“I can’t remember,” I said. They hadn’t even arrived and already I felt like a loser for not remembering the kid’s name. “He’s only eight and he barely speaks English,” I added by way of an excuse. “But I’m sure it will all be fine.”
“It will all be fine” was my new mantra. MAM had moved on and I was in a good place. I was doing the stuff they always tell middle-aged people to do. I was “staying active,” “eating healthy,” and I wasn’t drinking “too much.” I always made sure to fill up my rosé glass with ice. And I was working. Five to six hours a day, from eight till two.
I was happy. I was calm.
And so, when one of my ex-boyfriends—let’s call him Max—called me up and asked if he and his son could camp in the backyard of my house in the Village for ten days, I agreed.
The kid was dying to go camping and Max had promised he would take him. The kid wanted to be near the woods to see animals in the night. The kid wanted to catch his own fish and eat it. The kid wanted to sleep in a tent.
My yard was big enough to provide all that, I pointed out. I even had what could be considered a “cabin”—the old barn in my backyard. It had a newly poured cement floor and electricity. Never mind that it really was a barn that flooded when it rained. What kid wouldn’t want to stay there?
I was sure I could handle the visit. I’d stick to my routine of working every morning while Max spent bonding time with his son. There was one snag: Max didn’t drive. He didn’t have a license and hadn’t had one for over thirty years, being one of those people who have always lived in cities and is used to taking public transport.
“No problem,” I exclaimed. “You don’t need a car in the Village. You can ride bikes everywhere. How old is the boy again?”
“Eight,” the father said. We agreed this was old enough, certainly, to be proficient on a bike?
We made a plan. One that, as usual, I pushed to the back of my mind and didn’t think about until the appointed day was less than a week away.
“Are they actually coming?” Sassy asked.
I shrugged. “Who knows? You know Max. He might change his mind at the last minute.”
Max had a very laissez-faire attitude toward the rules of life. He was fifty-five, had never married, and didn’t seem to be working. “Where does he get his money?” and “What does he do for a living?” were unanswerable questions. From what I was able to gather from his texts and occasional emails, he was traveling around the world going to Burning Man events with baby-faced tech billionaires.
Do you want to go to Burning Man Africa? he’d text.
No thanks! I’d text back. Gotta work. On deadline. But you have fun!
I always got a bit squirrelly when my friends asked about the actual circumstances of how a person like Max happened to have a kid, especially as he hadn’t had the kid “on purpose.”
Max was one of those people who’d never led a conventional life and was always up front about it. He’d tell his partners that he didn’t believe in marriage, nor did he want children. Max knew his personality and lifestyle weren’t suited to the raising of small, vulnerable humans.
But Max became a parent anyway. He met an Icelandic woman at a party in Italy and they had sex for the next five days. She called two months later to say four things: she was pregnant, she was going to have the child, she was going to take care of it, and he didn’t have to be involved.
Six years passed. Six years in which the son grew up in the small Nordic country, speaking only Icelandic. Occasionally Max would mention his son. “You saw him?” I’d ask, mildly surprised. “How is he?”
“He seems fine. But we can’t communicate. He doesn’t speak English.”
The boy had a simple life. He had a half sister whose father was the opposite of Max—a local fisherman. The boy spent a lot of time outdoors. It was possible that he, too, would have ended up becoming a local fisherman.
But one day the woman decided to seek a better life for her and her children. She took all her savings and moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was able to get a job as a real estate agent working on twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-month rentals.
She had enough to get by.
But mostly, because she was in New York City, a place where Max spent a few weeks a year, Max began seeing his son more often. And now, at the age of fifty-five and with no previous experience, Max was trying to feel his way into being a father.
I was determined to help him. After all, he was making an effort and surely this should be encouraged. This, I explained to my friends, was why I had offered to help Max realize his dream of the perfect camping trip with his son.
But not everyone was buying it.
“Don’t you think it’s weird, this strange woman sending her child to stay at your house?” Tilda Tia asked. She pointed out that as a mother she would never have sent her eight-year-old kid to stay with a woman she’d never met.
I’m not a parent so I wouldn’t know. But I can imagine there might be some circumstances under which a mother might send her child away. Like in Heidi.
“This isn’t Heidi,” Tilda Tia barked. “I mean, you’re not even Max’s girlfriend.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s okay,” Kitty said. “She’s not a threat.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re getting into?” Tilda Tia was a real den mother. When she stayed at Kitty’s, she was always going to the supermarket and cooking meals and yelling at Kitty’s other houseguests to clean up their rooms.
She was right. I had no idea of what I was getting into. But I had already committed, prepared for the fact that anything might happen and probably would. As I had no children of my own, I figured at the very least the adventure would be research.
Now I picked up my phone and checked the time and the weather. The heat was going to kick up severe thunderstorms, starting in the next hour or so. Meaning it wouldn’t be a good time to set up tents. Because . . . electrocution.
