But no. She’s just marking kids off from the checklist on her clipboard and struggling to put names to faces. She tells me, smiling sweetly, that Fritzie had a good day, that she’s going to be “quite an asset to the classroom, a real lively personality,” and I beam as though this is such exciting news, even though it could also be a euphemism for “most disruptive human being ever.”
Fritzie is jumping from one foot to the next and waggling her head back and forth, which makes the baseball cap fall on the floor, and a red-haired kid swoops in and grabs it and pretends he’s going to eat it. Fritzie screeches, “Don’t eat my hat again!” and takes it back.
“Wow, you’ve had quite a day defending that hat,” says Karen. She smiles at me. “Everybody loved her hat. A couple of people even thought it might be delicious to eat, isn’t that right, Fritzie? Which was sort of crazy!”
And she gives Fritzie a big good-bye hug.
When we’re on the way to the playground, trailing behind Emily Turner and a whole gang of moms and their kids, I say, “So was it a problem, your hat?”
Fritzie shrugs. She seems like she’s in a very good mood. “Nah. It wasn’t a big deal. It fell off one time, and Max picked it up and put it on his own head, and then this boy named Laramie took it and said he was going to put ketchup on it at lunch and eat it, but then I got it back, and he chased me around the classroom, and we knocked into the table of folders and they all fell on the ground. Big deal. I picked them up.” Then she yells at the top of her lungs at the boy slightly ahead of us. “Laramie!” she calls, and then again. He stops and turns around, and she throws him the hat.
“Here,” she says, “you can have it!”
He runs over and grabs it. “Really?” I notice he was walking by himself, looking over at the other kids with a kind of longing.
“Yeah!” she says. “It’s yours. But don’t eat it unless you’re very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY hungry. And don’t put ketchup on it!”
After he bounces away with it on his head, I say, “Wait. That’s your hat. Why did you give it to him?” and she says, offhandedly, “I dunno. He needed it.”
She dances sideways and backward all the way across the street, and I keep having my heart stop and restart. And once we’re there, sorting ourselves out and claiming benches, the moms all open up their magic bags and hand out healthy snacks, carrots and bottles of special water and little packets of dried kelp and something called Pirate’s Booty, and I get to sit on the bench next to Emily Turner and her friends Elke and Lily and Sarah Jane, all of whom are wearing the most fabulous footwear I’ve ever seen—clogs and sandals and whatnot—and we feed the children these wonderfully healthy snacks from sweet little ecologically sanctioned containers, and pick up their backpacks, and then someone mentions lunch like it’s a thing we should have been thinking about, and so we gather up everybody, plug Sarah Jane’s twins into a massive eighteen-wheeler stroller, and wrangle Elke’s toddler, and off we go, to lunch down the street at a sushi restaurant, where it’s California rolls and sensational games with the soy sauce bottle and plenty of happy exuberance.
There’s a tension headache starting to pound just behind my eyeballs. But I try to be grateful for every moment that Fritzie is happy and carefree and playing with friends. I look up at the sky and squeeze my fingers one by one, intent on appreciating.
Patrick said we would deal with it.
It’s not until Fritzie and I are making our way to the subway that she suddenly says, “Hey, where’s my mom?” She’s skipping from one foot to the other when she says it, intent on not stepping on any cracks. “You know why I’m doing this, Marnie? Because you can break your mother’s back if you step on one,” she says. “I don’t know if you know that or not.”
“I have heard rumors about that,” I say. “But once when I was a kid, I was mad at my mom so I stepped on every single crack, and her back has stayed fine all these years. So I have serious questions about whether it’s true.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I did that, too, one time.”
“And was Tessa fine?”
“I guess so. So, where is she, huh? How come she didn’t come to the school to meet me?”
“Well,” I say. Okay. So here we are. I try to think of what to say. I’ve been trying to think of what to say all afternoon long. On the sidewalk there’s a gingko leaf torn and now in the shape of a heart. I try to let it give me some courage. I believe in signs from torn gingko leaves.
