I race upstairs to the nurse’s office to redeem my daughter. The poor kid is a pasty shade of green. I acknowledge this when I give her a hug.
“I know. I look like Oobleck,” she whimpers into my neck. “Yuck.”
“We’re going right home, sweetie,” I assure her. “Did Nurse Val take good care of you?”
Zoë nods and manages a half smile. “And she gave me a lollipop to make my tummy feel better. But I couldn’t finish it.” She fishes a half-eaten orange lollipop, haphazardly replaced in its cellophane wrapper, from the front pocket of her knapsack. At Thackeray, when they know they’re going to send a kid home in the middle of the day, the teacher has all their personal belongings brought to the nurse’s office so the child doesn’t have to return to the classroom to gather them up.
“Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you up here, Claire Marsh,” Nurse Val says. Her smile is the same warm crescent of red although she’s let her carrot-colored hair go yellow-gray. I give the woman a hug. She’s lost a few inches in height. I remember when she was so much taller than I was, even in my high-school years. She still smells like cinnamon Dentyne, though. “Your Mommy was one of my best customers,” she says, giving Zoë a wink.
“Were you sick a lot, Mommy?” my daughter wants to know.
“Sort of. I discovered I was really allergic to volleyball. And basketball.”
“I seem to recall you were allergic to swimming, too,” Nurse Val chuckles.
“But you love swimming, mom.”
“I love it now. But back then, all the chlorine in the pool made my hair turn green,” I say, helping Zoë on with her shoes.
“But we have to wear bathing caps,” the little pragmatist chirps, wriggling her foot.
“Yeah, but I was allergic to bathing caps, you see. They gave me a headache. Hold still, please, or you’ll have to go home barefoot.”
She holds up her unshod foot. “Not barefoot. Socked,” she says, insisting on the last word.
I get Zoë home and into bed, all tucked in, curled up like a little angel with Baa nestling in the crook of her arm. I give her a glass of ginger ale and then she asks for a story, so I read Goodnight Moon for the umpteenth time, the familiarity providing a sort of kid-lit comfort for both of us.
“I’m not tired,” Zoë says, her lids heavy with sleep.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to fall asleep if you don’t feel like it. Do you have any idea of what might have made you sick today?” I gently ask.
She nods her head, which surprises me. I hadn’t actually expected an answer. “Lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“Unh-hunh.”
Now I’m concerned about food poisoning. Except that she was the only kid who appeared to have come down with anything. “Did you eat anything that tasted funny?”
“Unh-hunh.”
I try to stay calm, keep my voice soft and as soothing as possible, despite my anxiety. “Would you like to tell me what it was?”
“Vanilla ice cream.”
I can’t think of anything milder, except perhaps Cream of Wheat. Can ice cream, unless it’s been sitting out and melting, go bad? Get rancid like milk? I’m no food chemist, but somehow, I doubt it. “Mommy isn’t so smart all the time, Zoë. Do you know why the vanilla ice cream might have tasted funny and gave you an upset tummy?” She rolls over, like she’s going to sleep. “Zoë? I asked you a question, sweetheart.”
“Unh-huh,” she responds, rolling back. I wait for her answer. She gives a sheepish little smile. “I had to make it orange.”
“And how did you make it orange?” I’m wondering what they had sitting around Thackeray’s Makepeace Cafeteria that was within easy access.
“Salad dressing.” I make a face. She makes one back. “It was really gross.”
“I can imagine, Z. But I still don’t know how it would make you sick.”
“Because I ate it,” she says, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “Xander dared me to finish it all.”
I try not to laugh, because she really is sick and she still has a fever, which is most likely coincidental. She’d probably been coming down with something anyway. Flirting. That’s what it had been all about. When I was in second grade, Willy Pearson smeared Jell-O on my hair to get my attention. He sure got it. It wouldn’t wash out or brush out and I had to chop off chunks of my beloved blonde curls. With Mia, it was Rob Bartholomew, who always stood in line behind her so he could smell her hair (I guess he had a thing for Herbal Essence). And, so she’d notice his existence, he drew a picture of a monster on her favorite pink denim jacket. While she was wearing it. Tulia’s second-grade crush, Tom Milliken, routinely tied her shoelaces together. Our Gran’s dark braids were repeatedly dipped in the inkwell of John Oakes, who sat behind her.
