Dear Catastrophe Waitress, page 22
Every day she sees Mark come out with the first and second graders, always with a different kid by his side. Sometimes he is holding their hands, sometimes he’s just walking, but he’s always engaged in conversation with them, talking and laughing, or stopping the line in order to talk to the kid who just stole somebody else’s hat. This is in marked contrast with Ms. Jimenez, who always looks bored and/or annoyed as she brings out the kindergartners.
It’s a chaotic mess when the kids come out, so they don’t always get a chance to talk, and when they do it’s usually something along the lines of “Freezing today, huh?” or something like that, though sometimes it’s “Kelly wrote a fantastic story today. I told her she had to show it to you, but I wanted to tell you just in case she forgot.” Of course, any communication always leads to Kelly expressing her disapproval. Sometimes it’s just a scowl, but sometimes it’s tears when they get in the car: “Why do you always have to talk to him? It’s so embarrassing!” Stacey always tells Kelly that it’s a good thing for parents and teachers to communicate, that’s why they send those fliers home with the teacher’s e-mail address, and didn’t she notice that Mr. Norris always says hello to Diego’s dad, too?
Kelly doesn’t exactly buy this, but it’s not like Stacey can (or would) start ducking Mr. Norris at pickup time just because it makes Kelly uncomfortable. They don’t always speak, but even when they don’t, she always catches his eye and smiles. He’s a good egg, she thinks, and she’s happy he’s Kelly’s teacher. She’s really curious about what his rock_l story is, but this is obviously not the time or place to hear a story at all, since it’s a struggle to even exchange three sentences.
Well, she thinks, maybe at the next parent conference. And maybe then Kelly’s anger will have subsided, her tantrums will have gotten better, and she’ll be able to tell Mr. Norris that she was all worried about nothing last time, ha-ha, isn’t it funny how parents get so neurotic about these little phases?
Except it’s not really a phase. And it’s not really getting better. One night after the playdate at Grace’s house, Kelly has a fit about dinner, about how she wants goddamn chicken nuggets, and so she goes to her room without eating and eventually comes and eats her cold grilled cheese before bed.
Phoebe is out of town, so Stacey calls her on her cell phone. She listens to Phoebe vent her worries for ten minutes, and provides her customary reassurance—no, you’re not a terrible mom because you’re out of town, no, Steve’s not fucking the nanny, no, really, Steve’s not fucking the nanny, no, you’re not a terrible mom, yes, I’m really really sure Steve’s not fucking the nanny. Wait, what’s that squeaking sound from upstairs?
After she assures Phoebe that she honestly was just joking, she can’t hear anything from upstairs, she says that she’s really worried about Kelly, that the time at Grace’s hasn’t helped at all, she totally lost it tonight.
Then she hears an angry whisper over her shoulder. “Who are you talking to? Why are you talking about me?”
Suddenly furious that she can’t even have ten goddamn minutes to have an adult conversation, Stacey whips her head around and barks, “Get back in bed NOW!”
She listens as Kelly retreats to her room and then as stuffed animals and books go flying into the hallway. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna have to call you back,” she tells Phoebe, and she’s grateful that she hung up the phone in time so that Phoebe didn’t overhear Kelly yelling, “Fine! I’m getting back in my bed, you fucking idiot!”
Stacey charges for the bedroom door, and just as she begins to yell “Never ever speak to me—” Kelly chucks the framed picture of the two of them smiling next to the pond at Larz Anderson Park at the door frame. The glass shatters and a shard flies into Stacey’s leg, which begins to bleed.
“Ow, Kelly, Jesus Christ! Goddamn it!” she yells, and then she collapses next to the door and begins to cry. She’s a failure, she’s the worst mother in the world, and now she’ll have a little scar on her calf to prove it to the world. She fucked up, she fucked up so completely, and no matter how far she runs, no matter how much she pretends to be somebody else, she is cursed for life.