She has stopped walking and is looking at me. Her eyes are guarded, like she knows what’s coming and has steeled herself for it.
“Well, sweetheart, your mom left for Italy today,” I say. “It was kind of a big surprise to everybody—even to her, I think. Richard showed up in Manhattan with an airline ticket for her, and so they left.”
“Oh,” she says. Her face goes dark, and without looking at me, she picks up a stick and starts dragging it along an iron fence, clanging it on the bars as she walks. It’s like watching storm clouds coming up over the horizon: you can see them coming, but there is no escape.
“I’m sorry. It’s kind of a shock, I’m sure.” When she doesn’t answer, I say, “I was wishing she could have said good-bye to you.”
At this, she sits down on the ground, on the sidewalk. Just plops herself down and folds herself up, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down.
I stop walking. “Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone.” Her head is buried in her knees.
I stoop down and put my hand on her back, and she pushes it away.
I can’t imagine what would be the right thing to say. What I want to do is pick her up and hug her and hold her and tell her that she’s safe with me. But she wants me to leave her alone, so there’s that. I look up and down the street, as if the answer might be found in one of the parked cars or any of the people walking by. Finally I say, “We can talk about it. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” Her voice is muffled. Then she says, “I just thought she would say good-bye.”
“I know. It sucks that she didn’t. I’m really sorry.”
Some teenagers go by, making a wide circle around us. Up ahead, I can see Emily Turner already at the corner, looking back in our direction. She does the “are you okay” gesture. I nod. And then I sit myself down next to Fritzie on the sidewalk. She’s still all folded up, rocking back and forth, and I can hear little sad sounds coming from her. Little peeps, like a chick would make.
“Do you want to go home?” I ask her finally. I put my hand on her back, and this time she doesn’t push it away.
“No.”
“Okay. That’s fine. We can just sit here.”
“Go. Away.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You should go because I’m going to stay here forever, and I am never going to talk to you.”
“Okay then. Me, too. I’m not going to talk to myself either.”
“You might as well go see Patrick, because I am not moving.”
“Nope. Patrick will have to come find us if he wants to see us.”
We sit in silence. She keeps her head down on her arms. I’m stiff, sitting on the pavement, so I inch myself over to the little patch of dirt and grass, the place where every dog in Brooklyn has probably peed. For a while I can’t think how this will ever end.
And then—I don’t know, about four eons in, I remember something I once believed about love and how it’s in the messiness that all the good stuff comes, and I close my eyes and beam her over some love. And then a couple of eons after that I say, “You know, when I’m really as angry and furious as I ever could be, I like to yell and scream and run around in a circle and bang on something.”
She peeks out from underneath one arm.
“Let’s see,” she says.
So that’s how it happens that at 3:45 on a Wednesday, the first day of school and the first in my life as a substitute mom, I am on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn letting out bl
oodcurdling screams and running in a circle and then banging on somebody’s stone fence post with a stick. And the little girl watching me is grim-faced and serious with streaks of dirt on her cheeks where the tears were. But at least she’s watching.
“Stop it,” she says sternly. “You’re making an idiot of yourself.”
“Oh, yeah? You think you could do it any better?”
She gets to her feet and grabs the stick from me and then she zooms around and around in a circle, shrieking so loud that airplanes are probably having to be rerouted from Kennedy Airport, and then she beats on the stone wall until she’s completely exhausted, and then when she’s done and sweaty, she says, “That is the way you do it.”
I say, “That was very impressive. What do you say? Shall we go meet a bride at Best Buds?”
“Why is there a bride at Best Buds?”
“Oh, she thinks she wants some flowers for her wedding. Silly of her, I know.”
“Okay,” she says at last. “But I am not ever going to be happy again.”
“Absolutely not. Me neither.”
As soon as we get home, Fritzie marches in the front door and goes to find Patrick, calling his name over and over again. I’m putting away her backpack and hanging up her sweater when he comes out from the study across the hall, lifting his eyebrows to me.
“Patrick,” she says. “You are going to have to get used to me, because my mum has gone away, and I am never going to speak to her again.”
