by Kate Walbert
It’s a playdate, a date for play; Caroline duly apprised of the plan this morning as she and Liz waited for the school bus on Lafayette. Around them, Cooper Union students bunched up like blackflies, bluebottles in window corners, at every DON’T WALK.
“Who?” Caroline says.
“Matilda. She’s in your class. You know. She wears striped shirts.”
“Does she have a cat?” Caroline asks.
“I have no idea.”
“Does she want to play My Little Ponies?”
Liz looks down at her daughter. “Who doesn’t?” she says.
Caroline shoves her hands in her pockets and swings one leg. She leans against a filthy meter tattooed with stickers advertising things: 800 numbers for important advice; someone staying positive with HIV.
“I’ll go,” Caroline says, as if going were a question.
“Great!” Liz says. “Here comes the bus!”
The school bus is the big yellow kind, exactly the same as the one Liz once rode to elementary school, in that faraway place, that faraway land known as rural Ohio. Here, in lower Manhattan, the bus seems too large, wrong, a dinosaur lurching through the veering bicyclists and throngs of pedestrians, the construction cones and smoking manholes; a relic of a thing, a dirtied yellow shell, an empty chrysalis whose butterfly has flown the coop. Inside, a handful of children are spread front to back, their expressionless faces gazing out the smeared windows, their ears plugged. Her own school bus, her Ohio school bus, had burst with noise and the boys who wouldn’t move over and then, later, would.
The bus stops; its doors open. Liz releases Caroline’s hand and waits as she ascends the high steps and disappears down the aisle. In an instant, she reappears in the window seat closest to Liz, her backpack beside her like a twin. Liz waves and smiles; that she has refused to buy headphones and the machines into which they fit remains a constant source of outrage to her daughter, though on this morning Caroline seems happy enough, smiling back, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue as the doors close and the school bus lurches on.
* * *
“First, the golden rule: never compare your own childhood experiences with those of your children,” Dr. Friedman had said, her glasses pushed to the tip of her nose. “This is a fruitless exercise, unhealthy and counterproductive. Best to remain alert; to look on the bright side; to, whenever possible, accentuate joy.”
Liz pounds the clay on the wheel and straightens her miner’s cap, a figment of her imagination but one that works relatively well in focusing her thoughts away from the business of children and onto the clay. The twins are presumably in the park with Lorna, sleeping in their double stroller or being pushed, side by side, in the swings meant for babies. Lorna is a pro. She will have bundled them up and thought to bring nourishment—formula or the breast milk that Liz pumps every evening; her breasts have nearly expired, she thinks, they’ve hit their expiration date. And Caroline is safely in school, repeating the colors of vegetables in Spanish or sitting at a small round table having what’s known as Snack: individual packages of Cheez-Its (they’ve all complained!), or free-of-hydrogenated-oils-and-corn-syrup-though-possibly-manufactured-in-a-factory-traced-with-nuts animal crackers. The point is, Liz has five hours before she needs to take the subway uptown: five whole hours. It is nothing and everything. It could stretch out before her like an eternity if she has the will, or it could evaporate in a single moment.
Concentrate, she thinks.
In the bright light of the cap, Liz sees the spinning clay take form and her own hands, aged, fingernails bitten to the quick. She has written Fran Spalding’s cell phone number across her knuckles, in case she forgets, or there’s a problem, or the world blows its cork: a possibility, a probability, apparently, but for now she’s going to concentrate. She’s not going to think about that.
* * *
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an important message from the New York City Police Department,” says the subway voice over the loudspeaker five hours later. Liz stands half in, half out of the subway car, a new habit; she always waits until the last passengers have pushed past before she fully commits to sitting down.
“Remain alert. Keep your belongings in your sight at all times. Protect yourself. If you see a suspicious package or activity on the platform or train, do not keep it to yourself. Tell a police officer or an MTA employee.
“Remain alert, and have a safe day,” the voice adds as the doors shut.
* * *
The taxi barrels across Central Park, through its odd scattering of tunnels; blocks of stone rise on either side of the road as if the taxi were plummeting through earth. Above loom the barren trees, leafless and gray, or the blotched white of sycamores; once, aeons ago it seems now, orange flags were unfurled along this same route. Then, thousands of people, all of them vaguely smiling, had wandered the paths like pilgrims in a dream. No one appears to be smiling now. They hurry along, wrapped in their coats, the day leaden, darkening; an Ethan Frome day, Liz used to say in college, to be clever, though she wasn’t particularly, unable to decipher the strange manners and customs of the East. She hasn’t thought of that in years.
Fran pays the driver, while Liz, in back, unbuckles Caroline and Matilda, leaning over them to push open the door. “On the curb,” she’s saying. “Watch your step,” she’s saying. “Grab your gloves.” Fran gestures for them to follow her into the building entrance, where two men in uniform hold open the large glass doors, bowing slightly as Fran passes.
“Partner!” one of them says, high-fiving Matilda. “Who’s your buddy?”
“Michael,” Fran says, arrested at the WELCOME threshold. “This is Matilda’s friend Carolyn.”