Despairing, she cries and cries and cries and cries. And she hears somebody else crying. It’s Kelly, and she’s saying, “I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m so sorry, Mommy, please don’t die, please, Mommy, don’t die, please …”
Stacey lifts her head. “I’m not gonna die, sweetie.” She walks over to Kelly’s bed and hugs her. Kelly clings to her and it feels nice. And suddenly there’s a break in her clouds of despair, and she says, “Kel-Bel, we’ve gotta go talk to somebody about this.”
“That sounds really suckish, mom,” Kelly whispers. “It doesn’t sound like any fun.”
“Well, Kel-Bel, how fun was this?”
“Not very much.”
“I’d say it was pretty suckish.”
“It was, Mommy,” Kelly says. They lie down together in Kelly’s bed, and Kelly is asleep in five minutes. Stacey cleans up the glass and then tosses and turns all night.
The next day she calls Kelly’s pediatrician, and the receptionist, after silently judging her the worst mother on the face of the earth, transfers her to Behavioral Health, where the receptionist, after silently joining in the other receptionist’s judgment, grants her an appointment with Dr. Karen Haver, who will give her professional opinion that Stacey is the worst mother on earth two weeks from today.
MARK
At the beginning of the second trimester, the principal, Ms. Jackson, whose first name is Inez but who insists that everybody call her Ms. Jackson (Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty, Mark can’t help thinking whenever the issue comes up), comes to his room and tells him that, as he is aware, the contract allows her to assign duties and to change them at the trimester, and she knows that he had an inside duty for the first trimester but now she needs him to take over taking the first- and second-grade walkers out in the afternoon, and she’s sorry but her decision is final.
Mark is happy to do this—he actually likes this duty, but he can’t help but get mad at the way Ms. Jackson acts like Mark is some kind of slacker, or some kind of malcontent who’s going to file a grievance when he didn’t say a word and actually preferred outside duties.
So on the first day, he takes the walkers out, and Kelly, his second in command, walks by his side. She reaches her hand up, and though he knows he needs to be careful and avoid any physical contact, he’s not going to refuse to hold the hand of this sweet kid with the dead dad, so he just hopes her incredibly hot mom will be cool about it. He suspects she will be.
When he hands Kelly off to her, Stacey is smiling, and Mark wonders if she understands how electric her smile is, if she knows that she’s lighting up the sidewalk here. Probably not. He also sees that she’s wearing a rock_l shirt with MY LEFT ONE written on the left side of her formidable rack.
“Nice shirt,” he says, and then blushes, because how can you admit to noticing a shirt like that without admitting that you’re noticing the fantastic breasts beneath it? You can’t, so he keeps talking: “Uh, I mean that’s her best song.”
“You like rock_l?” Stacey asks. “I didn’t think men were allowed to like rock_l.”
“There’s a story,” Mark says. Is there ever. “I’ll tell you sometime.” And then he is drawn away from Stacey and her incandescent smile, and later on he reflects that he managed to say something that actually sounded sort of cool even though he felt like he’d felt when he was a ninth grader in the presence of Lauren McCormick, Senior Girl.
After this, he has an extra reason to look forward to his afternoon duty. He finds himself feeling really disappointed whenever Kelly’s going to Grace’s house after school, because that means he won’t get to see Stacey that day. It’s not that the chaotic pickup time is very conducive to conversation; it’s mostly just little bits of conversation—Wow, it’s cold today, Kelly really liked that book you gave her, this kind of stuff. But it feels nicer than the interactions he has with the other parents. Is this just because he’s far more attracted to Stacey Phillips than he is to any of the other parents?
She always looks fantastic, and Mark begins to feel self-conscious about the fact that Stacey Phillips is so funky and stylish, and he looks like a dorky elementary school teacher. So he begins adding to his wardrobe, one piece at a time—a blazer here, a nicer shirt there, some uncomfortable shoes there. He wonders if she notices. Even if she doesn’t, it couldn’t hurt his chances with her or with anybody else. He doesn’t feel quite himself in nice clothes, but he finds that this is a sensation he enjoys.
