Dear Catastrophe Waitress, page 18
The following day Mark feels a jolt of joy as the kids walk into the building. He may be the walking dead, but these kids are alive here today, and Mark feels wonderfully parasitic—like he’s just drinking up all the excess life energy they’re exuding all the time and slowly, slowly, bringing himself back to life.
Several members of the class he taught last year scream “Mr. Norris!” when they see him, and they run up and hug him. One, Emilia, says, “Mister! Did you get married?”
“Uh, no, Emilia, I didn’t. Looks like I’m not going to.”
Emilia looks genuinely sad. “Oh, I’m sorry, mister.”
“Okay, thanks, Emilia. Who’s your teacher this year?”
“Miss Huffman.”
“Okay, then, you be good for Miss Huffman, okay?”
“Okay!” And off she goes.
Once inside his own class, Mark introduces himself to his students. During his short introduction, one kid raises her hand and says, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Mark thinks about invoking the only-child lie, just to make it easier, but he can’t betray Janet that way, can’t pretend she never existed.
“I have a sister, but she died ten years ago.” There is a moment of silence, and three or four kids look like they’re planning follow-up questions, but, thankfully, they don’t ask them. He then tells them to write a brief introduction to themselves for him. This works as a good diagnostic for where their reading and writing are as well as serving the purpose of getting to know them a little bit. He helps Karina and Max, who start misbehaving as soon as he asks them to write their name on the index card, and thus, he figures, probably can’t write a sentence.
The day goes by in a blur, and, that night, Mark works on a new composition he titles “Sticky Booger Blues,” inspired by some rather messy trouble that Diego had that afternoon. Once he believes he’s explored the subject of mucus enough, he gets out his bag and sits (working! Not contemplating his loserdom, not kicking himself, but actually doing something worth being alive for!) matching the cards with the photos.
As usual, there is a wide range of abilities in his class. He’ll do the official testing in a few weeks, but he can already guess the entire range: coming in below kindergarten level is Max, who, with Mark’s extensive help, came up with “my nam Max.” And, up at the high end, this one:
“Mr. Norris. I am sorry about your sister. My dad died too. I know it’s very sad. Sincerly, Kelly Phillips.”
SIDE TWO
STACEY
Years pass in a blur of art projects and movies. Kids’ Creation Station is doing very well—well enough that Stacey was able to pay off her loan early and is amassing some savings for a down payment for a house of their own. There is certainly a great deal she likes about living in the apartment in Phoebe and Steve’s house, but she feels like it’s time for S&K Phillips, LLC, to find a new headquarters.
Steve and Phoebe finally get married, and Phoebe, usually the calm professional, goes completely to pieces during the planning process. Stacey helps extensively with color selection, dress selection, invitation selection, and general hand-holding. She works very hard at not remembering Philippa doing the same thing for Kim and focuses instead on how much she enjoys not being the one who’s a mess, how much fun it is to be calm and competent and helpful.
Stacey attends a number of insufferable meetings with a bunch of worrywarts trying to decide which Boston Public Elementary School to choose for their precious little angels and eventually decides to send Kelly to the Emily Greene Balch Elementary School, primarily because it’s an easy walk from their house, and secondarily because a bunch of the worrywarts will be sending their kids there, and she figures they’ll be up the principal’s ass making sure everything is perfect so she won’t have to be.
Kelly is occupied at school for six hours a day, and Stacey finds that the extra time is a tremendous boon to her mental health, and the closeness they have after school and on the weekends starts feeling cozy again rather than just suffocating.
Phoebe is always trying to set her up with some hot young professional she meets on a consulting job, and even swears she will babysit whenever Stacey wants to go out with any of these eager men she has lining up. “I know how much you loved Bobby,” Phoebe says, and Stacey feels a little knife of guilt slide between her ribs over the lie she continues to tell her best friend, “but life does go on. Anybody would say that you’ve honored his memory, and you are doing a fantastic job of raising his daughter, and you don’t need to be alone forever. You deserve to be happy.”