“Caroline,” Liz says; she can’t help it, raw nerve. Anything else she would let slide, she tells herself. Truly.
“Of course,” Fran is saying. “Caroline.”
“Buddy bear,” Michael says to Matilda. “Look at you.”
They look. How can they not? Everywhere there are mirrors, reflecting them, reflecting Michael and the other guy, reflecting the bounty and the grandeur of it all—potted green plants with white lights, garlands, a cone of poinsettia, and even, on a pedestal between the elevator banks, an elaborately carved stone urn containing—what? Liz wonders. Dead tenants?
“This is lovely,” Liz says.
“It’s home,” Fran says. She rings for the elevator, the girls crowding next to her. In an instant there’s the ping, and then the doors slide open. Another man in uniform smiles as they all step in; there is a small chair in the corner for sitting, though he clearly prefers to stand.
“Hey, Matty,” he says. “How’s the Go-Go?”
Go-Go, Fran explains, is the cat, their cat, who recently contracted a hot spot. A hot spot, she tells Liz, is an itch that can’t be scratched.
“Wow,” Liz says.
They rise in mechanical wonder and then stop, abruptly, on eleven, where the elevator doors slide open to no one.
“False alarm,” the man in the uniform says, releasing the doors and driving them onward, upward. The girls stand stock still; they all stand stock still.
“Are you allergic?” Matilda says to Caroline.
“The cat,” Fran says to Caroline.
“Are you allergic to cats?” Matilda says. She wears pink plastic barrettes and a striped shirt underneath a pink jumper. “Caroline,” Liz says. “Did you hear—”
“No,” Caroline says. She hunches beneath her huge backpack, carried solely for fashion, or just in case. In it now, Liz happens to know, is a palm-size notepad on which Caroline draws the details of her day and a purple-lipsticked Bratz doll that she treasures, received on her last birthday from Ted’s mother, who, Ted said, meant well.
“Lots of people are,” Matilda says.
The elevator stops.
“North Pole,” says the man in the uniform.
“Thank you,” says Fran.
“Thank you,” says Liz.
“Th
ank you,” says Matilda.
“Thank you,” says Caroline, walking behind Liz and tripping her, accidentally on purpose. “Caroline,” Fran’s voice soars in from ahead. “How do you feel about strudel?” But neither Caroline nor Matilda is listening, or hungry, for that matter; released from the grip of the elevator, the girls run down the poorly lit hallway playing some sort of imaginary game, knocking into doors and taking corners at high speed.
“Matilda Beth,” Fran yells after them. “That’s one.” She pauses. “Don’t let me get to two.”
Matilda stops and grabs Caroline’s hand, pulling her toward what must be A—an unassuming door with a child’s drawing taped over its peephole. It is always the same, Liz thinks, in these pictures: the mismatched ears, the round eyes, the name scrawled across one corner. The girls are six years old and braided, the days of the week stitched on their underpants. They wear seamless socks and rubber-soled shoes, and both are missing two teeth, though not the same ones; each has been read Charlotte’s Web and The Boxcar Children, the first a story of a pig on a farm and its friendship with a spider, the second a story of children, orphans, living happily alone in the woods, making do with rusted spoons pulled from the dump and the occasional cracked cup of milk.
“Caroline,” Liz says. “Is this a gold-star day?” She has spied Caroline twisting her finger up her nose and refers to a deal between the two that sometimes results in better behavior but more often does not.
* * *
Once in the apartment, Matilda leads Caroline to her room, where they settle beneath a green canopy of gauze to play My Little Ponies. Liz returns to the living room with Fran, whose gray streak, she learns, is natural and who works at home during school hours, copyediting and proofreading documents for a legal firm. From time to time, the girls interrupt them, flying into the living room in leotards and ballerina skirts and, once, in nothing at all, at which point Fran calls Matilda aside and speaks to her in a voice that Liz has heard only from single mothers or from mothers with numerous children—women who simply do not have the time or the patience for the monkey business that everyone else puts up with, they have told her; once, even, she heard the voice from a mother who said she just placed herself in the hands of Jesus. So maybe it’s the voice of Jesus, Liz thinks now, admiring it; her own, she knows, entirely lacks authority, as if she were questioning each verdict she pronounced.
“More tea?” Fran asks.
“Thank you,” Liz says, following her back into the kitchen, where they wait with great anticipation for the water to boil, watching the kettle’s curved spout, its shiny, smudged lid, as if they had never seen anything quite so fascinating in their lives.
* * *
“We are living in the Age of Anxiety,” Dr. Friedman said, “and here we sit at the epicenter, the Ground Zero, if you will.” She looked up and over those glasses at all of them, the throng of mothers, the few stay-at-home dads or those fathers whose schedules allowed them to be flexible—men in T-shirts, shorts, and sturdy boots, their hairy legs oddly comforting, as if, at a moment’s notice, they could sweep the whole group onto their shoulders and hoist them out the window. Many of the women in the circle appeared to Liz to be close to tears, though some were more difficult to read, writing with expensive pens, their briefcases balanced against their slim ankles, their hair blown smooth. Dr. Friedman surveyed the room, clearly attempting to make eye contact with the closest suspect, though unfortunately that suspect was Janey Filch, wall-eyed and so shy she looked ready to faint.