In the meantime, there are parents in and around school all the time doing silent auction stuff. Grace’s mom comes to address a faculty meeting and says, “Of course this is being done by the parents for the benefit of the school, so we are not asking you to help out or supervise or anything, but we would really love to have you all there just to enjoy it as a community event. We’re going to be having entertainment for grown-ups outside, and entertainment for the kids on the inside, so those of you with children [Not me, Mark thinks, I got jilted!] can bring your kids and drop them off, we’re going to have a magic show and some other things we haven’t booked yet …,” and she drones on and on about all the wonderful things that the parents are going to do with all this money. After the meeting, Mark approaches her.
“Uh, hi, Opal.”
“Mark! What’s up?”
“Well, I, uh, I play guitar, and I used to do a bunch of kids’ entertaining, and I’d really like to do a few songs, if that’s okay.”
“Oh my gosh, that would be great! Are you sure you really want to do that? I mean, you spend all day with our kids every day, and I can certainly understand if you want a break.”
“No, I think it would be fun for me. I haven’t done it in a long time.”
“Well, okay, then, great!”
So Mark is committed to rockin’ out on his rock_l guitar with some songs about poop. He’s immediately nervous. Will it make him too sad? He doesn’t think so. Even though it reminds him of Janet (and of Becky blowing him back when she had never blown anyone else and certainly wasn’t lying to him about blowing anybody else at the same time), it’s also something he did before everything in his life started to suck, and it was something he might have picked up again a lot sooner if he hadn’t given the guitar to rock_l. Then she would have just cheated on him without writing the song, and then he never would have yelled at Rebekah, and maybe they’d be married by now, raising little culturally Jewish Unitarians and arguing about what holiday to celebrate in December.
Maybe there’s some way that making kids laugh about bodily functions will help him to recapture that time in his life when he didn’t know so much, when he didn’t know that God is a thug who kills children, that people—well, okay, women—have a seemingly unlimited capacity for deceit and betrayal, when he didn’t understand so completely that there is no earthly or celestial reward for being kind, it’s just something that suckers do because they are too weak to be cruel.
He begins devoting all his after-school time to rehearsal and planning for his appearance. He scours the used-record stores looking for cool stickers to put on his guitar. He rejects any number of band stickers and finally settles on a red sticker with black letters that reads: WARNING: MAY CAUSE IRRITATION. He slaps it on the guitar and feels cooler than he has in his entire life. He heads to the used-clothing stores, braving the musty smell of the merchandise and the patchouli reek of the twenty-year-old customer base in the hope of finding a cool rock-and-roll outfit. Or at least a cool Raffi-with-an-excretory-fixation outfit.
Finally, at four o’clock one Saturday, he spots a shiny purple suit on sale for only forty-five dollars. He buys it up, gets the sleeves and pant legs shortened, and is ready to go.
The silent auction is on Friday, and it’s now Thursday. The Balch is a hive of activity with busy-bee parents doing their dances all over the place. Mark wonders grumpily why the lovely Stacey Phillips is not among them. When he walks the kids out, she is there waiting for Kelly, and she waves twice, first at Kelly and then at him. (Ah, Lovely Stacey, he thinks. Do you have any idea what that wave does to me? And why must you be so far out of my reach?)
“So,” Mark says, “are you coming to the silent auction, or did you manage to duck the organizers?” He figures this is safe, because it’s a big school event, it won’t look like he’s asking Are you going to the school dance?, it’ll just look like he’s interested in this big thing that’s happening at school, and he’s trying to bond about the way the parents try to rope you into stuff.
“Oh, yeah, I got roped into supervising the kids’ entertainment. So it looks like I get to see a magic show,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Yes! She’s supervising kids’ entertainment! Thank you, God, and I’m sorry I called you a murderous thug! “Well, make sure to stick around after the magic show—there should be some good music.”
She looks at him quizzically, and then he is swept away by the tide of kids.