Stacey’s not so sure she agrees. What she deserves, and what she has, is cleanup duty for the mess Philippa made of her life. She is happy—proud of her business, proud of her savings account filling up with down-payment money, money she earned herself, all on her own, not because her dad was rich, not because of the school she went to, not because of anything but her brain and her hard work. That makes her happy. And Kelly makes her happy. Sure, raising her is hard work, but she is a funny, smart, creative, and sensitive kid. And yes, her flashes of irrational anger are worrisome—are they just childhood tantrums, or are they Ken’s DNA asserting itself?—but Stacey is proud when she thinks of what she’s saved Kelly from. Kelly will grow up thinking that being a woman means being strong, being in charge of your life, not living in fear and being called a dumb cunt all the time.
She nearly convinces herself that she is completely happy, that she doesn’t need anybody.
But it’s not just Phoebe pushing the whole dating thing. During Kelly’s first-grade year Camille, a fortyish woman with two preschool-aged children, starts coming in to the Kids’ Creation Station at least three times a week. After two weeks, Stacey ventures this after a conversation about Glitter Glaze: “So, uh, I take it you don’t work outside the home?”
“Honey, I don’t even work inside the home. I play with my kids all day and hire people to do everything else.”
“Wow, that must be nice.”
“Well, I earned it. Have you heard of the Caswell Company?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, they own gated town-house communities all over the South Shore. I was married to Warren W. Caswell the Third.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, to make a long story short, Warren was fond of getting drunk and violent and calling me any number of horrible things, and thanks to a fantastic attorney, he’s now paying me to stay home and sleep with my personal trainer!”
“Good for you!” Stacey says, and wants desperately to say, me, too, I left an abusive man, too, I know what it’s like, you are my sister, but of course none of that is true of Stacey.
Weeks later Camille, after describing in vivid detail her latest personal training session, says, “So what about you? Anybody interesting on the horizon?”
“Well, it’s hard with Kelly and everything, and I honestly don’t even know where I would meet anybody.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Honey, you don’t go into your competitors’ places of business very often, do you?”
“No, I mean, I’m pretty much here or at home with Kelly, and whenever there’s some new product people want, they usually come in and ask for it.”
“Do you want to guess how many dads I’ve ever seen at a birthday party or even on a random weekday afternoon at Captain Craft?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Zero. Zero, Stacey. Fathers do not come to these goddamn girly things and watch their little angels stick beads on stuff. Except here. You ought to issue them a drool cup when they walk in. Don’t you honestly even notice that you’re being ogled all the time?”
“No, but thanks very much for pointing it out, it’ll make work so much more comfortable for me from here on out.” Camille is of course exaggerating—she’s actually seen five fathers in eleven visits to Captain Craft—but her point is valid: Kids’ Creation Station is a big hit with divorced dads, widowed dads, and even married dads, and, as Camille points out, it is not the visual appeal of the art supplies that draws them in. And Stacey is being completely truthful. It’s never even occurred to her, which suddenly strikes her as bizarre. Is she so far gone? She spent years manipulating her attractiveness to her advantage at work, and now she’s apparently doing it unconsciously. It’s somewhat dispiriting—she wants customers because she’s created a superior business, not because of her fantastic rack.
“All I’m saying is that this place is full of potential dates every Saturday. Check the left hand, dearie.”
“Ugh, I don’t know.”
“Sweetie, if I had tits like yours, I wouldn’t settle for just one personal trainer.”
“Uh, I’ll keep that in mind.” And she does, filing it away in the back of her mind. Maybe if some dad comes in here someday, one who isn’t too creepy, too pathetic, too fat and bald, too old, too inept at parenting, then maybe, just maybe she would consider it. But months go by, and no one matching that description comes in.
After Kelly’s first day of second grade, Stacey peppers her with questions she knows are annoying, but she can’t quite make herself stop. Is she happy to be back in school? (“Sort of”) Is she glad Grace is in her class again? (“Duh!”) What’s her new teacher like? “Well,” she says, “well, he said that he had a sister who died, and I kind of thought he would be a really sad guy, but he doesn’t seem like a sad guy. He’s pretty nice, I guess. But he did have to yell at Kevin and then turn out the lights. I don’t like it when the teachers do that. I told him my dad died, too.”