“Everywhere we go are reminders of where we are. I don’t think they need to be chronicled here. The school has briefed you on contingencies, and your emergency-contact cards have been filed in triplicate. Each child has an individual first aid kit and a protective mask.
“Still and still, you might say, the question remains: what can you do right now, on this day, at this hour, in this moment?”
Here Dr. Friedman looked up again and smiled, the smile so studied as to be disarming, as if Liz weren’t really looking at a woman smiling but at a portrait of a woman smiling.
“Take a deep breath,” she said, exhaling loudly. “Smell the roses,” she said, inhaling loudly. “Relax.”
The women slouched a bit in their folding chairs, attempting to follow Dr. Friedman’s advice. Liz imagined that if Dr. Friedman were next to suggest that they all stand and do a few jumping jacks, most would leap to the job.
“Now,” Dr. Friedman said, wiggling her shoulders. “I’m going to give you all some homework. This is an exercise that I’ve found works very well with my patients. It’s simple, really. How many of you keep a journal?”
A few hands shot up, Marsha Neuberger waving as if desperate to be picked.
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Dr. Friedman said. “I only wanted to get an idea. Anyway, what I’m going to suggest is that you all try keeping what I call an anxiety journal; just like if any of you have ever tried to diet and kept a food journal—”
Anxiety journal like food journal, Liz would have written in her notes, if she had remembered paper and pen. Bemused laughter, she would have added.
“—where you wrote down your caloric intake. Your anxiety journal will be the place where you write down everything that makes you feel nervous, or anxious, throughout the day: it can be anything you like. Don’t worry about how it sounds. No one is going to read it but you.” This Dr. Friedman said emphatically, Liz would have noted, whipping off her glasses and looking up, avoiding Janey Filch but generally trying to reassure each and every one of them.
“Promise,” she added.
* * *
Liz looks from her steaming tea to Fran. Fran is describing her terrific luck in finding the apartment, falling into it, desperate, after fleeing San Francisco with Matilda and a few pieces of luggage. Now, as a single mother, she keeps a tight rein on things, she says. “Have you noticed?”
Liz is unsure whether she should have noticed or not, so she blows on her tea and shakes her head.
“There was a burglary,” Fran says. “In San Francisco. After that we felt like we had to get out. I mean, I did. I left Matilda’s father. Richard. And moved back East.”
“Oh.”
“Strudel?” Fran says, sliding a plate across the counter.
“Oh, gosh, no thanks.”
“I’ve sliced some apples for the girls.”
“Great,” Liz says, knowing that Caroline won’t touch them—the edges, minutes after being sliced, too brown.
“And you?” Fran says.
“I’m sorry?”
“What about you?” Fran says.
“Oh,” Liz says. “We moved from Boston. We were in art school, Ted and I, and then we moved here—Ted works in television, children’s television—and then we had Caroline and now the twins, but I’m getting back to it. Art. I’m a potter, actually. I work with clay.”
“In vitro?” asks Fran.
“I’m sorry?”
“The twins,” Fran says. “In vitro?”
Liz nods.
“Your eggs?”
Liz blows on her tea. “Nope. We had to shell out twenty thousand dollars; we did it through the alumni association.”
“Smart eggs,” Fran says.
“I didn’t really care. Ted felt strongly about that, you know. He didn’t want to adopt.”
“Men rarely do.”
They sit in the living room, on opposite sides of the sectional.
“I think our girls really get along,” Fran says.
“Yes,” Liz says.
“After the burglary, you know, Matilda had trouble making friends. I mean, she played by herself most of the time. Made up stories. I’d take her to a birthday party or something, and there all the other children would be running around and screaming and playing tag or smacking the piñata, that kind of thing, and Matilda would be sitting by herself involved in some fairy-tale game. It was, well, embarrassing, frankly.”
Liz can’t help thinking that ta
upe is entirely the wrong color for this room, high as they are above the city. Excellent light, the listing would say. Light and air; airy light; sun-drenched, sun-gorged, sun-soaked, rush to your sun-kissed oasis! There are windows everywhere, and those radiators that line the walls. Fran should clear them off and paint the place—something dramatic, terra-cotta, she’d suggest, or saffron yellow.
“This was in San Francisco, where everything is, well, healthy, do you know what I mean? There’s always someone talking about loving-kindness. I couldn’t stand it after a while. I just left. I mean, we did; after the burglary. We just got on a plane and flew away. Anyway, that’s it. I’m here for good. I mean, I grew up here, in the city, but it’s different now, of course. It’s a lot different.”
There is a bit of a pause; comfortable enough, Liz thinks. The truth is, she’s enjoying herself. It’s a playdate, she finds herself thinking; I’m on a date for play.
“Would you like a drink?” Fran says.
“A drink?”
“I’d have one if you would. Carpe diem, or whatever. Anyway, screw tea, we’re grown-ups, right?”
“Okay,” Liz says. “Sure. Great. Yes.”
