Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  I let Will continue to sleep and slide into the shower. The last time Will was out of town, I took a pair of pliers and removed the water-saving device from the showerhead. I stand under Niagara Falls and enjoy how it pounds my head. It won’t last, so I relish the temporary luxury of all that water.

  Before I can rinse the conditioner out of my hair, I hear a wail coming down the hallway. I give it a minute to see if Will is going to wake up and attend to his howling son. From the shower, I can see he has pulled the comforter up over his head, so I guess the answer is no.

  “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom!” I stand in Theo’s door, a towel wrapped around me, my hair dripping all over the wood floor.

  “That’s why you got me out of the shower?” I ask.

  “Can you carry me? The floor is really cold.”

  “Theo,” I say, now freezing, “you’re five years old. Five-year-olds can walk themselves to the bathroom. Maybe put on some socks?”

  “Please, Mommy?” I have stared down nervous terrorists with their fingers on the trigger but I’m somehow powerless against Theo’s quivering lower lip.

  “Come on,” I say. He stands up on his bed and I pick him up. He takes a deep inhale of my wet hair.

  “You smell like French fries,” he says. That’s unfortunate for many reasons.

  Fifteen minutes later, we’re down in the kitchen, where I spend the bulk of my life. I plop Theo on the counter and put him to work scooping coffee into the French press. Six or seven scoops in, I reconsider my decision.

  “What do you think about taking a walk in the Presidio today after we visit that school?” I propose. “Just you and me? It will be fun. Maybe we’ll play on the beach?”

  And Mommy can do a little reconnaissance. And hope no one notices.

  “What are we going to do besides walking? I want to do more things.”

  “We can play on the beach,” I say again. There are clocks everywhere, on the stove, on my cell phone, on the wall. They are all telling me the same thing. Gray is running out of time.

  “Can Henry come?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so. Not this time.”

  “Please, Mom? I never get to do anything with Henry.” I don’t point out that just yesterday we spent the entire excruciating length of a ballgame with Henry. However, what happened yesterday is utterly irrelevant when you’re five. Only right now counts. You get no points for before.

  Scouting for a secret safe house isn’t exactly an appropriate outing for Theo, let alone his little friend. I should do what any sane mom who used to be a spy would do and call a babysitter, leaving Theo at home, safe and cozy and out of harm’s way, while I go off and try to infiltrate a bunker presumably guarded by armed government agents, and attempt to steal back my terrorist. But for the same reason I sit outside Theo’s school, I don’t do babysitters. They make me anxious, chatting away on their cell phones, backs to the monkey bars and swing sets. It would be so easy to snatch a kid without the sitter even noticing. It might take minutes for her to realize her charge is gone. I start to sweat just thinking about it.

  Early on, I decided I didn’t want to force Theo to have all his playdates at our house because I suffered from an overdeveloped sense of paranoia. I wanted to say yes to little Matthew or Luke or Joe and let my son go and play with someone else’s toys, which is what it’s really all about anyway.

  I also decided there was no need to confess that as Theo and Matthew or Luke or Joe drive home from school, I’m never far behind.

  I park somewhere close by where I’ve a decent view of the house and I watch. Fortunately, I’ve had years of practice lurking around undetected so I have yet to be caught in the act, which is good because I haven’t worked out an appropriate cover story to explain myself if I did. You think I’d take care of that, come up with something during all those hours sitting and staring at closed doors.

  Theo sits on the counter, pouting, his face scrunched up in displeasure.

  “I really miss Henry,” he says.

  And I really need to get Yoder back. It might not be possible to satisfy everyone’s needs today. Sometimes mothers have to make hard choices.

  “I know, sweet pea. I’ll see what I can do.” But it doesn’t matter because Theo’s no longer listening to me. Daddy has entered the kitchen. Will looks tired and incredibly gorgeous in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. I almost give in to the urge to set Theo up in front of the TV and drag Will back to the bedroom for a few minutes of X-rated behavior.