He can’t fall asleep on Thursday night. He is nervous about his performance, of course, but he’s even more nervous about the fact that Stacey Phillips is going to be there. He keeps trying to think about something else, but he keeps seeing her every time he closes his eyes. At one o’clock he gets up, turns on Conan O’Brien, and tries to clear his head. You don’t even really know this woman, he tells himself. You’re doing it again, you’re getting obsessed with an idea of somebody without knowing a thing about her, it’s just like Becky, you wanted her to still be Becky, but she was really Rebecca.
And, anyway, you can’t date the parents of your students. And, anyway, she’s older—you don’t know how much, but she probably is in the market for somebody—somebody as good looking as she is, somebody different from you. After all, every other woman you’ve ever gotten involved with was actually in the market for somebody quite different from you.
Stacey is kind, and she has a wonderful kid, and she is so sexy it makes him sweat just to look at her, but she’s no more than an American version of Jo—a fantasy he can escape to so he can forget the reality of Becky, of Raquel, of the fact that he’s doomed to be lonely until he settles for some kind of socially awkward, unattractive girl who writes Buffy fan fiction in her spare time or something.
Having decided that Stacey is just a fantasy, Mark gives in to a rather elaborate fantasy in which she is the star, and soon after he’s finished, he’s able to catch three hours of sleep before waking up at five, terrified.
After school Mark hangs around, his stomach too sour to eat, his brain too muddled to do any work. He settles for running through his set list again, quietly singing his scatological hits while he strums his guitar quietly with his thumb.
Finally, after what feels like days, he walks around outside and sees what items are up for bid. He listens to the band of parents calling themselves Nina and the Blackwoods doing painfully sincere covers of 1980s songs. When “Nina”—actually Jennifer Martin, parent of a kindergartner—makes a little gun with her hand and “shoots” the audience for the “bang bang” part of Scandal’s “The Warrior,” Mark decides that even the worst magic show would be preferable to this. Besides, Stacey is in there.
He walks in and finds Stacey at the back of the room while The Amazing Zev is making foam balls disappear from one hand and appear in the closed hand of Patrice, a third grader.
“I don’t know if it’s appropriate for that guy to be playing with his balls like that in front of the kids,” he ventures. This is a calculated risk—he doesn’t think anybody who wears a My Left One shirt is going to be offended by a seventh-grade testicle joke, but if she is, better to just end his hopes now before he starts singing his poop songs.
Stacey doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, he really shouldn’t play with them so much—they’re all red.” Mark laughs, and Stacey continues. “So I hope your act will be a little more appropriate.”
“Oh, it’s actually going to be terribly inappropriate, and I can probably tell you right now which three parents are going to complain about it.”
Stacey gives him a puzzled look. “Should I remove my daughter?”
“I don’t know. What are your feelings on scatology?”
“I feel like I don’t know what that word means.”
“It’s, uh, I suppose it’s the study of excretory functions.”
“You’re doing a poop act?”
“Well, I mean, it’s not exactly a poop act, I don’t think anybody’s going to poop, although if you look over there, Jasmine’s little sister kind of looks like she may have left a present in her diaper. But, no, I mean, for some of the songs, the subject matter is fecal matter.”
“Well, how much am I going to want to kill you when Kelly starts singing this stuff?”
“Less than I’m going to want to kill myself when my whole class starts singing when I’m trying to do math with them.”
“Okay then,” and she smiles. He feels like this is going really well, except that he’s now feeling incredibly stupid for having volunteered to do this in the first place, because he knows he’s going to catch a bunch of shit for it, no pun intended, ha-ha, but more than that, he doesn’t seem to need it. It looks like he can actually hold a real conversation with Stacey without being the bard of the bathroom, and suddenly this feels like a terrible miscalculation, one more time when he’s going to look back and say, Jesus, why the hell did I do that anyway?
“So can I ask what your rock_l story is?”
“Oh! Yeah. I’d love—” I’d love to tell you the whole thing over a cup of coffee, baby, he wants to say, but actually says, “—to, but I am actually kind of nervous, and I need to go put my rock-and-roll clothes on. But how about after my, uh, performance?”
