a long time, but then I hear her. Grudgingly.

  For heaven’s sake, stop wasting your money on pregnancy tests. Go look at sunsets. Drink a cup of tea. Take a hot bath. And how many times do I have to tell you? Whatever happens, love that. Because maybe, just maybe, everything is perfect.

  I do all these things, and still my period does not come, which surely means my body is pregnant but wants to keep things a secret.

  “Tell me the truth,” Tessa says to me one evening as she joins me in taking Bedford out for his last walk of the day. “Are you for real a matchmaker, or are you just making it all up? You can tell me if you’re faking it. I don’t mind.”

  “Well,” I say, smiling. This is so Tessa. “It depends on what you mean by for real, I guess. I can tell when people belong together. Sometimes.”

  “Okay, just tell me this then. Am I doing the right thing going off with Richard?”

  “Well,” I say slowly. “Nobody can answer that question perfectly.”

  “See?” she says. She lets out a sigh that sounds a little bit triumphant. “I knew it. If matchmaking was for real, then everybody would be with the right person, because someone could just tell them who they belong with. And you’d look at me and know if Richard and I are going to last. Maybe it’s like my mum says, and I don’t deserve to even think about love for myself.”
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br />   “Tessa, Tessa. Everyone deserves love.” I try to imagine what Blix would tell her—Blix, who believed in people finding their own paths. “Let me ask you this: Can you maybe believe just for a moment that everything is going to be okay no matter which way it ends up? Whether you’re with Richard for the next fifty years or just the next fifty days? How about that? Can you accept that maybe you just have to let yourself live it?”

  She scowls harder. “I need to know if loving Richard is real, and if he’s going to be the person I can depend on for the rest of my life. That’s what I’m asking you. Is. This. Real. Love.”

  “But maybe it’s worth it even if it’s not permanent. Isn’t it? Maybe with the spark of this love in your life, everything is going to be changed in ways you can’t right now fathom.”

  By now Bedford has peed on nearly every object he likes, and we start back to the brownstone. When we get there, I sit down on the stoop and motion for her to sit beside me. “Let’s think about it this way,” I say. “Your life was truly miserable. You weren’t having any joy at all. You’ve been raising your child and everything has felt impossible. Is that right?”

  She nods.

  “And then you met someone. And you fell in love, because maybe something in you knew that this is the thing you needed in order to stay alive. And so you took some really brave steps: You made a plan, which was to go to him, and then you took action. You applied for a sabbatical, you started thinking of where Fritzie could stay, and now you’re asking for help. Help from Patrick. And from me. Which is a huge step for you, I bet. You probably hate asking for help.”

  “I never thought I would do this,” she says, and I think she may be crying a little. “Leave her.”

  We sit quietly, both of us watching Bedford ambling around at the end of his leash. Looking for gum wrappers and cigarette butts he can eat. After a while I say, “You don’t have to worry, you know. I’m going to take care of her for you. I will love her for you.”