  “Good morning,” he says with a yawn. He takes a sip of coffee and spits it in the sink. “What the hell?”

  “I made the coffee,” Theo pipes up. “Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” Will says, recovering. “But I might add a little milk.”

  “Treat it like espresso and you’ll be okay,” I suggest. Will wraps his arms around me. Theo squeezes in between us.

  “You smell good,” Will says.

  “Please don’t say like French fries.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Are we ready for this interview?” he asks.

  I was unaware I was meant to prepare.

  “Theo,” he says. “Are you ready to dazzle these people?”

  “Yes,” Theo says, although I’m pretty sure he didn’t even hear the question. He’s thinking about something else. He’s thinking about yesterday. “So the guys who broke the windows last night are now on the bad-guy ship with Darth Vader and Darth Maul. The good guys are on the good-guy ship. In the playroom. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Will’s eyes drift toward the back door and the tape and cardboard. I freeze. I also failed to prepare for this scenario. However, it’s clear I owe a karmic debt to Darth Vader as Will doesn’t even flinch at Theo’s story.

  “Accident,” I whisper in Will’s ear. “I slammed it pretty hard and it broke. The panes were cracked on the edges anyway. I’m not surprised.”

  “And then Mommy lied on top of me and crushed the Connect Four box!” Theo says, tugging on Will’s arm. “It was totally cool. Come on!”

  I give Will a weak smile. At least Theo didn’t mention the guns.

  “Yesterday was a little crazy,” I say.

  But I can tell Will has already mentally moved on to other things, like the thirteen thousand unanswered e-mails in his inbox and an afternoon meeting with a company that wants to mass-produce home composters. “A composter in every home!” As a tag line, I think it needs work.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Will says, untangling from us. “My parents are coming today.”

  My shoulders immediately tense up at the thought.

  “Are they staying the night?” I ask.

  “Yup,” Will says.

  And there it is. The final bit of evidence that I am indeed cursed.

  32

  Will stands at the mirror, knotting his tie. Theo, dressed in a dark blue sweater and khaki pants, watches intently. I stare into my bamboo closet with a feeling that can only be described as despair.

  “I think you’d better take Theo on this interview without me,” I say.

  “You can go like that,” Will says. “You look good in your underwear.”

  “I’m not sure the folks at San Francisco Country Day would agree.”

  “You’re probably right. It’s pretty much guaranteed that no one there will have a sense of humor.”

  So why are we even considering this for our only child? I mean, I’m well aware of my own irrational reasons but what are Will’s? Are solar panels really that compelling?

  I settle on a pair of black pants. They have a bleached-out streak on the left leg that I fill in with a Sharpie permanent marker. The color is slightly more brown than black but if I cross my legs in just the right way when I sit down, I might get away with it. As I struggle to button the pants, I feel another wave of the nausea that’s been plaguing me lately. Could it be the malaria, contracted during an unfortunate visit to Guatemala, that seems to fl
are up whenever I have something really important to do? Right after this interview I promise myself I will see the doctor, go and take back Yoder, escape Simon Still, rescue my father, and rid the world of yet another complete lunatic. No big deal if I were actually five people instead of one. And it would be helpful if the other four were Navy SEALs without previous commitments.

  To enter San Francisco Country Day, one must pass through a set of concrete pillars etched with various Latin phrases: “BE BOLD IN YOUR INTELLECT.” “DO NOT BACK DOWN IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY.” “STUDY HARD.” “PAY YOUR TUITION ON TIME.” “GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE ANNUAL FUND.” Things like that. I smile at the security guard standing beside one of the pillars. He ignores me as if he were a guard outside of Buckingham Palace protecting the Queen of England. He thinks I’m perfectly innocent.

  Beyond the gates is a world that’s the complete opposite of urban. Green lawns resembling Augusta National, interrupted only by majestic trees or bursting flowerbeds, roll right up to the sturdy brick buildings that practically ooze knowledge. I may have added ten points to my IQ just by proximity alone.