I texted Max: Where are you?
* * *
When the boy and his father finally arrived by Uber at 10:00 p.m., I’d like to say that I was as gay as a Doris Day housewife, but I wasn’t. I was annoyed they’d arrived hours later than promised.
But the arrival of houseguests is like giving birth: you’re so happy to see them you immediately forget how irritated you were while waiting for them to show up.
In a display of good parenting, the father rushed the boy into the bathroom while I carted some of their stuff from the driveway to the living room.
As I looked around for where to put the boy’s bags, I realized Tilda Tia was right. It was sort of awkward. I wasn’t his mother and yet he was staying at my house. His father was not my boyfriend, and yet he was staying at my house, too.
On the other hand, they weren’t technically staying in the house. They were supposed to be camping in the backyard and hanging out in the barn. They would have their space. I would have mine.
The problem was the impending thunderstorms, which made sleeping in a tent not only unpleasant, but dangerous.
But the boy wasn’t interested in being inside. He’d been promised a tent. And he wasn’t impressed when his father and I pointed out that the upstairs of the barn was big enough to put up a tent. And it even had a small air conditioner!
It would be cooler. And less buggy. And not subject to the perils of rain.
Nope. The boy wasn’t having it. He began ordering his father to put up the tent. I offered to help but was shooed away by the boy.
I went back into the house, poured myself a glass of rosé with ice, and congratulated myself on my luck. Obviously the boy had plans and they didn’t include me.
Which meant my relationship with the boy would be simple: I’d be a sort of camp counselor/Airbnb landlady.
Day Two
I woke up the next morning to quiet. Max and t
he kid were sitting on the couch, silently going through the kid’s bag.
I made myself a cup of tea and joined them. Max had slept badly in the tent, and finally at 6:00 a.m. he and the boy had gotten up. They’d already walked to the deli and fed themselves, as evidenced by the greasy paper bags and food wrappings on the table.
“Here,” Max said, handing me an envelope.
“What’s this?” I said.
“It’s a note. From Glotis.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Glotis. His mother,” Max hissed.
Oh. Right. Glotis.
“Dear Candace,” she wrote. “Thank you for looking after my son. I know this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for him.”
Awwww. That is so sweet. See, Tilda Tia, I wanted to point out. The mother is trusting me with her son. I don’t know why she is, but maybe she has a motherly instinct that being around me will somehow be good for him.
The father and I went through his clothes. “Why does he only have two pairs of shorts?” I asked. Max shrugged.
“I guess Glotis doesn’t have much money to buy him clothes.”
I may not know much about children, but clothes I did know. And in this case, I knew exactly what to do.
Max would take the boy shopping and I’d go along to help.
Mommy and Me
Luckily, there were loads of kids’ shops on Main Street. There were, I also noticed for the first time, loads of kids. And parents. Families. Falling into step, I wondered what it would be like if this really were my life, if Max and I were married and had a child. It was a bit far-fetched but not impossible I thought as we followed a pair of attractive, early-fortysomething parents and their adorable children into the surf shop. If this really were my life, would I be happier and more content?
Assuming that clothes shopping is “women’s work,” Max immediately sat down on a couch, leaned back against the cushions, and started texting.
I wasn’t bothered. Max’s input would only make the situation more confusing and besides, I knew way more about fashion than he did.
“Hey, kid. Look at this,” I said, pulling out a yellow T-shirt as I tried to lure the boy toward a circular rack of colorful clothing.
He just stood there, staring at me. Looking lost.
“Okay,” I said brightly. “How about . . . sneakers?”
Again, that look. As if he had no idea what I was talking about or why I was with him. A look that said: “You are not my mommy.”
Too true. I’m not even Mommy adjacent. I had no authority over the boy and we both knew it.
Luckily, the saleslady came to the rescue. “What a cute little boy,” she exclaimed. “What are his sizes?”
For a moment, I was flattered she thought I was young enough to be the boy’s mother, but then I remembered that a real mother would know her son’s sizes. If I admit that I don’t know them, she’s going to think I’m one of those bad mommies who doesn’t know anything about her own kid.
I was going to have to drop the ruse. I pulled her aside. “Actually, I’m not his mother. In fact, I’ve only met him once before. And his father only sees him once a year. And he doesn’t really speak English.”
She got it, of course. Thank god, because shopping, as I would later discover, is one of the many, many things that children cannot do on their own.
The Mother Hens
Of course, I never for one moment thought I could handle the boy and his father by myself. After all, even people who actually have kids have help, right? And sometimes, when they travel with them, these people with the kids bring their own nannies.
Someone at a rich-person party pointed this out to me. I pointed out back that while it was a wonderful concept, Max and I couldn’t afford a nanny. And even if we could, there wasn’t anyplace to put her. We couldn’t ask a nanny to sleep in a pup tent.
Luckily, for help I had all my friends. Like Tilda Tia, they, too, were convinced that the visit was going to be a disaster and I was going to need saving.