“Well,” he says, blinking. “Okay, then. I’ve been put on notice.”
“I HATE THEM! Her and Richard. I HATE THEM!”
I hold out my arms for her, but she doesn’t come any closer. She’s like a little feral animal, not looking for cuddling.
Patrick runs his hands through his hair, and we look at each other because we have no idea what to do, except I’m thinking maybe eating dinner would be a good idea. Patrick says he would like to make Fritzie’s favorite food, whatever that might be, and she walks around in a circle for a while, pondering and then says that would be hamburgers and artichokes and cherry pie and root beer. With butter sauce for the artichokes and thousand island dressing for the hamburgers.
He and I exchange glances again. He lifts his eyebrows. “It can’t be pizza from around the corner?” he says. “Or a chicken from Paco’s?”
“No!” she roars at him and goes over and pretends to pummel him in the stomach, only she really does get carried away and actually starts hitting him, and he has to fend her off, which almost makes her start crying. She is perched on such a delicate edge.
And you know what, because we would do anything to make her feel better, Patrick cooks the hamburgers on the grill on the rooftop, and I go to Paco’s and get artichokes and cherry pie filling and instant pie crust and root beer, and I come home and make a pie. We’re all hard at work, even Fritzie, who whirls around in a circle in the kitchen singing one of those tuneless songs from childhood—this one about worms going in and out of a corpse—and then I see her eyes light up as she hits on the idea of chasing down Bedford and dressing him in one of her T-shirts. He puts up with the shirt business, but apparently draws the line at wearing underwear on his head. They both come running through the kitchen and then the living room, with him barking and her shouting, and then suddenly she bursts into tears and runs and hides behind the couch and won’t let either of us hug her.
But finally we get dinner ready, and she carries the pie up to the roof while Patrick and I bring everything else, and then she tells him about her classroom and the hamster and how the teachers want to be friends with the kids, and that’s why you don’t have to call them Ms. Her eyes are sparkling as she tells him all this, and he teases her about being friends with teachers.
Despite the slight reprieve while she eats dinner, I can see in her eyes that she’s shell-shocked and sad, and that the hurt welling up inside her is so huge it is swamping her. After that, despite my efforts to have everything go smoothly, we argue over whether she needs a bath (I lose), whether she should brush her teeth (I win), and when it is time for bed (nobody wins; she argues and stalls and thinks up increasingly ridiculous topics to complain about until after ten, when we are finally all exhausted).
I lie down with her and Mister Swoony, and even though she says she’s never going to sleep, and never going to be happy again, and never going to speak to her mother or be nice to Richard, she finally, finally drifts off. Once I’m sure that I’ve heard every last peep from her, I ease myself off the bed. My back is stiff, and my neck has a crick in it. And not only that, I have cramps and a headache. I stagger into the bathroom, blinking in the bright light. It’s past eleven by now.
And there it is: my period.
Hi, it says. You didn’t really, really think that little rip in the condom four weeks ago was going to bring about a BABY, did you? You DID? And you think of yourself as somebody who has a sense of magic and possibility? And you didn’t know I was waiting for you? Hahahahahaahaha.
My period is always a little bit mean and capricious, but I never knew it would be this terrible.
I slide down the wall and lie on the floor with my face against the cool tile. I don’t want to think about anything right now except how the fibers of the tan bathroom rug are quite irregular. It’s fascinating, really, how there are different shades of beige and tan and ecru, all woven and twisted together, sticking up and leaning on each other. You might miss these if you never took the time to lie down on the floor, I think.
Should I cry? Maybe I should let myself cry. I am sadder than I think I have ever been.
Patrick comes in to brush his teeth. I don’t move. I just stare at his feet in front of me on the rug. Patrick’s perfect, unburned feet.
“Um. What are you doing?” he says.
“I’m feeling sorry for myself.”
“Oh,” he says. And then, “Ohhhhh.” He’s noticed the box of tampons on the edge of the sink. “Can I do anything?” he says. “Do you want some tea?”
“No. I think I am going to lie on the floor and cry for a while.”