  “Where are the toys?” Theo asks, holding tightly to Will’s hand, looking skeptical.

  “Probably inside,” I say. But he has a point. The school is shrouded in an unnatural stillness. It’s the kind of stillness that, in my experience, always predicates complete chaos. A trickle of cold sweat runs down my back. Something about this place is slightly creepy. Even the ivy climbing up the outside walls seems sinister.

  Our footsteps echo along the main hall as we make our way toward the admissions office. I’m curious how they’re going to go about interviewing a five-year-old when all he wants to talk about is Darth Vader and the wholesale slaughter of clone troopers.

  “Welcome, Hamilton family!” trills Frances Claiborne, the admissions director, who wears a proper navy suit with matching pumps. A dainty string of pearls hangs around her thin neck and her gray hair is pulled back so tightly it looks like a poorly executed face-lift. She offers a dead-fish handshake, which makes me immediately suspicious. I don’t trust people who can’t properly shake a hand because how hard is it really? These are the sorts of people who, when they encounter something truly difficult in life, immediately begin looking for a way to blame it on you.

  “We’re so thrilled you’re interested in our little school,” Ms. Claiborne says without much emotion.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Frances,” Will says.

  “Oh, everyone calls me Mrs. Claiborne,” she corrects.

  “Of course, Mrs. Claiborne,” he says. He doesn’t punch her in the face. Interesting.

  “The way we work this is we send Theo off with one of our evaluators, giving us adults a chance to talk.”

  She has yet to look at or acknowledge Theo, who hides behind my legs and pulls at the sleeve of his cotton sweater. The trickle of cold sweat running down my back expands into a river. Will is smiling, nodding, as if this process is right as rain.

  “Where exactly will he be going?” I ask, trying to keep the mounting hysteria out of my voice.

  “Oh, to one of the lower school rooms, with the evaluator” is what she says. What I hear is “to the underground prison cell, with the interrogator.”

  “And this is necessary why exactly?” I ask.

  Mrs. Claiborne pulls herself up straighter as if someone just stuck an iron rod up her ass.

  “It’s the way we do things here, Mrs. Hamilton,” she sniffs.

  Will lays a hand on my arm. “It’s fine, Lucy.” But it doesn’t feel fine to me. It feels all wrong.

  “Gretchen, can you take Theo down to room 4C for his evaluation?” The assistant behind the great mahogany desk nods her head. She’s a little afraid of Frances Claiborne. I’m guessing everyone is.

  Theo gives her a big smile, takes her hand, and heads off to find room 4C, where some man in a Jimmy Carter mask will probably torture him until he confesses I once let him watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Stop it, Lucy, I tell myself. You’re being ridiculous. Sadly, it’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation with myself.

  Mrs. Claiborne’s office is covered in dark, serious paneling and populated with red upholstered furniture. On the walls, there are paintings of horsemen heading out from their English estates with dogs in tow for a day of jolly fox hunting. Which is great fun, unless of course you’re the fox.

  She scans our application, making little tsk tsk noises to herself. And then she turns to me, her sharp eyes flashing above the half moons of her reading glasses.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Hamilton,” she says, “what exactly did you do before Theo was born?”

  This is a story I’ve told a number of times. I try not to vary it for fear it’ll come back to haunt me at some inopportune time if I do.

  “I was an analyst for the United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction,” I say.

  She practically sneers at me. “You worked for the government?” Everyone knows that only people seriously lacking in ambition work for the government.

  “Yes. I did.” I hate the way Mrs. Frances Claiborne’s pearl drop earrings bob up and down as she talks. But if I get right down to it and really examine my emotions, it might be I just hate Mrs. Frances Claiborne.

  “She left that job when she moved out here,” Will adds. He’s trying to please her and that strikes me as strange.

  “And your family?” she continues. “Do they remain in the East? The information about you on the application is rather … thin.”