“I want to go to sleep now,” Zoë says drowsily. I kiss her forehead. It’s still too warm, but it isn’t time for another dose of Tylenol. “Kiss Baa, too,” she adds.
I comply, kissing the top of the lamb’s head. “I’ll be in to check on you later,” I whisper. “Sweet dreams.”
“Okay,” she mumbles softly, then turns over onto her side, nestling the bedraggled stuffed animal against her chest. I tiptoe from her room, leaving the door open just a crack in case she calls for me.
It’s 8 P.M. and I’m sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, poring over Time Out. It’s important for me to keep up with current cultural events. My tour-bus patrons are always asking me for theater and restaurant recommendations and information on other local points of interest, from the commonplace to the arcane.
I look up from the magazine for a moment. Zoë is sleepily shambling into the room in her little cotton tee-shirt and underpants. She’s dragging her yellow knapsack like it’s a little red wagon.
“I have homework,” she says.
“Are you sure you need to do it tonight, since you went home sick today?” In my era, if you went home with a fever in the middle of the day, you weren’t expected to do your homework for that day. You got a dispensation so you could recuperate.
Zoë nods. “It’s a special project for Veterans Day.”
“But you don’t have school on Veterans Day, sweetheart. It’s a holiday. The school is closed.”
“I know that,” she replies, like I’m slow-witted. “That’s why it’s due tomorrow. We’ve had it for a week.”
I regard the look of evasion on her face. “Zoë, are you telling me that you’ve had to do a Veterans Day project for a whole week and you’re just going to start it now?” She nods. “We’ve talked about this, Z. What have I told you about waiting until the last minute?”
Her lower lip begins to tremble. “Don’t scold me. I’m sick.”
“You’re sick because you did a silly thing today,” I say gently.
“Well, I have to do my homework even when I’m sick or else I get a U,” she tells me. “That’s the rules.” Boy, they don’t cut these kids any slack. “I have regular homework, too,” she adds.
By the time I supervise her math homework and quiz her on her spelling words (brownstone, chocolate, exercise, and digital), it’s nine thirty. Although she spent the afternoon sleeping off the effects of her tummy trauma, it’s still way past her bedtime of seven thirty—a number that is more theoretical than actual, because of the amount of homework second graders get these days and the fact that we’re often not even home until 5
P.M., given her after-school activities schedule. Then you have to budget time for a healthy dinner.
“We still need to do my Veterans Day project.” Zoë emits a huge yawn. She’s a dozen years too young to prop up with caffeine in order to pull an all-nighter. Her school day begins at eight in the morning, and eight thirty on Fridays, for some inexplicable reason. Honestly, does Thackeray really expect these kids to fast-track it for Harvard when they can barely stay awake in class?
“Okay, then. Let’s buckle down. What’s the assignment?”
“We have to make a me
morial.”
“You—you have to—what?”
“A me-mor-ial. It’s a sculpture or a building that is supposed to honor all the soldiers that died in wars and all the ones that fought in wars and didn’t die and came home.”
I smile at her definition, despite my increasing ire. I think the task is in poor taste. It’s too advanced for six-and seven-year-olds, whose comprehension of death, destruction, disfigurement, and dismemberment should properly be limited to the programming on the Cartoon Network. I have no problem with second graders learning about patriotism and valor and a respect for our nation’s veterans. My objection is with their asking the kids to design something related so specifically to death.
“Let’s make a plan here,” I sigh. “First of all, do you want to make a memorial for veterans of one war in particular, or for all wars?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Well, pick something.”
“All wars.”
“All right. Good choice. Now, do you have an idea in mind of what you want it to look like?” Zoë rubs her eyes and yawns again. These kids have most likely never seen a memorial. “Well, there are lots of different types of memorials. The ones to veterans sometimes look like a statue—usually it’s of a man; sometimes he’s on a horse, and he’s holding an American flag or something. And sometimes it’s an eternal flame.”