Stacey says nothing to this. “So, did this guy give you homework or what?”
“Yes! Can you believe that? Homework on the first day? What’s with this guy?”
Stacey smiles and looks at Kelly in the rearview mirror. “Don’t look at me like I’m cute!” Kelly says. They arrive at Kids’ Creation Station and Kelly sits right down in the office and does her homework without any complaining or fighting, which is a relief, because she’s been really into the mural she’s doing, and Stacey was afraid they might have a Homework Battle.
It being the first day of school, Kids’ Creation Station gets an unusually large after-school rush, as the wealthy parents try to console their kids about the end of summer. Stacey runs around for two solid hours, during which time Kelly sits quietly and works on her painting of the two of them in a rain forest surrounded by red-eyed tree frogs.
They head home and Stacey heats up leftover lentil stew. “This sucks!” Kelly says. “I want grilled cheese.”
“You can’t have grilled cheese every day of your life, sweetie, and please don’t say ‘sucks,’” Stacey says.
So far it’s been a great day despite the stress of the new school year beginning. And then it’s time for Kelly’s bath, and Stacey realizes that with all the hurry of getting out the door this morning, she never put detergent in or started that load of laundry she’d put in the washer at six-thirty A.M., SO Kelly has no pajamas. Kelly stands there, naked and dripping wet, and screams, “You are so stupid! Why can’t you ever remember to do the laundry? That’s fine, I’ll just wear rags like an orphan! You’re an idiot! You suck! You’re the worst mother in the whole stupid world!” and slams her door.
Stacey yells, “Well, I hope you didn’t want to watch Fairly Odd-Parents in the morning, Miss, because you just lost TV for the whole week! You do not speak to me that way!” But she does speak to her that way. And Stacey keeps upping the punishment for name-calling, and it keeps not helping. And did she really just say “Miss”? “I hope you don’t want to watch Fairly OddParents, Miss”? How the hell did Candace Strange, lost for all these years, suddenly find her way into Stacey’s mouth?
She gives Kelly a few minutes to stomp around her room while she cleans up the dinner dishes. When Stacey’s sure that she’s calm enough to face Kelly, she grabs Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban from the shelf, knocks gently on Kelly’s door, and asks if she’s ready to read. Kelly gives a quiet “Yeah,” and they spend the next half hour at Hogwarts. When they reach the end of the chapter, Kelly, perhaps chastened by Harry’s desperation to hear his dead mother’s voice, says she’s sorry she was mean, she doesn’t think she’s stupid, she knows she works really hard, she’s sorry, she’s so sorry, she has the best mom in the whole universe.
Stacey smiles and kisses her good night, and when she’s sure that Kelly’s asleep, Stacey thinks about calling Phoebe, who’s consulting in Chicago, but instead she just sits on the couch in the dark and cries. Stacey wonders what she can do. Medication? Therapy? What the hell is Kelly so angry about?
Or maybe she’s the one who needs therapy and medication, Stacey thinks. Are Kelly’s tantrums actually getting objectively worse, or is she just less able to handle them? Why does she find herself crying so much at night? Why is she so impatient with Kelly? Maybe Kelly’s getting worse because Stacey’s getting worse. A bad parent raises a bad kid. Fantastic. During the day it feels fine, it feels like she’s got it all under control, like she’s built a nice life for S&K Phillips, but at night she just feels like her whole life is balanced on a knife edge, and she doesn’t know how to keep it from tipping over.
When she’s all cried out, she climbs into bed, exhausted. In the middle of the night, Kelly appears by her bedside, crying, she’s scared of the dementors, can she please sleep here? Kelly climbs into bed and she’s warm and soft and sweet, and they both sleep until morning.