  That’s because I don’t want to go to school here. I already went to kindergarten and I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost $27,000.

  “I have no family other than the one that you see,” I say.

  “Well, now, how can that be? We all have families.”

  “I don’t come from money,” I say flatly, “if that’s what you want to know.”

  My statement ruffles her feathers. Will shoots me a look, telling me in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut. Rich people don’t talk about money. The assumption is everyone has it and it’ll always be there. So while Mrs. Claiborne pretends to be interested in me, what she really wants to know is what she can expect me to cough up during fund-raising. Am I going to build a new wing on the library or am I more the twenty-five-dollar check kind of a gal?

  “Well,” she sniffs. “We consider ourselves a big family here, so we like to know as much as we can about applicants before making any decisions. Are you going to fit into the family or not?”

  If I leap across the desk and stab her in the heart with one of her faux fountain pens, my husband will probably get upset. And telling her the truth about my family is out of the question because the only way I could really discuss that in any detail would be after I saved my father and he confessed all, and I haven’t gotten around to any of that just yet. So I go for plan C.

  “Actually, if you want the truth, I came from a test tube,” I say. “Anonymous donors. It’s not the sort of thing I like to talk about.”

  “Lucy!” Will is horrified. Mrs. Claiborne is horrified. I feel a little more relaxed. Will and Mrs. Claiborne collectively decide to pretend I’m no longer in the room, which is fine with me. It’s too hot in here anyway. My husband is talking about his firm. He’s telling Mrs. Claiborne exactly what she wants to hear. But the damage is already done. I’m becoming just the kind of loose cannon that used to terrify me, a person who doesn’t know when to shut up.

  After the interview, we drop Will at his office and head for the playground. Our visit to San Francisco Country Day has made me long for fresh air and the reasonable voices of my mom posse.

  In the backseat, Theo flips through a Star Wars “EZ Reader” book. He’s been strangely silent since our visit to San Francisco Country Day. I know how he feels.

  “What did you think of that school?” I ask him. Moments before, when Will asked him the same question, Theo plastered on a fake smile and said it was good. But I di
dn’t believe it for a minute. I can tell when someone is lying.

  “The lady didn’t want me to get paint on my pants,” he says. “And I wanted to do the painting on the floor to make a bigger rocket but she said no. I like Teacher Wendy.”

  I like Teacher Wendy too and kind of wish we could stay in preschool forever. But at some point, making art out of toilet paper rolls would no longer be the developmental challenge it once was. Kindergarten is going to happen to us no matter what.

  As we drive, I remember what Avery once told me about the San Francisco public schools lottery system. She swore those families who listed a foreign language as the primary language spoken in their home often got their first choice of schools in the lottery although she had no explanation for why that would be.

  “So maybe we should practice Spanish at home now?” I mutter in Spanish to myself. “Maybe then we’ll get a decent lottery number. Or maybe I can figure out a way to bribe the people who run the lottery? Free solar panels?”

  The Spanish sounds as it always did, fast off the tongue, no rust. I’m suddenly depressed by all our schooling options. And home schooling is out because the only subject I’m any good at is foreign affairs and my approach might not be appropriate for a kindergartener.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Theo says. “Then Daddy won’t understand us and that would probably drive him crazy.” I spin in my seat, practically crashing us into a parked car. My son just answered me in perfect Spanish.

  “Theo, are you doing Spanish in school?” I ask. Please let the answer be yes.

  “No,” he says, still in Spanish. “I listen down in the Mission and to the ladies at the playground sometimes. I like the way it sounds.”

  Oh, my.

  33

  As we pull into the parking lot of the playground, I pepper Theo with questions in Spanish. What color is the sky? How old are you? What’s your name? He answers each in a grammatically perfect complete sentence. It feels as if someone has sucked all the air out of the car. Will is a normal guy, maybe a little evangelical when it comes to the environment but still, overall, nicely American. I was counting on his normalness to counteract my weirdness in our child. Apparently, that theory is full of holes.