“I want that. An infernal flame.”
“Eternal, not infernal. Eternal means ‘forever,’ so that’s a good sentiment for a memorial.” I think for a moment. “Infernal means ‘fiery,’ actually. ‘Blazing.’”
“So, what’s wrong with an infernal flame?”
“Nothing. It’s just redundant.”
“What’s ‘redundant’?”
“Saying the same thing twice in a row. Let’s stick to ‘eternal’ for the flame, okay?”
She thinks about this for several moments. “‘Twice in a row’ is redundant.”
“I love you, Zoë. You’re absolutely right. Very good! Now, let’s make an eternal flame before the sun rises.”
Finally, as the clock nears midnight, we have our memorial. I’ve insisted that she do most of the work herself. Otherwise, how will she learn anything? “I already did second grade,” I told her—although I never had assignments this advanced. “This year, it’s your turn.”
So, she’s built a low wall out of strips of cardboard, collected and hoarded for arts and crafts projects from the starched collars of the shirts Scott used to send to the Chinese laundry. She’s covered the cardboard with aluminum foil to represent “real metal.”
“I want it to be made out of shiny metal so when it’s rainy the flame will always make it bright and when it’s sunny out, it will be really bright!” She’s fashioned flames from colored construction paper and cellophane, gathering them into a sort of cheerleader’s pompom. A twisty tie of paper and wire holds the cluster of flames together and we’ve punched a hole through the cardboard base so the “stem” can be secured to its underside. It looks pretty good. The concept was essentially Zoë’s and the choice of materials was entirely her own.
I tell her she should be very proud of her creation, but she’s too tired to appreciate the praise. I bathe her, put her to bed, and tuck her in. She’ll have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in a mere handful of hours.
If I return to my own sightseeing research, I’ll be pulling an all-nighter. I take Time Out into the bedroom with me, thinking I’ll finish my reading, but I fall asleep with the light on. When I step out of bed the next morning, I practically trip on the magazine, unfurled in a slippery tent-shape on the floor.
Chapter 6
“Don’t kill me, Claire. I can’t do it.” This afternoon was Claire’s first Saturday tour group and I’d promised to pick up Zoë from Xander Osborne’s birthday party while Claire worked.
“I’m kind of in the lurch, here,” she whispered into her cell. “I’ve already got one strike against me with Go Native! for leaving those old ladies on the Lower East Side. They put an official reprimand in my file.”
I felt like shit. “Clairey, I must have been nuts when I told you I could get Zoë. What was I thinking? Nina is at the party. She’s the fucking hostess. And I’m Public Enemy Number One!”
“I thought she didn’t know about you,” Claire said.
“She knows now. And she also knows who I’m related to. Little kids have big mouths.” I didn’t want to let my sister down, but showing up at Chelsea Piers at four o’clock was a bad idea. I could just see the designer-clad Nina Osborne in custom-made Manolo Blahnik skates chasing me around the rink with a Polo Ralph Lauren hockey stick. “Can’t you get the mother of one of Zoë’s friends to bring her back with them until you get home?”
Claire’s voice was small and tense. “I tried them first. They’ve all got other plans. You were my court of last resort. What am I supposed to do, Mia? I can’t leave work. And this would make the second time in two weeks. I really need this job.”
“What? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.” There was tons of static on the line.
“We must have just gone through a dead zone. I said I really need this job!” Claire shouted into her phone. “Oh, hell. Now I’ve got fifty-two kids and twelve chaperones from the Willahatchee High School Marching Band looking daggers at me.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Claire. My bad, okay? I’ll owe you one.”
“You’re gonna owe me big-time. Goddamn it, Mia! Look, I’ve gotta run. My Go Natives are getting so restless I think one of them may stuff me into a tuba.”
Claire ended the call and I felt even shittier. What I couldn’t tell her is that things suck between Robert Osborne and me. We met cute, but things went south fast. I’m thinking of ending it. It was swell for a while, but there’s not much spark anymore. This is not a long-run kind of thing. I like that he dresses well, but I can’t keep pretending that I give a shit that the American Kennel Club renamed his breed of dog. Too bad, though. See, I love to screw but I’m not trying to screw up. I want “forever,” too, just like most other chicks.