During the next few weeks, the roller-coaster ride continues. Perhaps emboldened by what she hears on the playground, Kelly tries “Fuck you” out on Stacey when she’s mad. The demon she becomes when she’s angry just seems completely at odds with the sweet, thoughtful kid she usually is, and Stacey keeps thinking she’ll grow out of it, or she’ll get better when she’s not stressed by what’s currently stressing her. And sometimes the beast has gone away for weeks at a time, and Stacey believes that they’re finally out of the woods, it was just a phase after all, and now things are going to get better. But she’s reaching the conclusion that things aren’t getting better.
Phoebe encourages her to check in at school, and Stacey reluctantly agrees. Three weeks into the school year she calls and leaves a message for Mr. Norris. He calls her at Kids’ Creation Station at four o’clock that day.
“Hello, Kids’ Creation Station!”
“Uh, hello. I’m trying to reach Stacey Phillips?”
“Yeah, this is Stacey.”
“Hi, this is Mark Norris, Kelly’s teacher? I got a message that you called?”
“Yeah, I did. Hang on, let me just go into the back—Aileen, I’m going to the office, you’re in charge … Okay. Yes, I just wanted to … I’m not sure exactly how to say this …”
“It’s okay. A lot of people have questions about the new math curriculum. They really are learning the basic skills, it’s just that we try to put them in context so they’re not just—”
“No, no, it’s not about the math curriculum.” Shit! Calling Kelly’s teacher seemed like such a great idea before, but now how does she say I’m a shitty parent, and is my little angel being as demonic at school as she is at home? Or is she even being that bad at home? Please, Mr. Expert who sounds like he’s about twelve, reassure me! “It’s just that, well, Kelly’s been acting out a lot at home, and I just wanted to check and see if that … what you’ve seen from her at school.”
“What I’ve seen? I mean, I’ve seen only good things. She’s reading well above grade level, she does her work, she listens, she works well in groups, she’s very patient with the other kids—depending on the task, I try to group them by ability, or else put a mix of levels in one group, and whenever she’s in one of these mixed groups, she’s just incredibly patient with the kids who are not getting it as quickly as she is. I mean, I don’t say this to everybody, but she’s just a remarkable kid.”
“Well, thanks. I like to think so.”
“It’s just true. She did mention … well, she mentioned her father’s death once, but it’s never come up again. I’m sorry, by the way. I don’t know if that was recent …”
“No, it was before she was born.”
“I’m sorry. I … I lost my sister when I was nineteen.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that. Life is so hard sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Norris says, “it sure is.”
MARK
When he sees the note in his box, Mark winces, and as he opens it he braces himself for what he is sure is going to be a very annoying conversation. In his few years of experience here at the Balch, when the parents of the smart white kids call, it always leads to a really annoying conversation along the lines of “Why is my Madison only reading one year above grade level?” or “What are you doing to prepare Aidan for the Boston Latin test in the sixth grade?”
So Mark gets out his Kelly Phillips folder, notes with relief that she’s reading two years above grade level, and prepares his standard response about the Latin test. He’s shocked, then, when Stacey Phillips asks if Kelly has been misbehaving in school. Kelly? He tries to keep the shock out of his voice. Kelly is one of those if-only-I-had-a-class-full-of-Kellys kind of kids. The closest she’s come to acting out is getting a little bit frustrated when she runs out of room on a page to write one of her stories.
He feels bad that he can’t help Mrs., or possibly Ms. (he’s been yelled at for using each honorific, so now he just always goes with full names) Phillips sitting there at the Kids’ Creation Station, whatever that is, worrying. He can almost see her in his mind—probably worrying the strap of her Birkenstock, or tugging absent-mindedly on the hair on her plump calf as she talks to him, wanting him to say, Yes, Kelly’s a pain in the ass here, too, it’s not just you. But he can’t tell her that. He wonders what Kelly did—maybe she announced a desire to one day wear makeup or high heels, he thinks, and then feels bad as he remembers Kelly’s grief and how much harder it must be for Ms. Phillips to grieve while trying to be strong for a kid.