“Okay.” His toes don’t move. I close my eyes. And then I feel the warmth of him surrounding me. He joins me there on the floor, and at first he simply rubs my back and my cheek, and then he gathers me up and holds me against his chest, and he says, “You know. If tonight is any indication, we might have dodged—”
“Don’t even,” I say.
“I mean, just saying—”
“Patrick. I mean it. Stop.”
He kisses my hair, a hundred little kisses. His heart is beating against my cheek. We stay that way for a long time. I feel tears burning under my eyelids. I am so tired and so sad.
“Marnie,” he whispers. “If you really want—if this is what you need, we can try again.”
I pull away and look at his face. “On purpose this time?”
He closes his eyes for a moment. “God. I must be a lunatic, but yes. On purpose. But could I ask you one thing? Could we wait? Can we get settled with this halfway-grown one first? Can we just make sure we can live through this before we embark on another?”
“All right,” I say.
“I must be crazy, saying this. I am crazy.”
“Don’t overthink it, Patrick. Just take it as it comes. It’s life.”
“Okay, but can you please, please come to bed now? Because God knows we are going to need our strength.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MARNIE
And then the first weeks of having Fritzie go horribly. Like, the worst.
For one thing, she won’t talk to Tessa on the phone when she calls. She says from the next room, “Tell her I died.” Another time she yells out to me, “Please just tell her I hate her, and also I don’t remember her name.”
The following Thursday she says, “Tell her I’m your daughter now and she can stay away.”
On the following Sunday, she’s doing her homework when Tessa calls and she says, “Tell her I already grew up
and left home and I’m living in my own pensione with a man who is handsomer than Richard and nicer.”
Each time, Tessa hangs up without pressing the issue. She actually said to me the last time it happened, “Well, I guess this shows what I was saying all along. She doesn’t miss me.”
“No, no!” I said quickly, but it was too late because she’d already hung up. No, I would have told her. It proves just the opposite. She misses you so much she can’t bear it.
Three weeks later, as September slides into October, Fritzie and I get around to painting her room a routine but comforting pale blue. I’m relieved that’s the color she’s picked because it seemed equally plausible that she’d go for—oh, I don’t know—metallic rainbow splotches or Death to Civilization Black. I’m so happy with the pale blue that when she picks out gold foil stars to stick onto the walls, as well as gold filmy bubble curtains for the windows, I’m game. In fact, I’m game for almost anything. My heart is one big wet pulsating ball of sympathy for her right now. We go through stores like we’re members of the Kardashian family, piling into the cart anything she wants: posters of unicorns and pugs and one of Dumbo with his mother as well as a large pillow in the shape of a pretzel, a lava lamp, assorted stuffed animals with enormous eyes, and an alarm clock that also tells the weather. We get a beanbag chair and white Ikea bookshelves, a new bed, a desk with a swivel desk light, a dresser, a chair on wheels, a rug with stripes, and baskets for her toys to go in.
While I’m on a ladder painting with the roller, she careens around the room, nearly stepping into the paint tray four separate times, and then insists on helping me paint the corners, which means that at one point a whole brush full of paint goes flying across the wood floor, and I have to run for wet paper towels, and while I’m gone, she steps in the paint tray and tracks even more light blue footprints across the room. When I (very kindly and patiently) convince her to stop, to never again in her life move even one muscle if there is painting going on anywhere in the vicinity, she dresses up Bedford in her baseball hat and one of her T-shirts, and the two of them run through the hallway, barking and shrieking, which causes Roy to come dashing into the bedroom, screeching, with his fur totally puffed out, and it’s clear that between the paint fumes and the interspecies noise-making, he’s having his well-earned nervous breakdown. He of course skids right into the puddles of paint on the floor and turns in midair and flies off down the hall making an unearthly sound. I am so sorry for him, but I have to capture him and wash his paws with water, which he hates more than anything. Then I have to wash the floor in the hallway. And the places on the wall, where he somehow touched, because I swear he was airborne at several points.
A Happy Catastrophe Page 12