I’ve been known for not being “motherly” ever since I was a kid. When I was a little girl and someone’s mother in the neighborhood had a baby, all the little girls would have to troop over with their mothers to see the newborn. The mother would pick it up and hold it out and pass it to one of the little girls and everyone would coo and they’d keep passing the baby around until they got to me and I’d refuse to take it. Besides the fact that I found holding someone else’s baby terrifying—what if I dropped it?—it felt like an indoctrination.
In those days, when girls were good at holding babies, they ended up always holding babies. If you were “good with babies” they’d want you to become a babysitter.
I don’t think so.
Which was why all my friends had volunteered to help me play Mommy. Queenie and Kitty, both of whom had pools, had offered their houses for the afternoons and even to babysit. Sassy promised to do “sports” with the boy, like badminton and bridge.
Bad Mommy
It’s one thing to be a bad mommy theoretically, but it’s another to be a bad mommy in real life. Even if you are not technically the mommy.
Indeed, it seems that most women, whether they be biological mothers or not, know what to do in case there is an unmothered child in the vicinity.
Like when a kid arrives at someone’s house, you immediately give the kid something to drink. You take him to the bathroom. Give him a cookie. Treat him like a movie executive on a Hollywood set.
Which is exactly what happened when we arrived at Queenie’s for a swim. Queenie was what’s known as a Yummy Mummy and the boy was immediately taken by her. While she showed the boy to the bathroom, I got a tongue-lashing from my friends.
“Why didn’t you say he was so cute!” Sassy said.
“How can you not remember his name? He’s a person,” Kitty scolded.
“Hey. I don’t want to push it. I want to respect his boundaries. If he remembers my name, I’ll remember his name.” I tried to tell them my camp counselor theory but no one bought it.
“Even camp counselors remember the campers’ names. It’s part of the job, love,” Marilyn said, as if I was a dotty old bird.
Seconds later, Queenie came waltzing out to the deck holding the boy’s hand. Queenie looked glamorous and chic and put together, and now so, too, did the boy.
He looked happy. And relaxed. And for the first time all day, I relaxed.
But not for long. The other thing about kids is that you can’t just entertain them for a few minutes and then they go off and do something on their own.
Nor can you entertain them for a few minutes and then go off and do something on your own. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not a cocktail party.
You have to keep entertaining them.
Queenie knew this, being a mother herself. She asked the boy if he could swim and then swam with him in the pool.
Everyone took pictures of Queenie and the boy. Queenie told the boy how handsome he was and what a good boy he was, and we all agreed that Queenie was the best mommy out of all of us. She had the magic touch.
But then, Queenie got called inside by her actual daughter, and Marilyn took over.
Marilyn had grown up on the ocean in Australia and she got the boy to come out of his shell, getting him to talk in his halting English about how he’d lived near the sea in Iceland and it really was dark for two months in the winter and bitterly cold. But then Marilyn, who was sitting out in the broiling sun so the boy could be in the shade under the umbrella, got too hot and had to jump in the pool. Then he cuddled with Kitty, who was also a mom, having been a single mother when she was in her twenties, while Sassy told him stories.
And where was Max during all this mothering? He was in Queenie’s air-conditioned house, snoozing on the sofa.
And then the boy got bored. Sassy gave me a look
that told me it was my turn to step in and amuse him.
“Hey kid,” I said, drawing him away from the group.
“Yazzz?” he asked. He had a big, unsuspecting smile on his face.
“Do you want to learn how to sectione?”
“Like how?”
“Like this.” I executed a sectione from my old swim team days when I, too, had been an eight-year-old.
It worked. Finally the kid wanted to do something with me.
I’ll say this about him: He was a fast learner. He had that sectione down in about forty minutes. He had tenacity. He didn’t give up. And he didn’t complain.
Maybe I was going to succeed at this mothering/camp counselor thing after all.
Day Three
Determined to get our mobility worked out, I decided it was time to get the boy on a bike.
I was hoping to get this task done first thing in the morning, which would give me time to work. My plan was to go directly to the bike shop, drop off Max and the boy, and then come home.
But once we got in the car, there was a whole list of other things Max and the boy needed. I groaned. What should have been a thirty-minute excursion was now going to be at least an hour.
There was the twenty-minute stop in the hardware store where we argued about fishing rods and left empty-handed. In the supermarket, we bought all kinds of things I would never eat, like marshmallows, diced fruit, and potato chips. I was beginning to get irritated, thinking about all that extra food in my small kitchen.
Finally we got to the bike store. The boy seemed reluctant to go inside, but I reminded myself that it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t the parent.
I reached behind the seat and grabbed a bag of potato chips. For a couple of minutes I just sat there eating chips and enjoying this moment of me time.
“Hello?” Max came marching out of the bike shop.
“Yes?” I leaned out the car window.
Is There Still Sex in the City? Page 13