I fired up my computer and went back to tackling Excel. If I was ever going to learn this on my own, I needed to make a sample chart. Something to practice with so I could get the hang of it.
Ugh. My mind was too preoccupied. Men.
Wait. Yeah. Men. That’s it. If I generated a chart of all the men I’ve dated, broken down by certain key characteristics, maybe I can see where I’ve been going wrong. What mistakes I keep making.
I opened my address book and started to input the names of my flops. In recent history alone, there was Hal, of course, then Luca, and before Hal there was a guy I picked up in Coyote Ugly named Skeet who wanted to be called “Cowboy” and who thought Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was a shopping list. I didn’t think I needed to learn a computer software program to tell me where I went wrong with those three. None of these men spelled stability. I thought Robert Osborne might, but the price tag was too high. He was still his own favorite subject. Even in bed.
The Upper West Side is a Mecca for filmmakers. I was telling my tour that some of Spiderman II was shot in the Museum of Natural History and they seemed kind of excited about that, even though we didn’t set foot inside. I don’t know what it is about tourists and film geeks, but pointing out a building inside of which Tobey Maguire spent a few choice hours really gets their motors going. I guess that’s one reason why Letterman’s “brush with greatness” segments were such a hit. The chaperones want to see stuff from their generation, including the Dakota (Rosemary’s Baby) and the phone booth where Richard Dreyfuss called Marsha Mason in the pouring rain in The Goodbye Girl.
“The Richard Dreyfuss phone booth isn’t there anymore,” I say. Another slice of New York history that has gone the way of the subway token.
“What happened to it?” the Willahatchee music teacher wants to know. He’s already told me that he admires Dreyfuss’s musicianship, not only his guitar-playing hobby
in The Goodbye Girl, but as the title character in Mr. Holland’s Opus.
“No more phone booths. We got rid of them years ago. Too many drug deals, muggings, and public urinations. Sorry, folks, but it’s true.” I realize that this doesn’t paint the prettiest picture of my city, so I add, “But now New York is so much safer thanks to a kick-ass former mayor and a couple of kick-ass former police chiefs.” I conveniently omit the obvious, the breach of security that will occupy a corner of our minds for the rest of our lives.
I’d gotten advance permission from Go Native! to take my band on the Roosevelt Island tramway, site of Spiderman’s climactic scene between our homespun hero and Willem Dafoe. This is where my tour will culminate as well. We’ll cross over to Roosevelt Island and back and then Frank will return the good citizens of Willahatchee to the Trina’s Tours office.
Unfortunately, there appears to be some sort of a backlog of cross-river travelers at the Manhattan side of the tram. I try to ascertain what’s up and hear only a couple of speculative comments that the tram was “broken for a while,” but now it’s up and running again. All the folks in front of us actually live on Roosevelt Island and need to get home. Besides, they were here first. I ask my tour if it’s okay with them that we wait a bit. They’re fine with that, understanding the situation.
A half hour later, we’re all still on line. The tram buckets are larger than the little four-seaters in Disneyland, but compared to a subway car, for example, they don’t carry too many passengers. “Does anyone need to be anywhere soon?” I ask my tour. Sixty-four heads respond in the negative. After another twenty minutes or so, I’ve sent the first group over to Roosevelt Island and am lining up the balance of my guests for the next Manhattan-side tram. I load them in, then glance at my watch. Uh-oh.
Even if I can catch a cab right this minute, and even if the traffic is moving, it’s a long ride from 59th Street and Second Avenue to 23rd and Twelfth. We would have been fine, had it not been for the tram backup. I would have made it to Chelsea Piers just a few minutes late. I feel desperation coursing through my veins. I can’t afford to be any later to pick up Zoë, or the poor child might be sitting there all alone—in a best-case scenario. All my options suck. I’m a victim of Murphy’s Law this afternoon, stuck between risking child endangerment and risking my employment.
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